U.S. neighbors both north and south are moving to ease the United Nations standoff that has arisen out off competing resolutions on disarming Iraq by the United States, Britain and Spain on one side and France and Germany on the other.

Malaysia raised the specter Wednesday of an Islamic oil embargo as a way of exerting pressure on the West to prevent war with Iraq, but officials and analysts said such a tactic was unlikely to be used.

Last Friday, speaking at a meeting of generals and officers in the Defense Ministry, President Vladimir Putin expressed his deep concern about the long-term repercussions of the present Iraq crisis and the apparent intention of the United States to invade without a clear mandate from the UN.

While I understand that just about anything is possible, it is hard for me to imagine a city where ice has occupied a bigger place in the news than it has here of late.

When David Natanovich Bell first applied for a visa to visit the United States, at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in October 1987, the consular official took one brief look at his Soviet passport and one long look at him. She left the room, then returned with her boss. ""So,"" they asked him, ""do you want to renew your American citizenship?""

Aeroflot Engine Fails ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) -- A Boeing 767 operated by Aeroflot made an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after its right engine failed, officials said Wednesday. No one was injured in the emergency landing Tuesday evening in the northwestern city of Aktobe, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plane, bound from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to Moscow, was carrying 43 passengers and 10 crew. The passengers completed their flight Wednesday morning on an Airbus A-310 flown from Moscow to pick them up. Russian experts were expected to arrive this week to investigate the incident, the ministry said. Chechen Referendum MOSCOW (AP) -- Chechnya's administration receives daily dozens of proposed amendments to the region's draft constitution, up for approval in a referendum next month, an official said Wednesday.