Russia's Foreign Ministry charged yesterday that New York city police are targeting its diplomats for harassment and that Moscow fears for their safety. The accusation follows a December 29 incident in which police scuffled with a Russian and a Belarusan diplomat. Moscow claims that the... MORE

Negotiations between the Tajik government and the opposition, which opened in Tehran on January 6, have been driven into deadlock by Dushanbe's interpretation of the December 23 Moscow agreement as precluding power-sharing with the opposition. Emerging yesterday from week-long, closed-doors talks, UN mediator Gerd-Dietrich Merrem... MORE

The Crimean Tatars' Majlis, or national parliament, has begun collecting signatures on a petition to send to Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. The document requests financial help in bringing Crimean Tatars back to Crimea, from which they were deported by Stalin in 1944. Majlis leader Mustafa... MORE

Hospitalized Russian president Boris Yeltsin yesterday sent his Belarusan counterpart, Aleksandr Lukashenko, a plan for unifying the two countries on the basis of the existing Russia-Belarus Community. As summarized by Yeltsin's office, the plan's first stage involves: "synchronizing" economic reforms; unifying the two countries' customs... MORE

The executive secretary of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) -- the group that will monitor compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention -- expressed guarded optimism yesterday that both Russia and the U.S. might still ratify the convention before it enters into... MORE

The leader of the pro-government "Russia is Our Home" faction yesterday indirectly criticized the Russian Foreign Ministry for its uncritical support of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. Sergei Belyaev, who had just returned from a working visit to Belgrade, also criticized authorities there for their failure... MORE

Western news sources reported yesterday that the special U.S. envoy to Cyprus, Carey Cavanaugh, had won a promise from Greek Cypriot authorities to delay by 16 months the delivery to Cyprus of any components of Russian-made air defense missile complexes. U.S. officials had earlier indicated... MORE

Moscow's Ekspert-Region consulting group has ranked Russia's 89 regions by their attractiveness to investors. (Ekspert, No. 47, 1996) The authors claim to have analyzed over 100 statistical indicators and a welter of federal and regional legislation affecting investment in each region. The weights attached to... MORE

Chechnya's interior minister, Kazbek Makhashev, flew to Moscow yesterday, where he hopes to meet with his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Kulikov, and to set up a joint committee to look for POWs and MIAs in Chechnya. (Itar-Tass, January 13) Reliable data on this issue are hard... MORE

Cossack atamans and Chechen government officials are meeting in Stavropol today to discuss ways of restoring calm following the recent killing of 26 Cossacks in Naursky district in northern Chechnya. The Cossacks were murdered and their houses were set ablaze. The incidents provoked Cossack protests... MORE