Senior Foreign Ministry officials of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova held yesterday in Baku the first official meeting of a grouping that designates itself as GUAM (the four countries' initials). Chaired by Azerbaijan's foreign minister Hasan Hasanov and attended by Deputy Foreign Ministers from the... MORE

Russia and Vietnam on November 24 signed a package of intergovernmental agreements and discussed both the sale of Russian military aircraft to Vietnam and possible joint energy projects. But the two sides reportedly failed to make progress on the most important item on their agenda... MORE

Washington and Moscow continued to clash yesterday over UN policy toward Iraq, as U.S. secretary of defense William Cohen accused Iraq of trying to evade UN arms inspectors and warned of possible punitive measures, while Moscow repeated its calls for restraint. Cohen's remarks coincided with... MORE

A naval officer serving in Russia's Pacific Fleet has been arrested on suspicion of spying for Japan and charged with high treason. Russia's Federal Security Service reportedly detained the officer -- 35-year-old Captain Grigory Pasko -- in Vladivostok on November 23 as he returned from... MORE

Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma has sent a letter to the Crimean parliament warning it that some of its decisions violate the Ukrainian Constitution. Unless the Crimean authorities amend these laws to conform with Ukrainian legislation, Kuchma warned, he will exercise his presidential prerogative to declare... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin said yesterday that he intends to keep First Deputy Premier Anatoly Chubais in his post and "will not give him up." (Itar-Tass, November 25) But Igor Malashenko, President of the influential Russian private TV company, NTV, predicted that Yeltsin will sack Chubais... MORE

In the midst of a four-nation tour of Latin America, Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov charged yesterday that U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba are undermining what he described as "significant" democratic and economic reforms in the Communist-ruled country. Referring specifically to the Helms-Burton Act, which... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin's press secretary Sergei Yastrzhembsky has confirmed a statement by Security Council secretary Ivan Rybkin that the Russian president intends to visit the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Yastrzhembsky did not indicate when the visit might take place. Rybkin said yesterday that Moscow has... MORE

The Monitor's November 5 report on Azerbaijan used materials from the news agencies Turan, Assa-Irada, and Interfax, as carried by the BBC, Summary of World Broadcasts, November 6, 1997. The references to Assa-Irada and Interfax were inadvertently dropped from the footnote. Assa-Irada, not Turan, reported... MORE

Armenia's first deputy foreign minister, Vardan Oskanian, has just held talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels on a more active Armenian participation in NATO's Partnership for Peace program. In announcing this yesterday, the Foreign Ministry in Yerevan pointedly commented that such participation would only be... MORE