Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.

Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.

The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.

“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.

The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.

The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.

“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.

“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.

“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”

An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”

Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.

Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.

International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.

Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.

But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.

The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.

Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.

Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.

The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.

A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.

“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)

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On Twitter, pope to get different type of followers

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but he soon will have another type when he enters what for any 85 year old is the brave new world of Twitter.

Vatican officials say the pontiff, who is known not to love computers and still writes most of his speeches by hand, will have his own handle by the end of the year.

“It will be an officially verified channel,” said a Vatican official.

Primarily the tweets will come from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion or so Roman Catholics will not, of course, write the tweets himself, but he will sign off on them before they are sent in his name.

But even divine intervention might not help squeeze the gist of a papal encyclical, which can run to more than 140 pages, into 140 characters.

Those tweets will probably be limited to a link to a url with the entire document.

The papal handle has not yet been disclosed but it is widely expected to be @BenedictusPPXVI, his name and title in Latin.

The pope has given a qualified blessing to social networking.

In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalisation, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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Italy lifts ban on Novartis flu vaccine

ROME (Reuters) – Italy lifted a ban on Novartis‘s flu vaccines on Friday after accepting the drugmaker had shown they posed no risk to safety.

The company said it hoped to quickly resume regular supplies around the European Union.

Italy banned the sale of anti-influenza vaccines produced by Novartis on October 24, pending tests for possible side effects after small particles were found in some of the injections.

The Italian pharmaceutical agency AIFA, a government body, said on Friday it had lifted the ban “following careful checks on the documentation produced by the company.”

The agency said its analyses had gone beyond its routine controls and had “confirmed the absence of defects” in the products, Agrippal and Fluad.

After Italy imposed its ban several other countries followed suit, including Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Canada and Singapore.

Canadian and Swiss authorities lifted their bans on October 31, and Singapore ended its suspension on November 2.

Novartis welcomed Italy’s decision and said it would “continue to work with other European Union countries to lift remaining precautionary measures and resume supply there as soon as possible.”

It said in a statement that for the 2012-2013 season more than one million doses had been administered “with no unexpected adverse events reported.”

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by James Mackenzie and David Cowell)

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Draghi open to ECB rate cut, done helping Greece

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The euro zone economy shows little sign of recovering before the year-end despite easing financial market conditions, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Thursday, leaving open the possibility of an interest rate cut in the months ahead.

But after keeping rates on hold on Thursday, Draghi said the ECB cannot do much more to help Greece with its debt burden and gave Spain none of the assurance it wants that ECB bond buying will lower its borrowing costs.

“The ECB is by and large done,” Draghi told his monthly news conference when asked what the bank could do for Greece.

The euro zone is grappling to find a formula to make Greek debt sustainable, with Germany and the International Monetary Fund at odds over the need for governments and the ECB to take a “haircut” on Greek bonds they hold to make the numbers add up.

The ECB agreed earlier this year to hand over to euro zone governments profits on its Greek bonds but has refused to take a hit on the value of the paper, saying that would be “monetary financing” which it is prohibited from doing.

The ECB held its main rate at 0.75 percent, deferring any cut while it waits for a cue to use its new bond-purchase plan. That wait may be prolonged after Spain completed its 2012 funding at affordable rates on capital markets on Thursday.

A Reuters poll had given an 80 percent chance the ECB would hold its main rate, but most of the 73 analysts polled expect it will be cut to a new record low of 0.5 percent within the next few months.

Draghi said ECB monetary policy is “very accommodative”. He declined to comment when asked whether markets were right to expect a rate cut next month and said the policymaking Governing Council had not discussed what it would do next year.

Economist Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said: “Draghi appeared to ease open the door to a cut in interest rates over the coming months and potentially as soon as December.”

Not everyone expects a cut that soon.

“Our sense is that the ECB is firmly on hold,” said JP Morgan economist Greg Fuzesi, though he added: “Next year, the ECB will act if growth disappoints more fundamentally.”

Describing “a picture of weaker economies” in the euro zone, Draghi said this would influence new ECB economic forecasts due next month. Inflation would remain above the ECB’s target for the rest of the year, before falling below 2 percent in 2013.

“We certainly continue monitoring economic activity and we stand ready to act,” he said.

“We stand ready to act with OMT (bond-purchase plan) once the prerequisites are in place. We also stand ready to act with the rest of standard, normal monetary policy instruments.”

OMT READY TO GO

Recent survey evidence gave no sign of improvement towards the year-end and the risks surrounding the euro area remain on the downside, Draghi said. As he spoke, the euro fell against the dollar and hit a session low in early New York trade.

Gloomy data this week indicated the euro zone economy will shrink in the fourth quarter, which the ECB could eventually respond to by cutting rates.

Before making any decision to cut rates further, the ECB will focus on making sure that its looser policy reaches companies and households across the euro zone, a mechanism that has been broken by the bloc’s debt crisis.

