Armenia:
* The second cockpit voice recorder has been recovered from the site where an Armenian Airbus crashed into the Black Sea on May 3, killing 113 people, Transport Ministry official Svetlana Kryshtanovskaya said
* An official said experts would need about a fortnight to decipher the flight data from the Armenian plane wreck
* The flight data from the Armenian plane will be deciphered in Russia, an official said
* Experts may face problems deciphering flight data from the Armenian plane wreck, as the magnetic tape of its cockpit voice recorder was seriously damaged, an official said
* Deputy Finance Minister David Avetisyan said the National Assembly (parliament) had ratified an agreement between the Armenian and U.S. governments as part of Millennium Challenge Compact, which will provide Armenia with $235.65 million aid over the next five years
* Parliament adopted a bill in the first reading to make June 14 a day to commemorate repressed people. Vice Speaker of Parliament Vaan Ovannisyan said the date had been chosen because mass deportation of Armenians began on June 14, 1949
* Vice Speaker of parliament Tigran Torosyan said NATO was a major element in Armenia's security
Azerbaijan:
* The Foreign Ministry said that foreign ministry officials from countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, the U.S. and France - had gathered in Baku to discuss the resolution of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
* Romanian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Nikolae Ureke said Romania wanted to join the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova)
Belarus:
* Viktor Plotnikov, head of the innovation department of Belneftekhim, said a third oil refinery may be built in Belarus
Georgia:
* Georgian opposition leader and state security minister Igor Giorgadze has no reason to fear for his safety in Russia, even though Georgia has put him on the international wanted list, an aide to the politician said
* Giorgadze said he was not intending to seek political asylum in Russia.
* Georgia's top producer of mineral water said it was in talks with several countries in a bid to re-route exports of its famous brand Borjomi from Russia to Central Asia. Russia banned imports of Georgian wines and alcoholic drinks in March, and two popular brands of mineral water at the beginning of May, because health authorities said they failed to meet standards. The move has been widely condemned in Georgia as politically motivated.
* Georgian diplomats said Wednesday that the rotation of Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway region of South Ossetia might be postponed again over contentious border checkpoints and unresolved visa issues
* Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia will under no circumstances return to Tbilisi's jurisdiction, a deputy speaker of the self-declared republic Konstantin Ozgan said, commenting on a statement by former Georgian Security Minister Igor Giorgadze, who said that Abkhazia and another breakaway province, South Ossetia, "might agree to return to Georgia, but only if they see tolerant, open-minded people come to power in Tbilisi."
* Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba said that if Georgia recognized Abkhazia's independence, it would give a positive impulse to complicated Georgian-Abkhazian relations
* Financial police of the Finance Ministry confiscated 16,200 liters of counterfeit wine in the Imereti district in west Georgia
Kyrgyzstan:
* The border guard service said President Kurmanbek Bakiyev had appointed Zakir Tilenov head of the border guard troops, and transferred the border service from the National Security Service into an independent structure
Moldova:
* The government said Moldova would not leave the CIS
* The Supreme Council of the breakaway Transdnestr Region in Moldova made a tentative decision to declare a 1993 resolution on establishing the Moldovan confederation defunct
Tajikistan:
* A lawyer of former trade minister Khabibullo Nasrulloyev appealed a Russian court ruling to grant her client provisional refugee status
* The national anti-monopoly service said it had launched proceedings against the state unitary enterprise Tochikiston, accused of violating anti-monopoly legislation and raising tariffs for international air transportation
Ukraine:
* Thousands of people gathered in the center of the Ukrainian capital Wednesday to protest an increase in prices for natural gas after the national commission for electricity regulation raised consumer tariffs for gas and electricity by 25% starting May 1
* NATO has allocated about $800,000 to train civilian employees for Ukraine's Defense Ministry, said Major General Leonid Golopatyuk, director of the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff's Euro-Atlantic integration department
* Two of the three major parties that backed the "orange revolution" - former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's eponymous bloc, and the Socialist Party - signed a draft agreement Wednesday on forming a parliamentary coalition
* Dnipropetrovsk, a major industrial city in Ukraine's eastern region, has made Russian a regional language, a municipal council spokesman said
* Naftogaz, Ukraine's national oil and gas company, will obtain a loan to pay trading company Rosukrenergo for natural gas, the country's fuel and energy minister said
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan)
* Secretary General Nikoilai Bordyuzha said the Collective Security Treaty Organization would undergo sweeping reforms at an upcoming summit in June to tackle a number of objectives
