Liz Fuller writes the Caucasus Report blog for RFE/RL.
Diplomatic representatives abroad of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria have drafted a manifesto that reaffirms their readiness to embark on unconditional peace talks.
World leaders will congregate on the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan on July 13 to celebrate the launch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) export pipeline for Caspian oil. The completion of that project, years later than initially envisaged, represents a triumph of U.S. geopolitical priorities over entrepreneurial caution -- despite persistent squabbling among the various parties involved over financing and the share each will finally receive from any profits.
The death of Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev creates a window of opportunity for those few Russian officials who advocate peace talks as the only logical way to end the ongoing fighting across the North Caucasus.
Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev, 41, began his one-man campaign against Russian rule over Chechnya with an aircraft hijacking in 1991. Russia's most-wanted man was reported killed in an explosion in Ingushetia on July 10.
As Security Council secretary under President Boris Yeltsin, Ivan Rybkin played a key role in transforming relations between Russia and Chechnya after the first Chechen war. But his advice to current leaders on the Chechnya conflict goes unheeded.
Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1989 (Photolur) PRAGUE, June 30, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Lifting the veil of confidentiality that has marked the Karabakh peace process since it began in 1992, the French, Russian and U.S. co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group tasked with mediating a solution to the conflict have over the past eight days gone public with a summary of the basic principles currently under discussion.
Basayev in Budennovsk in 1995 (AFP) PRAGUE, June 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Chechen Republic Ichkeria President and resistance commander Doku Umarov named Shamil Basayev on June 27 as his vice president and as government chairman, chechenpress.org reported. Umarov simultaneously released Basayev from the post of first deputy prime minister to which he was named last year by Umarov's predecessor, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev.
(RFE/RL) PRAGUE, June 21, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, who was killed in a battle with combined Russian and Chechen forces in his hometown of Argun early on June 17, served just 15 months as president of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria. But over that period he succeeded in formalizing the organizational and logistical framework to expand the war into other North Caucasus republics. The resistance website chechenpress.org claimed on June 17 that under Sadulayev the resistance forces did not perpetrate a single attack on a civilian target that could substantiate the Russian argument that the resistance are "terrorists."
Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov announced on June 17 the death of Chechen rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev. How will this affect the situation in war-ravaged Chechnya?
Recently, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, the speaker of the lower house of the Chechen parliament and a close associate of the prime minister, has repeatedly advocated recombining the Russian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia to form a single federation subject.
The Georgian parliament recently passed a resolution expressing support for the country's aspirations to NATO membership. Although NATO has noted "significant progress," Georgia's chances of joining the alliance before 2009 are slim.
When Ramzan Kadyrov was named in early March to the post of Chechen prime minister, he publicly vowed to relinquish that post if he failed to bring about a radical improvement in living conditions within three months.
At the first meeting since January 2001 of the group established by the UN to discuss the standoff in Abkhazia, Abkhazia's foreign minister presented a new plan to Georgian representatives to resolve the conflict.
A voter being marked with invisible ink during the November election (RFE/RL) PRAGUE, May 12, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Voters in Azerbaijan will go to the polls on May 13 to elect parliament deputies in 10 constituencies (of a total 125) where the outcome of the November 6 parliamentary ballot was annulled.
In an address to parliament in the unrecognized Republic of Abkhazia, President Sergei Bagapsh outlined new proposals for resolving the conflict between Abkhazia and Georgia.
For years, Georgian legislators and oppositionists alike have suggested periodically -- generally when relations with Russia take a downturn -- that Georgia might quit the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Artur Baghdasarian speaking in France last month (epa) Armenian parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian has publicly distanced himself from one of the key tenets of the country's foreign and security policy -- nonmembership of NATO -- hinting that his Orinats Yerkir (OY, Law-Based State) party may even pull out of the government over the issue. But some analysts question whether Baghdasarian, who is widely regarded as populist and opportunistic, would risk doing so with 12 months to go before the 2007 parliamentary elections.
Despite a joint statement by the leaders of Adygeya and Krasnodar Krai that the plan to merge the two regions is no longer on the agenda, President Putin's envoy to the district is reportedly still pushing that plan.
It has been more than 13 years since Ingush and Ossetian informal militias, the latter backed by Russian security forces, engaged in a brief but brutal conflict in North Ossetia's Prigorodny Raion, to which both ethnic groups lay claim.
(RFE/RL) For almost two years, Adygeya's Slavs, who currently constitute some 70 percent of that republic's population of 445,000, have been lobbying to subsume the Republic of Adygeya into Krasnodar Krai, within which it currently constitutes an enclave.
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