At the NATO defense ministers' meeting in Bergen (Norway) this morning, U.S. defense secretary William Perry and another Pentagon official were cited as naming a second reason for postponing the Baltic states' accession to NATO, in addition to the already stated primary reason that the... MORE

The head of the OSCE 's mission to Estonia, Herbert Grubmayr, told Estonian prime minister Tiit Vahi yesterday that, in the mission's view, there are no violations of human rights in Estonia. Grubmayr expressed regret that U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher had mentioned Estonia... MORE

Kremlin security supremo Aleksandr Lebed flew this morning to Nazran, capital of the Republic of Ingushetia, to attend a conference of heads of the Russian republics and regions that border on Chechnya. Also attending the meeting, which will focus on what regional leaders can do... MORE

Final results are still awaited following the September 22 gubernatorial election in Amur oblast in Russia's Far East. Preliminary results gave the victory to the Communist candidate, but voting was very close and there have been complaints that many voters were prevented by bad weather... MORE

. The item "Pessimism about Russian Economic Prospects" in the Monitor of September 25 should have read: "Russian deputy economics minister Andrei Svinarenko said his ministry's best guess for 1997 is zero growth, with the beginning of an output recovery anticipated only in 1998.... Aleksei... MORE

Addressing the UN General Assembly yesterday, Moldovan foreign minister Mihai Popov called for an "undelayed, complete, orderly, and unconditional withdrawal" of the Operational Group of Russian Forces from Moldova. "We are worried by the continued stationing of these foreign troops in Moldova in contravention to... MORE

Russia's Federal Security Service (SVR) was back in the news yesterday as representatives of the agency described two separate incidents in which SVR agents had purportedly managed to thwart foreign espionage activities. The first involved a Russian citizen, said to have been recruited by the... MORE

After examining the Russian leader yesterday, doctors treating President Boris Yeltsin ruled out canceling the planned heart operation. Chief surgeon Renat Akchurin, who is expected to lead the team that will operate on the president, said the operation will go ahead, but not for six... MORE

. Russian Security Council secretary Aleksandr Lebed, seemingly intent upon positioning himself as the successor to ailing Russian president Boris Yeltsin, stepped up his anti-government and his anti-Western rhetoric yesterday. In the first case, Lebed strongly suggested that the government of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin... MORE

The European Institute for the Media, which monitored the campaign, reported that television and other state media had "clearly favored Ter-Petrosian through its tendentious coverage." The OSCE monitoring group in its preliminary assessment said that television airtime allotted to Ter-Petrosian had far exceeded the airtime... MORE