Japan has opened a credit line, worth more than US$100 million, for the modernization and expansion of Uzbekistan's telecommunications network. The agreement, announced in Tashkent yesterday, was signed during Uzbek Prime Minister Utkir Sultanov's just-completed visit to Japan, during which he co-chaired a session of... MORE

According to yesterday's issue of the official newspaper "Sovetskaya Belorussia" (still so named), criminal proceedings have been launched against former Prime Minister Mikhail Chyhir on charges of embezzlement and Chyhir detained for questioning by the Internal Affairs Ministry's investigative department. The charges stem from Chyhir's... MORE

The last nail seems to have been driven into the coffin of the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline, not by its critics but by Russia itself. The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC, the multibillion oil consortium) and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) announced yesterday that the... MORE

Reports this week quoted anonymous officials in Yeltsin's administration as strongly hinting of late that the president has extra-constitutional contingency plans. Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov is said to have collected evidence of extremist statements made by leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin's state of the nation address to the Russian parliament yesterday was, compared to those of past years, close to a non-event. Following the 18-minute speech, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, not unexpectedly, dismissed it out of hand, saying that it contained nothing of... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin, meanwhile, took a somewhat higher road in remarks on the Balkans that were included in his state of the nation address yesterday. Yeltsin repeated Moscow's criticism of the NATO air war against Yugoslavia in his remarks--calling it a violation of international... MORE

While attention focused yesterday on Primakov's diplomatic mission to Belgrade, Russian defense officials continued to send signals that they are contemplating military measures to counter NATO's operations in the Balkans. Russian General Staff chief Anatoly Kvashnin, for example, pointedly told reporters that Russia was not... MORE

The preconditions Milosevic set in the Belgrade talks, as laid out by Primakov, were clearly unacceptable to the West. Schroeder specifically rejected Milosevic's demand for an end to NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. Schroeder also made clear that what the international community expects from Milosevic is... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov yesterday hailed the results of talks conducted in Belgrade between a high-level Russian government delegation and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Primakov described a series of pledges which he had won from Milosevic, and suggested that the Russian diplomatic initiative marked... MORE

President Haidar Aliev has decided to release the giant Russian-owned AN-124 transport plane and the thirty-four, mostly Russian, military personnel detained with the plane since March 19 in Baku on prima facie suspicion of arms contraband (see the Monitor, March 24-25). Aliev said that his... MORE