Author: Khondkarian Raffi

Nuclear plant’s emissions way below accepted norms – Armenian official    
Mediamax news agency
11 Jun 04
   
Yerevan, 11 June: “Systematic inspection of the waste and emissions
from the Armenian nuclear power station gives every reason to confirm
that they are 100-200 times less than the maximum permissible norms,”
the head of the Armenian State Atomic Inspection Directorate, Ashot
Martirosyan, said in an interview with Mediamax news agency. He was
commenting on reports about the measurements of background radiation,
taken recently on the border with Armenia by representatives of the
Turkish nuclear power agency.
Ashot Martirosyan said that a large decrease in waste and emissions
from the Armenian nuclear power station had been observed in recent
years, thanks to the introduction of a special ALARA system [for
radiological protection] at the station with the support of the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
At the same time Ashot Martirosyan stressed that planned monitoring was
carried out of the influence of the Armenian nuclear power station
on the environment (water, air, soil, food) and this showed that
the station’s influence on the environment was far less than the
permissible norms.

Party Leader Shot in Azerbaijan
The Associated Press
06/14/04 05:42 EDT
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – An opposition party leader known for his bold
military exploits in the war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave was
shot and killed early Monday in Azerbaijan’s capital, police said.
Fatulla Huseynov’s body was found by his neighbors outside his Baku
home, said Yashar Aliyev of the city police. Neighbors reported
hearing between four and six gunshots minutes earlier.
Aliyev said police did not yet have a motive or suspect.
Huseynov, 67, was one of the leaders of Azerbaijan’s opposition Justice
party. He also served as the vice president of the Association of
Football Federations of Azerbaijan. He had previously worked in
Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry and headed the nation’s road police.
In 1992-93, Huseynov fought in Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic Armenian
enclave in Azerbaijan, where he earned the nickname the “black colonel”
for his unit’s military feats.
Azerbaijani forces were driven out of Nagorno-Karabakh, and
a cease-fire was signed in May 1994. But Nagorno-Karabakh’s final
status has not been resolved and firing sporadically breaks across the
“line of control,” a demilitarized zone that separates Azerbaijani
and Armenian forces.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

New Kerala, India
June 11 2004
Anand wins as World team takes lead
Moscow, June 11 (IANS) :
Viswanathan Anand registered a fine win and carried his World team to
a encouraging one-point lead on the opening day of the Petrosyan
Memorial chess match against an Armenian team.
The match is being played to mark the 75th birth anniversary of late
Armenian world chess champion Tigran Petrosian.
Petrosian, who was born in 1929, died in 1984.
The win Thursday did not come easily, as Armenian Smbat Lputian
stretched him to 61 moves in the first round.
“It is always nice to start with a win. The competition is bound to
get more intense as the match progresses,” said Anand, who last year
had led the World team to a fine win over a Russian team which also
had Garry Kasparov.
While Anand and Peter Svidler scored wins for the World team,
Kasparov was the lone winner for Armenia.
Svidler beat Boris Gelfand, an Israeli, who is turning out for the
Armenian team because he is the master’s most famous pupil.
The match continues till July 15. With six members on either side,
the match is a six-round Scheveningen event.
Anand (2774) had white pieces in his clash against Lputian (2634),
who is rated well below the Indian star. The game was a French
Winawer, in which at one stage, the Armenian seemed to have a chance
to escape with a draw. But Anand did not allow that and managed to
find a winning route as the game stretched to 61 moves.
Kasparov opened the match with a win over Dutchman, Loek Van Wely in
33 moves of an English Symmetrical game. The remaining three games
ended in draws.
Svidler beat Gelfand in a 52-move Sicilian Najdorf Variation game.
Besides Anand, the other members of the World team are Michael Adams,
Peter Svidler, Loek Van Wely, Etienne Bacrot and Francisco Vallejo
Pons. The Armenian team comprises Vladimir Akopian, Smbat Lputian and
Rafael Vaganian plus Kasparov whose mother is Armenian, Peter Leko
whose wife is Armenian and Boris Gelfand.
