Author: Nalbandian Albert

philstar.com

Mark eyes place in chess history

The Philippine Star 09/08/2004

With his second grandmaster norm safely tucked under his belt,
International Master Mark Paragua now eyes a place in Philippine
chess history.

The 20-year-old Paragua beat IM Elina Danielian of Armenia in the
14th and penultimate round to seize the solo lead in the Alushta GM
Tournament in Ukraine.

He now has 10.5 points, half-a-point ahead of IMs Yuriy Kuzubov of
Ukraine and Roman Ovetchkin of Russia and at least two points clear
of his other pursuers.

Kuzubov, tied with the Filipino after 13 rounds, got stalled by a draw
by GM Ramil Hasangatin of Russia while Ovetchkin shocked top seed GM
Vladimir Malaniuk of Ukraine to stay in the hunt for the title and
a GM norm.

A victory would make Paragua the first Filipino player since the late
GM Rosendo Balinas Jr. to win a closed tournament in a former Soviet
Union republic. Balinas did the trick in the Odessa tournament in 1976,
earning him the GM title in the process.

“Malaking bonus na para sa akin kung ako ang magtsa-champion dito
(Alushta GMT). Ang talagang target ko lang sa pagsali sa ganitong
event eh ‘yung GM norm,” said Paragua.

When informed of the opportunity to accomplish a rare feat, Paragua
said it just made him more determined to win.

“Lalo akong na-motivate para manalo,” he said while admitting that
he’s not aware of that prospect before.

Paragua will face FIDE Master Evgeni Kobylkin of Ukraine, who is tied
at eighth to ninth places with 6.5 points, in the final round.

One thing going for Paragua is that his closest pursuers – Kuzubov
and Ovetchkin – are not expected to go all out in their last outing.

Kuzubov, who will meet Malaniuk, and Ovetchkin, who will go up against
Nino Khurtsidze of Georgia, tallied 10 points heading into the last
round, just .5 short of the required score to clinch a GM norm.

EDITORIAL: Hostages to Putin’s rigid policy

Daily Times, Pakistan
Sept 5 2004

The gory images and footage coming out of the Middle School 1
in Beslan, North Ossetia, are deeply disturbing. They compel the
international community, especially the powerful countries of the
West, to look at where Russia might be headed under President Vladimir
Putin. Consider.

There is trouble all round in the Caucasus. While the conflict
was initially confined to Chechnya, it has now spilled over into
Ingushetia, parts of Daghestan and North Ossetia. The epicentre
of this trouble lies in the policies pursued by the Kremlin under
Mr Putin. Under Mr Boris Yeltsin Russia tried to extricate itself
from Chechnya in August 1996 through a deal clinched by Alexander
Lebed, Russia’s former security chief. However, after the Russian
withdrawal from Chechnya, no sustained effort was made by Moscow to
pursue the issue politically. The situation was further complicated by
violent events like the Moscow apartment bombings which the Kremlin
laid at the door of Chechen separatists. Mr Putin himself rode to
power on an agenda that, among other things, promised an end to the
Chechen problem in favour of the Russian Federation. In other words,
Mr Putin told his Russian voters that he would effectively put down
the separatists and bring Chechnya to heel.

This approach since early 2000 has guided Moscow’s Chechnya policy.
Mr Putin unleashed his army once again on the Chechens. In the last
four years Russian troops have committed hair-raising atrocities in
the region by attempting to kill off all able-bodied Chechen males.
While the West feebly objected to these violations initially, after
the events of September 11, 2001 Mr Putin got a virtual carte blanche
to put down the Chechens on the basis of his fallacious argument that
they were all linked with the international Islamist movement. The
Russian outrages have been well recorded by Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch, among other organisations, as well as by
independent analysts within Russia. The frequency with which Chechen
widows have been mounting attacks on Russian targets also testifies
to the male genocide in the region by the Russian army and the level
of despondency felt by the Chechens.

The irony is that while Mr Putin tells the international community
that his fight against the Chechens is part of the world’s war on
terror and seeks international understanding for his actions there,
he, nonetheless, does not want the international community to mediate
the conflict because he considers it to be Russia’s “internal”
problem. The recent incident in Ossetia is essentially linked to
Chechnya. Mr Putin’s policies have caused such despair and sense
of outrage in the region that there appears nothing left for the
Chechens and Ingushetians except to give their own lives in order to
take Russian lives. On both sides, innocent people continue to die.
This is shameful and it has to come to an end.

Mr Putin has generally shown himself to be carrying the mantle of the
Tsars. Further south, he has picked up a row with Georgia in South
Ossetia because the Russian population in that region wants to break
away from Georgia and join North Ossetia. Mr Putin has also tried his
best since the mid-1990s to bring the Central Asia republics back into
a security arrangement with Moscow. He has supported Armenia against
Azerbaijan and has generally shown himself to be a tough, impassive
leader whose training as a KGB agent gives him a steely resolve to deal
with difficult issues with determination. But this misguided toughness
without the ability to make political compromises has now increasingly
resulted in tragedies, both in Russia and Chechnya. Russia’s Chechnya
problem requires immediate international response and mediation,
preferably under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The world cannot
allow children, whether Chechen or Russian, to be held hostage to
the violence that has resulted from Moscow’s foolish policies. *

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
September 3, 2004, Friday

THE STRENGTH IS IN THE TRUTH

SOURCE: Krasnaya Zvezda, August 31, 2004, p. 3

by Oleg Gorupai

The United Army Group of the Russian and Armenian Armed Forces ran a
tactical exercise at the testing site of the Training Center of the
Armenian Defense Ministry named after marshal of the Soviet Union
Bagramjan. The exercise included shooting practice elements. Armenia
was represented by servicemen of the 549th Separate Motorized
Infantry Regiment (Commander – Colonel Vaan Arsenjan), 523rd Separate
Armored Battalion, multiple rocker launcher battery of BM-21s, two
reconnaissance groups, company of sappers, special platoon, two SU-25
ground-attack aircraft, four MI-24 helicopters, and two MI-8
transport helicopters. Russia was represented by servicemen of the
123rd Motorized Infantry Regiment (Commander – Colonel Sergei
Khmelevsky), artillery brigade of 2S1 complexes (Gvozdika), artillery
battery of D-30s, multiple rocker launcher battery of BM-21s, and two
MIG-29s of the 102nd Military Base of the Russian Army Group in the
Caucasus quartered in Armenia. Combat organization and cooperation
was drilled. The exercise was commanded by Lieutenant General Mikhail
Grigorjan, Defense Minister of Armenia and United Army Group
Commander. Almost 3,000 servicemen were involved.

According to the legend, the enemy attacked in the Gyumri and
Kirovakan directions. Servicemen involved in the exercise were
expected to practice defensive action, counterattack, extermination
of the advanced units of the enemy, and attack back to the state
border.

Russian Ambassador to Armenia Anatoly Dryukov said shortly before the
exercise that it was not aimed against any third country but was
needed to practice defense action only. The statement was made
because of the speculations in newspapers that Russia was flexing its
muscles in the Caucasus, that all of the following were links in one
chain – deterioration of the military-political situation in Georgia,
command exercise of the Nagorno-Karabakh army, and tactical exercise
in Armenia. Defense Minister of Armenia Serzh Sarkisjan also
denounced the assumption. He said that it was a planned exercise, run
for the ninth time in approximately one and the same time of the
year, and pursuing no political motives. Sarkisjan said that the
tenth exercise of the series would take place next year and that
serious means and forces would be deployed in it to celebrate the
jubilee.

The strength of the Russian-Armenian cooperation is in the truth, not
in money. There is no need to corroborate the statement. At every
exercise run by the United Army Group, officers of foreign armies,
political scientists, and journalists have access to all information
that may interest them. It is possible nowadays to find in the media
all relevant information on the Armed Forces of Armenia, composition
of the Russian-Armenian United Army Group, volume and size of the
military aid Russia sends to its strategic partner. It is common
knowledge that the Armenian national army is up to 40,000 men strong,
and that about 300,000 men comprise the mobilizational resources.

Summing up the exercise, Sarkisjan said that all tasks were
performed. Alexander Studenikin, Commander of the Russian Army Group
in the Caucasus, is of the same opinion. He is convinced that units
and formations of the United Army Group can properly operate in the
hostilities.

Translated by A. Ignatkin

Four detained in anti-Armenian picket in Azeri capital

Turan news agency
3 Sep 04

Baku, 3 September: A group of activists of the United People’s Front
of Azerbaijan Party [UPFAP] attempted to stage an unsanctioned picket
outside the French embassy in Baku at 1200 [0700 gmt] today.

