Armenia and Azerbaijan can come to an agreement on the principles of Nagorno-Karabakh issue settlement before the OSCE summit scheduled for December, reported Russian President Dmitri Medvedev who was the mediator of the October 27 meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“The issue of the settlement principles is yet to be solved to later become the basis of the peace treaty. Nevertheless, we have come a long way which gives a good ground for hope that if the sides work efficiently during this month, basic principles of settlement could be reconciled before the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan on December 1-2,” says Medvedev.

The main practical and political outcome of the Astrakhan meeting has become the agreement between the two presidents to exchange war prisoners.

“The parties have agreed on a joint statement, which is of humanitarian character but is a very important one. It is a special declaration providing for immediate exchange of war prisoners and bodies of those who died [in recent skirmishes on the line of contact] as confidence-building measures,” said Medvedev.

The News:
http://www.armeniano … nt_meeting_astrakhan

Russian troops pulled back from a small village of Perevi at the western part of administrative border of breakaway South Ossetian on Monday evening.

Georgia said the withdrawal was “a step made in the right direction.”

“The de-occupation of each village is of outmost importance for Georgia and especially for the population residing in those villages,” the Georgian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on October 18.

“However, it should be emphasized that the withdrawal of Russian occupational forces from Perevi is just a miniscule step in comparison with commitments envisaged by the ceasefire agreement of August 12 2008 which Russia still has to comply with,” it said.

The News:
http://www.geotimes. … ?m=home&newsid=22940

A group of gunmen has attacked the parliament of Russia’s republic of Chechnya leaving at least three people killed in the assault.

According to Russia’s Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev, who is in the Chechen capital at the moment, the victims are two militiamen and one civilian. The latest reports say that at least 17 people have been wounded. The injured include seven police officers and 11 civilians.

According to investigative committee on Tuesday morning cars with deputies entering the territory of the parliament were followed by a car carrying terrorists. At least one suicide blast followed and up to three gunmen managed to break into the building and open fire. According to the country’s law enforcement agency all of them have been neutralised.

The News:
http://rt.com/Top_Ne … upts-parliament.html

Several dozen Russian official media outlets reported on October 9 that a video of Last Appeal by 4 representatives of guerrillas, fighting in the Far East of the present-day Russia for freedom and independence of their country - the Amur Republic with its capital in Vladivostok - had been posted on the Youtube.

According to informal polls, the majority of the population of in Russian Far East wants to join Japan as its mainland province or to have their own independent state.

Russian media outlets suggest that the guerrillas in the Russian Far East use military experience of the Mujahideen of the Caucasus Emirate, and perhaps, at least some of them have secretly converted to Islam.

The News:
http://www.kavkazcen … 10/10/10/12604.shtml

The Real IRA have claimed responsibility for last night’s car bomb attack on the Ulster Bank on Culmore Road.
In a call to the ‘Derry Journal,’ a spokesperson for the organisation, using a recognised codeword, said it was behind the attack.

The bomb exploded shortly after midnight, causing substantial damage to the bank and a number of nearby buildings in the Da Vinci’s retail complex , including shops and a nearby hotel.

Hotel guest and residents of a several homes in the area were evacuated for a short time. No one was injured in the blast.

The News:
http://www.derryjour … rry-blast.6565898.jp