Liz Fuller writes the Caucasus Report blog for RFE/RL.
The Tbilisi office of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) is encouraged by the "constructive" atmosphere at the 4 August UN-mediated talks between Abkhaz and Georgian delegations and at a 10 August meeting in Sukhum between top Abkhaz leaders and the diplomatic representatives in Tbilisi of the five member states of the "Friends of the UN Secretary-General for Georgia" group, an UNOMIG spokeswoman told RFE/RL on 11 August.
(RFE/RL) The Azerbaijani authorities and supporters and associates of Ruslan Bashirli, leader of the opposition youth movement Yeni Fikir, have offered widely diverging accounts of, and explanations for, the events that culminated in Bashirli's arrest last week on charges of plotting to overthrow the Azerbaijani leadership.
Addressing a 3 August conference in Baku on "Religion and National Security," Rafik Aliyev, chairman of the Azerbaijani government's Committee for Work with Religious Formations, warned that the increased activity of "Wahhabis," meaning members of radical and/or unregistered Islamic groups, poses a threat to political stability in Azerbaijan in the run-up to the 6 November parliamentary elections. Reports of at least one, possibly two National Security Ministry operations against Wahhabis in recent weeks would seem to substantiate Aliyev's apprehension.
(RFE/RL) Azerbaijan's Prosecutor-General's Office announced on 4 August the arrest of Ruslan Bashirli, leader of the opposition youth movement Yeni Fikir (New Thinking), on charges of plotting to overthrow the Azerbaijani leadership at the instigation of Armenian intelligence operatives. Those allegations, which the Armenian National Security Service and Bashirli's fellow Azerbaijani oppositionists have both rejected, highlight Azerbaijan's ongoing suspicion and hostility toward Armenia and call into question Baku's commitment to creating a "level playing field" for all parties wishing to participate in the 6 November parliamentary election.
An antigovernment demonstration in mid-June As in 2000 and 2003, Azerbaijan's various opposition forces appear reluctant, if not unable, to close ranks in a single bloc to participate in the 6 November parliamentary elections. Both the "traditional" opposition parties and the more recent "liberal" forces have made their insistence that the election process and vote be free and fair a key tenet of their respective election platforms.
Militia in South Ossetia (file photo) The authorities of the unrecognized breakaway Republic of South Ossetia have rejected three times, most recently earlier this month, successive offers by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to grant the region "the broadest autonomy" within a unitary Georgian state. On 25 and 26 July, Georgian officials accused South Ossetians acting under orders from Russian military intelligence of staging a car bombing --> /featuresarticle/2005/7/9601C33F-925C-48C1-857F-8B7C76B52D31.html in central Georgia in February that killed three people, and they alleged that the same group of saboteurs has missiles capable of shooting down aircraft. Could those allegations herald an imminent military operation to bring South Ossetia back under Tbilisi's control?
President Ilham Aliyev (file photo) Conventional wisdom assumes that a covert struggle is under way between "conservatives" and "liberals" within the Azerbaijani leadership. But that assumption may be an oversimplification that fails to acknowledge a faction that advocates a managed transition to a more liberal political system, but one with an Islamic component.
Prague, 15 July 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Senior Chechen field commander Doku Umarov, whom Chechen opposition President Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev named as his deputy last month, has condemned the terrorist attacks perpetrated by his fellow field commander, Shamil Basaev, in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL correspondent Andrei Babitskii.
Of all the latent crises engendered by Moscow's failure over the past 13 years to craft a long-term comprehensive strategy for the North Caucasus, the one now threatening to erupt in Daghestan is arguably both the most complex and the most intractable. Even though Daghestan has been a byword for instability and political violence ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in recent months bomb attacks and political killings have become almost a daily occurrence.
Azerbaijani President Aliyev At its final session before the two-month summer recess, the Azerbaijani parliament approved on 28 June in the second and third (final) readings 43 separate election law amendments proposed by President Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijani media reported.
Expectations of Saakashvili were high during the 2003 Rose Revolution Two developments in recent weeks have further tarnished Georgia's claim to be the trailblazer of liberal democracy within the CIS. The first was the launch of a process to staff the Central Election Commission and its lower-level equivalents with people known to be loyal to the ruling elite. That process also effectively excluded many Armenians and Azerbaijanis from southern and eastern Georgia from serving on such commissions. The second was the national legislature's initial backing of an amendment to empower the Tbilisi municipal council to elect the city mayor.
Similar raids in Chechnya have never raised much protest from Moscow On one level, the Russian authorities' outraged response to the sweep operation in the village of Borozdinovskaya in northeastern Chechnya on 4 June that triggered the exodus to neighboring Daghestan of several hundred local families appears to be a laudable, if exceptional and somewhat belated, acknowledgement of the arbitrary suffering inflicted on local noncombatants during the past six years of fighting.
Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia (file photo) Senior Georgian politicians, including President Mikheil Saakashvili, Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli, and Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili, hailed the agreement reached in Moscow on 30 May on the terms and time frame for the closure of the two remaining Russian military bases in Georgia as heralding a new era in bilateral relations. So too did international organizations, including NATO and the EU.
In the nine months since his appointment as President Vladimir Putin's representative to the Southern Federal District, former presidential-administration head Dmitrii Kozak has managed to defuse at least two major crises in the region -- in the Karachaevo-Cherkessia Republic last November and in Adygeya in May.
Azerbaijan's National Security Ministry and Prosecutor-General's Office claimed in a joint statement on 13 June to have apprehended two men who have confessed that they were recruited by a person close to the opposition Musavat party to blow up Tagi Ibragimov, the president of the independent television company Azad Azerbaycan, and Appeals Court Judge Bahram Shukyurov.
Demonstrators in Baku on 4 June During talks in Baku late on 3 June, the Baku municipal authorities finally caved in to demands by the opposition Ugur bloc (comprising the Musavat party, the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, and the progressive wing of the divided Azerbaijan Popular Front Party [AHCP]) that they give the green light for a planned march and rally in the city the following day.
Saidullaev succeeded Aslan Maskhadov (pictured) as leader of the Chechen resistance Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev, the successor to slain Chechen President and resistance leader Aslan Maskhadov, told RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service in a 3 June interview that he strongly condemns terrorism and said it is not part of the resistance's policy.
31 May 2005 (RFE/RL) -- The ongoing process of revising and formalizing the internal territorial-administrative composition of Russia's North Caucasus republics, which triggered protests in Ingushetia in March, has now served as the catalyst for the reemergence of demands by the Balkar minority for the division of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR) into two units to give that group an autonomous republic of its own.
Pro-Moscow Chechen President Alkhanov More than two months after Russian forces hunted down and killed Chechen President and resistance leader Aslan Maskhadov, the resistance forces now under the overall command of radical field commander Shamil Basaev still have not mounted any major retaliatory action. But it is unclear whether the resistance is too weak to hit back, or is lying low and preparing a new terrorist attack.
Police wielding batons against a demonstrator in Baku today. Officials later denied they used force against protesters 21 May 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Riot police armed with shields and batons intervened on 21 May to prevent scores of would-be participants from reaching the venue for a planned opposition rally and march in Baku, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reported.
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