Cairo  - Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak will not attend the Arab summit in Doha scheduled on March 30-31, the State Middle East News Agency (MENA) quoted Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit as saying on Saturday.

Aboul-Gheit did not indicate the reason for Mubarak's non- attendance at the meeting, which was to review issues of reconciliation within the Arab camp, although a rift over Doha's diplomatic stances is believed to be behind the announcement.

Egypt is to send a lower-level delegation to Doha.

Hluboka Castle, Czech Republic - Neither Croatia, nor any other applicant country, will be able to join the European Union unless the bloc's reforming Lisbon Treaty is ratified, officials from France and Germany said Saturday.

"There will be no enlargement if there is no Lisbon Treaty," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner during an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Czech Republic.

Moscow  - Russia, Iran and Central Asian states called Friday for Afghanistan's neighbours to coordinate their efforts and be more actively engaged in helping the country fight terrorism and drug- trafficking.

The comments at a Russia-sponsored summit on Afghanistan seemed targeted at alerting Washington just four days before a broader UN- led conference that it must play more attention to the interests of regional powers in strategy planning.

Islamabad - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday welcomed the initiatives announced by his US counterpart Barack Obama to strengthen democracy and "pass a bill for 1.5 billion dollars aid to Pakistan every year."

"Pakistan has always held the Pak-US relations in high esteem and his announcements during the speech on a new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan will further cement these ties," Zardari said in a statement, according to the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.

Kabul  - Afghan President Hamid Karzai welcomed the new strategy unveiled by US President Barack Obama on Friday and said the chances for success were greater, because the plan has recognized that the war on terrorism was a regional problem.

"The Afghan government welcomes the new US strategy, because it has taken into consideration the Afghan government's ideas and its demand that the terrorism is a regional problem," Karzai said in a statement issued by his office.

London - A British government minister Friday put the costs of staging next week's summit meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) nations at 19 million pounds (27.1 million dollars).

Mark Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister in charge of planning the event, said the bulk of the money would be spent on security and policing.