* Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko said he would sign a decree to cancel the government's latest resolutions supporting parliament in its standoff with the head of state
*Viktor Yushchenko insisted at a meeting with the prime minister his decree ordering new parliamentary elections in the country must be implemented, his press service said
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:
- Russia will help Ukraine tackle an escalating political crisis if its former Soviet ally requests assistance
- Russia was totally against a forceful resolution of any international conflicts, including Iran's nuclear program
* Russia is concerned about a possible U.S. attack on Iran and says military action near its border is totally unacceptable, First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov said
* An Iranian diplomat abducted in Baghdad in early February has been released and repatriated, Iran's news agency said, citing a source at the Iranian Embassy in Iraq
* Russian specialists building the Bushehr NPP in Iran are not leaving the Middle East country contrary to media reports, said Mohammad Saidi, a deputy head of the Islamic Republic's Atomic Energy Organization
* Uzbek President Islam Karimov has completed the ratification of a treaty declaring Central Asia a nuclear-weapon-free zone, the presidential press office said
* The Indian government plans to go ahead with the Iran-Pakistan-Indian gas pipeline project, despite pressure from Washington which opposes the deal, CNSNews quoted Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee as saying
* Iran and Britain have begun negotiating the release of 15 Royal Navy personnel detained in the Persian Gulf last month for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters, Iran's chief international negotiator said
* Georgia will not alter its position on Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, the Caucasus state's economics minister said
* Kyrgyzstan's opposition is continuing to reject government posts even though five seats remain unoccupied in the new 22-member coalition Cabinet led by the oppositionist premier, the presidential press service said
* Russia is hoping Iran will resume a regular payment schedule for the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Russia's nuclear chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, said
* The death toll in the aftermath of two Monday quakes and a resulting tsunami has reached 28 and is likely to keep rising, Australian radio reported
* Russia's gold and foreign currency reserves could stop growing by 2010-2011, the Central Bank's First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said
* A UN-led group investigating the shelling in March of the upper part of the Kodori Gorge, the de facto border between Georgia and breakaway Abkhazia, said Tuesday it needed more information to continue the inquiry
* The Russian Jewish Congress has lamented Poland's attempts to use the Russian exposition at the Auschwitz Museum as a political weapon, the RJC president said
* A court in West Siberia has remanded Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky in a local pre-trial detention center as part of a new money laundering investigation against the former tycoon, a lawyer said
* U.K.-based fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky said he would file a lawsuit against Russian state television, which showed an interview with an anonymous witness who accused him of poisoning ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko
