“According to our business plan, capital accumulation should be completed within 9 months” – said Geybatov, who added that US$1 million is needed to provide the bureau with the required software.

The International Finance Corporation estimates that the first independent credit bureau may appear in Azerbaijan 2 years after the related bill has been accepted.

The present Central Credits Register, which is controlled by the country’s central bank, offers credit information which is more individuals-orientated than firms. Credit information is very general, only dividing debtors into positive and negative.

Moreover, Azerbaijan might also accept a law on credit stories, a government official said to the local media.

Both laws are due to help financial institutions make faster and more accurate credit decisions, thereby increasing the availability and affordability of the financial services provided to the country’s individual consumers, and also micro, small, and medium enterprises.

Azerbaijan joined the IFC in 1995. As of December 2008, the IFC committed nearly US$289 million via its own fund, while gathering nearly US$104 million through syndications. IFC’s investments in Azerbaijan were mainly in oil and gas, financial, general manufacturing, and agribusiness sectors.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has asked the government to look for new commodity markets. “There are other fish in the sea besides Russia and Europe — it is necessary to reach out to the new regions”, he told Interfax. According to Lukashenko, Belarus is being pushed to embrace new partners because of unfair trade conditions with Russia and evasion of arrangements.

Minsk started it’s search for new partners when Russia stopped to finance delivery of cheap oil, he reminded. This year Belarus will receive 6.3 million duty-free tons of oil though 1.7 million tons less than asked for.

China decided to grant Belarus a soft loan of one billion dollars for the implementation of joint projects. According to the deputy chairman of China, President Hu Jintao personally ordered Chinese officials to study all the proposals of the Belarusian side on development of joint projects.

“We need to develop the potential of trade and promote cooperation in most large-scale projects, and thereby raise the level of our cooperation”, – said Xi in Minsk during his official visit to the country.

The Belarusian government’s press-service informed that the two countries’ cooperation program includes 89 projects, such as car manufacturing, renovation of power stations, building of hotels and a China-town in the country. Projects ought to be realized within three to four years. “Belarus prepares for privatization, and China would like to participate in it”, said the head of “Strategia” analytical center Leonid Zaiko.

The vice-premier of the government Vladimir Semashko told Reuters that Minsk going to import oil from Venezuela and a trial run of 80 000 tons is supposed to arrive in May.

Earlier Belarusian representatives declared their intention to import 4 million tons from Venezuela in 2010 and to increase volumes of purchases to 10 million tons in a year’s prospect. The total amount of the country internal consumption is now 6.3 million tons.

“We do not want to avoid cooperation with Russia, this is a question of markets diversification and mutually beneficial cooperation with new partners” announced Minsk officials to local media, while adding, “We offer Venezuela and China the projects rejected by the Russian Federation”.

Meanwhile, head of Mizesa’s Research center Yaroslav Romanchuk is assured that the transportation costs from Venezuela will block any profit. “The union with Venezuela is a rather political anti western campaign than economical decision”, — said Romanchuk to Russian business paper Vedomosti. The statistics does not reflect any growth of trade between these two countries. In January 2009 Venezuela bought 517 Belarus tractors while only seven in January 2010 .

Andrei Kruglov, Gazprom’s deputy CEO, discussed his company’s interest in boosting its stake in the company. This comes a few years after the company purchased 50 percent of Beltrangaz’s shares in 2007 indicating Gazproms’s intention to increase their control over the Belarusian pipeline.

“As for Gazprom’s corporate policy in the investment area, we are striving to obtain control,” he said to local media in Minsk.

According to Kruglov, the company would “correct its business plan based on inter governmental relations.”

“Gazprom’s investment in Beltransgaz is part of an agreement at the inter-governmental level and is fully compliant with internal corporate investment policy for the development of transport infrastructure.”

He added that the company would look carefully at possible investment yields. “We will be making sure that in the future out input corresponds with the yield standards.”

The company could also seek the Belarussian government’s minority stake in Belgazprombank, the second largest bank in Belarus outside the state sector.

“That depends on the government of Belarus. It could decide to hold onto its stake in Belgazprombank, and if it does, we’ll support that. It those shares are put up for sale, of course the shareholders will think about the proposal,” said Kruglov while also adding that Gazprom is satisfied with their current level of involvement in Belgazprombank.

