Tbilisi/Moscow - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday again called on Russia to withdraw from Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgia will never accept Russian occupation of either region nor Moscow's recognition of their independence, Saakashvili was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

The Georgian leader made the statements at a meeting with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in the Georgia city of Batumi on the Black Sea.

Brussels - The European Union was deadlocked on Friday over whether or not to re-start talks with Russia over a strategic partnership that it froze on September 1, despite Russia's troop withdrawal from Georgia, diplomats admitted.

EU foreign ministers are set to meet on Monday in Luxembourg for the first formal debate on relations with Russia since the EU's leaders on September 1 vowed to freeze talks on the strategic deal.

Moscow  - Russian diplomats and politicians on Friday slammed the award of the Nobel Prize to ex-Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari as an ill-veiled political ploy to justify Kosovo's independence.

Ahtisaari, who won the honour for "more than three decades" of peace brokering, the committee said, is persona non grata in Russia for advocating Kosovo's independence from Serbia in his post as UN envoy to the region from 2005.

Paris, Oct. 10 : International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, The Telegraph quotes European and American officials, as saying.

Brussels  - The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, confirmed Friday that Russia has withdrawn its troops from Georgia's buffer zones, in accordance with an international deal.

"I am happy to announce that EU Monitoring Mission (EUMM) patrols have confirmed that Russian armed forces have completed their planned withdrawal from the areas adjacent to Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Solana said in a statement.

Moscow - Cross-country skiing Olympic champion Alexei Prokurorov of Russia died on Friday in a traffic accident, police said. He was 44 years old.