By empty (7/22/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Iran has begun building its 100-kilometer section of the planned 140-kilometer pipeline intended to export Iranian natural gas to Armenia, and construction should be completed by the spring of 2005, Armenian Ambassador to Tehran Geghan Gharibjanian told RFE/RL\'s Armenian Service on 20 July. The project has been under discussion for years, but the formal agreement to proceed was signed only in May. On 21 July, senior Gazprom official Aleksandr Ryazanov discussed with Armenian President Robert Kocharian the possibility of the Russian natural-gas monopoly\'s participation in the financing and building of the project.

By empty (7/22/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Musavat party leader Isa Qambar and Azerbaijan National Independence Party Chairman Etibar Mammedov both announced in Baku on 22 July that they will not attend an international forum in Boston on 25-29 July to which they were invited by the U.S. National Democratic Institute.

By empty (7/22/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)

A top presidential candidate in Chechnya was barred from running in next month\'s elections, thereby all but assuring victory for the Kremlin-backed man in Russia\'s war-torn republic. Chechnya\'s central election commission refused Thursday to register Malik Saidullayev as a candidate in the August 29 poll because his passport did not correctly list a place of birth -- the second time he has been barred from running. \"We have refused to register him,\" commission chief Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov told AFP by telephone from Grozny.