* Mikhail Kamynin, the Foreign Ministry's official spokesman, said Russia was ready to closely cooperate with the new Iraqi government and provide assistance to normalize the situation in the country
* Yaroslav Dikovitsky, a senior official of Ukraine's national oil and gas company Naftogaz, said Ukraine's debt to trading company Rosukrenergo for natural gas had exceeded $400 million
* The Stavropol Territory Court said it had sentenced Nur-Magomed Khatuyev, a militant involved in a bloody 1995 hospital attack in south Russia that left almost 150 dead, to 12 years in prison
* The RTS, Russia's premier stock exchange, announced that it would start trading in gold, oil and oil products on July 8
* U.S. Global Nuclear Disarmament Fund Executive Director Matt Taylor said Russia would receive about $15 billion from the fund for the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons
* Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said:
- The Russian government may invest about 10% of the Stabilization Fund's money in shares of private companies
- Russia remains a reliable energy supplier for Europe and intends to increase deliveries
- Russia soon hopes to complete talks on its accession to the World Trade Organization with the two remaining countries involved in the negotiations
- Inflation in Russia will be kept to a maximum of 9% in 2006 as compared with the rate of 10.8% in 2005
- Restrictions on capital flow in Russia will be abolished this summer
- The Stabilization Fund will grow to about 2 trillion rubles ($74 bln) by the end of 2006
- The Russian economy will grow at an average of 6% per year over the next three years
* Russia's nuclear energy chief Sergei Kiriyenko warned that there was no alternative to nuclear power in the coming decades, and said he wanted to secure an end to U.S. discrimination against the country
* Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak said Russia planned to propose exchanging a tranche of its outstanding Soviet-era commercial debt for Eurobonds before the G8 finance ministers' meeting in St. Petersburg on June 9-10
* Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk said GUAM, a regional organization founded in 1997 by four former Soviet republics, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, will soon acquire a new status and title
