On the evening of June 23, U.S. President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill that imposes sanctions on Russian companies selling ballistic missile technology to Iran--a veto despite overwhelming and bipartisan support for the bill among members of both houses of Congress. There seems little doubt... MORE

In vetoing the bill, the Clinton administration repeated earlier arguments that sanctions would actually have an effect opposite the one intended. Clinton said in a written statement that "[t]his bill would hinder. .. our overall national interests ... making it harder to achieve the goals... MORE

Russia's Zarubezhneft oil company yesterday signed a US$1 million deal to supply Iraq with drilling equipment for its now decrepit oil sector. The deal was the first to follow a UN Security Council resolution of last week that allows Baghdad to purchase US$300 million worth... MORE

The Russian government yesterday sent six taxation bills to the State Duma--the first in an estimated twenty backing up the government's "anticrisis" program aimed at restoring confidence in Russia's battered economy. President Boris Yeltsin has given the Duma--which is expected to debate the six on... MORE

IMF Deputy Director Stanley Fisher--who met with Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko on June 24--will, according to press reports, recommend to the IMF board that it should release the suspended US$670 million credit. Fisher returned to Moscow this week for further talks in the wake of... MORE

Earlier this week, the Labor Ministry discussed two rival drafts for a new labor code. The more radical version was prepared by First Deputy Minister Mikhail Dmitriev, and a more traditional one by the head of the ministry's law department, Sergei Panin. (Kommersant Daily, 25... MORE

A bomb exploded yesterday in the center of Makhachkala in what was clearly an assassination attempt on Magomed Rasul Omarov, a deputy of Dagestan's Constitutional Assembly and the republic's deputy minister of internal affairs. The bomb had been planted by the side of the road,... MORE

Aleksandr Ivanchenko, chairman of Russia's Central Electoral Commission, is to investigate the June 14 presidential election in Bashkortostan. (Russian agencies, June 23) On June 14, incumbent president Murtaza Rakhimov was overwhelmingly reelected with 70 percent of the vote. His only opponent--the forestry minister in Rakhimov's... MORE

According to Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov--speaking in Denmark at the conclusion of a session of the Council of Baltic Sea Countries--the changes to Latvia's citizenship law are merely "cosmetic" and "[fall] short of compliance with international recommendations." In Moscow, Foreign Ministry officials similarly dismissed... MORE

Gazprom chairman Rem Vyakhirev conferred yesterday in Kyiv with President Leonid Kuchma and Prime Minister Valery Pustovoytenko on reimbursement of Ukrainian debts to the Russian company. Kyiv estimated the arrears at approximately US$800 million--rather than the US$1 billion figure cited by Gazprom--and assumed direct responsibility... MORE