Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Shakhrai has told journalists that a referendum on private ownership of land will take place in March or April of next year. (2) He said that the Communist and Agrarian factions in the Duma had been "chopping away" at a draft... MORE

Unocal Corp. and Delta Oil Co. of Saudi Arabia plan to sign agreements with Turkmenistan for natural gas and crude oil pipelines, the oil companies said Friday. The multibillion-dollar agreement could open new natural gas markets in Pakistan and establish an export terminal on the... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin said yesterday in New York that Russia would join a peacekeeping force in Bosnia only if it was under U.N. control. In a speech at 50th anniversary celebrations of the United Nations, Yeltsin make clear Russia would not let its troops be... MORE

Sergei Medvedev, Boris Yeltsin's spokesman, said in New York on Sunday that the Russian president will take personal control of Russia's foreign policy. "The president thinks it necessary to coordinate all foreign policy activities himself," he said. Medvedev said that Yeltsin would name a deputy... MORE

Itar-Tass reports that Estonian political parties agreed on Sunday to form a new coalition government to replace the one which collapsed 11 days ago over a bugging scandal. It said the coalition, led by the Coalition Party of Tiit Vaehi who was reappointed Prime Minister... MORE

The Russian Central Election Committee announced on Monday that 43 political parties and movements have qualified for the December parliamentary elections by collecting the necessary 200,000 signatures. Unocal plans Turkmenistan agreement.

Russia's energy and fuel minister Yurii Shafranik and foreign economic relations minister Oleg Davydov yesterday invited any interested country to invest in the construction of a Balkan pipeline which would bring Caspian oil from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan to international markets, after that oil had... MORE

President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus told his countrymen on Thursday that he will introduce direct presidential rule if they fail next month to elect a working parliament. (16) Only 120 out of 360 seats were filled in nationwide balloting in May, a result that owed... MORE

On October 18 and 19, some 7,000 - 8,000 students attended an unauthorized rally in Chisinau's central square followed by a march through the city center. The student demonstration, on the first day of a preannounced teacher-student strike, went far beyond education issues to political... MORE

The Ukrainian legislature voted Thursday to approve Hryhor Vorsinov as prosecutor-general of Ukraine. Vorsinov replaces Yevhen Datsiuk, who resigned after criticism of his standards of investigation into alleged corruption among officials. One such official, former acting prime minister Yefrim Zvyahilsky, has been in exile in... MORE