Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Feb 10 2005

Georgia: Saakashvili Ready To Extend ‘Friendly Hand’ To Putin

Mikheil Saakashvili (file photo)

10 February 2005 — Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili today said
he is ready to mend fences with Russian President Vladimir Putin,
provided Moscow agrees to compromise on outstanding issues.

Addressing the inaugural meeting of the Georgian parliament’s spring
session, Saakashvili today assessed the state of his country, one
year into his mandate.

Touching on foreign policy, the Georgian leader described ties with
neighboring Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkey as “idyllic.”

Russia, however, remains a different story. But Saakashvili said that
could change — if Moscow adopts a more compromising attitude on the
countries’ disputes.

“On these conditions, I am ready to go again to Moscow,” Saakashvili
said. “I am ready to meet again with [Russian] President [Vladimir]
Putin and extend the hand of friendship to him. This hand,
unfortunately, has been hanging in the air since we met about a year
ago.”

Relations between Moscow and Tbilisi have been strained by a number
of issues, including what Russia says is Georgia’s support of Chechen
separatist fighters.

Shortly after his election in January 2004, Saakashvili visited
Moscow with pledges to give bilateral ties a fresh start. He offered
to set up joint patrols and checkpoints along the Chechen section of
Russia’s border with Georgia, to ensure that separatist fighters
could not use the South Caucasus country as a safe haven.

Relations began to improve, with Georgian security forces discreetly
extraditing a number of Chechen fighters to Russia. Last spring,
dozens of Moscow businessmen traveled to Tbilisi for the first
Russian-Georgian economic forum.

But tensions began to return last summer, when Saakashvili dispatched
troops near and in Georgia’s separatist republic of South Ossetia,
officially to combat local contraband rings.

The move triggered a weeklong series of deadly skirmishes that
threatened to reignite the 12-year-old Georgian-South Ossetian war.

Russia, which has supported South Ossetia since it gained de facto
independence, blamed Tbilisi for the renewed tension. Shortly
afterward, Moscow renewed accusations that Georgia is sheltering
Chechen fighters.

Moscow and Tbilisi also remain at odds over the fate of Russia’s two
remaining military bases in Georgia.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has
repeatedly asked Moscow to honor a 1999 commitment to vacate its
Georgian bases.

Russia says it will take at least another decade to complete such an
expensive and logistically complex move.

The Kremlin fears Georgia, which has set its sights on eventual NATO
membership, may one day use the Russian bases to host Western troops.

But Saakashvili today reiterated an earlier pledge that no foreign
soldiers will be stationed on Georgian soil once the Russians depart.

“There are certain principles all [Georgian] political forces and
parties must agree upon,” he said. “These principles are those of
Georgia’s European integration and the absence of foreign military
bases on its territory.”

The Georgian president also warned that anyone opposed to those
objectives would be prosecuted.

“All those parties that will say Georgia should not move along the
path towards European integration, and that it should not seek
membership into those European institutions we want to join, all
those parties that will say foreign military bases should be deployed
on our soil and that foreigners should be allowed to interfere in the
development of our country — either militarily or in any other way
— all those political parties must be automatically outlawed,”
Saakashvili said.

It was not immediately clear which parties or groupings Saakashvili
had in mind.

(Compiled from wire service reports.)

Christian Science Monitor
Feb 10 2005

Calm before the Chechen storm?

Rebels urge Russia to peace talks before Feb. 22 cease-fire deadline.

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

MOSCOW – A surprise unilateral cease-fire ordered by two top Chechen
rebel commanders has Moscow abuzz with debate. Experts are asking, is
it a genuine chance for peace, a PR stunt, or an artificial lull
before a fresh storm of Beslan-style terrorist assaults?
Few see much hope of ending the Chechen war, now well into its sixth
year, unless there is a political breakthrough that sees the Kremlin,
the separatist rebels, and pro-Moscow Chechen forces sit down
together to seek a settlement.

