Madrid - The Spanish government will do all it can to keep the oil firm Repsol "independent and Spanish," Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian said Thursday, amid rumours that Russian oil giant Lukoil was considering a swoop for up to a third of the company's stock.

Spanish national radio reported that Lukoil was reportedly targeting a 20-per-cent stake in Repsol held by the construction company Sacyr Vallehermoso, which has been hit by Spain's construction crisis.

Criteria, a holding company of La Caixa bank, meanwhile admitted that it had maintained "informal contacts" with an unidentified party about the possibility of selling all or part of its 12.5 per cent stake in Repsol.

Berlin  - The global financial crisis could present the international community with the chance to lay aside the recent tensions that have emerged with Russia, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said in a speech delivered in Berlin Wednesday.

"Relations with Russia have been strained in recent years," Zoellick told an audience at Berlin's Humboldt University.

Geneva  - All the delegations attended "constructive" talks on the Russia-Georgia conflict Wednesday and agreed to meet again for another round of negotiations next month, the European Union representative to the discussions said.

"We had constructive meetings of the two working groups," said Pierre Morel. As planned, the two groups, with eight delegations in total, met on security and refugee issues for about three hours each.

The first round of talks last month ended with Moscow and Tbilisi accusing each other of walking out without the two sides having sat in the same room.

"Today, we have taken a big step forward," said Morel, adding that the talks had entered a "fully operational phase."

Star City, Russia  - Astronaut Garrett Reisman uttered a first word in heavily-accented Russian and his homegrown audience exploded into applause, giving a taste of how space can clear national differences.

The welcome back for the crew 17th International Space Station (ISS) mission at Star City, a formerly secret military base outside Moscow, is a familiar affair with the Soviet-tinged feel of war heroes coming home to children holding balloons as they line the walkway.

Two teenage girls cooed over how cute first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was in a huge black-and-white shot above the stage where NASA officials sat with translator ear pieces one row back behind the cosmonauts and officials from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

Moscow - A Russian court ruled Wednesday to bar the media and the public from the trial of three men charged with the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

The judge at Moscow's Military Court reversed his decision to make the trial open to the public after the jury refused to hear the case in front of the press.

"This is in consideration of the security of the participants in the trial and that of their families," Judge Yevgeny Zubov was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying on Wednesday.

Geneva - All the delegations attended "constructive" talks on the Russia-Georgia conflict Wednesday and agreed to meet again for another round of negotiations next month, the European Union representative to the discussions said.

"We had constructive meetings of the two working groups," said Pierre Morel. As planned, the two groups, with eight delegations in total, met on security and refugee issues for about three hours each.