Russian President Dmitry Medvedev delivering a speech at the International Economic Fourm in St. Petersburg on June 7.

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday the United States was not strong enough to solve the world financial crisis alone and offered to convene a global conference in Moscow to tackle the issue.
In a keynote speech to Russia’s main annual event for international investors, Medvedev said the gap between the US leading role in the global economic system and its real abilities was one of the “key reasons“ for the current crisis, Reuters reported.
“No matter how big the American market and no matter how strong the American financial system, they are incapable of substituting for global commodity and financial markets,“ Medvedev told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“I propose holding a representative international conference involving the heads of the biggest financial companies and leading financial analysts...as early as this year,“ Medvedev said.

Mediation Refused
President Medvedev on Friday brushed off foreign mediation over Georgia’s separatist Abkhazia region, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited the disputed territory.
Medvedev also said Georgia should sign a pact of non-aggression with Abkhazia and reverse what Russia claims is a Georgian troop build-up close to the rebel region, AFP reported.
Faced with his biggest foreign policy challenge since coming to power on May 7, Medvedev met with the pro-Western Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who earlier warned there was a risk of war with Russia.
Speaking at the start of the meeting at a regional summit of ex-Soviet nations in Saint Petersburg, Medvedev referred to Western concerns and said “I think we can sort out our relations by ourselves.“
The United States and NATO have both strongly criticized a decision by Russia, announced last week, to send additional troops to Abkhazia as part of a wider effort to increase Moscow’s support for the rebel region.

Direct Negotiations
Medvedev’s message was underlined by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said Russia saw no need for foreign mediation. “The key to the solution is direct negotiations between the parties,“ Lavrov told journalists.
“The ball is on the Georgian side,“ Lavrov said, referring to Russia’s insistence that Georgia respect its international obligations in the volatile conflict zone on the Black Sea coast.
The meeting “was friendly and positive in tone,“ Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said in a statement.
However, “no progress was made on substantive issues“ including “withdrawal of illegally deployed Russian troops, immediate cessation of ongoing construction of military infrastructure“ and reversal of Russia’s move to set up official ties with Abkhazia, the statement added.
Negative Confrontation
Behind the Abkhazia dispute lie deep tensions over Georgia’s bid to join NATO, which Russia considers an encroachment on its sphere of influence.
NATO membership for Georgia would lead to “a very, very negative spiral of confrontation in Abkhazia,“ Lavrov said.
Tensions have escalated in Abkhazia in recent weeks, with a particularly bitter row over Georgian allegations that a Russian fighter jet shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane in April -- a claim backed up by a UN report.

EU Involvement
Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Saakashvili said he would urge Medvedev to revoke an order signed by his predecessor Vladimir Putin formalizing economic links between Russia and Abkhazia in April.
Coinciding with Friday’s meeting in Saint Petersburg, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Solana, made a visit to the heart of the conflict, meeting Abkhaz leaders in their main city of Sukhumi.
Solana said he wanted the EU to get more involved in mediating the conflict.
The EU “wants to participate more deeply in settling the conflict,“ Solana said in comments translated into Russian, adding however that there was no question of excluding Russia from negotiations.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has sent a letter to every lawmaker in his governing Labour party urging them to back plans for tougher terror laws.
Brown sent the letter on Saturday ahead of a vote in Britain’s Parliament on Wednesday, AP reported.
He wants to give police up to 42 days to detain terrorism suspects before charges are filed, extending the current limit of 28 days.
Around 50 Labour lawmakers plan to oppose the plans. It means Brown faces his first defeat in a House of Commons vote.
Brown claims police need more time to unravel increasingly complex cases.
According to BBC, Brown’s letter contains no new concessions but says ministers have done “everything in our power“ to balance liberty with the need for enhanced security against “individuals and groups who are prepared to use suicide attacks and want to cause mass casualties without warning“.
“In the legislation currently before Parliament, we have done everything in our power to protect the civil liberties of the individual against any arbitrary treatment, because in Britain liberty is, and remains, at the centre of our constitutional settlement,“ Brown told his party colleagues.

Georgia’s new parliament is holding its first session after elections denounced by the opposition as fraudulent, AP reported.
Opposition leaders refused to take their seats in parliament and led several hundred people in a protest outside the building Saturday. But their plans for a major protest coinciding with the first parliament session were thwarted by President Mikhail Saakashvili. He convened parliament three days earlier than initially planned and the change was not announced until late Friday. That gave the opposition little time to organize a rally.
Last month’s disputed election strengthened the pro-Western Saakashvili’s grip on power in the ex-Soviet republic. Official results gave his ruling party 119 of the 150 parliament seats.

Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno refused to meet a visiting UN Security Council delegation, a diplomatic source in the delegation told AFP on Saturday, denouncing Deby’s move as risky.
Officially, the president was out of the country when the delegation arrived, although his whereabouts were not specified. But diplomatic sources said he had in fact returned from a secret trip to Libya late Friday and felt “too tired“ to meet with the delegation, which is on a regional tour.
“It is the first time a president has not received the delegation,“ the source said. “In doing that, in the situation in which he (Deby) finds himself, he is taking risks.“
The delegation -- with representatives from the 15 nations on the United Nations body -- was received, however, by Prime Minister Youssouf Saleh Abbas.
The delegation, which arrived in Chad on Friday, went to the east of the country, bordering the troubled Sudanese province of Darfur, to meet soldiers in EUFOR, the European force being deployed in Chad and the Central African Republic, and visit refugee camps.
Deby was nearly toppled in early February by an assault on the capital launched by rebels from rear bases in Sudan.

Fresh balloting will take place June 15 at voting stations in Macedonia where irregularities occurred during June 1 general elections, the electoral commission said on Saturday.
Zoran Tanevski, a spokesman for the commission, told AFP that the decision affected 186 voting stations where the results were cancelled, out of a total 2,976 voting stations nationwide.
The elections handed Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski a landslide victory --but they were marred by gun battles in ethnic Albanian-populated areas that left one person dead, as well as by allegations of intimidation and fraud.
The unrest was seen as undermining Macedonia’s ambitions to join the European Union and NATO, 17 years after its independence from the then Yugoslavia.