Beijing  - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday urged North Korea and other nations involved in talks on its nuclear weapons programme to exercise restraint and "refrain from taking actions that may escalate tensions."

"We hope that parties involved in the six-party talks will further build consensus," Wen said ahead of planned talks next week with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Il.

Taipei  - Taiwan on Friday welcomed the prospect of a visit to the island by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao after Wen expressed his wish to see Taiwan and meet its people.

"We welcome Chinese leaders at all levels if they want to visit Taiwan, but we need to make careful planning," Premier Liu Chao-shiuan told parliament. "The higher their status is, the more careful the planning must be."

Wen made peace overtures to Taiwan Friday morning at a news conference in Beijing at the end of the annual session of China's nominal parliament, the National People's Congress.

Hanoi  - Vietnam has protested new moves by China and the Philippines asserting sovereignty over the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, local press reported Friday.

China announced recently it would allow a tourist agency to offer trips to an island in the Spratly archipelago known in Vietnamese as Phu Lam.

"This act seriously infringes upon Vietnam's territorial sovereignty and is harmful to bilateral negotiations to seek a fundamental and durable solution to the sea issues between the two parties," the Vietnam News Agency quoted government spokesman Le Dung as saying Thursday.

Vaduz, Lichtenstein  - The Principality of Lichtenstein has agreed to make its financial sector more transparent and work better on tax issues with other countries, it said in a statement Thursday.

"Liechtenstein commits to and will implement the global standards of transparency and exchange of information as developed by the OECD," read the statement, referring to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Wellington  - The New Zealand government is breaking with normal diplomatic practice and sending a former politician, Jim McLay, to New York as its representative to the United Nations, it was announced on Wednesday.

The post has traditionally been held by a senior career diplomat, but the conservative National Party government elected in November has chosen one of its veteran advisers who served as a cabinet minister and deputy prime minister between 1978 and 1984.

Wellington  - Fiji military strongman Commodore Frank Bainimarama is delivering his country "a passport to poverty" with his refusal to hold democratic elections, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

"He needs to recognize that if he wants Fiji to progress and to be taken seriously by both the (British) Commonwealth and the Pacific Forum leaders he needs to demonstrate that he has got a willingness for democracy to be restored," Key told reporters at his weekly news conference.