Word: azerbaijan
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What's in an alphabet? For the six Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union -- Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- the answer may be cultural identity. As the 55 million inhabitants of the republics, most of them Muslims, consider a new written form of expression to replace the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, the choice has taken on geopolitical implications. Turkey, whose switch from Arabic to Latin script 64 years ago symbolized its shift toward Western-style democracy, wants the republics to follow its lead. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Iran are pressuring them to adopt Arabic script -- and, they...
...former Soviet conventional forces and weaponry. The numbers are still gigantic: 3.7 million men in uniform, more than 10,000 combat aircraft, 56,000 tanks, nearly 90,000 artillery pieces, 800 warships. Russian President Boris Yeltsin argued for central control over all this too, but Ukraine, Moldavia and Azerbaijan insisted that they had to have their own national armies. Most Soviet naval bases were in Russia, but Ukraine was quick to claim the Black Sea Fleet, which had its home port in Ukraine's Sevastopol. Without warning, Russia ordered the newest aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, to its port...
...states) and an 11-member Commonwealth of Independent States had been created on the soil of the former Soviet Union. He granted recognition to all 12 and announced that diplomatic relations would be opened immediately between the U.S. and Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia and Armenia. The other six -- Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- could expect diplomatic ties once they committed themselves to "responsible security policies and democratic principles...
...country will not be admitted until it restores peace and respect for human rights. Though the West was concerned that such violence could become the norm in other former Soviet republics, recent flare-ups have been limited to ethnically divided Moldavia and the Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Most of the population, says Russian sociologist Yuri Levada, has proved -- for now, at least -- to be "more democratic, more restrained and more peaceful than many expected...
...also had its victims: scores were killed in the crackdowns in Tbilisi, Baku, Vilnius and Riga, and three young men were martyred in the August coup. But large- scale outbreaks of violence have been fairly isolated everywhere except in the ethnic conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. By and large, the Soviet Union has given up the ghost of the totalitarian idea with remarkably little bloodshed...