Tajik military officials said yesterday that their troops have in recent days resumed offensive operations aimed at ousting the opposition from Tavildara. Troops of the defense, internal affairs, and state security ministries, together with those of the presidential guard were committed to the operation with... MORE

Officials in Moscow and the Caucasus have said in the last two days that Russian president Boris Yeltsin will chair June 3 in Kislovodsk (Russia's Stavropol territory) a meeting of the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the heads of the Russian Federation's North Caucasus... MORE

In yet another example of Boris Yeltsin's pre-election courtship of the former Soviet military industrial complex, the Russian president met with some 500 defense enterprise leaders in Moscow yesterday and told them that Russia's role as a "great power" depends to a large degree on... MORE

Yeltsin did not neglect the uniformed portion of Russia's military complex yesterday. He told a meeting of senior commanders that the West remained a military threat to Russia and that NATO enlargement was part of a broader push by the West to consolidate its world... MORE

Grigory Yavlinsky is still under intense pressure from the Yeltsin camp. Earlier this week, Yeltsin's associate Vladimir Shumeiko issued a public appeal to Yavlinsky, Lebed, Fedorov and Mikhail Gorbachev to withdraw in Yeltsin's favor, but all four declined his invitation to a meeting. Yavlinsky's supporters... MORE

Failure to collect taxes remains the Russian government's major headache. Tax revenues have been far below expectations this year and forecasts for the future are even more pessimistic, Finansovye izvestiya reported May 28. During January through April 1996, the federal budget collected 58 trillion rubles... MORE

Russian economics minister Yevgeny Yasin says he doubts whether the IMF or the World Bank will continue to grant credits to Russia if Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov wins next month's presidential elections. Commenting on Zyuganov's economic program, which was made public at the beginning... MORE

The management of the Kara-Balta enterprise, Kyrgyzstan's largest producer of uranium concentrate, announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with a subsidiary of Kazakhstan's nuclear energy authority to turn Kara-Balta into a joint venture for uranium mining and processing. Under the agreement signed earlier... MORE

Vladimir Zhirinovsky offered yesterday to form an electoral coalition with Gennady Zyuganov and Aleksandr Lebed which, he said, would assure Communist party leader Zyuganov of victory in the first round of next month's presidential election. Zhirinovsky proposed Zyuganov for president, himself for prime minister, and... MORE

Campaigning in Stavropol in southern Russian yesterday, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov said that he plans to meet shortly with members of the failed "third force" coalition, Aleksandr Lebed, Grigory Yavlinsky, and Svyatoslav Fedorov. Noting that efforts to forge a "third force" electoral alliance had... MORE