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phone. I am ringing, but either phone numbers were changed or nobody is taking the call," he said.
Asked whether he thought his marriage with the Kazakh president's daughter could be restored, Aliyev said: "To say that is impossible would probably be wrong."
TBILISI. March 28 (Interfax) - Former Georgian defense minister Irakly Okruashvili has been sentenced in absentia to eleven years in prison by Georgy Shavliashvili, a judge at the Tbilisi city court.
Former press secretary of the Georgian president Dmitry Kitoshvili, who was also charged in the case, made a compromise with the inquiry and received five-years probation and was fined 10,000 lari.
Both Okruashvili and Kitoshvili were found guilty of extorting part of the shares in the Geocell mobile operator. According to the inquiry, they forced businessman Jemal Svanidze to refuse his stake in the company.
The former minister's defense is going to challenge the city court's decision at the Court of Appeals within one month.
The court's decision "is political," Okruashvili's lawyer, Eka Beseliya, told journalists.
The Georgian Prosecutor General's Office charged Okruashvili with extorting a bribe, corruption, professional negligence and abuse of office.
The criminal case against Okruashvili was opened in September 2007, after he formed the political party "The Movement for Georgia's Future" and made public accusations against president Mikhail Saakashvili.
Currently, Okruashvili is in Paris waiting for the court to rule on his extradition to Georgia on April 16. He also awaits the reply to his application for political asylum in France.
KYIV. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia cooperates with NATO much more closely than Ukraine, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yury Yekhanurov said.
"I would be very glad if during my time as defense minister we were able to get at least two thirds nearer to the level of NATO cooperation that exists with Russia," Yekhanurov said on the First national television channel on Thursday, the Defense Ministry said.
Russia's cooperation with NATO is extremely active and fruitful, the minister said. "Russians are very well represented in Brussels, they broadly cooperate with NATO in the Mediterranean Sea. There are many things we can learn from them," Yekhanurov said.
At the same time, Yekhanurov said he was surprised by how Russia sees Ukraine's rapprochement with NATO. "Judging by the way this issue is covered on Russian television, it turns out that we are not allowed to do what they can. They can hold joint exercise with NATO and we not. That is just not done!" the Ukrainian defense minister said.
YEREVAN. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Washington is prepared to cooperate with Armenian president-elect Serzh Sargsyan and assist to the democratic development of the country, U.S. charge d'affaires to Armenia Josef Pennington told a press conference in Yerevan.
The U.S. is puzzled by the political processes occurring in Armenia in recent months and has notified the Armenian leaders of its concerns, he said
There are obvious negative trends that must be opposed, he said.
However, all the reassurances and statements that we hear from the president-elect are giving us hope, Pennington said.
Washington is not going to impact the internal political processes in Armenia, he said.
They are the country's domestic problems and should be dealt within the country through democratic transformation, the U.S. diplomat said.
KYIV. March 28 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko has called on all political forces that are going to stage protest actions during U.S. President George Bush's visit to Kyiv to be tolerant and to respect their political opponents.
"The Interior Ministry calls on [these groups] to show their political views with respect to the rights of others," Lutsenko told journalists during a working visit to Georgia.
Particularly, the Communist party, the Vitrenko Bloc and the Ukrainian People's Rukh have applied to stage protest actions, the minister said.
"The Interior Ministry is ready to secure order on the capital's streets," the minister added.
Bush is expected to arrive in Kyiv on Monday night and will hold talks on Tuesday
VASILKOV, Kyiv region. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has taken a flight in a Su-27 fighter during his visit of the 40th tactical aviation brigade at the Center Air Command of the Ukrainian Air Force on Friday.
The president underwent a medical examination and received flight instructions before he put on a flight suit, flight boots, a flight helmet and black leather gloves.
The aircraft was piloted by the deputy commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Maj. Gen. Vasily Nikiforov.
The Ukrainian president spent 35 minutes in the air.
KYIV. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - A new radioactive waste storage facility near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant will be opened in April, Ukrainian Emergencies Minister Volodymyr Shandra said on Friday.
"In April we will open the first section of the Vektor facility capable of storing up to 500,000 tons of radioactive waste," the minister told a press conference in Kyiv.
Only Ukrainian radioactive waste will be stored at the facility, he said.
KYIV. March 28 (Interfax) - Donor countries are expected to increase their funding for the Shelter Implementation Plan at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by $300 million, Ukrainian Emergencies Minister Volodymyr Shandra said.
