Warsaw - Poland as well as the rest of Europe and the United States have to deal with an increasingly aggressive Russia, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in statements published Thursday in the country's biggest daily.

Poland was a US key ally in the region, Rice said in a statement in the Wyborcza newspaper, and said Russian leaders were currently making bad choices.

Referring to Russia's recent conflict with Georgia, Rice said the Kremlin should respect the sovereignty of its smaller neighbors. Russia's actions, she said, are pushing it toward the path of isolation.

Moscow - Russia's General Prosecutor's office on Thursday ordered a special investigative team to probe the murder of high-profile Chechen politician and former pro-Kremlin lawmaker Ruslan Yamadayev.

Yamadayev was gunned down in central Moscow on Wednesday.

He was the oldest brother in a powerful Chechen clan that has clashed with Kremlin-appointed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Business dailies Kommersant and Vedemosti led with headlines calling Yamadayev's murder the death of Kadyrov's greatest enemy.

New York - As world leaders gathered for an annual series of speeches, meetings and action this week at the United Nations, there was a new conflict that pierced the organization's usually stuffy diplomatic air.

There were no official UN meetings this week dealing with last month's war between Russia and Georgia. But the conflict was a regular topic of leaders from around the world who took turns this week addressing the UN General Assembly in New York.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called on the UN to condemn Russia's "brutal invasion" and help implement a ceasefire. His tough words were backed up by the heads of other states from the region.

Ankara  - A government tender seeking builders for Turkey's first-ever nuclear power plant received just one bid, from the Russian firm Atomstroyexport, the Anadolu news agency reported Wednesday.

Thirteen companies had asked for bidding documents, but in the end just Atomstroyexport made an official bid to build the power plant in the Akkuyu district of Mersin in southern Turkey.

Environmental groups have said that the project is a danger to the environment, especially as Turkey is prone to earthquakes.

UN Security Council talks on more sanctions against Iran were cancelled when Russia withdrew from a meeting planned this week in New York, Russian officials said Wednesday.

An official in the Russian delegation to the UN told news agency Ria-Novosti that Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov could not take attend due to "the intensity of his schedule."

The Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said it saw no need for an emergency session on Iran.

New York -Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili issued a dramatic call late Tuesday for the United Nations to mediate in the Caucasus republic's conflict with Russia and breakaway regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

Saakashvili called on the UN to denounce Russia's "brutal invasion" of his country last month and to help implement a stalled ceasefire plan that calls for a complete pullback of Russian troops from Georgian territory.