Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Sept 10 2004
PRESIDENT OF AZERBAIJAN HELD ENLARGED MEETING OF SECURITY COUNCIL
[September 10, 2004, 21:23:23]
President of Azerbaijan Republic Ilham Aliyev presided an enlarged
meeting of the Security Council, on September 10.
President Ilham Aliyev comprehensively highlighted members of the
Security Council on his visits to Germany and France. Head of the
Azerbaijan State expressed satisfaction with the carry out of the
meetings and talks he held in the atmosphere of sincerity and mutual
understanding.
Then, foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov reported on the negotiations
conducted for peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijan, Nagorny
Karabakh conflict.
At the meeting, further, discussed were issues of socio-political
situation in the Country, course of realization of the presidential
Decree dated 24 November 2003 ”On measures of acceleration of
socio-economic development in the Azerbaijan Republic and ”State
Program on socio-economic development of the regions of Azerbaijan
Republic (2004-2008)”, in particular, the measures connected to
opening of new working places, also focused the tasks for coming years.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev summed up the meeting.

Armenian fashion on display in October
Burlington Union, MA
Sept 10 2004
Students of the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts and their
instructors will present fashions from Armenia in New England on
Sunday, Oct. 10, at 5 p.m. at National Heritage Museum in Lexington.
This event, the first of its kind to be held in the U.S., has peaked
public interest.
Coordinating the program will be four accomplished designers from
Armenia who will present their unique fashions. Nune Aghbalyan and
Anna Panosyan, instructors at the Academy’s Textile Department,
have resumes that include degrees and design coursework in Berlin,
Paris and Barcelona. Kevork Chadoian, 30-year-old, brilliant designer
and 2004 graduate from the Academy will present an elegantly designed
“Armenian Wedding Suite.” ATEX Fashion Salon proprietor Karine Hakobyan
will show her beautiful collection which will include unique fashions
embellished with Marash and Aintab embroideries.
The Fashion and Textile Design Chair was joined to the Design
Department of the Academy in 1999 after overcoming great hardships.
The department aims to give students a sound education, emphasizing
theory and practice a free way of thinking about composition, and
insight on how to find correct functional solutions.

Russian Railways appeals to countries in Caucasus to unblock railroads
RosBusinessConsulting, Russia
Sept 10 2004
RBC, 10.09.2004, Sukhumi 18:25:13.Russian Railways has appealed
to politicians in the countries of the Caucasus to make a decision
to unblock the railroads in the region, Russian Railways President
Gennady Fadeyev declared at the opening of regular service on the
Sukhumi-Moscow route. According to him, the railroads in Abkhazia
had been out of use over the previous 12 years, which has resulted in
a decrease in the volume of passenger and freight transportation to
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, causing losses reaching billions of
dollars. “Economic development of any country is impossible without
the development of railway services, as transportation by rail is
the cheapest way to deliver freight,” Fadeyev pointed out.
Only passenger services have so far been opened on the Sukhumi-Moscow
route. However, talks are being held with the government of Abkhazia
to resume freight transportation in 2005. Fadeyev remarked that 18
trains a day used to go via Sukhumi in both directions before 1992.

Aid pouring into Beslan
News24 , South Africa
Sept 10 2004
Moscow – More than 150 tons of humanitarian aid has arrived in the
southern Russian town of Beslan from around the world, civil defence
authorities in Moscow said on Friday, a week after the tragic end of
the school siege.
Medicine and medical equipment, clothing, food and even mobile
hospitals and emergency vehicles were received from donors inside
Russia, Italy, Germany, France, the United States, Norway, Finland
and other countries.
Greece and Armenia also sent more than 200 litres of blood as doctors
battle to save the lives of dozens of former hostages injured in the
three-day school siege.
Following the sacking of local government heads in North Ossetia and
the appointment of successors, the republic’s president Alexander
Dzasokhov said reconstruction work in the town would commence quickly.