Results of Round 1:
Kasparov (ARM) beat Van Wely (ROW); Anand (ROW) beat Lputian (Arm);
Leko (ARM) drew Adams (ROW); Svidler (ROW) beat Gelfand (Arm);
Akopian (ARM) drew with Vallejo Pons (ROW); Bacrot (ROW) drew with
Vaganian (Arm).
Moves of Anand’s game:
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. a3 Bxc3+ 6. bxc3 Ne7 7. Qg4
O-O 8. Bd3 Nbc6 9. Qh5 Ng6 10. Nf3 Qc7 11. Be3 Nce7 12. h4 Nf5 13. g4
Nxe3 14. fxe3 cxd4 15. cxd4 Qc3+ 16. Ke2 Bd7 17. Rab1 Be8 18. Ng5 h6
19. Rxb7 Qc8 20. Rhb1 Nxe5 21. dxe5 f5 22. exf6 Rxf6 23. Nf7 Rxf7 24.
Rxf7 Bxf7 25. Qe5 Qd8 26. Rb7 Qf8 27. g5 hxg5 28. hxg5 g6 29. e4 a5
30. Qf6 Rb8 31. Ra7 Ra8 32. Rd7 Be8 33. Qxe6+ Bf7 34. Qe7 Re8 35.
Qxf8+ Kxf8 36. Kf3 dxe4+ 37. Bxe4 Re5 38. Kf4 Rc5 39. Ra7 Be8 40. Ra6
Ke7 41. Bxg6 Bxg6 42. Rxg6 Rxc2 43. Ra6 Rc4+ 44. Kf5 Ra4 45. Ra7+ Kf8
46. Kf6 Rf4+ 47. Kg6 Ra4 48. Rf7+ Kg8 49. Rf3 Rc4 50. Rb3 Rc6+ 51.
Kh5 Ra6 52. a4 Ra7 53. Rb5 Kg7 54. Kg4 Kg6 55. Kf4 Ra6 56. Ke4 Ra8
57. Kd4 Rd8+ 58. Kc4 Rd1 59. Rxa5 Ra1 60. Kb3 Rb1+ 61. Ka3 1-0

THE CENTRAL BANK OF ARMENIA AND UNDP JOIN EFFORTS TO DEVELOP
ArmenPress
June 7 2004
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS: The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) and
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the first
e-payment system in Armenia. Mr. Tigran Sargsyan, Chairman of the
CBA and Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident
Representative, presented the initiative to the mass media and the
first online payment was made by plastic card.
The e-payment system is a joint initiative of the Armenian Card
(ArCa) Unified Payment System and UNDP. Through the system, online
payments for public utilities, including telephone, electricity, gas,
and water can be made using ArCa cards. The system can also be used to
buy top-ups for the ArmenTel mobile prepaid system and Arminco Internet
services. Plans are also underway to expand the system to allow ArCa
cardholders to shop online and benefit from other paid services.
The online payment system is based on the highest standards of
transaction security and user convenience. The long-term goal of the
system is to expand Armenia’s infrastructure for non-cash transactions
and create a reliable and user-friendly environment for e-Commerce.
In her comments, Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP
Resident Representative, noted: “It’s important to see this online
payment system as an important step in developing an information
society in Armenia. Modern Information and Communication Technologies
are essential for creating a modern economy in Armenia and ensuring
equal access to information for all citizens.”
Mr. Tigran Sargsyan, Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia,
reiterated the “significance of the e-payment system for the further
development of the banking system in Armenia, particularly the
establishment of e-banking.”
The Armenian Card was established by the CBA and ten commercial banks
in March 2000 with the aim of developing a new unified payment system
in Armenia. Today, 13 commercial banks are part of the ArCa system,
and more than 46,000 plastic cards of this type are in circulation.

Sacramento reflects on his legacy
By Dion Nissenbaum and Mark Gladstone
Posted on Sun, Jun. 06, 2004
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO – Tucked away in a little-visited corner of the state
Capitol, Ronald Reagan’s portrait hangs beside those of his fellow
former governors — though his is the only one protected by glass.
