NEWS: RFE/RL Caucasus Repor - 4/23/2010 (rferl.org)

4/23/2010 6:10:15 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 .

Georgian Opposition Leaders In Russia The leaders of two Georgian opposition parties are in Moscow for talks about the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia with Russian politicians and Georgian diaspora groups. More
Kadyrov Rejects Murder Allegations A spokesman for Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has rejected allegations that Kadyrov ordered the assassinations of three brothers. More
NATO Looks To Evolve Without Shedding DNA The first day of the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, was dedicated to the future of the alliance. Day two will tackle Afghanistan in talks conducted together with non-NATO nations contributing ISAF forces and relations with Russia -- albeit with no Russian officials in attendance. More
Federal Envoy Calls For Concession To Circassians Within weeks of his appointment as president of the Karachayevo-Cherkessia Republic in September 2008, Boris Ebzeyev managed to antagonize the republic's Circassian minority by naming a Greek, rather than a Circassian, to head the republic's new government. That perceived slight was instrumental in fuelling Circassian demands that the existing borders between the North Caucasus republics be redrawn to create a Circassian republic comprising the territories where Circssians currently constitute a majority of the population. More
European Court Rules Azerbaijan Should Release Jailed Journalist The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) today ruled that the Azerbaijani authorities should release journalist Eynulla Fatullayev from prison and pay him 25,000 euros ($33,512) in moral damages. More
Clear Skies For NATO Meeting, Though Trouble Brews Over Russia, Afghanistan NATO foreign ministers are breathing a collective sigh of relief as skies in Europe clear from volcanic ash and their April 22-23 meeting in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, can now officially go ahead. Russia is expected to dominate the agenda of the meeting in the former Soviet republic. More
Daghestani Rights Group Plans To Sue Over 'Black Widow' Photos The co-chair of the advocacy group Mothers of Daghestan for Human Rights, Svetlana Isayeva, says her organization will file a lawsuit against the daily "Komsomolskaya pravda" for publishing the photographs of 22 women who law-enforcement officials say could potentially become suicide bombers. More
Excluding Azerbaijan Can't Bring Stability To The South Caucasus The Azerbaijani presidential administration's Novruz Mammadov argues that perceived attempts to pressure Ankara to abandon Azerbaijan are shortsighted and likely to backfire. More
Chechen Republic Head Implicated In Two Political Killings A Russian daily has published what it claims is an open letter from Moscow-based Chechen businessman Isa Yamadayev, together with a link to video footage in which Yamadayev's former bodyguard Khavazh Yusupov, who's charged with trying to kill Yamadayev, says in pretrial testimony that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov personally ordered him to kill Yamadayev. More
Moscow, Chechnya See Next Stage Of War Against Terrorism Differently Meeting with North Caucasus leaders in Makhachkala, just days after the suicide bomb attacks in the Moscow subway, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev outlined his vision of how terrorism can and should be eradicated. By contrast, having celebrated last week on a lavish scale the first anniversary of the official announcement that the 10-year counterterror operation in Chechnya had been brought to a successful conclusion, the Chechen leadership has adopted a different tack. More
Another Senior Turkish Diplomat Visits Abkhazia Nurdan Bayraktar Golder, head of the South Caucasus department of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, held talks in Sukhumi on April 19 with Sergei Shamba and Maksim Gvinjia, de facto prime minister and foreign minister, respectively, of the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia. More
Campaigns Start In Nagorno-Karabakh Campaigning officially began today for the May 23 parliamentary elections in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. More
What's In A National Anthem? A country's national anthem is linked to questions of political legitimacy, citizenship, and national identity. In Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine's third-largest city, citizens are talking about changing the country's national anthem, which they say is too depressing. In Tajikistan, a composer and a poet are together pushing for a new anthem, one that would replace the old composition handed to them by the USSR. More
Power Struggle Under Way In South Ossetia Over the past week, Vadim Brovtsev, who was named in August 2009 as prime minister of the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia, has been subjected to a torrent of criticism by government officials and the local media, which are controlled by de facto President Eduard Kokoity. More
New Life For Kazakhgate? A new prosecutor has been appointed in the long-stalled bribery case in which Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev and his allies are implicated. More