News

Georgy Baramidze has characterized the role of the Russian peacekeeping force in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict area as "extremely destructive".

The Defense Ministry's group in Chechnya has been reduced from 53,000 to 31,000 servicemen, with 20,000 of them being stationed there permanently.

The Forum of People's Consent finds it necessary to demand that the President and the Parliament should pass amendments to the Law on Presidential Elections within a month.

Journalists learnt it from Melita Akopian, chairwoman of the National Association of Consumers, when she summed up the program to raise public awareness of this law.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) who temporary live in Ingushetia filed no complaint with the Ingush ombudsman's office in 2003.

Large-scale special operations have been conducted in the Kurchaloy district of the republic for several days without a break.

Organizations concerned with the oil pipeline construction disregard interests of the region's people and conceal all information from them, said leader of the Armenian Green Union Akop Sanasarian.

The other day, Nechaevka people with transparencies and posters in their hands threatened to block the Kavkaz federal route.

An explosive device was allegedly found in the house of Movsar Dagalayev, which served as a ground for his detention. But the man's relatives insist the device was put stealthily by the servicemen themselves.

Activists of the Shield human rights organization hold that Aliyev persecuted Soviet dissidents and Azerbaijan democrats when being Azerbaijan KGB (State Security Committee) chief and a member of the Political Bureau of the Soviet Communist Party. To build a monument to him in Ukraine is a "shameful and foolish" undertaking.

Russian servicemen came in an UAZ car and armored troop carriers to the village and abducted three locals there.

Ruzana Shibzakharova, a local resident, was detained by Russian servicemen in the district center of Shelkovskaya several days ago.

The process of the refugees' home-coming to Chechnya, which started last spring so actively, has almost come to naught after New Year.

Early in the morning today, the Georgian Interior Ministry launched a special operation in Georgia's Zugdidi district to disarm gangs acting in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone.

The head of the NGO Clear World, Mekhribana Zeynalova, is convinced that the night bars where facts of child prostitution have been established are "in ward" of officials connected with law-enforcement agencies.

We call your attention to the statement by the Coalition of Chechen and Russian NGOs "Yalta Initiative for Peace in Chechnya."

Various religious sects have been quite active in their missionary work in the region for the last ten years. Participants of the conference were offered to pay attention to two confessions: Wahhabism and Jehovism.

Its creation was initiated by refugee journalists as a result of their meeting in Tbilisi in late January.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Usman Saidaliev and wishes to stress that the abduction of civilians is prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The statement reads, in particular, "Olivier Dupuis, a member of the European Parliament, has gone without food for thirteen days but has received no glance from his parliamentary colleagues, from the Council of Europe, from other European bodies or from the transatlantic UN or White House."