South Korea has urged Russia to send rocket parts as soon as possible so it can go ahead with an already-delayed satellite launch this month, an official said Tuesday.

Seoul wants to make another attempt to send the satellite into space between November 9 and 24 after last month's rocket launch was canceled because of a defective part.

A British Royal Navy submariner pleaded guilty in court Tuesday to meeting two men he believed were Russian spies to pass on secret codes and details of submarine operations.

Petty officer Edward Devenney, 30, from Northern Ireland, contacted a foreign embassy to try to pass the materials to Russia, a judge heard at the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court.

A Russian court on Tuesday ordered the release on parole of physicist Valentin Danilov, who was convicted of spying for China in 2004 and sentenced to 14 years in a prison colony, an official said.

"Unless one of the sides appeals this decision, Mr. Danilov will be freed in 10 days, when the decision goes into effect," the spokeswoman for Krasnoyarsk regional court Natalia Mishanina, told Agence France Presse.

Russian police detained six members of a banned Islamist organization for spreading "extremist" literature and recruiting followers in the capital Moscow, officials said Monday.

Six leaders and active members of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) were "leading active recruitment work in Moscow mosques, and spreading extremist literature," Moscow police's anti-extremism department said.

Iraq will renegotiate a massive weapons deal with Russia, a spokesman said on Monday, after Baghdad cancelled a $4.2 billion agreement that would have made Moscow Iraq's biggest supplier after the U.S.

The cancellation on account of graft concerns of the initial deal, announced last month while Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was visiting Moscow, was a setback for Russia's attempts to firm up its slipping foothold in the Middle East and also threw into doubt efforts by Iraq to equip its armed forces.

Palestinians are coordinating with Russia, as well as Swiss and French experts, on the exhumation of late President Yasser Arafat, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said Sunday.

Arafat died in a French military hospital near Paris on November 11, 2004 and French experts were unable to say what had killed him, with many Palestinians convinced he was poisoned by Israel.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill visited the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem on Saturday and met with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, on the second day of his Holy Land trip.

After his visit to the Bethlehem church, built over the site where Christians believe Mary gave birth to Jesus in a stable, Kirill met with the Palestinian president at his office in the West Bank city.

Russia on Saturday quietly marked 30 years since the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, an enigmatic figure whose era of "stagnation" witnessed repressions and a massive nuclear arms drive.

The burly and chain-smoking World War II veteran served from 1964 until his death in 1982 at a time when Moscow and Washington were churning out weapons of mass destruction and carving up the globe for spheres of influence.

Baghdad cancelled a $4.2 billion arms package with Russia on Saturday citing graft concerns and instead opted for new talks, ending a deal that would have made Moscow Iraq's second-biggest arms supplier.

In a bizarre sequence, however, the acting defense minister who negotiated the deal directly contradicted the prime minister's office, insisting nothing had been cancelled, a position that was swiftly denied by the premier's spokesman.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Friday hailed a "determined" stance from Russia on Iran's nuclear program and said Moscow's position on a range of issues was close to Israel's.

"The positions of the Russians are much more complex than what we think -- more, let's say, on Israel's side on a lot of issues," Peres told Israel's army radio in Moscow at the end of a four-day visit during which he held talks with President Vladimir Putin.