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FTSE- 100 index at fresh 14-week low, down 1.1 pc LONDON: London's leading shares hit fresh 14-week closing lows on Monday ahead of an expected UK interest rate rise later in the week and wider equity market weakness in Europe and the United States.

The FTSE 100 index ended 66.4 points or 1.1 percent lower at 6,118.6 points, its lowest since October 27 and nearly 12 percent down on the year to date.

Arbitrage selling of shares in mobile telecoms operator Vodafone pushed it to a third straight day of losses despite last week's successful deal to swallow Germany's Mannesmann .

The stock ended 3.3 percent lower at 334-3/4 pence, knocking 18 points off the index, after nearly half a billion shares changed hands out of total market volume exceeding 1.8 billion by the official London close.

Dealers and analysts said losses might have been worse had it not been for widespread institutional selling of other index heavyweights to buy Vodafone and reweight their portfolios.

A soft start to the week for New York blue chip stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average, down 0.6 percent at the London close, did little to help the UK market.

Thursday's widely forecast quarter point rise in short-term interest rates was one factor pressuring London stocks but not the most important one, according to ABN AMRO European equities strategist George Hodgson.

"My impression is still that the more immediate pressure is quite a lot of technical issues related to the institutional selling of UK stocks in order to get up to weight in Vodafone," he said.

"Almost any big liquid stock will do. On Friday it was largely banks, oils and pharmaceuticals. Today it's the pharmas and utilities," Hodgson added. The UK's big three pharmaceutical firms Glaxo Wellcome , AstraZeneca , SmithKline Beecham all suffered from the reweighting effect, dealers said, with the sector as a whole chopping 21 points from the FTSE 100.

Falls in general retailers, life assurance companies and electricity generators, less heavily weighted sectors in the FTSE 100, together shaved a further 17 points from the index.

Aiding the fall in traditional blue chips was the continuing popularity of technology stocks, as evidenced by the London techMARK index rising 2.2 percent to 4,547.4 points, its third record close in a row.

TechMARK supplied the FTSE 100's four top gainers in Misys, CMG , SEMA and SAGE , which gained 14, 10, nine and five percent respectively.

Elsewhere, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) shares moved ahead after news that SG Securities' banking analysts had backed its bid for National Westminster Bank .

SG said NatWest had a poor record and did not deserve to survive alone, despite a "valiant rearguard action" that had drawn out offers with substantially more cash, favouring the RBS bid over one by its rival the Bank of Scotland .

British Airways posted lower-than-expected third quarter losses but failed to rouse its share price amid lingering concerns over fierce competition in the airline industry and surging fuel prices.-Reuters