Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov has appointed the incumbent chairman of the country's Constitutional Court, Homiddin Sharipov, to the position of head of the presidential staff. Sharipov retains the Constitutional Court chairmanship until further notice, according to Rahmonov's chief spokesman. (Interfax, April 19) The measure is... MORE

The General Prosecutor of Kazakhstan has requested the Justice Ministry to declare the country's Communist party an anti-constitutional organization, revoke its legal registration, and suspend the party's activities. The General Prosecutor cited the official goals of the Communist party -- restoring the USSR and socialist... MORE

Armenian prime minister Hrant Bagratian and Russian minister for CIS Cooperation Valery Serov have agreed to establish a bilateral commission to work out the process and terms of Armenian membership in the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan customs union. Serov said that Armenia's accession to the customs union would... MORE

Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko has called for "a gradual increase in the monetary mass in the republic" in order to finance state economic programs. Addressing a gathering of regional officials, Lukashenko cited unnamed "experts" who recommend an increase in the monetary supply in the range... MORE

At their summit in Moscow, the G-7 countries opened the door to practical and timely measures in support of Ukraine's decision to close down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by the year 2000. Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, who participated in one of the summit's two... MORE

Delegations of the Russian and Latvian Foreign Ministries April 18 and 19 held in Riga the inaugural round of a planned series of talks on the two countries' mutual border. The delegations disagreed on the status of the Abrene (Russian name: Pytalovo) district, seized from... MORE

In neighboring Perm oblast, reactions to the Duma decision were even more muted. There, too, local officials refrained from public comment. Local newspapers financially dependent on the regional administration condemned the Duma decision without discussing it in detail, the independent press virtually ignored the event,... MORE

The first opinion poll to assess the views of the Russian population on restoring the USSR found that only 14 percent of those questioned considered it an important task and less than one-third supported the Duma's March 15 denunciation of the Belovezhye accords. (Monitor, April... MORE

During a whirlwind tour of the region that appeared to reflect Moscow's intense desire to reassert its influence there, Primakov met April 20 in Damascus with Syria's president and foreign minister, as well as with Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, who was also in... MORE

World leaders meeting in Moscow for the G-7 summit took time out April 19 to issue a statement calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Middle East. The appeal came during a Kremlin banquet that opened the two-day meeting. It also launched a flurry of... MORE