News

Today, Rostov-on-Don will mark another anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The mournful meeting will take place near the city's monument to tragedy victims.

At the meeting with Dennis Kief, GB's Ambassador to Georgia who arrived to Sukhumi on Friday, prime minister of Abkhazia Alexander Ankvab expressed his surprise with the negative reaction of the leading European countries, who criticised Russia's lifting up of economic sanctions against Abkhazia.

Matthaus Jorsch, a member of the delegation of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has stated that presentation a NATO membership plan to Georgia will depend on the fairness level of the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

On April 25, the Parliament of Abkhazia sent a message to the leaders of the NATO, European Union and United States with regret for the negative reaction of these entities and some other states to Moscow's initiatives in support of this non-recognized republic.

According to Kakha Kukava, one of the leaders of the Conservative Party, pressure on candidates from the opposition and members of their families continues in Georgia. He also told that the Central Electoral Commission of Georgia had published voters' lists without doorway and apartment numbers, which makes room for future falsifications.

Today at night, unknown persons set a car model VAZ-2107 belonging to military journalist Uzeir Dzhafarov on fire.

The ruling party "Eni Azerbaijan" has filed a complaint to the Board for the Press against satirical verses of poet Mirza Sakit (Zakhidov), who is now in prison.

On April 24, in his annual traditional address to the Armenian community of the USA on the day of genocide against Armenians, George W. Bush, President of the USA, treated the tragic events of 1915 as "massacre and deportation".

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic is accusing Selim Bimurzaev, a militants' commander from the village of Eshilkhatoy, of shelling the representative of Chechen Ombudsman in the Vedeno District and murdering two girls.

The Chechnya's Department of the Federal Service for Punishment Enforcement has refuted the information that inmates of the Corrective Colony in Chernokozovo are on hunger strike.

The march of the opposition supporters that started about 3 p.m. local time (2 p.m. in Moscow) and made its way to the monument of genocide victims situated Tsitsernakaberd is currently headed by Levon Ter-Petrosyan, leader of the opposition and the first president of Armenia.

According to Arpi Vartanyan, regional director of the Armenian Assembly of America in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, she hopes that George Bush, who is nearing the end of his US presidency, will fulfil his pre-election promise and use the word "genocide" in his annual speech addressed to the Armenian community of the USA instead of previous "more flexible" formulations.

The investigation of the case about bus explosion in Tolyatti is over. Evgeniy Vakhrushev, who is considered to be the organizer of the explosion, was found mentally sick, and the explosion was accidental.

The prisoners kept in the Corrective Colony No. 2, situated in the Chechen village of Chernokozovo, have announced a hunger strike, a relative of one of the Colony inmates told today to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The Human Rights Watch has recognized the merits of three Azerbaijan journalists (Einullah Fatullaev, Sakit Zakhidov and Ganimat Zakhidov), subjected to political prosecution and arrest.

Jane Armstrong, a Canadian journalist and correspondent of the "Globe and Mail" newspaper, has been deported from Chechnya.

In Sochi, the fight of Old Ritualists with militiamen on April 23 was provoked by an official of local administration who applied physical force to a young pregnant woman.

Today, the Zaterechny Court of North Ossetia has dismissed the complaint lodged by the All-Russian NGO "Voice of Beslan" against the actions of the investigatory group in charge of studying the Beslan terror act.

The Council of Europe is grateful to Ingushetia for rendering assistance to refugees from the Chechen Republic. This was declared yesterday, on April 22, in the city of Magas by Thomas Hammerberg, CE's Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Federation Council (Supreme Chamber of Russian Parliament) has postponed consideration of recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, claimed by these republics in their appeals to Russian leadership.