Prime Minister Mart Siimann's government took another step away from Estonia's laissez-faire agricultural policy regime on March 31, when a report issued by the government's agricultural committee presented a broadened support program for Estonian farmers. (BNS, ETA, March 31) However, Siimann that same day told... MORE

Up to 10,000 mostly young Minsk residents yesterday heeded the call of the Popular Front and of the legitimate parliament's leaders and demonstrated against "annexation of Belarus by Russia." OMON troops charged at the demonstrators, injuring and arresting a number of them, and some protesters... MORE

Gen. George Joulwan, commander in chief of U.S. forces in Europe and Supreme Commander of NATO forces, conferred with President Leonid Kuchma and other Ukrainian leaders in the course of a two-day visit to Kiev. Joulwan stated that "Ukraine as NATO Partner will always be... MORE

Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Pynzennik, one of Ukraine's leading economic reformers, resigned yesterday in frustration over leftist obstruction of reform legislation in parliament and the government's passivity in dealing with it. The most immediate issues at stake involve the 1997 budget and tax legislation, which... MORE

Russian president Boris Yeltsin's partner as gatherer of "Slavic lands," Aleksandr Lukashenko, has just reaffirmed his view of the Nazi as well as the Soviet Communist system. Addressing a conference of provincial officials, held in Minsk and broadcast by Belarusan and Russian television, Lukashenko was... MORE

The Kiev-class aircraft carrier "Admiral Gorshkov" will be sold to India once the two sides agree on a price, an "informed source" in Moscow said last week. The ship, once part of the Northern Fleet, was taken out of service in 1993 and rumors of... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry yesterday made public personnel decisions approved at the CIS summit in Moscow four days earlier. Russia's Lt. Gen. Boris Dikov was appointed commander of "collective CIS peacekeeping" troops in Tajikistan in place of Lt. Gen. Viktor Zavarzin. The decision means that Dikov... MORE

A still-obscure decision of the March 28 CIS summit (see Monitor March 31, April 1) established a CIS Committee on Conflict Situations, proposed by Kazakstani president Nursultan Nazarbaev. Reportedly to be headed by the prime ministers and/or foreign ministers of the 12 countries, the committee... MORE

Meeting in the Kremlin today, Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus signed a Treaty of Union of the two countries and initialed a union charter defining a mechanism to implement the union. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Russia-Belarus Community, meeting concurrently,... MORE

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon yesterday said that the U.S. government does not understand why the Russians are continuing to work on underground bunkers, subways, and tunnels apparently designed to protect their leadership in a nuclear war but did not regard the program as a threat.... MORE