Moscow - Russian energy monopoly Gazprom and aluminium mining giant RusAl clinched deals on Monday for development projects in Vietnam during the visit of the country's president to Moscow.

Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet and his Russian counterpart President Dmitry Medvedev were at the signing of the joint projects at the Kremlin after talks on boosting trade and energy ties.

Gazprom and it overseas operations arm ZarubezhNefteGaz sealed a deal with Vietnam's state oil firm PetroVietnam for joint exploration of the Asian state's offshore oil reserves.

Vienna- Austria's government indicated Monday it could take over some of the debt of Austrian Airlines AG before selling it to either Germany's Lufthansa AG or Russian carrier S7 Airlines.

The government's mandate to privatize its 42.75-per-cent stake in Austrian Airlines was scheduled to run out Tuesday, but the process was likely to be prolonged until December 31, the Finance Ministry announced.

The state "might be ready to contribute financially in order to make the sale go through," Transport Minister Werner Faymann said.

Brussels - The European Union on Monday welcomed a ceasefire agreement in Somalia, while NATO said it had successfully completed its first anti-piracy mission off the Somali coast.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stressed the importance of cooperation between the two Brussels-based institutions during a regular meeting of ambassadors at the alliance's headquarters.

One area in which the two organizations are working together is in the fight against pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden.

Stockholm - Two of Sweden's 10 nuclear reactors were to be offline for at least a month as checks continued on the control rods used to control the nuclear fission process, officials said Monday.

The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority last week ordered operators to check the control rods after cracks were detected in the control rods at one of the three reactors at the Oskarhamn nuclear plant, south-eastern Sweden.

Reactor Number 3 at the Oskarshamn plant was due to be back online December 3, Oskarhamn, spokeswoman Annika Carlsson told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

London - The British government will increase public sector borrowing to speed up economic activity in order to tackle the looming recession, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday.

Speaking to a group of academics and industrialists in London, Brown defended his controversial plans, saying that it was "responsible" for government to boost spending and to maintain levels of investment in welfare policies.

Ankara - The Istanbul trial of 86 alleged coup plotters hit a delay Monday when one of the accused insisted that the entire 2,455-page indictment be read out in court, CNN-Turk television reported.

The broadcaster reported that the demand for a full reading came from just one defendant exercising his right to have the entire indictment read. The process is likely to take up to 10 days.