On December 12, Eduard Kokoiti, the self-styled president of South Ossetia, sent a letter to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and leaders of OSCE countries to familiarize them with an action plan for settling the 15-year old conflict. Three successive stages call... MORE

Immediately following Azerbaijan's November 6 parliamentary elections, President Ilham Aliyev began cadre changes in the government. Some local experts believe the changes are long overdue. On December 14, he replaced Yusif Humbatov, chief of the territorial-administrative division at the President's office, with Zeynal Nagdaliyev, a... MORE

The Armenian authorities' economic policies have received another Western endorsement with the publication of extensive research conducted by a group of economists from the International Monetary Fund. In a research paper unveiled on December 6, they describe as "impressive" Armenia's decade-long economic growth and offered... MORE

Last week, officials from Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey met in Tbilisi to discuss further steps in the construction of another strategically important project in the South Caucasus, the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku (KATB) railway system. The idea to build a railroad that would connect Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey... MORE

Last week the saber rattling that has characterized Georgian-Abkhaz relation subsided as UN- mediated talks about confidence building commenced. Against a backdrop of continuing mutual violence in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia (see EDM, November 8, 29) the talks are intended to demonstrate that a... MORE

Widespread allegations about restrictions on judicial independence since the Rose Revolution have received new credibility following sensational confessions by four members of the Georgian Supreme Court. Tamaz Iliashvili, Merab Turava, David Sulakvelidze, and Nino Gvenetadze have publicly accused Kote Kublashvili, chairman of the Supreme Court,... MORE

As Azerbaijan's November 6 parliamentary elections fade into the distance, the more the Azerbaijani opposition is realizing that they missed their best opportunity to secure a role in national politics. Having inflated their expectations prior to the elections and convinced themselves that November 6 would... MORE

The November 26 post-election violence in Baku marked the end of Western influence in Azerbaijan. After being severely beaten and humiliated by police forces, the pro-Western Azerbaijani opposition has no one else to blame but the West. Its hopes for U.S. support to "overthrow the... MORE

The administration of President Robert Kocharian has enacted its controversial constitutional amendments following a November 27 referendum that raised Armenia's post-Soviet culture of electoral fraud to new heights. Its deeply flawed handling of the vote is also a serious setback for the West's cautious efforts... MORE