The mid-annual price for the Russian gas was established for Belarus in 2010 at $171.5 for one thousand cubic meters.

Kruglov has also pointed out that Belarusian debts for supplied gas now reach $94.5 million. He has declared that Gazprom expects to obtain repayment of Belarusian debts this year.

The private television station Imedi showed the report at 8 p.m. Saturday evening, complete with voiceover commentary on ‘live’ video showing Russian tanks and fighter jets operating inside the country.

Georgians rushed to gas stations and ATMs, and the country’s wireless network crashed under the weight of fearful calls.

The news program preceded the clip with a clear warning which labeled the program as fictitious, but many missed it and took it for the real thing.

In all, the panic was said to have lasted less than three hours.

After a lengthy, interesting, and highly competitive presidential election in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich was finally sworn into office in the country’s capital of Kiev yesterday.

During the presidential runoff over the last few months, the defining contrast between Yanukovich and his chief opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, seemed to be the former’s pro-Russian affinity versus the latter’s pro-European inclinations.

In his inaugural speech, however, President Yanukovich said that it was important for his country to build relations with Russia, the European Union, and the United States.

“Being a bridge between East and West, an integral part of Europe and the former Soviet Union at the same time, Ukraine will choose a foreign policy that will allow our country to get the most out of the development of equal and mutually beneficial relations with Russia, the European Union, the United States, and other countries that influence development in the world,” he said.

In addition to dealing with finicky relationship between its neighbors on either side, Yanukovich will also have his hands full repairing the debt-ridden and unreliable Ukrainian economy, fighting rampant corruption and poverty, as well as stabilizing a shaky political system that hasn’t been able to achieve much in recent years due to fighting within the Orange Revolution parties.

Check out this CNN interview with Mr. Yanukovich.

By Edith Balazs

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said countries in central and eastern Europe should join together and create a “triangle” of supply points for natural gas to reduce dependence on fuel from Russia.

“I’m proposing that countries in the region set up a gas supply triangle to boost the diversity and security,” Bajnai said at an energy summit in Budapest today, which was attended by heads of government from countries in the region. “We need to increase the number of independent suppliers.”

Countries in the region, dependent on Russian gas, have repeatedly suffered from fuel shortages because of pricing disputes between Russia and Ukraine, a transit country. Hungary gets about 80 percent of its gas from Russia and supports the European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline aimed at bringing Caspian gas to Europe.

Nabucco would be the eastern tip of a triangle, which would include a planned liquefied natural-gas terminal in Poland in the north and an LNG terminal in Krk, Croatia, in the south, Bajnai said. The plan would secure supply of gas transported in the Baltic and Adriatic seas, he said.

“Our aim is to create a critical mass that can represent its interest more efficiently, a critical mass that simply can’t be passed by or overlooked,” Bajnai said.

KIEV, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Monday renewed her attacks on President-elect Viktor Yanukovich, whom she accuses of winning election through fraud, and rejected any post-election deal with him.

In a televised statement she accused her rival of already beginning to sell off Ukraine’s gas pipeline network — a sensitive issue since it touches on relations with Russia — and predicted he would not stay in power for long.

The sharp attack by the fiery 49-year-old premier, who on Saturday dropped her legal challenge to Yanukovich’s election, significantly raised political tensions before his inauguration on Thursday.

“Yanukovich, who came to power by lies, is not our president and he will not last long,” she told a televised broadcast. “I want to say that I would not, under any circumstances, create a coalition together with Yanukovich,” she declared.

Yanukovich, a 59-year-old ex-mechanic who is backed by wealthy industrialists in eastern Ukraine, beat Tymoshenko by a narrow margin of 3.5 percentage points in the Feb. 7 runoff.

She says she was robbed of victory by electoral fraud, but at the weekend she withdrew an attempt to get a high court to give the go-ahead for another vote. She said she could not trust it to fairly consider the evidence.

Yanukovich is set to be sworn in to office on Feb. 25 and now has to steel himself to working with Tymoshenko — albeit for only a short period — until he can force her out by forging a new coalition in parliament.

