EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICANEWS RELEASE
1 AMERICAN AVENUE
YEREVAN, ARMENIA
TELEPHONE (+374 10) 464700
FAX (+374 10) 464742
E-MAIL: [email protected]
September 1, 2006
There has been a great deal of media commentary in recent days about an
alleged tape that the U.S. Ambassador is said to have conveyed to President
Kocharian implicating a government minister for corruption. We are unaware
of the existence of any such tape, and have not conveyed any tape to the
President. We have a continuing dialogue with Armenian government officials
at many levels on the well-known problem of official corruption. When we
become aware of credible allegations of corruption, we of course convey this
information to appropriate Armenian officials at a high level. We strongly
urge Armenian officials to investigate and prosecute corruption allegations,
and especially those involving government ministers or other senior
officials. Armenia cannot develop into a fully successful democratic and
economically sound state without assurance of integrity at all levels of
government.

ITAR-TASS, Russia
Sept 2 2006
Nagorno-Karabakh marks 15th anniversary of independence

YEREVAN, September 2 (Itar-Tass) – Nagorno-Karabakh marks its 15th
anniversary of independence on Saturday.
Nagorno-Karabakh was founded on September 2, 1991.
`The declaration on Nagorno-Karabakh independence is a brave
political and legal act, which was adopted in compliance with the
fundamental norms of the Constitution of the former Soviet Union and
international law,’ Nagorno-Karabakh President Arkady Gukasyan said
in Stepanakert.
`Now our efforts are aimed to settle the conflict with Azerbaijan,’
Gukasyan said. In his view, `the settlement of the Karabakh conflict
is possible on the basis of mutual compromises. In order to reach any
compromise the leadership of both sides should show goodwill.’
Gukasyan confirmed that Karabakh is ready to hold a direct and
constructive dialogue with Azerbaijan without any preconditions.
`No one doubts that Nagorno-Karabakh became a real state,’ Abkhazian
President Sergei Bagapsh said in his greetings message.

Panorama.am
12:47 02/09/06

YOUTH CENTERS BUILT IN AKHALKALAK AND NINOTSMINDA
The construction of youth centers in Akhalkalak and
Ninotsminda implemented by the Georgian government
will finish later the deadline. A-Info reports that
some specialists had to come from Tbilisi as they were
not available in the region. The construction workers
promise that the youth centers will comply with
European standards. /Panorama.am/

Panorama.am
13:57 02/09/06

FEW ARMENIAN STUDENTS ACCEPTED AT UNIVERSITY IN AKHALTSKHA AND
AKHALKALAK, GEORGIA
Akhaltskha and Akhalkalak branches of Tbilisi State University (TSU)
finished their acceptance examinations this year. Despite of the fact
that the majority of population in the region is composed of
Armenians, only 14 Armenian applicants were accepted at TSU. Georgian
students from other regions make up the majority of accepted
applicants at the university. /Panorama.am/

Panorama.am
14:10 02/09/06

HOT WEATHER OF 40 DEGREES IN SEPTEMBER LAST SEEN 120 YEARS AGO
In Armenia hot weather of 39-40 degrees was last registered in
September 120 years ago, in 1886. The same high temperature will
continue until September 4, Anahit Khachikyan, employee of
hydrometallurgy and monitoring of environment told Panorama.am. In her
words, the temperature is above the norm by 1-2 degrees even at
nights. She made a forecast of cooler weather starting September 5.
Ambulance service report more emergency cases caused by hot weather,
especially for people with heart diseases. They advise not to let
children under the sun for a long time since children have
underdeveloped system of temperature regulation and may undergo
thermal shock. /Panorama.am/

