Foreign diplomats and international organizations are backing a Kyrgyz provisional government decision to proceed with a constitutional referendum in late June, despite the widespread violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.

• June 17, 2010

Israel moves to ease the land blockade of the Gaza Strip and allow more civilian goods to enter the Palestinian territory.

• June 17, 2010

Following a US report about Afghanistan's valuable mineral resources, the Afghan government is gearing up to seek foreign investment and a public bid to extract these minerals is expected to start later this year.

• June 17, 2010

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the views that Turkish foreign policy was not so interested in developments in Central Asia were baseless.

• June 16, 2010

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a surprise visit to Chechnya on Monday after a series of attacks in the troubled North Caucasus region, where the Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency.

• June 16, 2010

China announced in late April the sale of two nuclear reactors to Pakistan. This deal is clearly against the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the spirit if not the letter of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT)

• June 16, 2010

Iran has formally signed a $7.6-billion cross-border pipeline deal to supply 750 million cubic feet of natural gas daily to Pakistan from mid-2014, ignoring India that was part of the original plan conceived in the 1990s.

• June 15, 2010

China and Kazakhstan have agreed to build and finance a gas pipeline and deepen cooperation in atomic energy, giving Beijing greater access to Astana's vast uranium resources.

• June 15, 2010