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The deal will need broad cross-party support because the collapse of Socrates' government last month -- pushing up borrowing rates and forcing Lisbon to seek a bailout -- means the winner of a June 5 snap general election will implement it.

Opposition Social Democrat leader Pedro Passos Coelho said

he was ready to meet the lenders. Any of the bailout terms that need parliamentary approval will have to be passed after the election.

"The government has obtained a good deal. This is a deal that defends Portugal," said Socrates, who had resisted asking for a bailout for months. The terms would be less onerous than those set for Greece and Ireland, he added.

He said the deadline for meeting budget deficit goals will be extended, with this year's target raised to 5.9 percent of gross domestic product from 4.6 percent previously. The deficit must be cut to 4.5 percent of GDP in 2012 and 3 percent in 2013.

In a reminder of the challenges Portugal faces in selling debt, it will hold a treasury bill auction Wednesday to issue up to 1 billion euros of 3-month bills.

"We don't expect a buyers' strike at this T-bill auction, which should target the same risk-tolerant investors who bought T-bills last month, already after the bailout request," said David Schnautz, a debt strategist at Commerzbank in London.

The interest rate on Portugal's bailout loan is expected to be set at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in mid-May.

Portuguese agreement to the loan terms is needed by June 15, when Lisbon needs to redeem 4.9 billion euros of bonds.

"We have said from the beginning that it is important that any program should have broad cross-party support and will continue our engagement with the opposition parties to establish that this is the case," European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj said in a statement.

Officials from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank have been in Lisbon for almost a month to hammer out the agreement.

The general election campaign that will now get under way is likely to focus on who is to blame for the country's economic crisis.

(Reporting by Axel Bugge, editing by Tim Pearce)

Socrates' government collapsed last month, sparking a sharp rise in borrowing costs which forced Lisbon to seek a bailout -- the third euro zone country after Greece and Ireland to do so.

Socrates, who now faces a snap parliamentary election on June 5, hailed the package as a victory, saying it included more lenient terms than those imposed on Greece and Ireland.

The deal gave Portugal more time to meet budget goals which it had previously agreed to.

"The government has obtained a good deal. This is a deal that defends Portugal," said Socrates, who had resisted a bailout for months.

Socrates provided few details of what terms the bailout included, saying only "there are no financial assistance programs that are not demanding."

Filipe Garcia, head of Informacao de Mercados Financeiros consultants in Porto, said: "He showed us the bright side of the moon, it is the dark side that remains to be seen, and that includes the interest rate."

Socrates said Portugal would now need to cut its budget deficit to 5.9 percent of gross domestic product this year, compared with a previous goal of 4.6 percent. The deficit will have to be cut to 4.5 percent in 2012 and 3 percent in 2013.

"Some of the parameters look a little softer than expectations such as the higher deficit target and longer time line," said Vitaly Serebryakov, currency strategist at Wells Fargo in New York.

Officials from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank have been in Lisbon for almost a month to hammer out the agreement with Portugal.

"We have reached staff-level agreement with the government on a comprehensive economic program that could be supported by the EC, the ECB and IMF," said European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj in a statement.

Socrates said the agreement still has to be presented to opposition parties. Opposition Social Democrat leader Pedro Passos Coelho said earlier he was ready to meet the lenders.

"We have said from the beginning that it is important that any programme should have broad cross-party support and will continue our engagement with the opposition parties to establish that this is the case," said Altafaj.

An EC source said what was presented was what had already been agreed. The source said the interest rate on the loan will be decided at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers in mid-May, when the bailout is expected to be approved.

Agreement is needed by June 15, when Portugal has to meet a bond redemption of 4.9 billion euros.

A new government after the June election will have to enact the terms of the bailout. Socrates said the loan agreement would not require any changes to the constitution.

(Additional Shrikesh Laxmidas and Sergio Goncalves; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Auto sales are an early indicator each month of U.S. consumer demand, and GM, as the biggest U.S. seller of autos and the first to report April sales on Tuesday, indicated that industry sales will be strong.

A Thomson Reuters poll of 40 economists and analysts had predicted a gain of 16 percent over last year.

GM said that its retail sales were up 25 percent, driven by higher sales for its fuel-efficient Chevrolet compact cars and compact crossovers: the Cruze, Equinox and Terrain.

The Cruze, the compact car that GM introduced last year, is now the second-biggest selling vehicle in the automaker's lineup, behind only its Silverado pickup truck. Cruze sales so far this year are about triple the sales of the car it replaced, the compact Cobalt.

"Consumers are continuing to rethink their vehicle choice," said Don Johnson, GM vice president for U.S. sales.

Ford Motor Co sales analyst George Pipas said this week that Ford is also showing a major shift in consumer taste toward smaller and more fuel-efficient cars as gasoline prices rise.

U.S. retail gasoline prices rose 8 cents in the past week to $3.96 per gallon and are now $1.07 higher than a year ago, according to government figures released on Monday.

Pipas said the he believes that high gasoline prices are convincing many consumers to "pull the trigger" on a new vehicle purchase.

"I believe there is a call to action," Pipas said of consumer purchases this spring. "Summer is the driving season, and I'm going to pull the trigger," he said of consumers.

Sales for the other automakers in the U.S. market will be issued later on Tuesday.

On Monday in Japan, new-vehicle sales in April halved, sinking to the lowest monthly tally on record, as Japanese automakers felt the full brunt of the March earthquake.

Also on Monday, French car sales fell 1.2 percent, reflecting the end of a scrappage scheme. In Italy, they fell to the lowest level in 15 years.

Last month, Ford outsold GM for only the second time in 13 years. Ford and other automakers will report U.S. sales later on Tuesday.

