Deauville, France  - European Union defence ministers were due to meet in the French coastal town of Deauville on Wednesday as the bloc's observers began a delicate ceasefire monitoring mission in Georgia.

Some 350 observers from 22 EU countries are tasked with ensuring that Russian troops withdraw to the positions they held prior to the August conflict, as agreed in a September 8 peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Initial reports out of the South Caucasus indicated that the observers were having some difficulties being allowed into the buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Tbilisi/Moscow - EU observers started their mission Wednesday to monitor the Russo-Georgian ceasefire agreement one and half months after conflict flared between the two countries over Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russian troops still in Georgia prevented the observers from entering the security zone they set up around South Ossetia.

"It is not a categorical ban on the EU mission; it's just that the details of the monitoring mission have not been cleared up yet," a Russian military spokesman told Interfax news agency.

Moscow - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is planning the launch of new Russian political party with the support of billionaire and former KGB officer Aleksander Lebedev, Vedomosti newspaper reported Tuesday.

The new political grouping named the Independent Democratic Party (IDP) will aim at putting candidates into parliament in Russia's 2011 elections.

The IDP's main platform will be the development of independent state and social institutions and particularly a national television broadcaster that would not take orders from the government, Vedemosti reported.

New Delhi, Sep 30 : Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) has said that it had started talks with Indian firms on the delivery of SuperJet-100 passenger airliners and other civil aircraft to the country.

The SuperJet-100 project is a family of medium-haul passenger aircraft developed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau in cooperation with major US and European aviation corporations, including Boeing, Snecma, Thales, Messier Dowty, Liebherr Aerospace and Honeywell.

“We have started preliminary talks with a number of Indian companies on the delivery of SuperJet-100 airliners,’ Alexei Fyodorov, UAC’s general director, said here without specifying the potential customers.

New Delhi, Sep 30 : Russia will start deliveries of MiG-29K Fulcrum-D carrier fighters to India in the spring of 2009.

Russia and India signed a contract on January 20, 2004, stipulating the delivery of 12 single-seater MiG-29K and four two-seater MiG-29KUB by 2009, to be deployed on the Admiral Gorshkov, currently being retrofitted in Russia for the Indian Navy.

“The first four MiG-29K aircraft will be delivered to India in the spring of 2009,” said Mikhail Globenko, marketing director of MiG.

Strasbourg  - Ahead of a Council of Europe debate over the Russian-Georgia conflict, a dispute emerted Monday between factions over whether to restrict the Russian deputies' participation.

A number of leftist and liberal deputies argued for punitive action against Russian deputies, but pro-Russian sentiment also appeared to be materializing in the assembly.

A key issue in the dispute concerns the commitment expressed by both Russia and Georgia, when they gained membership in the 47-member body, to settle their conflicts by peaceful means.

Speaking against the Russians, Britain's Labour deputy Denis MacShane said that Russia had destroyed Georgia's territorial integrity.