Azerbaijan is on the verge of signing a new, large-scale oil deal with an international consortium. The contract provides for prospecting and exploiting over a 30-year period the "Karabakh" oilfield, with estimated recoverable deposits of 100 million tons, in Azerbaijan's portion of the Caspian Sea's... MORE

Russian-mediated Georgian-Abkhaz negotiations reconvened in Moscow yesterday. The main objects of the talks are to define Abkhazia's political status and to discuss the return to Abkhazia of Georgian refugees. The Abkhaz side has returned to the negotiations after last week's Russian concessions to it: Moscow... MORE

Moldova is the first European CIS state to post economic growth since the collapse of the Soviet system. Addressing the parliament November 7, Prime Minister Andrei Sangheli reported that the country's production slump has been stopped and reversed. Gross domestic product is projected to have... MORE

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry officials yesterday made available to some agencies the advance text of a note to Latvia, stating that previous Lithuanian compromise proposals to Latvia on offshore zone demarcation had lost their validity because of Latvia's unilateral action in signing a deal with foreign... MORE

At a news conference yesterday, Foreign Minister Uladzimir Syanko denied persistent rumors that he is about to step down. His remarks follow a similar refutation earlier this week by President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who blamed a "moral terror" campaign by the political opposition for the speculation... MORE

Hospitalized President Boris Yeltsin was visited yesterday by his chief negotiator in Chechnya and nationalities minister Vyacheslav Mikhailov, and by Internal Affairs Minister Anatoly Kulikov, whose ministry is in overall command of Russian troops in Chechnya. Mikhailov described the almost one hour-long meeting as his... MORE

Yesterday, President Yeltsin replaced Tatyana Paramonova as acting head of Russia's Central Bank and nominated the present first deputy head, Aleksandr Khandruyev, in her place. The news was greeted calmly by bond and currency markets, indicating that Khandruyev's appointment is not expected to bring major... MORE

According to updated reports of the Moscow MVD, some 70,000 people attended yesterday's pro-Communist rallies on the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution in the Russian capital. Order was kept, not only by Moscow police, but also by what appeared to be communist paramilitary squads. These... MORE

The United States and Russia agreed yesterday that Russian troops could serve in a planned multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia in an auxiliary operation without being under direct NATO command. US Defense Secretary William Perry and Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev told reporters the Russians... MORE

Today, the Central Election Commission expects to complete the process of registering the parties and blocs that have qualified to compete for the 225 Duma seats to be apportioned by proportional representation. By yesterday evening, 39 parties and blocs had been registered. Tomorrow, the Commission... MORE