The South Korean Foreign Ministry announced March 16 that negotiations will soon commence over the establishment of some 200 South Korean light industry enterprises in Russia's Nakhodka free economic zone. Nakhodka, located on the Sea of Japan near Vladivostok, is a major Russian port seeking... MORE

The San Francisco-based Bechtel Group has won a $2.5 million contract to assist a Russian facility near the city of Oziorsk to store nuclear materials from Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal. Construction at the Russian site has already begun. Bechtel will serve as design and construction... MORE

Russia's Central Elections Committee has allocated 150 million rubles ($31,000) to Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov for his presidential election campaign. Zyuganov was the first candidate officially registered. A total of 4 billion rubles ($820,000) has been set aside by the state for the election... MORE

The Paris Club of creditor nations is likely to postpone its decision whether to reschedule Russia's $38.5 billion debt until late June, when the results of the presidential election are known, Interfax reported March 15. Earlier reports had said that agreement to reschedule the debt... MORE

1. Russian TV, Interfax, March 14 2.

Government forces continued yesterday a week-long operation against resistance groups in Komsomolabad raion and on the approaches to the Garm area. The Internal Affairs Ministry claimed that its forces killed 25 and wounded 40 opposition fighters while losing 3 killed and 12 wounded. Russian sources... MORE

Russia's Duma has postponed the review, due this week, of the January 18 intergovernmental agreement on the transit of "early" Azerbaijani oil through Russian pipelines. Some influential deputies, including those of Zhirinovsky's party demand renegotiation of stipulations which in their view weaken Russia's case for... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin announced on television last night that he, Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko, and their governments are preparing documents to be signed in the next few weeks, envisaging a confederal association of the two countries. He and Lukashenko have concluded that the two... MORE

Abdullah Mikitayev, chairman of Russia's commission on citizenship matters attached to the office of President Boris Yeltsin, warned yesterday in a statement for Baltic media that Russians may organize autonomous enclaves in Estonia and Latvia. Mikitayev justified autonomy as "quite natural" on the grounds that... MORE

The leader of the parliamentary faction "Russia is Our Home", Sergei Belyaev, said yesterday that ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky might be talked into standing down in favor of another candidate in the second round of the elections if he was offered a suitable cabinet post. (8)... MORE