By empty (5/15/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Emperor Akihito met Tuesday [15 May] with Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov, the first president of a country newly independent of the former Soviet Union to meet the Japanese monarch, the Imperial Household Agency said. During the meeting at the Imperial Palace, the emperor thanked the president for Tajikistan's help in a 64-day hostage crisis in 1999 in which four Japanese and a Kyrgyz were freed in Tajikistan in October after being held by Islamic rebels in nearby Kyrgyzstan, agency officials said. Rakhmonov invited Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko to visit his country, the officials said.

By empty (5/15/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The Uzbek Justice Ministry has registered the public youth movement Kamolot, the information service of the Uzbek Justice Ministry told Interfax on Tuesday [15 May]. The founding conference of the new movement took place in Tashkent on 25 April. Six hundred delegates from all regions of the republic attended the conference.

By empty (5/14/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The tax collection by the Kazakh State Revenues Ministry has increased by 59.3 per cent since 1998, State Revenues Minister Zeynulla Kakimzhanov today told in a report on the work of the fiscal bodies and improvement of the tax and customs service in 1999-2000. The ministry collected 283.