Azerbaijan's main opposition parties yesterday organized a march and rally in a Baku suburb as part of their campaign to boycott the October 11 presidential election. Attendance estimates ranged from 20,000 to 50,000. The placards, chants and the resolution adopted at the rally included certain... MORE

According to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Aleksy II, "all the forces of Hell are rising up against every attempt to advance toward the [Russia-Belarus] Union." Aleksy spoke those words in Vitsyabsk on an official visit to Belarus from September 24-27. Aleksy blessed... MORE

On September 25, in a request carrying implications for parliament deputies purportedly engaged in questionable activities, Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office asked the parliament to lift the deputy immunity from businessman and parliamentary deputy Mykola Ahafonov. Ahafonov, a former director of the Naukova agricultural company of... MORE

On September 25 Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed Boris Pastukhov to head the Ministry for Cooperation with CIS Countries (Itar-Tass, September 25). Pastukhov, 65, had hitherto been first deputy foreign minister under Yevgeny Primakov. In that post, Pastukhov was responsible for overall relations with CIS... MORE

Ramazan Abdulatipov has been appointed deputy prime minister with responsibility for nationality affairs, a post he held in Viktor Chernomyrdin's government. He will have responsibility for nationality issues throughout Russia, excluding Chechnya (NTV, RTR, September 25). Abdulatipov is an Avar (Dagestan's largest ethnic group). Widely... MORE

The Dagestani authorities won a breathing space when, on September 25, several hundred supporters of Mohamed Khachilaev halted a protest march calling for his release from pre-trial detention. The organizers of the protest called off the march after meeting with leading Dagestani official--who managed to... MORE

Following his resignation as Deputy Prime Minister on September 25, Aleksandr Shokhin said that there was a "small chance" that the IMF may not agree to release the second tranche of its stabilization loan to Russia until next year. He said also that the IMF... MORE

Malnutrition is spreading rapidly throughout Russia, according to the leading Western authority on health issues in the former USSR. Professor Murray Feshbach of Georgetown University told the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual convention in Florida on September 25 that, while starvation... MORE

Less than a week after Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree launching the country's fall military draft period (Itar-Tass, September 21), an influential social group has called for an end to military conscription in Russia altogether. The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers demanded on September... MORE

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev completes today an official visit to Italy, during which he reviewed progress on a giant natural gas project with ENI-Agip. The contract with the Italian company, signed last year, envisages US$2 billion worth of investments to develop parts of the Karachaganak... MORE