21.   A shaky truce mediated by U.S. envoys last month is generally holding, but sporadic violence continues.

22.   After a shaky truce expired Sunday night, officials in neighboring Ingushetia said Monday they would try to restart peace talks.

23.   Also Tuesday, U.S. envoy Christopher Hill returned to Kosovo following a break in his shuttle diplomacy and an upsurge of fighting which threatened a shaky truce.

24.   An already shaky truce took another hit when the Bosnian Serbs insisted on the unconditional withdrawal of rival government troops from a strategic spot south of Sarajevo.

25.   An intense exchange of gunfire early Tuesday in northwestern Macedonia threatened to scuttle the shaky truce that government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels declared a day earlier.

26.   At least five Russian soldiers were reported killed and five others wounded in clashes Thursday, while Russian and Chechen officials accused each other of violating a shaky truce.

27.   But only isolated outbreaks of violence occurred as a shaky truce held on the ground.

28.   But persistent conflict in the area threatens to unravel a shaky truce that took effect at the start of the year.

29.   But the postponement appeared to threaten that progress, as well as a shaky truce signed by Lebed and Maskhadov on Thursday.

30.   But in the Gaza Strip, a shooting rampage by Palestinian militants threatened an already shaky Mideast truce.