Amodu had been under pressure even before Nigeria’s third place finish at the Africa Cup of Nations, which ended with Egypt’s third consecutive victory last week.

The Nigeria Football Federation’s short-list is topped by Dutchman Guus Hiddink, Bayern Munich coach Louis van Gaal, Frenchman Bruno Metsu, former Ratomir Djukovic and former England caretaker coach Peter Taylor.

Hiddink is currently the coach of Russia, Metsu led Senegal to the 2002 World Cup and Djukovic guided Ghana to the 2006 World Cup.

According to an official statement after the marathon meeting, the NFF technical committee headed by Taiwo Ogunjobi will recommend one of three of these coaches for immediate employment before the end of this month.

The federal government of Nigeria will pay the new foreign coach, according to officials.

Amodu and his assistants will now train Nigeria’s second team for the 2011 Championship of African Nations (CHAN), meant for African players featuring in their respective domestic leagues.

In November, Amodu qualified the Super Eagles for the 2010 World Cup to be staged in South Africa in June.

However, the performance of the team under Amodu, who also qualified the team to the 2002 World Cup, was widely criticised by the press and the public.

About 10,000 people attended a rally in the Baltic region of Kaliningrad last week to call for the dismissal of the governor, prompting Putin’s United Russia party to send officials to investigate why its local leader had become so unpopular.

At a meeting in advance of regional elections next month, Putin told senior party officials they should avoid raising expectations by promising “everything all at once” only to ignore voters after election day.

“You cannot turn into promisers, who make promises only to … get into power and then spend their time solving their own personal problems,” said Putin, who is the party’s chairman.

About 100 activists gathered outside the Kaliningrad regional administration building on Friday to call for the governor to be sacked.

Rally organizers said they would give Putin a few weeks to respond to their demand before holding another major rally.

United Russia, which has a two-thirds majority in parliament, is campaigning to win 90 percent of seats in regional elections on March 14, senior party official Boris Gryzlov told Putin.

Unemployment, which has grown by one-third to more than 6 million in since 2007, and big rises in prices charged by state-run monopolies are adding to discontent in many regions.

Putin told the leaders to warn voters of the consequences of voting for untried opposition parties.

United Russia must always explain that “proper and well organized leaders are always capable of solving any problems and that in the absence of such leaders, anarchy prevails,” he said.

United Russia portrays Putin’s decade in power as president and then prime minister as the restoration of order after the economic chaos of the 1990s.

Pro-Western liberal opposition forces such as Solidarity and Yabloko are cast as the heirs to the unpopular rule of former President Boris Yeltsin.

Solidarity was one of the organizers of last week’s protest in Kaliningrad and surprised observers by persuading the Communist and Liberal Democratic parties, both mainstays of a Kremlin-dominated system that tolerates only the mildest of dissent, to join them.

United Russia officials said the Kaliningrad demonstration was not mentioned during the meeting.

(Reporting by Daria Korsunskaya; Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Andrew Dobbie)

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a gathering of the world’s top defense officials that negotiations with Iran’s government have “entered a crucial stage.”

“The parties concerned should, with the overall and long-term interests in mind, step up diplomatic efforts, stay patient and adopt a more flexible, pragmatic and proactive policy,” he said. “The purpose is to seek a comprehensive, long-term and proper solution through dialogue and negotiations.”

The comments at the Munich Security Conference, in its 46th year, came after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki decided to join the meeting at the last minute.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this week suggested he would at last agree to export a significant amount of uranium for processing. The U.N. is considering a fourth round of sanctions against the country for failing to rein in its nuclear ambitions.

Iran’s moves appeared timed in part to defuse pressure by the U.S., Britain and France for more sanctions against Iran. U.N. Security Council members China and Russia are not convinced.

Mottaki said in a late-night session Friday that more talks were needed on the timing of the exchange of uranium for processing, the place where it would be done and to determine the fuel that Iran needs.

“Iran is serious and we have shown it at the highest levels,” Mottaki said. “We have created the conducive ground for such an exchange in the not-so-distant future. I think we are approaching a final agreement that can be accepted by all parties.”

Earlier, Yang called for another round of talks involving the Security Council and Germany with the hope that a “mutually acceptable proposal” can be reached with Iran.

But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made it clear the Obama administration’s position has not changed.

She said the Iranian government has been unclear in its intentions regarding the possibility of accepting international urgings to negotiate on the nuclear matter.

“The fact is we haven’t really seen much in the way of response” from Iran, she told reporters in Washington. “Sometimes we see response from a part of the government that is then retracted from another part of the government.”

