Greeks bring food, music, life to festival
By Rachel Uranga, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
May 30 2004
With the smell of roasting meat wafting through the air and notes of
Greek music echoing through the crowd, thousands gathered Saturday
for the opening of the Valley Greek Festival.
The free event at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is scheduled to
continue from 1 to 9 p.m. today and Monday. It is expected to draw
50,000 revelers by its close, many who come year after year to enjoy
food, music and dance, as well as to see old friends.
“We look forward to this festival every year,” said Sonia Siekertzian,
a Granada Hills resident who, with her Greek-Armenian husband, has
not missed the event in its 31 years.
Put together by more than 300 church parishioners, the all-volunteer
effort yields tons of souvlaki — a Greek shish kebab — and oodles
of other Greek delicacies.
Parishioners began baking some of the 14 varieties of desserts —
including baklava and kourambiethes (a shortbread) — in January to
ensure the festival had the 48,000 pastries needed for the spread.
And rivaling Krispy Kremes are loukoumathes, a kind of Greek doughnut
hole, served warm. But there’s plenty of other food for those without
a sweet tooth, including tiropita (cheese pie), moussaka (a casserole
with eggplant, meat and potatoes), spanakopita (spinach and cheese pie)
and dolmades (grape leaves stuffed with rice).
“This is the way that we give back to the community,” said Peter
McCarty, a 47-year-old Northridge volunteer who could be found under
a white tent Saturday cooking up loucanico, a sausage flavored with
orange peels. Married to a Greek and himself Irish, McCarty said only
the music rivals the food.
Holding his 5-year-old daughter piggyback style, Toma Popescui stood
beneath a tree, watching traditional Greek folk dance.
“Seeing somebody’s culture is something amazing,” said the
28-year-old. “And the food is unbelievable.”
Rachel Uranga, (818) 713-3741 [email protected]
IF YOU GO: The 31st Valley Greek Festival, from 1 to 9 p.m. today
through Monday at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 9501
Balboa Blvd., Northridge. For more information, (818) 886-4040 or

“Karabakh Or Death” Plaque Wavered From Boulevard Tower
Baku Today
Politics
Baku Today 29/05/2004 12:49
Four members of Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) climbed up
the tower in Baku’s national park, boulevard, on Friday, waving
Azerbaijan’s flag and a plaque with the words “Karabakh or death”
written on it.
Akif Naghi, head of KLO, said the action was aimed at reminding Baku
residents about Karabakh on the Republic Day – May 28. Naghi added
that his organization would continue actions of the same kind so that
ordinary Azeris do not forget Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.

Guardian, UK
May 29 2004
Frozen assets
James Buchan enjoys Orhan Pamuk’s evocation of Anatolia, Snow, but
finds there’s something missing
Snow
by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Maureen Freely
436pp, Faber, £16.99
Orhan Pamuk’s new novel is set in the early 1990s in Kars, a remote
and dilapidated city in eastern Anatolia famed less for its mournful
relics of Armenian civilisation and Russian imperial rule than for its
spectacularly awful weather. Snow, “kar” in Turkish, falls incessantly
on the treeless plains and the castle, river and boulevards of Kars,
which the local scholars say takes its name from “karsu” (snow-water).
In this novel, the city is cut off from the world and also, to an
extent, from normal literary reality by three days of unremitting
snow. Written, the reader is told, between 1999 and 2001, Snow
deals with some of the large themes of Turkey and the Middle East:
the conflict between a secular state and Islamic government, poverty,
unemployment, the veil, the role of a modernising army, suicide and yet
more suicide. Pamuk’s master here is Dostoevsky, but amid the desperate
students, cafés, small shopkeepers, gunshots and inky comedy are the
trickeries familiar from modern continental fiction. The result is
large and expansive, but, even at 436 pages, neither grand nor heavy.
Pamuk’s hero is a dried-up poet named Kerim Alakusoglu, conveniently
abbreviated to Ka: Ka in kar in Kars. After many years in political
exile in Frankfurt, Ka returns to Istanbul to attend his mother’s
funeral. He is then commissioned by an Istanbul newspaper to write
an article about the municipal elections in Kars and investigate a
succession of suicides by women and girls in the city. In his role
as journalist, Ka trudges through the snow interviewing the families
of the girls. He learns that they are committing suicide because of
pressure by the college authorities to take off their headscarves
in class. (Compulsory unveiling succeeds just as well as compulsory
veiling, which is not very well.)
It soon emerges that Ka is not greatly interested in headscarves but
has come to fall in love with his old Istanbul schoolmate, Ipek, who
has ended up in Kars and is separated from her husband. Meanwhile,
his lyric gift returns to him with a force bordering on incontinence,
and he is forever plunging into tea houses to get his latest poem
down in a green notebook. Another narrator, called Orhan Pamuk,
tells the story not from the notebook, which is lost or stolen, but
from notes in Ka’s handwriting that he finds four years later in the
poet’s flat in Frankfurt.
The book is full of winning characters, from Ka himself to Blue, a
handsome Islamist terrorist with the gift of the gab, an actor-manager
and his wife who tour small Anatolian towns staging revolutionary
plays and coups de main, and Serdar Bey, the local newspaper editor,
who has a habit of writing up events and running them off his ancient
presses before they occur. There are many fine scenes, including one
where a hidden tape records the last conversation between a college
professor in a bakery and his Islamist assassin.
Yet there are literary judgments that some readers will question. The
first is to omit Ka’s poems. The green book has been lost or stolen
and what remain are Ka’s notes on how he came to write his 19 poems
in Kars and how they might be arranged on the crystalline model of
a snowflake. That is quite as dull as it sounds: really, in a book
so expansive and light, the only dull passages. Incidentally, what
verse there is in the book, copied from the wall of the tea-shop,
is worth reading. One senses that Ka is a poet visiting Kars because
the poet Pushkin visited Kars (on June 12 and 13 1829).
Pamuk also decides to stage his two narrative climaxes as theatre.
The first of these, in which soldiers fire live rounds into the
audience from the stage of the National Theatre in Kars during a
live television broadcast, is a fine job of writing and translating,
but the effect is the same as with the descriptions of Ka’s poems. The
second literary layer makes the matters at issue both fainter and less
persuasive. Pamuk likes to undermine and destabilise each character by
introducing a degenerate counterpart: not merely Ka/Pamuk, but Ipek
and her almost-as-beautiful sister Kadife, the two Islamist students
Necib and Fazil, and so on.
This playfulness or irony may be a response to a literary dilemma. To
use a European literary form such as the novel in Turkey is,
in an important sense, to ally oneself with European notions of
individualism, liberty and democracy that even when they are upheld
(rather than breached) are meaningless to traditional Muslims.
Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise,
individualism likewise.
Pamuk knows that as well as anybody and dramatises it in a raucous
scene in which a group of leftists, Kurds and Islamists gather in a
hotel room to write a letter to the Frankfurter Rundschau. He also
anticipates his critics by having Serdar Bey accuse Ka in the Border
Gazette of being so “ashamed of being a Turk that you hide your true
name behind the fake, foreign, counterfeit name of Ka”. In fact, the
best sentences in the book are those entirely without any playfulness,
or indeed any artistry, such as this one, where Ka remembers the almost
permanent state of military coup d’état of his Istanbul childhood:
“As a child he’d loved those martial days like holidays.”
A more serious challenge to novelists in Turkey, Iran and the Arab
world is that the events of September 11, the Moscow theatre attack
and Abu Ghraib are both more romantic and more desperate than even
Dostoevsky could have dreamed up and written down.
· James Buchan is the author of A Good Place to Die, a novel set
in modern Iran. Orhan Pamuk appears at the Guardian Hay Festival on
Monday May 31. See hayfestival.com for details.

Bush Points the Way
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
May 29 2004
I doff my hat, briefly, to President Bush.
Sudanese peasants will be naming their sons “George Bush” because
he scored a humanitarian victory this week that could be a momentous
event around the globe – although almost nobody noticed. It was Bush
administration diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil
war between Sudan’s north and south after two million deaths.
If the peace holds, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved,
millions of refugees will return home, and a region of Africa may
be revived.
But there’s a larger lesson here as well: messy African wars are
not insoluble, and Western pressure can help save the day. So it’s
all the more shameful that the world is failing to exert pressure on
Sudan to halt genocide in its Darfur region. Darfur is unaffected by
the new peace accords.
I’m still haunted by what I saw when I visited the region in March:
a desert speckled with fresh graves of humans and the corpses of
donkeys, the empty eyes of children who saw their fathers killed,
the guilt of parents fumbling to explain how they had survived while
their children did not.
The refugees tell of sudden attacks by the camel-riding Janjaweed
Arab militia, which is financed by the Sudanese government, then a
panic of shooting and fire. Girls and women are routinely branded
after they are raped, to increase the humiliation.
One million Darfur people are displaced within Sudan, and 200,000
have fled to Chad. Many of those in Sudan are stuck in settlements
like concentration camps.
I’ve obtained a report by a U.N. interagency team documenting
conditions at a concentration camp in the town of Kailek: Eighty
percent of the children are malnourished, there are no toilets,
and girls are taken away each night by the guards to be raped. As
inmates starve, food aid is diverted by guards to feed their camels.
The standard threshold for an “emergency” is one death per 10,000
people per day, but people in Kailek are dying at a staggering 41 per
10,000 per day – and for children under 5, the rate is 147 per 10,000
per day. “Children suffering from malnutrition, diarrhea, dehydration
and other symptoms of the conditions under which they are being held
live in filth, directly exposed to the sun,” the report says.
“The team members, all of whom are experienced experts in humanitarian
affairs, were visibly shaken,” the report declares. It describes
“a strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation being enforced
by the GoS [government of Sudan] and its security forces on the
ground.” (Read the 11-page report here.)
Demographers at the U.S. Agency for International Development estimate
that at best, “only” 100,000 people will die in Darfur this year of
malnutrition and disease. If things go badly, half a million will die.
This is not a natural famine, but a deliberate effort to eliminate
three African tribes in Darfur so Arabs can take their land. The
Genocide Convention defines such behavior as genocide, and it obliges
nations to act to stop it. That is why nobody in the West wants to
talk about Darfur – because of a fear that focusing on the horror
will lead to a deployment in Sudan.
But it’s not a question of sending troops, but of applying pressure –
the same kind that succeeded in getting Sudan to the north-south peace
agreement. If Mr. Bush would step up to the cameras and denounce this
genocide, if he would send Colin Powell to the Chad-Sudan border,
if he would telephone Sudan’s president again to demand humanitarian
access to the concentration camps, he might save hundreds of thousands
of lives.
Yet while Mr. Bush has done far too little, he has at least issued
a written statement, sent aides to speak forcefully at the U.N. and
raised the matter with Sudan’s leaders. That’s more than the Europeans
or the U.N. has done. Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac? Where
are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn’t John Kerry speaking
out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent?
Islamic leaders abroad have been particularly shameful in standing
with the Sudanese government oppressors rather than with the Muslim
victims in Darfur. Do they care about dead Muslims only when the
killers are Israelis or Americans?
As for America, we have repeatedly failed to stand up to genocide,
whether of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians or Rwandans. Now we’re letting
it happen again.

Andante
May 29 2004
Sergey Khachatryan
Sibelius, Khachaturian, violin concertos
Sergey Khachatryan was born in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, in
1985. He comes from a family of musicians. From childhood onwards,
he benefited from broad cultural horizons that favoured the musical
career of which he dreamt. He began the violin at the age of five. The
following year, he began his studies at the Sayat Nova Conservatory in
Yerevan, continuing them in Germany when his family settled there. The
exceptional qualities of this young virtuoso were revealed at a
concert with the Orchestra of the Hessen State Theatre, Wiesbaden;
he was then nine years old. From then on, foreign trips and prizes
followed at regular intervals, with many concerts, all over Europe
– Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France –
as well as in the USA, South America, Russia and Armenia.
The coming seasons are rich in exciting projects: with the Philharmonia
Orchestra, with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Neeme Järvi, with
the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Tokyo Philharmonic
Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev. then partner Anne-Sophie Mutter
in Bach’s Double Concerto with the London Philharmonic.
When one asks Sergey Khachatryan which violinists he admires most,
he unhesitatingly speaks of the supreme genius of the Soviet school.
Above all, he evokes the magnetic tutelary figure of David Oistrakh.
Sergey Khachatryan’s first recording, released in EMI’s ‘Début’
series in 2002, allowed us to meet a violinist blessed with a glowing
sonority and with musical intelligence rare in so young a musician.
Now he has recorded for Naïve two concertos that figure among the
jewels of the violin repertoire.
