Syrian forces kill 13 protesters after Friday prayers (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian forces shot dead 13 protesters Friday, activists said, as tens of thousands demanded the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, chanting "we will kneel only to God."

Defiant protest marches unfolded across the country despite a military crackdown that has triggered sanctions and condemnation abroad.

These included protests in the cities of Hama and Deir al-Zor, both of which have been stormed in tank offensives launched by Assad during the holy month of Ramadan.

The Local Coordination Committees activists said among the deaths were six in the Damascus suburbs of Saqba and Douma, two protesters killed in the commercial hub of Aleppo, and two in the northern province of Idlib on the Turkish border.

Residents said two people were also killed in Hama, just days after the army completed a week-long assault on the city which became a symbol of defiance to Assad's rule after huge crowds gathered weekly to demand his overthrow.

"Go, Bashar!" protesters chanted in rallies held in the coastal cities of Latakia and Baniyas, as well as across the southern province of Deraa where the uprising against 41 years of Assad family domination first flared nearly five months ago.

In Deir al-Zor, forces fired live ammunition at protesters coming out of a main mosque, killing one person according to the local coordination committees.

A witness said a fire broke out in the mosque after security forces shot at it. "The whole neighborhood is echoing with the sound of bullets. Worshippers are running to take cover in alleyways," he said by telephone.

Another resident said: "Assad wants to finish off the uprising before international pressure becomes too much for him. But people have gone out of almost every major mosque in Deir al-Zor, meters away from tanks that occupy every main square and roundabout."

Syrian state television said two members of the security forces were killed by gunmen in Douma, just outside Damascus.

Syrian authorities have barred most independent media, making it difficult to verify events on the ground in the unrest, among a series of popular revolts against repressive power elites across the Arab world this year.

Assad's forces have intensified assaults on towns and cities across the country since the start of Ramadan nearly two weeks ago to try to subdue mounting dissent against the ruling family, despite threats of new U.S. sanctions and calls from Turkey and fellow Arab states to end attacks on civilians.

Activists said at least 19 people were killed in raids near the Lebanon border and in the country's Sunni Muslim tribal heartland Thursday. Assad's family belongs to the minority Alawite sect that runs Syria.

More than 1,700 civilians in all have been killed in the military crackdown on protests against Assad, activists say.

Syria says 500 soldiers and police have died in the upheaval, which it blames on armed gangs and terrorists.

CLINTON URGES CUT IN TRADE TIES

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday Syria would be better off without Assad and called on nations that buy oil or sell arms to Syria to cut those ties.

"We urge those countries still buying Syrian oil or gas, those countries still sending Assad weapons, those countries whose political and economic support give him comfort in his brutality, to get on the right side of history," she said.

Syria's oil industry, with which the Assad has close links, generates most of the state's hard currency from crude output of 380,000 barrels per day.

While Syria exports crude oil, its refinery capacity is not sufficient to meet domestic demand for fuel. Trading sources said Swiss oil traders Vitol and Trafigura agreed to supply state firm Sytrol with 60,000 tons of gasoline this week.

The global campaign group Avaaz urged European nations on Friday to impose immediate restrictions on purchases of Syrian oil to "dry up" funding of Assad's security services. It said over 150,000 Avaaz members had signed a petition to that effect.

But there is little prospect of Western states putting teeth into the sanctions on Assad by targeting Syria's oil because of vested commercial interests against doing so.

Asked why the United States had not called on Assad to step down, Clinton said Washington had been "very clear" in its statements about Assad's loss of legitimacy, and wanted other nations to add their voices.

Wednesday Washington imposed sanctions on Syria's largest bank and its biggest mobile telephone company, controlled by Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf. The next day, U.S. Ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford said more sanctions would follow if the Syrian authorities did not halt the violence.

In addition to the Friday protests, nightly Ramadan prayers, or "tarawih," which follow the breaking of the fast, have given more Syrians a focus for daily protest marches.

In neighboring Lebanon, hundreds of people demonstrated in the northern, mainly Sunni Muslim, district of Akkar in support of the Syrian protesters.

