Elmira Suleymanova reported she has received 4500 complaints from the citizens in 2003. A little more than a half of them came within her authority as the ombudswoman and was taken for consideration.

The Azerbaijan Parliament regarded the decision of the Swiss Parliament as "appropriation of the role of a judge and intervention in internal affairs of the other state."

Azerbaijan Foreign Minister Vilayat Guliyev stated that official Baku and specifically his department intend to activate efforts aiming at attaining a final solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

A large group of separatists was routed in Chechnya. Turkish, Algerian and German citizens were among its members. 17 separatists were killed as a result of a short combat.

When being stopped by police officers at the town exit, the kidnappers showed regional operations headquarters passes.

On December 11, there was a skirmish in a many-storied building on Ordjonikidze Street in Malgobek. An accidental passer-by, Bekkhan B. Kartoyev, 1953, was killed as a result.

Correspondents of ORT and NTV TV companies and of the Trud, Krasnaya Zvezda and Izvestiya newspapers are in the delegation. Representatives of Sukhumi authorities arrange special press-conferences for them.

The heads of law-enforcement agencies demanded that the members of the Organizational Committee cancel the Congress. Their demand had the nature of an ultimatum as they threatened they would institute criminal proceedings against all the organizers if they disobeyed.

Russian servicemen abducted Khavazhi Shamayev, a 33-year-old resident of the Samashki village, and took him away from his own house in the direction of the district center of Achkhoy-Martan.

The released man had severe injuries and several fractured ribs, which is evidence that he had been subjected to savage beatings for all that time.

Having searched the house and not having found the man they needed, the gunmen savagely beat the 80-year-old woman.

Burdjanadze informed she suggested that the Abkhazian leaders come to Sukhumi to prepare a new stage in the relations between Georgia and Abkhazia. "The Abkhazian side, like the South Osetian one, did not take this step," she stressed.

The Manual on How to Work Out Applications for Grants was presented at the IATP (Internet Access and Training Program) center in Vladikavkaz on December 22. A small seminar on the rules of working out the applications was conducted within the presentation.

"There is no alternative to Russian peacekeepers," Abkhazian Prime Minister Raul Khajimba stressed in his interview with Russian journalists in Sukhum.

A landmine was activated in the Zavodskoy district of Grozny when a file of OMON (special tasks police platoon) officers was passing by.

The workshop "Modern Technologies of Teaching English" took place in Rostov-on-Don on December 15-20 within the framework of the All-Russian Festival "Ways of Hope". 50 young teachers from Adygeya, North Osetia - Alania, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, the Volgograd and Astrakhan regions, and Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories were participants in the workshop.

The action is aimed not only at presenting New Year gifts to children from families of scanty means, orphan children, under age delinquents, and children with limited physical and social abilities, but at instilling a spirit of mutual aid, mercy and humanism in those children.

The broadcasting of Rustavi 2 TV Company, which is the most popular one in Georgia, was ceased in Adjaria on November 23.

President of North Osetia Aleksandr Dzasokhov signed the order to create the organizational committee that is to arrange a congress of Caucasian people in Vladikavkaz in 2004.

Locals report they saw Dagestani Isa Makasharipov among commanders of the Chechen unit acting on the territory of the Tsuntinsky district in Dagestan. Makasharipov was one of Shamil Basayev's closest mates.