Eurasia

TBILISI – Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili is likely to scrape an election win on Saturday in a vote the West will scrutinize for fairness, but polls differ on whether his victory will be big enough to avoid a second round.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov won the December 23 national election, which was not unexpected. However, it is quite unusual that this will be his third term in office, despite the fact that the Uzbek Constitution limits presidents to two terms.  The Karimov administration made no attempt to amend the constitution …

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s parliament reconvened on Thursday a day after the opposition prevented the chamber from sitting, but there was no indication when it would reconsider a proposal to restore Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister.

KIEV (Reuters) – Yulia Tymoshenko, a leading force in Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution”, narrowly failed to win parliament’s backing to restore her as prime minister on Tuesday and accused her rivals of cheating.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul and his Turkmen counterpart Gurbangly Berdimuhamedov have agreed to make an extra effort to boost relatiosn betwene the two countries, they disclosed in a joint press conference on Thursday.

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s parliamentary speaker said on Thursday he had presented Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the pro-Western “orange” coalition, as candidate for prime minister.

In a historic ceremony Saturday, President Berdymuhamedov of Turkmenistan used a gold-plated spanner to bolt together two sections of rails, marking the formal start of construction of railway link between Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran.   

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a message to Traian Basescu on Sunday extended his congratulations to the Romanian president, government and nation on the country’s national day.

THE man who devised the Bush administration’s Iraq troop surge has urged the US to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos.

DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – An explosion injured 44 miners on Saturday at a colliery in eastern Ukraine struck by the country’s worst mining accident two weeks ago, officials said.