Luebeck (Germany) (AFP) - Russia can expect international sanctions against it to be lifted only when it complies with the terms of a ceasefire with Ukraine, foreign ministers from the Group of Seven said on Wednesday.

The top diplomats, gathering in Germany for their second meeting since the expulsion of Russia from their ranks last year over its annexation of Crimea, said the truce agreed in February in the Belarussian capital of Minsk must be respected.

"Sanctions are not an end in themselves; their duration should be clearly linked to Russia's complete implementation of the Minsk agreements and respect for Ukraine's sovereignty," the ministers said in a joint declaration.

"We also expect Russia to take effective measures against trans-border support of separatist fighters."

The ministers threw their "full support" behind mediation efforts by Germany, which holds the rotating G7 presidency, and France.

"We stand united in our conviction that the conflict in Ukraine can only be solved by diplomatic means and in full respect for international law, especially the legal obligation to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence," they said.

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German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivers his speech during a press conference on the …

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted four-way talks in Berlin Monday with his counterparts from Russia, Ukraine and France to assess the shaky truce in eastern Ukraine, which has been marred by deadly clashes in recent days.

They produced a renewed commitment by the parties to the ceasefire, and an expansion of its pledge for a withdrawal of heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine to include lighter artillery and armoured vehicles.

The G7 is a grouping of leading developed economies -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

Formerly the G8, the grouping was reduced to seven members in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Steinmeier said that the G7 partners were in agreement that Russia could only expect to rejoin the club if the Ukraine crisis were defused.

"There is no interest in any type of containment or even isolation of Russia," he told reporters at the G7 meeting in the northern city of Luebeck

"We would like to see conditions that would allow Russia to again be a member of the G8 and take part in G8 meetings.

"But it remains the case that this can only happen with the application of the Minsk accords and the resolution of the Ukraine conflict and in particular the fulfilment of the obligations that Russia itself committed to."

The US and the 28-member European Union have forged a united front against Russia, slapping it with several rounds of sanctions, and Canada and Japan have levelled their own punitive measures against Moscow.

The Luebeck meeting was aimed at preparing a G7 summit in Bavaria in June.

A man waters down the sidewalk outside Taco Bell in Los Angeles, California April 15, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson - RTR4XIOH

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Cities set to feel the brunt of California's mandated cutbacks in water use pushed back on Wednesday, calling a plan by regulators to demand reductions of as much as 35 percent in some communities unfair.

Water utilities in the areas surrounding the state capital of Sacramento, in line to face steep rationing despite years of conservation said factors such as leaks in the delivery system from streams and reservoirs, and the needs of big local water consumers like prisons and hospitals should be considered before a region was penalized.

"I am not against severe conservation," said Rob Roscoe, General Manager of the Sacramento Suburban Water District, which serves about 173,000 people in Sacramento's northeastern suburbs. "But I want everybody playing from the same rulebook."

Earlier this month, California Governor Jerry Brown, standing in a dry mountain meadow that in a typical year would have been covered with five feet of snow, ordered a 25-percent statewide reduction in water use for urban areas.

In order to reach that goal, Brown said, cities that already used less water than others would suffer smaller cutbacks, while those who used more per capital would have to reduce their usage by a higher amount.

His order, as a devastating drought moved into its fourth year, created the first statewide mandatory water rationing in California history.

Last week, the State Water Resources Control Board released a basic framework to meet that goal by forcing cutbacks of up to 35 percent of water use for communities that use higher amounts of water per person.

But those communities say the proposed rules are not based on a fair reading of how much water they use.

For example, the calculation does not consider whether the communities were using water that they had banked for their own use so that their residents wouldn't have to worry about running low, Roscoe said.

It also doesn't consider the environment where a community is located, or how fast the water that is used outdoors evaporates, the trade organization representing the state's water utilities said in a letter submitted to regulators and released on Wednesday.

The plan also doesn't give communities credit if they return clean water to local aquifers and streams.

Cities also complained that their economies could be hurt if businesses that use a lot of water to process food are penalized.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein)

Beirut (AFP) - The conflict in Syria has left more than 220,000 dead since it began four years ago with an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, a key monitoring group said Thursday.

"We have counted 222,271 deaths since the start of the revolt in March 2011," the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.

Based in Britain, the Observatory uses a broad network of sources on the ground in Syria to gather information about the conflict.

Abdel Rahman said more than 67,000 of the dead were civilians, including more than 11,000 children.

Among dead combatants, nearly 47,000 were from pro-regime forces, including more than 3,000 foreign fighters. Nearly 700 were fighters with Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, a key backer of Assad.

Nearly 40,000 anti-regime fighters and about 28,000 foreign jihadists have been killed in the conflict, the Observatory said.

Foreign jihadists have flocked to join the conflict in Syria, fighting for the Islamic State group or other groups such as the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front.

The toll does not include some 20,000 people listed as missing.

The Observatory says the full death toll is likely to be much higher than the deaths it has been able to count.