Liberal democratsin UK power talks with Conservatives

Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg is meeting his MPs and peers to discuss a power-sharing offer from the Conservatives.
The Tories won most votes in the UK election but were short of a majority - Gordon Brown remains PM while Tories see if they can form a government.
Clegg also spoke to the PM by phone on Friday. He has offered talks if Lib Dems cannot agree with the Tories.
Clegg, Brown and Tory leader David Cameron appeared together at the Cenotaph for VE Day celebrations.
The Lib Dem leader has met senior Lib Dem MPs and is now meeting his wider parliamentary party to sound them out about the options, after the UK election resulted in a hung parliament.
'NEW POLITICS'
An estimated 1,000 people gathered outside the Lib Dem meeting in favour of electoral reform, chanting "Fair votes now". Accepting their petition, Clegg said: "Reforming politics is one of the reasons I went into politics."
He said he believed it was in the national interest "for us to use this opportunity to usher in a new politics".
Meanwhile Labour MP John Mann has called for Brown to step down as Labour leader - arguing his position "rules out the credibility of a Lib/Lab pact".
He said: "Gordon Brown has had a good run and whilst he was an excellent chancellor he has been seen as a poor prime minister who is out of touch and aloof. Labour lost votes because of this."
Clegg will meet his party's governing body, the federal executive, later to discuss Cameron's proposals. He will need the support of a majority of MPs and the executive to enter into any deal.
Entering talks this morning, Clegg stressed his priorities, including "fundamental political reform", but said they would act in a "constructive spirit" in the "coming hours and days".
Electoral reform is likely to be a key battleground - the Lib Dems have long campaigned for the first-past-the-post system to be replaced with a form of proportional representation. The Conservatives oppose changing the voting system.
Clegg said the election result meant politicians had to talk to each other as "people deserve good, stable government".
He said the Lib Dems would enter into talks with other parties in a "constructive spirit" over the "coming hours and days", and the party would press its case for its four priorities - tax reform to make the system fairer, a "new approach" to education to give a "fair start" to all children and to the economy and "fundamental political reform to our political system".
The Conservative and Lib Dem negotiation teams will meet again at 1100 BST on Sunday and there will be a meeting of Conservative MPs at 1800 BST on Monday, the BBC understands.
'PROGRESSIVE' COALITION
The approach by the Conservatives has echoes of 1974, when Tory PM Ted Heath spent a weekend trying to agree a coalition with Jeremy Thorpe's Liberal Party. The deal collapsed on the Monday and Heath was forced to resign - leaving Harold Wilson to form a minority Labour government.
Labour frontbencher Peter Hain said it was "clear" that Clegg and Brown had "a lot in common" on the need for electoral reform - Labour has offered a referendum on changing the voting system.
And his colleague Ben Bradshaw told the BBC it was "not credible" that the Lib Dems would do a deal with the Conservatives without the promise of electoral reform.
He said Gordon Brown - who has gone to his family home in Scotland - could remain prime minister in a "progressive" coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats, if their talks with the Tories failed.
And Scotland's First Minister, SNP leader Alex Salmond, called on the Lib Dems to join a "progressive alliance" involving Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru - although a Labour source dismissed that as "a desperate attempt by Alex Salmond to make himself look relevant after a terrible general election result".