Brussels - Ukraine will stand by the terms of the deal which ended its gas row with Russia, even though not all the details are to its liking, President Viktor Yushchenko said on Tuesday.

"The agreements signed are not easy ones, but Ukraine fully takes up the performance (of its commitments) and guarantees full-fledged transit to European consumers," Yushchenko told journalists in Brussels after a meeting with the head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso.

Brussels, Jan 27 : NATO's Secretary General De Hoop Scheffer has said that urgent attention is needed to be paid to South Asia as a victory for the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan would be "a disaster for international security".

Speaking at the Security and Defence Agenda, a Brussels-based think tank, Scheffer warned that Western forces must prevail in Afghanistan.

Brussels - NATO ambassadors held talks with their Russian counterpart on Monday for the first time since the alliance froze relations with Moscow in the aftermath of August's conflict in Georgia.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said no formal agenda had been set for the meeting, which was to last "about an hour" at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.

NATO placed high-level meetings of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), which governs relations with its Cold War enemy, on hold to protest Russia's invasion of Georgia.

Brussels - The European Union is ready to help the United States close the infamous Guantanamo detention centre by taking in some of its inmates, but it is up to individual member states to decide how many they welcome, EU foreign ministers said on Monday.

"I think we need to look at this from a humanitarian perspective, a human rights perspective. If there are people who are not tried, are let free but they can't go back to their own countries I think we in Europe should take our responsibility," Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said in a meeting with EU counterparts.

Brussels - The European Union is re-introducing export subsidies for dairy products to help farmers cope with tumbling prices, despite protests from rival producers abroad.

Officials in Brussels, however, insisted Thursday that there would not be a return to the infamous butter mountains and milk lakes of the 1980s.

"We are not anticipating a return to the old days of butter mountains and milk lakes," said Michael Mann, spokesman for the EU's agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel.

"This is a temporary crisis situation on the market," Mann said.

Brussels  - European Union foreign ministers were Wednesday holding dinner-time talks in Brussels with their Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, in a bid to convince her to re-open the Gaza crossings and revive the stalled Middle East peace process.

"We hope we can find an agreement that will make it possible for supplies to get into Gaza," said Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency.