Russian interior minister Anatoly Kulikov announced at a press conference yesterday that the incidence of crime in Russia has fallen more than 9 percent so far this year over the same period in 1996. Kulikov attributed the decline to improved work by law-enforcement agencies. He... MORE

Russia's Federal Assembly yesterday unanimously approved ratification of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. President Yeltsin then signed the bill, completing the ratification process. U.S. president Bill Clinton issued a statement warmly welcoming the Russian action. There is a 30-day waiting period before the convention enters... MORE

A proposed agricultural privatization plan, initiated by Uzbekistan's Cabinet of Ministers, has undergone some criticism in the media this past week. In October, the Cabinet established a Republican Commission, chaired by Prime Minister Utkir Sultanov, to study economic reform measures. The commission outlined a proposal... MORE

Azerbaijan's opposition leader, former president Abulfaz Elchibey, yesterday lashed out at the U.S. and other Western powers for their alleged "indifference toward Azerbaijan's right to restore its territorial integrity" in Karabakh and their "solicitude for Armenia's prosperity." Addressing a session of his Popular Front's Majlis... MORE

U.S. secretary of defense William Cohen announced yesterday that the U.S. had recently bought 21 Russian-built MiG-29 jet fighters from Moldova so that they would not otherwise fall into the wrong hands. The planes had been shipped to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio over... MORE

Latvia's Foreign Ministry yesterday turned down Russian president Boris Yeltsin's October 24 offer of a Russian-Baltic security pact. The ministry's statement, which was virtually identical in its wording to the Estonian Foreign Ministry's statement of the preceding day (see Monitor, November 4), implicitly underscored Baltic... MORE

CIS executive secretary Ivan Korotchenya says that he will fight to retain his post, which he has held since the organization's inception. Interviewed at CIS headquarters, Korotchenya acknowledged that he agreed with the Russian leadership at the recent CIS summit in Chisinau that it was... MORE

Tensions remain high in Tatarstan over Russia's new passports (see Monitor, October 27), and protests have now spilled over into neighboring Bashkortostan. Last weekend, young people in the Bashkir capital, Ufa, held a protest demonstration during which they set fire to a replica of Russia's... MORE

President Yeltsin has ordered the remains of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and of his family to be brought to Moscow for final verification. The bones were exhumed six years ago near Yekaterinburg, the Urals city where the family was shot by the Bolsheviks in... MORE

Only two days after the conclusion of an historic meeting in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk between Russian president Boris Yeltsin and Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, officials in Moscow and Tokyo yesterday began to bicker over precisely what the two leaders had agreed upon.... MORE