Brussels - The European Union was on Friday split over the question of whether or not to renew sanctions against Belarus, six months after it froze them, EU diplomats said.

The row comes as the bloc is pushing to increase its influence in the former Soviet Union to counter Moscow's growing assertiveness in the region.

Brussels - The European Union's executive on Friday launched a probe into a plan to rebuild fallen Belgian banking giant Dexia, which in September received a multi-billion-dollar bail-out from the Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments.

"We cannot reach a favourable conclusion at this stage on the plans submitted to us. We therefore have to study them in depth," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

Brussels - The European Union's executive body is to host on Friday high-level talks between representatives of General Motors (GM) and politicians from EU states where GM has subsidiaries, in a bid to defuse the growing crisis over GM's financial troubles.

GM's chief operating officer, Fritz Henderson, and the head of its European division, Carl Peter Forster, are to hold talks with the EU's industry, competition and employment commissioners, officials in Brussels confirmed.

Mons, Belgium - NATO is to divert seven warships, bound on the alliance's first-ever visit to Asia, to the coast of Somalia to fight piracy later this month, alliance ambassadors decided Friday.

The fleet of six frigates and a tanker, which had long been scheduled to visit Pakistan, Singapore and Australia, will first spend a month fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa, NATO said in a press release issued at the alliance's military headquarters.

Brussels/Strasbourg - Britain's Conservative party is to leave the main centre-right group in the European Parliament to form a eurosceptic bloc of its own after elections in June, parliament officials in Strasbourg said Thursday.

The move would be a blow to the conservative European People's Party (EPP), of which the Tories are the second-largest member.

But British conservatives insisted that it would not hand more power to socialist parties, since they would still vote with their former partners on key matters.

Brussels - A row over VAT rates on nappies looked set to get dirty on Wednesday as the European Union's executive said it would have to discipline five countries for levying too little tax on disposable diapers.

"Sooner or later, the European Commission has to go ahead with those infringement (proceedings) and ask the (European) court to give an interpretation," commission taxation spokeswoman Maria Assimakopoulou told journalists in Brussels.