News

The first information meeting with Meskhetian Turks on the program of their resettlement to the United States was held in the village of Kholmskaya, Krasnodar Territory, on 16 February 2004.

"Georgia sold 6 SU-25 fighters to Azerbaijan in 2002, without notifying corresponding UN agencies," reports the Azg newspaper, Armenia.

The Moscow authorities will pay out over 265 thousand rubles in a lump sum and will pay over 17 thousand rubles monthly.

The public prosecutor proved that in June 2003, the lieutenant tied a local man to a chair with belts and beat him with the purpose of getting a confession from him.

Locals believe the bombardment was a reaction to the terrorist act committed in the Moscow metro on 6 February 2004.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who leads Al Qaeda's operations on the territory of Iraq, calls upon "all the Jihad fighters" to go to Iraq to wage "holy war" under his command their. He intends to transfer from 1.5 to 2 thousand fighters who stay on the territory of Chechnya now to Iraq.

The cache contained 132 mines of the 120 caliber.

Abkhazian Prime Minister Raul Khajimba came to Moscow on February 15.

"The new authorities enjoy great confidence and have total carte blanche regardless of how much we criticize them. I hope everything they will do will be under strict control of the West, which will not allow them to move towards aggression," says the expert in the issues of resolution of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.

"We cannot prevent torture against detainees at the police departments. The Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General's Office keep on disregarding all the appeals by international and republican human rights organizations," reads the statement.

Vagram Balayan thinks that in the context of the Baku-Jeikhan oil pipeline construction, the interested countries may force the Armenian side to accept certain variants of the resolution.

General Vladimir Arshba warned that if such a situation recurred, Abkhazia would find a way to defend its interests at sea, as well as a way to defend peace fishermen.

The Society "Memorial" does not back up the candidacy of the present President, and it is undoubted. At the same time, Memorial, as a united organization, does not support election campaigns of the other candidates either.

"Countries of the Caspian region do not have enough resources to prevent oil spills and liquidate their consequences. Therefore our goal is to draw the public's attention to this problem," said a representative of the NGO Crude Accountability, Michelle Kinman.

A judicial contest between regional budget trade unions and the Stavropol administration has ended with the victory of the former.

Rustam Djakalayev, 1989, a resident of the village of Assinovskaya, was shot down by Russian servicemen in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Ingushetia, on February 3.

The number of Azerbaijanians living in Russia increased from 340 thousand in 1989 to 620 thousand in 2002.

The risk exists that Georgia may be transferred from the second group of countries to the third one, which will damage the country's international image and may reduce financial help from abroad.

Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev died in a hospital in Qatar as a result of an attempt on his life, reported an Al Arabiya TV Channel correspondent with reference to medical sources in Doha (Qatar's capital).

The first meeting of workers of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with Meskhetian Turks will be held on February 16 in the village of Kholmskaya, Krasnodar Territory's Abinsky district. The IOM representatives will inform the Meskhetian Turks about the program of resettlement to the United States.