a fedora-devel fellow gave me a solution

cn=sqlite3.connect(':memory:', isolation_level=None)

and it worked
I hope that does not affect other versions


$ python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep 30 2008, 15:41:38) 
[GCC 4.3.2 20080917 (Red Hat 4.3.2-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sqlite3
>>> cn=sqlite3.connect(':memory:', isolation_level=None)
>>> c=cn.cursor()
>>> c.execute('BEGIN TRANSACTION')
<sqlite3.Cursor object at 0x9cb9c20>
>>> c.execute('create temp table tmp_main (id integer, b text)')
<sqlite3.Cursor object at 0x9cb9c20>
>>> c.execute('insert into tmp_main (id) values (10);')
<sqlite3.Cursor object at 0x9cb9c20>
>>> c.execute('END TRANSACTION')
<sqlite3.Cursor object at 0x9cb9c20>
>>>