“We are talking about two new schools, a modern hospital, a
rehabilitation centre and more infrastructure,” he said.
At least 335 hostages were killed and more than 700 injured when
gunmen blew up bombs in the school and opened fire on the hostages,
triggering a chaotic rescue operation by security forces. – Sapa-dpa
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

No Going Back
Transitions Online, Czech Republic
Sept 10 2004
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia–They compose poems about the city where they
were born. They send money home. They help each other find jobs and
solve problems. They even convene international reunions. But far
more often than they see each other in person, they meet up at the
web site Dushanbe.ru.
“They” are the Dushanbe diaspora. And having seen so many of my
friends leave since Tajikistan was thrust into independence in 1991,
and then mired in a civil war for most of the next 10 years, I feel
a part of this group, even though I still live in the Tajik capital.
I was flying to Prague for an international conference on migration
earlier this summer. As luck and geography would have it, the shortest
way to and from Central Asia to Central Europe was via Moscow. I
could get my visa and see my friends, the former residents of Dushanbe.
The friends I was staying with, Valeri and Lola, told me that they
had learned that our former compatriots were going to gather in the
suburbs of St. Petersburg for a reunion. They twisted my arm to get
me to postpone my return to Dushanbe–something that didn’t take much
effort–and I accepted their offer.
After a day’s drive, we reached a cozy recreation area by the Finnish
Bay. Most of the participants of the “Third Annual International
Meeting of Dushanbenians” had already arrived. They communicated
actively and loudly. A simple boom box blared Tajik music. Everybody
seemed to be excited to be together.
Some drank beer or stronger beverages in an arbor; others were
collectively cooking plov, the traditional Central Asian dish made of
stewed meat, rice, carrots, and other ingredients and spices. Soon
it had become clear that too many cooks had spoiled the plov. But
nobody minded too much in the festive atmosphere.
GOING TO EXTREMES
Trying to find familiar faces, I headed toward one man I knew, a
journalist working for a well-known media company. He caught sight
of me, unmasking my Internet identity before the crowd.
“Hey, folks, this is Kide (my nickname on the forum). You probably
haven’t seen him before,” he said, knowing that this was my first
gathering.
But someone said, “No, we know you. We’ve read your book, ‘The City
of Monday and the Jeans Community.'” I was flattered to be recognized.
“You probably have to go to Dushanbe a lot on business?” a pretty,
green-eyed woman asked me.
It took me a while to understand her question, but I automatically
responded: “I’m constantly there. I mean, I live there.”
She looked at me incredulously. “You’re fond of extremes?”
More people flock around me, asking questions that I try to answer
briefly and clearly. I simultaneously try to restrain myself from
exaggerating or airing my subjective opinions about the current
situation in Dushanbe. It feels like being at a press conference.
The men listen attentively, but the green-eyed lady doesn’t seem to
believe me. I can see her thinking “brain-washing” as she looks at
me. Suddenly I feel uneasy, as if I’m some sort of secret agent sent
to convince them to come back to their “motherland.” But after all,
with the five-year civil war over, there are no more tanks in the
streets of our town; no field commanders in camouflage uniforms;
the curfew was abolished long ago. Coming home is not out of the
realm of possibility.
“Who cares that fruit at the market is ten times cheaper than
in Moscow? Anyway, ordinary mortals cannot afford such gifts of
Tajik nature, I suppose,” one girl with dark hair and flashing eyes
exclaims. She left her town 12 years ago when she was just a child;
she has scars on her soul that time is not likely to heal. She’s an
ethnic Tajik but says she feels comfortable in the Western country
where she studied and managed to stay and work.
Another woman who was listening in on our conversation says, “You
mean to tell me that there are still Russians there?”
“Imagine, they are still there,” I–partly ethnic Russian–reply
dryly. I’m starting to feel somehow under attack, but I suppress
my emotions.
