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MOSCOW, April 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russia signed on Thursday joint border protection agreements with the former Georgian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The agreements were signed in the Kremlin by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh, and South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity. Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states after the five-day war with Georgia, which attacked South Ossetia in an attempt to bring it back under central control. Most residents of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia had held Russian citizenship for several years. Under the agreements, Russia will guard the Abkhaz and South...

In any community – a school class, a workshop, an army unit or a prison cell – laymen are tested for strength. Tests may be different: a special procedure of "initiation", a provocation, a physical contest or psychological pressure. In the same way, a goalkeeper in a soccer game is tested at the start with long-distance and precarious blows. Global policy follows similar rules. During recent decades, the West has been systematically testing Moscow leaders for strength. Yury Andropov was tested by a South Korean aircraft illegitimately entering the air territory of the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev's personal psychological and political...

Polish president calls for peace in Georgia, reiterates support for Georgia's territorial integrity WARSAW. AUGUST 8. INTERFAX CENTRAL EUROPE - The internal conflict between Georgia and its separatist republic South Osetia should be resolved in a peaceful manner, while Georgia's territorial integrity should be protected, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said Friday. "The president of Poland is looking at the developing situation in Georgia with the highest concern," reads a statement issued by Kaczynski's office. "The president wishes to stress that conflicts should always be resolved peacefully. The president's position is that Georgia's full sovereignty and territorial integrity should be recognized...

The outcome of conflicts between Georgia and its breakaway regions will depend on how the West handles Kosovo's claims for independence, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview published Thursday. Russia says if talks on Kosovo's final status were to give the province independence from Serbia, that would be a powerful precedent for South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- Moscow-backed separatist regions that are de facto independent from Tbilisi. A referendum on independence will be held Sunday in South Ossetia. Asked in an interview with Izvestia about the Georgian regions, Ivanov said: "It is hard to say how events will...

State forces blamed over Beslan Russian security forces were partly to blame for last year's school hostage crisis in Beslan, investigators from the North Caucasus have concluded. The hostage-taking raid by pro-Chechen gunmen led to the deaths of 331 people. The North Ossetian parliament commission said the school had been seized because of "failings in the law enforcement bodies". Many relatives blame their children's deaths on a botched rescue operation, in which fire engulfed the school. The head of the commission, Stanislav Kesayev, said the identified "failings" included "the fact that a large number of armed people gained access to...

Forty years ago the North Osetian publishing house printed a book by Aleksander Lapis and Valery Shanaev: Singed Wings. It was dedicated to the brave and patriotic men and women who defended the North Caucasus during the most difficult years of the war. The main hero was a man of astonishing destiny, aviator Vladimir Zangiev, who unfortunately left this life a few years ago, and did not make it to this 60th anniversary of the great victory. Life served up harsh trials for Zangiev, events that one could not even imagine in their worst nightmare: fierce aerial combat in...

Original title: The Ossetian Ku-Klux-KlanResidents of Northern Ossetia are ready to find those responsible for the Beslan tragedy themselves "I'm not a wild animal, like those who came here to kill our children. I won't avenge myself against families or peoples, but I'm going to find those who made this happen," declared one of the residents of Beslan to Gazeta. During the terror act he lost lost his entire family. The forty-day mourning period for the victims of the tragedy will end on October 12th, afterwards these Ossetian men, in accordance with the custom of their people, have the right...

Russian Affront By Ma³gorzata Kaczorowska 15 September 2004 The Russian newspaper Izvestya has attacked the Polish media for articles about Beslan. According to the newspaper, the media present the tragedy "with malicious satisfaction" and attacks on Russia. Yevgeny Shestakov, author of a commentary accusing Poland of an anti-Russian bias in relation to the tragedy in North Ossetia, says the atmosphere at newspaper reader discussion boards in Poland reveals a different Poland than the one that lays flowers before the Russian embassy and whose president sends condolences to the Ossetian nation. In Shestakov's opinion, Poland is "full of malevolence, permeated by...

Russia Warns West Against Meddling in Chechnya By Oliver Bullough MOSCOW (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West not to meddle with Russia's Chechnya (news - web sites) policy on Thursday in the wake of a bloody hostage crisis, highlighting a growing rift over the issue between former Cold War foes. He said, in a reference to British and U.S. offers of asylum to spokesmen for Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, that the West was directly interfering in an internal issue. "When our Western partners say we should re-examine our policy, what you call our tactics, I would...

THIS was another low, dark week in the history of terrorism. The pandemonium and bloodshed that climaxed the school siege in Ossetia capped outrages across the globe. In Iraq, 12 Nepalese hostages - lowly cooks and cleaners working for a Jordanian firm - were murdered, their fate almost forgotten in the welter of other outrages against civilians. Meanwhile, in Moscow, a female suicide bomber killed ten people outside an underground railway station. Responsibility was claimed by the same Chechen Jihadist group that downed two civilian airliners last week. And on Tuesday, 16 people were killed in suicide bombings on two...