;iProductID=511

International Glendale Open Studio Tour
Art Daily
May 29 2004
GLENDALE, CALIFORNIA.- International Glendale – Open Studio Tour
takes place in the City of Glendale on Sunday, June 6 from 10:00am to
4:00pm. To date, 92 artists will have displays set up in 51 homes,
galleries, studios and arts organizations exhibiting painting,
sculpture, collage, photography, and ceramics throughout the greater
Glendale area. Visitors will be able to meet, interact with, and
see the work being produced by Glendale’s widely diverse artists and
arts organizations.
Frank Gladstone, Chairperson for the Arts and Culture Commission
says the response from the art community has been tremendous. “What
a great response, especially for a first time event,” says Gladstone.
“We estimated that we might have 20 artists, but to have 92 sign up is
fantastic!” The goal of the event is introduce the greater community
to the many artists working in Glendale in studios and non-traditional
spaces, such as living rooms, garages, and storefronts. Artworks will
be available for purchase.
The City of Glendale Arts and Culture Commission, the event producer
and sponsor, will be selling maps to the locations from their offices
in Brand Studios, located on the ground floor of Brand Library at
1601 W. Mountain (between Western and Grandview). Location maps will
be for sale for $10.00 from Brand Studios between 10:00am and 3:30pm.
Some of the participating organizations include Patrick’s CafÇ, which
will feature an exhibition of Philippine artists organized by Zen
Lopez, while “A Noise Within” will set up an exhibition of costumes.
The Alex Theatre will host six artists in the forecourt and Harvest
Gallery will show contemporary Armenian artists.

Armenian leader, Russian official discuss mutual ties
Mediamax news agency
28 May 04
Yerevan, 27 May: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan received today
Georgiy Poltavchenko, plenipotentiary representative of the Russian
president in the Central Federal District.
The Armenian presidential press service told Mediamax today that
Kocharyan and Poltavchenko noted at the meeting that the potential
of bilateral economic cooperation remained sufficiently high. In
this regard, Kocharyan stressed the need for developing ties between
separate territorial and administrative entities of the two countries.
Kocharyan informed him of the spheres of the economy which are
developing more rapidly and could be of interest to interaction.

Armenian paper blames BBC Karabakh Internet page for bias
Golos Armenii
27 May 04
The Armenian newspaper Golos Armenii has criticized the BBC Russian
web site on the 10 years of the Karabakh cease-fire, saying that it
reflects only Azerbaijan’s position on the conflict. The web site does
not contain any Armenian view on the Karabakh conflict, excerpt for
“kind human interest stories” about the mood of Karabakh’s Armenian
residents, the newspaper said. Golos Armenii said that the authors
of the Karabakh web page have not presented the facts correctly, and
added that “an open lie” in such a painful issue cannot help start
a dialogue between the conflicting sides. The following is the text
of Marina Grigoryan’s report by Armenian newspaper Golos Armenii on
27 May headlined “‘The Karabakh project’ of the BBC: is everything
allowed?”. Subheadings have been inserted editorially:
The Russian editorial office of the BBC (bbcrussian) has opened
“a Karabakh page” on its Internet web site, which is especially
dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the cease-fire in the conflict
zone. According to its authors, its purpose is “to create opportunities
for contacts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the conflict
region, as well as in the whole world”. So the site is to promote the
development of “people’s diplomacy” and strengthen the peace process.
“Difficult and thankless task”
Of course, the implementation of such a project is a difficult and
thankless task, taking into account the particular abnormality and
bloodiness of the conflict, which has been going on for about 20 years,
and judging by recent events, its importance has not decreased. And
although the aspiration to help the Armenians and Azerbaijanis to
start a virtual dialogue was declared as its main purpose, it is
clear that such a page on the web site of one of the influential
world mass media will become an opportunity for Internet users to
familiarize themselves with the history and heart of the conflict,
its present state, the attitude to the problem in today’s Yerevan,
Stepanakert and Baku, and to learn the opinion of famous people who
are related to the issue in this or other way.
>>From this point of view, a person who knows the problem very well and
follows the development of the situation has many questions. And more
or less detailed research into the site leads to certain conclusions,
which I think are due to the fact that the BBC is a state corporation
and the Karabakh page on the BBCRUSSIAN Internet web site reflects in
some way the policy and interests of the UK in our region. Although
those who have created the site are trying to keep a veneer of
impartiality, there are many questions for them.
