RUSSIA TO AUGMENT ITS BORDER TROOPS IN KYRGYZSTAN?

Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, currently in Barvikha sanitarium near Moscow for a medical checkup, was visited yesterday by Gen. Andrei Nikolaev, commander of Russia’s border troops. Nikolaev raised the issue of closer Russian-Kyrgyz cooperation in guarding the Tajik-Afghan border, as well as in implementing a 1995 multilateral agreement among several CIS countries on joint protection of their borders with non-CIS countries. While referring to a need to contain the drug trade, Nikolaev implied that recent developments in Tajikistan and Afghanistan required stepped-up cooperation in guarding the borders. (Interfax, February 18) Emil Pain, an adviser to President Boris Yeltsin, urged more openly in a recent interview that Russia create "a second line of border defense in southern Kyrgyzstan" on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border to supplement the porous Afghan-Tajik border. (Mayak radio, February 15)

Massive Foreign Investments in Turkmenistan’s Oil- and Gas-Processing Sector.