While Jerry Brown was derided as “Governor Moonbeam” and Gray Davis
was recalled by disenchanted voters, Reagan is the only California
governor whose official portrait was defaced, a reflection of the
visceral reactions he still draws.
But on Saturday in this city where Reagan’s career as an elected
official began 37 years ago, any criticism was mostly muffled by the
grief of tourists and local residents.
As word began to spread that the president had died, school groups,
guided tours and visitors from around the globe trudged up four flights
of carpeted stairs to stand below Reagan’s portrait and reflect on
his legacy.
“Guys would have jumped off Niagara Falls for him,” said William
Edward Sullivan, a 79-year-old retired Army major who met Reagan two
decades ago during a presidential stop at a militay base. “I really
think he was one of the best presidents we ever had.”
Throughout the afternoon, visitors passed by Reagan’s portrait and
gazed up at the lifelike depiction of the smiling former governor
standing in Capitol Park with the afternoon sun bouncing off the
swoop of his trademark hair.
“He was always a man of integrity,” said Jerry Hunter, a pastor
from Bradenton, Fla. “He gave America hope and built up the American
spirit.” In death, as in life, Reagan evoked mixed reactions.
“He wasn’t my favorite, but rest in peace, I guess,” said one tourist
who declined to give his name.
For many years, Reagan’s portrait greeted visitors entering the
west side of the Capitol. But it was defaced several times over the
years, with pranksters adding horns and a mustache, said tour guide
Anne Adrian.
After being restored, the painting was moved to the third floor, next
to the impressionistic portrait of former Gov. Jerry Brown and the more
traditional paintings of former Govs. Geore Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.
Blocks from the Capitol at the Old Governor’s Mansion, there was a
mix of sadness and relief that Reagan was no longer suffering from
the debilitating and draining effects of Alzheimer’s.
At midafternoon, the news was just sinking in for tour guides and
visitors. The U.S. flag still had not been lowered, 90 minutes after
the announcement that the state’s 33rd governor had died.
Reagan and his wife, Nancy, moved into the 127-year-old gingerbread
house after his landslide victory over Democratic Gov. Pat Brown
in 1966.
But they stayed only three months, partly because the house was along
a busy street across from a smelly gasoline station. Nor was it a
child-friendly neighborhood for their active young son, Ron Jr.,
who liked sliding down the home’s banister.
Despite their short stay, a tour guide said visitors always ask about
the Reagans, especially about why there is just one photo of Nancy
on display. The gift shop sells a Nancy Reagan Fashion Paper Doll
et. And the guide said a display of a larger set of Reagan photos
was planned even before Reagan’s death.
“It’s sad because he left such a legacy in the United States,” said
Ken Toczyski, 48, a Louisville, Ky., minister. Recalling an uncertain
America of the late 1970s, the minister said Reagan came in and said:
“I believe in America. I think the people of America are what make
us great, and I want to see that greatness restored.”
Visitors on Saturday said the events of Reagan’s presidency are seared
in their memories.
“I can’t believe he lived so long. I remember when he was elected and
when he was shot. I remember what I was doing. I was in grade school,
in sixth grade,” said Joe Pounds, 34, a chef from Brooklyn, N.Y.,
who grew up in Sacramento.
It wasn’t just everyday people who were recalling the Reagans. Senate
President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, who served in the
Assembly when Reagan was governor, remembered his biting humor, even
when he was a target. Burton recaled how Reagan once labeled him as
“the one man in Sacramento who has the most to fear from the squirrels
in Capitol Park.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger canceled a trip to Las Vegas planned for
Monday. Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger made the leap from Hollywood
films to Sacramento. And before Reagan died, Schwarzenegger said
there was another connection. “He has been a big idol of mine,” said
Schwarzenegger. “I’ve campaigned for him. I’ve gone out there handing
out leaflets, making phone calls on his behalf, and was very active
during the campaign to make sure he becomes the president. And this
was at the time when I was not even a citizen yet.”