She reiterated that the focus is now on sanctions.

“We have, in good faith, engaged in diplomacy with the Iranians,” she said. “We’ve always had a two-track process, and we think it is important that we move now toward looking at what pressure, what sanctions, can be brought to bear on the Iranians. We’re going to continue to reach out to all of our colleagues in this effort, including, of course, China.”

Senior representatives of the U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany held a 90-minute conference call on Friday to discuss the prospect for negotiations with Iran as well as the outlook for imposing additional sanctions, but no decisions were made, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Iran now possesses more than enough enriched uranium for at least one nuclear warhead and the U.N. Security Council has demanded the Islamic Republic freeze its enrichment program. An agreement worked out by the International Atomic Energy Agency would delay Tehran’s ability to make such a weapon by requiring the country to export 70 percent of its uranium stock and then wait for up to a year for it to be processed and returned as fuel rods for a research reactor.

In Berlin on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle — both of whom are attending the Munich conference — said Iran must answer remaining questions about the nature of its nuclear program.

They stressed that they remained ready to continue negotiations toward a diplomatic solution. Westerwelle warned, however, that the international community’s patience was “not infinite.”

Lavrov said he planned to meet Mottaki in Munich and urge him to submit information on Iran’s nuclear program to the IAEA.

“Under certain circumstances, if there is no other possible solution, then we will have to discuss it in the Security Council,” Lavrov told reporters.

Attorney Edwin Coq said Laura Silsby knew the group couldn’t remove the youngsters without proper paperwork, while he characterized the other nine missionaries as unknowingly being caught up in actions they didn’t understand.

“I’m going to do everything I can to get the nine out. They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border. But Silsby did,” Coq said Thursday after a magistrate charged the 10 at a closed hearing.

Silsby waved to reporters but declined to answer questions as the missionaries were taken back to the holding cells where they have been held since Saturday. Haitians left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake sat idly under tarps in the parking lot, smoke rising from a cooking fire.

Silsby had expressed optimism before the hearing. “We expect God’s will be done. And we will be released,” she told reporters.

Family members of the Americans released a statement late Thursday saying they were concerned about their relatives jailed in a foreign country.

“Obviously, we do not know details about what happened and didn’t happen on this mission,” the statement said. “However, we are absolutely convinced that those who were recruited to join this mission traveled to Haiti to help, not hurt, these children.”

The Baptist group, most of whose members are from two Idaho churches, had said they were rescuing abandoned children and orphans from a nation that UNICEF says had 380,000 youngsters in that plight even before the quake.

But at least two-thirds of the children involved in the case, ranging in age from 2 to 12, have parents, although the parents of some told The Associated Press they gave them up willingly because the missionaries promised the children a better life.

The investigating judge, who interviewed the missionaries Tuesday and Wednesday, found sufficient evidence to charge them with trying to take the children across the border into the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 without documentation, Coq said.

Each was charged with one count of kidnapping, which carries a sentence of five to 15 years in prison, and one of criminal association, punishable by three to nine years. Coq said the case would be assigned a judge and a verdict could take three months.

The magistrate, Mazard Fortil, left without making a statement. Social Affairs Minister Jeanne Bernard Pierre, who earlier harshly criticized the missionaries, declined to comment. The government’s communications minister, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, said only that the next court date had not been set.

U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten showed up after 5 p.m. outside judicial police headquarters, where the defendants are being held.

“The U.S. justice system cannot interfere in what’s going on with these Americans right now,” Merten told reporters. “The Haitian justice system will do what it has to do.”

Silsby had begun planning last summer to create an orphanage for Haitian children in the neighboring Dominican Republic. When the earthquake struck she recruited other church members, and the 10 spent a week in Haiti gathering children for their project.

Most of the children came from the ravaged village of Callebas, where people told the AP they handed over their children because they were unable to feed or clothe them after the quake. They said the missionaries promised to educate the children and let relatives visit.

Their stories contradicted Silsby’s account that the children came from collapsed orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives.

She also said the Americans believed they had obtained in the Dominican Republic all the documents needed to take the children out of Haiti.

The Dominican consul in Haiti, Carlos Castillo, told the AP on Thursday that the day the Americans departed for the border, Silsby visited him and said she had a document from Dominican migration officials authorizing her to take the children from Haiti.

Castillo said he warned Silsby that if she lacked adoption papers signed by the appropriate Haitian officials her mission would be considered child trafficking. “We were very specific,” he said