International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde met Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf on Saturday to discuss efforts to resolve Europe's debt crisis, the state news agency SPA reported.

The talks in Riyadh also covered regional and global economic conditions, it said on its website.

Italy is now a "safe place" amid market turbulence; Premier Mario Monti said in an interview published Saturday, pressing for Europe to turn its political energy to generating growth rather than further plans to strengthen budget discipline.

Monti's comments in an interview with the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung came ahead of a planned appearance at the Munich Security Conference.

Russia's state-controlled Gazprom natural gas giant acknowledged for the first time Saturday that it had briefly reduced gas supplies to Europe amid a spell of extreme cold.

Gazprom deputy chief Andrey Kruglov reported to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the cuts lasted for several days and reached up to 10 percent, but supplies are currently back to normal. Officials in Austria and France, however, have reported cuts of as much as 30 percent, and Italy said supplies were down by 24 percent Thursday.

Iran has asked OPEC members not to raise oil production to compensate for a European Union embargo against the Islamic republic, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said on Saturday.

Qasemi said the request was forwarded in a letter to Iraq, the current head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Energy giants ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom said Saturday they have found gas deposits in the Romanian part of the Black Sea continental shelf, a month after they began explorations in the area.

"The first deepwater well drilled by ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom indicates the presence of natural gas," the two companies said in a press release.

Greeks have moved at least 16 billion euros ($21 billion) in funds to foreign banks in the last two years, about a third of which went to Britain, the finance minister said on Friday.

Evangelos Venizelos said that overall, depositors had withdrawn 65 billion euros from Greek banks since 2009 when the country began a tailspin into its worst economic crisis in decades.

Oil prices hovered above $96 a barrel Friday in Asia as traders awaited a key jobs report for evidence about the strength of the U.S. economy.

Benchmark crude for March delivery was up 13 cents at $96.49 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.25 to settle at $96.36 on Thursday.

Retail sales in the 17 countries that use the euro unexpectedly fell during the crucial month of December, official figures showed Friday, raising fears of a looming recession in the single currency bloc.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said retail sales dropped 0.4 percent during the month, in contrast to expectations for an increase of the same amount.

China's Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday the Asian giant had neither the ability nor the intention to "buy Europe", amid concerns over growing Chinese investment in debt-stricken Eurozone economies.

China is "willing to cooperate with Europe to fight the current crisis. Some people say this means China wants to buy Europe", Wen told a German-China business forum in the southern city of Guangzhou.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde vowed Thursday to support Tunisia and urged its new leaders to focus their efforts on job creation to win back investor confidence.

"The IMF in 2012 is not what it used to be in the eighties and is now a partner that will always be ready to support Tunisia if and when it needs it," Lagarde told reporters in Tunis.