Brussels - The European Union approved its own financial rescue package at a summit that saw British Prime Minister Gordon Brown steal the limelight Wednesday in Brussels by proposing new rules for global capitalism.

The 2-trillion-euro (2.7-trillion-dollar) package, initially approved by eurozone leaders at a Sunday meeting in Paris, includes measures to safeguard private savers, guarantee interbank lending and partly nationalize shaky financial insitutions.

Brussels - Russia should be allowed to join the European Union in the coming years, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday.

"I consider Russia to be a Western nation. So my project is that the Russian Federation should become a member of the EU in the coming years," Berlusconi told Italian reporters on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels.

Berlusconi's comments on Russia's EU aspirations were not new, but they nevertheless raised eyebrows in Brussels.

Brussels - European Union leaders ga

Banja Luka - Bosnian Serb lawmakers voted Wednesday to resist closer ties with the rest of the country, underlining Bosnia- Herzegovina's paralysis as it seeks to join the European Union.

A resolution by the Bosnian Serb republic's parliament also called for fewer powers for the international administrator who polices Bosnia's divided politics under the 1995 Dayton peace agreement.

The crisis flared from a UN General Assembly speech last month by the Muslim member of Bosnia's three-member presidency in which he accused Bosnian Serbs of genocide during the 
1992-95 ethnic war.

Brussels- European Union leaders meeting in Brussels on Wednesday were set to rubber-stamp a 2-trillion-euro (2.7-trillion- dollars) financial rescue plan and call for a global response to the credit crunch.

According to draft conclusions of the two-day summit seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, heads of state and government planned to "adopt (common) principles" put together on Sunday by the 15 countries that share the euro.

Brussels - The European Union must prove that it can lead the world in solving the financial crisis and fighting global warming, EU leaders said Wednesday ahead of a summit in Brussels.

"Europe is leading the global response: We must continue to do so. An urgent priority is to further deepen cooperation on the international level, specifically with the United States," the head of the EU's executive, Jose Manuel Barroso, told journalists after a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.