ARMENIA SAYS ITS PRICE OF US$110 FOR RUSSIAN GAS WILL REMAIN FIXED UNTIL END OF 2008
The Associated Press
November 4, 2006 Saturday 5:18 PM GMT
Armenia said Saturday that the price it is paying for Russian gas of
US$110 (~@86) will stay fixed until the end of 2008, an announcement
certain to rile neighboring Georgia which has been told to pay more
than double that from next year.
Armenian Finance and Economy Minister Vardan Khachatrian said that
Russia’s Gazprom state monopoly had agreed to freeze the price
until Jan. 1, 2009, in return for Armenia transferring control
of an electricity power generating unit for almost US$250 million
(~@197 million).
He also said that Yerevan was in talks with OAO Gazprom over the sale
of ownership rights to the Armenian segment of a planned pipeline
bringing Iranian gas to the country, which is due to open later
this year.
Gazprom this week said it plans to charge Tbilisi US$230 (~@180) per
1,000 cubic meters of gas, compared with the US$110 that it pays now,
ratcheting up economic pressure against Moscow’s small, pro-Western
southern neighbor.
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said that the sharp price
rise was obviously political because other ex-Soviet nations were
paying far less.
On Saturday, Nogaideli said that Georgia would not agree to pay such
a high rate because it was not commercially justified. “We are not
going to pay an non-market price,” he said.
Energy Minister Nika Gilauri said Friday that talks were taking place
with Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey to secure alternative supplies of
gas. Analysts in Georgia warned of a repeat of the gas war between
Russia and Ukraine at the start of this year when Gazprom cut off
supplies.
That stoppage, amid fierce negotiations over a higher price
demanded by Gazprom, was seen as punishment for Ukraine’s pro-Western
policies. Ukraine, which finally agreed to pay almost double at US$95
per 1,000 cubic meters, has since managed to limit the increase for
2007 to US$130 after Russian-leaning Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych
took over as head of government in the wake of his party’s success
in March polls.
Neighboring Belarus faces a fourfold rise in gas prices to US$200,
although Gazprom is believed to be willing to compromise if the
country hands over 50 percent of the state pipeline through which
Russian gas transits to western Europe.

KAZAKHSTAN, ARMENIA SIGN COOPERATION ACCORDS
Kazakhstan Today news agency website, Almaty
Nov 6 2006
Astana, 6 November: Several bilateral agreements were signed following
talks between Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan which took place in both narrow and expanded
formats in Astana today, the agency’s correspondent has reported.
In particular, an intergovernmental accord on mutual visits of citizens
was signed by Kazakh Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev and Armenian
Deputy Foreign Minister Gegam Garibdzhanyan.
A convention on avoiding double taxation and preventing income and
property tax evasion was also signed following the talks. The document
was signed by Kazakh Finance Minister Natalya Korzhova and Armenian
Trade and Economic Development Minister Karen Chshmarityan.
An intergovernmental accord on international transport communications
was signed by Kazakh Transport and Communications Minister Serik
Akhmetov and Armenian Trade and Economic Development Minister Karen
Chshmarityan.

KAZAKH-ARMENIAN BODY DISCUSSES ECONOMIC TIES AHEAD OF PRESIDENT’S VISIT
Interfax, Russia
Nov 6 2006
Astana, 5 November. The second sitting of the Kazakh-Armenian
commission on trade and economic cooperation is being held in Astana
today.
The Kazakh side is represented by Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Nurlan
Onzhanov and the Armenian side by Deputy Agriculture Minister Samvel
Avetisyan, a report circulated by the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said.
The meeting is being held without media’s participation. A news
conference is expected to be held in the afternoon, following the
talks.
The bilateral commission is holding the meeting on the eve of Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan’s visit to Kazakhstan. Kocharyan is arriving
in Kazakhstan on 6 November. His talks with Kazakh President Nursultan
Nazarbayev are to be held the same day. A number of bilateral documents
are to be signed and a joint news conference of the two countries’
leaders is to take place following the talks.