The action aimed to protest against the participation of Armenian
officers in the upcoming NATO exercises in Azerbaijan in September.

Police did not let the pickets gather outside the embassy. Four of
the pickets were detained and taken to police station No 9 of the
Sabayil district police department, the UPFAP press service reported.

Iran, Azerbaijan seem destined for more tension
By Mahan Abedin

Special to The Daily Star
Wednesday, September 01, 2004

The visit of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to the former Soviet
republic of Azerbaijan in early August raised hopes both in Tehran and
Baku for an improvement in relations between the two countries. It was
hoped that the visit would ease bilateral tensions, since Tehran has
viewed Azerbaijan with increasing suspicion since the latter gained
independence in 1991.

Khatami’s three-day trip started well after he met with his Azeri
counterpart Ilham Aliyev. In a deceptive and grandiose statement so
typical of high officials in the Islamic Republic, Khatami declared:
“The border between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of
Azerbaijan is a border of peace, friendship and brotherhood.” However
this could not mask the continued strained relations between Iran
and Azerbaijan, which may be the basis for a major conflict in the
southern Caucasus in the medium to long term.

The rapid break-up of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1991 raised
alarm bells in Tehran. Although Iran was happy to see the Central
Asian Muslim republics free from the shackles of Soviet communism,
this attitude did not apply to Azerbaijan. The primary Iranian worry
was that an independent Azerbaijan would be a magnet for Iran’s
7-million-strong Azeri minority.

However these worries proved to be unfounded. Iran’s Azeris are well
integrated into Iranian society and punch well above their demographic
weight – ethnic Azeris have dominated the political and military
elites in Iran since the beginning of the 19th century. Even today,
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an ethnic Azeri. The
same applies to the commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards,
Ali Safavi. Moreover, most Iranian Azeris live in Tehran rather than
in Iranian-Azerbaijan in the northwest of the country. This has
tended to dilute the Azeris’ cultural idiosyncrasies, despite the
fact that many continue to cherish their own language. Furthermore,
Iran’s Azeri population is markedly different than Azeris in the former
Soviet republic in terms of political consciousness, socio-economic
structures and popular culture – not least because the two peoples
have been separated for more than 150 years.

The upshot is that Iran’s Azeri minority is in every way unreceptive
to the irredentist slogans of pan-Turks and Azeri nationalists in
the republic of Azerbaijan. However this has not stopped pan-Turks
and other political agitators from trying to sow dissent across the
border. The election of Abulfaz Elchibey to the Azerbaijan presidency
in June 1992 proved disastrous for Iranian-Azeri relations. Elchibey
campaigned on a platform of moving Azerbaijan closer to Turkey,
America and Israel, arousing suspicion in Tehran. However it was
Elchibey’s political irresponsibility that most irked Iran’s political
and security elites. Elchibey openly called for Iranian Azeris to
struggle for their independence. A combination of ineptitude and
arrogance finally forced him to flee his capital a little more than
a year after assuming office.

Elchibey’s posturing against Iran and his suppression of pro-Iranian
political forces in Azerbaijan resulted in the Iranians’ tacitly
backing Armenia in the war over Nagorno-Karabakh. This produced an odd
geopolitical landscape, with ultra-secular Turkey, a member of NATO
and a reliable ally of the United States, supporting Muslim Azerbaijan;
and Iran, an Islamic state with a passionately anti-American ideology,
backing pro-Western and Christian Armenia.

Iran’s backing of Armenia was far-reaching. This support destroyed the
myth that Iran had developed an exclusively “Islamic” foreign policy
after the 1979 revolution. For the first time since the revolution,
Iranian political elites accepted that when Iranian national interests
were at stake, Islamic sensibilities would not be accorded top
priority. Moreover, in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran’s
support for the Armenians helped them score an overwhelming military.

The rise of Haydar Aliyev, following the overthrow of Elchibey, did
not significantly ease tensions with Iran. A former high-ranking KGB
official and first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan,
Aliyev was an experienced and shrewd politician. However,
his authoritarian and ultra-secular instincts brought him into
conflict with Iran. Aliyev cracked down on pro-Iranian parties and
attributed any form of Islamic revival in the republic to Iranian
interference. The newly reconstituted Azeri security services regularly
rounded up pro-Iranian political activists on charges of “spying”
for the Islamic Republic.

var nt=String(Math.random()).substr(2,10);document.write
(”);google_ad_client = “pub-3836522060572509”;google_ad_width
= 250;google_ad_height = 250;google_ad_format =
“250x250_as”;google_ad_channel =”5659596580″;//

For its part Iran stepped up covert and intelligence activities in
Azerbaijan, and from early 1995 onward dedicated an entire department
of its Intelligence Ministry to espionage operations in the former
Soviet republic. As in other parts of the Muslim regions of the former
Soviet Union, the Iranians were much less interested in spreading
militant Islam than in penetrating the political, military, security
and economic institutions of these emergent states.