“Evident subjectivity”
Let us start with the most unbiased sector: the chronology of the
conflict. The short lines seem to reflect the historical events in
reality. But in close examination, the subjectivity of those who
have created the “chronology” becomes evident, although it may not
be so evident to people who do not know the history of the conflict
very well.
For instance: everything concerning the Azerbaijani party was conveyed
with a barely perceptible emotional slant which causes sympathy for
the “victims”. It is achieved by means of such expressions as “the
mass banishment of Azeris from Armenia” or “Azeris are running away
from Kafan”. The point is about January and November 1988 – “dozens,
hundreds and thousands” Azeris killed in the course of hostilities. At
the same time, the unprecedented tragedies of “Sumqayit” and “Baku”
are characterized only as “Armenian pogroms”, and there is no word
about the excruciating death of dozens of innocent people and no hint
about hundreds of thousands of Armenians who ran away from medieval
brutality and barbarity and whose influx, as is known, started long
before the “exile of Azeris from Armenia”!
Do you not agree that a poorly-informed reader gets the impression that
in spite of the pogroms, Armenians continued to live in Azerbaijan all
that time and live there even today (one more piece of disinformation
which is actively promoted by the Azerbaijani party), while from
the very beginning the Armenians, “forcibly and on a mass scale”,
deported their neighbours from their own territory?
Then the “Incidents” connected with Armenians are presented in quite a
cunning way. For instance: “18 October. Demonstration in Yerevan as a
protest against incidents with the Armenian population of the Chadakhlu
village, to the north of Karabakh.” Why are the consequences fixed, but
the fact itself is not presented? Why is it not explained what kind of
“incidents” they were that caused demonstrations in Yerevan? Why,
when talking about Operation “Koltso”, the authors of the site
do not talk about the numerous victims of the Armenian civilians,
including hundreds and thousands driven away as hostages and lost
forever? Why in a sector dedicated to Shushi [Susa] is it said that
“Azeris consider that town to be a “cradle of national culture”? As
for the Armenians, this town is only of “strategic significance”,
as it is situated at the height over Karabakh.
By the way, I cannot refuse pleasure and submit a devastating fact:
as proof that Shushi is “a cradle of national culture”, the names
of the famous representatives of national culture are named on the
web site: one republican scale poetess and [Azerbaijani singer and
Minister of Culture] Polad Bulbuloglu. I think they could not find
other names. They could not mention the names of the famous Armenian
Shushi residents, could they? But in all probability, the authors
of the site were not happy to listen to the songs of the “prominent”
singer-functionary, otherwise they would be really surprised by the
“cradle” that gave birth and educated such a “culture”.
“Evidence of bias”
Many such examples can be presented, and it is evidence of the reality:
it is important not only to what to inform but also how to inform. One
more example which is evidence of the bias of those who created the
site directly affects the understanding of the conflict by the visitors
of the site. The referendum conducted on 2 September 1990 in the
Nagornyy Karabakh Republic [NKR] according to the strict international
judicial norms is mentioned as: “Nagornyy Karabakh declared separation
from independent Azerbaijan”. After this one should not be surprised by
the bewildered questions from different countries of the world in the
“Forum” sector: “Why do they not conduct a pan-national democratic
referendum in Karabakh that will define the destiny of the region?”
Let us leave chronology and look into another sector with the
tear-jerking headline “A friend in need is a friend indeed” and a no
less pompous subheading “History knows many examples when interethnic
hostility was powerless against a common misfortune” (where is this
“Sovietism” coming from on the Western radio station?). Everything
would be normal, if they submitted examples of how some Azeris were
saving Armenians – their neighbours and friends during terrible
pogroms.
But tell me please, men from the BBC, why did you touch on the wound
of the Armenian nation – Spitak earthquake on 7 December 1988? Show
me at least one adult Armenian resident who did not remember the
Azerbaijani carriages that arrived in Armenia with humanitarian
aid and inscriptions “Congratulations on the earthquake!” – it is
difficult to imagine more blasphemy and inhumanity. But according to
the Russian editorial office of the BBC, it was a “common misfortune”
and “the Azeris directed to Armenia, which was suffering a disaster,
an aeroplane carrying rescuers – ‘civil defence fighters'”, which
did not arrive in Armenia because of a crash! Sorry, but such crude
and primitive lies do not become the world famous corporation.