Regional powers Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have all applied pressure on Assad to stop the violence.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul warned Assad not to leave reforms until it is too late in a letter delivered to the Syrian president earlier this week, Turkey's state-run Anatolian news agency reported Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan spoke Thursday and agreed Syrians' demands for a transition to democracy must be met, the White House said.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

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Norway police to interview gunman Friday on new leads (AFP)

OSLO (AFP) – Norwegian police said they will question Anders Behring Breivik again on Friday after new information emerged relating to his killing spree, as prosecutors warned he would not go on trial before 2012.

Friday's interrogation will be only the second time police have quizzed the far-right extremist since Saturday, the morning after his shooting rampage on Utoeya island and the bomb blast in downtown Oslo that together killed 76 people.

Police official Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby said officers will question Behring Breivik on "the information received over the last few days -- which is a lot," although he did not reveal the nature of the information.

European counter-terrorism experts met in Brussels to look at wider lessons that can be drawn from the attacks, and an Oslo gun club said Behring Breivik had been a member since 2005.

But as the depth and complexity of the investigation spread, the Norwegian king's prosecutor general Tor Aksel Busch -- the country's highest legal officer -- said time would be required to sift through the evidence.

"We hope that we can conduct the court trial in the course of next year," he said, adding that Behring Breivik's indictment "will not be ready before the end of the year."

The possibility that the killer had been working with anyone else was receding, officials said, despite an international intelligence probe.

That possibility "has become weaker over time," police spokesman Henning Holtaas told AFP, although "we are checking all his communications."

He did not confirm that Behring Breivik was carrying the walkie-talkie radio on Utoeya island, where he shot 68 mostly young people dead, but two witnesses have said he was.

"He was dressed like a policeman. He had all the equipment -- the walkie-talkie, the arms, everything," 15-year-old survivor Jo Granli Kallset told AFP.

A functioning walkie-talkie would not reach much further than the mainland as little as half a mile away.

Locals have cast doubt on whether the device would be anything more than a prop as part of his disguise as a police officer.

Behring Breivik boasted before the attack in a 1,500-page manifesto that he was one of up to 80 "solo martyr cells" recruited across western Europe to topple governments tolerant of Islam.

Norway's intelligence service has been liaising with counterparts across Europe and in the United States but has found nothing so far to verify the gunman's claims of active cells forming a terror "organisation," made during a court hearing and in the tract.

Norway's intelligence services chief Janne Kristiansen said in an interview with AFP that the possibility the killer had acted as a "lone wolf" could make it more difficult for police to uncover his trail.

"He has done this very carefully and meticulously and so far he has succeeded in avoiding any radar, or radar of the secret services."

European Union terrorism experts meeting in Brussels warned that the bloodbath in Norway, which they said was almost "impossible to prevent", simply underlined the need for stronger European counter-terrorism action, both against "lone wolves" and all forms of extremism.

Police are still searching the waters around Utoeya and the bomb site in downtown Oslo for missing persons, although they said Thursday that the land search on the island had ended.

Officials did not revise their tolls from the two attacks. Eight people died in an initial car bomb blast in central Oslo that also sowed confusion among the police before the shooting spree.

Norwegian police on Thursday released the identities of 24 more people, aged between 14 and 30, all but one of whom were killed on Utoeya island.

The list included one Georgian, and brought the total number of confirmed dead whose names have been made public to 41.

Survivor Emma Martinovic told in a blog entry how "I heard the bastard laugh, I heard him shout 'you won't get away'," testimonials emerged to a lost generation of future Norwegian political leaders so brutally cut down.

These included Anders Kristiansen, an 18-year-old whose mother said he "dreamed of becoming prime minister since the age of five," and whose shining talent was lauded by Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere in the national press.

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Germany digs in heels over Friday summit on Greece (Reuters)

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Euro zone plans for a leaders' summit on a second Greek rescue were thrown into doubt by Germany on Wednesday, raising fears markets may exploit a policy vacuum with a new onslaught on the bloc's high debtors.

Berlin stuck to its line that Greece was funded until September so there was no rush to finalize the details of a second package. "There are no concrete plans for a special summit," a German government spokeswoman said.

Others were less sanguine. Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi, soon to take the helm of the European Central Bank, and Ireland's premier both said a definitive plan was needed and quickly -- echoing a strongly-worded attack from Greece's prime minister earlier in the week.

Ratings agency Moody's downgraded Ireland's credit to junk status on Tuesday and said that, like Greece, it would need a second bailout. Minds have been focused even more sharply by a market attack on Italy which, if it required assistance, would overwhelm the euro zone's existing rescue funds.