Delays in ending Ukraine’s long political turmoil and bringing a measure of stability to the power structure will only continue to deter much-needed investment for the struggling economy.

The ex-Soviet state of 46 million has been kept afloat by an International Monetary Fund bail-out programme of $16.4 billion, but this has been suspended because of paralysis in decision-making and breached promises.

The IMF has said it will resume the programme once stability has returned to government.

The Yanukovich camp is pressing ahead with trying to strike a deal for a new coalition among the opportunistic deputies in parliament which can involve long and tricky horse-trading.

If he fails to do this, he may be forced to call an early parliamentary election with unpredictable consequences.

Until then, he is doomed to share the higher echelons of power with a prime minister who does not regard him as legitimately elected.

FUTURE IN OPPOSITION?

Yanukovich is expected to tilt Ukraine back towards the old imperial master, Russia, after five years of estrangement under pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko. His first foreign visit after inauguration is expected to be to Moscow in early March.

One specific charge Tymoshenko levelled against him was that he had begun “selling off Ukrainian national interests in all directions”, including the privatisation of the gas network system.

Yanukovich has proposed creation of a consortium including Russia to run the country’s gas pipelines.

On Monday, she broached for the first time a possible future in opposition if Yanukovich managed to outflank her in parliament and form a new coalition bringing in defectors from among her erstwhile allies.

“If the patriotic forces, the democratic political parties in parliament sell out politically, then I will go into opposition to bring closer the time when our state returns to a civilised way of development,” she said.

Earlier on Monday, her camp said it wanted a quick parliamentary vote which she hopes will back her government before Yanukovich has time to muster support to bring it down.

The Regions Party faction of Yanukovich said on Friday it planned a vote of no-confidence in the government in early March after his inauguration. But Tymoshenko’s bloc said it had collected enough signatures to force the vote this week before his swearing-in.

Tymoshenko’s BYuT bloc appears to feel that the Yanukovich camp, which is busy preparing for the inauguration, will not have time to muster the necessary 226 votes for it to succeed this week.

Opposition leader Viktor F. Yanukovich has declared victory over current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election, which has garnered immense international attention over the last few months.

It is not yet official, and Tymoshenko will not concede, but exit polls currently put Yanukovich three to four points ahead.

In the simplest form, Tymoshenko has the support of eastern Ukraine with her pro-Europe stance while Yanukovich, in contrast, has the support of the Russian-speaking western and southern Ukraine.

The two fierce rivals have spared no expense in their efforts to insult, humiliate, and discredit one another with smear campaigns as they dragged each other through the mud.

Although it has been entertaining, the true victims of this election are the Ukrainian people. They are the ones who will be stuck with one of these candidates as their president in a now more divided country that already has its fair share of problems.

Furthermore, for those hoping this drawn out election may finally find its conclusion, you may be disappointed. The fallout of Tymoshenko’s loss may carry on for some time.

Over the weekend, she called on her supporters to take to the streets in protest if Yanukovich prevails.

As the elections started on Sunday, Tymoshenko’s team also said that Yanukovich supporters were practicing “terrorism” and “open banditry.”

Ukrainian officials deny any such reports.

Romanian President Traian Basescu hastily issued a statement yesterday saying he was prepared to negotiate the details of the missile defense system which, he added, could be up and running by 2015.

Mr. Basescu said that with Romania’s participation, the system was not directed at Russia but rather “against other threats,” without specifying them.

A NATO member since 2004, Romania’s ground based missile interceptors will be designed to shoot down any short to medium-range missiles launched from Iran.

This agreement may help Russia and the U.S. with their nuclear disarmament talks as Moscow has long suggested Romania and Bulgaria as an alternative to the Poland and Czech Republic sites.

The findings were published in the German science journal Naturwissenschaften (Natural Sciences) on January 28 this year, after tests confirmed that the teeth found in 2008 indeed once belonged to a Neanderthal.

The teeth were uncovered in the mountains of the Polish Jura Chain – an area which claims more than 200 caves scattered among limestone rocks, cliffs, and outcroppings.

Many Neanderthal artifacts such as flint tools, campsites, and the bones of animals have been found within Poland, but these are the first bodily remains found of the Neanderthals themselves who lived between 100 thousand to 80 thousand years ago.

Read the full AP story here.