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."

Warsaw - The Polish president will attend an upcoming European Union summit alone, TOK FM radio reported, after the prime minister said he would yield his place at the Brussels negotiating table in the latest round of their tense power struggle.

"I will inform the president if he's decided he must go to Brussels, then I will yield," Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently said, adding he would inform President Lech Kaczynski about the government's stance on issues to be discussed at the November 7 meeting.

Brussels - Eurozone finance ministers Monday faced the unenviable double task of trying to lead efforts to reform global capitalism while seeking a fix for their troubled economies.

The evening meeting in Brussels was the first in a series designed to prepare a common European position ahead of global talks on the financial crisis taking place in Washington on November 15.

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.

Brussels - Inflation in the European Union is set to fall sharply thanks to lower oil prices, giving countries such as Poland and the Baltic states a better chance of joining the euro, the EU's top economist said Monday.

"Commodity prices are more likely to fall ... on the back of deteriorating growth prospects and weaker demand coming from emerging countries. This would ease inflationary pressures," EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said.

Brussels - The European Union's economy is set to grind to a halt in 2009 and only start picking up in 2010, with a deep recession looming in Britain, the EU's executive said Monday.

According to the latest forecasts from the European Commission, the economy of the 27-member bloc is set to grow by just 0.2 per cent in 2009, while the 16 countries which use the euro are set for growth of just 0.1 per cent.

Growth in 2010 should pick up to around 1.1 per cent for the EU and 0.9 per cent for the eurozone.

Moscow - The presidents of France and Russia telephoned Saturday in preparation for the resumption of talks about closer ties between Russia and the European Union, the Interfax news agency reported Saturday.

The EU suspended those talks on a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement after Russia's war with Georgia this summer.

But officials from France, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, have given signs that the talks are set to resume and that a timetable for further talks could be laid out at a November 14 meeting in Nice.