“Open lie”
Does it not seem to the authors of the page that an open lie in such a
painful issue cannot help start a “dialogue”? On the contrary, it can
only give rise to distrust in the project, created with pretension
to objectivity, but in many cases coming out of the frames of even
clear disagreements and variant readings. The third moment. There are
two interviews on the site: with an [Azerbaijani] playwright Rustam
Ibrahimbayov and the OSCE Minsk Group diplomat Vladimir Kazimirov. I
do not know the reason for such a choice, but one thing is clear:
there is no Armenian viewpoint on the web site. In this case, the
parity was not even formally kept, because two short reports from
Yerevan and Stepanakert [Xankandi]- are simply kind human interest
stories telling of the mood of today’s Armenian residents and about
a Karabakh girl who is drawing the world. Quite another thing is
an interview with Rustam Ibrahimbayov who calls himself a “world
citizen”. Along with the praiseworthy restraint of his assessments,
the Azerbaijani writer has achieved his goal: “I give both parties
the right to consider Karabakh their land. I do not have a right
to refuse Armenians such a right. But as a world citizen, I think –
is it possible to settle such problems by armed forcible methods? I
categorically say ‘no’! And even if the Armenian party manages to
prove that historically, politically, etc. these lands should be
moved away from Azerbaijan, all the same, I think in the 20th and
21st centuries to settle the problem by means of war – is a crime
against humanity on the whole.” The journalist who puts questions
to the “world citizen” prudently keeps silence that only compatriots
of the famous playwright were the first to apply force, by the way,
not in the course of hostilities, but against civilians – their own
citizens, and then declared a war against the Karabakh residents,
terribly bombing hungry and cold Karabakh for several months – by
the way, there is no word about this on the site.
Then the writer assures the Karabakh residents that it will be more
profitable for them to be within Azerbaijan, because “Azerbaijan means
oil, and Armenians are potential businessmen”. In all probability, for
“the engineer of human souls”, Ibrahimbayov, there is no other high
category than “black oil” and all the “profits” stemming from it. The
articles of independent monitors are also presented on the site, in
particular, of an employee of the institute on peace and war coverage,
the author of the book “Black garden” Tom de Vaal. Certainly, every
person has a right to form an opinion about the conflict and make
their own assessments, and I am not going to condemn and criticize
Mr Vaal’s position. But I would like to ask him only one question:
why does he think that the Armenian nation, through its president,
should apologize to the Azerbaijanis?
As for the Azerbaijani nation and its president, they do not need
to do this, and the latter can kindly call “home his citizens –
Azerbaijanis”. If Mr Vaal, who visited the NKR and did not understand
where the home of a Karabakh resident is, I would like to ask him
– what did he understand about the conflict on the whole? We can
speak about the Karabakh project of the BBC more, but I think it
is enough for its assessment as being subjective in its choice and
interpretation of the facts. The absence of the material where the
position of the Armenian party is presented, as it is done in case
of Azerbaijani Ibrahimbayov, compels us to pricks up our ears. As a
result, we have the feeling that the project is being politicized,
which will unfortunately become an obstacle for achieving its goals –
to stimulate the development of contacts between the public of both
sides. The projects within the framework of “people’s diplomacy”
may bear and are already bearing fruit only if they serve their
direct purpose.
Azerbaijan is more successful in information war
At the same time, we would like to look at the Karabakh project from
another point of view as well. On the whole, it is already for ten
years that a cease-fire has been preserved in the conflict zone. But an
information war has existed even longer. It started with the articles
and TV reports of the Soviet period. And if we look at this site
from that point of view, what has each party managed to achieve in
this most significant component of today’s contradiction? One thing
is evident: the Azerbaijanis have had more success in conveying the
conflict to the world in a way that is advantageous to them. Here it
is irrelevant to speak about the foul means by which they achieved
this goal. But the result is evident, and the Karabakh page of the
BBC is demonstrates it well. In short, it may be formed in two most
important propaganda theses.
First – hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani refugees are actively
presented in all the documents and materials concerning the Karabakh
conflict. The Armenian refugees have been practically ruled out from
the context of the problem.
