A U.S. official said in Tokyo yesterday that Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov has been invited to attend a round-table discussion between Bill Clinton and Russian opposition figures. The official said that it was still unknown whether Zyuganov would attend. (Reuter, April 18) Moscow Again... MORE

Top managers of British-American Tobacco (BAT), one of the world leaders in that industry, and senior Uzbek government officials laid the foundation stone of a tobacco processing factory near Samarkand at a ceremony yesterday. The factory is projected to produce 26 billion cigarettes annually. BAT... MORE

Azerbaijan's police yesterday arrested Panah Husseinov, prime minister of the 1992-93 Popular Front government under then president Abulfaz Elchibey. Husseinov had been wanted since 1993 on charges of armed rebellion. He was arrested while en route to Baku airport and is now also being charged... MORE

The Georgian parliament yesterday adopted unanimously a resolution demanding that Russian "peacekeeping" troops in Abkhazia broaden their mandate to take account of Georgia's legitimate interests or else withdraw within two months. The resolution targeted the Russian troops' refusal to secure the repatriation of Georgian expellees... MORE

Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev yesterday cabled the command of Russia's Black Sea Fleet an order to suspend the previously agreed transfer of Sevastopol-based ships to Ukraine, the Ukrainian naval command said. The partition of the fleet in other Ukrainian ports is not affected, but... MORE

Interviewed this week in Poland, Belarus Popular Front leader Zyanon Pazniak said that the creation of the Russia-Belarus SSR presages a de facto reannexation of Belarus to Russia and thereby threatens the security of Belarus's neighbors. Pazniak and other Popular Front leaders are under investigation,... MORE

President Yeltsin is using his visit to the North Caucasus -- traditional Cossack heartland -- to showcase his strategy for co-opting Russia's resurgent Cossack movement. Yesterday he visited Budennovsk, the village in Stavropol krai that last year witnessed a hostage crisis in which hundreds died,... MORE

The Duma yesterday approved a constitutional law establishing the post of human rights commissioner. Two earlier attempts to adopt such a law failed because non-Communist deputies objected to attempts by the Communist faction to ensure that their candidate would be assured of the post. This... MORE

U.S. State and Defense Department officials said April 16 that a massive complex being constructed by Moscow in the southern Urals has been under observation for more than 10 years and that successive U.S. administrations have been unsuccessful in getting an answer out of Moscow... MORE

In a Moscow press interview today, Chechen Chief of Staff Aslan Maskhadov urged the prompt start of direct or mediated negotiations between Boris Yeltsin and Djohar Dudaev. Maskhadov said that the number of Chechen civilian casualties of the war and of Russian military casualties was... MORE