The new bond-purchase plan – dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) – is the ECB’s designated tool for this but can only be activated once a euro zone government requests help from the bloc’s rescue fund and accepts policy conditions and strict international supervision.

So far no request has been made, but the announcement of the policy alone has calmed markets.

“We are ready to undertake OMTs which will help to avoid extreme scenarios, thereby clearly reducing concerns about the materialization of destructive forces,” Draghi said.

Asked whether he could imagine an extreme scenario in which the bank began buying bonds without conditions, he said the answer was ‘no’.

CALLING FOR HELP

Investors and euro zone policymakers have been urging Spain to seek aid but Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has so far held off a request, saying he wants assurances that ECB intervention would bring down Spain’s debt costs.

Draghi gave Rajoy no comfort.

“The Governing Council will take the final decision in total independence,” he said of any decision on whether to use the OMT programme. “In so doing, it cannot give any assurance ex ante”.

Spain sold 4.8 billion euros of debt including its first longer-term issue in 18 months on Thursday, enough to complete its 2012 financing programme and begin raising funds for next year. So there is little immediate pressure on that front.

Yields on Spanish government bonds have dropped by around 2 percentage points since Draghi said in late July the ECB was ready to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro” – a pledge that heralded the bond-buying plan.

Investment funds have started flowing back into the euro zone since then, particularly from U.S. money market funds, Draghi said.

Some economists have now raised the possibility that the OMT might never have to be activated considering its impact so far.

But Matteo Cominetta, European economist at UBS, said it would eventually be put to the test because of the large amount of Spanish sovereign debt coming up for refinancing next year, roughly 140 billion euros according to Reuters data.

“Next year, you will have a record supply of Spanish bonds up for renewal in a situation where macro economic data will remain very bad for a long time in Spain,” Cominetta said.

(Reporting by Eva Kuehnen and Paul Carrel, writing by Mike Peacock; Editing by Paul Taylor)

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.

The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.

Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.

An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.

A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.

“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.

President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.

The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.

The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.

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Assad fans vent over Syria at Qatar soccer match

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria blames the state of Qatar for arming rebels bent on overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. Qatar has accused Assad of genocide. On Thursday afternoon, the two countries battled it out on the soccer field.

“Our souls, our blood, we sacrifice them for Bashar,” the Syrian fans screamed, waving their national flag, as the under-19s played in the United Arab Emirates in an Asian Football Confederation tournament.

Twitter was ablaze with politicized messages on the game from a group of pro-Assad social media enthusiasts.

“Doesn’t matter who wins a football game, at the end #Syria is kicking #Qatar’s mercenaries asses everyday,” said a Twitter user whose tag is @ProSyriana.

The game was broadcast live on Syrian state television, though the commentators steered clear of politics.

Peaceful pro-democracy protests hit Syria’s streets in March 2011 but were met with live ammunition. Nineteen months later, Assad is fighting a civil war against a majority-Sunni Muslim opposition. Assad is an Alawite, a sect that is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Damascus said from the beginning that the uprising was a foreign-backed conspiracy and ever since, Assad supporters have directed vitriol at Sunni states Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

“#Qatar players (are) falling down like #FSA scum,” said @Syriancommando, a prominent online activist, referring to the Free Syrian Army, a group of Syria army defectors who joined rebel fighters.

In the end, after a Syrian red card and a couple yellows, Qatar won 2-1 but fell out of the tournament on points, while Syria stayed in.

“#Qatar u may have won the battle but u didn’t win the war. #Syria goes on to play next game, Qatar is out. We’ll win the real war too.” said @Partisangirl, a Syrian YouTube commentator.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Tom Perry and Paul Casciato)

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UK PM warns of witch-hunt against gays in pedophile scandal

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that speculation about the identity of an unidentified member of his ruling Conservative party accused of sexually abusing children could turn into a witch-hunt against gay people.

Cameron, who leads a troubled two-party coalition, ordered an investigation this week after a victim of child sexual abuse in Wales said a prominent Conservative political figure had abused him during the 1970s.

The claims, which follow the unmasking of late BBC star presenter Jimmy Savile as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders, have stoked concern that a powerful pedophile ring may have operated in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I have heard all sorts of names bandied around and what then tends to happen is of course that everyone then sits around and speculates about people, some of whom are alive, some of whom are dead,” Cameron said during an ITV television interview.

“It is very important that anyone who has got any information about any pedophile no matter how high up in the country go to the police,” he said.

Britain’s interior minister warned lawmakers this week that if they named suspected child abusers in parliament they risked jeopardizing future trials.

MPs benefit from “parliamentary privilege” – meaning they can speak inside parliament freely without fear of legal action on a host of legally sensitive issues that might otherwise attract lawsuits.

