* A group of observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that monitored Sunday's presidential elections in Kazakhstan said it had found no violations, but the leader of the Kazakh opposition said many had occurred
* A senior official from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said the organization's observers had detected violations during Sunday's presidential elections in Kazakhstan
* The head of the OSCE mission said the presidential elections in Kazakhstan Sunday had been transparent
* The Kremlin press office said President Vladimir Putin had phoned Nursultan Nazarbayev to congratulate him on his landslide victory in Sunday's presidential election
* Officials said residents of the Crimea, a Ukrainian autonomy on the Black Sea coast hit by bird flu, had received initial compensation for their dead fowl Sunday night
* Russia's Ministry of Agriculture said Russia was imposing restrictions on poultry imports from Ukraine due to the bird flu threat
* Fitch Ratings international rating agency said Russian energy giant Gazprom and Ukrainian state oil and gas company Naftogaz were expected to settle their intensifying natural gas price dispute amicably
* In an essay released Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said recent revolutionary upheavals in some of the former Soviet republics had dramatically slowed down their social and economic development
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia and Ukraine had worked out a joint position on how to address the situation surrounding the self-proclaimed republic of Transdnestr in Moldova
* Transdnestr Deputy Economy Minister Mikhail Burla said the 5+2 group of negotiators on the situation surrounding the breakaway republic of Transdnestr in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, (including Moldova, Transdnestr, Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE, with the U.S. and the EU
as observers) would reconvene in mid-December
* Authorities in Transdnestr, a self-proclaimed republic in Moldova, said they hoped to sign a deal before the end of the year with Russian energy giant Gazprom to buy natural gas at $80 per 1,000 cu m
* Armenia's National Statistics Service said the external debt of the South Caucasus republic totaled $1.117 billion as of September 30, down 5.55% since January, but up 3.1% year-on-year
* Tajikistan's Finance Ministry said the lower house of parliament had approved the state budget for 2006
* The Novosti-Georgia agency said a hoax bomb threat had interrupted a Georgian parliamentary session for more than an hour
* Azerbaijan's gas company official said Russia's Gazprom subsidiary, Gazexport, had supplied 4.15 billion cu m of natural gas to the South Caucasus republic in January-November 2005, down 3% on last year
