Mark Perry | Mar 28

Foreign Policy - U.S. officials believe that the Israelis have gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan. Does this bring them one step closer to a war with Iran?

Kester Kenn Klomegah | Moscow | May 27

IPS - More than half of Georgia’s population still lives in abject poverty due to economic stagnation, worsening living standards, rising unemployment and low pay nearly nine years after the 2003 bloodless ‘Rose Revolution’ that promised post-Soviet economic revival, a new political course and better living conditions.

Following a military parade Thursday marking Georgia’s independence from Russia, two people were reported killed and many more injured when police used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to break up an opposition rally against President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government.

The Georgian opposition has taken to the streets to press for the resignation of the current government that have failed to live up to people’s expectations. They also claim that after the ‘Rose Revolution’ there were many opportunities and resources for normalising Georgian-Russian relations, which would have made it possible to solve vital domestic economic problems.

"I think one of the key mistakes of [President Mikheil] Saakashvili’s government is that it considers rule of law not as the major priority and there is no judicial independence," Eka Gigauri, executive director of Transparency International Georgia, told IPS. "Good legislation remains theoretically only as paperwork and are not duly implemented. Further, media environment is not free and independent, and many influential channels are state controlled."

Experts say there can only be speedy improvement if radical economic development and political reforms are implemented with strong support and participation of young progressive groups.

In spite of the fact that after the protests in 2009, the government initiated negotiations with opposition parties on the improvement of the electoral environment, no tangible results have been achieved. Negotiations are stopped and the government does not want to compromise and create the possibility for Georgian people to express their will on fair elections, Gigauri said.

Jonathan S. Landay | Washington | Nov 16

McClatchy - Working under extraordinary secrecy, the U.S. and Kazakh governments in the past year have moved nuclear material that could have been used to make more than 770 bombs from a location feared vulnerable to terrorist attack to a new high-security facility.

In the largest such operation ever mounted, U.S. and Kazakh officials transferred 11 tons of highly enriched uranium and 3 tons of plutonium some 1,890 miles by rail and road across the Central Asian country.

The transfer culminated a project spanning three American presidencies that was intended to prevent the material from falling into the wrong hands.

The last of 12 shipments arrived Monday at the new state-of-the-art storage facility in remote northeastern Kazakhstan, near the border with Russia and China. The 13-day journey began at the mothballed BN-350 fast-breeder reactor in the Caspian Sea port of Aktau. McClatchy agreed to withhold the precise location of the storage site for security reasons.

“The most immediate and extreme threat (to international security) is a terrorist acquiring nuclear material,” said Thomas D’Agostino, the head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the overseer of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. “This takes one of those pieces, a big chunk, off the table.”

Shaun Walker | Moscow | Nov 9

The Independent - South Africa and Georgia have little in common aside from a tradition of wine-making and a turbulent recent history. But a group of white South African farmers say starting a new life in the former Soviet state could be the solution to their troubles at home.

South Africa's 40,000 white farmers, mainly Boers – descendants from Dutch settlers – say they fear that South Africa's government is threatening their livelihoods with land-reform policies. When they first came to Africa, the Boer Voortrekkers, or pioneers, left coastal colonies to forge a path to the interior of the country in search of fertile land. Now some of their descendants believe the answer to their problems might lie thousands of miles away in the Caucasus.

In what would be an extraordinary migration, the Georgian government has invited South Africa's farmers to buy up land in the country for next to nothing in exchange for bringing their expertise and knowledge of modern farming methods.

Papuna Davitaya, Georgia's State Minister for Diaspora, said: "We are looking for investors in our agricultural sphere, because Georgia historically always used to be an agricultural country but in Soviet times we lost these traditions."

He welcomed a delegation of South African farmers to the country recently and gave them guarantees about what they could expect if they made the move. "Boers are some of the best farmers in the world," Mr Davitaya said.

Julian Borger | Tbilisi | Nov 7

The Guardian - Exclusive: Georgia trial reveals how sting netted highly enriched uranium that had been smuggled via train inside lead-lined cigarette box

Highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia.

Two Armenians, a businessman and a physicist, have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi.

Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, informed other heads of state of the sting operation at a nuclear summit in Washington in April, but no details about the case have been made public until now. The trial has been conducted behind closed doors to protect the operational secrecy of Georgia's counter-proliferation unit, officials said. But investigators have given the Guardian an exclusive first-hand account of the case.

It reveals that the critical ingredient for making a nuclear warhead is available on the black market and is reasonably easy to smuggle past a ring of expensive US-funded radiation sensors along the borders of the former Soviet Union. What is not clear is how much nuclear material is in circulation and whether any has already been bought by extremist groups.

