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By Finbarr O'Reilly

JOMBA, Congo (Reuters) - A United Nations envoy met Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda for talks to seek peace in eastern Congo on Sunday as fresh fighting flared in North Kivu province.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to try to end the conflict in east Democratic Republic of Congo, met Nkunda at Jomba not far from the borders with Rwanda and Uganda.

Earlier, a U.N. official and a witness reported heavy exchanges of artillery, rocket and small arms fire near the village of Ndeko, about 110 km (70 miles) north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Obasanjo, who held talks on Saturday with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, is seeking to prevent the fighting in North Kivu from escalating into a repeat of a wider 1998-2003 Congo war that sucked in neighboring states.

Weeks of combat between Nkunda's rebels and government troops and their militia allies have displaced around a quarter of a million civilians, creating what aid agencies call a "catastrophic" humanitarian situation in east Congo.

Escorted by Indian peacekeepers, Obasanjo flew in by helicopter to Jomba, in the foothills of the Virunga mountains, where he greeted Nkunda with a hug.

He also inspected a guard of honor of Nkunda's National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) rebels.

"It would be better for them to be part of a national army rather than for them to be called rebels. That is what we are here to try and do," he said.

A witness on the road just south of Ndeko, which is 60 km (40 miles) northwest of where Obasanjo met Nkunda, told Reuters: "There is a lot of fighting going on. They are using heavy weapons, rockets and artillery, as well as small arms.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission also confirmed the clashes.

"We have had a flash report of heavy fighting since seven this morning (12 a.m. EST) at Ndeko. We have sent a patrol out to see what is going on," said spokesman Lt-Col Jean-Paul Dietrich.

Neither the U.N. nor the witness could confirm who was involved in Sunday's fighting but Nkunda's fighters have previously clashed with both government soldiers and Rwandan Hutu rebels, known as the FDLR, in the area.

Nkunda accuses Kabila of arming and using the FDLR to fight alongside his weak and chaotic army units. The Congolese president, meanwhile, accuses neighboring Rwanda of supporting Nkunda's four year rebellion.

Nkunda initially took up arms saying he was fighting to defend fellow Tutsis in Congo from attack by the FDLR but, after marching to the gates of Goma last month, he is now calling for direct negotiations with the president.

Kabila has so far refused and there are fears that fighting could degenerate into a conflict similar to Congo's 1998-2003 war, which sucked in six neighboring armies and killed over 5 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/)

(Additional reporting by David Lewis; Writing by David Lewis and Pascal Fletcher)

(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/)

By Steve Gorman and Anupreeta Das

LOS ANGELES/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Fires whipped up by hot, gusty and erratic winds darkened Los Angeles skies on Saturday, scorching thousands of acres and hundreds of homes in the second-largest U.S. city.

More than 10,000 people were ordered to evacuate as a fire that exploded overnight on the edge of the Angeles National Forest, north of Los Angeles, barreled into the San Fernando Valley and burned more than 8,000 acres.

Los Angeles County Fire Department officials said one-fifth of the fire had been contained by Saturday evening, and were optimistic about reining it in as long as the winds didn't pick up again.

Meanwhile, another fire that flared southeast of Los Angeles in Orange and Riverside counties on Saturday morning, charred 2,000 acres in the communities of Yorba Linda, Brea, Anaheim and Corona, and destroyed 104 homes, including apartments and single-family houses.

In the city of Anaheim alone, 12,600 people were ordered to evacuate, a spokeswoman said.

The dry Santa Ana winds sweeping in from the desert fanned the fire in the foothills near Sylmar northwest of Los Angeles that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said had destroyed more homes than any other fire in the past decade.

"We're at the mercy of the wind. Mother Nature's not been too good to us for the last 15 hours," he said.

The Sylmar fire raged on both sides of Interstate 5, the main freeway connecting Los Angeles with the north.

Two of the five major transmission lines that supply power to the Los Angeles area were taken down because of damage to a converting station, and a third power line was damaged by heat. Natural gas and power lines were also threatened in Orange and Riverside counties.

Firefighters also continued to battle the two-day-old blaze in the celebrity enclave of Montecito, further up the coast near Santa Barbara, where 210 homes have been destroyed. The fire was about 60 percent contained, a spokeswoman said.

"When you walk around the areas that were devastated, it looked like hell today," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told a news conference.

