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Russia has ordered a partial withdrawal of officials and their families in Georgia in a worsening row over the arrest of Russian officers there. The Russian ambassador would also leave Tbilisi, said the foreign ministry. It follows Wednesday's arrests of five Russian military personnel accused by Tbilisi of spying. Moscow is demanding their immediate release. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili denounced the Russian reaction to the arrests as "hysteria". The already tense relations between the two countries have deteriorated over the past week, correspondents say.

Authorities in Central Asia suggest that an outlawed group responsible for terrorist attacks in the past poses a renewed threat in the region. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was thought to have been largely destroyed in the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan. But officials in Tajikistan have blamed several recent incidents on the IMU, and they say the group has been increasingly active since an uprising was suppressed in neighboring Uzbekistan eight months ago. The most recent mention by Tajik officials came on 27 January from Abdugaffor Qalandarov, the chief prosecutor in Tajikistan's northern Soghd Province. Qalandarov was speaking...

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan - He has outlawed opera and ballet and railed against long hair and gold teeth, but now Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov is determined to wipe out another perceived scourge: lip synching. Niyazov has ordered a ban on lip synching performances across the tightly controlled Central Asian nation, citing "a negative effect on the development of singing and musical art," the president's office said Tuesday. "Unfortunately, one can see on television old voiceless singers lip-synching their old songs," Niyazov told a Cabinet meeting in comments broadcast on state TV on Tuesday. "Don't kill talents by using lip synching... Create...

The phrase “Weimar Russia” first appeared about 13 years ago, at the height of the confrontation between then President Boris Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet that ended when Yeltsin’s tanks shelled the parliament. The meaning was clear to all: Weimar Russia, like Weimar Germany, signified a weak republic attacked from within by nationalists yearning to restore authoritarian ways.In the late 1990’s and the early years of this decade, the problems that incited fears of a dysfunctional state seemed to fade. But over the past 18 months, the specter of Weimar has once again begun to haunt Russia.If taken to extremes,...

THREE radioactive rockets capable of contaminating a city centre were offered for sale last week to a Sunday Times reporter posing as a middleman for Islamic terrorists. The Alazan rockets, which have a range of eight miles, were among 50,000 tons of weapons left behind at an arms dump in the breakaway eastern European republic of Transdniester when the Russian army withdrew after the cold war. They were offered to the reporter for $500,000 (£263,000) after he approached a senior officer in Transdniester’s secret police, claiming to represent a militant group in Algeria. The officer contacted a local arms dealer...