Nov 5

BBC - Georgia says it has dismantled a major Russian spy ring and arrested 13 suspects.

The suspects, including four Russian citizens and Georgian military officers, fed sensitive information to Moscow, the Georgian interior ministry said.

Moscow has described the arrests as a "provocation" and "a political farce".

Georgia and Russia fought a brief war in August 2008.

Interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told AFP: "This is a huge deal in terms of Georgia securing its military intelligence."

He also said that the arrests were a big blow to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.

A Russian foreign ministry statement said the arrests were a "provocation" timed to undermine Moscow's participation in forthcoming international summits.

Correspondents say the comments refer to a Russia-Nato summit in Lisbon later in November and an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe summit in early December.

"Let's wait, let's see, how convincing this political farce will be before giving our commentary," Grigory Karasin, Russia's deputy foreign minister, was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

Marrakesh, Morocco | Oct 27

Reuters - Georgia will keep up its objections to Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for as long as necessary, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We still do not see much will from Russia to reach out to us," Saakashvili said on the sidelines of a conference in Morocco when asked about Georgia's position on the Russian WTO entry bid.

"We are ready for serious, meaningful talks about the issues but we have certain issues that cannot be overlooked and cannot be overcome by neglect," he said.

"I think the Georgian issues are still there. We will stick to our principles for as long as it takes," Saakashvili said. As an existing WTO member, Georgia can in theory veto Russia from joining the trade bloc.

Sure start a war and then get pissy when your ass is kicked :D

Luke Harding | Moscow and Grozny | Oct 19

The Guardian - Pro-Moscow president blames UK for escalating violence after deadly assault by rejuvenated Islamist underground

Gunmen stormed Chechnya's parliament building today in Grozny, killing three people and injuring at least 17, in the latest audacious military operation by the region's rejuvenated Islamist underground.

One insurgent detonated a bomb outside the gates at 8.45am local time, killing himself and wounding others. Two more gunmen then ran into the building shouting, "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is great" in Arabic) and opening fire, Chechen officials said.

According to Russia's interior minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev, the militants tried to enter the main parliamentary hall, where several deputies were meeting. Unable to do so, the gunmen barricaded themselves in the ground floor of the parliament and eventually blew themselves up, officials said.

All the attackers were killed. Two police officers and a civilian also died. There was a grim scene around the building, with body parts and a decapitated corpse strewn next to shattered glass on the ground.

Nurgaliyev, who was in Chechnya's capital, described the assault as "extremely rare".

"Here there is stability and security," he said, repeating Kremlin claims that Chechnya, run by the pro-Moscow president, Ramzan Kadyrov, was firmly under government control.

Speaking at a parliamentary session after today's attack, Kadyrov blamed Britain and other European countries for the ongoing violence in Chechnya. He lambasted Britain for failing to extradite Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen separatist leader who has political asylum in London. Zakayev was briefly arrested last month in Warsaw while attending a meeting of the Chechen diaspora. Russia today renewed an Interpol warrant for his arrest.

Yerevan | August 20

AFP - Armenia and Russia signed a deal Friday extending Moscow's military presence in the ex-Soviet republic by decades and making Russian troops responsible for Armenia's national security.

The deal strengthens Moscow's military clout in the strategic South Caucasus region and reinforces its alliance with Armenia, Moscow's main regional ally.

In the summer of 2003 I visited Georgia. I spent almost a week in Tbilisi. One of the most interesting visits I had there was meeting Alex Rondeli. I also met with a young man named Timur Iakobashvilli. The meeting with Rondeli was quite fascinating. He is wise to world in ways that Iakobashvilli was not. Iakobashvilli went on to work in Saakashvilli's foreign ministry. Rondeli, from what I recall of the conversation knew that Georgia had to find a way to live with their giant neighbor to the north, whereas Iakobashvilla was all about closer and closer relations with the US, as a way of keeping the Russians out of the Caucasus and thumbing their nose at them as well. He was enthralled by the US invasion of Iraq and spoke glowingly of American powers of expeditionary warfare. He went so far as to give me a lecture--as a professor would lecture an ignorant student--about how important and dominating the US role in the world was and would continue to be and how essential it was for Georgia to become a part of NATO and the EU.

I told him point blank, at one point, "don't trust us. We will abandon you."

"That's impossible, Georgia and the pipeline are too important to US interests."

"No, they are not. They are not vital interests. But Georgia is vital to Russian interests. I advise you make your peace with them. They are permanent. We are not. Find a modus vivendi as soon as practicable."

