Author: Emil Lazarian

Pressure grows on Turkey to ease freedom of speech

Peninsula On-line, Qatar
July 14 2006

Web posted at: 7/14/2006 15:14:56
Source ::: REUTERS

Istanbul – Turkey yesterday faced growing demands to ease restrictions
on freedom of speech after a court confirmed a six-month suspended
jail sentence for an editor convicted of "insulting Turkishness".

The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, said after the ruling
this week that Ankara should rewrite its penal code.

Human rights groups and Turkish commentators urged the government to
abolish the code’s controversial Article 301, which carries a jail
sentence of up to three years.

The High Court of Appeals ruling in the case of Hrant Dink,
editor-in-chief of the Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos, would send a
chill through the domestic media, said Joel Simon, executive director
of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

"It calls into question the country’s commitment to press freedom
and legal reforms which are a pre-condition for its goal of joining
the European Union," Simon said.

Turkey started EU entry talks last October but negotiations are
expected to last more than a decade. In recent months it has faced
growing criticism from Brussels over the pace of reform.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Wednesday the latest
ruling showed the reformed penal code still restricted freedom of
expression and would set a binding precedent for other pending human
rights cases.

He said the Commission would review the situation in the light of the
EU’s political criteria in its upcoming progress report on Turkey in
late October or early November.

Sensitive to those concerns, the government has said it may call
parliament back from its summer recess two weeks early in mid-September
to push through the latest package of reforms.

Rights groups and Turkish commentators said it should use this
opportunity to abolish Article 301.

"A revision of Article 301 must urgently be incorporated into this
package," said Radikal newspaper editor Ismet Berkan.

The government has not yet commented on the court’s ruling and
officials were not immediately available.

Jonathan Sugden from New York-based Human Rights Watch told Reuters
it was difficult for the government to abolish such laws given its
uneasy relationship with the state bureaucracy.

The onus was thus on judges who could acquit in such cases on the
grounds that a conviction would contravene Article 10 of the European
Convention on Human Rights, which has been incorporated in Turkish law.

"It is staggering that seven years into a reform programme and several
programmes dedicated to training judges in applying the convention,
a substantial section of the judiciary … still hasn’t grasped the
fundamentals," he said.

Internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is among a
host of other writers who have been prosecuted under the same laws,
although his case was dropped.

Dink was sentenced for Armenian-related comments. Armenians say 1.5
million Armenians were killed in a genocide by the Ottoman Turks in
1915, but Turkey rejects this and says both Christian Armenians and
Muslim Turks suffered mass killings in partisan conflict.

London-based Amnesty International called for an immediate repeal of
the law, which it says muzzles peaceful dissenting opinion, and said
it could be part of the next reform package.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Landscape with a Pipeline // Caspian oil goes to the West detouring Russia

Kommersant, Russia
July 14 2006

The opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeikhan pipeline took place
yesterday in Turkish city of Jeikhan. It is the first pipeline on
post-Soviet territory which detours Russia. Kommersant correspondent
Vladimir Solovyev who attended the ceremony said the main heroes
of yesterday’s event were 3 men absent at the ceremony. First,
late Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliev. Second, US President George
Bush who decided not to irritate Vladimir Putin by visiting Jeikhan.
Third, Nursultan Nazarbaev who is now expected to fill the pipeline
with Kazakh oil.

Filling up the pipeline

The organizers optimistically called yesterday’s ceremony
"First Oil". Before letting the oil in, Turkish authorities
prepared thoroughly, spending $4 million on the ceremony only. The
Baku-Tbilisi-Jeikhan (BTJ) pipeline opening ceremony was held on a
small cape on the Black Sea coast, about 1 kilometer away from the
sea oil terminal with which the pipeline ends.

The itinerary for processions-the highway connecting Jeikhan and
Adana, where all guests lived,-was decorated with flags of Azerbaijan,
Georgia, and Turkey. Pieces of pipe with BTJ logo and a direction
arrow put along the highway served as guide signs. Security measures
were extensive, using sharpshooters and helicopters, because it was
expected that US President George Bush, or at least Condoleezza Rice,
would visit the ceremony.

US energy secretaries visited all previous BTJ events, Spencer Abraham
in 2002, and his successor Samuel Bodman in 2005. Now, when BTJ does
not need patronage from the White House anymore, Washington sent only
Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell.

Turkish newspapers were shocked, because not only George Bush ignored
the invitation to the ceremony, but also Kazakh President Nursultan
Nazarbaev, who went to St. Petersburg for the G-8. He sent Minister
of Energy Bahytkoju Izmuhambetov instead. No one was sorry about the
absence of Russian representatives, although Putin had been officially
invited as well.

Presidents of Azerbaijan and Georgia Ilham Aliev and Mikhail
Saakashvili only smiled and shrugged shoulders in response to
journalists’ questions, when they entered the VIP marquee.

Top managers of BP pipeline operating company spoke first. BP CEO
Lord Browne called BTJ a major project of the 21st century which
changed the energy map of the world. "This pipeline will make Turkey
the major player of world oil market," echoed BP president in Caspian
region David Woodword. Then Clay Sell delivered George Bush’s address
which called Jeikhan the gates to world oil market and reminded that
Washington more or less supported the project all these years.

These speeches produced a positive effect on the 3 presidents.

Turkish Prime Minister promised to turn Jeikhan into energy supermarket
refining absolutely all types of oil, and shared plans on building
another pipeline between Samsun and Jeikhan for pumping Russian
and Kazakh oil. Then Ilham Aliev took the floor. He recalled "the
destructive forces" who hindered the project. Mikhail Saakashvili, who
spoke next, did not even try to conceal that he spoke of Russia. He
emphasized that the BTJ pipeline is the symbol of independence for
Georgia and Azerbaijan. "BTJ united us all. It gave us new hopes, hopes
for stability and security, gave us new partners and new relations,"
said Saakashvili.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev looked the happiest winner at
yesterday’s oil festivity. Although it was, in fact, the achievement
of his late father Geidar Aliev. Almost all speakers acknowledged
Geidar Aliev’s merit for making the pipeline connect Baku and the
Mediterranean sea, after all. As a sign of gratitude, Turkey named
the oil terminal in Jeikhan after Geidar Aliev. Turkey also named a
park and an avenue in Istanbul after Aliev.