Another point of Iranian-Azeri contention has been the legal status
of the Caspian Sea and the energy resources contained in it. Iran
insists that relations there must be based on the Iranian-Soviet
treaties of 1921 and 1940. The latter treaty stipulates that the
Caspian is an “Iranian and Soviet Sea,” where the “principles of
equality and exclusivity” prevail. However, in March 1998 the Russian
government communicated to the Aliyev regime that Moscow no longer
had any objections to unilateral offshore oil and gas development
by Azerbaijan.

The arrival of Western oil companies in Azerbaijan and the development
of that country’s offshore energy infrastructure were treated with
alarm in Tehran. This was accentuated by Iran’s missing out on a
lucrative deal to act as a transit route for the export of Azeri oil
via the Gulf. The Americans applied intense pressure to persuade all
parties concerned to replace the most convenient and economically
efficient route, through Iran, with an alternative route through
the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Moreover, the Iranians feared that oil
exploration activities in the Caspian were beginning to encroach
on its yet-to-be-determined territorial waters. Thus, in early 2001
the Iranian Navy fired warning shots at a ship belonging to British
Petroleum and forced it to sail away.

The realization that Azerbaijan has possession of considerable stocks
of oil and natural gas has brought the country under tighter American
influence. This relationship has been reinforced since the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001, and the US-led “war on terrorism.” The Iranians
are fearful that Azerbaijan might allow American forces to strike at
Iran in the event of an Iranian-American military confrontation over
Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

In order to avoid this scenario the Iranians have communicated
to the Azeris in no uncertain terms that, in the event of such
collaboration between Baku and Washington, Tehran would provide
direct and unqualified support to the Armenians in a future war over
Nagorno-Karabakh, thus ensuring the demise of the Azeri republic. These
threats have a chilling resonance in Baku: The Armenians seized more
than 20 percent of Azeri territory in the war of the 1990s.

These complex geopolitical and historical forces mean that Iran and
Azerbaijan are likely to experience tense relations for many years
to come. The Azeri opposition daily Muxalifat got it about right when
it dismissed Khatami’s reference to a border marked by “brotherhood”
as a deceptive statement made by the leader of an unfriendly country.

Mahan Abedin is the editor of Terrorism Monitor, which is published
by the Jamestown Foundation, a non-profit organization specializing
in research and analysis on conflict and instability in Eurasia. He
wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Radical group members get 4 to 6 years in prison

Assa-Irada
Aug 31 2004

Baku, August 30, AssA-Irada

The verdict on the Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO) chairman
Akif Naghi and five members of the organization, who were arrested
during the June 22 picket in a protest against the participation of
Armenian officers in a NATO conference held in Baku on June 21-23,
was uttered at the Nasimi district court on Monday.

The GLO chairman was sentenced to 5 years in jail, four members of
the organization to 4 years and deputy chairman, the Garabagh war
invalid Firudin Mammadov to 3 years.

The radical group members are accused of resisting police, blocking the
road on Tbilisi Avenue and disturbing the work of a NATO preparatory
conference held at the Europe Hotel within the Partnership for
Peace program and causing damage worth 1.700 million manats ($340)
to the hotel.*

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Aug 26 2004

Armenian FM says peace talks will be fruitless

A meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents Ilham Aliyev
and Robert Kocharian will be held within the summit of leaders of CIS
countries due in Astana, Kazakhstan on September 15, Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanian told journalists.

According to Oskanian, there is a subject for discussion by the two
presidents during the meeting. Speaking about a meeting scheduled
between Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Prague on
August 29-30, Oskanian said his Azerbaijani counterpart has issued a
statement in this respect.

“If the opinions expressed in the statement are not realized, the
fourth meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers will take
place,” he said. Oskanian underlined that he did not expect serious
results from the forthcoming meeting. “We can only continue talks and
achieve certain results. Then it will become clear how the talks will
be continued,” he emphasized. Commenting on the upcoming Prague
meeting, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov did not
elaborate on what issues related to the Upper Garabagh conflict will
be discussed. Mammadyarov noted that Azerbaijan has already expressed
its standpoint on the conflict settlement and emphasized that all
details have been discussed during the meetings held so far.

Armenian opposition leader unhappy about foreign policy

Arminfo
21 Aug 04

YEREVAN

If Armenia does not integrate into global political processes by 2009,
then by 2010, it will turn into a territory populated only by people
speaking Armenian, the chairman of the new Liberal Progressive Party
(LPP), Ovanes Ovanesyan, said at the Azdak discussion club today.

He said that Armenia has lost flexibility in its foreign policy and as
a result, has become a marginal country isolated from all the regional
communication, economic and political processes.

As an example, Ovanesyan said that Armenia was sidelined from the
European Union’s TRACECA [Transportation Corridor
Europe-Caucasus-Asia] and INOGATE [Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to
Europe], as well as from the North-South railway corridor projects.

Ovanesyan believes that the construction of the Iran-Armenia gas
pipeline is also in question as constructing a gas pipeline, which
will be 77mm in diameter, will not do Armenia and Iran any good.

Ovanesyan said that Armenia’s one-sided pro-Russian orientation has
put Armenia in quite a sensitive position. “In the eyes of the
international community, Armenia has turned into Russia’s vassal,
which has made Europe, the USA and NATO turn away from Armenia,” he
said.

Russia highly values Armenia as all its other satellites have gone out
of hand. However, this did not stop Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov from stating that Moscow recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial
integrity and sees the settlement to the Karabakh conflict on the
basis of this principle. Ovanesyan thinks the fact that the Iranian
speaker, who represents another partner of Armenia, Iran, recently
issued a similar statement in Baku proves that Yerevan’s foreign
policy is destructive.

According to him, today the international community is forcing the
Armenian side to accept “the option for settling the Karabakh conflict
which is against its interests”.

Ovanesyan also spoke out against Armenia’s membership of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization since the country has no
common border with any of its members. “The Collective Security Treaty
Organization will not ensure Armenia’s security,” he noted, adding
that Armenia’s neighbours, Georgia and Azerbaijan, are doing their
best to join NATO, which can take place in 2007. In that case, Armenia
will find itself in total isolation, as if need be, the member
countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization will not be
able to render operational assistance to Armenia through its
neighbours which will already be NATO members.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
August 23, 2004 Monday 7:34 AM Eastern Time

Defendant set free from custody in St Petersburg

By Yulia Andreyeva

ST. PETERSBURG

The Lenin Federal Court of St. Petersburg continued on Monday its
hearings of the criminal case against participants in the extremist
youth group “Schultz-88”, which the city prosecutors accuse of
inciting ethnic and racial hostilities, public calls for violent
changes to the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and
the involvement of minors in criminal activities.

According to the investigators, members of the extremist group
committed a number of extremist actions in the territory of the city
motivated by ethnic strife and hostility.

In the course of the hearings on Monday, the court set free from
custody one of the defendants – Alexei Vostroknutov, whose term in
custody had expired. Before handing down its sentence, the court has
to consider the conclusions made by the psychiatric experts about the
key defendant and extremist group leader Dmitry Bobrov and hear the
arguments of the prosecution and the defense.

As some of the defendants are under age, the hearings are being held
behind closed doors.

The criminal proceedings against the group were instituted after a
young Armenian citizen was attacked. The attack was at first regarded
as an act of hooliganism but the investigators later understood that
the assailants had been motivated by national intolerance.

According to the investigators’ version, the extremist group was
formed a few years ago and its composition changed fully on several
occasions. In the course of the investigation, videocassettes and
literature with nationalist content were seized from the defendants.

The court will continue the hearings in the case on October 14.

Armenian electricity output up in first half of 2004

Noyan Tapan news agency
17 Aug 04

YEREVAN

In the first six months of 2004, Armenia generated 3,215.4m kWh of
electricity, which is 17.3 per cent more compared with the same period
of last year.

The Armenian nuclear power station increased its output by 150 per
cent, the hydro-electric power station by 5 per cent and the thermal
power plant by 37 per cent, the Armenian national statistics service
has reported.

[Passage omitted: minor figures]

Also, the volume of thermal energy generated during the reported
period stood at 289,500 gigacalories, which is 128.9 per cent more
compared to the last year.