President Vladimir Putin appears determined to stay his chosen
course, which involves signing a treaty with the Kremlin’s handpicked
Chechen leader Alu Alkhanov – perhaps as early as this May – that
will lock Chechnya into Russian permanently. But amid reports that
the rebels could have acquired a nuclear device or radiological
weapons, many experts see only an escalating cycle of violence in the
offing.

“The situation in Chechnya is currently at a dead end,” says
Alexander Iskanderyan, director of the independent Center for
Caucasian Studies, in Yerevan, Armenia. “The key to its solution is
in the Kremlin, but I see little hope of change there.”

Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya’s rebel president-in-hiding, called
attention this week to the self-imposed cease-fire, which had been
announced last month on a rebel website but went largely unnoticed.
He portrayed the move as an olive branch to get peace negotiations
started, and urged Russian leaders to take up the offer to talk
before the cease-fire expires on Feb. 22.

“If our Kremlin opponents are reasonable, this war will end at the
negotiating table,” he told the Moscow daily Kommersant, in a rare
interview published Monday. “If not, blood will continue to be
spilled for a long time but we will reject any moral responsibility
for this continued madness.”

The cease-fire was endorsed by Shamil Basayev, the notorious Chechen
field commander who has claimed responsibility for many terror
strikes against Russia, including the 2002 seizure of 800 hostages in
a Moscow theater and last September’s school siege in Beslan that
left 331 people dead, half of them children. In an interview
broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 News this month, Mr. Basayev
declared: “We are planning more Beslan-type operations in future
because we are forced to do so.”

That threat gained ominous traction this week when self-exiled
Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky said a “Chechen businessman” had once
offered to sell him a miniature nuclear weapon stolen from former
Soviet stockpiles. “It is a portable nuclear bomb,” Mr. Berezovsky
said. “Some part of it is missing at the moment, but these are small
details.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry quickly denied that, saying that all
Soviet-made “suitcase bombs” are accounted for. But independent
experts say Chechen militants may well have the means to produce a
“dirty bomb,” with deadly radioactive materials wrapped around
conventional explosives. “They probably don’t have a real nuclear
weapon, but we know they have had access to radioactive substances in
the past,” says Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based security expert.
“This threat is very real. A dirty bomb could make part of a Russian
city uninhabitable for 100 years. We may expect anything after the
cease-fire ends.”

Though the Kremlin has not responded to Mr. Maskhadov’s peace
overture, pro-Moscow Chechen leader Mr. Alkhanov said the only issue
he is willing to discuss with rebel leaders is their surrender.
“Negotiations with those who have engaged in bloody crimes against
society are absolutely out of the question,” he said. “The only real
salvation for such people is to give themselves up and confess their
crimes.”

There is doubt about whether the cease-fire, which was to take effect
Feb. 1, is holding. Russia’s official ITAR-Tass agency, which usually
reports peace and order prevailing in Chechnya, quoted Russian
commanders Thursday saying there have been up to 20 rebel attacks
each day this week.

Some experts say that Maskhadov, elected in Chechnya’s only
internationally recognized polls in 1997, no longer controls rebel
forces and is a fading force. “Maskhadov is just one of the leaders
of the Chechen resistance, and not even the strongest,” says Mr.
Iskanderyan. “[The cease-fire] may be just an attempt to show he’s
still relevant.”

But 17 prominent Russian human rights activists issued a statement
Wednesday warning that Chechnya was turning into an “eternal
conflict” and urging the Kremlin to take up the offer for
negotiations as “practically the only way of stopping Chechnya’s
transformation into yet another front in the confrontation between
radical Islam and Western civilization.”

The pro-Moscow Chechen government insists that reconstruction of the
war-torn republic has made great strides, though there is little
independent information. At a Moscow press conference this week,
Alkhanov said the treaty being drafted will settle the conflict by
granting Chechnya some economic autonomy “within the federal
constitution.”

But according to Malik Saidulayev, a Moscow-based businessman and
Chechen community leader, there is no security, order, or prospect
for peace in Chechnya.

The Kremlin’s “policy of Chechenization of the conflict has failed
and the situation in the republic has grown much worse,” he says.
“The war is not ending, it is spreading to the rest of the Caucasus
region.”