Police closed down Interstate 5 and other roads as 1,100 firefighters mobilized to fight the Sylmar fire. Only about 10 percent of the fire had been contained, Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Ron Haralson said Saturday afternoon.

Mountains were engulfed in flames and dense clouds of grayish-brown smoke. Soot hung in the air, which was heavy with the smell of burning wood. Winds blowing at a steady gale-force 35 mph periodically gusted up to 75 mph, helping spread the fire.

A map of the fire is at tinyurl.com/sayrefire.

MOBILE HOMES DESTROYED

The greatest damage was reported in the Oakridge Mobile Home Park, where the fire burned about 500 houses to the ground. About 300 people, many of them Oakridge residents who fled their homes during the night, gathered in Sylmar High School, where the American Red Cross set up relief services.

"You could see absolutely nothing," said Jackie Burns, 77, who, along with her husband, Len, fled their home at 3 a.m. as the fire raged through the neighborhood. "It was like looking into a black hole. It looked like the end of the world to me."

Some evacuees sobbed as a firefighter brought in a singed and tattered flag rescued from atop one of the houses.

"It was an absolute firestorm," said Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Steve Ruda. "Firefighters were braving 50-foot flame lengths as they swept across the mobile homes." Heat from the flames melted firefighters' hoses to the pavement, he added.

An additional 24 homes and 10 commercial structures have been damaged or destroyed. At least 5,000 more structures have been threatened, Schwarzenegger said.

California's fire season, which traditionally starts in June, has been lengthening and getting worse as the dry state adds homes in fringe areas prone to flames.

"California has fires year round," said Ruben Grijalva, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, at the conference. "There really is no fire season in California any longer."

Los Angeles County, home to nearly 10 million people, has been largely spared damage this year. In October of last year 30 blazes raged across Southern California, forcing evacuation of more than 500,000 people and damaging some 2,000 homes.

Marie Larsen, 70, another evacuee who took refuge at the Sylmar school, said she grabbed her suitcase -- still packed from a month ago when she fled her home during the Sesnon fire -- and left after police officers banged on her door.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Fred Prouser in Los Angeles, Anupreeta Das and Peter Henderson in San Francisco; editing by Todd Eastham)

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The shuttle Endeavour crew scanned the ship's wings and heat shield on Saturday, checking for damage after Friday's launch as it headed for a rendezvous with the International Space Station.

The inspections, done with a sensor-laden boom attached to the shuttle's robot arm, have been standard since the 2003 Columbia disaster, when debris from the shuttle's external fuel tank knocked a hole in its wing, causing the craft to disintegrate as it entered the Earth's atmosphere. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

Engineers thought they saw a 12-to-18-inch strip of insulation fly off from the rear of Endeavour, but images relayed by the astronauts on Saturday appeared to show nothing amiss.

"There's no apparent damage there," lead flight director Mike Sarafin told reporters on Saturday night.

NASA was still assessing a flyaway object spotted in video of the shuttle's liftoff.

"It looked like something was clearly there," Sarafin added.

The issue was considered minor, as was a glitch with one of the shuttle's communications antennas.

The shuttle, which rocketed off its seaside launch pad in Florida on Friday night, was on schedule to slip into a berthing port at the space station at 5:04 p.m. EST (2204 GMT) on Sunday to begin an 11- or 12-day stay.

Astronaut Sandra Magnus will swap places with space station flight engineer Greg Chamitoff, who has been aboard the outpost since June. The shuttle also carries more than 7 tonnes of gear for the station, including equipment needed to expand the number of full-time residents to six from three.

The shuttle carries two new sleeping compartments and a water recycling system so station crew members can purify urine and other wastewater for drinking.

The shuttle crew also has four spacewalks planned to repair the station's solar power system.

Last year, spacewalking astronauts discovered contamination inside a rotary joint that pivots the panels so they can track the sun for power. NASA locked the joint in place to prevent further deterioration. Astronauts will attempt to clean up the joint and replace suspect bearings. They also will be doing maintenance on the station's second rotary joint.

The space station, a $100 billion project of 16 member nations that orbits 220 miles above Earth, has been under construction for 10 years. NASA plans nine more assembly and resupply missions to the outpost after Endeavour's before the space shuttles are retired in 2010, leaving crew transport services for the Russians to handle with their Soyuz capsules.

