Georgian presidentEduard Shevardnadze on June 1 received Chechen president AslanMaskhadov's counselor and envoy for special issues Ruslan Kutaev,who was paying his second visit to Tbilisi in the space of twoweeks. (See Monitor, June 3) Last week Shevardnadze receivedAhmed Zakaev, who doubles as Chechen Security Council... MORE

The unwillingness of Ukraine's parliament to passthe 1997 state budget and the government's tax reform proposals-- and thereby to convince the IMF to release the first trancheof a $3 billion extended funding facility (EFF) credit -- seemsto be taking a growing toll on the Ukrainian... MORE

One indicator of the ongoing deteriorationof the Russian armed forces has been the disturbing increase inthe number of incidents in which soldiers go on unexplained anddeadly shooting sprees. One such event occurred on June 1 in theRussian "peacekeeping" force in Georgia's break-awayAbkhazia region, where a... MORE

PresidentsLeonid Kuchma of Ukraine, Lennart Meri of Estonia, Guntis Ulmanisof Latvia, and Algirdas Brazauskas of Lithuania yesterday joinedtheir German, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian counterparts-- Roman Herzog, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Vaclav Havel, MichalKovac, and Arpad Goencz -- for a political meeting and a specialreligious service performed... MORE

June is the last monthof work for the Russian Duma before the summer recess, which willlast from July 1 to August 31. The Duma has resolved to debatethe government's proposed spending cuts on June 11. Before therecess, Duma committees are also expected to begin work... MORE

The Russiangovernment on June 3 announced a revised economic forecast for1997, which predicts that GDP will either remain static or fallby up to 2 percent this year. The government's previous forecasthad predicted 0-2 percent growth this year. (Reuter, Interfax,June 3) The revised projection includes a... MORE

Presidents Islam Karimov of Uzbekistanand Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakstan yesterday ended a two-daymeeting in Almaty by calling for the formation of an Afghan coalitiongovernment that would include the Taliban movement and its ethnicUzbek and Tajik adversaries recently defeated in northern Afghanistan.In related news, the Taliban... MORE

Accordingto Izvestia, Russian president Boris Yeltsin was the primemover behind the May 30 creation of a new coalition of centristmovements. The newspaper says that Yeltsin personally orderedPrime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to form the alliance with VladimirShumeiko and Sergei Filatov. Izvestia claims Yeltsin wantsto be sure... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin met with Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkovon June 3 and told him to stop quarreling with the government.Yeltsin assured Luzhkov that, contrary to the latter's allegations,the federal government cares about Moscow and will provide thecapital with "all possible assistance." Luzhkov launched a... MORE

Russianfirst deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov told reporters yesterdaythat he does not plan to discuss the Kuril Islands territorialdispute during his June 8-11 visit to Japan. Nemtsov, recentlynamed as co-chair of a Japanese-Russian trade commission, suggestedthat discussions would be confined to economic issues. He urgedJapanese... MORE