Kiev- Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukrainian Prime Minister and populist politician, accused a leading US energy firm Monday of secretly planning to sell sensitive Black Sea gas drilling rights to Russian corporate giant Gazprom.

Executives from the Houston-headquartered Vanco Energy International, a firm that signed an exclusive deep water drilling rights agreement with the Ukrainian government in April, intend to abandon their Ukrainian project and to transfer rights to Gazprom, Tymoshenko charged, according to an Interfax news agency report.

Kiev- A Russo-Ukrainian row was averted Friday with US marines taking part in a World War II memorial march, Channel 5 television reported.

Russian naval officials in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, the home base for Russia's Black Sea fleet, had intended to hold a parade of warships in the bay on Friday.

But the Sevastpol city government banned the event.

The naval parade had been intended by the Kremlin to mark the 63rd anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe (VE Day), and simultaneously, the 225th anniversary of the founding of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Kiev - Ukrainian border police on Thursday seized a Turkish national and his lorry loaded with cocaine worth as much as 14.2 million dollars, the Interfax news agency reported.

Kiev - The Kremlin and the Ukrainian government exchanged diplomatic salv

Kiev - Emergency workers evacuated dozens of residents of a rural Ukrainia

Kiev  -  Ukraine's parliament on Thursday gave its approval to entering the World Trade Organization, giving a decisive victory to reform politicians in the former Soviet republic.

The national legislature the Verhovna Rada in a rare show of agreement between its pro-Europe and pro-Russia factions, voted 411 in favour of the measure, out of 449 legislators present.

The only opponents of WTO membership was the minority Communist party and a few left-wing independents, who abstained from casting ballots.

The vote was a dramatic success for the thin pro-Europe majority currently in control of Ukraine's government, which for months had failed to push approval of the WTO through the legislature, in the face of the pro-Russia opposition.