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All the new Central Asian republics have weathered a catastrophic economic storm with the collapse of the Soviet economy and a subsequent array of shocks including exclusion from the rouble zone, disruptive privatisation processes, the drought of 2000 and tumbling world cotton prices.

Seven years after its establishment immediately following the genocide in Rwanda, and more than four years since the beginning of the first trial, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based at Arusha, Tanzania, has to date handed down verdicts on only nine individuals.

This report describes the current situation in Albania, paying particular attention to relations with the country’s Balkan neighbours, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece.

NATO-led troops have played a vital part in securing the peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) since their arrival in December 1995.

The attempted coup d'etat by a group of young army officers against President Pierre Buyoya on 18 April 2001 was a grave warning about the peace process in Burundi. More than eight months after its signing, in August 2000, the Arusha peace accord is at an impasse.

Sierra Leone is a human tragedy of massive proportions that is rapidly becoming a security nightmare for all West Africa. Two-thirds of Sierra Leone’s population are thought to have been displaced during the ten-year civil war. Another 600,000 have become refugees in neighbouring countries.

In late February, violence flared in Albanian-inhabited villages in northern Macedonia close to the border with Kosovo. In mid March, the violence spread to Macedonia’s second largest city, Tetovo.

Slobodan Milosevic is gone, but he has left in the Balkans a bitter legacy of death, destruction and distrust, and the potential for renewed conflict remains dangerously high.

International relief at the fall of the regime of Slobodan Miloševiæ has been marred by dismay at the prospect of a breakaway from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) by Montenegro.

Joseph Kabila, son of the late Laurent Désiré Kabila, speaks a far more peaceful language than that of his bellicose father. But he will not be able to deliver peace alone, and there are already signs that the many parties to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are heading for renewed confrontation.