Reports of child abuse have provoked fevered speculation on the Internet about the identity of the Conservative figure from the era of Margaret Thatcher, prime minister from 1979 to 1990.

When the ITV interviewer passed Cameron a piece of paper with the names of people identified on the Internet as being alleged child abusers, Cameron said:

“There is a danger if we are not careful that this could turn into a sort of witch-hunt particularly against people who are gay.”

“I am worried about the sort of thing you are doing right now – giving me a list of names you have taken off the Internet,” Cameron said.

The BBC aired a program last week in which Steven Messham, one of hundreds of victims of sexual abuse at children’s care homes in Wales over two decades, said he had been sexually abused by a prominent Conservative political figure.

However, the BBC reporter said he could not name the figure because there was “simply not enough evidence to name names”.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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FDA reviewing Merck’s experimental insomnia drug

WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J. (AP) — Drugmaker Merck & Co. says the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing its experimental insomnia medication, suvorexant (SOO’vor-eks-ant).

The drug minimizes the morning grogginess common with many sleep aids. It could become a big seller for the Whitehouse Station, N.J., company.

If approved, it would be the first in a new class of medicines for patients with trouble falling or staying asleep. It works by temporarily blocking chemical messengers that keep people awake.

The FDA is doing a standard review, which usually takes 10 months. If approved, suvorexant would be a controlled substance like all hypnotic sleep drugs. They require additional government reviews taking four months or longer.

In studies, suvorexant’s most common side effects were tiredness and headache.

Merck also plans to seek approval for suvorexant in other countries.

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Stocks plunge after election; Europe woes deepen

The election behind them, U.S. investors dumped stocks Wednesday and turned their focus to a world of problems — tax increases and spending cuts that could stall the nation’s economic recovery and a deepening recession in Europe.

The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted as much as 369 points, or 2.6 percent, in the first two hours of trading. The average was on track for its worst decline in a year.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell as much as 40 points, or 2.8 percent.

Energy companies and bank stocks took some of the biggest losses. Both industries presumably would have faced lighter and less costly regulation if Mitt Romney had won the election.

Stocks seen as benefiting from President Barack Obama‘s decisive win rose. They included hospitals, free of the threat that a Romney administration would have sought to roll back Obama‘s health care law, and renewable-energy companies.

With the election over, traders’ attention returned to an increasingly sickly European economy, dragged down by a debt crisis for more than three years. The 27-country European Union said unemployment there could remain high for years.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, said that it expects the region’s economic output to shrink 0.3 percent this year. In the spring, the group predicted no change.

For next year, the commission predicted 0.4 percent growth, barely above recession territory. It predicted 1.3 percent last spring.

U.S. stock futures were higher overnight after Obama cruised to victory. They turned sharply lower after the European forecasts and discouraging comments from Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank. European markets turned negative as well.

Now that the U.S. election has been resolved, it’s natural for traders to focus on Europe‘s problems, said Peter Tchir, who manages the hedge fund TF Market Advisors.

What they’re tuning in to, he said, is the failure of a major European summit last week and minimal progress on the issues that are holding the region back.

“People can only digest one or two stories at a time, and people had put Europe on the back burner” before the election, he said.

Obama’s win followed a costly campaign that blanketed markets with uncertainty about possible changes to tax rates, government spending and other issues seen as crucial to the prospects of some industries and the broader economy.

As jitters about the election subsided, traders confronted an ugly reality: The so-called fiscal cliff, which will impose automatic tax increases and deep cuts to government spending at the end of the year unless the president and Congress can reach a deal.

That’s no easy task for a deadlocked government whose overall composition has barely changed — a Democratic president and Senate and a Republican House.

If Congress and the White House don’t reach a deal, the spending cuts and tax increases could total $ 800 billion next year. Some economists say that could push the economy back into recession.

“Obama‘s re-election does not change the bigger economic or fiscal picture,” Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics Ashworth, an economic research company, said in a note to clients.

Tobias Levkovich, a financial analyst at Citi Research, told clients Wednesday that a compromise on taxes and spending was likely in mid- to late January, but that stocks will probably fall in the meantime.

A deal early next year is much more likely “once the political class begins to negotiate realistically and as the consequences . . . are too costly for either party to ignore,” he wrote.

About two hours into trading, the Dow was down 345 points at 12,921, dipping below 13,000 for the first time since Sept. 4. The S&P 500 was down 37 to 1,391. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 75, or 2.5 percent, to 2,937.

As traders streamed into lower-risk investments, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note plunged to 1.64 percent from 1.75 percent late Tuesday. A bond’s yield declines as demand for it increases.

Stocks continue to hurt from lackluster third-quarter earnings reports, Tchir said.

“There’s been this whole litany of things that have been dragging down the market for a while, earnings chief among them, and that’s still out there,” he said, adding that those concerns “play as much of a role as anything to do with the election.”

