Azeri president leaves for CIS summit in Chisinau.

BAKU, October 8 (Itar-Tass) - President of Azerbaijan Ilkham Aliev
will on Thursday leave for Chisinau that will host a CIS summit on October
9, the presidential administration said.
The Azeri leader is expected to meet his Armenian counterpart Serge
Sargsyan on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement in the Moldovan capital on
Thursday evening, according to diplomatic sources.
An agreement on the Aliev-Sargsyan meeting was reached during a
working trip to the region of international brokers - the co-chairmen of
the OSCE Minsk Group for the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. They held
political consultations first in Yerevan and then in Baku early in October.
Yuri Merzlyakov, the Russian co-chairman of the Minsk group, said that
in Chisinau the Azeri and Armenian presidents would continue discussing
the basic principles of settlement proposed to the conflicting sides by
the co-chairmen of the Minsk group in Madrid in autumn 2007.
In his speech at the summit of the heads of Turkic-language countries
late last week, President Ilkham Aliev noted positive dynamics in the
talks on Nagorno-Karabakh.
"I can say that the negotiations are in their final stage, and the
questions under discussion may contribute to conflict settlement,"
President Aliev said.
In the meantime, Araz Azimov, the deputy foreign minister of
Azerbaijan and the Azeri president's special envoy for the
Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, re-voiced the position of official Baku. He
said there was no unilateral way of settling the Karabakh conflict, and a
solution was possible only through bilateral compromises.
Azimov also said that Azerbaijan was ready to make concessions without
giving up its position of principle.
"Our position of principle consists in vertical subordination of
Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has already announced its
readiness to grant a high autonomous status to Nagorno-Karabakh where the
Azeri and Armenian communities would live together side by side. It means
that Azerbaijan has already covered its half of the way and it's up to
Armenia now to give up its extreme stance and cover its half of this way,"
the Azeri diplomat explained.
"Armenia should agree to solve the Karabakh problem within Azerbaijan'
s territorial integrity," Azimov specified.
On the whole, Baku's position is based on step-by-step settlement,
which provides for the liberation of all the occupied territories around
Nagorno-Karabakh, the return of refugees, the opening of communications
and, finally, a discussion of the Nagorno-Karabakh future status.


.Verdict on the "Black Hawks" case to be announced on Thursday.

MOSCOW, October 8 (Itar-Tass) - A Moscow district court will on
Thursday announce a verdict to members of the "Black Hawks" group accused
of attacking two Moscow students in May 2008.
The prosecutor demands from four to seven years in prison for the
defendants, two of whom are being kept in custody and the others were
released on a written pledge not to leave Moscow.
The group included natives of Azerbaijan who called themselves the
Black Hawks. In May 2008 they attacked two Moscow students in the Moscow
underground. One young man was taken to hospital with heavy wounds, the
other also needed medical help. The attacked was filmed with a cell phone
camera.
The six defendants are being charged with hooliganism and causing
interntional harm to health.
One defendant was killed near an entrance to his house in September.

.Russo-Lithuanian commission to meet on Thursday.

VILNIUS, October 8 (Itar-Tass) - A Russian-Lithuanian
inter-governmental commission will meet on Thursday to discuss prospects
of trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.
Special attention will be paid to finding common interests in the
development of innovative technologies and the construction of nuclear
energy facilities. Both Lithuania and Russia's neighboring Kaliningrad
region hope to get down to the construction of new nuclear power stations
soon.
Other topics include transportation where Russia and Lithuania have
common interests but also face competition between the two Baltic ports -
Lithuanian Klaipeda and Russian Kaliningrad; the tariff policy pursued by
Lithuania with regards to cargoes bound for the Kaliningrad region; the
implementation of bilateral agreement on shipping in the Kurshsk bay and
waterways in Lithuania and the Kaliningrad region and facilitation of
border crossing procedures for the residents of adjacent territories.
The sides are expected to sign an inter-governmental agreement on
cooperation against contamination of the Baltic Sea with oil and other
toxic substances.

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