Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Moscow yesterday on a three-day official visit. He is scheduled to meet with Russian president Boris Yeltsin today, and will also hold talks with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Trade issues and Russia's role... MORE

The outgoing parliament of the Chechen republic, elected in 1991, has approved the results of the January-February 1997 elections to the republic's new legislature. Forty-three of the 63 deputies were elected, enough for the new legislative body to start work. (Interfax, March 10) Basaev Unhurt... MORE

Citing medical problems, Armen Sarksian on March 7 submitted his resignation as prime minister of Armenia only four months after taking office. Speaking by telephone from London to a group of selected journalists assembled at government headquarters in Yerevan, Sarksian denied the existence of any... MORE

The sixth round of inter-Tajik negotiations, underway since February 25, ended on March 8 in Moscow with the signing of a military protocol, reported thus far only by Russian sources. If those reports are to be believed, the Tajik Opposition would seem to have agreed... MORE

The Soviet-style kiss that opened a March 7 meeting between Boris Yeltsin and Aleksandr Lukashenko in the Kremlin appeared also to have been the final warm moment of their latest encounter. The Russian and Belarusan presidents made no decisions and managed only to sign a... MORE

Russia's minister for nationalities, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, has told a Council of Europe delegation that Moscow plans soon to set up an "assembly of the peoples of Russia," in which Russia's 176 officially-recognized ethnic groups will be represented. Mikhailov was meeting in Moscow last week with... MORE

A first-year Russian military cadet was arrested yesterday on charges of shooting to death an officer and at least five fellow cadets at the Kamyshin higher Military Construction School in Volgograd oblast. Two other cadets were said to have been seriously injured in the unexplained... MORE

Russia's second city has failed to make it onto the short-list of five cities bidding to host the 2004 Olympics. St. Petersburg's case was passionately pleaded by President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, who dispatched First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Ilyushin to lobby the selection... MORE

Russian, U.S., and Norwegian experts have reportedly concluded that it will cost more than $5 billion and take some 20 years to clear the coast of Russia's Maritime Territory. That conclusion was reached during discussions in Vladivostok on a plan of action to deal with... MORE

Former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar says that the composition of the new Russian government, now being put together by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and newly appointed First Deputy Premier Anatoly Chubais, will be crucial in deciding the success or failure of the radical reforms... MORE