* The Georgian Economic Ministry said the country intended to raise border control issues with Russia at the WTO's 6th Ministerial Conference
* The governor of Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, said the region could boost trade with Belarus to $200 million
* The Kremlin press service quoted President Vladimir Putin as saying Turkmenistan's neutral status provided for security and stability in Central Asia
* The chief executive of Gazprom visited Turkmenistan to discuss prices and volumes of natural gas imports from the former Soviet republic with its president, Saparmurat Niyazov
* Uzbekistan's national holding Uzbekneftegaz said an international consortium would start geological prospecting work in the Uzbek water area of the Aral Sea in March 2006
* Election authorities said the December 11 elections to the Supreme Council (parliament) of the self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic in Moldova were declared valid in all 43 constituencies
* A member of Georgia's parliament spoke out against the country's hasty withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose union of twelve former Soviet republics
* Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), one of Russia's leading mobile phone operators, announced its acquisition of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile phone operator, Bitel
* The Russian finance minister's press secretary said the minister and his Belarusian counterpart had signed an intergovernmental agreement December 10 to provide a $146-million state loan to Belarus to sustain stable payments in bilateral trade
* Ukraine's Health Ministry said experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in the country to study the recent bird flu outbreak in the autonomy of the Crimea on the Black Sea
* Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Ukraine was willing to give U.S. experts access to its early-warning radar facilities in Sevastopol, a port city on the Black Sea, and Mukachevo in western Ukraine, which are exclusively used for Russia's interests, in response to Russia's new approach to economic relations with the country, particularly its desire to revise natural gas prices
* Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko proposed building a nuclear waste disposal plant in the Chernobyl area, which saw the world's worst nuclear accident nearly 20 years ago
* Belarusian Economic? Minister Nikolai Zaichenko said President Alexander Lukashenko had approved the forecast of a 7-8.5% growth in his country's GDP in 2006
* Belarussian Economics Minister Nikolai Zaichenko said Monday that his country's natural gas pipeline operator Beltransgaz and Russian energy giant Gazprom had resumed negotiations to set up a joint venture, after almost a year-long suspension over disagreements on the value of Beltransgaz's assets
