News

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is expected to discuss with Azerbaijan political and military leaders the preparation for the international Rose-Roth Seminar planned to be conducted by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Baku in late November.

Raul Khadzhimba and Sergey Bagapsh, two candidates for the Abkhazian presidency, visited Moscow on November 1-2.

A session of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) is to be held in Geneva on November 16-17. Azerbaijan's official report on implementing the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will be presented at the session.

Eye-witnesses of the explosion in the center of Makhachkala confirm law enforcers' reports that nobody was in Oka at the moment of the explosion.

Commenting on this report, human rights activist Leyla Yunus said that "recently the Azerbaijan authorities have faced pressure from international organizations, which demand that the opposition leaders should be released, and evidently this circumstance prompted them to make such a decision."

"It's very difficult to fight with such a system of course. Mass repressions against participants in meetings and demonstrations in spring and summer confirm it," chair of the Anrapetutiun (Republic) party and deputy of the National Assembly Albert Bazeian said.

In his interview with the Caucasian Knot correspondent, Musa Shanibov, the former chairman of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples, said that Abkhazia faced the most dangerous problem. And this problem is created by those who traditionally consider both the authorities and people their property.

In his interview with the Caucasian Knot correspondent, Novruz Mamedov, head of the foreign relations department in the Azerbaijan presidential administration, commented on the recent decision by the General Committee of the UN General Assembly to recommend putting the question about the situation on the country's occupied territory on the agenda.

"This action is caused by today's intention of the parliament to pass a resolution canceling the presidential decree about a repeated election of the head of the republic and to claim a vote of no-confidence in Vladislav Ardzinba," Vasiliy Avidzba, head of Raul Khadzhimba's election staff, said to the Caucasian Knot correspondent.

"We claim one more time there's no state policy of resettlement," spokesman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry Gamlet Gasparian said commenting on Azerbaijan's initiative to put the question "About the Situation on the Occupied Azerbaijan Territory" on the agenda of the 59th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Abkhazian President Vladislav Ardzinba has signed a decree to hold a repeated election of the head of the republic.

Under the Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation, an application for the prolongation of a residential permit must be submitted six months prior to its expiration. The repatriates claim no one has familiarized them with this document.

On October 23, from 200 to 500 people, supposedly relatives of the Beslan tragedy victims, blocked off the federal route Kavkaz on the administrative border with Ingushetia.

The Chechen Interior Ministry has refused to give any comments on the matter, claiming that Chechen policemen have conducted no actions in the village of Noviye Atagi recently.

Police cruelly beaten picket participants. Several people received serious bodily injuries as a result, and more than 30 participants were detained.

The Baztab website, close to Iranian special services, spread information yesterday about the gathering of Azerbaijan troops on the border with Iran.

On October 21, indignant residents of Beslan gathered at the building of the town administration. Their indignation was caused by the fact that material aid did not reach victims.

"Great Britain treats Azerbaijan's territorial integrity with respect, and such trips don't correspond with the interests of Great Britain therefore the government recommends not to pay such visits," embassy officials said.

The recipients will include internally displaced persons (IDPs) and vulnerable groups in central and southern Chechnya as well as IDPs in Ingushetia and Daghestan. Assistance includes: food and non-food items, medical support, shelter and water/sanitation, education, psychological assistance and vocational training.

The Monitoring Group of Human Rights Organizations has addressed a letter to Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis in connection with the conviction of seven opposition leaders.