"An early agreement has been reached, and I think it will be confirmed at the upcoming meeting of the donor countries on a $300-million funding for the Shelter facility," Shandra told a press conference in Kyiv on Friday.
The extraction of fuel assemblies from the power plant units will be completed in April 2008, he also said.
In fact, fuel will remain only in the power unit N4 that exploded in 1986, he said.
Earlier, the emergencies minister said he hoped the new confinement at the Shelter facility will be built by 2012.
In spring 2008 Ukraine is planning to start building the Shelter facility at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Deputy Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Sergei Parashin said earlier that donors and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development had decided to gradually increase the contract price to 490 million euro.
KYIV. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Poland will support Ukraine at the NATO summit in Bucharest on the issue regarding the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday.
"Poland has absolutely supported and will support Ukraine's participation in MAP," Tusk told a press conference jointly held with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in Kyiv.
"Despite the complexity of this issue" the Alliance will decide in favor of Ukraine's MAP participation, he said.
DUSHANBE. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - A court in the Sughd region of Tajikistan has sentenced an activist of the banned extremist Hizb ut- Tahrir party to ten years in a penal colony.
"Jakhongir Murodov, a resident of the town of Khujand born in 1981, was sentenced to ten years in a maximum security penal colony," the court said in a statement on Friday.
Murodov was found guilty of making appeals to overthrow the constitutional regime in Tajikistan, as well as fomenting ethnic, racial or religious hatred, the statement says.
Murodov was the first extremist sentenced in Tajikistan in 2008. Twelve activists of various extremist organizations were sentenced in Tajikistan last year.
The Hizb ut-Tahrir organization was set up in Palestine in 1952. The party's headquarters are located in London. Hizb ut-Tahrir's goal is to overthrow constitutional regimes in Muslim states and create a caliphate, a single Islamic state. The organization is on the list of extremist and terrorist organizations in Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and the United States. The party's leaders, however, claim it does not spread ideas promoting the overthrow of constitutional regimes.
KYIV. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - The Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry is planning to complete the disposal of Category 1 and 2 ammunition at an old military base in Novobogdanovka in Zaporizhia region by April.
"We are planning to complete the work by summer. In particular, ammunition of the 1st and 2nd categories will be disposed of by April," Emergencies Minister Volodymyr Shandra told a press conference in Kyiv on Friday.
In 2008 1,552 tons of ammunition have already been disposed of, a search is underway for ammunition buried up five meters deep, he said.
The ministry is planning to transfer the military base's land, fully cleared, to the local community before the end of 2008, he said.
DUSHANBE. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - An Afghan national apprehended last year at the Tajik-Afghan state border with ten kilograms of heroin has been sentenced to 19 years in a Tajik penal colony, the Tajik National Security Committee said on Friday.
"A court of the Panj district, Khatlon region found guilty and sentenced Abdulkakhor Valadi Abdulgafor, an Afghan national, to 19 years in a maximum security penal colony," the committee said.
Tajikistan is one of the main transit countries of Afghan opiates to Russia and Western Europe.
NALCHIK. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh held a meeting in Nalchik with volunteers from Kabardino-Balkaria, who participated in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict in 1992-1993, and relatives of those who died in combat operations.
Opening this meeting, Bagapsh said that Abkhazia will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the end of military operations in Abkhazia.
"We shall hold many events dedicated not only to the victory but to those people who died for our independence including to our brethren from Kabardino-Balkaria. We have earned this independence by right. We have won the war and have no right to lose peace," he said.
South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity also took part in the meeting.
He thanked the peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and North Ossetia for backing during military operations and in peace time and confirmed the South Ossetian aspiration for independence.
TSKHINVALI. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - A UAZ car exploded in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali on Thursday evening.
The blast occurred at about 8:15 p.m. local time. South Ossetian police are working at the scene. Preliminary reports say there are casualties.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesman Mikhail Kamynin announced that the trail of terrorist attacks in South Ossetia in the past month led to Georgia.
Two people were killed and 17 sustained injuries on February 28 when a bomb hidden inside a TV-set detonated at a police station in the South Ossetian village of Dmenisi.
On March 23, a mine went off in the Znauri district, seriously wounding South Ossetian security serviceman Il Koliyev and peacekeeper V. Doguzov.
MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - The sortie of the Georgian unmanned reconnaissance aircraft over Abkhazia could be interpreted as a move preceding the use of force, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"We believe that this episode is more proof of Tbilisi's anti-Abkhaz policy that contradicts the United Nations course toward building confidence between the conflicting parties," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in the comments posted on its website on Thursday.
