Russia insisted on Tuesday that Iran must be invited to peace negotiations on Syria that world powers hope to hold in Geneva later this month.

"All those who affect the situation must be invited to the conference," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters.

Brazil, which hotly denounced U.S. surveillance of its leaders, itself spied on U.S. officials as well as on Russia, Iran and Iraq a decade ago, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported on Monday.

The paper indicated it had access to a document from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, ABIN, describing surveillance operations from 2003 and 2004, during the first mandate of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Turkish authorities have seized a large quantity of chemicals from a convoy trying to illegally enter the country from Syria, which "could be transformed into weapons", the army said Sunday.

The convoy of three vehicles refused to stop as it attempted to illegally cross the border on Saturday near the southeastern town Turkish town of Reyhanli, the army said in a statement.

About 10,000 Russian nationalists marched in Moscow on Monday in an annual show of anger against the presence of Muslim migrants that has previously escalated into violence.

The city-sanctioned demonstration was staged in the same blue-collar region on the city's outskirts that saw riots break out three weeks ago over a stabbing murder blamed on a citizen of Azerbaijan.

U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden says mass secret service surveillance poses a threat to freedom of expression and open society, in a text published in a German news magazine Sunday.

Snowden, who faces criminal charges in the U.S. for leaking top-secret documents about the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) activities, said systematic snooping was a global problem that needed global solutions.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has thrown his weight behind a controversial nationalist march in Moscow as rights activists warn of growing xenophobia in the country.

The top critic of President Vladimir Putin is known for his ability to mobilize mass street protests, although he said he himself would have to skip Monday's Russian March.

Intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is free to speak with whoever he chooses, including foreign authorities, a Kremlin spokesman said on Saturday, after the U.S. fugitive said he was ready to help a German probe into U.S. spying.

"He has temporary refugee status. That status does not foresee any restrictions on his moving around the country or speaking to anyone," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Agence France Presse.

The foreign and defense ministers of Japan and Russia agreed Saturday to cooperate in fighting terrorism and piracy as the neighbors, still at odds over territorial woes, held an unprecedented security dialogue.

Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera held a so-called "2+2" meeting with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at the government's guest house in Tokyo.

Russia is moving the imprisoned crew of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise protest ship from their jail in the Arctic Circle city of Murmansk to Saint Petersburg, the organisation said Friday, quoting information from diplomats.

The 30 crew members, including 26 foreigners from 18 countries, who were arrested in September after protesting oil exploration in the Barents Sea "are being moved from a detention center in Murmansk to a jail in Saint Petersburg," Greenpeace said in a statement.

Japan and Russia took a step towards making a peace that has eluded them since World War II on Friday, with a loose agreement for talks on a treaty.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov agreed there would be negotiations aimed at settling the dispute, which centers around the sovereignty of a chain of islands north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.