* Iran is demanding that London stop pressuring Iran to secure the release of a female sailor detained last Friday in the Persian Gulf along with 14 other British sailors, a senior security official said
* Russia will start bilateral talks on joining the World Trade Organization with Vietnam April 1, and with Cambodia April 4, Russia's chief WTO negotiator Maxim Medvedkov said
* Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:
- accused the European Union of dragging out strategic partnership talks, which should not be linked to the issue of Polish meat imports
- called for broader consultations on the deployment of elements of the U.S. missile defense system in Central Europe
* Russia's technological watchdog Rostekhnadzor reported gross violations at the Total-led Kharyaga oil project in northern Russia
* Russia's Security Council will discuss a long-term space program through 2040, President Vladimir Putin said
* A probe by Russian investigators in the United Kingdom into last November's murder of former secret agent Alexander Litvinenko is progressing smoothly, Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said
* Russia's food safety watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor, said it reintroduced beef imports from Canada but will impose temporary restrictions on beef and poultry imports from certain German and Belgian farms from April 5
* The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has requested that the pre-trial detention of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and business partner Platon Lebedev be extended pending a new trial on charges of money laundering, lawyers said
* A contingent of Russian federal troops stationed in Chechnya will not be reduced until all armed groups are eliminated in the troubled North Caucasus republic, a Russian interior deputy minister said
* The Bush administration is opposed to Russian weapons supplies to Iran, Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, told the U.S. Senate
* The United States is unprepared for a possible military campaign against Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said
* Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko said he might dissolve the Supreme Rada (parliament) following the switch of allegiance by several members of opposition factions to the parliamentary majority
* Kyrgyzstan's President Kurmanbek Bakiyev appointed an opposition leader Almaz Atambayev acting prime minister after accepting his ally Azim Isabekov's resignation from the post in a bid to ease tensions with the opposition, the government said
