London - The credit crunch is slowing down peacemaking in the world's conflict zones by undermining the economic development of war-torn countries, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said in London Friday.

"It will not help us to solve conflict with no economic development in those countries...We are avoiding taking the tough decisions that are needed," the former Finnish president told foreign journalists.

However, the 71-year-old said he basically remained optimistic about the future of world peace.

Vienna  - Joerg Haider was one of Austria's most divisive political figures, but his memorial service on Saturday is set up like the funeral for a national hero.

Up to 30,000 people are set to attend the public mourning in Klagenfurt, the capital of Austria's southern province of Carinthia, where Haider was governor.

Before his death last Saturday, when Haider drove drunk at 142 kilometres per hour and crashed his car, the politician was known mainly for his anti-immigrant policies, his portrayal of refugees as criminals, or calling SS veterans "respectable people."

Helsinki - The construction schedule for Finland's fifth nuclear reactor has run into a new delay, Finnish power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said Friday.

Work on the third reactor at Olkiluoto, south-western Finland, began in 2005. Power generation was now slated to begin in 2012 instead of 2011, TVO said Friday.

Two of the country's four operating reactors are also located at Olkiluoto.

TVO said the "the reactor plant civil construction works will take several months longer than earlier estimated."

A TVO spokeswoman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the delays were linked to the casting of the plant's concrete structures.

Nairobi - More than 33,000 people, the vast majority of them Somalis fleeing a bloody insurgency in their homeland, have fled across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen this year, the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR said Friday.

At least 230 people have been confirmed dead and an estimated 365 remain missing as result of crossings gone wrong, often as a result of unscrupulous smugglers forcing the migrants overboard.

The number fleeing is twice as high as the previous period last year. Over two-thirds of the migrants are Somali, while the majority of the others are Ethiopian, UNHCR said.

Increasing numbers of Somalis are fleeing the Islamist insurgency in their country as violence has picked up in recent months.

Frankfurt - Anselm Kiefer, a German sculptor who has been awarded the German Book Trade Peace Prize this year, on Friday called peace "an unachievable utopia."

Kiefer, 63, who lives has lived in France since 1993, is the first artist to be given the annual 25,000-euro (34,000-dollar) prize, which is usually given to book authors who promote international understanding.

Gottfried Honnefelder, chairman of the Boersenverein, the German book publishers' and book-sellers' association, said the award showed that artists were also in a sense writers.

He said Friday the prize rules allowed the award to anyone active in literature, scholarship or the arts.

Maputo - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva voiced his anger at the rich countries Friday, saying the current global financial crisis is due to "Western hypocrisy."

Speaking in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, on a state visit, da Silva argued that rich nations spent the last decade convincing other countries to better manage their economic and business affairs, but allowed their guard to slip when it came to their own affairs.

"The current financial crisis is due to the irresponsibility of the rich countries which, in the decades of the 80s and the 90s, spent all their time teaching how to administer our countries without properly administering their own countries".