AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA CLASH BUT ALSO TALK.

President Haidar Aliev and other officials had announced in advance of the summit that Azerbaijan would refrain from signing "most of the documents." At the summit, Aliev condemned Russia’s military support for one CIS country against another. He also renewed the demand for an investigation into clandestine Russian arms deliveries to Armenia, as well as for prosecuting those responsible and for repatriating the weaponry to Russia. Yeltsin responded vaguely that he had "removed many military commanders" involved in the affair and had informed Baku of this already. If so, no Baku official seemed to have received that information until yesterday. The issue will almost certainly continue to fester. Although sharply disagreeing on this issue, the Azeri and Armenian leaders nevertheless managed to discuss settling the Karabakh conflict, and Aliev credited his counterpart, Levon Ter-Petrosian, for accepting in principle the step-by-step plan recently proposed by OSCE mediators. Both presidents turned down — albeit out of different considerations — a Yeltsin-Chirac proposal designed to undercut the OSCE forum and move the negotiations to Moscow.

Uzbekistan’s Broad Vistas.