The Istanbul summit marked the entry of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into NATO as full members. In one of the keynote addresses during the summit, Latvia's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga spoke for all the ten countries that joined NATO between 2002 and 2004. She looked back... MORE

En route to Istanbul for the NATO summit, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stopped in Moldova and conferred with President Vladimir Voronin. Rumsfeld's formal purpose was to thank Moldova for contributing 44 de-mining specialists to the coalition force in Iraq until March, and its... MORE

From June 24 to 26, a group of specialists gathered in Zurich at the Center for Security Studies, Swiss Federal Technology Institute, to discuss the role of business in Russian foreign policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that economic strength is key to preserving... MORE

July 1 was a bad day for Yukos, and perhaps the beginning of the end for the embattled oil company. First, three court bailiffs, accompanied by five guards in camouflage uniforms, arrived at the company's Moscow headquarters to inform Yukos that it had five days... MORE

In June 2004 International Atomic Energy Agency Chairman Mohammad El Baradei announced that the Russian-built reactor at Bushehr was not the focus of Iran's nuclear program (Yahoo.com, June 30). This statement naturally pleased Russia, which can now state that its program of nuclear assistance to... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin turned down NATO's invitation to attend the alliance's recent Istanbul summit. A series of insistent, public entreaties proved counterproductive, tempting the Kremlin to ask a high political price for Putin's attendance. He wanted NATO to call for ratification of the 1999-adapted... MORE

President Leonid Kuchma was finally able to meet President George W. Bush at the June NATO summit in Istanbul. Over the last three years the Bush administration had rebuffed attempts by Kuchma to return to the cozy U.S.-Ukrainian relationship of the 1990s under President Bill... MORE

"I'm leaving my political party and opt for political silence," declared the new chairman of the Georgian Supreme Court, Kote Kemularia, after his strong parliamentary confirmation on June 24 (Dilis Gazeti, June 25). Before becoming the third chairman of the Georgian Supreme Court in the... MORE

Since Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev made an official visit to China in May, the number of exchanges between the two countries has increased remarkably. Never have bilateral relations been so close and so warm. On June 17, just a few days after his official visit... MORE

NATO's summit in Istanbul on June 26-29 failed to outline a vision for eastward enlargement and stopped short of acknowledging the membership aspirations of the alliance's new neighbors in the Black Sea-South Caucasus region. For the first time since the 1997 Madrid summit, NATO at... MORE