The world's top automaker by sales, Toyota Motor Corp, is expected to show weaker sales than its U.S. counterparts, due to production and inventory problems, analysts said.

GM shares were up 2.4 percent at $32.94 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning.

(Additional reporting by Deepa Seetharaman, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Sales of Pfizer's core business of prescription drugs fell 2 percent to $14.2 billion. Cholesterol fighter Lipitor, the company's biggest product, led the downturn, as its revenue tumbled 13 percent to $2.39 billion due to generic competition in overseas markets.

The world's largest drugmaker, whose shares fell 1.3 percent in premarket trading, said it earned $2.22 billion, or 28 cents per share, in the first quarter. That compared with $2.03 billion, or 25 cents per share, in the year-earlier period, when Pfizer took charges related to its late 2009 purchase of rival U.S. drugmaker Wyeth.

Excluding special items, including its Capsugel business that is being sold and is now considered to be a discontinued operation, Pfizer earned 60 cents per share. Analysts on average expected 59 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Global company revenue of $16.5 billion was a bit lower than the year-earlier quarter and slightly trailed Wall Street expectations of $16.63 billion.

Revenue would have fallen 2 percentage points if not for the weaker dollar, which boosts the value of overseas sales, and for new products obtained in Pfizer's recent purchase of specialty drugmaker King Pharmaceuticals.

Many investors fear Pfizer, which has bought three of the largest U.S. drugmakers over the past decade, will be far too big to deliver strong profit growth once Lipitor faces cheaper U.S. generics in November, and more than a half dozen other Pfizer drugs lose U.S. patent protection in the next few years.

Wall Street expects Pfizer's new chief executive, Ian Read, will eventually sell off one or more of its non-pharmaceutical businesses, or perhaps even its generic drugs operation.

By divesting such products, which have far lower profit margins than branded prescriptions drugs, the hope is that newly approved medicines will have a better chance to bolster overall earnings of the smaller company.

Pfizer on Tuesday said it aims in the second half of the year to complete its ongoing assessment of what businesses it may sell.

Animal-health sales jumped 16 percent to $982 million in the quarter, while sales of consumer healthcare products rose 12 percent to $745 million. Nutritional product sales rose 3 percent to $470 million.

(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson and Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

The U.S. dollar struggled to pull away from a three-year trough, while oil and copper prices eased as investors focused on the still-fragile state of the recovery in many developed economies.

A slew of data this week will help gauge the strength of the world economy, with particular focus on U.S. non-farm payrolls on Friday.

"Everyone is waiting to see how uncertainties in the macro-economic situations of major economies will pan out," China Futures Co. analyst Yang Jun said.

European shares were expected to open mostly down, with Euro Stoxx 50 futures shedding 0.4 percent, while S&P 500 futures fell 0.3 percent, pointing to a weaker start on Wall Street. Financial spreadbetters called London's FTSE 100 .FTSE flat-to-higher after a four-day weekend. .EU .N

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.9 percent, with South Korea .KS11 stocks losing 1.3 percent and Australian stocks .AXJO down 0.8 percent. Japan's financial markets were closed for a public holiday. .AX .KS

"Our number one headwind for equities right now is the Aussie dollar," said IG Markets institutional dealer Chris Weston.

The U.S. currency has been under pressure for months due to the Federal Reserve's ultra-loose monetary policy, which has opened up a yield gap between the dollar and currencies such as the euro and the Aussie.

DATA SURPRISE

The dollar index .DXY, which tracks the dollar against a basket of major currencies, crept up 0.1 percent, still not far from three-year low plumbed in New York trade. <FRX/>

The euro was around $1.4815, having risen to a 17-month high above $1.49 after surprisingly strong manufacturing data boosted the chances of another European Central Bank interest rate rise.

The Aussie eased from a 29-year high above $1.10, to trade around $1.09 after the Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates unchanged, as expected.

The central bank, the first in the developed world to begin tightening policy in late 2009, said underlying inflation was likely to head higher, laying the groundwork for further rate rises in the months to come.

"That addition to the statement suggests they're preparing to move in the next few months -- though there's no sense of urgency about it," said Brian Redican, a senior economist at Macquarie.

LOONIE GAINS

The Canadian dollar edged up as provisional results from Canada's election showed the pro-business Conservatives cruising to victory, on course to transform their minority administration into a majority government.

The loonie has lagged other commodity-linked currencies, in part due to uncertainty about the outcome of Monday's election, with the opposition New Democrats pledging to raise corporate taxes, increase social spending and toughen climate change policies.

"I think generally this is probably very good for the Canadian dollar," said Firas Askari, head of foreign exchange trading at BMO Capital Markets. "We haven't had a majority government in some years and I think this provides a measure of stability that the market was looking for."

Oil, the asset often most sensitive to perceptions of geopolitical risk, fell nearly half a percent, but remained about $2 above the Monday low hit after news of the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by U.S. special forces.

While the death of bin Laden could reduce the threat against the United States by militant Islamists in the long-term, the potential for retaliatory attacks in the short-term would support prices, analysts said.

"The potential of violence from retaliation has more upside than downside risks, and would support the market," said Serene Lim, commodities analyst with ANZ Bank in Singapore.

U.S. crude futures eased 50 cents to $113.02 a barrel, while Brent crude fell 42 cents to $124.70.

Spot gold was a little firmer at $1,547.59 an ounce, after retreating from a record $1,575.79, and copper fell 0.3 percent.

Weaker industrial metals prices dragged on shares of big mining firms, with BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) down 1.4 percent and Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) 0.7 percent.

(Editing by Richard Borsuk)