French banks vow to keep credit flowing: France

LONDON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. regulator was "optimistic" on Monday about finding a framework for the world's top economy to use global book keeping rules for investors to compare cross-border companies. "We are hopeful we can put forward a model," James Kroeker, chief accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission …

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Britain and France sign nuclear power deals

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron put recent disputes behind them Friday to unveil a nuclear power deal and renew their own sometimes shaky political alliance.

The pair took a strong position on the Syrian regime's violence at their summit in Paris, and Cameron took the opportunity of a joint news conference to wish his "friend" Sarkozy well in France's upcoming presidential election.

Celebrating a multi-million pound (euro) nuclear power deal and ever closer defence ties, the Paris summit was a far cry from recent encounters between the pair at European summits in Brussels, where they have clashed bitterly.

"When you look across the foreign policy and defence policy issues we discussed today, I don't think that there has been closer French-British cooperation than at any time since the Second World War," Cameron said.

Cameron and Sarkozy first bonded over the Libyan intervention last year, where British and French jets spearheaded what later became a NATO-led air campaign that eventually led to the overthrow of Moamer Kadhafi's regime.

They have since worked towards closer defence and military industrial ties and have jointly pushed for tougher UN action against Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who is engaged in a bloody crackdown on a pro-democracy revolt.

Both men expressed support for an upcoming conference of an international coalition dubbed the Friends of Syria, which meets next week in Tunis, but called on the Syrian opposition to organise itself better as well.

"We cannot accept that a dictator massacres his own people, but the revolution will not be brought from outside, it will rise from inside Syria, as it has done elsewhere," Sarkozy told the pair's joint news conference.

Both men said the conditions are not ripe in Syria for another Western military intervention like the one that tipped the balance in Libya, but said that they would bring maximum diplomatic pressure to bear.

"In Libya we had a UN Security Council that authorised force, we had an Arab League that wanted action to be taken, we had a clear opposition in Libya that was working on behalf of the whole of the country," Cameron said.

"With Syria we don't have all those circumstances in place but that doesn't mean we should stand back and just say there is nothing that can be done. We need to ... put the maximum pressure on Assad to stop the butchering."

Cameron also gave his backing to Sarkozy's re-election campaign, which promises to be an uphill struggle against opposition Socialist challenger Francois Hollande, who has a clear opinion poll lead with 10 weeks to go.

"We'll be following your fortunes in the weeks to come on the campaign trail and, as I said, I wish you luck," Cameron told Sarkozy, calling the summit "a chance to wish my friend well in the battle he has ahead."

The pair also hailed the civil nuclear deal, in a joint appearance that was noticeably more friendly than other recent encounters.

Cameron said the British engineering firm Rolls-Royce will secure a £400 million (481 million euro, $632 million) share in the work to build Britain's first French-pioneered EPR reactor at Hinkley Point in southern England.

Other British firms will sign deals worth a total of £115 million with France's state-owned energy giant EDF as part of the Hinkley project.

On defence ties, the two leaders announced a new "long-term strategic partnership" on military drones, including a project for France's Dassault and Britain's BAE Systems to develop air combat drones.

They said a joint expeditionary force comprising British and French troops would be operational by 2016.

Cameron and Sarkozy have clashed publicly over how to handle the eurozone sovereign debt crisis and about the French leader's plan for a financial transaction tax, which the British premier recently branded "madness".

"We do sometimes have disagreements on European issues," Cameron admitted, but insisted that they have "a relationship that is easily strong enough to survive the odd bump or bounce when we sometimes have a disagreement."

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Britain and France to sign nuclear power deal at summit

Britain and France were to strike a landmark cooperation deal on civil nuclear energy at a summit between Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday, officials said.

France and Britain have often clashed recently over economic policy in the eurozone, an area in which Paris is much closer to Berlin, but they are still close partners in defence and now plan to share nuclear expertise.

Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power, but France still uses it to generate around three-quarters of its power and is keen to seize the market for the world's next generation of more powerful reactor technology.

"At our last summit, we signed a historic partnership on defence. Today, we will match that ambition on nuclear energy," Cameron said, in remarks released by Downing Street before he left London for Friday's talks in Paris.

"As two great civil nuclear nations, we will combine our expertise to strengthen industrial partnership, improve nuclear safety and create jobs at home. The deals signed today will create more than 1,500 jobs in the UK."

French nuclear giant Areva is pioneering development of the modern EPR reactor, but Cameron said that thanks to the agreement, British firms would make "the vast majority of the content of our new nuclear plants".

Downing Street said that, under the deal, the British engineering firm Rolls-Royce will secure a £400 million (481 million euro, $632 dollar) share in the work build Britain's first EPR at Hinkley Point in southern England.

Other British firms will sign deals worth a total of £115 million with France's state-owned energy giant EDF as part of the Hinkley project.

France and Britain will also work more closely on training and safety technology in order to ensure that the next generation of reactors are safe.

Renewed safety fears in the wake of last year's Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan contributed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision that the EU's biggest economy would begin to phase out nuclear power by 2022.

But France, which generates 75 percent of its power in reactors remains committed to the technology, and Sarkozy has made bashing an opposition plan to gradually reduce this proportion a key part of his re-election drive.

Both Downing Street and the Elysee Palace said Friday's summit would also tackle the crisis in Syria and the broader question of Franco-British defence cooperation following their close collaboration in the Libyan campaign.

"One year on from the Libya uprising, we are working together to stand up to the murderous Syrian regime and to stop a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran," Cameron said, in the same pre-summit statement.

On the diplomatic front, France and Britain will press for a stronger UN Security Council position on Bashar al-Assad's vicious crackdown on a popular revolt, despite Russian and Chinese opposition to outside intervention.

And on the question of practical military cooperation, the NATO partners plan to review progress on a year-old defence agreement that will see them pooling more resources and technology, especially in naval forces.

According to reports in France, the partners are due to take another step towards building a European armed drone -- an un-manned bomber and spy plane that would be a joint project between France's Dassault and Britain's BAE.

Cameron was due to arrive in Paris shortly before midday (1100 GMT), hold talks and a joint news conference at the Elysee followed by a working lunch.

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