Prime Ministers Utkir Sultanov of Uzbekistan, Nurlan Balgimbaev of Kazakhstan, and Apas Jumagulov of Kyrgyzstan held on December 8 in Tashkent a regular quarterly meeting in the framework of the tripartite Central Asian Union. The premiers discussed the activity of the joint Central Asian Bank... MORE

Presidents Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan and Saparmurat Niazov of Turkmenistan have jointly decided to launch bilateral negotiations on delimiting the two countries' respective Caspian sectors. Baku and Ashgabat announced yesterday that Aliev and Niazov met in Tehran during the current summit of the Organization of... MORE

The Russian side agreed yesterday to restore the status quo in the Upper Larsi border sector by moving its border post back to the original location. It further agreed with Tbilisi to resume the work of the bilateral commission for border delimitation and demarcation. The... MORE

The IMF forced the Ukrainian government to cancel a $450 million deal with Merrill Lynch under which the bank agreed to buy hryvnya-denominated treasury bills on condition that they were indexed against the dollar. Such an arrangement would have insulated the bank from any possible... MORE

Special working groups comprised of officers from the U.S., Britain, Nordic countries, and the Baltic states conferred on December 8-9 in Tallinn on projects aimed at boosting the defense posture of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. One working group, chaired by Norway, discussed technological options for... MORE

Russian first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov arrived in Mexico City on December 7, his second stop on a tour of three Latin American capitals. As he had during a visit to Chile that preceded his arrival in Mexico, Primakov pointed out that he is... MORE

In making a pitch for a higher budget to fight crime, Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov reported how undercover police bought a Grad missile launcher -- a three-meter long truck-mounted artillery piece -- from soldiers for two billion rubles ($330,000). "Previously, one could buy everything all... MORE

An attempt to hijack a plane on a domestic flight from Russia's far eastern city of Magadan ended peacefully this morning. The lone hijacker was either overpowered or gave himself up (reports differ) after the plane landed in Moscow, and all 147 people on board... MORE

Investigators suspect that the December 6 crash of a Military Transport Aviation An-124 Ruslan in Irkutsk might have been caused by some problem with the plane's fuel or with the electronic systems that monitor engine performance. As it was taking off with a load of... MORE

Russian security police claim to have discovered another channel for the smuggling of large shipments of weapons and explosives from Chechnya. On December 7, the Federal Security Service's Anti-Terrorism Department, assisted by the Moscow Region Anti-Organized Crime Directorate, detained two women who had arrived in... MORE