Grand Forks Herald, ND
Sept 2 2006

Dunamalyan, Bronson begin practice
Dr. Natalya Bronson and Dr. Aida Dunamalyan recently completed UND’s
four-year psychiatry residency program in Fargo and have established
their practices at Prairie at St. John’s in Fargo.
Bronson, a native of Russia, earned her medical degree in 1980 and a
residency in 1982, both at Vladivostok State Medical University in
Vladivostok, Russia. She earned her doctoral degree in pediatrics at
the Russian State Medical University in Moscow in 1986. She began her
practice at Prairie at St. John’s in August.
Dunamalyan, a native of Armenia, earned her undergraduate degree at a
private educational institution in Armenia and her medical degree
from Yerevan State Medical University in Armenia in 1973. In 1987,
she earned the doctoral degree in cardiology from the Institute of
Cardiology in Armenia. She began her practice at Prairie at St.
John’s in September.

Gulf Times, Qatar
Sept 2 2006

Turkey seen getting EU thumbs down in reform
Published: Saturday, 2 September, 2006, 10:16 AM Doha Time

Rehn … due to meet Turkish officials for talks on Thursday
BRUSSELS: European Union lawmakers are set to approve a report
slamming the slow pace of reform in Turkey in the latest warning from
Brussels that the accession hopeful must do better.
A draft of the report to be voted on by the European Parliament’s
foreign affairs committee on Monday complains of insufficient
progress on freedom of expression and raises concerns over the lot of
religious minorities, corruption, and violence against women.
The report comes weeks before a crucial European Commission
assessment of Ankara’s reform efforts and follows a growing chorus of
concern from EU officials that Turkey has been dragging its heels
since opening entry talks last October.
`The European Parliament … regrets the slowing down of the reform
process,’ the draft report said, highlighting what it called
`persistent shortcomings’ across a range of areas.
`The report is a clear signal that if Turkey wants the process to be
successful, the speed of reforms must be increased,’ Camiel Eurlings,
the Dutch conservative charged with drafting the report, told
Reuters.
Eurlings, in a telephone interview from Istanbul on a trip to meet
religious minorities, urged the European Union’s Executive Commission
to put more pressure on Ankara by setting deadlines for reforms in
specific areas to be implemented.
Legally, the European Parliament must give its assent to any state
joining the bloc but has never sought to veto any past accession.
However, it has been effective in pressuring EU hopefuls to speed
reforms in previous enlargement rounds.
Ankara has denied that the pace of reform has slowed since last
October and has said it may call parliament back from its summer
recess two weeks early in mid-September to push through the latest
package of reforms.
The report praised recent acquittals of academics prosecuted for
`insulting Turkishness’ but cited concerns over cases such as that of
Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink, given a suspended six-month jail
term for remarks about claims that Ottoman Turkey committed genocide
against Armenians in World War I.
A forthcoming law aimed at protecting religious minorities did not go
far enough, the report added, whereas a law passed in June increasing
the number of crimes classified as terrorism could undermine recent
advances in human rights, it said.
Progress on reforms was lacking in other areas including
civil-military relations, law enforcement, women’s and trade union
rights and the independence of the judiciary, it said.
The report affirmed EU calls for Turkey to remove what could be the
main stumbling block in the talks this year, notably its refusal to
implement an agreement with the EU opening its sea and air ports to
Cypriot traffic.
The EU has warned that failure to implement the protocol this year
extending Turkey’s customs union with the EU to 10 new members could
jeopardise Turkey’s negotiations with the union.
EU officials from Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn down have warned
Ankara in recent weeks it needs to speed up efforts to meet EU
standards, particularly in areas such as freedom of expression and
combating violence against women.
Rehn is due to meet Turkish Economy Minister Ali Babacan, Ankara’s
chief EU negotiator, for talks in Brussels next Thursday.
Recent polls show not only that most Europeans are against the poor,
mainly Muslim country entering the bloc but that Turks themselves are
becoming increasingly disillusioned with the EU accession process,
seen taking over a decade. – Reuters

