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"There is no legal basis for either prohibiting this peaceful meeting or for breaking it up," stated Dr. Rhodes, Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation (IHF).

High-level official statements promising and praising the harshest methods to fight corruption may encourage violations of human rights, Human Rights Watch said.

"Out of thirteen independent broadcasters currently working in Azerbaijan, nine operate in the regions," said Whit Mason, Internews' Country Director in Azerbaijan.

The Executive Committee of the Extraordinary Congress of the People of Kalmykia, founded in January 2003 to remove Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from the Kalmyk presidency, intends to arrange a march to Moscow at the end of February.

The Krasnodar Regional Court has denied the appeal by the Novorossiysk Fund "School of Peace" against the decision of a district court on the liquidation of the Fund.

Unknown people set fire to the regional office of the Christian Democratic Party in the capital of Adjaria, Batumi, on February 22.

The general was quoted as saying "only the presence of the CIS PKF (Peacekeeping Forces) in conflict areas can guarantee security for civilians and facilitate the process of peaceful adjustment between conflict parties."

Altogether 3,851 phone calls were received by Echo Moskvy Radio for 5 minutes of the survey.

Paata Shevarnadze, a son of the Georgian ex-president, denied a number of mass media reports stating that Eduard Shevarnadze received guarantees on his family immunity upon his retirement. He also stated that the Shevarnadze family was a victim to political persecution on behalf of the current authorities.

The leaders of the Russian national organizations For Human Rights and Russian Radicals, Lev Ponomaryov and Nikolai Khramov, have been released from the Kitay-Gorod police station.

He told it in the interview published by Chechen separatists' Internet agency Kavkaz-Center.

Memorial evenings devoted to the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Ingush people are being held in all towns and regions of the republic these days. On February 23, it was 60 years since the day of the deportation of the Ingush people to Kazakhstan.

A special session of the Presidium of the National Assembly of Nagorny Karabakh was held on February 20. It was devoted to the Day of Artsakh's Revival.

The authors of the statement call the "absurd list" of persons giving information as one of the main defects of the draft legislation.

Lechi Sardalov, Mate Tsekhisashvili, Madina, Magomadova, Ruslan Badalov, Zargan Makhadjiyev are among those human rights activists who went on hunger strike.

On February 20, it was 16 years since the Soviet of People's Deputies of Nagorny Karabakh passed the resolution on the reunification of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region with Armenia.

"We have repeatedly emphasized that voluntariness must be the fundamental principle of the return of displaced persons from Ingushetia to Chechnya," said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov.

OMON (special tasks police platoon) fighters, who had been given notice in advance, came to the place of the action in 10 buses, as well as police detachments and ambulance cars.

The Moscow Mayor's Office banned the meeting to commemorate victims of the war, to protest against it, and to urge a political settlement of the Russian-Chechen conflict that was planned to be held at the memorial stone on Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow on February 23.

The possible change of the place for the exercises is connected with the brutal murder committed in Budapest on February 19, when a lieutenant of the Armenian Armed Forces was killed by an Azerbaijan officer.