News

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 However raised units have not been withdrawn form their stands," Adjarian Interior Minister Djemal Gogitidze said.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.

"We are going where it is peaceful and calm. There is no peace here," some refugees told journalists at Adjaria's administrative border.

"A state of emergency and a curfew have been introduced," the leader of the Adjarian autonomy, Aslan Abashidze, said to Russian journalists in Batumi on March 15.

"I am not going to order troops in Adjaria and think that the use of military force is inadmissible," Mikhail Saakashvili said.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili made a statement late in the evening on March 14 in which he gave Aslan Abashidze 24 hours for unconditional fulfillment of the requirement that the Adjarian leader should secure freedom of movement for the head of the Georgian state on the territory of the autonomy.

The students demanded the release of the Medical College dental student who, according to them, had been taken just from the school by unknown armed men on March 11.

Abu al-Walid, a notorious Chechen field commander of Arab origin, announced that Russia was threatened with a new series of terrorist acts if that one who would be elected new president advocated the war in Chechnya.