Daily Variety
September 20, 2004, Monday
THE BACK LOT
by PETER BART
Captain Kirk shows he’s still got game: At 87, Kerkorian closes
mega-deal. But could he come back yet again?
Whenever I hear the expression, “I’ll be back,” I think of Kirk
Kerkorian.
I realize many associate those words with the Great Gubernator, but
it’s Kirk who’s really put teeth into them — witness the many times
he has sold MGM only to buy it back again.
Now that Kirk has done the deal one more time — the sixth or
seventh by my count — is there a chance history may repeat itself?
I know some will laugh at the prospect, but consider the following:
If you were 87, sharp as a tack, in excellent health and with several
billion dollars to burn, wouldn’t you want one more reprise? It’s
sort of like Sinatra giving “New York, New York” a final encore.
There’s another factor, too. Kirk is probably the only remaining
studio CEO who actually likes movies. He doesn’t choose to walk the
red carpet or attend official events, but I’ve often seen him
standing in line waiting to buy a ticket. He’s that sort of
individual.
Given these propensities, why did he sell his studio? Probably
because no one thought he could do it. Industry insiders were
counting him out. They said he’d painted himself into a corner.
Kirk’s “corner” turns out to be worth about $ 5 billion. I know a lot
of corporate players who would covet a corner like that.
Under what scenario could Kirk buy it back one more time? Sony could
get into a quarrel with its financial partners; or Comcast could
exercise its right to pull out, or perhaps to make a bigger play with
Kirk as its deep-pockets partner.
The unique element to Kerkorian’s dealings is that he can move faster
than a Swift Boat. The decisions are his own; so is the money.
If all this suggests a certain admiration for Kirk, I plead guilty. I
don’t pretend to be a Kirk intimate (there are very few) but I’ve had
meals with him, had long talks with him, even worked for him (though
during my three years at MGM I almost never saw him).
Contrary to the usual descriptions in the press, he is not reclusive.
I always found him rather garrulous, if intensely private. He is
brilliant when discussing business, but it’s even more fun to get him
talking about more arcane topics — aviation in the ’40s, Las Vegas
in the ’50s or the really senior tennis circuit where geezers, rich
and poor, sit on the hard asphalt eagerly awaiting their chance to
pound away.
It was always a source of frustration to Kirk that, while he always
found ways to buy and sell his great studio, he never could figure
out how to run it.
His choice of corporate leaders was consistently disastrous, starting
with Jim Aubrey, through David Begelman and Frank Yablans. He was so
angry with some of his MGM hires that he even weighed the possibility
of bringing criminal charges against at least one.
In all his years, Danny Melnick was his only effective production
chief and Alex Yemenidjian and Chris McGurk, the outgoing chairman
and president, his only solidly effective business strategists.
Still, MGM in its newest iteration as a standalone entity could not
compete effectively with the giant multinationals — Kirk understood
that and knew he had to do something about it.
And he had long since memorized the scenario.
When MGM was in financial trouble in the early ’70s, he sold the back
lot, plus many of its old props and even used movie scripts. When he
bought United Artists in 1981, he dreamed of creating a powerful
studio (he’d earlier lost out in bids for Columbia and Twentieth
Century Fox).
But after a bad run of pictures, he tried to sell his stalled empire
to Ted Turner in 1986. Michael Milliken couldn’t sell enough junk
bonds to fuel the deal, so Kirk re-invented it several times,
yielding Turner ultimate control over about 3,000 film titles.
In subsequent years, Kirk wheeled and dealed with everyone from
Giancarlo Parretti, an Italian waiter, to Christopher Skase, a
shadowy Australian financier, to Peter Guber and Jon Peters. Some
deals flew and others simply flew away, but Kirk was always dealing.
To some who remembered the glory days of Louis B. Mayer, Kirk had
turned a great studio into a swap meet. Others simply marveled at the
financial machinations — how a one-time Armenian farm boy could
outplay Wall Street bankers at their own game.
And he may still be in the game. He’s got the money, he’s got the
energy and he still has that unique quality that sets him apart: He
loves movies.
He’ll be back.

