By empty (1/4/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Turkmenistan\'s acting president, in his first campaign statement for next month\'s election, called for wider Internet access in the country and for improving pensions that were slashed last year, state-controlled media reported Thursday. Under the late President Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled Turkmenistan for two decades, access to the Internet was tightly restricted to state and officially approved groups, embassies, accredited foreign journalists and international organizations. The authoritarian leader also stripped more than 100,000 elderly Turkmens of their pensions last year under a law that canceled sick leave and maternity leave payments.

By empty (1/3/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Mikheil Saakashvili traveled on January 2 to the Georgian-populated village of Tamarasheni, which is located less than one mile outside Tskhinvali, the capital of the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia. Saakashvili reiterated his earlier offers to the population of those districts of South Ossetia not under Georgian control to rebuild schools, highways, and other infrastructure damaged during the 1990-1992 conflict. The South Ossetian Foreign Ministry released a statement on January 2 denouncing Saakashvili\'s visit as intended to fuel tensions and demonstrate support for \"destructive forces\" based in the village of Kurta, meaning the alternative South Ossetian leadership elected by the region\'s Georgian voters two months ago.

By empty (1/2/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Caviar export quotas have been set for five Caspian countries – Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan – for this year. There were no quotas in 2006, as the sturgeon population in the Caspian Sea reduced to critical, Willem Wijnstekers, Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), said on Tuesday. The convention entered into force in 1975, and the former Soviet Union signed in document in 1974.