“And not only Russians, but also Tajiks, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Jews,
and Armenians. In other words, people are still there. They live and
work in Dushanbe.”
I desperately want to end my press conference.
But another small delegation approaches me. Sighing, I’m relieved
when they ask what school I graduated from. It turns out we share an
alma mater, and we pass some time warmly recalling our teachers and
classmates, some of whom perished during the civil war.
NICE PLACE TO VISIT…
Watching my downcast reaction to this spontaneous outpouring, my
former classmate, Dima, consoles me. Dima and I attended the same
school for 10 years, and then studied together again at university.
“Don’t let it get you down. They haven’t been in Dushanbe for years,
and you live there. They can’t believe there’s no more war there,
and somehow they cherish these thoughts… maybe it accelerates the
feeling of their own safety.”
But then he continues, “Aren’t you going to go somewhere yourself?”
Dima has been working in Helsinki for a Russian trade company. He
says it wouldn’t be difficult for “a smart guy like me” to find a
decent job.
I know that he has the best of intentions, and I try to appreciate the
sentiment, but inside I’m angry. Angry at him for offering to “rescue”
me and angry with myself for being irritated by the offer of a friend.
“Thanks, brother,” I respond finally. “But there’s too much winter
in Finland.”
Man feels good where he’s needed, and I feel needed in Dushanbe,
though I am not sentimental about it. But here, these 100 or so
ex-Dushanbeans–who are now Londoners, Muscovites, New Yorkers,
Parisians, Jerusalemites–are tuned to one nostalgic frequency, just
like a short-wave radio. And no “jammers” like me can push them out
of this groove.
They want to believe that all the ethnic Russians were cast out from
the Tajik lands, and–although things are far more complicated than
they seem–it’s difficult for me to argue with them. The truth is that
every one of these people–myself included–has countless different
bloods flowing in their veins from the hopelessly multicultural Tajik
past. But they still feel mostly Russian–they speak Russian and they
think Russian.
Having me here, among the exiles, perhaps only reminds them of the
motherland they left and that seems to be lost to them forever.

What underlies the bestial carnage of the Caucasus?
Mmegi, Botswana
Sept 10 2004
QUESTION TIME
PATRICK VAN RENSBURG
“DON’T these people have children, too”, Beslan residents asked each
other last week when Chechen rebels took a thousand of them hostage,
mostly Ossetians, and half of them children, resulting in the death
of several hundreds, and injury to many more.
What is it all about?
Towards the end of the 1914-1918 World War, when Lenin’s Bolsheviks
seized control from the Tsars of the Russian Empire that covered most
of Central and Eastern Europe and North Asia, it became the Soviet
Union based on semi-autonomous Republics that the colonies were
turned into.
Historically, the Caucasus, which separates the Caspian Sea and the
Black Sea, was a battleground of Chechens, Armenians, Georgians,
Azeris, Ingushis and Ossetians, in which the Tsars waged brutal wars.
Religious differences, Christian versus Muslim, often masked material
reasons for conflicts like access to land and other natural
resources. Sometimes, the ethnic differences were a more direct spark
of conflict.
The Russians, it seems, were especially contemptuous of the “swarthy”
Chechens, particularly those to the south of Chechnya, who were
Muslim. The Third Imam of Chechnya and Dagesta on the Caspian Sea,
Imam Shamil, had introduced Sharia Law and strengthened the hold of
Islam over his people in the mid 1800s.
Even after Imperial Russia conquered Chechnya, its brutality
continued, with burning of villages, hounding of Muslim clerics and
forced emigration to the Ottoman Empire, to the south, of many
defeated opponents.
A journalist of Southern African origins, Vanora Bennett, in her book
‘The Return of War to Chechnya’, written in the early 1990s, claims
that “what the Russians remembered with great bitterness” over the
years of their imperial occupation of Chechnya, were “dramatic
mountain kidnappings” by Chechen guerillas “of highly placed Russian
officers and their relentless bargaining over the price of the
release of their hostages”.
