As Azerbaijan’s ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party celebrates the fourth anniversary of Ilham Aliyev’s presidency, political parties and groupings in the country are already looking ahead to the 2008 presidential election. On September 19, leaders of Musavat, one of the main opposition parties in the country,... MORE

The United Nations Security Council has approved a routine prolongation of the U.N. Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) mandate to operate in Abkhazia (United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General, October 15; Civil Georgia, October 16; Georgia Today, October 19-25). The Security Council’s resolution is less... MORE

On October 18 Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual TV call-in show in the Kremlin. Questions came from teachers, students, scientists, farmers, and doctors from across Russia's 11 time zones. Two questions came from the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, which prompted him to... MORE

At their summit in Tehran (see EDM, October 17), the presidents of the five Caspian countries’ agreed tentatively and in general terms to create an institutional framework for regional cooperation on economic, legal, and some security issues. The presidents, who had not met since 2002... MORE

The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have finally dashed hopes for a near-term settlement of the Karabakh conflict with their failure to hold yet another, potentially decisive round of negotiations. Armenian President Robert Kocharian publicly declared on October 11 that contrary to the international community’s... MORE

White Stream, a project to transport Caspian gas via Georgia and the seabed of the Black Sea to Europe, was presented during the summit-level Energy Security Conference in Vilnius on October 10-11. This pipeline project could encourage investments in Caspian gas field development by diversifying... MORE

On October 10 the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27–21 to pass a non-binding resolution that labeled the deaths of Armenians during World War One as “genocide.” House Democratic leaders predicted a full House vote on the resolution would come before Thanksgiving.... MORE

On September 4 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that the national budget of the country in 2008 would reach $12 billion (Day.az, September 4). Just three years ago, the budget totaled only $4 billion. Aliyev’s announcement was no surprise to the domestic audience, since the... MORE

Last week Georgia’s former defense minister, Irakli Okruashvili, accused the country’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili of large-scale corruption and conspiring to kill Badri Patarkatsishvili, a prominent businessman. Okruashvili claimed that then-prime minister Zurab Zhvaniya, who was found dead in a friend’s apartment in 2005, actually... MORE

Levon Ter-Petrosian, Armenia’s former president acclaimed in the West for his conciliatory stance on the Karabakh conflict, has rocked the domestic political arena with his first public speech in nearly a decade. Addressing hundreds of supporters in Yerevan on September 21, he described the current... MORE