Pipeline’s significance

BTJ became the first and largest non-Russian geopolitical project
on post-Soviet territory. The West spent $4 billion on building the
pipeline which is absolutely independent from Russia. This pipeline
gives space for maneuver both for the West and for the countries in
the region, and guarantees uninterrupted oil supplies to Europe.

Caspian reserves of oil cannot entirely substitute the resources
of the Persian Gulf, but they are a good alternative. Governmental
agreement between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on transporting Kazakh
oil across the Caspian sea was signed a month ago in Astana.

Turkey will benefit from the new pipeline as well. Turkey stopped
receiving Iraq’s oil ever since the war in Iraq began. Now, Caspian
oil will compensate Turkey’s losses over and above.

Israel is also interested in the BTJ pipeline. Israeli Minister of
Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer attended the opening
ceremony. Israel plans to be buying oil in Jeikhan and then transport
it to Ashkelon, and from there to the markets of East Asia, India,
and China through the KATSA pipeline.

Meanwhile, the pipeline has already begun influencing the region. The
U.S. is now creating special forces called Caspian Guard, to guarantee
absolute security for the pipeline. Washington’s reverent concern
about the pipe means the U.S. will not put up with main threats to
it existing in the region-the frozen conflicts. Now, the West will
not risk anymore and will actively seek ways to solve Karabakh,
Abkhazian, and South Ossetian conflicts. The U.S. now pushes Erevan
and Baku to sign the declaration on Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Similar
steps would probably be taken in regard to Georgia.

The BTJ pipeline might stabilize the region. Yet, it does not
guarantee the conflicts will be solved according to Tbilisi’s and
Baku’s wishes. On the other hand, BTJ greatly changes the status of
the countries in the region, and cements the new pro-West alliance.

Stretching the pipeline up to the Mediterranean sea, Washington has in
fact created a new block, which has been already joined by Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Turkey, and Israel.

Vladimir Solovyev, Jeikhan

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

BTC Briefing, Like Pipeline, Skirts Troublespots, Azeri Revelations
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N

Inner City Press, NY
July 13 2006

UNITED NATIONS, July 13 — An oil pipelines gambit came to interim
fruition on Thursday. The Baku – Tblisi – Ceyhan curving route,
avoiding Armenia, breakaway parts of Georgia and most Kurdish parts
of Turkey, is a testament to its precarious position. At a briefing
at the UN, Inner City Press asked the outgoing Ambassador of Georgia
Revaz Adamia to explain BP’s funding of a 700 person defense force
for the pipeline. "They are not soldier," Amb. Adamia answered.

"They are high tech people."

Inner City Press asked the Ambassador of Azerbaijan Yashar Aliyev about
the avoidance of Armenia. We cannot deal with them until they stop
occupying our territory, he said. "You mean Nagorno – Karabakh?" Not
only that, Amb. Aliyev answered. That’s only four percent. Few people
know this, but Armenia has occupied twenty percent of our territory.

But we digress. The pipeline is more than a tube for oil, the
Ambassadors read from their scripts. A four-minute movie was
shown. Later the full 20-minute film was screened, as waiters served
lamp chops and salmon on a skewer. "Bill Clinton was there at the
birth," a Georgian representative said. "He offered American guarantees
so the work would get done. It avoids this" — he pointed on a map at
Russia — "and here," pointing to Iran and the Middle East. "If only
Turkmenistan agrees to provide its gas," he said wistfully. He added
his view that Armenia gets away with incursions in Azerbaijan due to
U.S. support. It’s an issue rarely touched on at the United Nations.

Georgia

Inner City Press asked outgoing Georgian Ambassador Ademia where
he’s going. "Back to science and business," he answered. "Oil,"
guess-whispered one wag — not this one — in the crowd.

Full disclosure: this reporter consumed, on the pipeline proponents’
tab, several skewers of meat and a glass of Borjomi mineral water,
named for a national park in Georgia which environmentalists say is
put at risk by the BTC pipeline.

At the UN, A Day of Resolutions on Gaza, North Korea and Iran,
Georgia as Side Dish

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N.

UNITED NATIONS, July 12 — Just as there are big countries and little
countries, at the UN there are big issues and then other issues,
sometimes called non-issues. On Wednesday at the UN, there were
serial stakeouts by the Ambassadors of France and the United States,
off the cuff comments by the Ambassadors of Russia, China and the UK,
and side speeches by the Palestinian Permanent Observer and the UN’s
head of peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno.

Taking questions from a half-dozen journalists at the noon briefing
— where Inner City Press asked about a UNHCR conflict-of-interest
investment with Ivan Pictet, who’s on the UN Investment Committee,
click here for that article — was the Special Representative of the
Secretary General for Georgia, Heidi Tagliavini, soon to leave her
post and return to Switzerland. Still she was diplomatic, preferring
not to comment on yesterday’s outbursts from Georgia’s parliamentary
speaker and the Russian ambassador, rather referring obliquely to
"mis-information" being a problem in Abkhazia.

Inner City Press asked if she views as mis-information the allegations
of money laundering, including for terrorism, in Abkhazia.

"Thank God my mandate doesn’t include bank regulation," she
replied. She went on to describe Abkhazia as a "dark area" where
certainly money laundering could happen. In response to Inner City
Press’ second question, about South Ossetia, she described the
Abkhazians as more professional, and having a longer independent
history, than is the case in South Ossetia. Asked if Georgia should
be allowed to speak before the Security Council when it is on the
agenda, she respond that she personally thinks that’s right, but it is
of course up to the Security Council. In the hall outside Room 226,
the Georgia ambassador noted that Russia should not be able to block
Georgia’s attendance and speaking, since these are procedural and
not substantive matters. That and a token, a New York wag replied.

At another stakeout, Inner City Press asked the UN’s head of
peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno for more information on the release of
the final five of the peacekeeper in Ituri in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. Mr. Guehenno replied that the problem in Ituri is "young
men with guns," and that even those are disarmed can’t find a job. He
said, in a sanitized on-camera version, that those negotiated with,
Peter Karim, changed from day to day.

