The center was created and operates in fact, but it is not a juridical person because the Kabardino-Balkarian department of justice hampers the registration by all means.

Ashot Manucharian, the outstanding Armenian politician and member of the political council of the Armenian Union of Socialist Forces and Intellectuals, was savagely beaten by three unknown people near the office of the Forum of Intellectuals Council of Elders on April 22.

"We hope that the Chechen issue in the UN Commission on Human Rights has been closed once and for all", Russian deputy foreign minister Yuri Fedotov said to a press-conference in RIA Novosti.

Natalia Vutova, representative of the Council of Europe Secretary General in Armenia, said that the draft law conflicted with the European Convention on Human Rights and a number of other international documents.

"I warned Aslan Abashidze about the terrorist act two days ago and advised him to reinforce his bodyguard," the chairwoman of the League of People's Defense said.

The Chechen regional department of the Russian Ministry for Press, TV, Radio Broadcasting, and Mass Media issued an official warning to the editorial staff of the independent social and political newspaper Chechen Society on April 19.

Nino Burdjanadze is a deputy for the city of Kutaisi.

Two unknown men shot and killed two Russian soldiers and wounded a third on April 20 in the outskirts of Nazran, Ingushetia's largest town.

Magomed Khambiyev, a Chechen separatist leader and former "interior minister of Ichkeria," who surrendered in early March, said all his subordinates have surrendered their arms and have turned themselves in to the law enforcement agencies.

Head of the Department for Protection and Study of Monuments, the Ministry for Education, Culture and Sports of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), Slava Sargsyan categorically disagreed with the statement of Azerbaijani Milli Majlis Speaker Murtuz Aleskerov that the cultural monuments in the town of Shushi, in particular, the fortification of the town, are allegedly destroyed by the NKR authorities.

Information about the death of Abu al-Walid in Chechen mountains appeared in the Arab press on April 16.

Aram Sargsian announced that the opposition invited people to the decisive meeting, which will be held on April 27. "All Armenians must gather here that day," he said.

A unique press conference devoted to the problem of Chechen refugees occurred in Moscow, Russia, on April 20. Organized by the Independent Press Center, it was titled "Bound westward: what makes refugees seek emigration? What prevents them from going back to Chechnya?"

Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the Board of the Human Rights Center Memorial and the Commission on Human Rights for the Russian President, comments on the situation with regard to Chechen refugees in Ingushetia.

Mikhail Saakashvili said that the priority tasks of the parliament were to assist with the restoration of Georgia's territorial integrity, to carry out reforms in all fields of the country's life, to improve the people's standard of living, and to liberalize the tax code.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has signed the order to relocate the 25th motorized rifle brigade from Batumi to Tbilisi.

The action will be conducted within the framework of the all-Russian public campaign Civil Society Against Police State. In the course of it, activists will call upon citizens to take part in the actions against arbitrariness.

The book holds fundamentals of the American journalism, it is important to know them in the period of development of democracy and free press, said WPFC' executive official.

Several tens of students, NGO activists, and journalists made their way to places in Krasnodar where neonazis were known to gather and leave their typical marks and inscriptions.

"It is an infrequent occurrence in the world when aid workers are attacked in hot spots. We haven't had such problems even in the Congo and Sudan," the organization's Dutch department director Kenny Gluck noted.