Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday sent a letter to US President-elect Barack Obama congratulating him on what he called a "brilliant victory."

After extending the "warmest congratulations" on his behalf and that of the French people, Sarkozy wrote that Obama's election triumph "crowns an exceptional campaign ... (that) has shown the vitality of American democracy to the entire world."

Sarkozy added, "In choosing you, the American people have chosen change, openness and optimism."

Brussels  - The French presidency of the European Union agreed Tuesday to scale back its ambitious 11-point plan on reforming global capitalism amid concerns that calls for a "global economic government" would encroach on national sovereignties.

The French proposal is meant to kickstart discussions on a common EU position ahead of a global financial summit due to take place in Washington on November 15.

At a preparatory meeting in Brussels, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said fellow EU ministers had shown "massive support" for the presidency's document, which outlines a series of key changes to the way global capitalism should be run.

Madrid/Paris - French police Tuesday detained eight suspected Basque separatists, French and Spanish media reported.

The arrests were made in connection with an investigation into bars linked with Batasuna, a party regarded as the political wing of the militant group ETA.

The bars were also suspected of financing French Basque radicals who have carried out attacks against restaurants and other establishments, Spanish police sources said.

Arrests were made in different locations in the French Basque region, according to Askatasuna, a group defending jailed ETA activists.

The detainees were taken to a police station in Bayonne. Police searched several addresses.

Paris - Eleven world-renowned writers, including four Nobel Prize winners, have issued a ringing defence of Czech-born author Milan Kundera, accused of turning a Western spy in to the Communist state police in 1950, the daily Le Monde reported on Tuesday.

"This amounts to no more and no less than tarnishing the honour of one of the greatest living novelists on the most dubious grounds, to say the least," read a joint statement issued by the writers, including Nobel laureates JM Coetzee, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer and Orhan Pamuk.

The signatories pointed out that, in addition to Kundera's denials, the testimony of a "respected scientist from Prague," Zdenek Pesat, has also cleared him.

Madrid  - French police Tuesday detained six suspected Basque separatists, Spanish media quoted Spanish police sources as saying.

The arrests were linked to an investigation into bars suspected of financing violent separatists in France.

The arrests were made in different locations in the French Basque region, according to Askatasuna, a group defending jailed activists of the militant Basque separatist group ETA in Spain and France.

The detainees were taken to a police station in Bayonne. Police searched several addresses.

New York - United Nations officials on Monday rejected charges of incompetence by UN peacekeepers deployed at some northern and eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo where fighting has created fresh humanitarian crisis.

Some media reports in Europe and The New York Times criticized the 17,000-strong UN Mission in Congo, known as MONUC, of being powerless in the face of intensified attacks by armed rebels against government troops.