Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday summoned the head of the country's state banks to the Kremlin after Russia's leading indexes free fell in the sharpest decline since their inception.

The start of trading was delayed until the afternoon on Moscow's RTS and MICEX exchanges following a 19 per cent dive in stocks Monday.

The Kremlin has pledged over 150 billion dollars in loans to banks and small lenders to stave off its worst financial crisis since national debt default in 1998.

New York - The conflict involving Russian and Georgian troops over South Ossetia has remained unsettled, influencing the determination of the role of the UN military observer mission in the area, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

But he urged the council to extend the mandate of the small UN force until mid-February while discussion and arrangements would bring some clarity to the situation.

Moscow  - Trading on Russia's two leading stock markets was twice halted on Monday as stocks plunged to three-year lows amid deepening woes on the European markets and a dive in oil prices.

Russia's ruble-denominated MICEX dropped 16.7 per cent to 757.44 points before trading was suspended for the second time on Monday afternoon, while the dollar-denominated RTS free fell 15 per cent to below the 1,000-point mark to as low as
902.37 points.

Moscow/Sukhumi, Georgia  - A border guard was shot dead in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia on Monday, local agencies reported, while Russian troops said an explosion hit its convoy in a sign of ongoing violence in the EU-monitored border zones.

Abkhaz police chief for the Gali district, Laurens Kogonia, said border guard Mukhran Ashuba died in a shootout in the village of Nabakevi.

No one was injured in the blast that hit a column of Russian armored personnel carriers preparing to withdraw from a buffer zone in Georgia under the supervision of EU monitors, deputy troop commander Alexander Novitsky told news agency Interfax.

Moscow  - A Russian military chief was one of those killed in Friday's car-bomb blast in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, Interfax news agency reported Saturday, citing a military spokesman in Moscow.

Colonel Ivan Petrik, who was the commander of the Russian troops in South Ossetia, was fatally wounded in his office when the 20- kilogram bomb went off next to a Russian army base.

The spokesman was confirming a report in Saturday's Kommersant newspaper.

Seven Russian soldiers were killed in the attack and seven injured.

Moscow  - Six people were killed in an explosion in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia on Friday, Russian news reports said.