OhmyNews International, South Korea
Sept 3 2006
Fly the Flag for Martyrdom
[Opinion] As more terror arrests unfold in Britain, it’s time to
rethink this terrorism thing
The anti-terror raids continue in the United Kingdom. In barely two
weeks, close to 50 people have been detained, a few have been
released but many have already been charged under terrorism laws
passed after heated debate in the past year. It remains to be seen
what will become of the latest string of mass arrests.
If past experience is anything to go by, we should expect a raft of
commentary on the subject of terrorism reflecting the political
spectrum of views in the days to come. It appears though that, in
recent times, the venomous, usually violent and hysterical, attacks
on the Islamic faith in the wake of such events have waned, a
development for which we are all immensely thankful.
In many ways, the discussions of terror and its ramifications for
society have become a whole lot more cool-headed and encouragingly
plural in the diversity of opinions and remarks witnessed. But does
that mean it has become any more insightful, perceptive or rigorous?
I am afraid not. More and more the notion, preferred by the political
establishments of the leading Western nations, that terrorism is
wholly reactionary, that is: that its perpetrators are interested
only in rolling back winds of democracy now blowing across the Middle
East, sounds hollow to our ears, even mildly irritating. So also is
the assertion that the phenomenon is inspired by cultural conflict,
i.e. that Mr. or Mrs. Terrorist aims simply to “undermine our way of
life.”
But I reserve my deepest contempt for a thesis popularized years ago
to dignify despotic regimes in the so-called communist world, such as
the Khmer Rouge, by Noam Chomsky and kindred intellectual spirits,
and now resurrected to deal with the “novel” species of terrorist
action. This argument can be summarized as follows: “for all causes,
roots, motivations, means and goals of terrorism, look to the
‘foreign policy’ of the West.”
As applied to terrorism, I find this perspective one of the laziest
framework of analysis ever advanced for any phenomenon in the social
universe.
Surprisingly, the only rebuttal establishment figures seem to be able
to proffer is that terrorism “pre-dates the Iraq war,” or as British
Cabinet Secretaries are wont to put it: “9/11 happened before Iraq.”
As if “Iraq” or “Afghanistan” or indeed Palestine and Lebanon are the
only foreign policy issues someone bent on grievance can adjure for
the purpose of castigating “Western foreign policy.” Critics of the
West if they are so inclined can go as far back as the colonial era
to unearth samples of possible Western wrongdoing. With regards to
the United States, they can mention the support of the CIA for the
Shah of Iran’s less than saintly SAVAK, which dedicated to rooting
out communists introduced some of the elements of repressive rule
still in use by certain members of the Iranian security agencies.
They can point to corporations in Germany and France that helped
Saddam acquire his deadly biological and chemical warfare capacity,
and thus, at least, were complicit in the murder of all those Halabja
Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Iranian infantry. They can point to Britain’s
longstanding security alliances with several Gulf States and her
continuing efforts to arm the House of Saud.
If you want to find fault with the foreign policy of the West, you do
not need a PhD in international relations. It is a layman’s job.
The perversity of the logic which assumes for western foreign policy
the complete cause of terrorism lies, in actual fact, in its complete
“emptiness.” For a start, we have to admit that terrorism is not
limited to the Islamic variant. So that, Tamil suicide bombers cannot
possibly be reacting to “Western foreign policy.” Joseph Kony who
professes himself a Messiah of the Jungles is an obvious East African
terrorist whose appalling deeds can clearly not be linked to “Western
foreign policy.”
The Millenarian Japanese sect that poisoned the Tokyo subway had no
anti-western grievance to nurse, nor even a Western audience to
ponder the meaning of its acts. Having thus agreed that terrorism
across the world comes in different shapes and sizes, we are forced
to focus solely on Islamic terrorism to justify our stance that
Foreign policy is the causal agent in the dynamic of international
terrorism.
It is here that the logic completely falls apart. Why should it only
be “Western foreign policy”? Presumably, Russian foreign policy is
