- the Mideast Quartet will arrange a ministerial meeting during March 12-13 consultations in Brussels
- South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade will pay a working visit to Moscow March 5-6 to discuss the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula
- Russia is concerned over the frequent statements made about a possible military strike on Iran
- it called on the European Court of Human Rights to speed up the hearing of an appeal lodged by Russian World War II veteran Vasily Kononov in a case against Latvia
* The leader of the radical Palestinian movement Hamas, on a visit to Moscow, said Israel is delaying initial negotiations to create a Palestinian state
* The foreign minister of Poland said future talks on the deployment of a U.S. missile defense base in Poland could take several years
* Russia's Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said Sakhalin II shareholders should work to restore financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the hydrocarbon project off Russia's Pacific coast
* A senior Iranian government official, Gholam Hossein Elham, said the UN demand that the country suspend its uranium enrichment was illegitimate and reiterated that Tehran would not heed the ultimatum
* The EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the European Union might deploy its peacekeepers in Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
* Russia urged the resumption of a dialogue with Israel at talks with a delegation of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the Russian Foreign Ministry said
* The EU nation's Cabinet said Vladimir Gusinsky, a former Russian media tycoon wanted back home on fraud charges, was granted Spanish citizenship by special order of the government in Madrid
* Moscow's organized crime bureau said it averted a terrorist attack in Moscow February 22 when a man with an explosive device was arrested at a bus stop in the northwest of the city
* Russia's Air Force commander said Russia must build aerospace defense forces capable of staving off commensurate threats
* A Russian woman was stabbed to death and another wounded in the city of Heihe in southeast China, the administration of a neighboring Russian region said
* Russia's Military-Industrial Commission to meet February 27 to consider prospects for a fifth-generation air defense system, a senior Russian government official said
* Experts polled by RIA Novosti said Russian state entities to be the main bidders for a minority stake in the oil giant Rosneft held by the bankrupt oil company Yukos
* Russia's Supreme Court upheld a verdict against a Daghestan national previously sentenced to 23 years in a high-security prison for organizing a terrorist act in 1998
* Gazprom and Brazilian oil company Petrobras signed an agreement on hydrocarbon cooperation, the Russian energy giant said
* Iranian media reported that Iran's 2007 budget starting March 21 envisions $1.3 billion on construction of new nuclear power plants