CULTURE – STATE OF DENIAL
Weekend Australian
All-round Country Edition
November 4, 2006 Saturday
A FRENCH law adopted last month that makes it a crime to deny
an Armenian genocide took place in Turkey during World War I has
been criticised by freedom-of-speech supporters in Europe. The law,
which still has to pass the Senate, has also been linked to Turkey’s
application to join the European Union. According to the Financial
Times Deutschland, a report due out next week is expected to give
Turkey low marks for democratic reforms and delay EU accession.
That the law was similar to Turkey’s repression of recognition of
the genocide was not lost on the Turkish media. The daily Hurriyet
headlined its story on the law “Liberte, egalite, stupidite”.
“Wonder of wonders, France, the celebrated land of Liberte, having
such a massive hiccup over its Fraternite with the Armenians as
to be ready to discard one of the cardinal pillars of the French
Revolution,” complained Karamatullah Ghori in the Turkish Daily
News. Even Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, viewed as a traitor by many
Turks for his recognition of the Armenian genocide, pointed out that
“freedom of expression is a French invention. This law is contrary
to this culture of liberty.”
According to Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar in The New Republic,
the French law was a dangerous step on a slippery slope. “Indeed, the
new French legislation is just the latest illiberal policy in Europe
masquerading as liberalism … Do we really want the Government to
start deciding that some historical views are acceptable but others
merit prison sentences?”
In French weekly Le Point, Bernard-Henri Levy mounted an argument in
favour of the law, saying that “a little dose of political correctness”
was sometimes necessary. He also took issue with the polemic of British
historian Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote in The Guardian that even
Holocaust denial must be allowed in the name of freedom of opinion
and freedom of scientific research.
According to Gwynne Dyer in Arab News the point of the law was never
to get it on the books, as President Jacques Chirac could veto it.
“It was to alienate Turkish public opinion and curry favour with the
half-million French citizens of Armenian descent.” The action would
also “provoke a nationalist backlash in Turkey, further damaging the
country’s already fragile relationship with the EU”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FAMILY OF SIX, INCLUDING BABY, WHITE-WATER RAFT INTO HUNGARY
Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
November 3, 2006 Friday
Budapest, November 3 (MTI) – Border patrol officials apprehended an
Armenian family of six, including a ten-month-old baby, and their
Russian guide, at a railway station near the Ukrainian border after
they white-water rafted into Hungary along a hazardous section of
the Tisza River, the border patrol media liaison reported on Friday.
An investigation is underway, and most likely the group will be
expelled from Hungary, Jozsef Tanyik said.

PAMUK A GREAT WRITER, A WORTHY NOBEL LAUREATE
The Jakarta Post, Indonesia
November 4, 2006 Saturday
Orhan Pamuk deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature; his books make
him a worthy laureate. But it is unfortunate that his success is now
being politicized.
Matt Moore and Karl Ritter wrote in The Jakarta Post (Oct. 13):
“With its selection, the Swedish academy stepped squarely into the
global clash of civilizations, honoring a Western-leaning Muslim
whose country lies on the strategic fault line between east and west
and whose people are increasingly unhappy with Europeans’ reluctance
to accept them as full members in the European Union.” Did Moore and
Ritter take the effort to read any of Pamuk’s brilliantly constructed
books? From their article it does not seem so.
Why didn’t they write about the themes and literary qualities of
Pamuk’s books? Now it seems he is being condemned because he is not
Turkish enough (i.e. he is not a good Muslim, not a good Oriental).
Is Orhan Pamuk a European because he admires Dostoyevski? If one reads
a book written by Pamuk one will see that he does not choose between
east or west, between secularism or religion, between modernity or
tradition. Pamuk takes a close look at his surroundings and tries
to make sense of them by constructing a narrative with many layers
and voices.
As Margaret Atwood wrote in a review for The New York Review of Books
(Aug. 15, 2004): “Stories, Pamuk has hinted, create the world we
perceive: Instead of ‘I think, therefore I am’, a Pamuk character
might say, ‘I am because I narrate'”.
Pamuk wants to show us that our world is not a black-and-white world,
and if we picture it as black and white, not only will it not make
sense to us but it can also become a rather unlivable place.
Pamuk is Dostoyevskian in the sense that he tries to go beyond simple
representations, his narrations are inhabited by subjects like the
honest thief, the tender murderer and the superstitious atheist;
people are never just this or that, they are both and neither.
In response to the bloody situation in Iraq, Pamuk says in an interview
with Alexander Star (The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2004): “In my books
I have always looked for a sort of harmony between the so- called east
and west. In short, what I wrote in my books for years was misquoted,
and used as a sort of apology for what had been done. And what had
been done was a cruel thing.” And in response to 9/11 he writes
(The New York Review of Books, Nov. 15, 2001):”I am afraid that
self-satisfied and self-righteous Western nationalism will drive the
rest of the world into defiantly contending that two plus two equals
five, like Dostoyevski’s underground man, when he reacts against the
‘reasonable’ Western world.
“Nothing can fuel support for an ‘Islamist’ who throws nitric acid at
women’s faces so much as the West’s failure to understand the damned
of the world”.
Pamuk’s position is subtle, for example his novel Now carries an
epigraph from Dostoyevski’s novel The Brothers Karamazov: “Well,
then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent.
Because the European enlightenment is more important than people.”
This quote not only criticizes Turkey’s top-down modernization since
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), it also criticizes the way many
Europeans, for example the Somali-Dutch Ayaan Hirsi Ali, treat Muslims:
Modernization as such is more important than the lives of ordinary
people, but what is liberty without a life? Enlightenment cannot be
enforced, that is illiberal.
Pamuk infuriates Islamists and nationalists alike. Orhan Pamuk is
critical of Islamism, because it stifles freedom of thinking and
expression. Pamuk was also one of the first to speak up against the
Ayatollah Khomeini fatwa which ordered the murder of Salman Rushdie,
who was accused of blasphemy after publishing The Satanic Verses.
Pamuk was also recently one of the co-writers of an open letter to
the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, urging the release of scholar and
public intellectual Ramin Jahanbegloo, who is being held for having
contacts with foreigners.
Pamuk is also critical of nationalists and for the same reasons. He
gave an interview to the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger (Feb. 6, 2005)
in which he said that “thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians
were killed”. Pamuk is referring to the killings by Ottoman Empire
forces of Armenians during World War I.
Turkey does not deny the deaths, but denies that it was genocide,
i.e. according to a premeditated plan. Pamuk’s reference to 30,000
Kurdish deaths refers to those killed during the past two decades
in the conflict between Turkish forces and Kurdish separatists. In
Turkey, debate about this issue is stifled by stringent laws; therefore
Turkish history and identity are frozen.
Turkey should become a full member of the European Union soon, says
Pamuk. This must be possible because Turkey has long been a member
of NATO. It must be possible if the European Union stands for humanism.
But it becomes impossible if Europeans, out of fear of globalization,
deep- freeze an European identity as, for example, Christian.
But once again, Pamuk is no politician, nor is he an activist, he is
foremost a luminous artist. His books enlighten us on the difficulty of
forming an essential identity, to be someone; we are like the countries
we inhabit, i.e. complex and difficult to read. And Pamuk’s novel The
Black Book shows that to make sense of the world and ourselves the
reader has to become a writer. The clash of civilizations is simply
not an interesting narrative, it is far too colorless, and it is
about time to change that record.
Roy Voragen, Bandung The writer teaches philosophy at Parahyangan
Catholic University, Bandung, West Java, and can be contacted at
[email protected].

NAGORNO-KARABAKH TO HOLD REFERENDUM ON NEW CONSTITUTION
Agence France Presse — English
November 6, 2006 Monday 4:32 PM GMT
The disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh will hold a referendum next
month on its first ever constitution, the region’s ‘presidency’
said Monday.
The territory, whose self-declared independence is recognized by
no-one, has nonetheless organized three presidential elections and
four legislative votes since breaking away from Azerbaijan in 1991.
Now, the region’s largely Armenian population will cast their vote
December 10 on a proposed constitution already approved by Karabakh’s
national assembly.
The referendum coincides with the 15-year anniversary of the enclave’s
announced secession from Azerbaijan, which sparked a six-year war
between Baku and neighboring Armenia that caused tens of thousands
of casualties on both sides.
Despite a 1994 ceasefire, the status of the region — located 270
kilometers (170 miles) west of Baku — is unresolved, and the situation
remains tense.
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers failed to make a
breakthrough during October talks in Paris. They are scheduled to
meet again in Brussels this month.

CRITICAL EU REPORT RISKS FURTHER ALIENATING TURKS: ANALYSTS
by Hande Culpan
Agence France Presse — English
November 6, 2006 Monday
Turkey was Monday bracing for a critical report on its progress
towards joining the European Union which could further reduce the
Turkish public’s dwindling support and trust for the 25-nation bloc,
analysts said.
“We are past the point where the report will be perceived as it should
be,” Professor Dogu Ergil, an Ankara-based political analyst, told AFP.
“We are in a climate where Turkey feels besieged and the Turkish public
views every EU requirement as unreciprocated concessions and interprets
them as dishonesty and even ill-will on the EU’s part,” he said.
The sour mood clearly showed in a survey carried out by the A Institute
on September 23-24.
Only 32.2 percent of thoe 2,408 people questioned said Turkey should
join the EU while 25.6 percent said it should not.
In a survey by the same institute in 2004, 67.5 percent said Turkey
should definitely join the EU, while 57.4 percent expressed the same
view in a poll in September 2005.
Only 7.2 percent of those questioned in the latest opinion poll said
they trusted the EU, while 78.1 percent said they did not.
The report — to be issued Wednesday by the EU’s executive arm, the
European Comission — is likely to add to the disillusionment of the
Turks. It is expected to issue harsh criticism on several issues,
most notably the divided island of Cyprus.
Ankara is under pressure to open its ports and airports to vessels
from Cyprus, an EU member it does not recognize, under a customs
union agreement with the bloc.
But Turkey refuses to do so until the EU eases the international
isolation of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot community in northern
Cyprus, whose welfare has for years been a cornerstone of Turkish
foreign policy and whose plight is viewed by the Turkish public as a
“national cause”.
“The Cyprus issue has inevitably led to tension, with hardening
rhetoric on both sides,” Mehmet Ozcan, a senior researcher at the
Institute of International Strategic Studies here, told AFP.
“The Ankara government’s non-concessional attitude on Cyprus, in view
of upcoming presidential and general elections next year, has had a
direct affect on Turkish public support for EU,” he added.
The European Commission report is also likely to criticize Turkey
for failing to ensure freedom of expression by modifying or scrapping
Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code.
Dozens of writers and authors have been pursued by the courts under
Article 301, including 2006 Nobel literature prize winner Orhan
Pamuk. Most have been brought to court for remarks contesting Ankara’s
official line on the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians, which Turkey
categorically rejects as constituting genocide.
The Commission’s expected request to modify or scrap Article 301
comes amid moves in France to push through a law penalizing anyone
who denies that the killings constituted genocide and the removal of
Turkish-origin candidates from Dutch electoral lists for refusing to
recognize the massacres as genocide.
“The moves in France and the Netherlands have led to the impression
that even if Turkey fulfills all EU requirements, there is no guarantee
that it will become a member,” Ergil said.
Ozcan said the report’s expected criticism over Article 301 was
unlikely to go down well in Turkey due to the potentially explosive
nature of the Armenian question.
“The Turkish people cannot take any more,” he said.
According to press reports here, the European Commission report will
also chide Turkey on the slowing pace of reforms, the continuing
practice of torture and the military’s influence in politics.
Turkey began membership talks with the European Union last year amid
widespread skepticism as to whether the mainly Muslim nation of some
70 million people has a place in Europe.

TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX
Agence France Presse — English
November 6, 2006 Monday 10:17 AM GMT
Rankings of 163 nations studied by anti-corruption watchdog
Transparency International for its annual Corruption Perceptions Index,
released on Monday.
The index score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as
seen by business people and country analysts and ranges between zero,
which is highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.
Country, rank (score out of 10)
=1. Finland 9.6
=1. Iceland 9.6
=1. New Zealand 9.6
4. Denmark 9.5
5. Singapore 9.4
6. Sweden 9.2
7. Switzerland 9.1
8. Norway 8.8
=9. Australia 8.7
=9. Netherlands 8.7
=11. Austria 8.6
=11. Luxembourg 8.6
=11. United Kingdom 8.6
14. Canada 8.5
15. Hong Kong 8.3
16. Germany 8.0
17. Japan 7.6
= 18. France 7.4
= 18. Ireland 7.4
=20. Belgium 7.3
=20. Chile 7.3
=20. United States 7.3
23. Spain 6.8
=24. Barbados 6.7
=24. Estonia 6.7
=26. Macau 6.6
=26. Portugal 6.6
=28. Malta 6.4
=28. Slovenia 6.4
=28. Uruguay 6.4
31. UAE 6.2
=32. Bhutan 6.0
=32. Qatar 6.0
=34. Israel 5.9
=34. Taiwan 5.9
36. Bahrain 5.7
=37. Botswana 5.6
=37. Cyprus 5.6
39. Oman 5.4
40. Jordan 5.3
41. Hungary 5.2
=42. Mauritius 5.1
=42. South Korea 5.1
44. Malaysia 5.0
45. Italy 4.9
=46. Czech Republic 4.8
=46. Kuwait 4.8
=46. Lithuania 4.8
=49. Latvia 4.7
=49. Slovakia 4.7
=51. South Africa 4.6
=51. Tunisia 4.6
53. Dominica 4.5
54. Greece 4.4
=55. Costa Rica 4.1
=55. Namibia 4.1
=57. Bulgaria 4.0
=57. El Salvador 4.0
59. Colombia 3.9
60. Turkey 3.8
=61. Jamaica 3.7
=61. Poland 3.7
=63. Lebanon 3.6
=63. Seychelles 3.6
=63. Thailand 3.6
=66. Belize 3.5
=66. Cuba 3.5
=66. Grenada 3.5
69. Croatia 3.4
=70. Brazil 3.3
=70. China 3.3
=70. Egypt 3.3
=70. Ghana 3.3
=70. India 3.3
=70. Mexico 3.3
=70. Peru 3.3
=70. Saudi Arabia 3.3
=70. Senegal 3.3
=79. Burkina Faso 3.2
=79. Lesotho 3.2
=79. Moldova 3.2
=79. Morocco 3.2
=79. Trinidad and Tobago 3.22
=84. Algeria 3.1
=84. Madagascar 3.1
=84. Mauritania 3.1
=84. Panama 3.1
=84. Romania 3.1
=84. Sri Lanka 3.1
=90. Gabon 3.0
=90. Serbia 3.0
=90. Suriname 3.0
=93. Argentina 2.9
=93. Armenia 2.9
=93. Bosnia and Hercegovina 2.9
=93. Eritrea 2.9
=93. Syria 2.9
=93. Tanzania 2.9
=99. Dominican Republic 2.8
=99. Georgia 2.8
=99. Mali 2.8
=99. Mongolia 2.8
=99. Mozambique 2.8
=99. Ukraine 2.8
=105. Bolivia 2.7
=105. Iran 2.7
=105. Libya 2.7
=105. Macedonia 2.7
=105. Malawi 2.7
=105. Uganda 2.7
=111. Albania 2.6
=111. Guatemala 2.6
=111. Kazakhstan 2.6
=111. Laos 2.6
=111. Nicaragua 2.6
=111. Paraguay 2.6
=111. Timor-Leste 2.6
=111. Vietnam 2.6
=111. Yemen 2.6
=111. Zambia 2.6
=121. Benin 2.5
=121. Gambia 2.5
=121. Guyana 2.5
=121. Honduras 2.5
=121. Nepal 2.5
=121. Philippines 2.5
=121. Russia 2.5
=121. Rwanda 2.5
=121. Swaziland 2.5
=130. Azerbaijan 2.4
=130. Burundi 2.4
=130. Central African Republic 2.4
=130. Ethiopia 2.4
=130. Indonesia 2.4
=130. Papua New Guinea 2.4
=130. Togo 2.4
=130. Zimbabwe 2.4
=138. Cameroon 2.3
=138. Ecuador 2.3
=138. Niger 2.3
=138. Venezuela 2.3
=142. Angola 2.2
=142. Congo 2.2
=142. Kenya 2.2
=142. Kyrgyzstan 2.2
=142. Nigeria 2.2
=142. Pakistan 2.2
=142. Sierra Leone 2.2
=142. Tajikistan 2.2
=142. Turkmenistan 2.2
=151. Belarus 2.1
=151. Cambodia 2.1
=151. Ivory Coast 2.1
=151. Equatorial Guinea 2.1
=151. Uzbekistan 2.1
=156. Bangladesh 2.0
=156. Chad 2.0
=156. Democratic Republic of Congo 2.0
=156. Sudan 2.0
=160. Guinea 1.9
=160. Iraq 1.9
=160. Myanmar 1.9
163. Haiti 1.8
From: Baghdasarian

L’AZERBAïDJAN FACE AU DESASTRE CULTUREL
Le Temps, Suisse
4 novembre 2006
L’Unesco reste impuissante face a la nouvelle campagne que mène le
gouvernement azeri pour effacer toute trace de la culture armenienne
sur son sol.
En août 2005, l’informaticien ecossais Steven Sim entreprit un voyage
perilleux au Nakhitchevan, province de l’Azerbaïdjan enclavee entre
l’Armenie et l’Iran. Sur cette terre aride et grandiose, pratiquement
fermee aux etrangers, ce passionne d’architecture esperait visiter
plusieurs eglises armeniennes, dont certaines datent du XIIe siècle.
Mais ce qu’il trouva lui fit froid dans le dos: a la place des
monuments repertories voici une quinzaine d’annees, il ne restait
que des tas de gravats.
Le temoignage de Steven Sim a ete divulgue le mois dernier a Paris,
photos a l’appui: il apporte une nouvelle preuve de la campagne
menee par le gouvernement d’Azerbaïdjan pour effacer toute trace de
la culture armenienne sur son sol. Par son ampleur, cette destruction
methodique rappelle celle des bouddhas de Bamyan par le regime afghan
des talibans, en 2001, celle des monuments ottomans de Bosnie par les
Serbes, dans les annees 1990, ou celle, plus recente, de certaines
eglises serbes du Kosovo.
“Au Nakhitchevan, je suis alle voir les emplacements de huit eglises
armeniennes”, a explique Steven Sim au Temps. “Je me suis rendu sur
les sites, a present vides, de deux [eglises], et j’ai vu d’assez
près [les sites restants] pour etre a 100% certain que les six autres
n’existent plus.” Ainsi, le village d’Abrakounis, dans l’imposante
vallee du Yerndjak, possedait une eglise de 1381 ornee de fines
sculptures. A l’endroit meme où elle fut photographiee en 1990,
il n’y a plus qu’un terrain vague jonche d’eclats de briques.
Steven Sim, qui a fini par etre expulse du Nakhitchevan pour s’etre
montre trop curieux, craint que toutes les anciennes eglises de cette
province – leur nombre est evalue entre 59 et une centaine – n’aient
ete aneanties. Une video, prise en decembre 2005 depuis le territoire
iranien, renforce cette hypothèse: on y voit des soldats reduire en
miettes les croix gravees du cimetière medieval de Jughla, situe sur
la rive azerie du fleuve Araxe. Ce site, qui comptait quelque dix
mille stèles au debut du XXe siècle, a ete aplati au bulldozer et
transforme en terrain militaire.
Après la diffusion du film, le gouvernement d’Azerbaïdjan a reagi.
Une lettre envoyee au Temps par son ambassadeur a Paris affirme ainsi
que “le cimetière armenien de Jughla n’existe pas” et que les images
montrant la destruction des croix “ne permettent pas de localiser le
site photographie avec certitude”. Pourtant, au printemps dernier, une
delegation de parlementaires europeens s’est vu refuser l’autorisation
de se rendre sur place.
Malgre des demandes reiterees, l’ambassadeur n’a pas repondu aux
questions du Temps sur les destructions d’eglises denoncees par
Steven Sim. Le temoignage de ce dernier est certes “oriente”, puisque
le coût de son voyage au Nakhitchevan a ete pris en charge par une
organisation armenienne, mais, pour l’heure, les autorites de Bakou
n’ont pas pris la peine de le refuter.
Afin de contrer les accusations concernant le cimetière de Djougha,
l’Azerbaïdjan se dit victime d’une “campagne de propagande” menee par
l’Armenie et affirme que plus de cinq cents monuments azeris ont ete
detruits par les Armeniens. Les deux Etats se sont affrontes entre
1990 et 1994 pour la province azerie du Haut-Karabakh, actuellement
contrôlee par les Armeniens. Ils se livrent aujourd’hui une sorte de
guerre froide, marquee par des echanges de tirs episodiques.
Dans ce contexte tendu, l’influente diaspora armenienne mobilise
ses amis politiques en Occident. Le 17 octobre, deux parlementaires
suisses, le Vert genevois Ueli Leuenberger et le democrate-chretien
fribourgeois Dominique de Buman, ont conduit une delegation d’elus
de plusieurs pays au siège parisien de l’Unesco, division de l’ONU
chargee de la sauvegarde des monuments anciens.
Mais ils sont ressortis consternes de leur rencontre avec le directeur
general de l’organisation, Koïchiro Matsuura. “Nous ne sommes pas
du tout satisfaits, a declare Ueli Leuenberger a l’issue de la
reunion. On a l’impression que l’Unesco n’a rien fait face a ces
destructions. C’est incomprehensible.”
Car cela fait des mois, voire des annees, que l’organisation a
ete informee du desastre culturel en cours dans le Caucase. Il y
a six mois, ses fonctionnaires annoncaient l’envoi imminent d’une
“mission d’experts” sur place. Depuis, plus rien. “Si on devait
enqueter sur toutes les allegations de destructions de monuments
dans le monde, on aurait besoin de 5000 ou 10000 employes [il y en a
2160]”, expliquait au printemps dernier un cadre de l’organisation,
avec un melange d’amertume et de desinvolture.
Aujourd’hui, l’Unesco observe un mutisme complet sur la question des
monuments detruits au Nakhitchevan, et justifie son silence par de
mysterieux pourparlers diplomatiques en cours. Ses relations avec le
gouvernement d’Azerbaïdjan sont au beau fixe: le 19 octobre, a Paris,
la femme du president azeri Ilham Aliev a assiste a un concert donne
pour les 60 ans de l’Unesco sous le titre “Azerbaïdjan, carrefour
des civilisations et des cultures”.
–Boundary_(ID_/yuXdt6Tgcage+dYPT TWsw)–