Category: News

The Sacramento Bee
News
Bob Sylva: Nun reaches back through centuries to create religious icons
By Bob Sylva — Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Saturday, September 4, 2004
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In a tiny basement studio of a big house on L Street that serves as a modern
convent for a pretty hip posse of five Catholic nuns, Anne Sekul sits at her
drawing board and blasts Gregorian chants on her CD player. The solemn music
sets a divine mood.
She fasts, she meditates, she contemplates the beyond. At a precise,
illuminating moment not of her own authority, the spirit arrives – this wet
brush of flame – and the holy image is slowly revealed.
Then, in the aura of grace, in a yielding of control, in a technique of
illustration that is centuries old, Sekul begins to paint on gesso-surfaced
board. Her subdued colors are extracted from vegetables and crushed rock,
mixed with egg emulsion to form tempera. She also applies a haloed radiance
of gold leaf.
Hers is an expression of faith, not artistry.
Sekul paints – the proper term is “writes” – icons. Not those clickable
doodads on computer desktops, but rather these gorgeous and timeless
renditions of Jesus Christ, the saints, the archangels, Blessed Mary, which,
among the faithful, are cherished for their inspired ability to divulge the
eternal.
Icons are typically a fixture of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Greek,
Russian, Serbian and Armenian among them. But not the Roman Catholic, whose
devotional objects are less stylized and more three-dimensional. Moreover,
icons usually are written by specially trained iconographers authorized by
the patriarch. Not rendered by a bold Catholic nun, however devout in her
spiritual purpose.
“I try to follow and respect the tradition,” says Sekul, cognizant of her
encroachment on sacred ground. “When I begin an icon, I fast, I pray, I
meditate. This is a spiritual endeavor, not an artistic one. But I’m just
learning the theology.”
Now one afternoon this week, a pool of sunlight afire on the cool, shady
sidewalk, Sekul is sitting in her basement studio. There is a shelf of
texts, a cup of brushes, a chapel-like quiet. On one wall, there is a
gallery of sacred figures: Christ, the Holy Mother, Archangel Gabriel, St.
Anthony of the Desert, St. Teresa de Avila – all rendered in grave,
extenuated figures that recall El Greco.
“You can call me Sister or you can call me Anne,” offers Sekul, who herself
is a picture of informality. Later, of her appearance, she quips, “Would you
put down that I’m blond, 5-foot-9, weigh 120 pounds!”
Sister, that would be cause for deceit.
In truth, Sekul, 52, is energetic and fit, with a bowl of brown hair and
watchful brown eyes. She’s wearing cropped cargo pants, a blue T-shirt and
sandals. She doesn’t look like a nun. But, then, upon reflection, what does
a nun look like?
Sekul grew up at 42nd and J and graduated from St. Francis High School. “I
didn’t want to be a nun,” she confesses. “I know that sounds terrible to
say. But it didn’t seem like a lot of fun. But I also knew that I couldn’t
do anything else in life until I tried the community (of Mercy sisters).”
That was 30 years ago. After a satisfying, even fun career of teaching and
administration, of starting the Mercy Education Resource Center, Sekul, a
lifelong painter, took a sabbatical five years ago to pursue icon writing.
She studied under a demanding teacher at Mount Angel in Oregon. “I feel a
call to do this,” she says of contemplative icon writing. “I think it has
been in me for a long time.”
Lately, Sekul is doing small commissions for local Catholic churches. She
believes the sometimes overly secularized Catholic decor could benefit from
an infusion of the more splendid Byzantine ritual. The holy icons have
amplified the light in the niche of her own soul.
“I think this has changed me for the better,” says Sekul. “I think I am more
aware of my faith, my prayer life. I think it has reminded me to be more
patient and kind to people. When you think about life, the meaning of life,
it is about relinquishing control. It is about letting God enter your life
with goodness.”

Armenian visit angers Azeris
BBC News
Sept 4 2004
Large parts of the Azeri media have staged an orchestrated protest
against the planned presence of military officers from neighbouring
Armenia at Nato-sponsored exercises later this month.
Leading private and independent daily newspapers on Saturday published
blank front pages under the words “The media of Azerbaijan protest
against the arrival in Baku of the Armenian military”.
The private TV station ANS stopped broadcasting for three hours,
showing a blank screen with the same protest message.
Official and pro-government media outlets have not joined the
protest. The Azerbaijani foreign ministry has said it has expressed
its concern to Nato over the Armenians’ presence, but refused to
lodge an official complaint.
‘Insult’
The protest was announced in a statement published in Friday’s papers
and signed by nine newspaper editors.
“We believe that the admission of the Armenian officers to Baku is
an insult to the Azerbaijani people,” it said.
There have been repeated outbursts of public anger against Armenia
ever since the war between Azerbaijani and Armenian-backed forces
over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1994.
The area is still under Armenian occupation and no peace deal has
been signed.
Earlier in the week, six members of a group campaigning for Karabakh
to be brought back under Azeri control, including its leader, were
sentenced to between four and five years in prison following protests
on 22 June against the Armenian officers’ visit.
The exercises, organised under Nato’s Partnership for Peace programme,
are scheduled for 13 to 26 September.

Setroit Free Press
Pergrouhi Javizian: Gave time to Armenian church
September 4, 2004
BY JEANNE MAY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Pergrouhi Terzian Javizian, who spent her early life in a Turkish orphanage
and came to this country to become a pillar of St. John’s Armenian Orthodox
Church, died of pneumonia Wednesday at Regency Health Care Centre, Taylor.
She was a week short of her 97th birthday and lived in Dearborn. Her
American friends called her Pearl.
Mrs. Javizian was born in Kourtbelen, a little village outside Istanbul, and
when she was 3, her father was killed in a massacre that eventually left 1.5
million Armenians dead.
Her mother became a servant in the home of a wealthy family, and she was put
in an orphanage.
When she was 16, a friend from her village who had come to the United States
went to Barkev Javizian, a Ford Motor Co. worker, and said, “Why don’t you
save these two?’
Armenians in America helping Armenians from the old country was not unusual
in those days, but there was a hitch: a young woman would be required to
marry a man who sponsored her.
“But my dad said, ‘I will consider them to be my mother and my sister, and I
will take care of them until they get on their feet,’ ” her son Simon said
Friday.
Then Mrs. Javizian arrived, and she had blonde hair and blue eyes and her
savior was oh-so-handsome.
“When I saw your father, he looked just like Robert Taylor,” Mrs. Javizian
told her son.
And they were married.
Children came along at a fairly rapid clip, and Mrs. Javizian took care of
them and her home.
“After I was born, she would go to night school, and many times she would
take me with her,” her son said. “She never did graduate, but she went to
night school at Southwestern High School.”
When her children were old enough not to need her constant attention, she
threw herself into the life of the Armenian-American community.
She’d always attended St. John’s Armenian Church, Southfield, and she became
chairwoman of its Ladies Auxiliary. She also was secretary of the Detroit
Chapter of the Armenian General Benevolent Union.
But she was most famous for her hours in the church kitchen.
“She was a great, great cook,” her son said. “She would man the ovens. She
would be standing there, and the sweat would be pouring off her, and the
more she sweated, the better she liked it.
“She was always cooking. It gave her the greatest pleasure to present her
food and eat, eat, eat. The more we ate, the more she smiled.”
She also performed in her church’s stage presentations commemorating St.
Vartan, who fought for Christianity against the Persians in 451. He lost,
but managed to persuade the Persians that the Armenians would never give up
their religion.
Mrs. Javizian’s son owns Simon Javizian Funeral Home, Detroit.
In addition to her son, survivors include another son, Garry; two daughters,
Helen Javizian and Margaret Zadikian; 11 grandchildren; seven
great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren.
Friends may call from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday at St. John’s Armenian Church,
22001 Northwestern Highway, Southfield, where prayers will be at 7:30 p.m.
The funeral will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the church, with Armenian
clergymen from all over the area participating. Burial will be in Woodlawn
Cemetery, Detroit.
The family suggests memorial donations to St. John’s, 22001 Northwestern
Highway, Southfield 48075, or St. Sarkis Armenian Church, 19300 Ford Road,
Dearborn 48128.
Contact JEANNE MAY at 586-469-4682 or [email protected].

High-tech stale of stalking in the 21st century
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Sept 4 2004
GLENDALE — A Glendale businessman faces stalking charges that allege
that he attached a cell phone with Global Positioning System technology
to his ex-girlfriend’s car so he could track her every move and show
up unexpectedly wherever she was.
In what authorities said was the first stalking case of its kind
in Los Angeles County, Ara Gabrielyan, 32, was charged Tuesday with
stalking and threatening over a six-month period to kill his former
girlfriend and himself.
Gabrielyan — who ran an Armenian CD and video specialty shop — is
suspected of using GPS technology to pinpoint her location so he could
arrange apparent chance encounters at the bookstore, at the airport,
even at her brother’s grave site.
“This is what I would consider stalking of the 21st century — the
utilization of technology to track a victim,” said Lt. Jon Perkins
of the Glendale Police Department.
After the unidentified 35-year-old woman broke off their nearly
two-year relationship, Gabrielyan would follow her by car, show up
at her doorstep and call her 30 to 100 times a day, she told police.
But it wasn’t until he started to bump into her at odd places that she
became suspicious. Gabrielyan would pop up when she was having coffee
at Barnes & Noble, picking up a friend at Los Angeles International
Airport and even visiting the cemetery. In all, police said, he bumped
into her at dozens of locations.
“It was an obsession, an obsession to the point where 24 hours a day
he had to know where she was, what she did, who she met and how she
carried out her daily routine,” Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.
“She, like other stalking victims, feels violated and extremely
vulnerable — like they no longer have that sense of security in
their own home.”
Gabrielyan’s luck ran out, according to authorities, when his
ex-girlfriend spotted him under her car — apparently trying to change
the cellular-phone battery, which lasts about five days. He said he was
trying to fix some wires, but she called police, who found the phone.
Gabrielyan was arrested Sunday and is being held on $500,000 bail.
The technology, which in recent years has been used to keep track of
children, the elderly and even pets, would give Gabrielyan real-time
updates on her location every minute.
“The technology was designed with every good intention in the world,
but it was utilized for bad in this case,” Detective Mike Stilton said.
The situation is such a rarity that the District Attorney’s Office
has assigned a prosecutor who specializes in complex stalking and
threatening cases — including actress Catherine Zeta-Jones’ recent
stalking case.
The Police Department has 57 pages of documents outlining the woman’s
movements since Aug. 16 — which is when police believe Gabrielyan
placed the device on her car — including where she was and how long
she spent at a particular place.
Gabrielyan had purchased a Nextel phone device that has a motion switch
on it that turns itself on when it moves. As long as the device is
on, it transmits a signal every minute to the GPS satellite, which
in turn sends the location information to a computer.
Gabrielyan, who paid for a service to send him the information, would
then log on to a Web site to monitor her locations, police said.
Police are investigating where Gabrielyan purchased the device and
the tracking service.
He’s scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on one count of stalking
and three counts of making criminal threats. If convicted, he could
be sentenced to a maximum of six years in state prison.
Given the fact that the prosecutor is from a special team, Gabrielyan,
who has been arrested once in a credit card fraud case but has not
yet been tried, will be assigned a special public defender.
Capt. Al Michelena of the Los Angeles Police Department said stalking
somebody using GPS technology is not something his department has
encountered.
“I think that would be a rare instance where a stalking suspect would
use that kind of technology, and now that this incident has happened
it’s certainly something to be aware of,” Michelena said.
GPS technology can be used for tracking purposes in California only
by law enforcement agencies, and in cars if the owner chooses to sign
up for a service such as OnStar. Owners of cars equipped with the
OnStar service, for example, are one button away from being located.
Erin McGee of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association
said GPS is wonderful technology to maintain safety and security.
“I guess it’s use of the technology gone wrong,” she said. The
organization lobbies on behalf of the wireless industry.
Technologically sophisticated methods of stalking are on the rise,
said Tracy Bahm, director of the Stalking Resource Center at the
National Center for Victims of Crime, and they expect these types of
stalking cases to become commonplace in coming years.
“The concerns from our perspective is GPS is becoming more common,
smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper, and all these things make
it easier for a stalker to use it,” Bahm said. “We know of a handful
of cases throughout the nation and that tells me there’s a lot more
of it going on, but people who encounter it may not be reporting it.”
The group is also working to make sure each state’s laws cover stalking
by GPS.
If Gabrielyan had not been charged with felony stalking and
threatening, simply placing the GPS device under the car would have
been considered a misdemeanor, Lorenz said.
“This is sort of old technology coupled with new applications and the
law is trying to catch up to it,” said prosecutor Debra Archuleta,
the head of the stalking and threat assessment team.
The public needs to be aware of the reach of this technology and how
it can intrude on lives, law enforcement officials said.
“This particular case alerts the community and it alerts the public
to the extremes some people could go to to prey upon an innocent and
unsuspecting victim,” Perkins said. “What started out as a device to
help keep track of children has transitioned into a covert type of
device that’s used for wrongful purposes.”

Tri-Valley Herald, CA
Sept 4 2004
Health system expands coverage
ValleyCare volunteers work to improve health care in Azerbaijan
By Matt Carter, STAFF WRITER
PLEASANTON — When U.S. interests are at stake in odd corners of the
world, the “boots on the ground” aren’t always worn by soldiers.
Volunteers with ValleyCare Health System and the Alameda County
Department of Public Health have signed on to a four-year project to
improve health care in troubled Azerbaijan.
The predominantly Muslim nation of 7.9 million people is rich
in oil, but has been fragmented by war since the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Situated between Iran and Russia on the Caspian Sea,
Azerbaijan also is coping with environmental damage caused by oil
spills and pesticides.
A five-member delegation from the emerging nation arrives Sunday for
a week-long stay in the Valley, where they’ll see the latest medical
techniques and practices first hand.
Azerbaijan has an infant mortality rate of 82 deaths for every 1,000
live births — more than 10 times greater than the United States.
ValleyCare board member David Mertes of Livermore said the main goal
of the program is to improve health care for women of childbearing age,
newborns and children.
“While some of the program will impact (adult) men and older folks,
the priority issues are related to women of reproductive age,” Mertes
said. “Things such as ovarian cancer, breast cancer and cervical
cancer are very high on the list.”
ValleyCare has been involved in a similar project before, helping
doctors in Snezhinsk, Russia, provide better medical care.
The goals of that three-year program included creating jobs and
bettering living conditions for Russian nuclear weapons scientists,
in the hopes of reducing the likelihood that they’d leave home to
work for nations hostile to the United States.
Mertes said the “very successful” outcome of that project led to
another offer.
“A year or so went by, and we were contacted by the American
International Health Alliance, and asked if we were interested in a
project in Azerbaijan,”
Mertes said.
The Health Alliance, which administered a $750,000 Department of
Energy grant for the Snezhinsk project, is overseeing a U.S. Agency
for International Development grant of about $800,000 for work in
Azerbaijan.
“When we were approached again, I think it was because we had the
experience,” Mertes said. “They said this was their first program in
Azerbaijan, and they didn’t want to have a failure right off the bat.”
As was the case with Snezhinsk, most of the money is earmarked for
travel expenses. The goal of both programs is an exchange of expertise,
not the purchase of supplies and equipment.
“We have two criteria,” Mertes said. “Whatever is done must be of
a nature that it can continue after the project ends. It has to be
sustainable — not, ‘We leave after four years and it stops.’ Second,
it must be replicable in other cities.”
According to the CIA Fact Book, the average life expectancy in
Azerbaijan is 63. The CIA estimates that foreign firms plan to invest
some $60 billion in the country’s oil fields, but a dispute with
Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region has slowed the country’s
development and created 800,000 refugees.
“Corruption is ubiquitous and the promise of widespread wealth
from Azerbaijan’s undeveloped petroleum resources remains largely
unfulfilled,” the book concludes.
Mertes and Mike Ranahan, a gynecologist affiliated with ValleyCare,
visited Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, and another city, Ganca, in May.
In June, a delegation of five health care professionals from the East
Bay conducted a tour that included refugee camps surrounding Ganca.
In addition to Ranahan, the delegation included ValleyCare infectious
disease nurse Jessica Jordan and three Alameda County Public Health
employees: Marla Blagg, and doctors Tony Iton and James Steward.
Mertes said the information will flow both ways in the program,
and that ValleyCare’s volunteers expect to learn as well as teach.
Snezhinsk “was the first foray ValleyCare got into with international
stuff,” Mertes said. “We learned a lot about ourselves by looking at
how other people looked at the way we did things. You can’t do it
without asking yourself, ‘Why am I doing it this way?’ It’s really
valuable.”
While they are here, the group from Azerbaijan will tour ValleyCare
facilities in Livermore and Pleasanton, Highland Hospital in Oakland,
and the University of San Francisco Medical Center.
On Wednesday, the group — which includes Ganca’s vice mayor and the
minister of health for the region — will see an Oakland A’s game,
courtesy of Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty.
Next Saturday, the group will meet with their American counterparts
and devise a work plan for achieving the program’s goals.
“During the course of the week, we’ll decide on specific things they
want to accomplish,” Mertes said, “and determine whether we can help
them achieve them.”

The Globe and Mail
Entertainment
Saturday, September 4, 2004 – Page R8
Armenian Lullabies
Hasmik Harutyunyan
with the Shoghaken Ensemble
Forget the don’t-you-cry stuff. This may one of the very few albums to
contain a lullaby based on an incident of genocide, and it’s a surpassingly
beautiful tune, with a serenity that stems as much from heart-sore
resignation as from a desire to get that wee one to sleep. Armenian women in
the villages where most of these tunes were gathered had hard lives and
little freedom, a condition that makes many of these folk lullabies sound
like the night’s bitter farewell to the privations of the day. Harutyunyan’s
voice has an earthy purity that’s just right for this music, which often
unfolds against little more than a wheezing flute introduction and a hushed
drone. — R. E.-G.

Central Asian and Southern Caucasus Freedom of Expression Network
(CASCFEN), Azerbaijan
Sept 4 2004
Newspapers published with blank front pages
…To protest planned arrival of Armenian officers to Azerbaijan
CASCFEN, Baku, 4 Sept 2004 — Today about two dozens of dailies were
published with blank front pages to protest planned arrival of
Armenian officers to participate in maneuvers to take place in
Azerbaijan within NATO “Partnership for Pease” Program on September
12, 2004. The decision was taken by 9 leading mass media heads a day
before and others were called to join an action. As a result other
popular dailies joined action too. Alongside with dailies Group of
Companies ANS (includes TV, Radio channels, news agency and several
magazines) suspended broadcasts between 10am to 11am and 04pm to 05pm
and is going to suspend it from 08pm to 09pm. Among those published
with blank front pages are most popular newspapers such as “Azadliq”,
“Yeni Musavat”, “Baki Khaber”, “Xeber.net”, “Baku Today”, “Ekspress”,
“Uc noqte”, “Iki sahil”, “Sharq”, “525-ci qezet”, “Ayna”,
“Mukhalifet”, “Olaylar”, Russian-language “Zerkalo”, “Ekho”, “Novoye
Vremya” and others. The electronic versions of these newspapers
published protest slogans on their web sites too.
The statement published on the papers on Sept 3 warned that if the
arrival of Armenians will not be prevented media outlets reserve the
right to broaden protest actions: “Depending on development of events
we reserve the right to broaden our protest activities even further
and to suspend our activity for longer term”.
Those joining protest consider arrival of Armenian officers to
Azerbaijan as a disrespect for the nation: “Letting the officers of
occupational forces into the training facilities of Azerbaijan,
letting them train together with our soldiers means disrespect
towards the military interests of the host country and playing with
the nerves of the Azerbaijan nation”.
“We think that admission of the Armenian forces to Baku is insult to
Azerbaijani nation, which lost thousands of its sons, aggravates a
political situation in the country, causes mass protest, and creates
ground for infringement of existing stability and unpredictable
negative consequences”, reads the statement.
The Statement of Protest by Mass Media of Azerbaijan
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Equatorial Guinea officials to question Mark Thatcher, probe Armenian company over coup
Agence France Presse
Sept 4 2004
MALABO : A team of state prosecutors from Equatorial Guinea was to
leave Malabo for South Africa to question Mark Thatcher over his
alleged involvement in a complex bid to oust President Teodoro Obiang
Nguema, a government source said.
Another legal team from the tiny, oil-rich country on Africa’s west
coast was in Armenia to probe links between a local air transport
company and the same alleged coup plot, a judicial official said
Saturday.
Thatcher, 51, the millionaire son of former British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher, was arrested in a dawn raid on his luxury Cape
Town home on August 25 and charged with bankrolling a plot involving
mercenaries to oust Obiang, in power in Equatorial Guinea since 1979.
“A delegation from the public ministry led by Attorney General Jose Olo
Obono will on Saturday travel to South Africa” to question Thatcher,
said the source, who asked not to be named.
Government officials in Malabo last week told AFP that Malabo and
Pretoria were discussing the possibility of Equato-Guinean officials
interviewing Thatcher in South Africa.
Nineteen people accused of plotting to topple Obiang have been on trial
in Malabo since last month. Their trial was suspended indefinitely
on Tuesday to take into account new developments including the arrest
of Margaret Thatcher’s son in South Africa.
On August 27, a court in Zimbabwe absolved most of the 70 men on
trial there over the same alleged plot.
Press reports have implicated an international network of wealthy
businessmen in the alleged plot to oust Obiang, in exchange for which
they would be given a slice of Equatorial Guinea’s oil riches.
Thatcher is due in court in South Africa on November 25 to answer
charges he contributed 275,000 dollars (230,000 euros) to the plot,
whose alleged mastermind, Briton Simon Mann, is a friend and neighbour
in the plush Cape Town suburb of Constantia.
Mann, founder of the defunct mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes, was
found guilty of attempting to illegally purchase weapons in a Zimbabwe
court last week in connection with the conspiracy in Equatorial Guinea.
Meanwhile, the suspected leader of the 19 would-be coup makers on
trial in Malabo, South African businessman Nick du Toit — a former
business partner of Mann’s — has told a court here that he met with
Thatcher, but insisted their meeting was strictly business-related.
The focus of the Equato-Guinean investigators’ visit to Armenia
was a contract between the central Asian country’s Tiger Air and a
German company whose representative in Malabo, Gerhard Eugen Merz,
was among 15 foreigners arrested in Equatorial Guinea in March and
accused of plotting the coup, a legal official said here.
Merz died days after his arrest, officially from cerebral malaria,
but with rights groups saying he was tortured to death.
Among those arrested were the six Armenian air crew of an Antonov
cargo plane. All six have denied involvement in the alleged coup bid,
and told a court in Malabo that they had come to Equatorial Guinea to
work under contract to Merz’s company, which had leased their plane
and services.
The Antonov and its Armenian crew arrived in Equatorial Guinea in
January this year.
Between then and the discovery of the alleged coup plot in March
they made only one flight, on behalf of a company owned by du Toit,
who faces the death penalty for allegedly leading the coup bid.

Putin makes televised address to people of Russia
ITAR-TASS, Russia
Sept 4 2004
MOSCOW, September 4 (Itar-Tass) – President Vladimir Putin has
addressed the people of Russia on major radio and television channels
in the aftermath of the brutal hostage-taking in Beslan, North
Ossetia, that ended in the deaths of about 350 people.
Following is the full text of the address.
“A horrendous tragedy has befallen our country. We all of us deeply
suffered in the past few days, letting through our hearts all the
developments in the town of Beslan.
“It was not mere murderers whom we had to face; we encountered the
ones who had taken up arms against defenseless children.
“First and foremost, I would like to give the words of support to the
people who lost the dearest of all the treasures one can have –
children, family members, close friends. I share their grief with
them.
“I would like to ask you to recall all those who fell at the hands of
terrorists in the past few days.
“Russian history has had many tragic pages and has seen many tragic
events. We are living in a situation that took shape after the
disintegration of a giant state that turned out unviable in the
conditions of a rapidly changing world. But in spite of all the
difficulties, we managed to keep up the kernel of that giant and
called it the Russian Federation.
“We expected a change – a change for the better, but we found
ourselves unprepared for many of the things that came upon us. Why
did it happen?
“We are living in a transitional economy, which does not meet the
requirements or the level of development of society and its political
system. Internal conflicts and ethnic contradictions, so toughly
suppressed by the dominating ideology in the previous epoch, are
mounting now.
“Our attention to the issues of defense and security started
flagging, and we let corruption mute our judiciary and law
enforcement systems. Our country used to have a most potent system of
border defenses, and yet it became defenseless both in the West and
in the East virtually overnight.
“Creation of tangible border defenses will take years and billions of
rubles, but even there our performance could be more efficient if we
reacted timely and professionally.
“I must admit that we did not give a close look to the processes
unfolding in our own country and abroad, or anyway we failed to react
to them properly.
“We winked at our own weakness, and it is the weak who are always
beaten up. Some want to tear away saucy piece of our wealth, while
others help these aspirants in so doing. They still believe that
Russia poses a threat to them as a nuclear power. That is why this
threat must be eliminated, and terrorism is just another instrument
in implementing their designs.
“As I said, we encountered crises, revolts, and terrorist acts on
many occasions, but what happened this time is a terrorist crime, the
cruelty of which stands beyond precedence. This is not a challenge to
the President, Parliament, or cabinet of ministers; this is a
challenge to the entire Russian state and its people. This is
aggression against us.
“The terrorists believe they are stronger than ourselves, that their
cruelty will intimidate us, paralyze our will and degenerate our
society. Here we have a seeming alternative – to rebuff them or to
begin obeying their orders. The second means to give in and to let
them partition Russia in a hope that they will somehow let us alone.
“As President of the Russian state, a person who gave an oath to
defend the nation and its territorial integrity, and last but not
least, as a Russian citizen, I am confident that we have no such
alternative.
“The moment we give in to their blackmail and succumb to panic, we
will plunge millions of people into an endless chain of bloodletting
conflicts, like Karabakh [an enclave of Azerbaijan predominantly
populated by Armenians – Itar-Tass] or the Dniester region [a part of
Moldova that proclaimed itself independent in the early 1990’s –
Itar-Tass] or other tragedies of the kind. One cannot but see that
this is obvious.
“What we have on our hands is not the scattered acts of intimidation
or odd terrorist sorties. This is direct intervention on the part of
international terrorism in Russia. It is a total and full-blown war
that keeps claiming the lives of our compatriots.
“But world experience proves that such wars do not end quickly. Given
this situation, we cannot afford complacent treatment of it anymore.
“We must set up a much more efficient system of security and make
demands to our law enforcement system that its actions become
proportionate to the size of new threats.
“The main thing, however, is to mobilize the consciousness of the
nation in the face of a common threat. Events in other countries show
that terrorists get the most adequate responses in the places where
they run into the power of the state, on the one hand, and organized
and united civic society, on the other.
“Dear fellow countrymen,
The people who sent the terrorists to commit that utterly heinous
crime harbored a hope to set on our peoples to fight with one another
and unleash a bloody feud in Northern Caucasus.
“I would like to tell you the following in that connection.
“First, an expansive set of measures aimed at strengthening the
country’s unity will be prepared shortly.
“Second, I believe it is vital that we set up a new system of
interaction between the forces controlling situations in Northern
Caucasus.
“Third, we need a new efficient system of crisis management, based on
completely novel approaches to the activity of law enforcement
agencies.
“I would like make special stress on the intention to implement those
measures in strict conformity with the Constitution”.
“My dear friends, all of us are living through mournful and painful
hours now, and I would like to thank all of you for your
self-restraint and civic responsibility.
“We have always been stronger than them and will remain so. I mean
our morals, courage, and human solidarity. I saw it again this early
morning.
“Beslan is literally imbued with grief and pain, but people there
were so much caring for one another, so much cooperative.
“They were not afraid to risk their lives for the sake of others.
They remained real people even in the most inhumane conditions.
“It is hard to reconcile oneself with bitter losses, but the ordeal
has made us closer to one another and compelled us to reassess many
things. We must be together nowadays, because that is the only way to
defeat the enemy”.

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Sept 4 2004
FOREIGN MINISTER TO VISIT ITALY
[September 04, 2004, 23:28:33]
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov will
leave for Italy on September 7. The goal of the visit is to negotiate
development of cooperation between the two countries in all spheres.
Italy has also concern in that, and I hope the negotiations will be
fruitful, he stated.
During the trip Minister Mammadyarov is expected to meet with his
Italian counterpart and other officials.
***
Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov also told AzerTAj that the peace
talks on Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict are on a due level so far,
and give a chance to hope for good result. The next meeting of the
two countries Presidents is expected during September 15 summit of
the CIS Heads of State in Astana, Kazakhstan. Reportedly, the OSCE
Minsk group co-chairs will also arrive in Astana and meet there with
President Ilham Aliyev.