Riga  - Lithuania and Poland on Monday urged NATO foreign ministers to offer Georgia and Ukraine a path to membership when they meet to discuss Russia's military intervention in the Caucasus.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Lithunian President Valdas Adamkus made the appeal before Tuesday's NATO emergency meeting in Brussels, citing "the uncontrolled violence and use of force in Georgia."

Turin, Italy - At least five people died in a lightning strike, drowning, electrocution, high winds and the downing of a tree as storms struck northern Italy, Poland and Austria.

A 10-year-old boy died Friday in Turin, Italy, after being hit by lightning while a 37-year-old Italian man drowned off Genoa the same day when he was swamped by high waves in the Mediterranean.

A female German tourist, 27, was missing in the rough waters near Ventimiglia, west of Genoa, and other swimmers narrowly escaped drowning before being rescued nearby.

Warsaw - Poland still expects a scheduled visit from a Russian diplomat after sealing a deal on a controversial US missile defence shield to be hosted in Eastern Europe, the foreign ministry said Friday.

Poland's PAP news agency reported earlier that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had cancelled a planned trip to Poland in September after Thursday's US-Polish agreement.

Poland's Foreign Ministry has no official word that Lavrov has called off the trip, local media quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.

Warsaw - Poland's ambassador to Iraq has resigned after failing to recover from burns sustained in a roadside bombing last year, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

General Edward Pietrzyk's wounds have not healed and "demand a different climate" for treatment than Iraq can offer, a ministry spokesman said.

No successor has been named.

Pietrzyk's envoy was attacked last October in Baghdad near the Polish embassy, killing one of his bodyguards and an Iraqi civilian.

After five weeks of medical care, where he was for a time kept in an artificial coma to manage pain, Pietrzyk decided to return to Baghdad.

Warsaw - Some 50 trams in the Polish capital will soon hit the streets with large "sober" signs on the back as part of a national program to fight drunken driving, media reported Friday.

The trams will join a few dozen buses that recently donned the oversized signs, designed in the style of Polish licence plates.

The programme is the brainchild of a Polish priest who was appalled at the number of drunken drivers on Polish roads.

It is part of a broader nationwide programme that promotes a sober lifestyle through billboards, commercials and contests.

Prague - Polish and Czech leaders planned Friday to discuss the future of the European Union's reform treaty, which the Czech president declared dead after Irish voters rejected it.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski's visit to Prague has led to speculation that he will urge his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus to support the Lisbon Treaty, which neither country has ratified.

The two leaders were to discuss "developments in the European Union after rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland" over dinner Thursday, Klaus's office said.

Klaus is a longtime critic of the EU accord, designed to streamline decision-making in the expanded 27-nation bloc. He says it's too federalist and too much like a European constitution.