Receiving rump Yugoslavia's president Zoran Lilic in Minsk yesterday, President Aleksandr Lukashenko announced that Belarus will sell weapons to Yugoslavia in order to enable it to "ensure its territorial integrity." The sides also decided to cooperate in military-industrial research. (Interfax, March 7). Belarus has actively... MORE

Russian officials reconfirmed increasingly friendly ties between Russia and India during a weapons exhibit in New Delhi yesterday. Russia's ambassador to India told a news conference that Moscow is ready to share Russian technology and expertise in the chemical and energy industries, while Russian defense... MORE

Pentagon officials revealed yesterday their suspicions that Russia may have conducted a clandestine test of a small nuclear device in January at the Novaya Zemlya test site in the Russian Far North. U.S. defense secretary William Perry corroborated the report during testimony before Congress, but... MORE

Russia's ambassador to the UN Conference on Disarmament became the latest Kremlin spokesman to denounce NATO expansion yesterday when he charged in Geneva that the alliance's planned enlargement was "devoid of any rationale" and a "dangerous provocation" that could "poison the entire international climate." (UPI,... MORE

Bolstering its efforts to defend the Chechen capital against advancing rebels, Russia moved reinforcements into the center of Grozny today. Itar-Tass reported that, following a night of battles in the city between pro-Moscow forces and separatist fighters, a convoy of Russian armored vehicles rumbled into... MORE

1. Interfax, NTV, western agencies, March 5 and 6 2. Reuter, March 6 3. Izvestiya, March 6 4. Reuter, March 5; UPI, March 6 5. Interfax, March 6 6. Reuter, March 6 7. Vechernyaya Moskva, March 5 8. Interfax, March 5 9. Interfax, March 5... MORE

According to latest reports from Novorossiisk, port authorities have imposed an "ecological" tax on top of customs taxes on the transshipment of export cargoes including crude oil. Officially intended to finance anti-contamination measures in the oil port, the tax was imposed pursuant to the Krasnodar... MORE

In an address to Georgia's parliament and in talks with President Eduard Shevardnadze yesterday, Turkish parliament chairman Mustafa Kalemli held up Turkish-Georgian relations as an example of good neighborly cooperation for the entire Caucasus. Kalemli chose Georgia for his first official visit abroad as parliament... MORE

Georgia has become the first ex-Soviet republic to pledge to return its small share of German book and manuscript collections plundered by the Soviet army from German libraries and museums. Georgia's consent to return the German cultural property it holds since World War II contrasts... MORE

The sixth round of Ukrainian-Romanian negotiations on a framework treaty failed to resolve long-standing disagreements. Bucharest withheld an explicit recognition of the common border and renunciation of territorial claims and sought a condemnation of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact's effects on Romania in an effort to establish... MORE