BERLIN: Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a German company plans to give the Trabant, a two-cylinder car that became the symbol of East Germany, a new lease on life.

The new Trabants will no longer have tiny engines, noxious fumes and plastic bodies, but will retain the iconic design of the original - like Volkswagens new Beetle or the new Mini.

The Trabant was the most common vehicle in the former communist state and was produced without major changes for nearly 30 years. It was known in the West as a “spark plug with a roof” because of its small size, but East Germans queued for years to buy one. Despite its cramped interior and weak engine, the boxy car came to be regarded with affection and now has cult status.

Herpa, a Bavarian manufacturer of miniature vehicles, wants to capitalize on nostalgia for the “Trabi” and bought the rights to the name with a view to creating a full-sized version of the car.

“Theres been a new Beetle, a new Mini - its time for a new Trabi,” said Daniel Stiegler, a Herpa spokesman.

The company will present a one-tenth scale model of its concept at the International Motor Show in Frankfurt next week. The initial design has the two-door, four-seater car painted in the once omnipresent sky-blue color.

Production will be negotiated based on the reaction at the show. “A limited run of 5,000 is the most likely option,” Stiegler said. “We are in talks with several manufacturers.”

Herpa is considering a model equipped with a BMW engine, which would retail at around \50,000, or $68,320. Restored vintage models in good condition sell for about \10,000.

The car became a symbol after images of East Germans crossing the border in their Trabis were beamed to millions across the world in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.

DUBLIN: An Irish court has appointed an examiner to oversee the restructuring of a small financial company that owes $238 million to some of the worlds largest investment banks.

With the ruling, issued late Wednesday, the company, Structured Credit, became the latest to be enveloped by a crisis in subprime lending that has spread in the global credit market.

Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan ruled that at least a part of Structured Credit had a reasonable chance to survive if it could raise $125 million from shareholders. She approved Structured Credits request to restructure rather than liquidate.

The court also heard details of the amounts that Structured Credit owed the 12 banks. One bank, Morgan Stanley, which favored liquidation, said Structured Credit owed it $93.7 million.

The company ran headlong into the crisis when customer demands for collateral climbed to $438 million in mid-August from $5 million in late June. The demands led the company on Aug. 20 to seek court protection from a creditor, Nomura Bank Holdings, which said it was owed $28 million.

With 10 employees and offices overlooking one of the finest 18th-century private squares in central Dublin, Structured Credit worked in a segment of the derivatives market called credit risk transfer. The company raised $207.8 million in early 2006, enough to give it entry into the worlds $34.5 trillion derivatives markets.

The company underwrote derivatives that were intended to offset risk, providing protection for its investment bank customers against losses beyond certain agreed amounts. Since June 2006, it had signed 48 agreements to pay its 12 customers - which included Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Merrill Lynch and UBS - collateral, in cash, if the derivative contracts it underwrote fell below certain amounts.

Market specialists said that Structured Credit, because of its size, was probably ill-prepared when the crisis hit the derivatives market.

“I am surprised that such a small firm is operating in that space,” said Andrew Dillon, managing director of Baronsmead Partners Ireland, a seller of professional indemnity insurance to bankers. “Its usually only the biggest that are involved,”

Structured Credit, led by Edward Bowers, raised $207.8 million from investors including the private equity fund Aquiline Financial Services in New York; the California Public Employees Retirement System; the Canadian pension fund Caisse de Dйpфt et Placement du Quйbec; the Calyon unit of Crйdit Agricole; and the American mortgage insurer Triad Guaranty.

According to company records, Bowers set up Structured Credit in 2006 after working for the mortgage insurer Radian Group. The chairman of Structured Credit, Geoffrey Kalish, was a senior principal at the companys largest shareholder, Aquiline.

In March, Structured Credit said as a “testament” to its “potential importance to the Irish economy” the minister for finance, Brian Cowen, had attended the opening of its offices on Fitzwilliam Square. In its first year, the company underwrote $5 billion of derivative credit risk agreements with 12 banks.

But the seeds of what Structured Credit described in court documents as an “unanticipated” crisis were set during a few weeks in July and August. In court Wednesday, reports by an independent auditor, Ernst Young, showed that during those weeks, Structured Credit posted collateral of $175 million to 10 investment banks.

The hardline leader of Somalia’s Islamist movement emerged from eight months’ hiding yesterday to attend an opposition congress in Eritrea that called for an immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian troops.

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is accused by the US of links to al-Qaida, headed the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) until it was driven from power in Mogadishu by Ethiopian forces, last December. Having fled the capital he was thought to be been living in southern Somalia.

Many people saw his hand in an ongoing insurgency mounted by former Islamist fighters and clan militias, against the occupying Ethiopian army and troops loyal to Somalia’s interim government.

The conference, in the Eritrean capital Asmara, drew more than 300 delegates including observers from the United Nations and the European Commission as well as disaffected members of the Somali government.

Mr Aweys’s surprise appearance confirmed recent reports that the leadership structure of the disbanded SCIC was still largely intact.

The 72-year-old cleric sat beside Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, regarded as the SCIC’s second-in-command, who said the aim of the ten-day meeting was to create “a political organisation that liberates the country and ends the violence and chaotic situation”.

“We call upon Ethiopia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Somalia and stop its imperialistic adventure on our territory,” Mr Ahmed said. “We remind her that the longer the conflict goes on, the higher the risk it will engulf the whole region.”

The opposition congress comes a week after the closure of a government-sponsored reconciliation conference in the capital. The separate talks are indicative of the wide gulf between the two groups, whose differences are being played out on the streets of Mogadishu, where several people are being killed in fighting every day.

They also illustrate how the Somali conflict has become a theatre for the proxy conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, whose relations have never recovered since they fought a border war in the late nineties. Ethiopia is firmly on the side on Somalia’s weak government and enjoys the strong support for the US, which provided military support for its invasion to oust the Islamists.

Eritrea, despite having little tolerance for religious groups of any persuasion within its own borders, was quick to offer refuge to the Islamist leaders. The country has also been accused by UN arms monitors of supplying weapons to the SCIC and, more recently, to the insurgents.