Inner City Press asked if in his briefing to the Council about the
African Union summit in Banjul, the issue of the Secretary-General’s
new deference to a "Mugabe-selected mediator" came up. Mr. Guehenno
replied both that it had not come up, and that he was not sure if
the mediator was Mugabe-selected. Inner City Press asked, "what
is the mediator’s mandate? Between whom is he mediating — Mugabe
and the Blair government in the UK, or Mugabe and the opposition
in Zimbabwe?" Mr. Guehenno said he is not the one to ask, that the
question should be directed to and answered by Department of Political
Affairs. Okay then.

The main action was dueling resolutions: the Qatari resolution on Gaza,
not expanded to cover Lebanon, texts and more texts on North Korea, and
forthcoming text on Iran. In the midst of these, all covered elsewhere,
French ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere let drop that he met with
the Thai candidate for Secretary-General. Inner City Press pursued
at the stakeout the fate of the Gaza electrical power plant, which
UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Tuesday should be repaired
by Israel. Inner City Press asked U.S. Ambassador John Bolton if he
had any comment on this. He replied, "I don’t have any comment." Dan
Gillerman, the Ambassador of Israel, said that his country has "no
intention to punish" civilians, but that he has "no information on
the plant." Inner City Press asked to be updated, and asked OCHA to
amplify Jan Egeland’s reference to an "American insurance company"
now possibly barred from paying out on the policy due to sanctions
against Hamas. Who paid the premiums?

Especially, after the insurance company became arguably barred from
paying on the policy? Developing….

Feedback: editorial [at] innercitypress.com

UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 718-716-3540

UN’s Corporate Partnerships Will Be Reviewed, While New Teaming Up
with Microsoft, and UNDP Continues

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the U.N.

UNITED NATIONS, July 13 — The UN under Kofi Annan has increasingly
worked with corporations. Questions have been raised about background
checks and safeguards. A day after Inner City Press reported that the
UN’s Geneva-based refugee agency had not known that Swiss banker Ivan
Pictet is on the UN Investment Committee when the UNHCR Kashmir Relief
Note placed money with the Pictet Funds India Equity fund, the agency’s
spokesman mused, "Isn’t the UN Investment Fund based in New York?"

Inner City Press asked if it would have been helpful to UNHCR if
the UN system had a database of the companies controlled by the
outside business people who serve on bodies like the UN Investment
Committee. A Google search for that committee and Pictet found close
to nothing. It appears that there is no easy way to find who is on
the UN Investment Committee.

UNHCR’s Ron Redmond answered that that it would "have been helpful
to have that type of information… For UNHCR to look it up is labor
intensive, with all the possible company names." He later added
in writing, "Any additional information on prospective corporate
partners is of course always welcome; it would facilitate our
screening processes." Mr. Redmond states that UNHCR was never
required to ask SocGen to cease using the UNHCR visibility logo,
in part because the brochure that it was on was only intended to be
used for a brief period. But records show that individuals high in UN
Headquarters chided UNHCR for the use of such terms as UNHCR "teams
up" with SocGen. Despite this in-house chiding, or perhaps because
the chiders refuse in their defensiveness to comment for the record,
this practice continues in the UN system to this day, literally.

Click here to view the UN’s World Tourism Organization’s July 12,
2006 press release, "UN tourism agency teams up with Microsoft," which
was published on the UN News Center just as UNHCR SocGen-derilab’s
April 5, 2006 press release was. They just keep teaming up.

As the UN increasingly has intercourse with corporations, basic
safeguards are still not in place. Inner City Press has previously
reported on the lack of background checks when corporations are
allowed to join the UN Global Compact, and has twice been rebuffed
in requests to interview or ask questions of corporate CEOs who have
come to meet the Secretary General or on other Global Compact business.

At Thursday’s noon briefing, spokeswoman Marie Okabe was asked if any
of the individuals in the Secretariat who were asked to comment on
the UNHCR – Pictet – Societe Generale transaction had in fact spoken
or provided guidance. We’re still working on it, Ms.

Okabe answered.

Near six p.m., Ms. Okabe called Inner City Press and said she
had spoken about the matter, as requested, with Under Secretary
General Mark Malloch Brown. "They are aware of the issues," Ms. Okabe
said. "This case highlights the complexities of the UN’s partnerships
with the private sector and so current guidelines and practices of
various funds and agencies and programs will be reviewed" to try to
avoid "potential conflicts of interest" and misuses of UN logos.

Great. But what about the continued "teaming up," now with
Microsoft? There’s more work to be done.

[A note on UNHCR’s work about Uzbekistan: the agency managed to
visit in Kazakhstan with Gabdurafikh Temirbaev, the Uzbek dissident
threatened with refoulement back to Tashkent, and has, its spokesman
said, gotten a commitment to be able to review Uzbekistan’s extradition
request.]

Alongside UNHCR’s work, unlike at the UN Development Programme,
at least UNHCR answered the questions and acknowledged that things
could be better. On UNDP and human rights, on UNDP and refusal to
answer press questions, what will happen?

Zimbabweans

On the issues surrounding UNDP, the Office of the Spokesman for the
Secretary-General managed to get some response from UNDP to a question
Inner City Press asked UNDP in writing more than a week ago: why does
UNDP help the government of Uzbekistan to collect taxes, given the
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ finding that
this government shot and killed its own people in Andijan in May
2005. Here now is UNDP’s response:

"As far as your UNDP/Uzbekistan questions from the other week,
here’s what I can tell you… in Uzbekistan and most of the 140
developing nations where UNDP operates, UNDP works with government
and civil society on a broad range of governance projects, including
economic reforms, of which tax administration and fiscal policy are a
significant component. Other governance projects in Uzbekistan focus on
gender equality, internet access, and public administration reform. It
may be worth noting that UNDP works in a wide range of political
environments, from Costa Rica to North Korea, with the belief that
UNDP’s mandate as a development agency is to work constructively on
behalf of the people of the developing world wherever and whenever
possible."

One wag wondered if UNDP’s programs in Uzbekistan might involve
technical assistance on not putting political dissidents in boiling
water, as the U.K.’s former ambassador in Tashkent has testified takes
place. And see above, that UNHCR has managed to visit in Kazakhstan
with Gabdurafikh Temirbaev, the Uzbek dissident threatened with
refoulement back to Uzbekistan, where he would face torture —
perhaps with tax funds UNDP helped to collect. UNDP has still not
even purported to answer the week-old question about UNDP’s funding
of Robert Mugabe’s purported "Human Rights Council." Now the Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights has called for a boycott. What was that again,
about UNDP working with civil society? To be continued.

