By empty (6/28/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Robert Kocharian, accompanied by five government ministers, arrived in Tbilisi on 27 June for a two-day official visit. In meetings with his Georgian counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze and with parliament speaker Nino Burdjanadze, Kocharian discussed regional security, bilateral political and economic cooperation, and regional cooperation within the TRACECA (Asia-Caucasus-Europe transport corridor) and Silk Road projects and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization. The official communiqué issued after Kocharian\'s talks with Shevardnadze did not specify whether the two presidents also discussed the situation of the Armenian minority in the southern Georgian region of Djavakheti, but Kocharian was said to have met behind closed doors with some members of Georgia\'s Armenian minority.

By empty (6/27/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba has told Apsnipress that the Georgian leadership\'s proposal to establish a joint Georgian-Abkhaz administration under the UN aegis in Abkhazia\'s southernmost Gali Raion concurrently with the repatriation to Gali of Georgian displaced persons is unacceptable. Shamba again insisted that repatriation is a purely humanitarian issue and accused the Georgian leadership of using the displaced persons as pawns in their \"political games.\" (Caucasus Press).

By empty (6/27/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Meeting in Baku on 25 June, the leaders of six opposition parties and several other prominent opposition politicians endorsed a \"Charter on the Cult of Personality\" drafted by AMAL, the movement that represents Azerbaijan\'s intelligentsia, zerkalo.az reported on 26 June. The charter condemns the antidemocratic methods of propaganda resorted to by authoritarian regimes; the selection of government personnel on the basis of their family or regional origin; attempts to establish a hereditary leadership, meaning President Aliev\'s alleged plan to ensure that his son, Ilham, succeeds him as president; and efforts to undermine democratization, political pluralism, and the transition to a market economy.