Even under Soviet rule, especially under Stalin, the Georgian, the
Chechens reportedly had bitter experiences. In her book, Vanora
Bennett records that Stalin had ordered that on 23 February 1944,
Chechens and Ingushis should collect on their village squares to
celebrate Red Army Day. Throughout their territories, she writes,
600,000 were rounded up by soldiers and packed off in cattle trucks
into exile in the Soviet interior in Central Asia.
The reason, reportedly, was that Stalin accused them of having
collaborated with Nazi Germany. Apparently, a decade after Stalin’s
death, many deported Ingushis and Chechnyans “crept home”.
In 1991, the Soviet Union began to collapse. As a semi-autonomous
Soviet Republic, Chechnya declared its independence.
It was a country divided between its north and south, between
Christians and Muslims. In 1993, its leader, Dudayev, is reported to
have dissolved the Chechen Parliament, and to have ordered the
execution of many opponents. By the end of 1993, opposition to
Dudayev had developed into a small-scale civil war, as a result of
which Northern Chechens called for Russian support.
Russian military intervention was questionable in international law,
critics argue, even if Chechnya was part of the CIS – Commonwealth of
Independent States. It would have been wiser for Russia to have
internationalised intervention and set aside historical prejudice and
national self-interest.
Chechens claim that 300,000 Russian soldiers presently “inflict a
regime of terror” in Chechnya, whose population has been reduced from
two million, 10 years ago, to 800,000 now. Thirty five thousand
children have been killed, they claim, and another 42,000 injured.
For all that, hostage taking, suicide bombings, planting bombs in
passenger aircraft and calculated, direct harm to children are
criminal acts, that must become punishable by life imprisonment,
anywhere, under international law.
The Russians are attracting some criticism for seeking to identify
Chechen nationalism with international terrorism. Separatist Chechens
see this, and Russian refusal to promote negotiations, as attempts to
undermine the legitimacy of their claims to national independence.
They accuse President Putin of personal antagonism towards legitimate
Chechen independence aspirations.
Are Chechnyan rebels, who now specialise in the evils of
hostage-taking, knowingly following ancestors who kidnapped Tsarist
generals in the Caucasian mountains 150 years ago, or is it but a
curious coincidence?
The truth is that today’s enemies are numb to the horrors of the most
extreme brutalities against each other, or between their respective
allies. The Beslan hostage taking shows that Chechen rebels no longer
kill only purebred Russians.
What they seek is the widest publicity, hoping that it will draw
attention to the oppression they suffer. The media are not without
blame for turning their reading and viewing public into spectators of
massive televised death. Maybe, through repetition viewers are being
made immune to its horrors.
I write this week’s column in Galway, less than 100 km from Northern
Ireland, which has also been the scene of great violence over a far
longer time, but that for some time, now has experienced calm. The
violence here wasn’t between people of different faiths, but between
Catholicism and Protestantism, which – as in the former Soviet Union
– has masked material differences of a political and economic nature
between the leaderships, here, of two conflicting Christian factions.
President Putin has inherited the outcomes of mistakes of his
predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, in respect of Chechnya. Russia has little
materially to gain from the war-torn region.
Putin would gain immensely in international stature if he were to
invite the UN to involve itself in making and keeping peace in the
Caucasus.

T.O. filmmaker documents Silent Genocide
By Rebecca Whitnall, [email protected]
Ventura County Star, CA
Sept 10 2004
Dr. Michael Hagopian speaks for those who no longer can. He’s a
storyteller by trade and his medium is film.
Much of his 90 years has been spent documenting a genocide that to
this day goes unheard of by even the well-educated and unrecognized
by many governments, including our own and countries involved in the
atrocities, he says.
In April 1915, the annihilation of almost 1.5 million Armenians
began. It is referred to as the Silent, or Secret Genocide.
Despite the great number of Armenians who lost their lives, Hagopian
isn’t shocked more people don’t know about it.
