According to reports in the Russian press, the Islamic Shariat law is being increasingly enforced in Chechnya. Chechen resistance fighters are said to be raiding market stalls, smashing any liquor bottles they find and forcing guilty vendors to go before a court of ulems (experts... MORE

A spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service (SVR) on September 4 confirmed media reports that Russia had expelled a 32-year-old Swede in February of this year for serving as a courier in the passing of classified information. The courier, who was identified as Hans Peter... MORE

According to an Armenian news agency report citing unnamed Yerevan officials, Armenian military representatives recently held talks in Damascus on military cooperation between Armenia and Syria, a country hostile to Turkey. (Noyan-Tapan, September 4). This report is not known to have been corroborated by other... MORE

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Demurin said yesterday at a Moscow briefing and in a Latvian media interview that Latvian prime minister Andris Skele's scheduled visit to Moscow can no longer take place. Demurin said the move was meant to underscore Russia's displeasure with the... MORE

Russian security supremo Aleksandr Lebed was in Chechnya again yesterday to meet with Chechen chief-of-staff Aslan Maskhadov and other leaders in the village of Novye Atagi some 25 km (15 miles) south of the capital Grozny. The meeting was held to iron out problems in... MORE

Russian denunciations of Washington's two recent missile attacks on targets in Iraq continued to grow in intensity yesterday, with the most noteworthy addition to the cacophony coming from Security Council secretary Aleksandr Lebed. On a plane en route to Chechnya, Lebed compared U.S. behavior in... MORE

Russian Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov has reacted to President Yeltsin's admission that he is suffering from heart disease by demanding top-level consultations between the cabinet, the speakers of the two houses of the Russian parliament, and the leaders of the various parliamentary factions. Zyuganov... MORE

The political leader of the Chechen resistance, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, has declared an amnesty for all those who worked for the local Moscow-backed government, except for those guilty of especially serious crimes. The amnesty, timed to coincide with today's fifth anniversary of Chechnya's declaration of independence,... MORE

A Russian daily reported on September 4 that only one-fourth of all military personnel have received their pay for July of this year, and that the government currently owes between three and five million rubles to nearly every serviceman in the country. Wives of officers... MORE

South Korean Defense Ministry officials yesterday indicated that Seoul is considering the purchase of advanced Russian Su-35 fighter jets. Citing the need for "diversification" as the country's rationale, one ministry official said that the Su-35 would compete with U.S. F-15's. Long a customer of the... MORE