PROMINENT RUSSIAN BUSINESS LEADER DIES, COLLEAGUE SAYS
AP Worldstream
Sep 09, 2006
Arkady Volsky, a prominent Russian business leader and public figure
died after an illness Saturday at age 74, his colleague said.
Volsky, who founded and for 15 years headed the Russian Union of
Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the country’s biggest business
lobby, passed away from a “severe and long-lasting disease,” the
union’s current head Alexander Shokhin said on Ekho Mosvky radio.
NTV television reported Volsky died from leukemia.
“Volsky’s death is a big loss not only for (the Union), but for the
entire business and political community of the country,” Shokhin said.
Born in 1932 in then-Soviet Belarus, he rose to senior posts in the
Communist government, notably serving as a senior aide to former
Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.
Following the 1991 Soviet collapse, he turned into the country’s
biggest business lobbyist and also actively participated in crisis
negotiations in bloody regional conflicts including Chechnya and the
Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Volsky also was also a rare critic of the politically charged jailing
of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who last year was sentenced to eight years
in a Siberian penal colony on charges of fraud and tax evasion,
and the ensuing partial renationalization of his Yukos oil company.
Last September Volsky was replaced with Shokhin, a more
Kremlin-friendly figure, in what many interpreted as punishment for
his protest.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to Volsky’s
family and friends, a Kremlin spokeswoman told The Associated Press.

EUROPEAN LEGACY DAYS OPENED IN ARMENIA
PanARMENIAN.Net
09.09.2006 15:39 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Initiated by the Ministry of Culture and Youth
Affairs of Armenia and the CE Information Office European Legacy Days
opened in the museum reserve of Zvartnots temple in Yerevan.
“The slogan of the event, devoted to medieval art, music and
architecture, is “Insight into Middle Ages.”
Within the campaign visits to museums will be free of charge,” noted
Deputy Minister of Culture and Youth Gagik Gyurjyan.
Special Representative of the CE Secretary General in Armenia Boyan
Urumova noted that the Days aim at stimulating participation of the
society, especially the youth, in realizing their own legacy. “The
initiative also stimulates cultural dialogue. 20 million people took
part in the European Legacy Days in 49 countries since past year. 33
monuments opened.
The spirit of Europe and Armenia, as a European country, is expressed
in their mental legacy and it should be preserved,” she underscored.
European Legacy Days will be held in Armenia September 10-11. Outlook
from the Middle Ages exhibition will open at the State Historical
Museum of Armenia, as well as exposition of medieval frescos at the
National Picture Gallery. Medieval manuscripts will be exhibited
at Matenadaran, Yerevan, while Vandalism and Old Jugha film about
destruction of ancient Armenian khachkars in Nakhichevan by Azerbaijan
will be screened at Moscow cinema, reports Novosti-Armenia.

OPPOSITION MUST WIN PEOPLE’S TRUST, CRU LEADER SAYS
Panorama.am
14:19 09/09/06
‘The major aim of the opposition must be the recovery of the lost trust
among the public,” Hrant Khachatryan, Constitutional Right Union head,
told a press conference today. Khachatryan does not think rallies and
demonstration may help in this sense. “The opposition must be very
careful in any negative deal with the authorities since there are some
suspicions around,” Khachatryan said. The party leader underlined two
reasons for the failure to establish a political field in Armenia. He
said there have been no favorable preconditions for that since 90s
and that socio-economic conditions have been poor.

A LEBANESE ARMENIAN PROTESTER …
Panorama.am
16:39 09/09/06
A Lebanese Armenian protester waves a Lebanese flag and holds an
anti-Turkey banner during a demonstration against the participation
of the Turkish troops in the peacekeeping force in Lebanon, in the
Beirut Armenian neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon, Friday, Sept.
8, 2006. Turkey”s parliament on Tuesday approved sending an unspecified
number of troops to take part in the U.N. mission to solidify the
fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon”s Armenians,
who make up about 4 percent of the country”s population, have come out
against Turkish participation _ a reminder that some in the region
have not completely shed bitter memories of Ottoman rule. Armenians
accuse the Ottoman Turks of killing 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in
1915 in what they call a campaign of genocide.
(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

AZERBAIJAN AGAINST ARMENIA-TURKEY CULTURAL DIALOGUE
PanARMENIAN.Net
09.09.2006 14:50 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Initiated by the Armenian Turkish Union of
Entrepreneurs and the Kars Municipality, the Cultural Festival of
the Caucasus will be held in Kars September 13-15. The Festival is
held under the slogan of Dialogue Culture. Meanwhile, a forum of
national non-governmental organizations of Azerbaijan, unifying over
400 organizations, has addressed the municipality leaders of Kars,
Turkey and organizers of the Festival, urging them to refuse from
cooperation with Armenia, which “breaks peace and stability in the
Caucasus and has turned into a source of permanent threat for the
countries of the region.” Thereupon, the Forum adopted a statement,
urging to cancel the Festival, reported Trend.

SURVEY PINPOINTS ETHNIC WINNERS AND LOSERS IN ‘MELTING POT’ BRITAIN – ARMENIANS BEST
Robert Winnett and Holly Watt
The Times, UK
Sept 10 2006
Found: migrants with the mostest
ARMENIAN immigrants and their descendants are the most successful
ethnic group in the country, according to an analysis of “melting
pot” Britain.
They are followed by the Japanese, Dutch and Greek Cypriots among the
groups who are economically and socially most successful. Bangladeshi
Muslims and migrants from Sierra Leone and Syria have fared worst.
The new analysis places the 42.2m adults registered to vote in
mainland Britain in 200 ethnic groups – on the basis of a person’s
surname and first name.
The information is linked to a marketing database to rank the
socioeconomic status of each group. The system, Origins Info, is
used by hospitals, retailers and charities to tailor their services
to individual ethnic groups.
Its developers claim it is reliable even though most married women
adopt their husband’s name and some immigrants may have changed their
surname to avoid discrimination.
Richard Webber, a professor of spatial analysis at University College,
London who developed Origins Info, said: “The patterns that this
analysis have uncovered are striking. We are hoping it will prove a
valuable tool for government and business.”
The system can also be used to identify where different ethnic groups
live and the ethnic composition of the professions.
It reveals that Ripley in Derbyshire is the “most English” place in
England with 88.58% of residents having an English ethnic background.
The most diverse area is south Tottenham, in north London, which is
home to 113 ethnic groups from Bretons to Vietnamese.
Southall in west London has the least English gene pool – just 17.82%
of residents in the area nicknamed “little India” are of English
ethnic origin.
Ian Smith, 63, a carpenter, who has lived in Southall since 1978, said:
“Of the 90 or so houses in my street I would say there are fewer than
10 English families. Most are Sikhs but there are now more Somalis
and quite a few Poles.
“Sometimes I do feel slightly intimidated because it can feel like
a foreign country at times. But we get on well with our neighbours
who are both Sikhs.”
The analysis shows the persistence of ethnic clusters decades after
the group first arrived in Britain. Greek Cypriots are concentrated
in Broxbourne and Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire and Margate in Kent,
Italians can be found in Bedford and Waltham Cross and the Dutch in
Plockton in the Scottish Highlands and Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales.
Cardiff has a high concentration of Maltese residents because it was
the port where many disembarked after naval service during the 1940s
and 1950s. The Chinese are in Oxford, Harlow and Milton Keynes and
Hispanics in Eastbourne, Crawley and Ascot. In Wales, English border
areas have been colonised by those with a Welsh background.
Overall, there is a disproportionately high number of immigrants
in business, law and medicine. An analysis of doctors, using data
provided by the Medical Directory, found the proportion of medics
with northern Indian roots is more than 10 times higher than for the
population as a whole. Spaniards and Romanians are also significantly
“over-represented” as doctors.
Similarly, Russians, the Dutch and Nigerians are over-represented
among barristers.
A disproportionate number of company directors are from immigrant
stock. The Japanese, Russians and people from the Nordic countries
are heavily over-represented among the country’s 5.3m directors and
partners. The English are one of the least commercially minded races,
according to this measure.
One in four restaurants is run by a Muslim and one in four chemists
by an Indian or a Sri Lankan.
Danny Sriskandarajah, head of migration, equalities and citizenship
at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a Blairite think tank,
said immigrant groups often had enduring characteristics. “There’s
something unique and special about people prepared to break the ties
with home. Throughout history, only a tiny percentage of people moved
any sort of distance. A few entrepreneurial, adventurous types have
the wherewithal and motivation to move.”
Of the 2,651 people of Armenian descent in Britain, more than 1,600
run businesses and a high proportion live in expensive parts of
west London.
Among the most successful is Bob Manoukian, property developer and
former agent for Prince Jefri of Brunei. He has a family fortune of
£300m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
Other successful people with Armenian roots include David Dickinson,
presenter of the BBC’s Bargain Hunt, and Ara Palamoudian, chairman
of the Armenian community & church council of Great Britain.
He said: “Armenians have always tried to be self-sufficient and not to
be a burden on any country. It could be the history of the Armenian
people, the way their lives have been over centuries. They had to
find shelter around the world.”
Many Armenians fled to England after the first world war, during
which up to 1.5m died, amid allegations of genocide by the Turks.
Other waves arrived in the 1970s and 1980s.
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BUMPING UP AGAINST NATIONAL PRIDE, AN AUTHOR FACES TRIAL, BUT SO DOES TURKEY
Suzan Fraser
Brooks Bulletin, Canada
Canadian Press
Sept 9 2006
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) – Elif Shafak, one of Turkey’s leading authors,
is about to have a baby – and go on trial.
The reason for this strange conjunction of joy and foreboding
is her new novel, which has exposed her to a charge of “insulting
Turkishness” because it touches on one of the most disputed episodes
of her country’s history – the massacres of Armenians during the
final years of the Ottoman Empire.
A University of Arizona literature professor, the 35-year-old Shafak
divides her time between Tucson and Istanbul. She sought a postponement
of her trial, set for Sept. 21, until after her first child is born
but was refused.
She could get three years in prison, though similar trials of other
Turkish writers have usually folded on technicalities and no one has
gone to jail.
For now, she is sitting at a cafe on an Istanbul back street,
reflecting on the peculiarities of being tried for the words she gave
to an Armenian voice in the novel.
“I think my case is very bizarre because for the first time they are
trying fictional characters,” Shafak, a striking woman with unruly
locks of blond hair, told The Associated Press.
The case has broad ramifications, highlighting a rising wave of
Turkish nationalism and the whole question of whether Turkey, a
Western ally and NATO member, should be admitted to the liberal,
democratic European Union – something the Bush administration supports.
Turks who long for EU membership worry that trials of writers are
setting back their cause. But nationalists such as Kemal Kerincsiz,
one of the lawyers suing Shafak, say Turkey shouldn’t have to forsake
bedrock convictions – for instance, that there was never any Armenian
genocide – just to please Europe.
“The Easterner has to insult himself and degrade his own culture
to ingratiate himself with the West,” Kerincsiz said in a recent
interview. “Our place is in Eastern culture.”
Shafak said the law on insulting Turkishness “has been used as a
weapon to silence many people. . . . My case is perhaps just another
step in this long chain.”
That chain includes Turkey’s best known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, and
dozens of other writers and intellectuals forced to defend themselves
against charges of “insulting Turkishness.”
Shafak says the rising nationalism is a reaction to Turkey becoming
more democratic and pluralistic as it strives to join the EU,
and welcomes it as a sign her country is undergoing a momentous
transformation.
“This ultranationalist movement is taking place not because nothing
is changing in Turkey, but just the opposite, because things are
changing,” said Shafak. “The bigger the transformation, the bigger
their panic.”
The novel in question, The Bastard of Istanbul, deals with taboos –
domestic violence and incestuous rape – that are rarely discussed in
this conservative, predominantly Muslim country.
But it is what her Armenian-American characters say that has landed
Shafak in court.
For instance, this from a man worried about his niece being brought
up by a Turkish stepfather:
“What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up? . .
. (That) I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their
relatives to the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have
been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some
Turk named Mustapha!”
Turkey insists the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during forced
evacuations in the First World War was not a planned genocide but
the result of the bloody breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
Shafak’s book has sold 60,000 copies, a best seller by Turkish
standards, and will appear in English next year.
Her mother was a diplomat, and she says she first became aware of
the Armenian issue when she was a girl and Armenian militants were
assassinating Turkish diplomats.
“My very first acquaintance with the word Armenian was so negative,
it just meant someone who wanted to kill my mother,” Shafak said. “I
then started to ask questions: ‘Why so much hatred against Turkish
diplomats? What is behind this?”‘
She does not take sides on the genocide debate, but accuses Turkey
of having “collective amnesia.”
“Turks and Armenians are not speaking the same language,” she said.
“For the Turks all the past is gone, erased from our memories. That’s
the way we Westernized: by being future-oriented. . . . The
grandchildren of the 1915 survivors tend to be very, very
past-oriented.”

ARMENIA’S PARTICIPATION IN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS MUST BE COORDINATED WITH PARTNERS
Regnum, Russia
Sept 9 2006
“Decision on Armenia’s participation in the peacekeeping mission in
Lebanon has to be taken in coordination with geopolitical partners,”
chairman of opposition party The Constitutional Right Union, Armenian
parliament member Hrant Hachatryan at a press conference on Sep 9.
The oppositionist, however, did not specify Armenia’s geopolitical
partners in this issue, REGNUM correspondent reports.
“When Armenia first took decision to participate in a peacekeeping
mission at a state level, I pointed to the problems that we were
consequently to face. Participating in peacekeeping operations is
an important part of geopolitical technologies. By plugging into the
system, Armenian authorities have taken up a serious responsibility,”
Khachatryan stated.
He says he does not rule out the possibility of Armenia’s sending
her peacekeepers to Lebanon. “In each particular case, an individual
decision has to be taken on the issue,” he remarked.
Armenian peacekeepers joined in 2004 the peacekeeping mission in
Kosovo as a part of a Greek battalion. From January 2005, Armenian
servicemen have been a part of a Polish peacekeeping division in Iraq.

CURRENT MID-EAST CONFUSION BRINGS HISTORIANS BACK TO OTTOMANS
Zaman Online, Turkey
Sept 9 2006
The Middle East experienced its most peaceful and glorious years
during the Ottoman Empire.
Lands sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews enjoyed peace and comfort
for nearly 400 years.
However, the region has not experienced such stability and harmony
since the fall of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago.
With the recent crises in the Middle East, historians have focused
their attention on the Ottomans.
With the forthcoming 15th Turkish History Congress (TTK) to be held
next week, 750 foreign experts have submitted statements and articles.
Responding to Zaman’s questions, Prof. Yusuf Halacoglu, chair of
the Turkish History Council, said: “That the lands in the Middle
East previously belonged within the domains of the Ottoman Empire
encourages historians to study more.”
Foreign scientists are eager to present their statements on Turkish
history during the 15th TTK.
Only 350 of the statements have been approved in the congress.
The participation demand derived from increasing curiosity about
Turkey and the Ottomans from historians.
Halacoglu remarked that they had to reduce the number of historians
from 750 to 310 due to the limited time.
The chair of TTK noted that the participants know both the Ottoman
Turkish language and contemporary Turkish.
During the congress, the presentations will cover several different
topics, and experts will be able to express their views freely,
Halacoglu stated.
Controversial issues like the Armenians and missionary work will also
be discussed in the congress.
Halacoglu claimed there might also be people backing the Armenian
genocide, and added, “They should base their claims on firm ground
because we have our own information to refute their claims.”

FALSE ARMENIAN MAPS CLAIMING TO KARABAKH AND NAKHCHIVAN ON SALE IN CHINA’S TAIWAN AND HONG KONG
Today, Azerbaijan
Sept 9 2006
“False maps, globes and school textbooks showing Azerbaijani regions
-Nakhchivan and Karabakh- as Armenian territories are on sale in East
and Southeast Asia,” said Akbar Huseynli, an Azerbaijani living in
Hong Kong.
He told APA that these school facilities are sold in Hong-Kong,
Shanghai and Taiwan.
“African, European, Arabian nations and even Armenians have a number
of economic and cultural societies in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Most of
people living here are unaware of Azerbaijanis and Azerbaijan.”
He said that articles on Azerbaijani oil have recently spread in
media but Southeast Asia is not well known here.
“The reason may be that Taiwan has no political-economic ties
with Azerbaijan. It is a pity that Azerbaijan plays no part in the
activities of the most competitive trade center.”
He regretted that there is no Azerbaijani Diaspora in Southeast Asia
while there are about 17 diasporas in Belgium and the Netherlands. A
lot of Azerbaijani businessmen are active in China but they have not
gathered together to form a Diaspora.
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