Quick Guide: The OSCE
BBC News
June 2 2004
Flags of member nations at the OSCE HQ (Picture: OSCE)
Membership: 55 nations
Headquarters: Vienna, Austria
Budget: 185.7m euros (2003)
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE,
aims to prevent conflict and manage crises in Europe, the Caucasus
and central Asia.
The organisation is based in Vienna, Austria, but many of its 3,500
staff work in the field. The OSCE is particularly active in the
countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the republics of the
Caucasus.
The organisation’s mandate is broad. It aims to promote democracy and
human rights and to resolve regional conflicts. To this end it
encourages political, social and media reforms.
The OSCE has no peacekeeping contingents, but may call on the
resources of other international bodies, including the UN and Nato.
Background
The OSCE’s forerunner, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE), was set up in 1972 as a forum for dialogue between
nations. It brought Nato and Warsaw Pact countries to the meeting
table.
Moldova: OSCE monitors removal of Russian arms (OSCE/Neil Brennan)
In 1975 the CSCE produced the Helsinki Final Act. The signatories –
from East and West – promised to respect basic freedoms and human
rights and to recognise Europe’s post-war borders.
At the end of the Cold War, the CSCE became a fully-fledged
organisation and provided the framework for reducing conventional
armed forces in Europe.
The organisation adopted its present name in 1994 to reflect its more
permanent structure.
Members, decision-making
The OSCE has 55 member states. These are drawn mainly from Europe,
the Caucasus and Central Asia. The United States and Canada are
members of the OSCE.
All OSCE members have equal status within the body. Decisions are
reached by consensus, except in the case of “clear, gross and
uncorrected violations” of OSCE commitments by a member country.
Member states fund the running of the organisation and its missions.
Structure
Summit Conference: Leaders of member states meet once every two or
three years to map out the OSCE’s priorities
Ministerial Council: The OSCE’s main governing body meets annually,
except in a Summit Conference year; it comprises foreign affairs
ministers of member countries
Permanent Council: Undertakes the day-to-day running of OSCE
activities; comprises permanent representatives of member states who
meet once a week
Leaders
Chairman-in-office: The position is held by the foreign affairs
minister of a member state for a one-year term. The incumbent has
overall responsibility for the organisation.
Secretary-general: Responsible for managing OSCE operations, the
secretary-general is the representative of the chairman-in-office.
OSCE on the ground
Albania: A substantial OSCE presence aims to promote democracy, human
rights and media freedom.
Monitors on Georgia-Chechnya border (OSCE/Alexander Nitzsche) Armenia
and Azerbaijan: The OSCE is working for a political settlement between
Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region. It
has monitored elections in both states and maintains offices in their
capital cities.
Belarus: The OSCE has repeatedly clashed with President Alexander
Lukashenko after it condemned as fraudulent elections which he won in
2001. The OSCE office in Minsk undertakes projects related to the
body’s principles.
Bosnia: An OSCE mission aims to strengthen the legal system and
de-segregate the education system.
Central Asia: The OSCE maintains offices in the capitals of Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. The OSCE monitors
elections in the region. It has warned that a failure to develop
democracy will make Central Asia more vulnerable to extremism. The
OSCE has criticised human rights standards in Turkmenistan.
Chechnya: The organisation has urged a political solution to the
conflict and has expressed concerns about the climate of violence and
the lack of independent media in the republic. In 2002 Russia refused
to renew the mandate of the OSCE’s mission.
Elections in Kosovo: OSCE is committed to democracy-building
Croatia: An OSCE mission advises on democratisation and human rights.
Georgia: The OSCE urges a political resolution to the status of the
breakway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. OSCE
monitors are in place on the Georgia-Chechnya border.
Kosovo: As part of the UN Mission in Kosovo, a large OSCE presence is
involved in democracy-building and human rights monitoring. The OSCE
police school trained more than 6,000 officers for Kosovo’s new,
multi-ethnic police force.
Macedonia: Originally set up in 1992 to prevent the Balkan conflict
from spreading, the OSCE mission expanded following the 2001 conflict
between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces. The
organisation has trained a new multi-ethnic police force.
Moldova: The OSCE is working for a political settlement between
Moldova and the breakaway Trans-Dniestr region.
Macedonia: 2001 conflict prompted the OSCE to boost its presence
Serbia and Montenegro: The federation was admitted to the OSCE in
2000, eight years after the old Yugoslavia was suspended during the
war in Bosnia. An OSCE mission based in Belgrade has set the
promotion of democratisation, human rights and media freedom as its
priorities.
Ukraine: The OSCE runs projects on media freedom, military and legal
reform.

Tehran to Host Armenian Cultural Week
Mehr News Agency, Iran
May 31 2004
TEHRAN May 31 (MNA) — Armenian Cultural Week is due to open on June 24
at the Niavaran Artistic Creations Foundation in Tehran. According to
the public relation department of the foundation, paintings and cubic
works by prominent Armenian artists will be displayed.
Film screenings of “Pomegranates’ Color”, “Myth of Suran Castle”,
and “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” by prominent Armenian filmmaker
Sergei Parajanov, holding gatherings, and an exhibition of conceptual
artwork as well as three special workshops are among the main programs
being sponsored by the foundation.
A total of 40 paintings by renowned Armenian artists Samuel Khachikian,
David Petrosian and Nagiz Pashaian are also to be displayed at the
exhibition.
Additionally, during the week lectures on cinema, acting, and directing
will be conducted by Professor Yervan Qazanchian director of the
Armenian Theater Center.

The Irish Times
May 29, 2004
A hidden holocaust
The Turkish state has never had to answer for the genocide of its
Armenian minority nearly 100 years ago
By JOSEPH O’NEILL
The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide By Peter Balakian
Heinemann, 329pp. £ 18.99
That history is a form of advocacy is nowhere more clearly illustrated
than in the continuing controversies, and silences, surrounding the
destruction of the Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire. It is
not in dispute that over 100,000 Armenians died in the nationwide
massacres of 1894-96 and the Cilician massacres of 1909. Nor is
it disputed that mass deportations and killings carried out in 1915
under the Young Turk government – wartime measures undertaken to solve
finally the problem of an alien, potentially unreliable minority –
led to the Armenian population in Turkey falling from 1.5 million in
1914 to 100,000 in 1923. The contentious issue is the precise legal
and moral character of this apocalypse; specifically, whether the
Armenians fell prey to a deliberate attempt to exterminate them as
a race. Were they, in other words, the victims of genocide?
Even to state this question, in the view of Peter Balakian, is to risk
collusion in mass murder. The argument against genocide – kept alive
by “the Turkish government and a small group of its sympathizers”,
who characterise the fate of the Turkish Armenians as essentially
disastrous rather than genocidal – is, according to Balakian, so
plainly made in bad faith and so obviously meritless that it is
“morally wrong to privilege the deniers by according them space in
the . . . media”. For the avoidance of doubt and personal culpability,
then, I should perhaps make the following clear: even if you disregard
every shred of survivor testimony, the Armenian genocide in 1915 is
an open-and-shut case. The extraordinarily detailed contemporaneous
accounts of Western bystanders (diplomats, missionaries, businessmen
and other eyewitnesses) and the testimonies forthcoming at the Ottoman
courts martial in 1919, can leave no intellectually conscientious
person in any reasonable doubt that probably more than a million
(exact numbers are inevitably hard to compute) Armenians were
systematically and intentionally put to death as part of a scheme
of racial elimination. Why, though, has this crime not received
the general and profound acceptance afforded to, say the Jewish
holocaust? Why, for example, have successive American (and indeed
Israeli) administrations refused to acknowledge the genocide?
