Belarus seems to be basing its economic program for 1998 on the assumption that the capital inflows needed to finance the country's trade deficit can come only from Russia. First Deputy Prime Minister Petr Prokopovich said on November 6 that, because Belarus has "no prospects"... MORE

During Chechen president Maskhadov's absence, Vice President Vakha Arsanov has issued a number of decrees strengthening Islamic influence in the republic. Arsanov went on republic TV at the beginning of the week to order female civil servants and students to cover their heads and hair... MORE

A delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), led by the chairman of PACE's special commission on Chechnya, Ernst Muehlemann, made a one-day visit to Grozny yesterday. Delegation members expressed concern over human rights in Chechnya and, in particular, said they... MORE

Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov flew yesterday from Turkey to the U.S., where he is to make a private visit to Washington, DC, at the invitation of the Carnegie Endowment. No official announcement has yet been made about the possibility that he will meet with State... MORE

At President Eduard Shevardnadze's initiative, the Georgian parliament yesterday voted overwhelmingly to abolish the death penalty. Shevardnadze needed three years to persuade parliament to take this step, urged by some European and international organizations but unpopular in Georgia. The president introduced a de facto moratorium... MORE

A day after concluding summit talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing, Russian president Boris Yeltsin yesterday traveled to Harbin, a Chinese regional capital bordering Russia's Far East. Yeltsin visited a World War II memorial in the once Russian city, where he restated Moscow's and Beijing's... MORE

Meeting yesterday in Palanga (Lithuania), Presidents Lennart Meri of Estonia, Guntis Ulmanis of Latvia, and Algirdas Brazauskas of Lithuania conclusively declined Russian president Boris Yeltsin's offer of a security pact as a substitute for Baltic accession to NATO. Yeltsin's proposal "does not correspond to the... MORE

At an indoor rally of 500 Communist activists in Yerevan, the party's first secretary, Sergei Badalian, called for restoring the "social achievements" of socialism, reliance on Russia for solving the Karabakh conflict in accordance with Armenian aspirations, and stepping up the campaign for Armenia's accession... MORE

Less than 100 members of the Communist Party and the self-styled "workers' movement of Kazakhstan" -- under their respective leaders Serikbolsyn Abdildin and Madel Ismailov -- held a rally in Almaty to honor the Bolshevik anniversary and to endorse the presidential aspirations of Azamat movement... MORE

Some 500 Communists gathered on November 5 in Gori, Stalin's birthplace. The former chairman of Georgia's parliament, Vahtang Goguadze, called for cooperation with Russia in order to overcome Georgia's difficulties, including the Abkhaz secession, which -- another Communist speaker said -- "the Communists would never... MORE