Brussels - Russia's ambassador to NATO asked Monday to meet the alliance's top officials over the crisis in Georgia and rejected any criticism of his country's actions, drawing parallels with NATO's bombing raids in Serbia in 1999.

"This morning the Russian mission to NATO made the decision to propose holding an extraordinary session of the NATO-Russia Council. We insist that before NATO make any statements it conduct responsible work to find out the facts," Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin told journalists in Brussels.

Brussels  - The head of NATO is "seriously concerned" by the outbreak of fighting in Georgia and calls on all sides to return to the negotiating table, a statement released in Brussels said Friday.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is "seriously concerned about the events that are taking place in the Georgian region of South Ossetia," and said that NATO is "closely following" the situation, the statement said.

De Hoop Scheffer "calls on all sides for an immediate end of the armed clashes and direct talks between the parties," it said.

Khyber Agency, July 29 : A remote mountaineous region in Pakistan that has almost turned into a dry riverbed, houses a terrorists training camp where about two dozen young men, most of them being in their teens, receive rigourous training for the war against NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan, said a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The camp is located just a few miles away from Peshawar. To reach here, one requires an armed escort on a 20-minute walk from a village along a muddy track. It is under the control of Haji Namdar, a top Taliban commander based in the Khyber Agency.