"Finally, they've made a choice," said Izvestia, catching the tone of a spate of articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin's "change of tone" in recent days over a war Moscow had staunchly opposed up to now.

"Despite the silent majority, but in line with the country's interests, Russia will not side with Iraq as our military and elite want," the paper said.

Putin said Wednesday night that "for political and economic reasons, Russia is not interested in seeing the defeat of the United States in Iraq" and wanted to continue to "cooperate with the United States" to settle the crisis on a global level.

Russia has all along urged a diplomatic solution to the Iraqi crisis within the framework of the United Nations.

The official Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper said Putin's "change of tone" over Iraq was motivated by "pragmatic considerations that, little by little, take precedence in determining the foreign policy" Russia will follow.

But it stressed that Russia still "did not support the idea of a preventive war, despite what the US and Britain want."

Putin instead has chosen "the lesser of two evils," by adopting a position that allows Moscow "to speak out against the start of the war while saving face politically and, at the same time, setting itself up to defend its own geopolitical and financial interests in post-war Iraq," Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.

Izvestia, in a side comment, said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov would now no longer need to perform what it called rhetorical miracles to "avoid clearly stating the Russian position."

Ivanov meetes Friday in Paris with the foreign ministers of France and Germany, the two other countries that have been most outspoken in their opposition to the US-led offensive to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The three were all in Brussels Thursday for talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Iraq owes Russia billions of dollars in Soviet-era debts.

Russian oil companies, which have been heavily involved in Iraq since Soviet times, also have invested more than one billion dollars (940 million euros) in the Iraqi oil industry since 1996 although they have been mostly unable to develop fields because of UN sanctions.

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