Israeli officials have accused Syria-- with Russian help -- of beginning to produce VX, a more lethal nerve agent than the sarin nerve gas it is believed already to hold in large quantities. Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai on Tuesday said Israel had learned about... MORE

The Russian General Staff claims to have drafted a new "military reform" plan to cover the next two years, but the few details made public indicate that it is an unambitious program aimed only at carrying out a presidentially-mandated 200,000 man reduction rather than part... MORE

Public discussion of the Belarus/Russia union is to continue until May 15. But although the issue is a major theme in the central Russian media, it is not making the front pages of the provincial Russian press. The Monitor's correspondent in the Volga Region reports... MORE

Kaliningrad/Koenigsberg region governor Leonid Gurbenko yesterday called for reducing Russian military forces in his region "in line with the reasonable sufficiency principle... to a level that is economically affordable." The regional government presently "deprives the civilian population in order to cover the military's maintenance and... MORE

Minsk authorities yesterday imposed on the Soros Foundation's Belarus branch a $3 million fine for alleged tax evasion. The foundation has officially been tax-exempt since 1995 in Belarus, as it is in the other countries in which it operates for the advancement of an open... MORE

Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov emerged with only a light wound from yesterday's assassination attempt (see Monitor, April 30), and continued his activities on schedule. The number of wounded in the grenade attack on Rahmonov is now officially reported at 49, more than twice the number... MORE

According to his press secretary, Russian president Boris Yeltsin yesterday expressed regret that "the radical part of the State Duma" had wasted its time on less serious matters and failed to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention before it entered into force. This failure, he said,... MORE

Russian defense minister Igor Rodionov will visit Japan from May 16-18, Moscow sources said yesterday. Among the issues Rodionov will reportedly raise is the continued military presence of the U.S. in Japan and throughout Asia. (Itar-Tass, April 29) Meanwhile, unnamed sources in Tokyo said on... MORE

A Russian government official on April 24 denied an accusation that Russia was connected to the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway by Japan's Aum Shinri Kyo cult. A day earlier a cult leader testified that former Russian Security Council secretary Oleg... MORE

Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian of Armenia and Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan met privately to discuss the Karabakh conflict during the Black Sea Economic Cooperation summit, held on April 28-29 in Istanbul. They failed to make progress, as Aliev insisted on Azerbaijan's territorial integrity while Ter-Petrosian ruled... MORE