Chisinau - Moldova's top election monitoring agency warned the ruling Communist party to pay its political advertising bills or face legal action, the Infotag news agency reported Wednesday.

Moldova's Communists currently hold a two-third majority in parliament, with new elections set for April 5.

The Communist Party of Moldova was ignoring invoices for advertising in the national newspaper Kommunist, and if the bill is not cleared the party could face a lawsuit, an official at Moldova's Central Election Commission (CEC) said.

Chisinau  - Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin ordered most government officials take lie detector tests as part of a national anti-corruption programme, Infotag news agency reported Wednesday.

Polygraph tests would be mandatory for persons seeking employment in the police, the national intelligence agency, customs, border patrol, military, and prosecutors' offices, according to the presidential order.

Chisinau - A week-long Russian embargo of natural gas deliveries to Moldova had left the former Soviet republic with idled factories and increasingly cold homes, the Infotag news agency reported.

The Kremlin in a row with Kiev over natural gas deliveries on January 7 cut off all fuel shipments through Ukraine to Europe. The move severed all natural gas deliveries to Moldova.

Chisinau - A Russian import firm imported a lorry shipment of Moldovan wine on Tuesday, ending a two-year Kremlin boycott of bulk imports.

The lorry container load was destined for processing by the Moscow-based Imperial Vin beverage company. Moldova's Gatchinsky Spirit Factory was the exporter.

The Russian government banned all wine imports from Moldova in 2006, citing worries about low quality and possibly dangerous additives.

Moldovan producers said the embargo was groundless, pointing out Moldovan wine had long competed successfully in markets with stricter health standards than Russia's such as the European Union.

Chisinau  - The leader of Moldova's renegade province Transnistria on Monday called for a three-fold increase in Russian troops stationed in the region, the Interfax news agency reported.

Igor Smirnov, Transnistria's authoritarian leader, said Russia should increase its "peacekeeper" force in the district from some 1,000 to 3,000 men.

Kiev- High water had caused massive back-ups on the Moldova-Ukraine border on Tuesday as the region attempted to recover from the region's worst flooding in a generation.

Queues of cars were stretching up to ten kilometres on either side of the two former Soviet republics' common border, with delays according to Channel 5 television lasting as much as 24 hours.

Overflowing rivers and torrential rain pushed water levels to record highs on Sunday, killing 22 Ukrainians and causing property damage estimated at half a billion dollars.