- North Korea's bilateral problems with the United States and Japan should be kept off the agenda of the six-nation talks on the Korean peninsula's nuclear problem
- All possible agreements on the Middle East peace process should be coordinated with all forces in Lebanon, including with Hizbollah
- A resolution being prepared by the United Nations Security Council on Iran's nuclear program must not include an ultimatum, but should make the requirements set by the UN nuclear watchdog binding
* More than 30 gunmen have surrendered to federal law-enforcement officers in Chechnya in an amnesty, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said Friday
* Russia has called for European courts to issue rulings free of politics after the European Court of Human Rights obliged the government to pay compensation to a Chechen woman whose son disappeared in Chechnya
* A former Kremlin chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, was reelected chairman of the board of Russia's electricity giant, Unified Energy System
* Russia's Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said:
- the ruble's real effective exchange rate grew almost 7% this year
- 15 billion rubles ($560 mln) would be allocated from the Investment Fund to set up a venture company
* Georgia's Interior Ministry launched the second phase of a police operation in the Kodori Gorge, in its breakaway region of Abkhazia, which denied media reports that militia head Emzar Kvitsiani wanted by Tbilisi was hiding on its territory
* Belarusian Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov said a Latvian diplomat in Belarus had been charged with disseminating pornography
* Russia's taxation service said it was set to lobby for a legal mechanism allowing it to apply to private financial institutions for information on the incomes of clients
* Russia's economics ministry said it would sign in July an agreement with U.S. carmaker Ford Motors on the industrial assembly of automobiles in northwestern Russia
* Russia's government will more than double welfare benefits for parents with children aged under eighteen months, Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov said
* The signing of a final document by parties to roundtable talks on means of pulling Ukraine out of a four-month political crisis will not change the composition of the coalition in parliament, Supreme Rada Speaker Oleksandr Moroz said
