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US and Russian presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin will discuss the Upper Garabagh conflict in Bratislava, Slovakia in February, along with other issues, says US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Elizabeth Jones. The two presidents will call for stepping up activity in resolving conflicts in the former Soviet Union countries, including the Garabagh problem, she said. (19-JAN-2005)

On January 20 it will be 15 years since a horrible tragedy that went down in Azerbaijan´s history as one of the remarkable stages in the national liberation movement.  In the early morning hours on January 20, 1990, atrocities were committed by 26,000 Soviet troops against civilians in Baku. They acted pursuant to a state of emergency declared by then Soviet leader Gorbachev and disclosed to the Azerbaijani people only after hundreds of peaceful residents laid wounded or dead in the streets of Baku. (19-JAN-2005)
 

The organisations in the emerging Human Rights House will organise a seminar in Minsk 18-19 of February 2005. The object is to familiarize Belarusian journalists, lawyers and judges with European standards of human rights. A delegation from the Norwegian PEN and the Huma Rights House Foundation will attend the seminar in Minsk. (20-JAN-05)
 

Moscow court´s finding that Kommersant, Russia´s leading independent business daily, must pay millions in damages for a July article that described long lines of customers withdrawing money at a major bank. (18-JAN-05)
 

A member of staff at the Grozny branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Said-Khussein Deniyev, has been found in the Chechen Republic after going missing last Thursday. (18-JAN-05)
 
 

The jury of the Olof Palme Prize has awarded three Russian human rights activists in 2004 . The Prize will be given to the head of Helsinki Group in Moscow, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the president of the Human Rights Institute, Sergei Kovalyov, and the reporter of the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Anna Politkovskaya. (18-JAN-05)
 

This article provides first-hand knowledge, from personal experience, of what it is like to be an inmate in a Burmese prison. Moe Aye, the author, was a political prisoner in Insein Prison from 1990-96. He is now the News Editor of the Democratic Voice of Burma (Republic of the Union of Myanmar), a Burmese radio station broadcasting uncensored news into Burma from Oslo. (18-JAN-04)
  

Anxiety has grown about the commencement of the trials of three high-profile war crimes indictees from the former military junta, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which seized power in a coup in 1997. The three, Tamba Alex Brima (alias Gullit), Santigie Kanu (aka Brigadier Five Five) and Ibrahim Bazzy Kamara, have spent more than a year in the custody of the war crimes court, waiting for a trial chamber to be set up before their prosecution commences. (18-JAN-05)
 

The African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) says Zimbabwe?s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) must be allowed to hold public meetings if this year?s parliamentary elections are to be declared free and fair. ANC secretary-general, Kgalema Motlanthe told journalists after the party?s national executive committee meeting that he was worried that the MDC still required permission from the police to hold public meetings. (18-JAN-05)