Itar-Tass news digest of April 10:4

MOSCOW – The death toll from the accident at the Taizhina mine in
Osinniki town, the Kemerovo region, has reached 20, a regional
administration source told Itar-Tass.

MOSCOW – Rescuers are trying to reach places where they supposedly can
find miners blocked after the accident in the Taizhina coalmine. The
rescuers are working at two possible escape ways, an officer on duty
at the headquarters dealing with the accident consequences told
Itar-Tass. The nearest way is blocked by rock that caved in, and work
to remove the obstruction is going on. Sixteen people have been
evacuated from the mine by rescuers or got onto the surface
themselves. Two of the miners are hospitalised.

YEREVAN – Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty
Organisation (CSTO) Nikolai Bordyuzha has discussed with the Armenian
leadership an agenda of the CSTO’s June session, which is to be held
in Astana, Kazakhstan. During his talks with President Robert
Kocharyan of Armenia he “exchanged views on ways of upgrading
cooperation within the CSTO framework and matters of raising its
efficiency,” a source at the presidential press service told Tass on
Saturday.

YEREVAN – Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty
Organisation (CSTO) Nikolai Bordyuzha believes that “the CSTO should
be adapted to the security problems which the CSTO countries are
facing.” “Nowadays our key problems are terrorism, organized crime and
drug trafficking, but not a military threat,” Bordyuzha told a news
conference here on Saturday.

MOSCOW – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak told Itar-Tass
on Saturday that the provisions of the Proliferation Security
Initiative (PSI) that U.S. President George W. Bush launched in
Krakow, Poland, last May were getting closer to the Russian
approach. “We are very pleased to note that this plan is generally
developing in a direction corresponding to our views,” the Russian
diplomat said commenting on the U.S. initiative designed to halt the
WMD proliferation. Kislyak said that the PSI authors regarded the
initiative as an attempt to give a collective answer to a global
threat that can be posed by “black markets” in the context of the WMD
proliferation.

CAIRO – A delegation of the Iraqi leadership has arrived in the city
of Al-Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, for negotiations to
stop the fighting between armed residents and the U.S. military. The
delegation consists of representatives of the Iraqi Islamic Party and
one of the Interim Governing Council’s members.

MOSCOW – Ella Pamfilova, the head of the Russian president’s
Commission for Human Rights, believes that Iraq is facing a new
humanitarian catastrophe that calls for immediate and active
U.N. interference. “It is absolutely clear that Iraq is facing a new
humanitarian tragedy, this time on a larger scale, while the United
States is not meeting its commitments of an occupying power under
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483,” Pamfilova told reporters on
Saturday.

YEREVAN – The Armenian opposition demands resignation of incumbent
President Robert Kocharyan. Albert Bazeyan, an opposition leader and
chairman of the Republic party, said the question of holding a
referendum on no-confidence vote for the Armenian president had nearly
been exhausted. The ruling pro-presidential coalition has refused to
include the referendum issue in the agenda of a regular three-day
session of the Armenian parliament. “Robert Kocharyan should go. The
sooner he does, the better,” Bazeyan told a meeting in front of the
Yerevan Opera House on Saturday.