Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa is to hold talks with Russian officials in Moscow in a bid to defuse the crisis in his country, Russian news agencies quoted a Kremlin source as saying Friday.

"He is to be received in Moscow for a serious conversation," said the source, who was not identified. "This is our contribution to a solution to the crisis, which of course is worrying us."

Russia on Friday seized a consignment of the radioactive isotope Sodium-22 at a Moscow airport from a passenger who was to travel on a flight to Tehran, the customs service said.

"Tests showed that the Sodium-22 could only have been obtained as the result of the work of a nuclear reactor," it said in a statement. "A criminal enquiry has been opened and the materials transferred to prosecutors."

The founder of a leading independent weekly publication critical of authorities in the restive province of Dagestan in Russia's North Caucasus has been shot dead outside the newspaper's office, police said Friday.

Khadzhimurad Kamalov's paper Chernovik (Rough Draft) has reported extensively on police abuses in the fight against an Islamist insurgency that originated in neighboring Chechnya and has spread across Russia's Caucasus region. Kamalov founded the weekly in 2003, worked as its editor for several years and remained its publisher until his killing late Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the United States hopes it can work with Russia on the draft resolution it proposed to the U.N. Security Council on the Syria crisis.

Though Clinton said Washington had differences with Moscow on the draft, Clinton said it was the "first time" that Russia has recognized the violence in Syria needs to be taken up by the Security Council.

Russia on Thursday surprised the Western powers by proposing a U.N. Security Council resolution on the Syrian crisis, as France hailed the move as "an extraordinary event."

As a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad, Russia has tried to head off Security Council intervention in the Syria crisis. With China, it vetoed a council resolution proposed by European nations in October condemning Assad's crackdown on protests which the U.N. says has left 5,000 dead.

A leading Syrian human rights activist on Thursday urged the international community to cut diplomatic ties with Damascus and up pressure on Russia to stop blocking U.N. action against the regime there.

"So far 5,000 people have been killed in Syria, among them are 277 children, 159 women and a lot of people were killed under torture. All this is happening in cold blood and the international community is watching and doing nothing," Rami Abdul Rahman, founder of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday on the sidelines of a European Union conference in Warsaw.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday expressed regret that the leaders of the USSR did not fight to the last to prevent its collapse two decades ago.

"The USSR should have started timely economic reforms and changes as well as reforms to strengthen democratic change in the country," ex-KGB agent Putin told Russian television viewers in a phone-in.

Washington said Thursday it was "ludicrous" to accuse it of a role in the killing of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said U.S. Special Forces were involved.

"The assertion that U.S. special operations forces were involved in the killing of Colonel Gadhafi is ludicrous," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's spokesman, Captain John Kirby, told Agence France Presse.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the U.S. special forces of being involved in the killing of deposed Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

"Who did this?" Putin said in his annual televised phone-in with Russians.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday he was pleased by Russia's outburst of protests against his 12-year rule but rejected opposition claims that parliamentary elections were rigged.

In his annual phone-in session with Russians, Putin sought to show he was relaxed about the mass protests alleging fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections won by his United Russia party.