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The Georgian Defense Ministry is planning to reduce the number of its personnel from 23,000 to 17,000 people in the near future.

Earlier, the Board Council of the Association of Relatives of the Missing Nagorno-Karabakh Soldiers delivered an address raising concern about destinies of the soldiers taken prisoners and civilians taken hostages.

Abductors, wearing camouflage uniforms and masks and moving in cars without number plates, enter local houses by force. And the Chechen Interior Ministry opens criminal cases in connection with the adductions.

Today relatives of seven young men killed in Karachaevo-Cherkessia occupied the ground floor of the republican Government House and entered the private office of the president of Karachaevo-Cherkessia by force.

Elections for the Chechen parliament will most likely be held in October 2005, Chechen President Alu Alkhanov told a press conference in Grozny yesterday, November 4.

Ingushetia has all necessary prerequisites and conditions for European businessmen to invest in its economy, the head of the delegation, vice president of the European Economic Chamber Viktor Mikheyev, believes.

The United States is dissatisfied with the course of the election campaign and society's low interest in the municipal elections.

"I've got a video record of how two different persons are giving evidence that the ArmenTel majority owner, the Greek company OTE, promised some Armenian officials a bribe of $7 million," deputy of the Armenian National Assembly Arshak Sadoian announced.

Medics believe that the grave ecological situation in Chechnya as well as stress situations in which residents of the republic regularly are contributes to the increase in the infant mortality, sickness rate, and birth of physically unhealthy children.

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.