As I read this story in Time I am reminded of that conversation. And I cannot help but to ask Misha the current Georgian president, "allies? Really? Or was it a marriage of convenience at the time for the US?"

Putin's Long Chess Game, as I called it back in 2005, is now coming to fruition. Patient. Plodding. Often awkward. But so far, successful. The Georgians must be feeling very isolated right now. They have no one but their leaders to blame.

Apr 13

The Guardian - Exclusive: The Georgian government says it has broken a uranium smuggling ring, underlining the threat of a 'stolen bomb'

The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has told fellow leaders at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington that his government has thwarted an attempt to sell highly-enriched uranium on the black market last month.

Georgian sources said the HEU was intercepted in a sting operation carried out by the Tbilisi authorities without international assistance. They said the uranium was over 70% enriched. The exact analysis is expected in a few days, but it appears to have been pure enough to use in a crude nuclear weapon.

The amount seized was small, measured in grams, so nowhere near the 25kg needed for a bomb, but Georgian officials said the criminal gang who was trying to sell the HEU was offering it as a trial sample of a bigger quantity available for purchase on the black market.

I wonder if he will have to eat his tie over this accusation ;)

Tom Esslemont | Tbilisi | Mar 13

BBC - Officials in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia have announced a scheme to let prisoners shorten their jail terms by spending time in a monastery instead.

The scheme for petty criminals has been proposed by the country's Orthodox Church and government officials.

It comes as prisoner numbers in Georgia continue to rise and so too does the popularity of the Church.

It is unclear how many prisoners will be allowed to become monks or if they have any choice in the matter.

To say that the Orthodox Church plays an important and influential role in Georgia is an understatement.

Some 80% of its population are said to be Orthodox Christians and its leaders have at times played a part in politics.

Now the Church has gone a step further by directly offering to help reform certain criminals by handing them a cassock and allowing them to serve out their sentence as monks.

In a joint statement, officials from the prisons ministry and the Church said they would work together to select the convicts they thought would benefit most from spending time in a monastery.

The US wants to deny that Turkey's slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was genocide. But the evidence is there, in a hilltop orphanage near Beirut, reports Robert Fisk

It's only a small grave, a rectangle of cheap concrete marking it out, blessed by a flourish of wild yellow lilies. Inside are the powdered bones and skulls and bits of femur of up to 300 children, Armenian orphans of the great 1915 genocide who died of cholera and starvation as the Turkish authorities tried to "Turkify" them in a converted Catholic college high above Beirut. But for once, it is the almost unknown story of the surviving 1,200 children – between three and 15 years old – who lived in the crowded dormitory of this ironically beautiful cut-stone school that proves that the Turks did indeed commit genocide against the Armenians in 1915.

Barack Obama and his pliant Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton – who are now campaigning so pitifully to prevent the US Congress acknowledging that the Ottoman Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians was a genocide – should come here to this Lebanese hilltop village and hang their heads in shame. For this is a tragic, appalling tale of brutality against small and defenceless children whose families had already been murdered by Turkish forces at the height of the First World War, some of whom were to recall how they were forced to grind up and eat the skeletons of their dead fellow child orphans in order to survive starvation.

Jemal Pasha, one of the architects of the 1915 genocide, and – alas – Turkey's first feminist, Halide Edip Adivar, helped to run this orphanage of terror in which Armenian children were systematically deprived of their Armenian identity and given new Turkish names, forced to become Muslims and beaten savagely if they were heard to speak Armenian. The Antoura Lazarist college priests have recorded how its original Lazarist teachers were expelled by the Turks and how Jemal Pasha presented himself at the front door with his German bodyguard after a muezzin began calling for Muslim prayers once the statue of the Virgin Mary had been taken from the belfry.

Hitherto, the argument that Armenians suffered a genocide has rested on the deliberate nature of the slaughter. But Article II of the 1951 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide specifically states that the definition of genocide – "to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" – includes "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group". This is exactly what the Turks did in Lebanon. Photographs still exist of hundreds of near-naked Armenian children performing physical exercises in the college grounds. One even shows Jemal Pasha standing on the steps in 1916, next to the young and beautiful Halide Adivar who – after some reluctance – agreed to run the orphanage. more

Washington | March 4

BBC - A US Congressional committee is debating a resolution to label as genocide the killing of Armenians by Turkish forces during World War I.

The non-binding resolution is fiercely opposed by Turkey, a key US ally.

James G. Neuger | Jan 14

Bloomberg - As Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in 2008, a post-Cold War turning point was at hand.

George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion. Vladimir Putin boasted that he alone could be trusted. And Nicolas Sarkozy badgered Georgia’s leader into signing a cease-fire.

