Europe

KYIV, Nov 7 (Reuters) - A senior adviser to Ukraine's president said on Monday that Kyiv had never refused to negotiate with Moscow and that it was ready for talks with Russia's future leader, but not with Vladimir Putin.

The comments on Twitter by Mykhailo Podolyak followed a Washington Post report on Saturday saying the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine's leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Moscow.

MOSCOW, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday praised the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and voiced confidence in its future development.

The SCO has completed its original task of ensuring order on the borders between the Central Asian countries, China and Russia, Lavrov said here during a press conference after talks with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president has suggested he’s open to peace talks with Russia, softening his refusal to negotiate with Moscow as long as President Vladimir Putin is in power while sticking to Kyiv’s core demands.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appeal to the international community to “force Russia into real peace talks” reflected a change in rhetoric. In late September, after Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions, he signed a decree stating “the impossibility of holding talks” with Putin.

08 Nov 2022; MEMO: A Palestinian human rights group told a UN panel on Monday it had been subject to threats and "mafia methods" during a campaign of harassment organised by Israel to silence groups documenting alleged Israeli rights violations, Reuters reports.

Israel dismissed the process overseen by the panel as a sham, while it declined comment on the specific allegations.

08 Nov 2022; MEMO: A series of public hearings with victims of alleged Israeli human rights violations opened at the United Nations in Geneva on Monday, with Israel dismissing them as "sham trials", Reuters reports.

The independent Commission of Inquiry established by the UN top Human Rights body last year, plans five days of hearings which it says will be impartial and examine the allegations of both Israelis and Palestinian authorities.

ROME, November 7. /TASS/: The US and NATO think that launching peace talks on Ukraine would be possible if Kiev takes back Kherson with the battle for it having both strategic and diplomatic significance, La Repubblica wrote on Monday.

According to the paper, Washington is in constant contact with Brussels and its allies on this issue as well as instilling this idea into the mind of the Kiev regime.

MOSCOW, November 7. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin is not planning to go to the East Asia Summit, scheduled for November.

"This trip is not planned," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday.

ST. PETERSBURG, November 7. /TASS/: Russian TV host and reporter Ksenia Sobchak returned to Russia on November 6 through the Latvian border. According to a source in the Northwestern Federal District, Sobchak crossed the border in the Pskov Region.

TASS currently has no official confirmation of this information. Earlier on Monday, sources close to Sobchak’s family told TASS that she returned to Russia last week.

MINSK, November 7. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko believes that the citizens of European countries wish to live in peace, but their authorities are unable to "put out the fire in their own home."

"Germany, the whole of Europe - there are no leaders now. But even if there were some... They can't even put out the fire in their own house," the BelTA news agency quotes him as saying.

BERLIN, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Qatar's foreign minister has accused Germany of "double standards" over its criticism of the World Cup host's human rights record and has defended its summoning of the German ambassador, in a newspaper interview published on Monday.

Qatar has faced intense criticism from human rights groups over its treatment of migrant workers, who along with other foreigners comprise the bulk of the country's population.