Problem with <BR> tag

Hi All,

I am developing one website for intranet usage.
In that page my lead ask me to reduce the whitespaces between the lines.

<div style="LEFT-MARGIN: 10px; RIGHT-MARGIN: 10px;">External I/O ports :1 VGA, 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 IEEE-1394, 1 RJ-11, 1 RJ -45, S-video out, 1 Headphone, 1 microphone-jack, 1 Expansion port for xb3000 expansion base, AC Adapter, Kensington lock, 2 Omni-directional microphones</div>
<br>
<div style="LEFT-MARGIN: 10px; RIGHT-MARGIN: 10px;">Video capture interface?:IEEE 1394 Interface</div>

in the page out it displayed like that


External I/O ports :1 VGA, 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 IEEE-1394, 1 RJ-11, 1 RJ -45, S-video out, 1 Headphone, 1 microphone-jack, 1 Expansion port for xb3000 expansion base, AC Adapter, Kensington lock, 2 Omni-directional microphones


Video capture interface?:IEEE 1394 Interface

too many white spaces between the lines. I have used <p> tag also.
the result is same.
After i removed <br> tag and used <div> tag, but in the preview there is no line breaks between two paragraphs.

My lead said that the current line break is 12pt, but it should be 8pt.

Is there any way to reduce the white space or any styles to reduce or increase the line breaks for <BR> tag.
Please help me to solve this.

In CSS there is a 'whitespace' element I belive.
I'm not very good with it.

I usualy use www.w3schools.com, it would have a propper code for it in the CSS section. But forums offer the personal help option you may need too.
Hope it helps.

PS- it's a better idea to use <br /> as it's an open tag