The Kremlin's foreign policy coordinator, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, deputy prime minister Valery Serov, and CIS executive secretary Ivan Korotchenya (a Belarusan) held a special meeting to discuss "reorganization of CIS bodies with a view to facilitating implementation of political decisions and enhancing integration processes." According to... MORE

Returning yesterday with President Leonid Kuchma from Georgia, Ukrainian officials cited him as stating at the concluding news conference there that "a third man, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin, invisibly hovered over our one-on-one meeting" [of Kuchma and Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze]. We dialogued with Yeltsin the... MORE

According to Robert Ruzanov, Russia's trade representative in Japan, trade between the two countries reached $6 billion in 1995 but fell to $5 billion in 1996, due mainly to the weakening of the yen. Russian exports to Japan consist mainly of metals (34 percent), fish... MORE

Iraq's ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday, where he was reportedly criticized for Baghdad's recent defiance of the UN and told that Iraq should fulfill all its commitments under UN resolutions. The reprimand follows a decision by the Iraqi parliament... MORE

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, on the last leg of a week-long Middle Eastern tour, met in Cairo yesterday with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and with the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Martin Indyk. Primakov later told reporters that Egypt and... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin and French prime minister Lionel Jospin reportedly agreed during talks in the Kremlin yesterday that the recent French-Russian-Malaysian deal to develop an Iranian gas field not only serves the national interests of Russia and France, but is fully compatible with the... MORE

A recent study by the Russian government's center for current economic analysis finds that payment arrears in the Russian economy continued to increase in the first half of this year. Despite the best efforts of the team headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais,... MORE

On October 28 the Russian government met and approved the revised 1998 budget, which had been hastily agreed to earlier this week by the tripartite commission (of government, Duma and Federation Council representatives). The budget will now be considered by the Duma on November 12... MORE

Lithuania's Foreign Ministry yesterday declared that proposals aired by Russian president Boris Yeltsin on October 24 can ensure neither Lithuania's nor the Baltic region's security. Lithuania seeks security through NATO, sees no need for a Russian-Lithuanian or Russian-Baltic pact, and desires good-neighborly relations with Russia... MORE

German minister of state Berndt Schmidbauer completed a visit to Russia on October 27 during which he met the head of the Federal Security Service, Nikolai Kovalev, and asked that the FSB -- the successor to the KGB -- take responsibility for guaranteeing the security... MORE