Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma will visit China for one week beginning December 3 at the invitation of President Jiang Zemin. Also in the Asian region, Foreign Minister Hennady Udovenko, in Seoul yesterday, signed a package of accords establishing diplomatic and trade ties with South Korea.... MORE

The Ukrainian parliament's budget commission chairman, Mykola Azariv, told an audience in Donetsk that state revenues from privatization in the first ten months of 1995 amounted to just 2 trillion karbovantsi, dramatically short of the 90 trillion that had been expected. Azariv blamed the State... MORE

A consortium headed by New York-based OilCapital has raised the $2 billion funding needed to build a 930-mile (1,500 km) oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish Mediterranean coast, a London business newspaper said Friday. (7) Zoo Threatens to Unleash Tigers.

Today in Tel Aviv, Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres and Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev signed a military cooperation agreement between the two countries. Israel Radio said under the accord Israel would help upgrade weapons used by Russia and Russian weapons used by other countries.... MORE

The latest opinion polls show the Communist Party surging ahead, capturing about twice as much support in this month's parliamentary elections as its nearest rivals. (2) Yeltsin: Chechnya Elections Must Go Ahead.

Russian president Boris Yeltsin reaffirmed yesterday that elections should go ahead in breakaway Chechnya next month despite rebel threats of sabotage. (3) Generals Urge Sealing Off Porous Borders.

Interviewed by the BBC while in London, Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev stated that he did not hope for a quick political settlement of the Karabakh conflict but that he would persist in seeking one and hoping for "some understanding" from Armenia. He named the conditions... MORE

Ignoring a vow of confidentiality, Abkhaz leader Vladislav Ardzinba and Supreme Soviet deputies have in the last three days exchanged public recriminations over a proposed Georgian-Abkhaz settlement, and in the process revealed some of its terms. A protocol under discussion at Russian and UN-mediated negotiations... MORE

Ivan Rybkin, chairman of Russia's Duma and head of a governmental electoral bloc, has conveyed his support for Transdniester's secession from Moldova in a message of greetings to a Russian irredentist forum there. Informing the Transdniester Compatriots' Congress about last week's Duma resolution urging recognition... MORE

Parliament chairman Mechislau Hryb has announced that he would not seek that post again in the new legislature, even if deputies ask him to do so. Hryb cited "the impossibility of working under conditions of suspicion and violations of the constitution by Lukashenko" as the... MORE