Anti-AIDS official: HIV spreading fast in Russia

Russia's anti-AIDS coordinator says the number of registered HIV cases is growing 10 percent a year despite increased government funding.
Vadim Pokrovsky says Russia must spend the funds more wisely by focusing on prevention as well as treatment in order to slow the spread of HIV.
He says he fears the global economic crisis could threaten future funding.
Pokrovsky says Russia has registered a total of 471,000 people as HIV-infected, including more than 50,000 who have died of AIDS-related causes. He told reporters Friday that the actual number of people with HIV was likely higher than 1 million.
The government says it budgeted 10.7 billion rubles ($445 million) for the cause last year — at least 50 times more than in 2005.

Military court barres the public from Politkovskaya trial

Moscow military court has barred the public from a trial of three men accused of involvement in the 2006 killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
The presiding judge told a hearing Wednesday that he took the step because jury members were too afraid to enter the court in the presence of the media. Monday the court had decided to keep the trial open to the public.

A lawyer for Politkovskaya's family, Karina Moskalenko expressed disappointment at today's ruling. Lawyers for the defendants also criticized the decision.
The editor, Dmitri Muratov of Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novaya Gazeta called the ruling "shameful," saying it will prevent society from learning more about the unsolved murder case.
A gunman shot and killed Politkovskaya October 2006 in her Moscow apartment building.

She was a strong critic of then Russian President Vladimir Putin and accused Russian forces of major human rights abuses in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.The three defendants have denied involvement in Politkovskaya's murder.

The defendants include two Chechen men, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makmudov, who are brothers of the suspected killer, Rustam Makhmudov and a former Moscow police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov.The Chechen defendants are accused of monitoring the journalist's movements before she was killed.

The suspected shooter is thought to have fled the country, while the mastermind of the killing has not been identified.The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says Russia is the world's third most dangerous country for reporters after Iraq and Algeria. It says 49 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992.

Russia threatening Europe

Russia will pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty if ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia are set on the path to NATO membership, Interfax news agency quoted a government official as saying on Friday.
"If Ukraine and Georgia are granted NATO Membership Action Plans (MAP), then the revised CFE treaty will be doomed," Interfax quoted the unnamed official, whom it described as a senior military diplomat.
"If MAP starts being implemented for Ukraine and Georgia, Russia will not only continue the moratorium it imposed on the CFE, but will ultimately pull out of it."
Georgia and Ukraine are seeking action plans, which are seen as road maps to eventual membership of NATO, at an alliance summit in December, though diplomats say it is unlikely either will be granted MAP.
Russia, which is fiercely opposed to NATO's expansion toward its borders, suspended its compliance with the CFE treaty last December but remains a signatory.
Moscow says the treaty, designed to limit battlefield weapons, such as tanks and armoured vehicles, on either side of the old Iron Curtain, is a Cold War relic which gives too much scope for an enlarged NATO to beef up its forces.
Russia's biggest grievance with the CFE pact is the limit on deployments west of the Ural mountains, while armaments are not capped in new NATO members in eastern Europe.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at talks in the Estonian capital on Thursday that Ukraine should press ahead with defense and security reforms to gain membership to the alliance.