Abkhazia Georgia

As the United States threatened to invade Haiti, Russia was busy in its own southern yard Saturday, arranging a cease-fire in one guerrilla war, covertly meddling in another and scrambling to prevent an old one from reigniting.

As the United States threatened to invade Haiti, Russia was busy in its own southern yard Saturday, arranging a cease-fire in one guerrilla war, covertly meddling in another and scrambling to prevent an old one from reigniting.

An explosion killed the mayor of a small town near the separatist region of Abkhazia, Georgia's Interior Ministry said. The explosion killed Mujhava Mayor Gia Mebonia while he was inspecting a house damaged by overnight shelling. A villager was also killed and a police officer was seriously injured. The explosion comes at a time of increasing tensions in the areas surrounding the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia and Georgia fought a war over South Ossetia in August.

Georgia and Ukraine signed a sweeping friendship treaty Tuesday and accused Russia of pursuing the interests of the defunct Soviet Union. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, at a news conference with Georgian leader and former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, denounced Moscow's attitude on nuclear arms, the division of the disputed Black Sea Fleet and economic links. He also accused Russia of preventing Georgia from settling a conflict with separatists in the Abkhazia region.

Using simple language that belied the complexity of their concerns, Western governments roundly condemned Russian intervention in the Caucasus this month at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They underscored a critical equation of post-Cold War diplomacy: Pipeline politics make foreign policy. The OSCE call to end Russia's Chechen offensive was choreographed to accompany a long-sought agreement to build a Caspian Sea pipeline that, favoring U.S.

My nonassociation with the CIA started 12 years ago. It was in the war-emptied ghost town of Tenancingo, El Salvador, that I was accused of being a CIA spy by local guerrillas whom I visited as administrator of a French humanitarian mission.

Georgian President Eduard A. Shevardnadze on Tuesday fled the rebel-captured city of Sukhumi for his own capital of Tbilisi, where he blamed the Russian military for "masterminding" the assault and charged that the victorious troops were executing "scores" of pro-Georgian officials and ordinary citizens.

Georgian President Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the onetime Soviet foreign minister who helped end the Cold War, faced a growing crisis Saturday as opposition supporters rallied in his Caucasus nation's capital to demand that he step down. Key opposition politicians urged Shevardnadze, 75, to resign in the wake of alleged fraud in parliamentary elections held Nov. 2.

When Oleksandr Kovtunenko heard Sunday that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin might be impeached, the young Ukrainian businessman decided to buy a gun, "the biggest I could find," in case of an invasion by imperialists from Moscow. "I will fight against anyone to defend Ukraine," Kovtunenko said, nervously sipping coffee in a Kiev cafe. Serhij Nechitailo, his business partner, had a safer idea. A plane ticket to the West, he suggested, might be a better bargain.

The next President faces the most dangerous international crisis since the end of the Cold War. In the southern Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, a real Greek tragedy is in the making, with Western spectators, so far, blithely ignoring the warnings offstage. Even today, all the political and psychological ingredients for what may be the third Balkan war of this century are present there.

On Aug. 17, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin announced that a dozen missile-carrying strategic bombers, accompanied by support and tanker planes, will be permanently airborne. Their mission: to protect Russian territory. From whom? Putin didn't name the enemy that caused the resumption of such flights after a 15-year hiatus. But only one other country has similar air capability -- the United States. Twenty-four-hour bomber missions is one of many recent flexes of Russian military muscle.