ANSA Notiziario Generale in Italiano
September 19, 2004
UE: PRODI IN ARMENIA, SPINGERE AVANTI PROCESSO RIFORME ;
ULTIMA GIORNATA DI VISITA REGIONI CAUCASO DEL SUD
BRUXELLES
(ANSA) – BRUXELLES, 19 SET – Nella sua ultima giornata di
visita nelle tre regioni del sud del Caucaso, la prima mai
compiuta da un presidente della Commissione Ue, Romano Prodi ha
invitato l’Armenia ad accelerare l’attuazione di riforme, cosi
come aveva gia’ fatto verso l’Azerbaijan e la Georgia.

“Molto resta da fare per promuovere la democrazia, i diritti
umani e lo Stato di diritto, consolidare le fondamenta per
un’economia di mercato e, soprattutto, risolvere i conflitti
nella regione”, ha detto Prodi, in un discorso pronunciato
davanti a studenti e rappresentanti della societa’ civile
armena, il cui testo e’ stato diffuso a Bruxelles.

Prodi ha ricordato la decisione presa in giugno dal vertice
Ue di invitare l’Armenia, la Georgia e l’Azerbaijan ad aderire
al programma di ‘politica europea di buon vicinato’, destinato a
gettare dei ponti tra l’Ue allargata e i suoi vicini.

La Commissione Ue sta ora preparando un rapporto sulla
situazione dei tre paesi. “Alla fine di quest’anno – ha detto
Prodi – dovremmo avere fatto progressi sostanziali nella
valutazione dei tre paesi della regione”. Il rapporto giochera
“un ruolo chiave” nel definire il piano di azione di Bruxelles
verso ciascun paese. “Pertanto raccomando fortemente l’Armenia
di preparare il terreno per una decisione positiva, facendo fare
al processo di riforme sostanziali passi in avanti nei prossimi
mesi”, ha affermato il presidente. (ANSA).

A1 Plus | 15:25:02 | 20-09-2004 | Social |
ANOTHER PROTEST OUTSIDE CITY HALL
“Ongoing Northern Avenue imbroglio has already taken five lives –
people died of diseases of nervous system”, the people gathered Monday
outside Yerevan’s City Hall said and also pointed out two cases of
unsuccessful suicide attempts. The protest was sparked by the
authorities’ move resulting in the eviction of tenants of the
apartments due to be pulled down for the new avenue construction.
Protesters demand to raise their compensation saying the authorities
set too low prices for apartments – $200 per one square meter. It
seemes the protest action produced little effect. Yerevan’s mayor
Yervand Zakaryan supported the government decision on compensations
and said no changes would be made.
The evicted tenants keep struggling and say their last resort would be
to appeal to Turkey…

NKR PRESENTED GRANTED AN AMNESTY
Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
20 Sept 04
On September 17 the president of the Republic of Nagorni Karabakh
Arkady Ghukassian considered the appeals for pardon of the
prisoners. By the decree of the president 13 persons were granted
amnesty. Conditional pardon was granted to 22 prisoners. 16 prisoners
were refused pardon taking into account the degree of graveness of
their crimes. Among the prisoners granted presidential pardon are
Samvel Babayan and Erik Paramazian.
AA.
20-09-2004

A1 Plus | 20:49:11 | 20-09-2004 | Politics |
NEW TIMES REACTED TO BABAYAN RELEASE BY ISSUING NEW STATEMENT
On Friday, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s president Arkadi Ghukasyan
granted amnesty to Karabakh war hero general Samvel Babayan convicted
of masterminding the president assassination attempt and being kept in
jail for 4.5 years.
New Times party came up with a statement Monday reminding another
statement issued recently by the party’s leader Aram Karapetyan
together with Constitutional Right party chair Grant Khachaytryan. The
statement demanded immediate release of the general from
detention. “Refusal to release Samvel Babayan will be taken as another
move against creation of unity and atmosphere of tolerance”, the then
statement said.
In its new statement, New Times party is welcoming the authorities’
retarded but cautious decision.
The party hopes that “proposals made by us beforehand on political and
economic reforms, a part of which are now at the stage of
implementation, will be put into reality quicker than before”.