Feedback: editorial [at] innercitypress.com

UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 718-716-3540

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azerbaijani court jails three political activists

Agence France Presse — English
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 4:25 PM GMT

A court in Azerbaijan on Wednesday handed down sentences of up to
seven years to youth opposition activists charged with attempting to
overthrow the government, opposition parties said.

Three leaders of the Yeni Fikir (New Idea) movement, created ahead of
last year’s parliamentary elections to protest the rule of President
Ilham Aliyev, were sentenced in a closed session, one of the convicted
activists told AFP.

"We expected an unfair sentence because this was a political case
from the very beginning. The witnesses against us were government
agents and there was no hard evidence in the case," said a leader of
Yeni Fikir, Said Nuri, who was given a five year suspended sentence
for health reasons.

Nuri said the defendants were planning to appeal the ruling and then
take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if it was not
overturned in Azerbaijan.

Yeni Fikir was one of a number of protest groups that sprang up ahead
of elections last November, which ended up giving Aliyev almost
total control of the parliament in a vote deemed undemocratic by
international monitors.

Yeni Fikir’s leader, Ruslan Bashirli, was sentenced to seven years
in prison and a third activist, Ramil Tagiyev, received four years.

All three were arrested just weeks ahead of the November poll for
plotting what prosecutors said was an uprising backed by the US-based
National Democratic Institute (NDI), a pressure group, and money from
Armenia’s government.

The Popular Front of Azerbaijan opposition party, which supports Yeni
Fikir, said the convictions were part of a wider political campaign
aimed at stifling dissent.

"This was a political order. The authorities are trying to limit the
activities of democratic youth organizations. At the same time we
have again been shown that the court system is in the grip of the
authorities," said Isaak Alezoglu, a spokesman for the Popular Front.

NDI has denied training Yeni Fikir members to overthrow the government
but has been forced to curtail much of its activity in the oil-rich
republic after it was implicated in the plot.

International organizations have blamed Aliyev, who succeeded his
father as president in a controversial election in 2003, of stifling
media freedoms, cracking down on the right to freely assemble and
harassing the opposition.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU warns Ankara over ruling on Armenian journalist

Agence France Presse — English
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 10:59 AM GMT

BRUSSELS, July 12 2006 — The European Commission lamented Wednesday
a Turkish court ruling against an ethnic Armenian journalist for
"denigrating the Turkish national identity," warning the case could
cloud Ankara’s EU hopes.

Commenting on an appeal court ruling on Hrant Dink, editor of the
bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, EU Enlargement Commissioner
Olli Rehn called on the Turkish government to bolster freedom of
speech in the country.

"I am disappointed by this judgement which limits the exercise of
freedom of expression in Turkey," he said, following Tuesday’s court
ruling, the first such judgment based on article 301 of Turkey’s new
Penal Code.

He noted that ruling "will set the trend for lower jurisdiction to
follow when applying article 301 in the future," adding: "This is
all the more serious since there are still a number of similar court
cases pending."

"I would therefore urge the Turkish authorities to amend article 301
and other vaguely formulated articles in order to guarantee freedom
of expression in Turkey," he said.

He underlined that freedom of expression is a key principle of the
EU’s so-called Copenhagen political criteria, which Ankara must adhere
to if it one day wants to join the currently 25-nation bloc.

"In any case, the Commission will review the situation in light of
the Copenhagen political criteria in its upcoming Progress Report,"
Rehn said, referring to an annual report on Ankara’s EU preparations
due in October.

Turkey began EU entry talks last October, but the negotiations are
likely to take at least a decade and Ankara has been warned there is
no guarantee of eventual membership.

Dink was convicted in October for an article about the collective
memory of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire,
which many countries recognize as genocide.

He now faces the risk of going to prison if he commits a similar
offense over the next five years.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Obituary of Shamil Basayev Chechen rebel leader responsible for
notorious acts of terrorism, including the school siege at Beslan

The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
July 11, 2006 Tuesday

SHAMIL BASAYEV, who was killed yesterday aged 41, was a hero to his
people in the Republic of Chechnya; elsewhere he was regarded as one
of the world’s most infamous terrorists.

The Chechens are a brave mountain race not noted for their
squeamishness; but there are those who would say that Basayev scaled
new heights of barbarity.

He achieved international notoriety in June 1995 when he led an attack
on a hospital at the city of Budyonnovsk, in southern Russia.

There was further revulsion in October 2003, when his Chechen militants
took 800 people hostage at a Moscow theatre. Two days later Russian
special forces stormed the building; 129 hostages died, along with
41 terrorists.

Basayev also took responsibility for the Beslan school siege of
September 2004; on the third day of the siege shooting broke out
between the terrorists and the Russian security forces, resulting in
the deaths of 344 civilians, 186 of them children.

The Russian government put a price on the rebel leader’s head, offering
a reward of 300 million roubles ($10 million) for information leading
to his capture. Although Basayev did not participate in the atrocity
at Beslan, he claimed to have organised it, boasting that the whole
operation cost only 8,000 euros.

In an an interview broadcast on American television last year he was
happy to describe himself as "a bad guy, a bandit, a terrorist". His
justification was that the Russians had "officially" killed 40,000
Chechen children, and were therefore terrorists as well.

Shamil Salmanovich Basayev was born on January 14 1965 at Vedeno, in
south-east Chechnya. His family is said to have had a long history of
involvement in Chechen resistance to Russian rule, and he was named
after Imam Shamil, who led the mountain tribes’ resistance against
the Tsarist armies in the 19th century.

His grandfather fought in the abortive attempt to create a breakaway
North Caucasus Emirate after the Russian Revolution, and the Basayevs,
along with much of the rest of the Chechen population, were deported
to Kazakhstan. They were allowed to return in 1957.

After leaving school Basayev served for two years as a fireman in the
Soviet army. He then worked at a state farm in the Volgograd region
of southern Russia before moving to Moscow, where he unsuccessfully
applied to read Law at Moscow State University. Instead he enrolled at
the Moscow Institute of Land-Construction before deciding to become
a computer salesman. A colleague later claimed that Basayev was more
interested in playing video games than in selling computers, and that
he appeared preoccupied with the career of Che Guevara.

