Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev said yesterday that he maintains good working relations with President Boris Yeltsin and suggested that the media has sensationalized rumors of his dismissal. Grachev added that, to date, he had no evidence that the president was dissatisfied with his performance.... MORE

Russian officials warn that Duma vote on disbandment of USSR could have dire consequences *

Communist presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov has denied the statement made by General Valentin Varennikov at a meeting of the Union of Officers on Saturday that the Russian Communist party has a "maximalist" program that will be only made public after a Communist victory in the... MORE

Uzbekistan's chairman of parliament

The president of Tajikistan, Imomali Rahmonov, issued March 16 a statement obliquely regretting that "the USSR's full restoration is unrealistic and impossible." The Tajik leadership supports closer economic and political integration among CIS countries, retaining their sovereignty "in a new type of interstate formation," Rahmonov... MORE

The president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosian, described the Duma vote as "a provocation against the sovereignty of CIS member states." The initiative of Duma Communists seeks to obscure the CPSU's responsibility for the "70 years of oppressive rule" which preordained "the breakup of the criminal... MORE

The president of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, told a news conference that the Russian Duma was wrong to seek culprits for the USSR's collapse. "The Union fell apart as a result of objective historical, social, and political processes," Aliyev observed. "Azerbaijan will never deviate from the... MORE

Reacting immediately but cautiously, Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze warned that the Duma's resolutions can only undermine mutual confidence among Georgia and Russia and cooperation within the CIS. It was left to Shevardnadze's protege and mouthpiece Zurab Zhvania to point out that Georgia chose independence in... MORE

In a statement issued March 16, Moldova's Foreign Ministry recalled that the country had proclaimed its independence before the formal dissolution of the USSR and that its independence had since been universally recognized. Moldova seeks economic cooperation with the CIS, but rules out political-military cooperation... MORE

Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko professed his "regret that the former union cannot be again" along with his certainty that "we must build a union state with all those [ex-Soviet republics] who desire it... That new union may even be closer than the former one." Lukashenko... MORE