Support from an unexpected corner came yesterday for President Boris Yeltsin's campaign to appoint Sergei Kirienko as prime minister. State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev, a leading member of the Communist party and former editor of its newspaper Pravda, met with the president yesterday. Immediately afterwards,... MORE

According to a report published last week in a Russian daily, the secretary of Russia's powerful Security Council, Andrei Kokoshin, is gearing up for what is likely to be an intense turf battle with the heads of the country's various "power structures." (Kommersant-Vlast, April 7)... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin is due to meet today with Gennady Seleznev, Communist Speaker of the State Duma, in a fresh bid to resolve the crisis Yeltsin himself provoked when he sacked the entire government on March 23. Yeltsin's nominee for prime minister, thirty-five-year-old Sergei Kirienko,... MORE

With hopes once again of getting the 1993 START-2 treaty ratified, President Boris Yeltsin yesterday presented supporting documents to the State Duma. Items of interest in those papers: first, a U.S./Russian protocol extending by five years the treaty's destruction timetable, and, second, materials dealing with... MORE

Meanwhile, in recent days both countries have given hints of proposals they intend to make during the summit that could depart from the expected agenda. On April 9, a Russian Foreign Ministry source was quoted as saying that Russia may seek the signing not of... MORE

The buildup has continued over the past few days for this weekend's rescheduled summit meeting between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. The informal meeting, to be held in the Japanese resort town of Kawana, had originally been scheduled for April... MORE

According to President Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan "follows Ataturk's precepts in developing as a secular independent state." The Uzbek state "honors our ancestors' religion as a factor in the spiritual development of the nation, along the model set by Ataturk," Karimov declared at a joint briefing... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry and the unrecognized "foreign ministry" of Abkhazia issued parallel statements yesterday. In them, Georgia was held responsible for recent "terrorist activity" in Abkhaz-controlled territory. Ten Russian soldiers were wounded and two Abkhaz troopers killed in three incidents from April 5-10. Moscow and... MORE

Meeting on April 11 in Baku, the United Azerbaijan Association's Central Council expanded its membership to 143, decided to launch a press organ ("United Azerbaijan") and appointed its editors, created a youth branch of the UAA, and approved a directive of the organization's leader, Abulfaz... MORE

Latvia's coalition government will try to carry on even as a minority government because "its collapse would suggest that Latvian governments can be changed under external pressure. This could cause major problems for any successor government," Prime Minister Guntars Krasts stated yesterday. The government lost... MORE