Basayev is said to have taken to the streets of Moscow in support of
Boris Yeltsin when Communist hardliners attempted to stage a coup in
August 1991.

Two months later, however, the Chechen nationalist leader, Dzhokhar
Dudayev, unilaterally declared independence from Russia, and Yeltsin
declared a state of emergency and sent troops to the border with
Chechnya.

In response, Basayev and two others hijacked an Aeroflot passenger
plane bound for Ankara, threatening to blow it up unless the state of
emergency was lifted. On this occasion the crisis was resolved without
loss of life, and the hijackers were allowed to return to Chechnya.

In 1992 Basayev was fighting with the separatists in Abkhazia, a
breakaway region of Georgia. After the Georgian government’s forces
were defeated in October 1992, the ethnic Georgian population of the
region was driven out; Basayev’s unit is said to have killed thousands
of Georgian civilians, and it became the core of his "Abkhaz Battalion"
in the first Chechen war.

Basayev is also said to have fought with Azerbaijani forces in their
war against Armenian separatists in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh,
and to have established links with al-Qa’eda in Afghanistan. He was
later to subscribe to the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Islam.

There have been claims that he became an important figure in the
Chechen mafia, and was involved in drug-dealing. Certainly he appeared
to have access to considerable sums of money: he came to own several
large houses and was able to finance his own private militia.

But he himself maintained that he was supported by private benefactors.

In December 1994 the Russians invaded Chechnya in an attempt to
depose Dudayev, who appointed Basayev one of his military commanders;
by now his "Abkhaz Battalion" was 2,000-strong. After a gruelling
three-month campaign, the Russians took Grozny, Chechnya’s capital,
and the Chechens were forced into the hills.

The "Abkhaz Battalion" had lost all but about 200 of its men, and
on June 3 1995 a Russian air raid on Basayev’s home town killed 11
members of his family, including his wife and two children.

Less than a fortnight later Basayev led the attack on Budyonnovsk
hospital, 90 miles north of the Chechen border. For several days 1,500
people were held hostage inside the hospital, and more than 100 of
them died when Russian special forces unsuccessfully attempted to
storm the building.

Basayev was demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.

While he failed to achieve this aim, he did succeed in negotiating
a halt to the Russian advance and the prospect of peace talks before
he and his fellow terrorists were allowed to escape back to Chechnya.

In 1996 Basayev was appointed commander of the Chechen forces, and in
August that year he led a successful operation to retake Grozny. The
Russians were forced to the negotiating table, and Chechnya effectively
achieved its independence. Basayev ran for the presidency of his
country, coming second to Aslan Maskhadov with 23.5 per cent of the
vote. In early 1998 Maskhadov appointed him prime minister; having
served his six-month term, Basayev stepped down, having failed to
make good his promise to crack down on crime and kidnapping.

In August 1999 Basayev and the Saudi terrorist known as Khattab led a
2,000-strong army of Islamic fundamentalists in an unsuccessful attempt
to help Dagestani Wahhabists to take over neighbouring Dagestan and
establish a new Chechen-Dagestan Islamic republic.

Meanwhile, in September that year, a number of Russian apartment blocks
were bombed, killing 293 people. Basayev denied that he was involved,
as did President Maskhadov, but the Russians had lost patience and
sent forces back into Chechnya.

As the Chechen rebels withdrew from Grozny in January 2000 Basayev
stepped on a landmine, and had to have a foot amputated. The operation
was videotaped and later televised, viewers seeing the foot being
removed under local anaesthetic while Basayev looked on impassively.

On December 27 2002 Chechen suicide bombers destroyed the republic’s
pro-Russian government’s headquarters in Grozny, killing about 80
people. Basayev claimed responsibility, saying that he had personally
detonated the bombs by remote control. He also claimed responsibility
for the bomb which killed the pro-Russian Chechen president Akhmad
Kadyrov at a stadium in Grozny in May 2004, and for the deaths of
10 people killed by a suicide bomber outside a Moscow metro station
in August.

He rejoined the Chechen separatist government in August 2005,
taking the post of deputy prime minister. Less than a fortnight ago,
Chechnya’s new separatist leader, Doku Umarov, named Basayev as his
vice-president.

Basayev received the highest awards of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
(the separatists’ name for the once-independent republic of Chechnya):
"K’oman Siy" (honour of the nation) and "K’oman Turpal"

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Russia ready to become guarantor of accords on Nagorno-Karabakh

ITAR-TASS News Agency
July 15, 2006 Saturday 05:17 PM EST

ST PETERSBURG, July 16 — Russia is ready to become a guarantor of
implementing agreements on Nagorno Karabakh by Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference on Sunday.

"The two countries should reach a compromise and Russia together
with its partners is ready to become a guarantor of implementing the
agreements," he said.

Putin recalled that "most G8 countries try to help settle the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to a certain degree," he said. French
President Jacques Chirac and U.S. President George W. Bush are actively
engaged in this process, he said.

"We want Armenia and Azerbaijan find a reasonable decision. We will
not impose our decision on them," he said

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Discomfort over Plan for Webster Comfort Inn

Norwood News, NY
July 14 2006

By ALEX KRATZ

On a recent Friday afternoon, Korean War veteran Harold Hekimian
pointed to the side of his house where sand from the construction
site next door has spilled onto his property, under his porch, into
his basement and onto his backyard.

Wearing a linen bathrobe and sporting a shaved head – the result of
a four-year battle with stomach cancer – Hekimian loudly laments the
imminent arrival of his new neighbor: an 80-room Comfort Inn.

A plywood fence runs suffocatingly close alongside Hekimian’s house
on Webster Avenue between East 202nd and 203rd streets. He can only
imagine how intrusive a five-story motel will be on him and his sister,
Virginia, both in their 70s.

"They’re taking away my oxygen," Hekimian says, putting his hand to
his chest. "I won’t be able to breathe."

