Moscow  - Russia accused Georgia of readying for war with its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the foreign ministry said Thursday after a heavy gun fighting overnight in the region.

"Concern was expressed over the actions of the Georgian side right near to Tskhinvali, which can be regarded as military preparations," the ministry said on its website after telephone talks between Russia's deputy foreign minister and South Ossetia's president Eduard Kokoity.

Several people were injured in the shootout overnight at the border of Georgia's rebel region, both sides said Thursday.

Moscow - The funeral was being held for dissident Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Wednesday ahead of his burial at Moscow's 16th century Donskoy Monastery.

Several hundred people crowded the vaulted church where white- gowned priests chanted and swung thuribles, or incense-burners, over his open coffin.

Solzhenitsyn, remembered as Russia's moral conscience for his unflinching exposes on the horrors of the Soviet prison camps, died Sunday aged 89.

Moscow - Hundreds of people paid their last respects in Moscow Tuesday to the late author and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose body is lying in state at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Hundreds of people were already waiting to enter the building before the doors opened to get a last glimpse of the respected Nobel laureate.

Next to the casket stood an honour guard and a large black-and- white photo of Solzhenitsyn.

Moscow  - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia should restore Soviet-era alliances with Cuba, news agencies reported.

"We need to rebuild position in Cuba and other countries," Putin said during a meeting with his deputy Igor Sechin on his return from talks in Havana.

The head of Russia's federal security services Nikolai Patrushev was also part of the delegation seeking to extend trade and military cooperation.

Moscow  - Russia accused Georgia of using "disproportionate force" in its separatist province of South Ossetia and warned it off inflaming tensions in the region, the foreign ministry said Monday.

Georgia's presidential envoy for conflict resolution rejected the statement as "in fact, an advanced declaration of (potential) war."

Moscow  - Soviet dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was widely mourned on Monday as Russia's moral conscience for his unflinching accounts of the brutality of Stalin's repression camps.

Solzhenitsyn, frail in the last year of his life, died of heart failure or a stroke late Sunday aged 89.

"He worked all day long as usual on Sunday and only at night felt unwell," his widow Natalya was quoted on Ekho Moskvye radio as saying.