Word: azerbaijan
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...cultural poor relations in a Slav-dominated family, and decided to join, provided they are given the status of co-founders. Their move brought together, however loosely, republics with 90% of the old union's people and all its strategic nuclear weapons. Only the small border republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldavia were left temporarily outside the new fold, and they too were thinking of coming...
...Soviet empire has shrunk, many remain virtually marooned in far-flung outposts defending a U.S.S.R. that no longer exists: 260,000 Soviet troops in eastern Germany, 45,000 in Poland, 120,000 in the independent Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Fourth Army remains billeted in Azerbaijan, its unhappy assignment to prevent bloodshed between militant Azerbaijanis and Armenians -- two peoples who are no longer under the aegis of Moscow...
...experts believe, is a breakdown of the command structure that would put the easily mobile tactical weapons into dangerous hands. These nukes -- artillery shells, warheads on short-range missiles, nuclear mines -- are much easier to seize than ICBMs stored in underground silos. Already the southern republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan have "nationalized" all military property on their soil, prompting Moscow to announce that the army would shoot to repel any seizure. Nonetheless, local riot police in Azerbaijan have hijacked some army trucks full of ammunition. It is not inconceivable that future raiders or army mutineers might grab some nukes...
...makings of one hell of a Tom Clancy novel here," said an Administration official during a White House meeting in January. The issue is not entirely hypothetical. There was at least one incident, in Azerbaijan, in which a band of rebels briefly broke into an installation at which nukes were stored. The U.S. committee concluded that the greatest risk was that tactical nuclear weapons, such as artillery shells, might fall into the wrong hands...
...were reported killed in a clash with republic troops . . . The seizure of power in Tadzhikistan by Rakhman Nabiev, a hard-line former Communist Party chief, prompted thousands of people to defy a newly imposed state of emergency. Crying "Communist coup!," protesters vowed to resist Nabiev's administration . . . Armenia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement calling for a cease-fire and negotiations to end their dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, but the fighting continued. Among those who helped broker the agreement was Boris Yeltsin. The Russian president, who is suffering from a heart ailment, subsequently announced that...