The seminar was focused on the issues concerned with protection of human rights in economic, social, and cultural fields.

The newspaper "Overcoming of Informational Barriers" is issued by the Association of Stavropol Territory's Migrant Organizations "Solidarity" with the assistance of the Caucasian Knot Internet website, the Memorial society and the Soros Foundation.

The seminar "Urgent Problems of Legal Proceedings on Civil and Criminal Cases" took place in Pyatigorsk on October 16-17.

Akhmad Kadyrov took his oaths of office and swore to serve the peoples of Chechnya and to abide by the constitutions of the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic.

The Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of State disseminated the speech of Ronald McNamara made on October 7 at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw.

On October 10-12, the seminar "Elections of 2003 in South Caucasian Countries and Their Impact on Regional Processes" took place in Tsakhkadzor. It was organized by the Yerevan Press Club with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

The participants protested against the frequent cases of attacks on representatives of mass media by law-enforcement agencies.

From the roof of a nearby building, a Human Rights Watch researcher saw police and military troops chase down protesters, surround them and viciously beat them.

The minister stressed that the truce on the contact line of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict was sustained mainly due to the balance of military forces, which was to a large extent conditioned by the level of economic development of the conflict parties.

The Karabakh non-government organization Center of Civil Initiatives continues to monitor penitentiary institutions of Nagorny Karabakh.

The Law "On Freedom of information" recently adopted by the National Assembly of Armenia is progressive. It is only necessary that mechanisms of its implementation should be worked out. This was noted at the round-table meeting organized by the Association of Investigative Journalists on October 15.

On October 13 Panakh Kerimov, an election committee member, handed over a ballot illegally marked in favor of Aliyev to political parties, local and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, as evidence of the crime. On October 14 police hemmed in and blocked Kerimov?s house.

Violent clashes between security forces and opposition protesters in Azerbaijan left at least three civilians dead and hundreds wounded just one day after the falsified presidential elections of October 15.

The Turan Information Agency published a list of journalists who were covering things happening in Baku and were beaten by the police.

In Maskhadov's opinion, the Kremlin's policy in Chechnya aimed at settling the war conflict by means of armed forces has ended in a complete fiasco.

The soldiers drove the journalists who were on the tribune into a corner and start trampling and batoning them.

"For the last three years those civil society activists who incurred the authorities' anger for any of several reasons have become a target of state repressions in the form of unconcealed judicial despotism and torture keeping conditions," reads the appeal.

The capital's prosecutor's office has instituted criminal proceedings against 15 activists of the Musavat party on the accusation of public order violations and resistance to the police. In response, the Musavat party begins mass protests from today and states it will fight for its voters until the end.

The statement reads, "The preliminary analysis of information received is evidence that numerous violations on election day completed the picture of mass breaches, violence and lawlessness with which all the presidential election campaign was accompanied and of which the Federation repeatedly informed local public, the mass media and international organizations."

A round table for representatives of public organizations and power organs was arranged in the Sleptsovskaya village, Ingushetia, on October 11.