By empty (10/13/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Deputy foreign minister Araz Azimov has said tensions between the European Union and Azerbaijan are temporary.The country’s relations with the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) are of humanitarian nature and implemented on an informal level. There is no need for making any conclusions from the recent opening of flights to Northern Cyprus, he said.

By empty (10/13/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has challenged Kazakhstan to be a leader of economic and democratic reform in Central Asia. Speaking in the Kazakh capital Astana, she called for the country\'s presidential elections set for December to be free and fair. Human rights groups have accused President Nursultan Nazarbayev of clamping down on opposition groups.

By empty (10/12/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Serzh Sarkisian took issue on 7 October with a hypothesis expressed the previous day at a NATO-organized seminar in Yerevan by Sir Brian Fall, who is the British special representative for the South Caucasus, RFE/RL\'s Armenian Service reported. Fall suggested that the Armenian government\'s continued willingness to host a Russian military base is due to fears of renewed aggression from Azerbaijan, and he asked rhetorically whether Armenia would want a \"substantial Russian military presence on its territory\" even after the Karabakh conflict is resolved. Sarkisian responded on 7 October saying that the Russian military presence has \"nothing to do with the Karabakh problem and our relations with Azerbaijan in general.