On April 29, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze told a news conference that "we still have a long path to travel before being able to join NATO, [but] it may happen sooner than we imagine." Shevardnadze called for an expansion of Georgia's involvement in NATO's Partnership... MORE

Vano Siradeghian, chairman of the Armenian Pan-National Movement (APNM) and a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary election, returned yesterday to Armenia in order to take part in the campaign, only to be arrested on his arrival at the Yerevan airport. Siradeghian had fled abroad in... MORE

United States Ambassador Daniel Speckhard arrived in Minsk yesterday after an eleven-month absence. The United States, European Union (EU) countries and other pro-Western states had recalled their ambassadors in June 1998 after President Alyaksandr Lukashenka had, in violation of international conventions, evicted the diplomats from... MORE

Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus yesterday appointed Irena Degutiene as acting prime minister to replace Gediminas Vagnorius, who resigned from the post on April 30. His resignation brought down the government: By law, when the prime minister resigns, the entire cabinet of ministers are automatically "resigned"... MORE

Four people, including three police officers, were killed in an attack yesterday on a police checkpoint in Ingushetia, not far from the southern Russian republic's border with Chechnya. The terrorist raid, which took place near the village of Galakshi, was reportedly carried out by ten... MORE

The Kremlin gave further indications over the weekend that a union between Belarus and Russia is high on its agenda, despite the failure of Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka to consummate a marriage between the two states during the Belarus leader's trip to Moscow... MORE

Viktor Chernomyrdin has to date been much more muted in his criticism of NATO actions in Yugoslavia than have some other key Russian government officials, including Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. But the Russian envoy's more moderate rhetoric has not obscured... MORE

Russia's special envoy for the Balkans, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said after talks at the White House yesterday that the two sides had moved "closer to a diplomatic solution" to the Kosovo crisis. Chernomyrdin was also quoted as saying that the two sides "will keep working" on... MORE

Opposition field commander Mansur Muakalov on May 1 released three out of six police officers whom his detachment had seized last week in the Yavon district, approximately seventy kilometers southeast of Dushanbe. In that operation, a forty-strong opposition unit overran the police post, set it... MORE

Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliev underwent open-heart surgery on April 29 in the Cleveland Clinic, a leading institution in the United States and the world in the field of cardiac medicine. Aliev is reportedly due to convalesce for up to two weeks. The surgery, according to... MORE