Reacting to President Haidar Aliev's ailment, some circles within the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (NAP) suggest that the president's son Ilham would be a natural and worthy successor as head of state. Ilham, 36, is first vice-president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).... MORE

Major-General Artsrun Markarian, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and National Security and commander of the country's interior troops, was assassinated yesterday by unidentified gunmen on a highway outside Yerevan. Markarian, 40, had survived an assassination attempt in January 1998, during the shadowy power struggle which... MORE

Belarusan President Alyaksandr Lukashenka kept silent for four days before finally commenting yesterday on fascist violence in downtown Minsk. He declared during a staff conference, in the presence of the press, that the Russian National Unity (RNE) activists' assault on Belarusan opposition representatives had been... MORE

On February 9 the leaders of Ukraine's People's Democratic Party (NDP) and Liberal Party (LPU), Anatoly Matvienko and Volodymyr Shcherban, announced that they had formed a political bloc aimed at building an open society based on a market economy. Each called for a wider coalition... MORE

On February 8, the Stavropol Krai court found Aiset Dadasheva and Fatima Taimaskhanova guilty of organizing and carrying out the bombing of the Pyatigorsk railroad station in April 1997. Two people died and thirty were wounded in the terrorist bombing. Dadasheva and Taimaskhanova were sentenced,... MORE

Gennady Zyuganov said today that his Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) would not support a "nonaggression pact" between Russia's branches of power, which Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed last month and the Kremlin tentatively approved on February 5. Zyuganov noted that the last... MORE

The Russian State Duma may be set to consider the START II arms reduction treaty next month, but there is little reason to believe that any significant progress toward ratification will be forthcoming. In remarks to reporters yesterday, Duma Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ilyukhin said... MORE

Russian Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov and Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin sent a letter yesterday to acting Prosecutor Yuri Chaika concerning "insulting statements directed at the president of the Russian Federation" made by Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). The... MORE

During a Russian television interview broadcast yesterday, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov renewed Moscow's attack on UNSCOM chairman Richard Butler and restated Russia's demand for a new monitoring system to oversee the disarmament of Iraq. Ivanov said that Butler had discredited himself with his "provocational acts."... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry reacted angrily yesterday to allegations that military hardware from Russia is finding its way to ethnic Albanian separatists in Yugoslavia's troubled province of Kosovo. Shaqir Vukaj, Albania's ambassador to Russia, had made the charge a day earlier. Vukaj suggested that Russia has... MORE