An extraordinary summit of EU leaders will be held on November 22-23 to try and settle a battle over an estimated trillion euros of the bloc's spending, EU President Herman Van Rompuy's spokesman said.

"President Van Rompuy has convened a summit on November 22-23 on the Multi-annual Financial Framework," Dirk De Backer told Agence France Presse.

British mobile phone giant Vodafone has signed an agreement with Kuwaiti telecom company Zain to expand its footprint in the Middle East region, the pair announced on Monday.

"Vodafone Group and Zain Group today jointly announce a partner market agreement that will significantly expand Vodafone's partner market presence in the Middle East and provide Zain customers with greater support in Vodafone's global footprint," they said in a statement.

Reducing Spain's budget deficit, which has soared past EU limits due to the deep recession, is the government's top priority, Finance Minister Luis de Guindos said on Monday.

Deficit reduction "is the number one priority from the point of view of economic policy," he said.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned Monday against expecting too much from the European Central Bank at its meeting this week, as markets hope for a raft of new anti-crisis measures.

"We must be very careful not to nurture too many false expectations," Schaeuble told Deutschlandfunk public radio in an interview.

Oil-rich Abu Dhabi began commercial operations on Saturday at its new Khalifa Port in a multi-billion-dollar project to transfer its main container terminal from the 40-year-old port of Mina Zayed.

The new facility, built on reclaimed land five kilometers off the coast of the Gulf emirate, received its first ship from a commercial customer, the 366-meter MSC Bari.

Iraq's oil exports reached their highest level in more than three decades last month as the country's output has continued to increase, oil ministry officials said on Saturday.

Overall exports averaged 2.565 million barrels per day (bpd), bringing in $8.442 billion in revenues on the back of average oil prices of $106 per barrel, Falah al-Amiri, head of the State Oil Marketing Organization, said.

Despite its solid foundations, Finland's economy is threatened by the euro crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report published Friday.

Finland enjoys "strong economic fundamentals and continued sound policy management," the report noted, but "as a small open economy, with deep trade and financial linkages, the country is sensitive to adverse spillovers from the turmoil in the euro area."

Spain's cabinet approved a major financial reform package on Friday including the creation of a "bad bank" to buy troubled property assets and bad loans from lenders.

Spain had agreed to push through the changes as a condition for receiving a banking sector rescue loan of up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) from its Eurozone partners.

IMF Deputy Managing Director David Lipton said Friday he was optimistic that Greece could get its restructuring program back on track and remain in the Eurozone.

Lipton told CNBC television that the International Monetary Fund believes that Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his team "are dedicated to finding an appropriate path for adjustment, getting things back on track, and we're trying to help."

China's manufacturing activity slumped in August to a nine-month low, official figures showed Saturday, in the latest sign of serious weakness in the world's second-largest economy.

The government's purchasing managers' index (PMI) fell to 49.2 in August from 50.1 in July, according to a statement released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and the National Bureau of Statistics.