Brussels - The European Commission on Tuesday approved a Spanish plan aimed at stabilizing its financial markets by providing liquidity to lenders in need.

The approval follows lengthy discussions between Madrid and Brussels over the exact scope of the plan.

Brussels - The European Union's top energy official is set to depart for a mission to Turkey and Azerbaijan Wednesday in a bid to bypass Russia for new gas supplies, officials said.

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs' visit is set to send a strong political signal that the EU is interested in two major pipelines, known as ITGI and Nabucco, which would bring gas from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Europe while avoiding Russia, European Commission officials said.

Brussels  - A detailed French set of proposals on how to reform the global financial system was at the top of the agenda on Tuesday as European Union finance ministers met in Brussels.

The plans "can still be better, but it's a good start ... I think we'll turn them into European plans," Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos said as the meeting opened.

His Austrian counterpart, Wilhelm Molterer, backed that sentiment, saying that "some countries might judge one or another detail differently, but the direction is absolutely right."

Marseille - The Spanish port city of Barcelona is to be the seat of the headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean, diplomatic sources said Tuesday in the French city of Marseille.

Agreement on what had been a bone of contention among the 40-plus members of the union was reached overnight during a meeting of foreign ministers from European Union members and their counterparts from Mediterranean states.

The decision to place the group's secretariat in Barcelona is in reference to the original EU Mediterranean initiative on which the Union for the Mediterranean was based, the Barcelona Process.

Brussels - Eurozone finance ministers were meeting Monday in a bid to forge a unified response to the global credit crunch, while trying to avoid a recession at home.

The evening gathering in Brussels was the first in a series of preparatory meetings taking place in Brussels this week ahead of a November 15 global summit on the financial crisis in Washington.

And it came amid gloomy new forecasts from the European Commission, which now expects the euro economy to teeter on the brink of recession in 2009.

Marseille - New rules of military engagement are necessary for the 17,000 UN peacekeeping troops stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday in Marseille.

"The rules of engagement now are very restrictive," Kouchner said ahead of an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in the southern French city of Marseille. "We can not have soldiers there who are not allowed to shoot. I'm not saying we should make war. But we should be able to carry out defensive missions."