By empty (5/13/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Uzbekistan abolished today its policy of state censorship, but the landmark move was dampened by a clear warning to editors about their responsibility for the content of their newspapers. The Uzbek media has been tightly controlled by the government since a period of relative freedom just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For the first time since then, state censors did not review the country\'s newspapers on Monday.

By empty (5/13/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbaev signed a protocol in Moscow on 13 May on the equal division of three oil fields in the northern Caspian. Under that protocol, Russia and Kazakhstan will each have a 50 percent stake in developing the Kurmangazy, Tsentralnoe, and Khvalynskoe deposits. The protocol also defines the median line dividing the two countries\' respective sectors of the Caspian Sea, and thus augments a bilateral agreement signed in July 1998 on dividing the north Caspian seabed.

By empty (5/14/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Deputies voted overwhelmingly on 14 May to endorse the appointment of former Anticorruption Council head Mirian Gogiashvili as minister of finance and tax revenues. Gogiashvili,who is 29, studied finance and international law at Tbilisi State University and then pursued graduate studies in Vienna and Tokyo. From 1998-2000 he worked as an adviser to the executive director of the World Bank, and from 2000-2001 as an assistant to President Eduard Shevardnadze, who proposed him to head the new combined ministry last week.