China will try to hammer out a World Trade Organisation (WTO) deal with the European Union (EU) next week after making no obvious progress in talks with the United States, sources said. A delegation of European Commission officials was due in Beijing on Sunday for talks on China's 13-year quest to join the 134-member WTO, sources close to the talks said. The talks could begin as early as Monday, the sources said, adding that the delegation would stay for two weeks or longer. "After having seen what they have been able to offer to the Americans, of course that facilitates negotiations," said one source who asked not to be identified. "If it's possible to wrap up so much the better. But if it's not possible we'll continue working," the source told Reuters, declining to elaborate on European demands or the agenda for the talks. China, a founding member of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt), the WTO's predecessor, left Gatt after the communist revolution in1949.

PowerGen to name US buyer for British utility company

PowerGen is poised to announce the sale of two coal-fired power stations to one of two US electricity companies early next week, the Independent reported on Saturday. The newspaper said the potential buyer was either NRG Energy or Edison Mission Energy and that the sale of the Ferrybridge and Fiddler's Ferry stations would generate more than one billion pounds ($1.62 billion). There had been speculation the two stations would be sold separately but PowerGen had persuaded the British government it was preferable to have just one buyer, the paper said.

One2One takeover bid

Deutsche Telekom AG on Saturday dismissed as speculation German media reports it was considering a DM 33 billion takeover of British mobile phone operator One2One. "We do not participate in such speculation," a Telekom spokesman said in response to reports in news weekly Focus and the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. One2One, Britain'sfourth-largest mobile phone company, is a joint venture between Cable & Wireless Plc and U.S. MediaOne Group Inc. The company, which was founded in 1993, has failed to reach profitability and Lehman Brothers has been hired to find a buyer, the reports said. Mannesmann AG, which runs Germany's D2 Mobilephone network, has also expressed an interest in One2One, Welt am Sonntag said in a report released before publication on Sunday. Reports that Telekom is interested in One2One come just two days after Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia announced plans for an $81 billion merger.

Kosovo crisis hurts Lufthansa

German air carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG is losing about DM 10 million daily as a result of delays and flight rescheduling caused by the Kosovo crisis, the weekly Der Spiegel said. Der Spiegel said in an advance summary of its Monday edition article that Frankfurt, Europe's second-busiest airport, became the main stop-over for NATO air traffic. "Frankfurt was degraded into amilitary airport," the magazine quoted Lufthansa chief executive Juergen Weber as saying.