“I’m not surprised because there’s not been as much publicity,”
Hagopian said. “There is a lesser presence in the world of Armenians
than Jews. Also, there weren’t photographers and film because it was
much longer ago (than the Holocaust).”
The Turkish Ottoman empire claims the deaths were the result of civil
war. Hagopian’s films document that there was nothing civil at all
about these deaths.
Half-century of work
Most witnesses are now dead; the youngest remaining survivors would
be 86 now. Hagopian, however, has been filming interviews for more
than 50 years and has created what is reportedly the most complete
collection of testimonies about the Armenian genocide in the world.
His requirement in interviewing witnesses is that they were at least
10 when they witnessed the deaths, providing a more accurate account
than younger children could.
The Armenian Film Foundation, of which Hagopian is a founder and
chairman, is completing work on its third film in a trilogy, “The
Witnesses,” which documents the genocide.
“Caravan Along the Euphrates,” the series’ third film, incorporates
survivor accounts selected from the collection of more than 400
interviews filmed by Hagopian on four continents. The film’s target
release date is next year, coinciding with the 90th commemorative
year of the genocide and 35th anniversary of the film foundation.
The first film in the series, “Voices from the Lake,” was the
first feature-length documentary on the genocide and focuses on the
day-to-day tragedies that occurred in the city of Kharpert, Hagopian’s
hometown, where much of the annihilation took place.
“It was the city of no return for Armenians,” he said. They were
taken there but never able to leave.
The second film in the series, “Germany and the Secret Genocide,”
is set against the backdrop of World War I. It weaves interviews and
letters written by genocide survivors, with witnesses and experts in
the field to examine Germany’s involvement in the mass killings of
Armenians at the hands of the Turkish soldiers.
The organization’s films have won numerous awards, including the
prestigious Golden Camera Award in the history category from the U.S.
International Film and Video Festival, the largest festival of its
kind. It specializes in documentary, informational and industrial
films.
Hagopian also owns Atlantis Productions. He works from his home in
Thousand Oaks, where he lives with wife, Antoinette, and one of his
four children.
He has a doctorate in international relations from Harvard University,
is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, and has done
more than two years of graduate work in cinema at the University of
Southern California.
Also, he has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including
the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was first inspired
to create documentaries.
Young filmmaker
Hagopian was unimpressed with the quality of a film presented by a
colleague as a possible teaching aid.
“It was very simplistic. I thought I could do better,” he said,
even though photography was only a mild hobby.
With that purpose in mind, he began looking for employment at
international universities and finally accepted a position at the
American University of Beirut in Lebanon, for the grand annual salary
of $2,000.
For a year he shot foot after foot of film and sent it back to an
adviser in the United States for critique.
He had no way of viewing the footage himself and his improvement
relied entirely on advice received.
The project begins
The following year, he shot 30,000 feet of film on the Nile, from
which he culled two movies. They won first prize at the Cleveland
Film Festival.
Encouraged, he went on to study filmmaking at USC.
“It wasn’t til 1965 that a community leader approached me and said
he wanted to mark the 50th anniversary of the genocide,” said Hagopian.
He agreed to work with the group and in a matter of weeks produced
a show for KCOP TV in Los Angeles titled “Where are My People.”
He said it was the first documentary on the secret genocide.
“It was a lamentation in a way, asking where these people are,”
he said.
His next film on the subject was the Emmy-nominated “Forgotten
Genocide.”
“Up til that time, I was doing them as individual films under the
Atlantis Production label,” he said.
The Armenian Film Foundation was established in 1969.
Though he tests the films by screening preliminary shows with members
of the foundation, he mostly works on them alone.
When working with a number of interviews and others’ stories,
“You let the film direct you,” he explained. “Once it directs you,
you do a lot of testing.”
But the creation, he said, “is kind of a one-man enterprise.”
