A Russian deputy foreign minister was quoted yesterday as saying that Yugoslavia may now be ready to accept foreign mediation in an effort to resolve the escalating crisis in Kosovo. The remarks by Igor Ivanov followed talks in Belgrade with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and... MORE

At Euroforum's 29-30 April "Kazakhstan Oil and Gas" conference in London, top Western oil and gas extraction and service companies praised Kazakhstan's investment opportunities and legislative environment. Privately, however, they were less enthusiastic about the country's frequent government reshuffles. Foreign investors concurred that Kazakhstan's oil... MORE

Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, and Imomali Rahmonov of Tajikistan agreed today to set up a "troika" with a view to resisting "the advance of Islamic fundamentalism." The troika is also supposed to support pacification in Tajikistan and stability in Central... MORE

Nearly 100,000 coal workers at thirty-nine mines refused to work again yesterday, the second day of a strike called by the Independent Union of Miners of Ukraine (NPHU). The participants demand: payment of wage and pension arrears, which are said to have increased in recent... MORE

Overlapping statements by Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze on May 4 and by Russia's Foreign Ministry on May 5 revealed the actual content of the CIS document on Abkhazia, which mandates "additional measures to settle the conflict." The document and the procedure of its adoption last... MORE

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Valery Nesterushkin "could hardly find the words to express indignation and wrath" yesterday over the desecration of a Soviet military memorial in the Latvian town of Dobele. The Foreign Ministry summoned the Latvian ambassador to demand that such "terrorist" acts be... MORE

The Ukrainian ambassador to Belarus, Anatoly Dron, appealed yesterday to the host country to ratify the bilateral treaty which recognizes the existing Ukrainian-Belarus borders. Signed by Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Alyaksandr Lukashenka in May 1997, and ratified by the Ukrainian parliament the following month, the... MORE

Addressing a conference on problems of social and ethnic integration in Latvia, President Guntis Ulmanis advanced the concept of "inclusive society" as a more worthy goal than that of "integration." The latter is often held to imply assimilation -- the dilution and ultimate loss of... MORE

A Russian Space Agency official announced on April 28 that the problem-plagued Mir space station will be gradually lowered in its orbit and, sometime next year, will be abandoned and allowed to plunge to its destruction. According to Yuri Semenov, president of the state-run Energia,... MORE

A direct telephone link has been put in operation between the office of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and that of his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, Foreign Ministry officials announced yesterday in Moscow and Beijing. The Russian-Chinese "hotline" is the first to link the Chinese leadership... MORE