Moscow - Russia will halt some strategic weapons programmes if the United States drops plans for a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a top Russian general said Friday.

Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's strategic missile forces, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Washington could save Russia from the necessity of investing in retaliatory measures.

"And an array of programmes, expensive programmes, would simply become unnecessary for us," Solovtsov said.

London, Dec 19 : A leading human rights organisation in Russia has said that racist groups in the country are becoming more radicalised.

Sova, a hate-crime monitoring centre, has said that neo-Nazi gangs are now borrowing tactics from Islamic extremists as they try to incite a `holy racial war'.

Two migrant workers have been beheaded in al Qaeda style in the last 18 months. The most recent victim was Salakhetdin Azizov, Sky News reported.

The 20-year-old market worker from Tajikistan was attacked as he walked home across a stretch of wasteland in south Moscow.

He was stabbed several times. His body was then dragged into nearby woodland where he was decapitated.

Ankara - Turkey's nuclear energy board on Friday gave the green light to the Russian firm Atomstroyexport to build Turkey's first nuclear power plant, the Anka news agency reported.

Tbilisi/Moscow - Four months after the war it lost to Russia, the Georgian Parliament Thursday charged that the government as well as the military had made serious mistakes in the South Ossetian conflict.

In a report released late in the evening in the Georgian capital, the special commission also blamed Russia as the party which pushed the level of conflict to open warfare, according to media reports in Tbilisi.

The report also charged that the Georgian government, despite having good intelligence, was badly prepared for the war over the renegade areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It said the war was waged without agreement within the cabinet.

Moscow  - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega met with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev Thursday on his first visit to Moscow in over two decades as Russia angles to restore a Soviet-era alliance in Latin America, traditionally a region of US influence.

"Russia wants to build robust, full-fledged and long-term relations with all of Latin America and such important partners as Nicaragua, in particular," Medvedev said.

Moscow - A proposed cartel of the world's three major gas exporting nations - Russia, Iran and Qatar - should not be compared to OPEC, the organization of oil exporting nations, Russian officials said on Thursday.

Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky was speaking to reporters ahead of a Tuesday meeting in Moscow of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, who are aiming to enhance their cooperation.

Earlier this year Russia proclaimed the formation of a so-called "gas troika," within the forum, to represent the interests of the three big gas players.