Earnings have been relatively weak, with many companies reporting lower revenue and darkening expectations for the coming quarters.

With more than four-fifths of them having reported, companies in the S&P 500 index say earnings are up about 2 percent over last year, the lowest growth rate in three years, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.

Broad industries reacted to the election much as analysts had expected.

Hospital companies soared because of expectations that they will gain business under the health care law, known as ObamaCare. HCA Holdings and Tenet Healthcare leapt 7 percent, Community Health Systems 6 percent and Universal Health Services 4 percent.

With Obama seeking to restrain the growth of military spending, defense companies could struggle to win government contracts. Their stocks fell sharply: Lockheed Martin Lost 5 percent, Northrop Grumman 6 percent and General Dynamics 5 percent.

Among the 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 index, financial stocks and energy companies fell the most.

Banks figure to face tougher regulation in a second Obama term than they would have under Romney. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup fell 4 percent, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs 6 percent and Morgan Stanley 8 percent.

The biggest losers were coal companies, which had hoped that a Romney administration would loosen mine safety and pollution rules that make it more costly for them to operate. Peabody Energy dived 9 percent, Consol Energy 7 percent, Alpha Natural Resources 13 percent and Arch Coal 11 percent.

Oil companies fell less steeply.

Alternative energy companies, especially solar manufacturers, outperformed the indexes on expectations that they will continue to enjoy generous subsidies. First Solar was roughly flat and Yingli Green Energy Holding edged slightly higher.

Trading also reflected the outcome of ballot measures decided in Tuesday’s election. After two states approved the recreational use of marijuana for the first time, Medical Marijuana Inc., a company too small to be listed on major exchanges, surged 17 percent.

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Daniel Wagner can be reached at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports.

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Canada firms to capitalize on nuclear trade with India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal.

Once implemented, the agreement will end a ban on nuclear cooperation Canada imposed in 1976 after India secretly exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1974, commonly called the “Smiling Buddha”, using material from a Canadian-built reactor in India.

“Being able to resolve these issues and move forward is, we believe, a really important economic opportunity for an important Canadian industry, part of the energy industry, that should pay dividends in terms of jobs and growth for Canadians down the road,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday on a visit to New Delhi.

A negotiator with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that what remained was a careful legal review of the language; translation into French and Hindi; and then a signing.

This is not expected to take very long, he said. The two sides have set up a joint committee to liaise on nuclear issues, but he said it would not be negotiating.

India aims to lift its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW in the next 20 years by adding nearly 30 reactors. The country currently operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a capacity of 4,780 MW, or 2 percent of its total power capacity, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

Canada’s ambassador to India, Stewart Beck, said on Monday his country wanted to be able to track all nuclear material, but that India felt it only needed to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It was not clear who made concessions in the talks and how effective the safeguards would be to ensure that Canadian material did not get used again for making nuclear weapons.

However, the CNSC official said India would now be required to notify Canada of any transfers to a third country and trade could only go to facilities that are safeguarded by the IAEA.

PROBABLY BEATING AUSTRALIA

Harper said the CNSC had worked to “achieve all of our objectives in terms of non-proliferation”.

Canada is in a race against Australia, its strategic ally but a commercial rival in the uranium business. Australia is also trying to nail down safeguards under which it too could sell uranium to India.

“We are effectively ahead of the Australians,” the CNSC official said, noting however that Russia and Kazakhstan were already supplying into India.

Opening up the Indian market would be a big help to Canada’s Cameco Corp, which is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium producer but which recently cut its long-term output targets due to the Fukushima disaster.

“Anytime we can reduce the roadblocks to selling our product around the world is always helpful,” Cameco chief executive Tim Gitzel told Reuters in Canada. “It opens a new market for us with the appropriate safeguards in place. So this is good news.”

Another potential beneficiary is Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin Group Inc, which bought the government’s commercial nuclear division, which designed the Candu reactor that is in use in numerous countries.

“As far as the sales of reactors goes, we would normally now request that Canada be accorded the same treatment as the Russians, the French and the Americans and that a site be designated in India for the implementation of at least a twin- unit Candu nuclear power station,” SNC Lavalin International President Ronald Denom, part of Harper’s delegation in India, told Reuters.

He also said it should open up the market to service the existing reactors in India.

Harper also said Canada welcomed foreign investment, after the country temporarily blocked Malaysian state oil firm Petronas’ C$ 5.17 billion ($ 5.19 billion) bid for gas producer Progress Energy Resources on October 20.

Late on Friday, Canada extended to December 10 its review of a $ 15.1 billion bid made in July by China’s CNOOC Ltd for Canadian energy producer Nexen Inc.

“Those decisions have to be taken looking at the global evolving economy in which we operate,” Harper said.

($ 1 = C$ 0.9965)

(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Toronto; Additional writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Michael Roddy)

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