behind Chechnya? Indian foreign policy is behind Kashmir; and
Philippine foreign policy is behind the Abu Sayaf insurgency in the
southern archipelagoes, and its vicious manifestations in central
Manila? Yet all these nations will strongly protest that these issues
are matters of “domestic policy” and some will indeed balk at the
idea that some notion of “foreignness” is in operation.
Indeed, China, unlike Russia, so abhors that notion that the
Government simply refuses to acknowledge the possibility of foreign
influence on the Muslim Xingjian secessionists who have frequently
resorted to the deliberate civilian targeting we usually refer to as
“terrorism.” Malaysia, increasingly the target of South Asian
regional terrorist movements, often adopts the same insular approach.
Are we then to conclude that the “foreign policy” of every country,
in so far as it involves Muslims is likely to incur the wrath of
international terrorists regardless whether that country designates
the matter as internal or external? When faceless Islamists blow up
resorts in Egypt, Turkey or apartment buildings in Saudi Arabia, as
they invariably do, is it of any use to devise a long chain of causal
linkages until “Western foreign policy” is reached?
And even if we were to accept that logic, that international
terrorists will avenge the lives of any Muslims endangered by the
foreign policy of any country, in what category should we place
Darfur? Here, we have a supposedly Islamic regime that kills other
Muslims, admittedly of a different color, in their thousands. Where
are the bombs going off in Sudanese chanceries abroad? What happens
when different Islamic regimes clash? As was the case with Iran and
the Taliban? How does our international terror “foreign policy”
analysts determine their loyalties, and, even more crucially, how
does that translate into violent action abroad.
I find the whole scheme of argumentation ridiculous.
But perhaps, we can narrow it down further and speak precisely of
Western-born Muslims who participate in terrorist activities against
the West. Surely, I would agree that these people are “radicalized”
by “Western foreign policy”? Why else would they do what they do?
Surely, only a blind fool (where blind is metaphorical) will argue
that “Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and Lebanon” play no role in
the decisions these people make to commit mass murder?
Perhaps I am very thick, but I remain unconvinced. I still do not see
why it should be those particular contexts, alone, that trigger such
would-be terrorists. I am not persuaded that they cannot similarly be
enraged enough by the massacres, of Muslims, going in Darfur to mount
attacks on Sudanese Chanceries in Britain, Germany and France. Or on
the offices of the Arab League — which opposes international
peacekeeping missions to arrest the humanitarian disaster. After all,
have we not seen U.N. offices blown to smithereens in Iraq?
If these people are citizens of Western countries but identify so
strongly with Palestinians as to be willing to violently renounce
their citizenship in the cause of what, in any other circumstances,
will be a foreign pursuit, then I do not understand their
unwillingness to identify with any other cause save that cause is in
some way linked to “Western foreign policy.” After all, let’s bear in
mind that their motivation is to “avenge Muslim suffering.”
And yet, how many travel to Xingjian to fight the Han? How many are
flooding to Azerbaijan to confront the Armenian and how many to
Ethiopia to protest the latter’s incursions into Somalia?
But there are even lower depths of ludicrousness to which we can
sink. We can decide to ask why it is that only Muslims feel so
outraged by “Western foreign policy” to want to “do something about
it.” When France destroyed the Ivorien airforce for the alleged
killing of a French Soldier; when Britain descended upon Sierra Leone
to restore a an overthrown Government, when Australia backed the
Apartheid Regime of Botha in South Africa, when the United States
invaded Granada to thwart perceived Communist designs, when thousands
and thousands of Western foreign policy goals clashed with the views
of so many around the world, people naturally protested and in
certain parts of the world conflicts broke out.
Yet, African-Americans, Britons of Latin American origin and
Surinamese Dutch who invariably joined such protests often aligned
themselves with other civil society movements within their countries
of origin in the West. Is the Muslim case different? Is it a case of
Muslim identity, alone of all identities, superseding national
