Baku plans to sell 5 to 10 percent of the offshore Shahdeniz field to Iran, the Turan agency reported May 10. Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Western oil companies will exploit the swap provision exceptions in President Clinton's trade embargo in order to speed up the... MORE

Azerbaijani authorities released 35 Armenian prisoners of war May 11 in response to Armenian releases of Azerbaijanis the day before, Interfax and Turan reported. The exchange of prisoners sets the stage for OSCE-sponsored talks May 10-15 in Moscow on the war in Karabakh. More Bribes... MORE

The chairman of the Azerbaijani parliament's budget committee said that Azerbaijanis now pay more bribes to be able to go about their business than they pay taxes to the state, the Turan agency reported May 5. Jumshud Nuriyev cited one particularly exasperating situation: a truck... MORE

A drop in gas pipeline pressure May 10 has forced Armenian authorities to reduce the supply of electric power to Yerevan residents to only one hour a day, Armenian radio reported. The radio said that the drop "this time" was not the result of sabotage... MORE

Despite appeals from the Russian government, the Russian-language paper Golos Armenii shut its doors May 11 because it had not paid the rent for its building. The closure of the paper leaves Armenia without a major, locally-produced Russian-language journal for the time being. Uzbek Government,... MORE

Segodnya reported May 11 that Uzbek officials would meet in Moscow later this month with leaders of the Uzbek opposition. The paper said that this meeting--the second after a failed contentious session in Washington January 31--was taking place at the request of Tashkent. Whether the... MORE

Lt. Gen. Pavel Tarasenko, who had been commander of Russian border guards in the Caucasus, has replaced Anatoly Chechulin as chief of Russian border guards in Tajikistan, Moscow radio reported May 11. Chechulin, who had often been at odds with local Russian military commanders, will... MORE

If you live in Estonia, the answer is probably "yes." The Estonian Institute of Market Research reports that Estonians are buying more Fords than any other kind of car. Last year, 17.5 percent of the cars sold there were Fords. Opel came in second with... MORE

The deputy director of the Federal Bankruptcy Department told Trud May 5 that the influx of foreign vodka has seriously reduced state revenues. He said that the state vodka monopoly on domestic production had been rendered meaningless by these imports. In other comments, P. Karpov... MORE

Citing a lack of progress in talks with the three Baltic countries, Moscow has dissolved the Russian delegations that had been participating in them, Molodezh Estonii reported May 10. Russian foreign ministry Baltic desk chief Vladimir Udaltsov said that Yeltsin had taken this step in... MORE