Turkish officials are cautioning that Ankara will jettison plans to reconcile with Armenia if a US congressional committee endorses a resolution to term Ottoman Turkey's 1915 massacre of ethnic Armenians as genocide. Ties with Washington would also suffer, they said.
France's confirmation of plans to sell high-end warships to Moscow is prompting Tbilisi to renew calls for its admission into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Tbilisi says NATO membership would offer protection against a heightened security threat posed by Russia.
Turkmenistan is reluctant to accept to Reuven Dinel, an alleged former Mossad operative, as Israel's first ambassador in Ashgabat, a leading Israeli newspaper says.
A report published by Ha'aretz characterized Turkmenistan's four-month delay as an "unusual diplomatic hint."
Intensive negotiations to secure Turkmen natural gas supplies for the proposed Nabucco pipeline are ongoing, a Western diplomat tells the Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
The second largest border crossing between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan is now closed to everyone but residents of the immediate vicinity.
The Kara-Suu-Avtodorozhnyy border crossing near Osh, Kyrgyzstan's southern capital, was shut "by the Uzbek side for international passes, for trucks and other people," a spokesman for Kyrgyz Border Service told EurasiaNet on March 1.
Citing an unnamed European intelligence source, a report released in late February by the Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group states that Russia has placed some 4,000 to 5,000 troops in the breakaway region of Abkhazia.
Abkhazia's first separatist leader, Vladisalav Ardzinba, who presided over the enclave's violent divorce from Georgia proper in the early 1990s, has been hospitalized in Moscow hospital, Russian news sources are reporting.
In a move that could alter the Caspian Basin energy-export equation, Iran has announced that it wants to significantly increase natural gas purchases from Azerbaijan.
State-controlled news outlets in Turkmenistan are reporting that former US president George H. W. Bush sent a letter to Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, extending wishes for "sound health and successes." The letter was reportedly conveyed by Neil Bush, the former president's son, who visited Ashgabat on behalf of a Houston-based oil company looking to do deals in Turkmenistan.