In The Burning Tigris, Balakian approaches these questions – and the
evidence of genocide – by chronicling the American response to the
lot of the Armenians. The story begins in the 1890s, when news of the
atrocities authorised by Sultan Abdul Hamid II began to filter back
from the many American missionaries posted in eastern Turkey. Thanks
to such remarkable women as Clara Barton (the first president of the
American Red Cross) and Julia Ward Howe (the famous suffragist and
abolitionist), the fate of the Armenians – an ancient Christian nation
threatened by the heinous Turk – became a burning public issue. Acting
to safeguard “the spirit of civilization, the sense of Christendom,
the heart of humanity” (Howe’s words), huge charitable sums were
donated by the American public. This effort, Balakian notes, marked
the beginning of the modern era of American international human rights
relief, in which specialised relief teams were sent to the site of the
disaster. For nearly three decades, American humanitarian sentiment
and the “starving Armenians” were practically synonymous.
Then comes the terrible meat of the book – the Turkish campaign to
wipe out the Armenians in 1915. By chance, a cadre of literate and
scrupulous Americans was on hand to see or hear about most of it,
and rose to the occasion. In particular, Henry Morgenthau, the US
ambassador in Istanbul, received a flood of dispatches from all
sectors of Turkey describing unimaginable horrors. Balakian most
effectively collates and summarises these, and the picture that
emerges – ravines filled with corpses, freight trains packed with
deportees, emaciated naked women and children filing into Aleppo,
deportees dying in typhus-stricken encampments in the Syrian desert
– is utterly clear and utterly damning. Morgenthau heroically did
his best to ameliorate matters, but Washington refused to act. Once
again, though, the American public reacted with enormous generosity.
After the war, public sentiment relating to the Armenians gradually
fizzled out. As US-Turkish relations improved, few chose to dwell
on what happened to the Armenians. To this day, the Turkish state
remains bitterly hostile to any recognition of the genocide and,
because of its importance as a NATO member and bulwark of moderate
secularism in the Muslim world, is allowed to get away with it.
The Burning Tigris is a scorching and essential book, but not always
circumspect. Little attempt is made to explain the sense of religious
and national imperilment that turned ordinary, peaceable Turks into
butchers of women and children. (“Nothing is so cruel as fear,” noted
the British vice-consul, Maj Doughty-Wylie, whose superb account
of the 1909 Adana inter-communal massacres Balakian heavily relies
on without making reference to those parts that mitigate Turkish
culpability.) This does not substantially detract, however, from
the overwhelming power of the case Balakian presents. We are left,
nonetheless, with at least two dismaying conclusions. First, that even
in questions of genocide our capacity for sympathy is closely related
to our self-interest; second, that advocacy such as Peter Balakian’s,
however brilliant, is only as effective as the fairness of the hearing
afforded it.
Joseph O’Neill is the author of two novels and, most recently,
Blood-Dark Track: A Family History

Meanwhile: An Arab battleground and playground
John Schidlovsky IHT
International Herald Tribune
May 26 2004
BEIRUT and playground
A traveler returning to this city for the first time in 29 years
feels an odd mix of nostalgia and disorientation. Lebanon’s civil
war ended 14 years ago, yet the scars remain highly visible, and the
causes apparently unresolved.
I first came to Beirut in July 1975 as a 27-year-old American
journalist intent on learning Arabic while soaking up the cosmopolitan
city’s sybaritic life-style. A job at the English-language Daily Star
newspaper covered my bills, including rent at a seaside apartment in
the heart of the city’s posh hotel district.
Within a few months, however, the hotel district had become the
site of fierce fighting between Christian Phalangist and leftist
Muslim militias. By the end of 1975, the Daily Star had suspended
publication, the war had spread to many areas of the city and I had
fled for the peace of Cairo. None of us guessed the war would last 15
years, take 100,000 lives and make Beirut a synonym for urban terror.
Now, leading a delegation of 13 U.S. news editors on a fact-finding
trip to Lebanon and Syria, I have returned to Beirut for the first
time. The city has been at peace since 1990 and is rebuilding its
downtown in a huge multi-million-dollar project spearheaded by Prime
Minister Rafiq Hariri. Beirut remains a dazzling city, perched between
the achingly blue Mediterranean and the snow-capped mountains to
the east, and it is tempting to imagine a scenario in which the city
regains its former allure as a dynamic regional center.
