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Main news of February 11

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RUSSIA * Moscow cancelled $12 billion of Iraq's debt, or 93% of the total sum owed by the Middle East state, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said *... 11.02.2008, Sputnik International

2008-02-11T19:06+0000

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Main news of February 11

19:06 GMT 11.02.2008

RUSSIA

* Moscow cancelled $12 billion of Iraq's debt, or 93% of the total sum owed by the Middle East state, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said

* Jailed ex-Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky ended a hunger strike he began almost two weeks ago in support of a terminally-ill former colleague, a lawyer for the ex-Yukos chief said

* A Russian carrier rocket with a Norwegian telecoms satellite on board was launched, a spokesperson for Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said

* Russian doctors gave two would-be space tourists, Richard Garriott and Nik Halik, a clean bill of health paving the way for specialist training and a flight to the space station, a spokesman said

* Talks with pirates who seized a tug carrying a Russian-British-Irish crew off the coast of Somalia almost two weeks ago are continuing, a spokesman for the Danish owner said

WORLD

* Western pressure over the country's nuclear program failed to force Iran to back down, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally on the 29th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution

* Unusually severe cold weather took the lives of 797 people in Afghanistan so far, the chief of Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authorities (ANDMA) said

* The Israeli armed forces were ordered to prepare a large-scale military operation on Gaza in an effort to stop militant rocket launches on Israeli towns, the defense minister said

* Armed robbers stole works by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh worth 112 million euros ($164 million) from an art museum in Zurich, a police spokesman said

BUSINESS

* Gazprom said it has postponed until Tuesday evening its deadline for Ukraine to pay its $1.5 billion natural gas debt, after which the Russian company threatened to reduce supplies

* Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said she would press for an independent audit of intermediary companies involved in Ukrainian-Russian natural gas deals

* A Moscow court upheld the seizure of 100% of RussNeft shares, a court spokeswoman said

* Russian companies are interested in large-scale projects to build oil and gas pipelines in India, a source in the Russian delegation about to travel to the Asian country said