Prime Minister and acting president Robert Kocharian yesterday declared his candidacy in the March 16 presidential election. The election was called after Levon Ter-Petrosian's resignation from the presidency under pressure from Kocharian and the "force" ministers. Kocharian's announcement means that he and his key supporters... MORE

Three Ukrainian nationalist parties, each of them holding a few seats in the current parliament, are contesting these elections as a bloc with a single program and slate of candidates. Formed at a unification congress last October, the National Front campaigns against what it describes... MORE

Belarusan Sunday television proudly announced that the country possessed some two metric tons of plutonium and uranium -- an amount that qualifies it as a nuclear "threshold" state. The revelation aired on the news program "Rezonans," one closely associated with President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's government. In... MORE

A delegation of Russian lawmakers, attempting to fly to Iraq with humanitarian supplies, remained grounded in Armenia yesterday. The group of forty-eight parliamentarians is headed by ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and is accompanied by over 100 journalists. The chartered Ilyushin-86 is said to be carrying twelve... MORE

Supporters of retired Gen. Aleksandr Lebed have launched their campaign to collect enough signatures to get his name put on the ballot in the election for governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai. Lebed has the support of the Krasnoyarsk branch of his Honor and Motherland movement. Also... MORE

Police in Moscow yesterday arrested a retired army colonel in connection with the still unsolved murder of investigative journalist Dmitry Kholodov. Kholodov was killed by a parcel bomb in the office of the newspaper Moskovsky komsomolets, where he worked, in October 1994. (Itar-Tass, February 9)... MORE

Five Polish aid workers kidnapped in Chechnya last December have been released by Chechnya's National Security Service. They were freed in a dawn raid yesterday on a house in the northern suburbs of Grozny. No one was harmed and no shots were fired. Two men... MORE

Russian President Boris Yeltsin arrived in Italy yesterday for a three-day visit. It is the Russian leader's first overseas venture since a bout of illness earlier this winter, and a number of Italian newspapers have reportedly focused attention on Yeltsin's health. Yeltsin's last trip abroad,... MORE

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze last night escaped unharmed from an assassination attempt that killed two of his bodyguards, wounded others and severely damaged his armored limousine -- a gift to him from the U.S. government. Unidentified attackers ambushed Shevardnadze one kilometer away from his residence... MORE

Kyrgyzstan's National Security Minister, Feliks Kulov, announced on February 6 that his agency has uncovered twelve foreign intelligence agents active in the country from January 1997 to January 1998. Ministry officials stated on background that the "largest agent networks" in Kyrgyzstan are those maintained by... MORE