These are just three peeks behind the diplomatic curtain presented in “A Little War That Shook the World,” Ronald D. Asmus’s absorbing account of the five-day clash in the Caucasus that August.

Asmus, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, now runs the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. He pieced together this tale of realpolitik and diplomatic dead-ends by unearthing previously unpublished documents and interviewing Western and Georgian officials. Taken together, the evidence illustrates how the West failed to get to grips with an emboldened Russia.

Written with a diplomat’s feel for policy nuance and a journalist’s eye for detail, the book traces how Russia exploited U.S.-European divisions -- magnified by the festering sore of the Iraq war -- to put a stop to Georgia’s headstrong embrace of the West.

Thus we learn that “several senior White House staffers” urged “at least some consideration of limited military options,” such as bombing the mountain tunnel that served as Russia’s main supply line.

Nov 22

BBC -

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev has warned he is ready to use force to wrest control of a disputed enclave from Armenia if last-ditch peace talks fail.

He said talks starting on Sunday in Munich were the final hope of settling the Nagorno Karabakh issue peacefully.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place in the region since it was the scene of a brutal war between the two countries in the 1990s.

Both nations lay claim to the enclave, currently under Armenian control.

In comments broadcast on Azeri TV on Saturday, President Aliyev said that if the Munich talks failed to reach agreement he would be "left with no other option".

"We have the full right to liberate our land by military means," he said.

Luke Harding | Yalta | Oct 11

The Observer - As Ukraine prepares for its first presidential election since the Orange Revolution, there are signs that its giant neighbour to the east will not tolerate a pro-western outcome.

From the terrace there are views of the Crimean peninsula, with fir trees, dark green cypresses and a shimmering bay. Inside – through a pleasant Italian courtyard – is the room where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sat together around a wooden table and divided up postwar Europe.

But almost 65 years after the "big three" met in the Crimean seaside resort of Yalta – now in Ukraine – the question of zones of influence has come back to haunt Europe. Russia has made it clear that it sees Ukraine as crucial to its bold claim that it is entitled to a zone of influence in its post-Soviet backyard.

Last month, a group of east European leaders and intellectuals gathered in the Livadia Palace, where Britain, the US and the Soviet Union held the Yalta conference in February 1945. The idea was to discuss Ukraine's strategic future. But the discussion was overshadowed by one question: will there be a war between Russia and Ukraine?

The scenario is not as daft as it seems. In August, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, gave his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, an unprecedented diplomatic mugging. In a seething letter, and subsequent video message, Medvedev reprimanded Yushchenko for his "anti-Russian" stance. He told him that, as far as Russia was concerned, the pro-western Yushchenko was now a non-person.

Mary Beth Sheridan | Zurich | October 10

WaPo - Senior Armenian and Turkish officials traveled to Switzerland on Saturday to sign an agreement that could set them on a course to end a century of hostility stemming from brutal massacres at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

But just as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's motorcade arrived at the University of Zurich for the signing of the accord, she got word of a last-minute glitch. The motorcade reversed and sped to a hotel, where U.S. diplomats tried to satisfy concerns on the Armenian side over language in the two countries' statements.

Robert Fisk | Oct 8

The Independent - A new trade deal is set to gloss over the murder of 1.5 million people

In the autumn of 1915, an Austrian engineer called Litzmayer, who was helping build the Constantinople-Baghdad railway, saw what he thought was a large Turkish army heading for Mesopotamia. But as the crowd came closer, he realised it was a huge caravan of women, moving forward under the supervision of soldiers.

The 40,000 or so women were all Armenians, separated from their men – most of whom had already had their throats cut by Turkish gendarmerie – and deported on a genocidal death march during which up to 1.5 million Armenians died.

Subjected to constant rape and beatings, some had already swallowed poison on their way from their homes in Erzerum, Serena, Sivas, Bitlis and other cities in Turkish western Armenia. "Some of them," Bishop Grigoris Balakian, one of Litzmayer's contemporaries, recorded, "had been driven to such a state that they were mere skeletons enveloped in rags, with skin that had turned leathery, burned from the sun, cold, and wind. Many pregnant women, having become numb, had left their newborns on the side of the road as a protest against mankind and God." Every year, new evidence emerges about this mass ethnic cleansing, the first holocaust of the last century; and every year, Turkey denies that it ever committed genocide. Yet on Saturday – to the horror of millions of descendants of Armenian survivors – the President of Armenia, Serg Sarkissian, plans to agree to a protocol with Turkey to re-open diplomatic relations, which should allow for new trade concessions and oil interests. And he proposes to do this without honouring his most important promise to Armenians abroad – to demand that Turkey admit it carried out the Armenian genocide in 1915.

