Moscow  - President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao and the leaders of four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations on Wednesday in a bid to secure support for Russia its standoff with the West over Georgia.

Medvedev flew to the capital of Tajikistan for two days of consultations with his partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as Western leaders renewed their condemnation of Russia's diplomatic recognitition of breakaway regions of Georgia.

The SCO was formed in 2001 as a counterweight to NATO's growing influence in the region.

Moscow  - Russian newspapers on Wednesday supported President Dmitry Medvedev's decision to recognize the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but expressed fears the move could harm Moscow's relations with the West.

"Goodbye America, Goodbye Europe?" led the popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, while business newspaper Kommersant splashed "The President of Russia is ready for confrontation with the West," across its front page.

Most analysts were caught off guard by the president's announcement on Tuesday, expecting the Kremlin to delay such a move and use the threat of recognizing the two Georgian regions to enhance its bargaining position with the West.

Moscow - Russia's nuclear energy monopoly Rosatom agreed on construction of a new power plant in Russia's European exclave of Kaliningrad, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko inked the deal Wednesday for the construction of the plant about 120 km from the capital of the Baltic Sea exclave between Poland and Lithuania.

The plant will have two reactors with a total capacity of 2,300 megawatts by the first stage of construction in 2015.

When plans for the plant were announced in April, Kiriyenko highlighted the export potential of the project.

The Rosatom head also said the company was prepared to allow up to 49 per cent of the plant to be held by foreign investors.

Moscow  - Russia said Monday it would scale down WTO accession talks and pull out from trade agreements concluded with a mind toward membership, the news agency Interfax quoted Premier Vladimir Putin as agreeing with top ministers.

"We should pursue negotiations and working groups on Russia's WTO accession, but we will inform our partners of the need to exit some agreements which currently oppose the interests of the Russian Federation," first deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was quoted by the agency as saying.

Putin approved the plan as "sensible."

Minsk/Moscow  - Belarussian opposition politician Aleksander Konsulin has been surprisingly released from prison, his daughter disclosed Saturday.

An Interfax agency report from Minsk gave no reason behind the early release of Konsulin, who in March 2006 was sentenced to a five and one-half year prison term for "serious rowdyism" and for organising an unauthorised public gathering.

Konsulin, a former presidential candidate, has been one of the stiffest critics of the authoritarian rule of President Aleksander Lukashenko.

Moscow  - Two people were killed and at least three injured by an explosion on the beach in the Olympic host town of Sochi along the Black Sea, Russian agencies reported.

"At 10:35 am an unidentified device exploded at Loo beach, two people were killed," the head of the city's emergency situations ministry, Anatoly Sherbinin, was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying.

The victims were a 31-year-old Russian and a 22-year-old tourist from Ukraine, an unidentified law-enforcement official was quoted by the agency as saying.

Reports said people had been evacuated from the beach and an investigation was under way. No other details were given as to the cause of the blast.