Timoshenko meets Putin, Yushchenko to receive Saakashvili.

KIEV, November 19 (Itar-Tass) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
will on Thursday meet his Georgian counterpart Mikhail Saakashvili in Kiev.

Political scientist Alexander Paliy believes that Saakashvili is
traveling to Kiev in hope of finding allies in his confrontation with
Russia. Apart from talks with President Yushchenko, Saakashvili will
appear in a talk show in which he will tell the viewers his vision of the
situation in the Caucasus after Russia recognized Abkhazia and South
Ossetia.
In the meantime, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko will meet
her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Yalta on Thursday. Both will
co-chair the fifth meeting of the Committee for economic cooperation of
the Russian-Ukrainian inter-state commission. Timoshenko said that her
task was to optimize relations with Russia on the basis of a constructive
dialogue. Apart from gas, the Ukrainian and Russian prime ministers are
planning to discuss the delivery of Ukrainian pipes to Russia. An
agreement on duty-free deliveries of some types of Ukrainian pipes to
Russia expires next |January. Kiev attaches great importance to
cooperation in aircraft building.
The intrigue behind the two talks consists in the fact that both
Yushchenko and Timoshenko are presidential candidates who have their own
election tasks.
The weather in Kiev is unlikely to please the Georgian guest on
Thursday. It's going to be a grey and cloudy day with rain.
On the contrary there is no rain in Yalta. "It's a warm and sunny
autumn," Oleg Grishin, the Russian embassy press secretary, told Itar-Tass
by telephone.

.Serb Patriarch Pavle to be buried in Rakovica near Belgrade.

BELGRADE, November 19 (Itar-Tass) - Patriarch Pavle, the 44th head of
the Serbian Orthodox Church, will be buried on Thursday. His body will be
interred in the cemetery of the Convent of St. Angels - Rakovica - in the
outskirts of Belgrade at 13:00 local time (15:00 Moscow time). Patriarch
Pavle often visited Rakovica. He served his last liturgy there two years
ago shortly before he was hospitalized to the Military Medical Academy.
Patriarch Pavle died at the age of 95 last Sunday.
Tens of thousands of Serb believers will have a chance to say good-bye
to their beloved pastor whom many considered to be a saint for his high
moral values, strong will and faith, mercifulness and outstanding modesty.
A two-hour funeral service will be held in a church where Pavle's body
is now lying. At 9:30 local time the coffin will be escorted to the
Cathedral of Saint Savva where the last rites will be read. The service
will be conducted by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of
Constantinople and acting Patriarch Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro
and the Littoral.
A delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church led by Metropolitan
Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk, a member of the Holy Synod, as well as
representatives of other local Orthodox churches will attend the funeral.
Serbia's secular authorities have done everything to enable ordinary
Serbs to pay their last tributes to the late patriarch. Classes have been
cancelled in schools. The government has recommended all state and private
companies to give days off to all employees if they wish to.
Special trains and buses will take tens of thousands of believers from
the provinces to Belgrade for Patriarch Pavle's funeral.
State television and radio channel are ready for a live broadcast from
the funeral.


.Fire crews find 700 artillery shells in a burning house.

KHABAROVSK, November 19 (Itar-Tass) - Fire crews in the village near
Komsomolsk-on-Amur found 700 122-mm artillery shells as they were trying
to suppress a private house fire. Apart from the shell, the firefighters
found hexogen with aluminum powder in a territory adjacent to the house.
|The Khabarovsk branch of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations
said on Wednesday that it had taken ninety minutes to extinguish the fire.
The house owner is claiming he found the shells on a dump and intended
to take them to a metal scrap collection station.
An investigation is under way.

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