The Hague - Belgium has instituted proceedings against Senegal at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanding that the country extradites former president of Chad Hissene Habre to be tried in Belgium, the ICJ confirmed on Friday.

In its application filed to the Hague-based court on Thursday, Belgium maintains that Senegal, where the former Chad dictator has been living in exile since 1990, has taken no action on repeated requests to see the former Chadian President prosecuted in Senegal.

London/Brussels - Some of the world's top banks have pledged to deal through central clearing houses when trading credit default swaps (CDS) in the European Union, EU officials said Thursday.

But bankers and EU staff alike sidestepped a reported French call for the countries which use the euro to set up a clearing house in Paris to counter the weight of London and New York, saying that they did not care where the business was carried out.

The Brussels-based European Banking Federation (EBF) "has no preference as to the location of the (one or more) central counterparties, but above all it wishes for

Brussels - If civilian casualties were the yardstick used to assess NATO's operations in Afghanistan, few would be able to argue that the alliance is winning its war against the Taliban insurgency.

According to United Nations estimates published in Kabul on Tuesday, the toll of Afghanistan's civilian death by military action rose by 40 per cent last year, to 2,118, the highest figure since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Brussels - People fleeing from violence and seeking safety in the European Union do not have to prove that their lives are under personal threat if they come from a dangerous enough country, the EU's highest court ruled on Tuesday.

But it is up to EU states to decide which countries count as dangerous enough, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled.

The ruling concerns Iraqi couple Meki and Noor Elgafaji, who in December 2006 applied for temporary residence permits in the Netherlands, saying that their lives would be in danger if they stayed in Iraq.

Brussels - The European Union's executive on Tuesday approved a joint venture between British aircraft engine maker Rolls Royce and Abu Dhabi investment fund Mubadala aimed at offering aircraft maintenance services in North Africa and the Middle East.

The formation of a joint venture specializing in aircraft engine maintenance "would not significantly impede effective competition within the European Economic Area (EEA) or a substantial part of it," the European Commission said in a statement.

Brussels - The European Union's executive body is set on Wednesday to warn at least six member states that they are going too deeply into debt as they struggle to ward off recession.

But analysts say that the European Commission is likely to give euro users France, Greece, Ireland, Malta and Spain, and non-euro country Latvia, several years to bring their budgets back into line with EU rules, as the 27-member bloc faces the worst economic crisis in 60 years.