That same day, June 30, the hotel’s developer, Sam Chang of Floral
Park, received design approval from the Buildings Department for a
five-story, 80-room motel on the slender plot of land wedged tightly
between Hekimian’s house and an auto body shop to the north. Chang has
yet to apply for a building permit, but that’s mostly a formality,
said Jennifer Givner, a spokesperson for the department. All Chang
needs is the proper insurance documents and the permit will almost
certainly be granted, Givner said.

Queens architect Michael Kang, who designed the motel and has worked
with Chang for 12 years on other New York hotel projects, refused to
offer any details about the hotel without the developer’s permission.
Chang specializes in low-cost hotels and has constructed more than
30 in New York, mostly in Manhattan. As of publication, Chang failed
to return several calls from the Norwood News.

Because the area is zoned for heavy commercial buildings, Chang’s
development company, McSam LLC, has a right to build the hotel
regardless of community opposition.

"They have an ‘as of right’," said Rita Kessler, the district manager
for Community Board 7, talking about the developer’s "right" to build
on commercially zoned Webster. "But we’re going to fight them."

At a Board 7 Land Use Committee meeting two weeks ago, Chang sent
his lawyer, Patrick Jones, to discuss the project with Board members.
Kessler and other members peppered the lawyer with questions.

"He had no answers for anything," Kessler said.

Instead, the lawyer jotted down questions in his notebook and said he
would bring them up with his boss. Kessler also gave Jones something
else to give to Chang – a copy of a petition, created by the Hekimians,
with more than 800 signatures of people opposing the new motel.

With PS/MS 20 just a stone’s throw away, Kessler and others are
concerned about who will inhabit the rooms and what they will be used
for. The motel will be available for short-stay rentals, Kessler said,
meaning customers will be able to rent rooms for less than four hours
at a time.

"Webster certainly is not a tourist attraction," Kessler said, adding
that she’s concerned the hotel will also be used to house the homeless.

Father Richard Gorman, chair of Community Board 12, sympathizes with
the community’s plight. He’s fought against what he describes as
"no tell motels" or "hot sheet motels" for more than a decade.

Gorman says a motel like Chang’s in an area like Webster Avenue is
only designed for two types of people – drug addicts and prostitutes
looking for a private place to conduct illegal activities or homeless
families sent there by the city because there is nowhere else to put
them. The city pays out of the way motels up to $90 a night to house
homeless families, Gorman says.

Recently, Gorman says, there was a brutal murder in one of the dozen
motels in his district in the northeast Bronx. The community has
been cut out of the approval process, Gorman says, even when motel
developments directly affect the community surrounding it. "To have
it across the street from a school, I would be very concerned,"
Gorman says.

Barbara Rondon, who has worked at PS/MS 20 for the past 10 years
and lives in the area, agreed. "We don’t need that [a motel] here,"
she said. "We’re trying to bring this area up, not bring it back down."

Back on Hekimian’s porch, Harold says "hello" and smiles to everyone
passing by on the sidewalk. Both he and his sister were born in
this house. Their parents, Armenian immigrants, fled Turkish death
squads in 1915 and ended up here in Norwood in 1927. The Hekimians
remember when Webster was a narrow cobblestone road trafficked with
horse carriages. Virginia points to where the family’s lush green
lawn spread out to what is now gray concrete.

Harold Hekimian looks out from his porch and sweeps his hand over the
neighborhood – a place where the siblings now have myriad immigrant
friends, mostly young families, from places like Ghana and Chile.
They could be the next Hekimians.

"We’re used to it here," Hekimian says. "Where are we going to go?"

"But Harold," Virginia says, "you’re not going to like it here when
the motel comes."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Review: Arts: Beauty and harmony: In today’s climate of cultural
conflict, the V&A’s spectacular new gallery of artefacts from all
across the Islamic world reveals less a clash of civilisations than a
refreshing union of east and west, discovers Jason Ell

The Guardian – United Kingdom; Jul 15, 2006
JASON ELLIOT

A transformation has occurred at the V&A. This week, after three
years of renovation and redesign, the new Jameel gallery of Islamic
art will open its doors to the public with a spectacular collection
of artefacts from across the Islamic world, many of which have never
before been seen on display.

The new gallery, dedicated to the memory of its Saudi benefactor,
Abdul Latif Jameel, is both timely and long overdue. Visitors to
the V&A’s former Middle Eastern display of Islamic art may recall
a confusingly structured and poorly lit collection of disparate
artefacts, overlooked by the sombre and greenish presence of a giant
carpet. This – the famous Ardabil carpet – was said to be one of the
finest Persian carpets in the world. However, it looked more like
something dredged from a pond.

All this has changed. A spectacularly reconfigured display of over
400 objects from the museum’s 10,000-piece Islamic collections,
sensitively interpreted by senior curator Tim Stanley, now looks set
to rival comparable collections around the world. The centrepiece
of the gallery is none other than the Ardabil carpet, rescued from
its former gloom and ingeniously displayed at floor level, as was
originally intended by its 16th-century makers.

Rebuilding the entire gallery around the 50-square-metre marvel
imposed multiple challenges on designers. The greatest of these was
to allow the carpet to be viewed horizontally, but to protect it
from undue levels of light and dust. The innovative solution has
been to surround it with an enclosure of non-reflective glass (be
careful – it’s almost invisible), free of structural supports. This
is made possible by a giant protective canopy above the glass walls,
fitted with fibre-optic lighting and suspended by steel cables from
the ceiling joists overhead. At long last, the delicate colours and
intricacy of the carpet’s pattern – created from a staggering 30m
hand-tied knots – may now be appreciated at close quarters.

The Ardabil carpet is also a reminder of the days when the appreciation
of things Islamic was less eclipsed by political issues. To William
Morris, who in 1893 petitioned for its purchase from a London dealer,
the "singular perfection" of the Ardabil carpet was an inspiration: "To
us pattern-designers," he wrote, "Persia has become a holy land." Other
designers, such as Owen Jones and William De Morgan – whose iridescent
tiles imitated techniques pioneered by Muslim artists a thousand years
earlier – were at the forefront of a European fascination with Islamic
design. Their enthusiasm encouraged the building of English country
homes based on Mogul architecture, pavilions in the oriental style,
and many a Turkish smoking-room and Moorish conservatory around
the capital.

