Frankfurt/Vienna - Deutsche Lufthansa AG has officially entered the bidding process for Austrian Airlines, which is being privatized by the Austrian government, the German carrier confirmed Monday.

"We have officially expressed our interest," a spokesman for the the German said.

Andreas Bartels said, hours after the Sunday deadline for sending letters of interest to OIAG, the state-controlled holding that wants to sell its 42.8-per-cent share in Austrian Airlines.

Vienna - Four mountaineers missing after an avalanche on the Mont Blanc massif in France are possibly Germans, an Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.

French authorities presume that eight alpinists were killed by an ice avalanche on Mont Blanc du Tacul on Sunday. Three have been identified as Swiss, and one as Austrian mountain guide Stefan E.

Four more missing mountaineers were initially believed to be Austrians, but they were probably Germans, Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, spokesman of the Austrian foreign ministry, told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

Vienna - The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has started to increase the number of its observers to monitor the ceasefire in Georgia, a spokeswoman said Monday.

In addition to the eight military monitors that had been stationed in Georgia's capital Tbilisi, six officers from Finland, France and the United States have been deployed to the country in the past days, Sonya Yee said.

A total of 20 monitors will arrive within the coming days. The unarmed officers are being recruited from a pool of 23 countries, Yee said.

Vienna - Climbing

Vienna, August 22 : The second round of crucial two-day meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) countries to grant India access to nuclear fuel and technology ended here today inconclusively.

The NSG is expected to meet again on September 4 to take a final decision.

After intense deliberations over the move that will end India''s 34-year-old isolation in the civil nuclear commerce, diplomats said no final decision could be arrived at. The leader of the US delegation at the NSG meet told reporters that the meeting was positive.