Washington Times, DC
Sept 20 2004
Response gone awry
By Ariel Cohen
Three days after the tragedy of Beslan ended, we sat for more than 3½
hours with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Between picking up the pieces of the worst terrorist attack to
date in Russia and planning a massive power consolidation, the
energetic Russian leader still found time to meet with leading
Western scholars and journalists, answering our questions at length,
totally unscripted.
Unfiltered, Mr. Putin was a strange mix of tough pragmatism and
Soviet nostalgia. He was shaken by Walkie-Talkie intercepts of
terrorists shooting children in Beslan “for fun” and by the horrible
conditions in northern Russian camps to which Josef Stalin exiled the
Chechens 60 years ago. “The first Chechen war was probably a
mistake,” Mr. Putin said. But what about the second war he started in
1999?

Mr. Putin repeatedly bemoaned the passing of the Soviet “great
power” – 13 years after its demise. He recognized Soviet ideology
suppressed real ethnic conflicts, and that new secure borders have
not been erected. Yet he also questioned the sovereignty of
neighboring countries such as Georgia. Today, Russia is slowly
absorbing its constituent parts, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while
thwarting Chechen bids to secede.
President Putin missed an opportunity to reach out to the U.S.
after the horror of Beslan. In response to my question, he launched a
long tirade about the Soviet Union and United States releasing the
jinni of terror from its bottle.
He believes the Western powers want to keep Russia down by
supporting Chechen separatism, noting Britain and the U.S. granted
asylum to some Chechen leaders, and that Western intelligence
services maintain contacts with Chechen fighters.
As an intelligence professional, Mr. Putin should appreciate the
difference between information gathering and operational support.
Instead, he overstated his view of the West’s desire to create an
irritant for Russia. In an earlier speech to the nation, Mr. Putin
went further, saying foreign powers are interested in dismembering
Russia and neutralizing it as a nuclear power. Nevertheless, he is
open to antiterrorism cooperation, and indicated “professionals” on
both sides are thus engaged.
President Putin left enough common ground to believe cooperation
is possible with the West in the war on terror. He called President
Bush a “good, decent man,” a reliable and predictable partner,
someone he can “feel as a human being.”
From his remarks, it is clear Mr. Putin genuinely likes George
Bush and wants him re-elected, something media at the event
studiously ignored. After all, doesn’t John Kerry say foreign leaders
are support him?
Mr. Putin three times mentioned Russia, the U.S. and Western
Europe belong to “Christian civilization and European culture,” to
which a prominent French writer for Le Monde commented maybe Russia
does but not the United States.
Mr. Putin has the global geopolitics right, especially when it
comes to connections between the Chechen and other radical Islamist
terrorists in the Northern Caucasus, to global jihadi sources of
funding, political-religious indoctrination and volunteer recruitment
and training.
He criticized the West for allowing fund-raising for the Chechen
cause from Michigan to London to Abu Dhabi, but seemed unaware the
U.S. Treasury recently busted Al Haramain, a Saudi global “charity”
connected to Osama bin Laden, involved in supporting the Chechens.
Mr. Putin also correctly noted the West shouldn’t want to see
terrorists come to power anywhere on Earth, should not demand anyone
negotiate with child killers, and that it is not in Western interests
to see the Russian Federation dismembered.
It is the Russian president’s actions after Beslan, more than his
rhetoric, which point to missed opportunities in the wake of Russia’s
September 11. Instead of revamping, retraining and reorganizing
Russia’s antiterrorist and security services, Mr. Putin has opted for
massively recentralizing power. In doing so, he is taking the country
back to a future reminiscent of the czarist era. Mr. Putin
essentially is applying the 19th century Russian imperial model and
the Soviet security state apparatus to a 21st century state rife with
terror and corruption.
Nostalgia for the Soviet past may beget new authoritarianism, as
Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev warned in their Sept.
16, 2004 interviews. In this crisis, the Russian president has
empowered himself and his inner circle, not the people of Russia.
Presidential appointment of Russia’s 89 regional governors instead of
popular elections, and establishment of a disempowered and toothless
“public chamber” to oversee security services instead of effective
civilian controls will not solve Russia’s terrorism problems.
The security services that failed to prevent or resolve the
Beslan tragedy and Mr. Putin has not reformed after five years in
office are still a Soviet-style, quasi-totalitarian political control
mechanism. They are not the hat Russia needs to wear in confronting
modern local and global terrorism.
Islamist jihadi terrorism is a new enemy – not the old enemy of
the Cold War. In response, Russia’s antiterror approach needs
rethinking and revamping, with new structures for the 21st century
set up to deal with global terrorism.
A new anti-terror doctrine and effective organizational structure
to coordinate intelligence and operations are needed. The U.S., Great
Britain and Israel can offer help. The time for cooperation against a
common enemy is now.
The Bush administration, however, faces a real challenge in
Russia’s questioning of Georgia’s sovereignty in the Caucausus and
playing fast and loose with her post-Soviet borders.
By trying to pull South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Moscow’s orbit,
the Kremlin also may strengthen Chechen separatism. This policy opens
the doors to revising other borders, such as Northern Kazakhstan,
Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, and even Nagorno-Karabakh.
Undermining the territorial integrity of neighbors is unacceptable to
the U.S. and dangerous for Russia.
In crises, countries and leaders fall back on their time-tested
political instincts and patterns. Mr. Putin’s recentralization proves
Russia after its barbaric terrorist trauma is no exception.