The European attraction to Islamic art did not, of course, begin
in the 19th century. Throughout the middle ages, highly prized
specimens of Islamic craftsmanship entered the treasuries of churches
and aristocratic homes, both through trade and as booty. European
monarchs were crowned in robes woven in Sicily, one of the great
creative workshops of the Muslim artist; Fatimid rock crystal ewers
from north Africa were used to display Christian relics; and Turkish
and Persian rugs were favoured as royal wedding presents.

Fine examples of all these luxury goods are to be found in the
gallery. Others, such as the lustre ceramics produced in 15th-century
Spain and Italian inlaid metalwork called Veneto-Saracenic, testify to
a fertile exchange of artistic techniques between Muslim and Christian
cultures of the Mediterranean. In the eastern Islamic lands, too,
styles and technologies from China were taken up and developed by
Iranian artisans, whose ingenuity underpinned the art of the later
Mogul and Ottoman empires.

In today’s climate of cultural divisiveness, this sense of
interconnectedness is refreshing. It suggests for Islamic art a global
significance, and tells not so much of a clash of civilisations, but of
a resounding chorus. Islamic art is, after all, probably the world’s
greatest artistic success story. Soon after the earliest Islamic
conquests of the Middle East in the late seventh century, artists
drawing on the existing traditions of the region began to produce
art and architecture with its own distinctive personality. Easily
differentiated from its Greco-Roman and Hellenistic predecessors,
it spread through the burgeoning empire with extraordinary speed. The
universal appeal and adaptability of this new artistic mode allowed
its themes and principles to be taken up by artists from the Atlantic
coast to the Gobi desert, enriching thereby the vast and intervening
blocs of culture.

The Arab, Turkish, Persian and central Asian contributions to
Islamic art are all represented in the new V&A gallery, and there
are outstanding examples from each. Visitors can admire giant Qur’an
pages commissioned for Mamluk sultans, swollen with monumental
lines of exquisite calligraphy, or marvel at Timurid-era miniature
paintings composed with microscopic precision. There is a series of
large-scale 19th-century oil paintings from Iran (unseen for decades),
and a dramatic wall-sized display of glazed tilework from 14th-century
Uzbekistan. One of the tiles from a 14th-century tomb near Bokhara,
deeply incised with swirling shades of green and turquoise, has been
deliberately exposed to the visitor’s touch. The towering minbar, or
staired mosque-pulpit, dedicated to a 15th-century Egyptian sovereign,
is a masterpiece of geometric design in wood and ivory. And there is
a dazzling display of vibrant ceramics from the famous Turkish centre
of Iznik, including a large tilework chimney-piece dedicated to the
myth of the Seven Sleepers. All these treasures are reminders of
the high level of patronage afforded to the Muslim craftsman across
enormous expanses of time and territory.

Between all these stretches a broad spectrum of lesser but fascinating
treasures. These are dominated by fabrics and ceramics, but include
fine examples of astrolabes and compasses, inlaid candlesticks,
vases and ewers, ivory caskets, enamelled and gilt mosque lamps,
bookbindings, embroidered robes, stained glass, daggers and begging
bowls, as well as some rare and touching pieces such as the silken
vestment woven in Isfahan for an Armenian church, and a child’s
funerary kaftan from Turkey.

Despite the diverse styles of Islamic art, and the astonishing variety
of media in which the skill of the traditional Muslim artist has
been expressed, there are unifying factors that make it immediately
distinctive. All Islamic art aims for beauty based on coherence
and harmony. The saying of the Prophet Muhammad, "God is beautiful
and He loves beauty", orients the artist’s aesthetic ideal; and the
Qur’anic emphasis on the fundamental goodness and significance of life
informs the goal of creating works of art that will reflect the order,
goodness and purpose of creation itself.

The expression of this vision relies on a distinct and threefold
visual structure, to which a series of panels in the gallery is
very usefully dedicated. The first of these is calligraphy: for the
faithful, the graceful ciphers of the Arabic script transmit the voice
of the Divine, and are the substance of revelation made visible. In
no other art form has the written word taken on such an exalted role;
sultans and peasants alike strove to learn its many styles, which
became disciplines in themselves, and around which an entire science
of numerological symbolism evolved. The second is geometric design,
brilliantly exploited in endless variations – intellectually enticing
and puzzling at the same time. The third panel offers examples of
idealised plant shapes drawn from the natural world: tendrils, vines,
buds and flowers, all alluding to the fecundity and abundance of
nature, and symbolically linked to the Qur’anic evocation of paradise
as a luxuriant garden.

At the simplest level, these elements comprise the fundamental
repertoire of the traditional artist; at a profounder level, they
celebrate the relationship between God, man and nature. They are to
some extent mutable – geometric patterns can form letters, and letters
can be used to create pictures – and are combined in almost infinite
and sophisticated variations of immense beauty. Great art, according
to Ruskin, "is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man
go together"; it is precisely this insight that was so well understood
by the traditional Muslim artist, whose finest works simultaneously
appeal to the devotional, intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities of
the onlooker. The most refined expressions of this exacting discipline
– whether carved on to a paper-thin dried leaf or stretched across a
monumental facade – are thus transformed from objects of mere visual
delight into powerful focuses of spiritual contemplation.

Recent scholarship has also begun to delve into the Muslim artist’s
use of geometric principles in designs as diverse as the layout
of pages of the Qur’an to the structure of entire mosques. Behind
these lie aesthetic as well as symbolic considerations, reflecting a
reverence throughout Islamic cultures for the philosophical dimension
of mathematics, for numbers and the shapes derived from them. In
this sense, Islamic art extends a fascinating bridge between the
intellectual heritages of east and west, and throws light on the
Islamic role as a transmitter of classical learning into Europe
through the medium of Arab culture. Despite the "exotic" attraction
of many of the motifs and styles used in Islamic art, deeper study
reveals a more rational foundation, coherent and rigorously structured.

The enormous challenge of designing a gallery in which to order
meaningfully artefacts produced over a span of 1,000 years and three
continents has been diligently met. Roughly speaking, the Jameel
gallery is divided in half between artefacts with either a secular or
a religious function. This is a problematic but necessary dichotomy,
since the whole of Islam is underpinned by a theocentric vision,
wherein the worldly and spiritual are not so forcefully divided
as in other forms of belief. But the looseness of this separation
deliberately highlights a common misconception about Islamic art as
a whole. While it is true that art destined for an overtly religious
context rarely contains images of human forms, many of the items
on display prove that Islam’s doctrinal "ban" on graven imagery –
originally a Jewish tradition, absorbed into Islam in its earliest
years – was interpreted differently at different times, rather than
explicitly laid down in the Qur’an.

