The Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan yesterday issued a statement of concern over the military agreements, reached during Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev's recent visit to Armenia. The statement substantiates the "alarm" just expressed in more general terms by President Haidar Aliev's senior adviser Vafa Guluzade.... MORE

Under a Russian-Georgian agreement initialed but not signed (see the Monitor, June 30 and July 2), Georgian border troops began on July 16 a phased takeover of Georgia's maritime border from Russian troops. On July 17, the Georgian parliament adopted unanimously a law on the... MORE

Iran and Russia issued a joint communique last week that urged the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. The statement followed talks in Tehran on July 15-16 between high-ranking officials from the Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministries. The two sides also expressed... MORE

The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, together with a Foreign Ministry spokesman, criticized Norway on July 17 for actions taken against Russian boats fishing in waters near Bear Island in the Barents Sea. Federation Council Speaker Yegor Stroev called the expulsion of the... MORE

Japan's ambassador to Russia, Takihiro Togo, reiterated in Tokyo yesterday that Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's recent resignation would not upset plans for the country's foreign and prime ministers to visit Russia this fall. Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi, who is considered one of several leading... MORE

The IMF is due today to decide whether to disburse the first half of its huge new stabilization loan to Russia. Anatoly Chubais, Russia's chief negotiator, will be in Washington to urge the IMF board to release the US$5.6 billion payment. The IMF has made... MORE

Striking coal miners in western Siberia lifted their blockade of the Trans-Siberian railway yesterday morning, July 19, and have promised not to re-impose it before tomorrow, July 21. They were responding to a concession by the government, which dispatched Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Sysuev to... MORE

Chechnya's President Aslan Maskhadov has prolonged for a further ten days the state of emergency he imposed last month in the breakaway republic. On July 19, he announced an extension of the curfew and a general mobilization of 5,000 reservists who took part in the... MORE

The joint military exercise Baltic Challenge-98 is underway in Lithuania's city of Klaipeda. It is NATO's largest exercise anywhere this year, and the largest-ever held in the Baltic states. The exercise has, in fact, been in process since July 10 (see the Monitor, July 10)... MORE

A civic initiative in the town of Ivangorod, Leningrad Oblast, has collected more than sufficient signatures (more than one tenth of the town's registered voters) to call a referendum for the town's return to Estonia. Ivangorod is in fact the former Estonian town of Jaanilinn,... MORE