RFE/RL Caucasus Report 7/31/2009 6:10:08 PM A review of RFE/RL reporting and analysis about the countries of the South Caucasus and Russia's North Caucasus region.For more stories on the Caucasus, please visit and bookmark our Caucasus page . |
Moscow Court Orders Arrest In Attempt To Kill Kadyrov Foe A court in Moscow has issued an arrest warrant for a suspect in the attempt to kill former Chechen parliament deputy Isa Yamadayev, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More Gallup today released results of a poll conducted in 12 of the 15 former Soviet countries (they left out Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) asking people how they think about their leaders. And the results raised some eyebrows in the newsroom. More Ashot Ghahramanian, governor of the Armavir region in southern Armenia, has confirmed a report in the "Tehran Times" of July 27 that Iran has offered to supply Armenia with nuclear fuel for the Medzamor nuclear power plant, which is located in Armavir. More Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba met separately on July 29 in Sukhumi with the EU special representative for the South Caucasus, Ambassador Peter Semneby, and with Johan Verbeke, who headed the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), the mandate of which expired earlier this month. More The special rapporteur on political prisoners for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has demanded the release of two Azerbaijani bloggers being held in a Baku jail, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reports. More In direct violation of Azerbaijan's commitments as a member of the Council of Europe, the authorities continue their relentless crackdown on all forms of dissent, including that by a new generation of young activists. If Azerbaijan becomes as authoritarian as Belarus or Turkmenistan, this would be a big loss for Western interests in the region. More At a Congressional hearing in Washington this week, legislators heard from the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs that the United States and Russia have begun cooperating in several areas of common interest -- from nuclear nonproliferation to narcotics trafficking. More Moscow police have yet to confirm claims by former Chechen parliament deputy Isa Yamadayev of an attempt to assassinate him at his Moscow apartment late on July 28. Yamadayev told the radio station Ekho Moskvy on July 29 that a man whom he did not identify opened fire on him. He refused to say whether or not he was injured. But he did say his attacker was apprehended. More Georgian, Abkhaz, Russian, EU, and UN representatives took part in a meeting on July 28 in the UN Human Rights Office in Abkhazia's southernmost Gali Raion to discuss the security situation on both sides of the border between Abkhazia and the rest of Georgia. More Ingushetian Prime Minister and acting President Rashid Gaysanov met on July 27 in Moscow with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and briefed him on the political and economic situation in Ingushetia. More The Georgian opposition parties that launched open-ended protests on April 9 in the hope of forcing President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign have suspended their daily protests until September. More Zaal Kasrelishvili, who heads the Tbilisi-based Confederation of Peoples of the Caucasus, was quoted on July 27 by the Georgian weekly "Mteli kvira" as claiming that some 40 militants are currently encamped in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge close to the border between Georgia and Russia, waiting to cross into Chechnya or Ingushetia. More The French, Russian, and U.S. co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group that seeks to mediate a political solution to the Karabakh conflict have modified the so-called Madrid Principles intended to serve as the basis for such an agreement, U.S. co-Chairman Matthew Bryza told RFE/RL's Armenian Service on July 27 following two days of consultations in Krakow with his fellow co-chairs. More Turkmenistan is preparing to take Azerbaijan to international court to resolve a long-standing dispute over ownership of three oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea. A recent bilateral thaw had fueled hopes of a new era of cooperation that could lead to the construction of a pipeline to bring Turkmen gas across the Caspian to Azerbaijan and on to Europe. More Members of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI) government and parliament in exile met in Berlin on July 25 to discuss the formal announcement in Oslo the previous day that ChRI Prime Minister Akhmed Zakayev and Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, speaker of the pro-Moscow Chechen Republic parliament, have embarked on consultations aimed at stabilizing the situation in Chechnya. More Some 1,500 Balkars congregated on July 25 at the monument near Nalchik to the victims of Soviet-era political reprisals to discuss the impact and repercussions of the "counterterror operation" conducted in the Elbruz district in the extreme west of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR) from June 30 until early on July 13. More The working group on territorial integrity and local self-government, one of nine created within the framework of the 70-member commission set up to draft amendments to the Georgian Constitution, proposed on July 22 dropping from the reworked constitution the designation "South Ossetia" in favor of "Tskhinvali region," Caucasus Press reported. More Representatives of the Chechen government in exile and the pro-Moscow Chechen Republic have announced that they have started consultations aimed at promoting national reconciliation in Chechnya. Is this process likely to bring an end to the ongoing fighting across the North Caucasus? More Looking at media coverage of Nabucco, one would think the strategic project to bring Caspian gas to European markets while bypassing Russia was already under construction. But competing visions are still on track to eclipse EU and U.S.