The Nakhchivan Automobile Plant (NAZ) which opened in January 2010, assembled 500 Chinese-made Lifan cars last year, the plant’s head of sales and marketing, Tamerlan Abdullazade, told APA.

http://news.az/articles/economy/33020

The United Nations’ top court has dismissed a case filed by Georgia that accuses Russia and separatist rebels of ethnic cleansing.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague said it could not examine Georgia’s complaint because negotiations had not taken place.

Georgia said Russia and the rebels had used ethnic violence against Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia took control of the two Georgian regions in a brief war in August 2008.

Thousands of ethnic Georgians fled the regions during the conflict and many remain internally displaced in Georgia.

Resolving a dispute in border talks between Moscow and Sokhumi will be “an important test” for Abkhaz-Russian “friendly relations”, Vice Speaker of the breakaway Abkhazia’s Parliament, Irina Agrba said, according to the Abkhaz news agency Apsnipress.

A joint Abkhaz-Russian commission “on border delimitation and demarcation between the Russian Federation and Republic of Abkhazia” held its second meeting in Moscow this week.

Abkhaz TV station, Abaza, reported on March 31, that in a joint communiqué after the meeting the commission said talks were held “in a constructive spirit” and the sides have to define exactly the border line in an area at the village of Aibga during the next rounds of talks.

Tbilisi will celebrate Novruz today.

The event will be held at the Rustaveli Theater and is organized by the Georgian Azerbaijanis Congress and the Azerbaijan Business Association in Georgia, the Tbilisi City Hall told Trend.

Local dance troupes and singers will perform at the event.

The Selskiy Dom restaurant will also host a cultural event and banquet with Azerbaijani dishes. Representatives of the diplomatic corps and official authorities have been invited to the events.
Novruz is a celebration of spring, life and farming.
Georgia acceded to the list of countries celebrating Novruz as a national holiday in 2011.

Regional merger referendum positive – Russian election official

Divorce in haste, repent at leisure

Written by Patrick Armstrong on Saturday, 19 March 2011 09:25 | Published in Patrick Armstrong’s Russia SitRepnniversary. Twenty years today the USSR held a referendum on whether to support the proposed New Union Treaty. The new setup would have given much more power to the republics; the word used to describe it then was “confederation”. I recall much brouhaha about how the referendum would be a bust and even some “experts” claiming that no one knew what they were voting on (despite the fact that all the iterations of the treaty – 3 as I remember – had been published in the Soviet press). In the event there was a decent turnout and a strong support for continuing in the new arrangement.http://www.bsr-russia.com/en/russian-sitrep/item/1613-divorce-in-haste-repent-at-leisure.html

BY TOM PARFITT | MARCH 15, 2011

Ambassadors to the European Union member states and the head of the EC delegation in Ukraine are touring Crimea to study the social and economic situation in the autonomous republic and to present a joint cooperation initiative in Crimea.

This initiative was put forth by the European Commission and a number of the EU states concerned and its goal is “to coordinate an approach in order to facilitate the social and economic development of Crimea,” German Ambassador to Ukraine Hans-Jurgen Heimsoeth said at a press conference in Simferopol on Friday.

The group of the ambassadors touring Crimea consists of the heads of the diplomatic missions of Finland, Hungary, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to Ukraine Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira.

Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/36413/#ixzz1IUHedgE0

Has The FSB Penetrated The Kabardino-Balkaria Insurgency?

The case against Asker Jappuyev is based on a directive he issued in early February after a group calling itself the “Black Hawks” began targeting the homes of insurgents’ families. The leader of that group has since been identified as an FSB officer.

Yesterday, Karelia Republic signed a cooperation agreement with Russkoye More on salmon breeding. Accordingly, Russkoye More is to invest up to 5 bln RUB into development of commercial salmon breeding.

This is one of the most strategically important agreements for Karelia, said Andrey Nelidov, the head of the Republic. The entry of the biggest fishery company lets us presume that Karelian salmon breeding will take leading positions both in Russia and abroad.

http://barentsnova.com/node/949

Dig sites threatened by climate change

“The material is so well preserved it’s almost a kind of ethnography instead of archaeology,” says Hermann Parzinger, of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, after excavating the tomb of a Scythian warrior three years ago.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article6017454.ece

Friday, March 11, 2011 – Global warming is damaging archeological treasures that have been frozen for millennia, British researchers said this week.

Warming temperatures are causing ice and hardened ground to thaw exposing remains in some of the coldest places on earth, British news outlets reported on Friday.

Georgia faces a stark choice between two mutually exclusive futures.

The first depicts Georgia as a modern-day divided Berlin and envisions the conflicts it currently faces as a Cold War in the Caucasus—a long-term and largely bloodless division between sides whom outside forces have divided so profoundly that compromise is ruled out a priori. The conflicts are resolved when the other side surrenders, its own residents tear down the artificially imposed division, and its government implodes due to the weakening of its patron.

Such a scenario invokes the artificiality of Berlin’s division, the perceived inevitability of communism’s collapse, and the nobility of West Berliners as they constructed a thriving market democracy on the frontlines of the Cold War. It therefore strikes a chord with many in the West.

Unfortunately, an outcome like Berlin 1989 is highly unlikely for the Georgia conflicts even in the long term. Residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia—selfgoverning entities currently recognized as independent states by Russia and three other countries—would have to magically “get over” their grievances—some of which originate from conflicts fought with Georgians in the 1990s while others are a product of more recent hostilities. But they would also have to embrace the Georgian government as their own and renounce their longstanding ambitions for self-government. In other words, the divisions among peoples in Georgia are anything but artificial.

Mentally ill Russian pilot suspended from duty

A mentally ill man who has worked as a civilian pilot for about a year has been suspended from duty in Russia’s southern republic of Adygea, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on Tuesday.

Over the past decade, the deficit of pilots in Russia has become very acute. The country needs at least 700-800 pilots a year. There are currently about 10,000 commercial pilots in Russia, but an estimated 1,000 are lost every year through retirement or finding work abroad.

Russian Court Rules Farmers Get Compensation For Losses To China

Following the 2005 border demarcation, several small islands and the western part of the Big Ussuri Island (Heixiazi Dao) in the Amur River in Khabarovsk Krai were ceded by Russia to China. The move sparked negative reactions among the local Russian population when the land transfers were made in 2008.