Although a U.S. State Department spokesman said yesterday that the issue of a proposed NATO oil embargo on Yugoslavia had not figured prominently in Talbott's talks with Chernomyrdin and Ivanov, reports indicated that the U.S. diplomat had not secured what Washington had hoped would be... MORE

Lengthy talks in Moscow yesterday on Kosovo between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and a pair of top Russian officials--former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and current Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov--appeared to produce meager results. Both sides did proclaim that Russia and the United... MORE

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev used NATO's summit as his peg and a Russian media interview as his medium to define his country's foreign policy in a manner which strongly relativizes Russia's place and role. Commenting on the suspension of Moscow's participation in NATO's Partnership for... MORE

Presidents Robert Kocharian of Armenia, Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan and Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia were invited, as a group, to a meeting with the most relevant foreign ministers of NATO countries during the alliance's Washington summit. The NATO group consisted of Madeleine Albright of the... MORE

In a Russian media interview, Belarusan President Alyaksandr Lukashenka disclosed and decried Russian presidential envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin's failed effort to persuade several CIS countries to fall into line with Russian policy on the eve of NATO's anniversary summit. Chernomyrdin undertook a frantic tour to Tbilisi,... MORE

Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus disclosed yesterday that the three Baltic countries have decided to avoid racing against each other for admission to NATO. During the Washington summit, Adamkus and his Estonian and Latvian counterparts, Lennart Meri and Guntis Ulmanis, informed U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine... MORE

Uzbekistan has officially joined the GUAM group of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, augmenting its capacity to provide a counterweight to Russia within and outside the Commonwealth of Independent States. Uzbek President Islam Karimov added his signature to GUAM's--now GUUAM's--documents during a meeting with Presidents... MORE

Over the weekend, a meeting of the council of the "North Caucasus" association of economic cooperation took place in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz. That the meeting was held where it was was not an accident. The republic is the most economically developed one... MORE

The tycoon Boris Berezovsky left the hospital yesterday to answer questions at the Prosecutor General's Office, where he was officially informed of the criminal charges against him, which involve the alleged illegal channeling of revenues of Aeroflot airlines through a Swiss company. His lawyer Henry... MORE

The idea that Boris Yeltsin might use a union between Russia and Belarus as a way of extending his power after the year 2000--when his final term as president ends--has again been broached in the press. The basis for the new round of speculation was... MORE