“Documentary filmmaking is somewhat like being an artist. You can’t
make a statement by committee,” he said. “Do you think Michael Moore
works by committee?”
Hagopian said art films differ from documentaries in the way audiences
react to them.
“In art films, you’re expressing yourself, but I need to take the
audience into consideration,” he said. “If they don’t understand what
I’m saying, there’s no point.”
‘Asian Earth’
Hagopian’s next endeavor will be to revisit “Asian Earth,” a film
he made about life in India. “I think it’s my best work. It’s got
everything in it: life, marriage, death.”
The idea with this project would be having someone revisit the areas
covered in the film 100 years after the original footage was shot to
compare the way of life of people in both periods.
He also will be archiving the thousands of feet of film he’s taken
over the years for “The Witnesses.”
The foundation is looking at proposals by different agencies to take
on the job.
“I’m trying to tell the survivors’ stories,” he said.
“With such great violations of human rights there are lessons to
be learned.
“It’s a story that needs to be told.”

Azeri Security Council discusses Karabakh talks, president’s foreign visits
Azartac news agency, Baku
10 Sep 04
[No dateline as received] Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev chaired
an expanded sitting of the Security Council at the Presidential Palace
on 10 September.
Ilham Aliyev informed the Security Council members about his foreign
visits to Germany and France. The head of state emphasized with
satisfaction that the meetings and talks within the framework of
these visits had been held in an atmosphere of sincerity and mutual
understanding.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov reported results of
the talks on the peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.
The sitting also discussed the public and political situation
in Azerbaijan, the implementation of the Azerbaijani president’s
decree dated 24 November 2003 “On intensification of socioeconomic
development in the Azerbaijani Republic” and “The state programme on
socioeconomic development in the regions of the Azerbaijani Republics
(for 2004-2008)”, as well as future measures to create new jobs.

Armenia purchases 10 SU-25 fighters from Slovakia
Noyan Tapan news agency
7 Sep 04
Yerevan, 7 September: Azerbaijan newspaper Zerkalo has reported that
Slovakia has sold Armenia 10 SU-25 military jets. A Noyan Tapan
correspondent has tried to get details of the deal from the head
of the Armenian community of Slovakia, Ashot Grigoryan, who is on a
business visit in Armenia.
Grigoryan said that the deal was struck in August but fell through
at the initial stage, and the issue found its way into the Slovak
press since there were suspicions that the deal breached the law. In
particular, the major Slovak TV company Markiza carried reports in this
regard for several days in a row. The things reached a point where the
Ministry of Economy of Slovakia revoked the licence of the company
selling the planes and the government instructed the State Control
Committee to investigate terms of the deal and its legal aspects.
Grigoryan started negotiations on all official levels to renew the
deal. As a result, he received the consent of the Ministries of Defence
and Economy of Slovakia to strike the deal. Grigoryan said that after
the purchase of 10 (not 12) planes, Azerbaijan sent a note of protest
to the government of Slovakia.
Some interested parties put pressure on Slovakia at the initial stage
to sell the planes to Azerbaijan rather than Armenia. Thus, Armenia
has not only purchased modern military aircraft but also strengthened
political and economic ties with Slovakia, and disagreements between
Azerbaijan and Slovakia have aggravated. Doubtless this is the result
of Armenian-Slovak relations that have been steadily developing
recently.

One Azeri killed, four injured in Russian skinhead attack
Bilik Dunyasi news agency
10 Sep 04
Baku, 10 September: Four cafes owned by Azerbaijani and Armenian
businessmen were destroyed in Yekaterinburg (Russia). As a result,
one cafe burnt up completely, a 25-year-old Azerbaijani died and
four were injured. According to reports from law-enforcement bodies,
the attackers will face criminal charges. The owners of the cafes
suppose that the Beslan and Moscow terrorist acts sparked the cruel
attacks on people of Caucasus origin.
The law-enforcement bodies believe that the Caucasians were attacked
by Yekaterinburg’s skinheads.