KREMLIN : *ONLINE NEWS AGGREGATORS*

YANDEX is Russia's biggest search engine with around 56 percent share in Russian search traffic and also the biggest news aggregator compared with rivals Google and Mail.Ru...........

THE KREMLIN said on Tuesday that a new draft law proposing to limit foreign ownership in    online news aggregators in Russia was justified, a day after shares in Russian search engine Yandex fell on reports about the plan.

Lawmakers propose limiting foreign ownership in online news aggregators to no more than 20 percent for security reasons, making them subject to restrictions similar, to those faced by Russian media, according to the text of the draft law.

Shares in Yandex N.V., the parent company of Yandex group which is registered in Netherlands, fell to almost 2 percent in Moscow on Monday following a report on the proposals.

Asked on a conference call with reporters if the Kremlin thought the legislation was justified, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said ''yes'', adding that it still needed to be worked on further.

''The fact is that aggregators which cover a certain amount of  users, can in one way or another be equated to mass media in the view of experts,'' Peskov said.