Second – the efforts Azerbaijan is making on the recognition of
Armenia as an aggressor are gradually achieving their goal – it
has already taken place if not directly, then indirectly, because
the term “occupied territories” is used practically everywhere
and without any reserve. It seems that even in Armenia itself they
have resigned themselves to this, thanks to the “heroic” efforts of
our local diplomats who always find an excuse for their own cruel
failures and who have accustomed us to the country’s defeats in the
world arena. But this is a theme of another conversation, though very
topical, in the context of the new Internet web site of the BBC.
The lack of talent in the Karabakh issue policy, the repeated failures
of the Armenian party at the level of international discussions
on the problem of importance to the country, a number of documents
adopted recently, which unequivocally reflect the position of the
Azerbaijani party – all this and many other things testify to the
following fact: today’s generation of Armenian diplomats and all those
who are responsible for the Karabakh problem are unable to make the
world community understand the TRUTH [capitalization as published]
about Karabakh.
This has made possible the appearance and gradual domination of
LIES about Karabakh in the world’s news sources. And this calls into
question the future fair settlement to the problem. From this point
of view, a dangerous situation is taking shape because of those
politicians we are gradually losing immunity and neutrality on the
lies and misinformation about what happened to us and in our land
10-15 years ago.
Once, when the situation was quite different from today, we could
hardly allow somebody to tell a LIE about us and our motherland.
P.S. By the way, the BBC is flattering Ibrahimbayov, calling him
the author of the “White sun of the desert” film scenario. It is
known that the scenario of the famous film was written by the famous
playwright B. Yezhov, who recently passed away. As for Ibrahimbayov,
he was only an assistant consultant on the east.

Azeri officials more critical than media of BBC’s Karabakh coverage
Ekho, Baku
28 May 04
The BBC has broadcast a documentary named “One Day of War” about the
situation in the Nagornyy Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The ruling
New Azerbaijan Party [NAP] and the pro-government parties are warning
the BBC that its broadcasts in Azerbaijan can be suspended. Meanwhile,
the experts suggest waiting until the film is shown.
“Neil Harvey is in the mainly ethnic Armenian enclave of
Azerbaijan… It’s visually extremely good. Looks like World War One
trenches. The front line is just beyond the city,” this is what is
reported about the film on the BBC’s official web site.
The film was broadcast yesterday by the BBC Two TV channel. The web
site carries information about the course of work by journalist Neil
Harvey, who visited Xankandi between 15 and 22 March 2004.
[Passage omitted: Quotes from the BBC web site]
“They allowed me to film the valley, but were against me filming
Agdam,” Harvey reports. Next comes an enthusiastic report about the
bandit formations of the separatist regime who were “marching like
samurais”.
[Passage omitted: Threats by Azerbaijani officials against the BBC]
The pro-government circles are increasingly vocal in blaming the BBC
Russian Service for “bias”. However, experts suggest looking into
each case separately and not jumping to conclusions.
“The way the film about Xankandi has been made does not give enough
grounds to judge whether it is ethically correct. It all depends on the
content: on whether the views of both sides are presented and so on,”
the chairman of the Yeni Nasil Union of Journalists, Arif Aliyev, says.
“The preparation and broadcasting of the film means imparting
information to TV viewers, which is a journalist’s responsibility,” the
director of the Institute for Media Rights, Rasid Hacili, says. There
may be claims about “bias” if a journalist has violated the principles
of objectivity and balanced reporting by failing to present the views
of both sides.
The radio station can be deprived of its frequency only by a court
ruling.

Russia’s Aeroflot holding talks on buying up Georgian Airlines
RIA news agency
28 May 04
Tbilisi, 28 May: Aeroflot is holding talks on buying the Georgian
Airlines company, director-general of the Russian company Valeriy
Okulov has said. He is attending a Russian-Georgian business conference
in Tbilisi.
“The talks will take more than a week,” Okulov said. He refused to
disclose any other details of the deal.
RIA-Novosti has learnt from a member of the Russian delegation that
there is talk about purchasing 100 per cent of shares in the Georgian
company. The source said that Aeroflot had already initialled an
agreement with Georgian Airlines on acquiring the company. “The deal
is worth several million dollars,” the source said.
The source also said that talks had began at the business conference
between the Volga car manufacturer and the Georgian leadership and
the Tbilisi aircraft factory [as received] on setting up the assembly
of Niva cars in Tbilisi.
He said that talks had also started on the construction of a railway
branch from Georgia to Armenia, which will be financed by Russian,
Armenian and Georgian businessmen.