Kavkaz

TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgia said on Friday it was cutting diplomatic ties with Russia over the Kremlin’s recognition of two Georgian rebel regions as independent states.”We have received instructions at the Foreign Ministry and we will cut diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation,” Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told reporters.

DUSHANBE/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s energy minister and a top oil company denied on Friday they were preparing to cut oil flows to Europe in response to threatened sanctions, a step Moscow never took even at the height of the Cold War.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said no one doubts Iran’s right to use peaceful nuclear energy in accordance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Criticism by the G7 group of nations of Russia’s actions in Georgia is biased and groundless, Russian officials say.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Azerbaijan’s national oil company, SOCAR, said on Monday it had begun exporting Azeri Light crude to Iran to compensate for export constraints imposed by a pipeline blast in Turkey and war in Georgia.

TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgia’s parliament approved a resolution on Thursday calling on the government to cut diplomatic ties with Russia after Moscow backed the secession of two Georgian rebel regions.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia successfully tested a long-range Topol missile designed to avoid detection by anti-missile defence systems from its Plesetsk launch site, a Russian military spokesman said on Thursday.

TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgians flocked to church on Thursday to pray for their country, reeling from military defeat by Russia, and their Orthodox Patriarch asked God to give them back two breakaway provinces backed by Moscow.

LONDON (Reuters) – There is no question of launching “all-out war” against Russia, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Thursday, while condemning Moscow’s “invasion” of Georgia.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy that Georgian troops must return to their barracks in line with a French-brokered ceasefire, the Kremlin said on Thursday.