Moscow- Russia said on Thursday it had handed over control in the buffer zones around Georgia's rebel regions to an EU observer mission as France's foreign minister was due in Georgia to verify the pull out.

Moscow  - Russia denied it has plans to sell state-of-the-art missile systems to Iran, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday, in response to questions about Israeli security concerns.

"We have repeatedly declared at the highest political level that we are not going to deliver those kinds of arms into the countries which are in, to put it mildly, unstable areas," Andrei Nesterenko told journalists at a briefing in Moscow Thursday.

Moscow  - Russia's two leading exchanges rebounded at the start of trading Thursday after a week of staggering losses in Russia's worst financial crisis since the national debt default of 1998.

The benchmark RTS rose 11.93 per cent to 852.22 points by mid- morning, while the ruble-denominated MICEX index scaled more than 14 per cent.

Russia's second-largest oil firm Lukoil led the climb in share prices on the MICEX with a 21.13-per-cent increase, while state monopoly Gazprom gained 11.36 per cent.

A day earlier, market watchdogs had promised to close the MICEX exchange until Friday and the RTS indefinitely as shares toppled. Trading has been halted 11 times in the last three weeks.

Moscow - Russian state television has lowered the pitch of its coverage of the most devastating financial crisis to hit the markets in over a decade at the Kremlin's behest, the Moscow Times reported Thursday, citing media monitoring firms.

Kremlin officials have banned the use of the terms "crisis" and "collapse" on the country's main television channels, the newspaper quoted Ekho Moskvy radio sation deputy editor Vladimir Varfolomeyev as saying.

Moscow/Tskhinvali, Georgia - Russia has pulled troops out of all of its checkpoints inside Georgia around the breakaway region of South Ossetia, the head of the Russian peacekeeping forces said on Wednesday.

Moscow  - Japan scrambled four fighter jets on Wednesday to flank Russian bombers on a long-range patrol over the Sea of Japan, a Russian air force official said.

"Four Japanese air force F-15 fighters escorted the long-range aviation crews as they flew over the Sea of Japan," Lieutenant- Colonel Vladimir Drik was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying.

Russia ordered out an extra two Russian Su-27 fighters to backup their TU-22 bombers, known as Backfires by their NATO codenames, while they completed their training, Drik said.