Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and interior minister Anatoly Kulikov have agreed that elections in rebel Chechnya will go ahead regardless of an upsurge in violence, a Russian news agency said today. Yesterday a powerful car bomb killed about a dozen people and ripped a... MORE

The chairman of the State Duma warned today that disagreements over the electoral law could lead to the entire December 17 parliamentary election being challenged after the event. Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin raised a prospect of Russia's second post-communist new parliament being dissolved or bypassed... MORE

Rosvooruzheniye, the state arms distributor, will participate in the third international air and naval show in Malaysia, LIMA' 95, from December 5 through 10. Russia will showcase over 100 advanced armament types designed by almost 30 defense plants. The Smerch rocket launcher of Splav enterprise... MORE

Russia's foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev continues to publicize policy disputes within the Yeltsin administration. Today he told a Moscow radio station that Russia could not decide whether to cooperate with NATO or to confront it, and thus has no real policy at all. This was... MORE

An explosion blew out a door and a window in an office in the Russian parliament building in central Moscow today, setting a room on fire, a parliament official said. The official said the blast occurred on the seventh floor of the State Duma building,... MORE

The long-awaited fifth round of inter-Tajik negotiations opened November 30 in Turkmenistan's capital Ashgabat, only to be immediately suspended on the opposition's demand. In its statement at the opening ceremony, the opposition delegation demanded a stop to offensive operations by government forces and Russian air... MORE

The China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Company, a division of the government-owned China National Petroleum Co., is reported to have agreed to provide $1.5 billion in financing and to participate in the construction of an oil pipeline from Baku via Georgia to Yumurtalik near the... MORE

The US State Department on December 1 accused Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko of harboring "a degree of sympathy" for the Nazi regime, in response to the Belarusian's president's comments in the November 23 issue of the Duesseldorf daily Handelsblatt in which he favorably evaluated some... MORE

Ukrainian prime minister Yevhen Marchuk considers that a memorandum of understanding between Ukraine and G-7 countries and the European Commission, regarding assistance for closing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, is "evidence of progress" and that "Ukraine's partners understand Ukraine's position better," and advances the prospect... MORE

Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev says Russia may become a member of the Council of Europe (CE) by the end of February 1996. (8) Kozyrev made the remark after meeting December 1 with a delegation from the Council led by the organization's secretary general, Daniel... MORE