Moscow - Just hours before a European Union emergency summit on the crisis in Georgia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the situation on the telephone, the agency Interfax reported late Sunday.

The two leaders focussed on the disputed buffer zones held by the Russian Army on Georgian territory along the two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, according to the report from Interfax, which cited presidium officials in Moscow.

Vienna - Europe's declared goal to shift away from Russian oil and gas was always a challenge. It's even more difficult after Moscow's assault on Georgia, analysts say.

Georgia's strategic role as a pipeline transit country, run by a US-backed leadership that Moscow detests, formed the backdrop to the conflict that erupted in early August.

After Russian troops handed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili a humiliating battlefield defeat, the region's fragility and Moscow's clout are more obvious than ever. Monday's emergency EU summit on Georgia will not change that in the short term.

Tehran - Russia's nuclear power chief will visit Iran to prepare the nuclear fuel operation of the joint Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran, ISNA news agency reported Saturday.

ISNA said that Sergei Kiriyenko will arrive in Tehran on Sunday for talks with officials of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, ISNA said.

Kiriyenko is also scheduled to go to the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr and inspect the latest developments in the plant there.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization head Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh said the Russian side was committed to launching the Bushehr plant as scheduled.

Berlin  - Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg has warned in an interview with a German magazine against appeasing Russia, but also said he would not support sanctions against Moscow.

The news weekly Der Spiegel released the text Saturday. It quoted Schwarzenberg saying Prague supported a rapid admission of Georgia to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), saying delay over this had only encouraged Russia to establish facts on the ground.

Moscow, Tbilisi - Georgia is to introduce tougher laws to stop the country being "destabilised" following the recent invasion by Russian troops, Georgian media reports Saturday quoted President Mikheil Saakashvili as saying.

Saakashvili was speaking late Friday during a visit to the Black Sea town of Poti where there was still a Russian troop presence, the reports said.

Saakashvili had given no details of what measures were being introduced, but had stressed that "citizens' rights" would not be affected.

Brussels - Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze plans to meet European Union officials and country leaders during a visit to Brussels next week, the Georgian embassy in Brussels said Friday.

The visit coincides with Monday's emergency meeting of EU heads of state and government, who will be discussing the consequences of the conflict between Georgia and Russia.

Gurgenidze plans to hold "a series of bilateral meetings with EU leaders", an official from the Georgian embassy told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.