TALLINN, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - Four ethnic Russians have been charged with masterminding unrest in Estonia during the removal of a Soviet-era war memorial earlier this year, prosecutors said Thursday.

Laura Vaik, the prosecutor in charge of the case, also said the unrest was far from spontaneous and had support from Russia, however it was not clear whether this meant the Russian government itself.

'Preparations for the mass riots already started nearly a year before the riots, in mid-2006,' Vaik told reporters.

TALLINN, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - The Estonian government decided Thursday to extend for a year the mission of its three-dozen-strong military contingent in Iraq, which was set to end in December, Defence Minister Jaak Aaviksoo said.

'We are glad that the increase of troops by the United States has helped to stabilise the situation in Iraq, and we hope that in the two next years the military mission in Iraq will be replaced by civilian control,' Aaviksoo told reporters after a cabinet session.

TALLINN, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - Estonia hit back at Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday for urging the European Union to clamp down on Tallinn's alleged 'glorification' of Nazism, saying the Kremlin leader was just an 'ordinary politician.'

'We do not glorify the Nazis in any way, but Moscow seems very upset that Estonia considers the Nazi era and Stalinism as equally evil and criminal regimes,' said Education Minister Tonis Lukas while leading a cabinet session for Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, who is currently overseas.

TALLINN, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - The remains of a fifth Red Army soldier exhumed from the site of a World War II memorial in the Estonian capital were on Thursday handed over to relatives from Ukraine, the foreign ministry said.

The remains of Stepan Hapikalo were handed over to two relatives who were due to take them back to the central Ukrainian city of Poltava for reburial, officials said.

TALLINN, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - Estonian authorities said Thursday they had finished rebuilding a secure facility meant to prevent potential leaks from two mothballed nuclear reactors and radioactive waste left by the Soviet navy.

The upgraded facility at a former Soviet military base in the Estonian coastal town of Paldiski is meant to provide safe storage for the next 50 years, after which the reactors are to be dismantled.

MOSCOU, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday urged the European Union to clampdown on the 'glorification' of Nazism in Latvia and Estonia.

'Some of the things we have witnessed in some Eastern European nations provoke real feelings of surprise and incomprehension,' Putin told leaders of the European Jewish Congress, Interfax news agency reported.

TALLINN, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - Increasing militarisation is making Russia a growing threat, and one that is being badly underestimated by the West, the defence force chief of the former Soviet state of Estonia has warned.

'Russia has became much more dangerous than it was in mid-1990s but the West seems to underestimate it,' Major General Ants Laaneots told state television late Monday.

TALLINN, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - Estonian consumer price inflation rose in September to 7.2 percent compared with the same period in 2006, the national statistics office said on Friday.

Compared with August 2007, prices in September increased 1.1 percent.

Inflation in September was fuelled primarily by increases in costs of food, fuel, leisure activities and clothing, the office said.

TALLINN, Oct 3, 2007 (AFP) - Only four percent of ethnic Russians in Estonia feel a strong affinity with their counterparts in Russia, according to an opinion poll published on Wednesday.

The study by the Estonian Open Society Institute and public opinion research firm Saar Poll also found that 40 percent of the Baltic country's substantial Russian-speaking minority considered themselves strictly as Russian-Estonians.

TALLINN, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - Estonian lawmakers on Tuesday called for a senior European official to be fired after accusing him of peddling 'lies' about violations of the civil rights of ethnic Russians in Estonia.

Rene van der Linden, the Dutch president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, sparked anger in Estonia after repeatedly saying that individuals who do not hold Estonian citizenship cannot vote in local elections.