Tbilisi, Georgia/Moscow - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili early Tuesday called the latest Russian agreement to withdraw from Georgian territory a step forward."

Saakashvili held a joint press conference after midnight with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had arrived late Monday from Moscow after extracting a promise from Russian Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to withdraw and to return to a ceasefire agreement that ended the five-day Caucasus war in last month.

Moscow - Four Russian navy ships will participate in joint exercises with Venezuela in the Caribbean this year, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said Monday.

The Russian statement came after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the arrival of Russian ships on national television Sunday, saying they would dock in the South American country by late November.

Andrei Nesterenko confirmed that "before the end of the year" the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, an anti-submarine ship, tugboat and big sea tanker would enter Venezuelan waters.

Moscow - French President Nicolas Sarkozy will spearhead international efforts to pressure Russia into withdrawing more troops from Georgia, in talks in Moscow and Tbilisi on Monday to save the ceasefire pact he brokered last month.

Sarkozy is attempting to force Moscow's full compliance with the accord that stopped the five-day war over South Ossetia, by threatening to suspend talks on a new EU-Russia partnership agreement. The French president, who currently holds the EU rotating presidency, is backed by an EU ministers vote at an emergency session on September 1.

Moscow, September 7 : Russian forensic experts have said that archaeologists could discover another site where the remains of the children of Russia''s last tsar are buried.

Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their four daughters and son, and several servants, were shot dead by the Bolsheviks in a basement in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in the early hours of July 17, 1918.

Moscow - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose country had a brief war with Russia last month, Sunday said he expected billions of euros to help build up his country after the conflict.

"As for as I know, several billion euros will come from Europe and various institutions," Saakashvili said, according to remarks broadcast via state television from Tiblisi.

The European Union has not yet organized a donor's conference, and European Union ministers have called for an investigation of who started the conflict.

Prague - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose country had a brief war with Russia last month, warned Sunday that Moscow could trigger more armed conflicts in the former Soviet territories.

In an interview with public broadcaster Czech Television, Saakashvili said a potential flashpoint is the politically tense Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, which is part of Ukraine.

"Russia has already distributed more passports in the Crimea" than in the Georgian breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Saakashvili said. "I think we should not be blind."

Crimea, a popular Soviet-era tourist destination, hosts a Russian naval base.