Charging that "Croatia'smilitary actions in Serbian-populated regions brought the situationto the brink of a big Balkan war," Yeltsin said he regrettedCroatian president Franjo Tudjman's refusal of his invitationto come to Moscow for negotiations with Milosevic. The Russianpresident renewed his invitation, blaming Tudjman's initial negativeresponse on... MORE

Submitting the Russia-Kazakhstan agreement on ensuring securityat the Baikonur space vehicle launching site to the Duma for ratification,Boris Yeltsin has written to Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin that theagreement has an added advantage. "It provides legal groundsfor the presence and functioning of Russia's military counterintelligencestructures to... MORE

Returning froma Russian-American joint mission aboard the Mir station after115 days in space, Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov told anews conference in Zvezdnyi Gorodok (Star Town, the training centernear Moscow for Soviet and later Russian cosmonauts) that he andhis Russian colleagues had rejected the American food... MORE

While on avisit to Kazakhstan, President Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan waswarned by Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati against drawingclose to Israel, IRNA reported as cited by Reuters August 9. Velayatiadvised Azeri officials "not to allow Zionist elements toinfiltrate into the Caucasus" and warned that... MORE

Governmental delegationsof the North Ossetian and Ingush republics, headed by Prime MinistersYuri Beragov and Mukharbek Didigov, met in Nazran to discuss therepatriation of the Ingush forcibly expelled from North Ossetia'sPrigorodnyi rayon in 1992. The Ingush side proposed a repatriationschedule whereby 7,000 Ingush would return to... MORE

A reportby Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev's foreign policy adviser,Vafa Gulizade, summarized in the August 9 Moskovskaya Pravda, describes Russia as a country that "has not yet renouncedexpansionist and imperial views and represents Azerbaijan's mainadversary and largest obstacle on the road to full independence."Although Azerbaijan is... MORE

At the August 8 meetingof the tripartite armistice control commission, the Transdniesterside raised the new demand that the Moldovan peacekeeping contingentgive up its armored vehicles, Flux and Basapress reported. Thosevehicles are legal under the 1992 Yeltsin-Snegur armistice convention,but Transdniester interprets last month's agreement on mutualsecurity... MORE

In Fort Polk, Louisiana for theCooperative Nugget 95 joint exercises, Estonia's Defense Forcescommander, Lt. General Alexander Einseln, said that Estonia'sdoor to NATO is closed but not locked and it is up to Estoniato open it for itself. The key is learning to live up to... MORE

Nearly 1,000soldiers from 14 former Warsaw Pact and ex-Soviet countries, includingthe three Baltic states and the CIS member countries Ukraine,Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, are participating from August 8 through26 in the joint exercise Cooperative Nugget 95 at Fort Polk, Louisiana.The exercise, the first of its type... MORE

The defense ministersof Lithuania and Norway, Linas Linkevicius and Jorgen Kosmo, signeda bilateral agreement on military cooperation in Vilnius on August9, BNS reported. The agreement covers inter alia military procurement,technical assistance, and cooperation for peacekeeping missions.Linkevicius said at the signing that Lithuania will seek bilateralagreements... MORE