News

Armed supporters of Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze did not let Georgian Minister of Education Khakha Lomaia through the Choloki post, which is at the autonomy's administrative border. The minister's trip was concerned with the information that studies were suspended at local schools.

Rebels encircled a group of federal forces in the mountains of the Itum-Kali district, Chechnya. "As the Russian soldiers saw the despair of the situation, they decided to surrender," reported Chechen separatists' website.

Names of 7,000 victims appeared in central newspapers in Armenian and Russian.

Nikolay Khramov thinks the authorities are trying to limit citizens' constitutional right to freedom of assembly, "basing on indistinct by-laws, which have become old, and their own high-handedness."

The speaker of the Georgian parliament told reporters that she was going to discuss with Abashidze a way out of the crisis situation that had arisen in relations between Tbilisi and Batumi.

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Igor Ivanov pointed out that the efforts of the Moscow Mayor in the interests of establishing a dialogue between Tbilisi and Batumi were supported by the Russian leadership.

Sergey Abramov, 32, an official of the Russian Accounts Chamber has been appointed to replace Anatoly Popov.

The Association's team was not allowed in one of the polling stations, which attracted attention by servicemen's mass voting. Police officers were posted at the entrance, who threatened to launch criminal investigation.

Elena Batenkova, a member of the Feedback group and the Committee for Antiwar Actions, is a participant in the picket on Pushkinskaya Square, protesting against the war in Chechnya and appealing to stop the conflict their through negotiations.

An explosive assembly weighting about 15 kilograms was found by a school watchman.

The body of Ruslan (Khamzat) Gelayev, a notorious Chechen commander, has not been given to his relatives so far. The agreement that the relatives were allowed to take his body was reached a week ago, one of them said in his interview with the Caucasian Knot correspondent.

Adjarian Interior Minister Djemal Gogitidze made such a statement.

The Georgian NGO International Center on Conflict and Negotiation conducted a phone survey on March 13, the next day after the arrest of an Orthodox radical Vasily Mkalavishvili and his seven followers.

Members of the Abkhazian deputation and most representatives of the Abkhazian Supreme Soviet did not appear at the parliament session.

It happened in the house of a Moroccan arrested in connection with the [March 11] terrorist acts in Madrid.

Activists of such NGOs as the Chechen Mothers for Peace association, the Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship, the Victor Popkov Center, and the Committee for Antiwar Actions took part in the seminar.

Yuri Luzhkov came to Batumi together with Garry Luchanski, a well-known businessman

"Both the parties have taken no active steps after the Georgian president's ultimatum expired. However raised units have not been withdrawn form their stands," Adjarian Interior Minister Djemal Gogitidze said.

"The president cannot deliver ultimatums to his own people in his own country, and even more so to the leader who is not appointed and dismissed by the president," Abashidze said in his interview with Russian journalists in Batumi on March 15.

The high turnout at the polling stations in the Chechen Republic, despite the almost complete absence of voters, was due to election commission employees casting ballots they had filled in beforehand. This was privately confirmed by workers at the voting sites.