Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov yesterday charged that Islamic groups in Pakistan have set up indoctrination and guerrilla training centers for young Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz. According to Komilov, these Pakistani groups trained and sent the militants who committed "terrorist acts" in Uzbekistan's Namangan region... MORE

President Eduard Shevardnadze told the country by radio yesterday that the recent attempt against his life cannot stop international projects to make Georgia a transit country for Caspian oil and the Central Asia-Caucasus-Europe corridor. He went on to remind Moscow that "Georgia can be have... MORE

Addressing yesterday a session of the government's Coordinating Committee to Combat Corruption and Organized Crime, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma decried the "emergence of a criminally-tainted economic elite which no longer contents itself with the wealth it has accumulated, but uses that wealth in a grab... MORE

The Riga district court yesterday was forced to adjourn sine die the criminal trial of the ex-USSR's OMON troopers. (See Monitor, February 16) Only ten out of fifteen defendants appeared in court. Four others were reported to have vanished just before the court date, and... MORE

The International Monetary Fund will not renew its financial support for Moldova until after the March 22 elections. The Fund's decision, while not unexpected, underscores Moldova's uncertain economic prospects in 1998, as well as the strains plaguing the country's external finances. The Fund's decision, announced... MORE

Lithuania celebrated yesterday the 80th anniversary of the its declaration of independence, with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski featuring as a central figure of the official events. The main theme in Kwasniewski's discussions with Lithuania's outgoing President Algirdas Brazauskas, President-elect Valdas Adamkus and Parliament Chairman Vytautas... MORE

As political leaders raced to defuse the Persian Gulf crisis diplomatically, a group of hard-line Russian deputies said yesterday that they would remain in Iraq to serve as a "human shield" against U.S. and British air strikes. According to Aleksei Mitrofanov, a leading member of... MORE

The lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, will debate the 1998 federal budget in the last of four statutory readings tomorrow and hopes to approve it on Friday, February 20. After that, the budget will go to the upper house. (Itar-Tass, February 16)... MORE

Russia's Central Bank exuded an air of renewed confidence yesterday in announcing that it was lowering the refinancing and Lombard rates from 42 percent to 39 percent effective today, February 17. The bank said it was responding to positive changes on Russian financial markets, as... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, in Greece on an official visit, repeated Moscow's call yesterday for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to visit Baghdad in a last ditch effort to avert military strikes on Iraq by U.S. and British aircraft. Primakov argued that the use... MORE