"Such reconnaissance could be interpreted as the activity preceding the use of force, given that the technical characteristics of the unmanned aircraft shot down by Abkhaz air defense forces allow its use for fire adjustment as well," the comments said.
"There is every reason for the sortie of the Georgian 'drone' over Abkhazia to be qualified as a dangerous provocation," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Sukhumi said that on March 18 local air defense forces shot down a Georgia unmanned aircraft, which was performing a reconnaissance flight over Abkhazia. The debris of the aircraft were shown to journalists and UN officials monitoring the situation in Georgia. Tbilisi dismissed Sukhumi's allegation about the aircraft and called it "targeted disinformation."
MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - An explosion which took place in Tskhinvali on Thursday was the fourth terrorist attack in the region since the beginning of the year, Capt. Vladimir Ivanov, an aide to the commander of the Combined Peacekeeping Forces in the Georgia-South Ossetian conflict zone, told Interfax on Friday.
"It is worth noting that this was the fourth terrorist attack with the use of explosive devices that brought about unjustified causalities, including among civilians," Ivanov said.
"The Combined Peacekeeping Forces Command thinks these facts are a blatant violation of existing agreements, which artificially destabilizes the situation in the Georgia-South Ossetian conflict zone," the captain said.
A South Ossetian resident was killed due to an explosion of a bomb planted under a UAZ vehicle, which belonged to the South Ossetian prosecutor general, at 8.20 p.m. local time on Thursday. The driver of the car was also seriously wounded.
TBILISI. March 28 (Interfax) - By claiming Georgia's involvement in the recent terror attack in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia is trying to draw Georgia into a provocation ahead of the NATO summit, Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili said.
"A sharp increase in a number of terror attacks in South Ossetia is suspiciously timed with the NATO summit in Bucharest, where Georgia hopes to receive NATO's MAP [Membership Action Plan]," Yakobashvili told journalists on Friday.
"We see clear attempts to push us toward inappropriate actions in Tskhinvali. Attempts are being made to provoke a war in the region and to draw Georgia into a military operation to stop Georgia's integration with NATO," the State Minister said.
Earlier, the breakaway republic's authorities said that the terror attack in Tskhinvali targeted its prosecutor general and was presumably orchestrated by Tbilisi.
MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - NATO will set up a theater missile defense, a multi-layered system targeting short-and medium-range ballistic missiles, by 2010, the North Atlantic alliance's Moscow Information Office said on Thursday.
The system, to include early warning devices and radar, will achieve an initial degree of combat readiness by 2010 and will be completely battle-ready by 2015, the office said in a report.
Individual NATO member states will supply detection equipment and weapons for the system.
A facility would be set up to test the system before putting it in use, the office said.
KHANTY-MANSIISK. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Representatives of the British special services have not arrived at an international conference in Khanty-Mansiisk, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) director Nikolai Patrushev said.
"Of those who participated in the first conferences, Georgian representatives from CIS and British representatives are not participating," Patrushev told journalists at the end of the seventh day of the international conference of the heads of special services and law enforcement agencies held in Khanty-Mansiisk.
Special services from 38 nations participated in the first session in St. Petersburg seven years ago, Patrushev said. Representatives from all CIS special services, SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), NATO and EU were invited, he said.
This year, 54 nations have sent their representatives to Khanty- Mansiisk, he said.
BEIJING. March 28 (Interfax-China) - A 19-year-old ethnic Uygur woman has confessed to a failed attempt to blow up an airliner during a March 7 flight, Chinese official news agency Xinhua said, citing an announcement by China's Public Security Ministry on Thursday.
Citing sources in China Southern Airlines, which owns the airliner, Xinhua said Guzalinur Turdi had planted an improvised bomb in the toilet of the plane, which had left Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region, and was heading for Beijing.
"Crew members smelled gasoline on the woman as she left a toilet during the flight. They found a beverage can containing flammable liquid in a dustbin in the toilet. The drink had been replaced with the flammable liquid, using a syringe," the agency said, citing the airline sources.
The plane made an emergency landing in Lanzhou, capital of China's Gansu Province, where Turdi was arrested.
Police also arrested other suspects in the case, Xinhua said.
The aborted attack had been masterminded "by Eastern Turkestan separatists from abroad," the agency said, citing Xinjiang Communist Party chief Wang Lequan.
