Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev met in Brussels with NATO secretary-general Javier Solana to hand over the presentation document containing Azerbaijan's proposals for its participation in the NATO Partnership for Peace program. A senior presidential aide said that the proposals envisage, among other things, NATO assistance... MORE

Transdniester president Igor Smirnov and Supreme Soviet chairman Grigory Marakutsa yesterday told a Tiraspol briefing that their fundamental condition for any settlement of the regional conflict is a permanent presence of the Russian Army in that part of Moldova. The two leaders were speaking one... MORE

An election will be held on May 19 for the governor of the city of St. Petersburg. The post is being upgraded from "mayor" to "governor" to emphasize the fact that St. Petersburg is, like Moscow, a component part of the Russian Federation. Twenty-two hopefuls... MORE

During a special plenary session of the Russian Duma yesterday devoted primarily to the armed forces, deputies requested the Russian prosecutor-general to launch a criminal investigation into the starvation deaths of several army recruits. The resolution, which also denounced inadequate efforts to supply the army... MORE

Anatoly Chubais, sacked from his government post by President Yeltsin earlier this year, reacted calmly in a recent interview to the Duma's latest efforts to reverse the privatization program that Chubais masterminded. (Novoe vremya, No. 16) Chubais dismissed accusations of wrongdoing leveled against two of... MORE

The well-informed journalist Gleb Cherkassov says reports that Gennady Zyuganov has already decided on the composition of his future cabinet are false. On the contrary, Cherkassov says, Zyuganov plans to wait until after the election to make the final selection. At present, Zyuganov plans to... MORE

The heads of a number of leading Russian banks have adopted an appeal to candidates in June's presidential election to sit down at the negotiating table and work out a joint political program. (Nezavisimaya gazeta, April 25) The bankers are said to be alarmed that... MORE

In addition to the joint communique on a strategic partnership, Russia and China signed more than a dozen agreements yesterday. They included: creation of a telephone hotline between Moscow and Beijing; cooperation on intellectual property rights, currency control, and anti-monopoly policy; cooperation in the peaceful... MORE

Moscow and Beijing committed themselves yesterday to strict observance of the May 1991 and September 1994 agreements regulating the demarcation of their joint border. They pledged to complete the border survey as quickly as possible and agreed to continue negotiations on those issues not yet... MORE

Following a meeting between Liu Huaqing, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission, and Russian first deputy prime minister Oleg Soskovets (who oversees Russia's defense industrial complex), the two sides announced that they would increase exchanges between their armed forces as well as cooperation... MORE