Philip P. Pan | Oct 6

WaPo -

On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

The humiliating episode underscored Russia's continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine's first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia's interests in January.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country's first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a "possible military intervention" by Russia that would "bring back the division of Europe." Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

Crimea is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine's current government insists it must go.

"It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine," said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. "That's the message they're sending to any future president."

Dom Rotheroe | Oct 3

BBC - Political violence and killings seem to be daily occurrences in the tiny mainly Muslim republic of Ingushetia in the Russian North Caucasus, which shares a border with Chechnya. Dom Rotheroe explains why.

"Don't mention to our mother that he was tortured before he died," one of the sisters of the late Batyr Albakov whispers to us before we interview his family.

"She doesn't know about that and she has a weak heart."

They came in the early hours of 10 July to take Mamma Albakov's son away. Two carloads of security forces had barged their way into the family flat in Russia's Caucasian republic of Ingushetia.

Eleven days later, Batyr's family learned of his death through a report on the internet.

In that time, the 26-year-old aeroplane engineer had supposedly become an Islamic militant, acquired a gun and camouflage gear and been killed in a shoot-out with security forces.

Ian Traynor | Oct 1

The Guardian - An investigation into last year's Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war.

In more than 1,000 pages of analysis, documentation and witness statements, the most exhaustive inquiry into the five-day conflict dismissed Georgian claims that the artillery attack was in response to a Russian invasion, accused both sides of violations of the laws of war, indicated that war crimes had been perpetrated against Georgian civilians and rejected Russian claims of "genocide" in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.

The EU-commissioned report, by a fact-finding mission of more than 20 political, military, human rights and international law experts led by the Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, was unveiled in Brussels today after nine months of work.

"There is no way to assign overall responsibility for the conflict to one side alone," the report found.

But the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a "penchant for acting in the heat of the moment".

The war started "with a massive Georgian artillery attack", the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia.

Flatly dismissing Saakashvili's version, the report said: "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated ... It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack."

Clancy Chassay | Sept 20

The Observer - Policemen and soldiers work at the site of an explosion in a police station, Nazran, in Russia's Ingushetia region, Aug 17, 2009. Photograph: Stringer/Russia/Reuters

Like many in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Petimat Albakavar lives in terror. "Nobody sleeps properly. We can't because we are listening to every sound, waiting for the police to knock at the door," she says.

On 10 July, Petimat's 26-year-old son, Batyr, was taken away at dawn by armed men claiming to be Ingush police. They appeared at the door and demanded to see the family's passports but refused to show any identification themselves. "As soon as they left I went to all the police stations, but I couldn't find my son. I filed complaints with the police and government officials, but nobody knew anything," says Petimat, her eyes weary with grief and fear.

"Ten days later we found a report on the internet that someone with my son's name, whom they described as a rebel leader, had been killed in the forest. It was Batyr. His passport was with him."

According to human rights investigators, hundreds of civilians such as Batyr have been "disappeared", tortured and murdered by Russian security services as they struggle to quell a rebellion that spans across Ingushetia and the neighbouring republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. In June the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt. As suicide bombers strike with alarming frequency, the security forces are unleashing a wave of terror which critics say is only serving to fuel the rebellion.

Moscow | Sept 16

AFP - Russia tightened its ties with Georgia's rebel regions on Tuesday by signing agreements allowing it to maintain military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for nearly half a century.

Georgia's pro-Western government immediately condemned the move, with a top official saying the agreements would deepen a "barbaric" occupation.

Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov signed the long-awaited pacts with his Abkhazian and South Ossetian counterparts Merab Kishmaria and Yury Tanayev, the Interfax and ITAR-TASS news agencies reported.

"The agreements that have been signed are aimed at protecting the republics and people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia," Serdyukov was quoted as saying by the news agencies.

Serdyukov said he expected other agreements with Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be signed soon, including one on "military-technical cooperation," a term that Russian officials use to describe arms sales.

September 1

Al Jazeera - Turkey and Armenia are at the beginning of a "long process" of normalising ties, the Turkish foreign minister has said.

Ahmet Davutoglu's comments on Tuesday came a day after the feuding neighbours agreed to establish relations and reopen their border under a plan to end nearly a century of hostility.

Davutoglu told Turkey's NTV television that the process would be long but that obstacles could be overcome and that the border could be open by the end of the year.

"If everything goes as planned, if mutual steps are taken, the borders could be opened around New Year," he said.