Russian speaker warns against new tensions on Korean peninsula.

MOSCOW, May 21 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian Federation Council speaker
Sergei Mironov warned against new tensions on the Korean Peninsula that
may arise due to the incident with a South Korean corvette which Seoul
said was torpedoed by a North Korean submarine.
"I would not like to make any conclusions about the reasons of the
sinking of the South Korean warship until the official investigation is
over. It is undesirable to voice accusations against any side until all
facts are confirmed," Mironov said on Thursday at a meeting with a
delegation of the Korea Press Foundation.
"I would not like the tragedy to spiral up tensions on the peninsula,"
Mironov said.
The Russian speaker echoed U.S. State Department spokesman P.J.
Crowley who said "there's no interest in seeing the Korean peninsula
explode."
On March 26 a blast ripped the 1,200-ton Cheonan corvette in two.
Fifty-eight sailors were rescued, but 46 died.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will pay a brief visit to
Japan on Friday to discuss the situation and will then leave for Seoul.
Japan condemned North Korea and expressed full solidarity with South Korea
that officially blamed Pyongyang for the sinking of the corvette.

.NKorea threatens to scrap non-aggression pact with South.

PYONGYANG, May 21 (Itar-Tass) -- North Korea warned Friday it will
scrap a non-aggression pact with South Korea and freeze all inter-Korean
relations if Seoul tries to punish it for the alleged sinking of a warship
in March.
The official Korean Central News Agency carried a statement of the
North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, which on behalf
of the national government accused Seoul of creating a situation where a
war "may break out right now."
Pyongyang said it will react with "merciless punishment" to any
countermeasures by Seoul.
The threat came a day after a team of multinational investigators
announced in Seoul that North Korea sank the South Korean warship, the
Cheonan, in a torpedo attack on March 26.
North Korea rejected the accusations saying the South has produced
"fragments of an aluminum construction of unknown origin without
mentioning any markings, size and type."
It said the investigation aimed at "distracting public attention from
the failures of the South Korean regime in foreign and home policy on the
eve of elections to the local bodies of authority."
The Committee said the results of the investigation were published
"not to disclose the true reason of the sinking of the warship, but to
prepare grounds for an aggression against the DPRK jointly with other
outside forces."
In that case North Korea will "strongly react with such merciless
punishment as the total freeze of the inter-Korean relations, the complete
abrogation of the north-south agreement on non-aggression and a total halt
to the inter-Korean cooperation undertakings," it said.
"From now on the DPRK will regard the present situation as the phase
of a war and decisively handle all matters arising in the inter-Korean
relations to cope with it," the committee said.

.Russia beats Canada to qualify for ice hockey semis.

BERLIN, May 21 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia beat Canada at the world ice
hockey championship 5-2 in the quarterfinals on Thursday and will now
face host Germany in the semifinals which beat Switzerland 1-0.
The other semifinal will put Sweden against the Czech Republic. Sweden
beat Denmark 4-2 and the Czechs held off Finland 2-1.


.Floods begin to retreat in Yakutia.

YAKUTSK, May 21 (Itar-Tass) -- Floods began to retreat from affected
settlements in Yakutia after all ice jams on the Lena River were bombed
down to let water pass.
Republican emergency chief Alexander Gorkun said on Thursday water
retreated 42 centimeters in Khangalassk district and the threat of
flooding the administrative center of Yakutsk was eliminated.
"People began to return home," he told a briefing, adding there is no
threat of blackout. "The energy situation is under control. All measures
have been taken to prevent flooding of the Yakutsk heat and power plant.
All industrial enterprises of Yakutsk are operating in a normal regime."
Over a thousand people were evacuated from seven flooded settlements
in Yakutia. Nearly two thousand rescuers are engaged in anti-flood
operations.
However the republican rescue service said early on Friday the flood
wave on the Lena River had reached Namsky district and underflooded four
settlements there.
On Thursday Yakutia President Vyacheslav Shtyrov told President Dmitry
Medvedev up to 15 residential settlements may face the threat of flooding
in the coming week.


.Rescuers find body of one missing miner at Alexeyevskaya.

KEMEROVO, May 21 (Itar-Tass) -- Rescuers found the body of one missing
miner at the Alexeyevsakaya coal mine in Siberia on Friday, the
emergencies ministry said.
The search for the other missing miner continues.
The cave-in that buried the miners is eight meters long at a depth of
50 meters.
The accident at the Alekseyevskaya mine occurred on Wednesday when the
roof of the inclined conveyer cross-cut collapsed burying 10 meters of the
pit.
107 miners were inside at the moment and 105 were taken to the surface.
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