-backed ambitions. More Five Abkhaz opposition parties or public organizations have issued a second statement criticizing President Sergei Bagapsh, this time for comments he made during a July 15 interview with the Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy. It was the third such public criticism of Bagapsh in just over two months. More The Ingushetian leadership has formally asked the Russian Interior Ministry to increase the manpower of the republic's police force by 50 percent, and to create additional sub-departments within the ministry, Ingushetian Prime Minister and acting President Rashid Gaysanov announced on July 21. More Daghestan Interior Ministry spokesman Colonel Mark Tolchinsky was quoted on July 22 by the Russian news agency Regnum as saying his ministry has no information that would corroborate allegations that a group of Islamic militants crossed from Daghestan into Azerbaijani territory one week earlier. More Senior officials of the unrecognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have voiced their objections to Georgian hopes to augment with an unspecified number of U.S. personnel the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) currently deployed on the Georgian side of Georgia's internal border with those two republics. More The message U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was sending to both the Georgian and Ukrainian leadership was that the Rose and Orange revolutions were works in progress, that they were still incomplete, and that their promise was yet to be fulfilled. But a deeper signal Biden appeared to be sending was that institutions are more important than individuals and that Washington would structure its policies toward these two allies accordingly. More A complaint filed by jailed Azerbaijani bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada about inhuman treatment by Sabayil district police was rejected by a district court judge on July 23 in a closed-court hearing. More The message the Georgians wanted to send to Vice President Joe Biden was clear almost from the minute Air Force Two landed in Tbilisi. And it was not subtle. More Georgian authorities may seek to focus primarily on security issues as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrives for a two-day visit. More Seven leading UN human rights experts released a formal statement on July 21 affirming their readiness to assist the Russian authorities in carrying out an independent investigation into the murders of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists in Russia, including the recent killing of Natalya Estemirova. More There is a lot more to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine and Georgia than just soothing nerves. In addition to the obligatory hand holding, Biden is offering more than a little bit of tough love as well. More The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, briefed the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee on his country's priorities as the current holder of the EU's rotating six-month presidency. Bildt offered a panoramic list of challenges that Sweden faces through the end of its tenure on December 31. More In an extended address to parliament on July 20, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili outlined a package of proposals intended to assuage the opposition's repeated demands for his resignation. Some of those proposals duplicate those he put forward two months ago at a meeting with opposition leaders on May 11; a couple are new. More The release on July 10 during the G8 summit in Aquila of a statement by the French, Russian, and U.S. presidents calling on Armenia and Azerbaijan to endorse the most recent draft of the so-called Madrid Principles for resolving the Karabakh conflict triggered anger and outrage in both Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. More Unnamed faculty members at institutes of higher education in the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR) have questioned the veracity of claims that the North Caucasus resistance is openly seeking to recruit new members among students. More Slain activist Natalya Estemirova helped hundreds of ordinary Chechens document abuses. Now, in the wake of her murder, rights group Memorial is suspending operations in Chechnya. The step effectively removes the last remaining line of defense for the republic's vulnerable residents. More Former Georgian UN envoy Irakli Alasania has launched a new political party that aims to attract voters weary of the country's longstanding political deadlock. Can the former diplomat become a political peacemaker? More The presidents of Armenian and Azerbaijani again failed to make a breakthrough on the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh when they met in Moscow on July 17, and a peace deal seems as elusive as ever. Ahead of the meeting, RFE/RL correspondents asked Azerbaijanis and Armenians whether they are ready for a possible peace agreement. More What happened to Natalya Estemirova is something that has already happened thousands of times over the last 10 years. A person was abducted and murdered. Even when the bodies are not found, it is clear that they have been murdered. Of these 3,000 or 5,000 "disappearances," how many have been followed up to the point that a court sentenced the guilty? More Human rights organizations worldwide have no doubt that the abduction and killing of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was the direct consequence of her systematic investigation of human rights violations by local and federal power agencies in Chechnya. But as she herself acknowledged, she could have been targeted for those activities at any time. So why was she killed now? More Another Russian activist has been murdered. Natalya Estemirova's colleagues believe her killing was sanctioned by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Is Kadyrov's independence from the Kremlin enabling violence to grow in the volatile North Caucasus? More On July 13, the EU and Turkey signed what's been hailed as a historic deal to start work on the Nabucco pipeline, which is designed to give Europe an alternative to the unreliable supply of natural gas from Russia's Gazprom by connecting directly to Azerbaijan and other Caspian sources. But even if Azerbaijan does have the gas to fill the initial need, some question if it has the political will. More |