NASA hopes to hire a commercial launch services firm in the United States for station cargo deliveries. A contract award is expected by January.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

By David Lawder and Emmanuel Jarry

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World leaders pledged rapid action on Saturday to rescue a weakening global economy from the worst financial crisis in over 70 years and agreed to give emerging nations more say in running financial affairs.

The Group of 20 leaders from major industrialized and developing countries set out plans to toughen oversight for major global banks, study limits on banker pay and try for a breakthrough by year end in global trade talks -- all part of a roadmap to rebuild a financial system crippled by the credit crisis.

"We must lay the foundation for reform to help ensure that a global crisis such as this one does not happen again," they said in a statement after their first-ever summit.

They vowed to make progress before a second summit by the end of April.

U.S. President George W. Bush called the meeting, probably his last major economic event before he steps down in January, a success, saying leaders agreed to free-market, pro-growth policies.

"It makes sense to come out of here with a firm action plan, which we have. And it also makes sense to say to people that there is more work to be done," he said.

The G20 also called for fiscal stimulus measures, be they tax cuts or government spending, to take "rapid effect," and urged more interest rate cuts.

But they fell short of announcing any new measures or major regulatory breakthroughs, and left it up to individual countries over what actions to take.

G20 support though could bolster efforts in the U.S. Congress to push through a second economic stimulus plan, which is opposed by Bush and backed by his successor. Britain, also heading fast into recession, may unveil tax cuts this month.

G20 warnings on the dangers of inaction were stark.

"Economic momentum is slowing substantially in major economies," it said.

Emerging countries are starting to get sucked into the maelstrom, as shown by Pakistan getting a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund that same day.

"It is the worst crisis in 100 years," Japan Prime Minister Taro Aso. "But the crisis could be a chance at the same time. History tells us that when we overcome crisis, a new order is created. We should not be just flustered by the crisis."

POWER SHIFT BEGINS

In what portends a major shift in the global balance of economic power, the G20 agreed to a place for emerging market economies on the Financial Stability Forum, where top bank regulators evaluate banking and market risk.

The FSF also won a bigger role in setting global financial policies and standards, which national regulators then would follow.

In the medium term, the G20 also opened the door to the big prize -- more seats for developing countries at the IMF and World Bank.

The West is relying increasingly on their money to bail out banks and countries. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lobbied export colossus China and oil-rich Saudi Arabia for help and had led the call for overhauling the 60-year-old Bretton Woods order that set up the IMF and World Bank.

Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf told Reuters, however, the rich oil-producing kingdom had no plans to offer more money to the IMF. "There were lots of rumors that we were coming here to pay the bill; there is no such thing," he said.

Japan said it hopes China will throw money into the coffers of the IMF which acts as the world's financial policeman but until now has been dominated by the United States and the other members of the Group of Seven rich nations.

The leaders set their finance ministers an aggressive work schedule -- a review of global accounting standards, colleges of supervisors for major global banks, new standards for credit rating agencies and ways to limit bankers' pay by tying it to a company's risk profile. But much of the list already is being worked on. "It's remarkably bland," said Edwin Truman, analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Hedge funds and private equity firms got an apparent exemption from tough new controls, with the G20 saying they should use voluntary best practices though at a faster pace.

Advisers designated by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to meet with dignitaries on the sidelines of the G20 summit said he supports a coordinated response to the global financial crisis and is ready to work with member countries on improving the financial system when he takes office.

"The president-elect believes that the G20 summit of leaders from the world's largest economies is an important opportunity to seek a coordinated response to the global financial crisis," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Congressman Jim Leach said in a statement.

(Writing by Stella Dawson; Editing by Eric Walsh)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia is ready to discuss existing missile defense programs with the United States, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday, signaling an easing in Russia's outright opposition to U.S. plans.

"We will not do anything until America does the first step," Medvedev said about Russia's promised response to U.S. plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

"I think we have a chance to solve the problem through either agreeing on a global (anti-missile) system or, as a minimum, to find solution on the existing programs which would suit the Russian Federation," he said.

"(The) first signal we received (from the incoming Barack Obama administration) shows that our partners think about this program rather than plan to simply rubber-stamp it," Medvedev added.

(Reporting by Oleg Shchedrov; Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Peter Cooney)