Ariel Cohen is research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies at
the Heritage Foundation. He had tea Sept. 6 with Russian President
Vladimir Putin and a group of foreign policy experts.

Major oil pipeline to be built on time despite Georgian public protest
– BP chief
A-Info news agency, Akhalkalaki
13 Sep 04
Akhalkalaki, 13 September: Despite the existing problems with
residents of Georgia’s Borjomi and Akhalkalaki Districts, the
construction of the Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipeline, in general, will be finished at the end of October, the
president of BP Azerbaijan, David Woodward has said.
He said that neither the residents’ protests nor the Georgian-Ossetian
conflict would have an influence on the pipeline
construction. ”Enough people are working on the construction of the
pipeline, which will allow us to finish it on time,” Woodward said.
But it cannot be ruled out that the residents of Borjomi and
Akhalkalaki Districts will attempt to hinder the construction.

National Geographic
Sept 20 2004
Noah’s Ark Quest Dead in Water — Was It a Stunt?
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
In April businessman and Christian activist Daniel McGivern announced
with great fanfare a planned summer expedition to Mount Ararat in
Turkey. The project, he said, would prove that the fabled Noah’s ark
was buried there.
Explorers have long searched for the ark on the Turkish mountain. At
a news conference in Washington, D.C., McGivern presented satellite
images, which he claimed show a human-made object – Noah’s ark – nestled
in the ice and snow some 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) up the mountain.
“We are not excavating it,” McGivern told the audience. “We’re going
to photograph it and, God willing, you’re all going to see it.” If
successful, he said, the discovery would be “the greatest event since
the resurrection of Christ.”
Noah’s Ark Quest Dead in Water — Was It a Stunt?
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
September 20, 2004
In April businessman and Christian activist Daniel McGivern announced
with great fanfare a planned summer expedition to Mount Ararat in
Turkey. The project, he said, would prove that the fabled Noah’s ark
was buried there.
Explorers have long searched for the ark on the Turkish mountain. At
a news conference in Washington, D.C., McGivern presented satellite
images, which he claimed show a human-made object – Noah’s ark – nestled
in the ice and snow some 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) up the mountain.
“We are not excavating it,” McGivern told the audience. “We’re going
to photograph it and, God willing, you’re all going to see it.” If
successful, he said, the discovery would be “the greatest event since
the resurrection of Christ.”