Along its length the gallery traces a historical line, with the
earliest exhibits nearest the entrance. Here, Roman capitals and
Sassanian vases from the pre-Islamic period suggest how Is lamic
artisans took up existing artistic prototypes and shaped them to the
evolving vision of the Muslim world.

One important characteristic of the gallery is the interpretive
support available to the visitor. There are interactive maps showing
the territorial extent of Islamic cultures; several videos expand
on themes of religious and courtly patronage; and poetry from the
Shahnameh of Ferdowsi can be heard alongside a display of inscribed
tiles. Attention is also drawn to the limitations of the term "Islamic
art" to describe the artistic output of such diverse cultures; and
the care that has gone into the displays themselves is immediately
obvious. Colour and light abound.

A critic might draw attention to the predominance of ceramics, or
to the lack of musical or scientific instruments – both pioneering
achievements of the Islamic Middle East. But the gallery does not
claim to be exhaustive, and has attempted not to acquire new material,
but to re-explore its existing holdings. It has put one of its most
generous donations to excellent use. It also demonstrates just how far
the western understanding of this complex artistic heritage has evolved
since the days of the museum’s earliest collectors. It will be the envy
of the museum’s other galleries and of collections internationally,
and, 150 years on, will amply fulfil the V&A’s original writ to bring
the splendour and richness of Islamic art to the greater world.

The new Jameel gallery opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
SW7, on July 20. Details: 020-7942 2000. Jason Elliot’s most recent
book is Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran (Picador).

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeri opposition daily lambasts US mediator for Karabakh remarks

Yeni Musavat, Baku
14 Jul 06

An Azerbaijani opposition daily has criticized the new US mediator
for the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict for ignoring the public opinion in
Azerbaijan and insisting on a referendum on the breakaway region’s
legal status. The paper said that the US co-chairman of the OSCE
Minsk Group, Matthew Bryza, was confident that the Azerbaijani
government could quell any public opposition to an agreement with
Armenia on holding a referendum in Nagornyy Karabakh. The following
is the text of Alya’s report in Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni Musavat
on 14 July entitled "Who should make Bryza silent?":

[US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group] Matthew Bryza has again
spoken about a referendum in Adana [in Turkey]. A couple of hours
before the final completion of the USA’s useless project, i.e. the
opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, he gave
an interview to journalists to say that there was no other way to
settle the Karabakh problem and that the [Azerbaijani and Armenian]
presidents should persuade their peoples to agree to this idea
[referendum on Nagornyy Karabakh’s status].

It emerged that the new co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group is absolutely
indifferent to the public opinion outside the USA. This means that
Matthew Bryza could not care less about the negative attitude of the
Azerbaijani people towards the referendum. How else can one assess the
statements by Bryza who is obstinately insisting on the referendum
even after seeing the negative public reaction following his first
statement? Even if he had not noticed this negative reaction, he
should have guessed because of his official post that like other
world nations, the people of Azerbaijan will protest resolutely
against the proposal to cede their lands.

As it is out of the question that the new mediator, who joined the
Karabakh settlement process late but fervently, knows nothing about
such simple matters, his behaviour might also be explained by the
fact that he regards as insignificant both the public opinion in
Azerbaijan and our reaction to the issue.

Why? Is it because he is confident that the authorities can at
any time (for example, after [Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev
consents to sign a peace agreement on holding a referendum) quell any
opposition, or does he consider that we are not strong and decisive
enough? In my view, we should now think more about this rather than
the international situation that can make a peace agreement possible
or impossible.

True, for the time being it is a decisive factor that Russia is not
interested in the resolution of the Karabakh problem. But there is
no guarantee that the situation will not change. Russia might one
day compromise Azerbaijan to its eternal rival as it compromised
Afghanistan and conceded Iraq to the USA after its international
position was shaken. The history has seen many events which once
seemed unlikely.

The matter has another unpleasant aspect – it is international factors
that have turned Karabakh into a subject of endless bargaining;
Ilham Aliyev was permitted to commit election fraud precisely as a
result of this bargaining; it
is this bargaining that holds back Azerbaijan’s development and
has doomed
us to live under the tyranny of a repressive and corrupt regime. We
have been onlookers of this bargaining for many years and we
have been feeling the growing damage of it with every cell of our
body. If we finally want to put an end to it, we should think about
eliminating the reasons behind this attitude rather than being
surprised at the occupying boldness and demonstrative disrespect
of Bush’s envoys. There is no need for tedious pondering and long
research. We simply must get rid of our status of onlookers, stop
bowing to officials from a district police officer to Ilham Aliyev,
and remove animal fear from our hearts.

Given our "qualities", we should not be surprised at what is
happening. Do we not know that we are "a bit" weak in putting up
resistance? Those on the other shores of the ocean probably know this
better than we do. Maybe they hesitated at the beginning. But after
seeing that we show endurance to the most brutal election violence
and the worst methods of pillage, they have calmed down and began
to seek Ilham Aliyev’s consent only.

They were very anxious after the 2003 presidential election. They
arrived in Baku under the guise of experts of some international
organization and asked representatives of NGOs and of various layers
of society and politicians probing questions. They asked everyone:
"Do you think the election could lead to growing terrorist moods and
Islamic fundamentalism in Azerbaijan?" They tried to find out how
real was the danger of a civil war. I myself came across one of them
at one of those meetings. He insisted that I should tell him if a
civil war was possible in five or 10 years. In fact, his questions
made me laugh because just a month had passed since the 16 October
[2003 presidential election] events and I still remembered well what
part (percentage) of my dear Azerbaijani people could dare to fight.

I still remember it. The reason people like Steven Mann, Matthew
Bryza and others are coming to us demanding that we "concede Karabakh"
is that there were
few of us on that day. Those "brave boys" – "impartial" and
"honest" who
claimed that we were born to fight not them [referring to ANS TV
and radio] – dared to call us "violent" because there were few of
us on that day. But the situation has not changed yet.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress