Unions prepare to call off general strike in Nigeria

NIGERIAN unions prepared last night to call off a crippling general strike that had paralysed the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter after reaching a deal with the government on a compromise price for petrol.

Strike leaders said the accord to end the country's longest general strike for four decades followed their meeting with President Olusegun Obasanjo, who left yesterday for Monrovia to meet embattled Liberian leader Charles Taylor.

The deal would end a week of economic disruption and sometimes violent protests in which at least eight people died days before a visit by US President George W Bush.