UP THE MOUNT ARARAT
Azg/am
21 Sept 04
Vahagn Gurzadian and Sver Aarset Repeated the Route of Parrot and
Abovian
On August 10 two members of the British Royal Astrological
Association, Vahagn Gurzadian and Sver Aarset, climbed the Biblical
mount of Ararat. Aarset managed to reach 3.800 m whereas Gurzadian
reached the top. They repeated the scientific expedition of professor
Parrot and Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian made 175 years ago in
1829.
The Northern slope of the mount has been a closed military zone since
1920, no foreigner was permitted. But the Turkish authorities gave
permission to the Aarset-Gurzadian expedition in view of their
scientific researches.
The English scientist, Sver Aarset is a prominent specialist in the
field of modeling the dynamics of the galaxies.
Vahagn Gurzadian is professor of the University of Rome, head of the
“Cosmologia” group in the Institute of Physics in Yerevan, board
member of “Euroscience”, organization elaborating the European
science. He is an editor of the US International Journal of Modern
Physics D and the British Advances in Astronomy and Astrophysics book
series.
The scientists had some experience of mountain climbing but the idea
of Ararat expedition came to them during Aarset’s visit to Yerevan
forcooperation with Gurzadian and his group.
During our short meeting Vahagn Gurzadian shared some interesting
details of the expedition with us.
“It was not an easy journey, there were several problems mainly at the
foot of the mount not up there”.
Before climbing Ararat we were on Aragats and then we left for
Kars. When we approached Ararat, the territory facing Armenia turned
to be a military zone with lot of armors and helicopters circling
above. At first they were very suspicious about us but in a while,
after finding out who we were and what our mission was, they suggested
to stay and set off the next day.
We chose the Abovian-Parrott route because it is the most natural one
from the Armenian side. Abovian and Parrott managed to climb just
after the 3-d try because of problems with aclimization. Our second
try was successful. The night before the climb we were wondering
whether our equipments would stand the glacier. Parrott’s diary that I
had with me helped me much, we could see that we were following their
route. I left Aarset on the height of 3000 m and continued up to 4.800
m. Even the professional mountaineers don’t take the risk of climbing
so up high at one stroke because the so-called mountain sickness
starts. I felt dizzy and decided to go back. It was not an easy
decision as I was not sure to make the second try.
Next morning we set off at 4.15. On 3.800 m Aarset decided not to
continue feeling that he is holding us back. He knew that Ararat was a
special symbol for me.
I feel kind of guilty that most of my friends in Armenia didn’t have
this chance. Even if they were here no one would let them join us. I
could never imagine that the climb to Ararat would be possible only
due to my scientific activity. I am very thankful to all those
contributing to our expedition, especially to Arax Gold company.
Besides the fact that we were on Ararat I think that our materials on
ancient monuments are not less important. We took the pictures of an
Armenian church situated at the altitude of 2.100 m, an Armenian
castle and other monumentsof archeology and architecture.
On our way back through Etchmiadzin we told His Holiness Karekin II
about our journey. By the way, Parrott also visited Etchmiadzin but
before the climb, and there the Catholicos presented the 20-year-old
interpreter, Khachatur Abovian.
By Melania Badalian
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1 Plus | 13:27:22 | 20-09-2004 | Social |
FREE HEALTH CARE FOR JOURNALISTS
On Monday Armen Soghoyan, chief of Public health and social security
department of Yerevan’s municipality, told journalists all health care
clinics announced open house for media representatives on September 25
to provide them with opportunity of free medical examination.
Journalists wondered why media representatives? Maybe they are
reckoned to be among the low-income members of society living in
reduced circumstances?
Journalists were surprised when Soghoyan said the idea had been
conceived in journalists’ trade union – nobody has ever heard about
that institution.
The municipality official also says this year the medical clinics’
budget is to rise from current 24,9 billion to 31,7.