But Lebanon is a far different place than it was in 1975. A crushing
$35 billion public debt will hamper the economy for years. Foreign
investment is a shadow of what it used to be. Syria, which keeps
20,000 soldiers in the country, controls the country’s politics. On
a regional level the bloody conflict in Iraq and the deadlocked
Israeli-Palestinian issue provide little reason for optimism.
Between our meetings and appointments, I sneak away to revisit some
old haunts. My first stop is at my old apartment building, a four-story
structure that is still padlocked and pockmarked with the bullet holes
that I remember from 1975. A block away, the huge war-ravaged carcass
of the Holiday Inn casts its eerie shadow over the neighborhood. Both
of these damaged buildings – one tiny and anonymous, the other a
hulking symbol of a nation’s collective madness – may be renovated,
I’m told. If the price is right.
When Beirutis talk about war these days, it is about Iraq, not the
old civil war here. At the packed night clubs in the Monot district
and in the glittering new restaurants in Beirut’s rebuilt downtown,
the questions being debated are whether Lebanon’s experience provides
any lessons relevant to post-war Iraq.
Lebanon’s war ended with the 1990 Taif Agreement allocating political
power to the country’s various religious sects and communities. A ratio
of 50-50 in the country’s Parliament was fixed between Lebanons Muslims
and Christians, with proportions allocated for subgroups: Shiites,
Sunnis, Druze and Alawis, Maronites, Greek Orthodox and Catholics,
Armenian Orthodox and Catholics and others. In Iraq, the political
challenge is finding an appropriate system of sharing power among
rival Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.
Is Lebanon’s formula a workable model for peaceful coexistence? The
peace has held for 14 years but some thoughtful Lebanese wonder if
the country isn’t more divided than ever. “Sure it could,” said a
filmmaker in his 20s when asked if sectarian violence could erupt
again. “Nothing’s really changed from the civil war.”
Lebanon is a small country and suffers the fate of many small countries
in having its fate determined by external players – in this case,
Syria, Israel, the Palestinians. And of course the United States.
The U.S. Embassy is far out of town on top of a heavily-fortified
citadel, its diplomats rarely venturing out without armed escorts
– a grim reminder of the bombing in 1983 that destroyed the former
embassy site and the subsequent bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks.
At the beautiful campus of the American University of Beirut, the
school’s president, John Waterbury, describes U.S. relations with
the Arab world as the worst he’s seen in 40 years.
But Beirutis are nothing if not resourceful, and some are managing to
cash in on the chill in U.S.-Arab relations. Wealthy Arabs from the
Gulf are staying away from the United States because of the Iraq war
and traveling here instead, and many are investing in expensive real
estate along Beirut’s rebuilt waterfront. A new condominium tower –
built directly in front of my little old apartment building, now cast
into permanent shadow – offers units at more than $2 million per floor.
John Schidlovsky is director of the Washington-based International
Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced
International Studies.

Georgian PM criticizes Russian governor’s “foolish escapade” in Abkhazia
Kavkasia-Press news agency
26 May 04
Tbilisi, 26 May: Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania has commented on
[Russian] Krasnodar Territory governor Aleksandr Tkachev’s recent visit
to Sukhumi [capital of breakaway region of Abkhazia] and Tkachev’s
statements about the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.
Zhvania said he did not regard this as a manifestation of the Kremlin’s
policy [Cossack delegation led by Tkachev visited Sukhumi on 22 May].
“This was a foolish and irresponsible escapade. This may only bring
us back to the ambiguous relations of the previous decade,” the prime
minister said.
“We have no desire to return to the past. We want to see a new,
pragmatic Russia. We want to respect Russia’s interests in the region
and we hope that our sovereign interests will also be respected,”
he noted.
“We will never understand these kinds of hysterical escapades. If
Georgia’s and Russia’s policies are defined by this sort of gestures
and by such people, the Caucasus will once again be divided by many
lines of confrontation, while we wish to turn the Caucasus into
an arena of cooperation. These people do not want to help Russia to
resolve its problems and to increase Russia’s international authority,”
Zhvania said.