–Boundary_(ID_aMMM7rJDXeUy9/5gCkHrYw)–

RUSSIA AS A DEMOGRAPHIC MELTING POT

RIA Novosti, Russia
February 10, 2005

MOSCOW, February 10. (RIA Novosti)-The decline in Russia’s
economically active population in the next 15 years will seriously
restrict the country’s economic growth. Russia’s workforce is
contracting due to fewer residents with Russian roots from the CIS
and Baltic countries coming to resettle in Russia, writes a weekly
magazine, Itogi.

According to Yury Dyomin, the first deputy director of the Federal
Migration Service, his department issued registration documents to
over 100,000 foreign citizens in 2004 as part of a program to attract
foreign workforce. The largest CIS workforce suppliers are Ukraine
(36,152), Moldova (14,137) and Armenia (4,793).

The official believes that it would be ideal for Russia if
representatives of indigenous Russian ethnic groups came to the
country. However, this is hardly possible today. At the same time,
the country is traditionally a multi-ethnic state and “Russian
society has always been able to absorb other peoples in its melting
pot.”
Illegal migration is a particularly acute problem for the country.
Various estimates put the number of illegal immigrants in Russia
today at between 1.5 million and 15 million. Therefore, Mr. Dyomin
believes his department’s objective is to create conditions for
legalizing the larger part of this workforce.

This is difficult to do because the number of the documents that CIS
citizens must present to enter Russia has been recently cut from 18
to 5 to comply with international norms.

In the past 12 years, over 8 million Russians from other CIS
countries and the Baltic states have come to live in Russia. To step
up this process, the possibility for migrants to feel comfortable in
Russia must be sealed legislatively. Apart from that, conditions have
to be created to encourage migrants to settle in regions that need
manpower, for example, Siberia and the Far East.

AZERI MF CONSIDERS BAKU CAN RETURN “SEIZED TERRITORIES” THIS YEAR

PanArmenian News
Feb 10 2005

10.02.2005 14:56

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov holds the
opinion that official Baku will have the possibility to return the
“occupied territories” this year. “However, favorable attitude of the
other conflicting party is necessary for it”, he said

AZERI FM TO DISCUSS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WITH HIS TURKISH ASSOCIATE

PanArmenian News
Feb 10 2005

10.02.2005 14:44

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Azeri Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmar Mamedyarov
is going to discuss the issue of the Armenian Genocide and the
Armenian-Turkish relationships with his Turkish associate Abdullah
Gul. Besides, the parties are scheduled to consider the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict.

“QARVATCHAR CAN BY NO MEANS BE HANDED OVER TO AZERBAIJAN”

Azg/arm
11 Feb 05

Davit Babayan, 32, is a political analyst from Stepanakert with a
masterâ~@~Ys degree in international relations of Central European
University in Budapest and American University of Armenia. He
was participant of a number of conferences on Caucasian issues in
Moscow, Sofia, Warsaw, Hungary and Austria. He is author of around
50 scientific publications.

– Davit, you were accompanying the OSCE monitoring group during its
mission in territories under Nagorno Karabakh forcesâ~@~Y control. You
said in Qarvatchar that that region should by no means be handed
over to Azerbaijan because of its geopolitical location and its
water resources.

– Qarvatchar can be considered one of the vital territories securing
Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia. Mountainous landscape makes it ideal
for defense. Besides, the most important rivers of Armenia, Tartar,
Khachen, Arpa and Vorotan originate here. Arpa and Vorotan are the
only guarantee for Sevana Lakeâ~@~Ys viability. Passing this territory
over to Azerbaijan will mean giving it a powerful weapon for putting
pressure on Artsakh and Armenia. Baku has already practiced such a
policy in 1970s and 1980s that resulted in upsurge of new diseases.
Nagorno Karabakh was leading in the number of people affected with
those infections in the South Caucasus. Besides, Baku constantly
proclaimed that Armenians bury nuclear waste in Qarvatchar. If they
take hold of the territory they may poison our water resources blaming
the alleged nuclear waste that Armenians buried.

– Davit, the monitoring group accomplished its technical mission. What
do you think may the possible developments in Karabakh issueâ~@~Ys
resolution be after the report on situation?

– Things may develop in various directions as neither the conflicting
sides nor the international institutions will show identical
approach to it. I would divide the possible developments into
outer and inner. Itâ~@~Ys not excluded that there will be outside
forces trying to put certain points of the report against us. They
will use the tactics of dragging humanitarian issues to political
sphere. For instance, after being convinced that there is no state
policy of inhabiting the territories supervised by Karabakh and
that thousands of people living there are refugees from Getashen,
Shahumian, Martakert, Baku and elsewhere, these forces will manipulate
the fact that hundreds of thousands Azeris live in tents and demand
that those people return. Such demands certainly will not help
conflictâ~@~Ys regulation. But I think that this approach will not
dominate international community. The work of the monitoring group
and the conditions Nagorno Karabakh creates will have a positive
impact on the republic, proving once again that Nagorno Karabakh is a
democratic and free state. This is an immensely important moment that
will surely play into our hands. As to inner developments, societies
in both Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh may make their demands to
the authorities. Our society may demand that a state program of
inhabiting the liberated territories elaborated and realized. And
the Azerbaijani society may demand that Baku puts more pressure on
international circles in the issue of refugees.

– Do you think it possible that the international community will
force Armenia and Karabakh to return part of the territories at least
since there are no Armenian settlers and no inhabitation is in process
while thousands of Azeris suffer hardship?

– I donâ~@~Yt think that the international community will force
Nagorno Karabakh to hand over any territory. The issue of territories
is political and is linked with Karabakhâ~@~Ys status.

– Azeri press was arguing lately that the US might use the territory
of Karabakh in case it attacks Iran. Do you think it possible?

– I think that such talks are political manipulations targeting at
aggravating Armenian-US and Armenian-Iranian relations. Even if there
is a military action between America and Iran, the US will use its
air force. In this view, the territory of Karabakh cannot be used as
there is no runway there. Any overland operation also seems unlikely
as the width of Arax River in Karabakh is 65-110 meters, depth â~@~S
1.1-1.8 and the current reaches 1-2.5 meters per second. Besides,
the Iranian border at this location is mountainous and there are many
strategic hills. From this perspective, Azerbaijanâ~@~Ys territory
is better for the US.

By Tatoul Hakobian

–Boundary_(ID_n+Sv/Eeg5JEXVYBGzhpGCA)–

NEW NGO SET UP TO ASSIST FARMERS

ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: A new non-governmental
organization, called The Green Path, has emerged with the help of the
Marketing Assistance program (MAP) of the US Department of
Agriculture Yerevan Office.
The new organization’s stated goal is to help establish companies
and farmers’ union engaged in production of ecologically clean and
competitive products, assist them in marketing and exporting food and
related products to increase incomes, create jobs, and raise the
standard of living for Armenians working in the agro-processing
sector.
Nune Sarukhanian, the chairwoman of the new organization, said it
has 50 skilled experts, sufficient financial resources and
partnership connections in the regions and will soon launch its
activity. She said donations came from several other organizations
and individuals.

Wayne hosts delegation of Azerbaijani women
By Sam Strike 02/10/2005

Wayne Suburban Newspapers, PA
Feb 10 2005

Eleven women, all specialists in women’s issues in the former Soviet
republic of Azerbaijan, visited the Women’s Resource Center in Wayne
last week as part of a two-and-a-half week program in the
Philadelphia area.
The group members are technically guests of the U.S. Department of
State through a program called Community Connections at the
International Visitors Council (IVC).
Participants apply and are selected by being emerging leaders in
various fields to meet their respective counterparts in the States
and to live in area homes and be exposed to a diversity of American
experiences.
They spoke through their accompanying translators at the center.
Volunteer coordinator for the center Trish Larsen said that the staff
“thought it was informative and interesting in that some of the
pressing issues in our countries are similar, but cultural issues
make them different too.”
Among the topics discussed were emotional and physical abuse, divorce
and the traditional roles of women in their country. The visitors
said that in Azerbaijan many girls are marrying young, and once in
marriages are very limited in their personal freedoms.
“It seems that they still have quite a fight… I thought they were
about 20 years behind us in some women’s rights,” Larsen said. “I did
feel unfortunately they have a lot of work to do.”
Most questions asked by the visitors were directed at Counseling and
Legal Services Coordinator Sherrie Myers and how she would handle
certain situations that have been brought to her by area women.
“I thought they were trying hard to figure out how we make this work
here,” Larsen said of the women. They were curious how the Women’s
Resource Center is funded.
“They seem to get a lot of volunteers through the universities but we
have more women who are in different stages of life,” she said.
Wayne residents Art and Marge Miller have been hosting people from
Azerbaijan and Russia through the IVC for 10 years.
“We learn a lot, about as much as the people who are visiting,” Art
said. “It gives us a perspective on their lives, and it’s interesting
to see the things we have that they don’t.”
The two women staying with them now, newspaper correspondent Zulfiyya
Aliyeva and program officer for the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees Naila Valikhanova, had never seen a garbage disposal
function before. It was fascinating to them, he said.
What fascinated the Millers was the women’s tales of the country’s
long-standing tension with neighboring Armenia.
“We feel free to pretty much talk about anything and they are too…
and they’re free to express their opinions and they do,” Art said.
The Millers, who have lived in the area since 1974, currently write
books together.
“When we first began hosting these visits we assumed they didn’t know
much about computers because that was a new thing to us, but we found
out both are very up to date with computers, and they e-mail back and
forth to their families,” Art said.
“Americans tend to think we know everything and others need to catch
up – it was a humbling experience,” he said.
Azerbaijan – a nation with a Turkic and majority-Muslim population –
regained its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. Despite a 1994 cease-fire, it has yet to resolve its conflict
with Armenia over the Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh enclave (largely
Armenian-populated), according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s
World Factbook. Azerbaijan has lost 16 percent of its territory and
must support some 800,000 refugees and internally displaced persons
as a result of the conflict. It borders the Caspian Sea in Southwest
Asia.
The women were not allowed to be interviewed by The Suburban as per
rules handed down from the U.S. Department of State.

RUSSIAN FM TO VISIT ARMENIA FEBRUARY 16

ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: Armenian foreign ministry press
office has confirmed today that Russian foreign minister Sergey
Lavrov will pay a two-day visit to Armenia on February 16 to discuss
the details of Russia’s Putn’s visit to Yerevan later this year. The
ministry said Lavrov’s visit is “the continuation of an intensively
unfolding dialogue between the two countries in an effort to deepen
cooperation between Armenian and Russian foreign ministries, as well
as various-level bilateral ties.”

This will be Lavrov’s first official visit to Armenia where he and
top Armenian officials are expected to discuss a wide array of issues
on of strategic bilateral partnership and interaction between Armenia
and Russia within different international organizations.”

The ministry also said a special focus in the talks will be on the
current pace of Nagorno Karabagh conflict regulation, as well as on
building an atmosphere of mutual understanding in the South Caucasus.

ARMENIAN OFFICIAL GOES ON BOOSTING TIES WITH NATO

ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: A senior member of the Armenian
parliament called today for intensifying ties with NATO to foil
Azerbaijan’s intentions to take the Nagorno Karabagh case to
NATO Parliamentary Assembly session. Speaking to journalists, Mher
Shahgeldian, the chairman of the parliament committee on defense and
national security issues, recalled, however, statements by senior
NATO officials that the alliance was not going to intervene in the
Armenian-Azeri conflict.

He said Armenia has to work harder to build up cooperation with NATO,
especially after a threat by Ziyafat Askerov, the head of Azerbaijani
delegation to NATO Parliamentary Assembly that Baku is going to raise
the Karabagh issue there.

According to Shahgeldian , NATO is becoming one of the components of
the regional security. “Armenia’s position in NATO PA differs from
that of Georgia and Azerbaijan, which have openly said they want to
joint it, while Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization,” he said.