* Japan's prime minister and the Russian president will discuss a territorial problem among other issues during their bilateral meeting at the upcoming G8 summit in Germany, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said
* Russia could make a financial vehicle available for the transfer of North Korea's frozen funds, if Washington guarantees that no sanctions against Russia will follow, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:
- he was surprised by criticism from Japanese officials over his trip Monday to the Kuril Islands in Russia's Far East
- Russian military will make decisions necessary for the country's national defense in response to U.S. plans to deploy elements of its missile shield in Europe
- he asked the United States to ensure funds from unfrozen North Korean accounts be transferred back to the Communist state
* Basque separatist group ETA said it had called off a ceasefire with the Spanish government and that hostilities would resume at midnight June 6
* Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree formalizing his earlier deal with the prime minister to hold early parliamentary elections September 30
* NATO's Moscow office condemned Moscow's threat to impose a unilateral moratorium on an arms reduction treaty between the Western security alliance and former Eastern Bloc countries, warning of serious consequences
* Russian prosecutors identified people involved in the abduction one year ago of four of the country's diplomats in Iraq, the Prosecutor General's Office said
* Kirill Androsov, Russia's deputy economics minister, said:
- trading in the Russian Export Blend Crude Oil (REBCO) futures will move from the New York Mercantile Exchange to a new commodity market in St. Petersburg
- the St. Petersburg economic forum opening Friday is expected to produce deals worth $3.3 billion and gather 6,000 officials and businessmen from 60 countries
* Russia and Australia have coordinated a new nuclear energy agreement and may sign it in September, said Australia's nuclear security chief, John Carlson
* U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Manas military base rented from Kyrgyzstan met all international norms, while Bishkek is considering reviewing diplomatic immunity for U.S. servicemen in the country
* Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's foreign minister, accused Washington of plotting to destabilize his country after his U.S. counterpart suggested sending an envoy to probe the recent shutdown of an independent Venezuelan television broadcaster
* Azerbaijan's natural gas reserves stand at 1.5 trillion cubic meters and are 100% higher than previous estimates, Ilkham Aliyev, the president of the energy-rich South Caucasus republic, said
* A major oil spill in the north of Sakhalin Island contaminated a river used by endangered fish species to spawn, a spokesman for a regional environmental group said
* Israeli land forces pulled out of Southern Gaza, concluding a large-scale incursion lasting 24 hours, in which dozens of Palestinians were detained, the Israel Defense Force press service said
* Russian President Vladimir Putin granted a top state award to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to honor the Nobel Prize winning writer as a champion of humanitarian causes, the Kremlin press office said
* The European Court of Human Rights will examine an appeal by Platon Lebedev, a former key Yukos shareholder serving an eight-year prison term, the businessman's lawyer said
* Several hundred people held an unauthorized protest in the southern Russian city of Stavropol against the alleged ethnically-motivated killing of two Russians Sunday
