Ingush president Ruslan Aushev preempted Yeltsin's televised speech by announcing that Ingushetia opposed any redeployment of Russian troops from neighboring Chechnya to its territory. Such a move would risk "involving Ingushetia in combat actions" and would also expose it to "looting by the Russian military,"... MORE

A resistance group yesterday killed a government soldier in a raid on a Tajik MVD post in the area of Sicharog east of Dushanbe. Last month, government forces mounted a massive operation there and reported that the area had been cleaned of resistance forces. The... MORE

In a long-postponed address, Russian president Boris Yeltsin told the country on television yesterday that Russian forces were ending operations in Chechnya at 24:00 that day and beginning a phased withdrawal "beyond Chechnya's administrative border," i.e. to Ingushetia and Dagestan. Yeltsin also said that the... MORE

Returning from the European Union's Brussels headquarters, Estonian president Lennart Meri cited assurances that the EU would admit countries separately, not collectively. Meri reaffirmed Estonia's confidence in its own chances and its

A consortium of Russian aerospace companies, including Tupolev and Yakovlev, is reported to be interested in buying parts of Fokker NV, a Dutch aircraft assembler that went bankrupt March 15. A March 29 statement said the consortium seeks cooperation with a Western firm for future... MORE

At an international conference in Kiev on anti-terrorist cooperation, Ukrainian Security Service (USB) deputy chief Anatoly Belyayev disclosed that USB had thwarted Kurdish Workers' Party plans to bomb some Western embassies in Moscow by alerting Russia's secret services. USB also warned Russian, Belarus, and Kazakh... MORE

A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has denied allegations made last week in a British parliamentary report that Russia has stepped up intelligence activities in Britain. (See Monitor, March 29) The spokeswoman said March 29 that Russian spying in Britain has actually declined... MORE

While allowing that the details of Poland's entry into NATO are open to discussion, President Aleksander Kwasniewski made very clear March 29 that Warsaw seeks full membership in the alliance. Kwasniewski thus rejected an option mooted recently by Moscow urging Eastern European countries to enter... MORE

Itar-Tass reported today that, in order to halt NATO expansion, a group of experts working in the Russian Duma were preparing a document to restore the Warsaw Pact. Although the document will be non-binding, one expert said the idea would be "accepted with understanding" among... MORE

...may suspend all-out fighting, but unlikely to bring peace Chechnya Fighting Down to the Wire.