"Moody's problem is not with Ireland, Ireland's problem is with Europe," Prime Minister Enda Kenny told parliament. "There is no point in having a meeting that won't bring about a conclusion in a comprehensive sense to something that is not going to go away unless it is dealt with."

The European Commission, sharply critical of the role ratings agencies are playing, described Moody's decision as "incomprehensible." The cost of insuring Irish debt against default rose and 10-year bond yields hit 14.19 percent.

Italian and Spanish bonds settled but traders did not expect long-term respite without decisive action.

"We are still pretty bearish on the periphery in general given there are various risk factors in terms of the policymakers' response to the crisis so far," said Michael Leister, a strategist at WestLB. "We're not too convinced they can turn things around in the short term."

WRANGLING

The leaders need to pin down how private holders of Greek government bonds can be persuaded to shoulder a portion of the cost of a new package for Greece, and weigh up the potential impact on markets if securing their involvement is declared a debt default by ratings agencies, as expected.

But they appeared to be subsiding into a bout of internal wrangling and risk creating a no-win situation:

If no summit is now held on Friday, it could have a strong negative impact on financial markets. If it is held and no clear decision is taken, the impact could be worse.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, has informed ambassadors he intends to hold the summit on Friday evening, and most of the 17 euro zone member states back that decision, but Germany is reluctant to fix the date, especially if there is no decision ready to take.

"Markets reacted very badly after euro zone finance ministers could not reach an agreement," an EU diplomat said, referring to a finance ministers' meeting on Monday. "If they cannot agree, we take the fight to the highest level. People are working on a set of conclusions to be agreed."

A senior EU official said the Germans were furious about being "backed into a corner" and were therefore holding firm on not attending on Friday, which would skittle the summit. Diplomats said furious rounds of phone calls were being made.

They said the current intention was for leaders to meet on Friday evening and for finance ministers to gather again on Sunday so the precise details of a plan can be fixed before financial markets open on Monday.

STRESS TESTS

A major concern on leaders' minds will be the results of stress tests on 91 European banks, to be released on July 15, which are expected to show 10 or more banks may have failed.

That could have a further impact on Italy, where bank stocks and the bond market have been hit by growing concerns that the euro zone's third-largest economy could be next in line after Greece, Ireland and Portugal to suffer debt contagion.

Draghi said Italian banks would comfortably pass the stress tests but echoed Kenny's call for a comprehensive EU response to the spreading debt crisis.

"We have to recognize that management of the financial crisis has not gone smoothly with partial and temporary interventions," he said in a speech to the Italian banking association.

"We must now bring certainty to the process by which sovereign debt crises are managed, by clearly defining political objectives, the design of instruments and the amount of resources," he said.

Current proposals on the table for securing the private sector's involvement in Greece focus on the buy-back of Greek government bonds and the swapping of existing Greek debt for longer-dated securities with a lower coupon, which would materially reduce Athens' outstanding obligations.

However, it remains unclear how a buy-back of Greek bonds would be financed. One proposal is to use the 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which has been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal.

The ECB remains vehemently opposed to any Greek plan that ratings agencies would be likely to see as a default.

ECB policymaker Jens Weidmann, a former adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the EFSF should not be used to buy bonds in the secondary market and it would be unacceptable for the ECB to accept defaulted Greek debt as collateral.

"The money of the (EFSF) bailout should not be used for the purchase of government bonds in the secondary market," he told Die Zeit newspaper. "Containment of the crisis should not mean that we undermine our principles. We must draw a red line."

But Germany's finance ministry said funds from the euro zone's rescue mechanism could in theory already be used by members of the bloc to buy back their own bonds, suggesting a shift in Berlin's stance.

German newspapers ran headlines and editorials on Wednesday calling on leaders to get their act together.

"The fact that some important heads of state have still not realized the entire amplitude of the problem is ... disastrous," a commentator wrote in Die Welt.

One Eurogroup official said Friday's meeting, if it happens, may not deliver on what the market is expecting.

"If there is a meeting on Friday, it is more psychological support than anything else. The heads of state will not decide anything," he said, explaining that there was not enough time between now and then to prepare a meaningful decision.

(Additional reporting by Julien Toyer and Luke Baker in Brussels, and by Noah Barkin and Gernot Heller in Berlin; editing/writing by Mike Peacock)

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