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Document RUSMIL0020080329e43s00001
Interfax China Pharmaceuticals & Health Technologies Weekly
16,807 words

27 March 2008

07:41 AM

China Pharmaceuticals & Health Technologies Weekly

CHNHEA

English

(c) 2008 Interfax Information Services, B.V.
A cursory glance through the contents page of this week’s issue of the China Pharmaceutical and Health Technologies Weekly should be sufficient to convince our subscribers that the majority of the week’s stories belong to one of two themes.
The first give-away is that this issue’s policy section is stuffed.
The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) released a draft regulation for medical device recalls, to ensure potential adverse events are nipped in the bud, as well as declaring that it wants to tighten quality control on drugs, by announcing its drug quality inspection priorities for this year will be the low cost commonly used drugs that will make up the country’s national essential drug list.
The preventative, biologically-based equivalent of the essential drug list, the expanded program on immunization (EPI) also featured this week, as the government announced it will create a national system to purchase vaccines and syringes, which will replace the old vaccine purchasing network conducted on a provincial level.
Another of our stories this week focused on purchasing systems; one of our top stories, in fact. Guangdong's medicine purchasing center announced that that over last year it shelled out only RMB 12.17 billion ($1.73 billion) on drugs, representing savings of around RMB 2 billion ($284.09 million), thanks to its online bidding programs. A trial initiative, in which the central government is interested? The words ‘Health Reform’ cannot be far off.
And lo, we hear that Chongqing Municipality is conducting a Ministry of Health-backed research program into medical services and health care that will later come to influence the health reform.
Meanwhile, the National Development and Reform Commission is also throwing its hat in the ring by advocating the integration of China's separate urban and rural medical insurance systems into a single system at county level, in order to ensure optimal coverage.
Improved quality of medical and health products, essential drug lists, universal coverage with basic medical insurance, lowered costs for citizens through centralized purchasing systems… yep, the theme for this week has once again been the health reform. The reform, though not yet published, is working its way deeper into the fabric of the health and pharmaceuticals sector every week.
The theme of reform is reinforced by the week’s survey, which looks at the role the SFDA played over the ten years that it existed as an independent agency directly under the control of the state council. Now that the administration is under the wing of the (hopefully more efficient) expanded Ministry of Health, we hold a retrospective of sorts of the SFDA’s greatest hits, trials and tribulations, challenges met, hurdles overcome, opponents bested. It’s all in there.
Finally, the other theme to dominate the week has been finance. Specifically, though we have seen a number of annual financial reports for the year 2007 released in previous weeks, this week has been a week in which we have been inundated by financial reports, including those by some Chinese pharma giants – Nanjing Pharma, Tiantan Biological and Tongrentang, among others.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions regarding the China Pharmaceutical and Health Technologies Weekly, please contact the editor, Tom Telford:
China will create a national system to purchase vaccines and syringes for use in its expanded program on immunization (EPI), which will replace its old vaccine network that conducted purchases on a provincial level, the Ministry of Health announced Mar. 24.
At present, provincial health administrations purchase vaccines and syringes used in the EPI program, usually using bidding methods. The MoH said that it wants to procure the products on a national scale, using either an auction-based system or by commissioning manufacturers to produce the products on a massive scale to ensure uniform quality in the products used in the nationwide program.
In addition, the MoH said that it will form a "centralized" vaccine distribution system.
"Procuring and distributing EPI vaccines on a national scale will be much more efficient than the provincial systems," Liu Peicheng, a spokesman for vaccine maker Beijing Sinovac Biotech Ltd., told Interfax.
In March, Sinovac Biotech, along with UK-based GlaxoSmithKline, won a contract from the Beijing municipal government to supply inactivated hepatitis A vaccines. Beijing has been able to invest more on the EPI than some other provinces, which continue to use activated live hepatitis A vaccines.
Liu predicted that companies producing vaccines using more advanced technologies would benefit, provided the government can invest more than just the bare minimum in the project.
"It will take years for the Chinese central government to purchase vaccines on a national basis and invest those kind of sums in the EPI," he said.
The Chinese government originally allocated around RMB 2.5 billion ($355.11 million) for the EPI last year, but costs for the storage of vaccines overshot the budget by a significant amount.
"An additional RMB 8 billion ($1.14 billion) or so is needed for other costs if the government spends RMB 2.5 billion ($355.11 million) on EPI vaccines," Liu said.
The MoH statement stipulated that provincial governments will have to