On July 2, identical protest demonstrations were held in Tashkent and Andizhan by scores of female relatives of imprisoned members of the clandestine Islamic movement Hizb ut Tahrir. A few representatives of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU, not to be confused with the... MORE

The four South Kuril Islands, long a source of diplomatic dispute between Russia and Japan, have in recent weeks also been at the center of a controversy that is sharpening tensions between Japan and South Korea. The issue in question is fishing rights. Under a... MORE

Russia seems to have made great strides in reversing the highly negative image it gained with the August 1998 financial collapse and to have convinced major players in the international economic community that it is on the road to reform and thus a good bet... MORE

So-called "cleansing" or "mopping up" operations by Russian forces aimed at two Chechen villages have caused thousands of civilians to flee into neighboring Ingushetia and have been accompanied by looting and other abuses. Last week federal troops launched the "zachistki," as such operations are called... MORE

Bush administration hopes of reshaping and reenergizing the UN sanctions regime against Iraq were frustrated this week when a Russian veto threat forced the United States and Britain to at least temporarily abandon efforts to win UN Security Council approval of their so-called "smart sanctions"... MORE

A finding by a Moscow court this week has to all intents and purposes sealed the fate of Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-Most holding. On July 4, the Moscow City Court overturned a Media-Most appeal protesting a municipal court's May decision, in which it ruled that a... MORE

Top Russian officials are continuing to put out mixed signals over the possibility of conducting peace talks with the Chechen rebels. Viktor Kazantsev, presidential representative in the Southern federal district, told the Gazeta.ru website yesterday that talks with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov were possible, but... MORE

The Tajik government's Operation Thunderbolt has clearly fallen short of destroying the few remaining antigovernment armed groups. Those groups formed part of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) during the civil war, but--unlike the bulk of UTO's forces--refused to disarm under the terms of the 1997... MORE

French President Jacques Chirac's high-profile, three-day visit to Russia this week appeared to signal a further improvement in ties between the two countries, but intensive talks involving him and President Vladimir Putin nonetheless revealed continuing differences on some key international and bilateral issues. For Moscow,... MORE

But the happy talk of the Vladimir Putin-Jacques Chirac meetings this week could not fully obscure enduring differences between the two men. These surfaced also during the July 2 press conference, when Putin launched a harsh defense of Russian military operations in Chechnya--calling Chechen rebels... MORE