citizenship? If so, why?
And yet again, why should it be only specific “foreign policy”
issues? What about “world poverty,” “climate change,” “social
inequity,” “economic recessionism,” “the AIDS crisis”? Are these not
also concerns?
But even granting the dubious premise that Middle Eastern foreign
policy is of a different moral caliber, one is still at a loss why
every grievance must be directed at the West. What about such issues
as the plight of Palestinians in Arab refugee camps where they are
denied even the most basic of rights? What about the appalling
conditions in which foreign immigrants, many of them Pakistani
Muslims, live in Qatar and Dubai? What about the suppression of the
Shiite Muslim faiths, often so violently, in Sunni-dominated
countries, and of the Ahmadi and Sufi Muslim faiths in almost every
Middle-Eastern country?
When Muslim Kurds explode anti-personal bombs in Turkish resorts, are
we to twist our way backwards until we reach Kemal Atakurk and his
supposedly semi-Western reforms before having something meaningful to
say?
Do all these play as mush a part in radicalizing British and Spanish
Muslim youth as does Israeli projectiles in Qana?
I believe that the sooner we ditched this wholly worthless debate
about “foreign policy” and begun a more sophisticated dialogue the
better.
Terrorism is not an ideology. Terrorism is a political instrument
adopted by non-state actors to exert influence in a world in the
throes of techno-social transformation, where notions of state
monopoly over violence, resources and identity should have been
discredited long ago. The means to conduct terrorist action is the
only true determinant.
Those who have access to the infrastructure will use it because
terrorism is cost-efficient. It is symbolism, destruction, propaganda
and psychological warfare rolled into one. It impacts like a Frigate
mounted with radar-guided missiles at a tiny fraction of the cost.
Martyrdom-inspired terrorism is, of course, an advanced version, even
more potent. It leads its victims on the path of self-doubt, assuring
them that their cause –their will to resist — cannot possibly match
the martyr’s in moral power, nor can their claim to life contend with
the Martyr’s contempt of death. Remember how Khomeini withstood
Saddam, despite all the latter’s armament? He unleashed the Martyrs,
that’s how.
If we seek causes and roots, in my view not an entirely useful
exercise, then we should open our eyes to “structural” events
underway across the globe.
Stronger currents of globalization — long fanned by the Hajj and
other doctrinal injunctions — pervade the Islamic reality than it
does any other international social situation. That just-described
globalization implies a wider reach for Islamic political aims and
means. That is not an acknowledgement that the Islamic world has a
monopoly over grievance. Or that whatever ails the Middle East does
not ail other regions. The notion that the complex problems in this
part of the world — complex in the way that all international social
problems are — could all be wished away by the simply sanitization
of Western Foreign policy is as empty a plea as saying that we should
all simply stop being mean as a way of ushering in a new era of
universal peace.
As mentioned, Islam is cosmopolitan by its very nature, thus Muslim
grievances will be magnified beyond proportion by key actors in the
Islamic world, because they have the means to do so; and those that
desire to employ terrorism to further their political designs will
manage to do so much more easily than can your average anarchist in
Padova who similarly wants to blow up the world because (s)he is
repulsed by all the social inequity, greed and decadence currently
choking the planet. It is a question of infrastructure. It is a
question of the achievable. It is a question of politicking.
We should learn to see terrorism as a criminal enterprise and attack
it as ruthlessly as we will any other such criminal activity that has
the capacity to cause so much devastation. Else, we will soon
discover that groups, of all sorts, similarly claiming to hold some
grudge against East, West, North and/or South, are embarked
forcefully on the terrorism business, and succeeding mightily in
fueling useless disputes amongst their victims over their motives.
Terrorism is what it is; let’s deal with it.

UNPO, Netherlands
Sept 2 2006
Abkhazia: Echoing Kosova?
2006-09-01
Abkhazia’s case for independence from Georgia has echoes of Kosovo’s
from Serbia, reports Thomas de Waal from the Black Sea territory.
Below article, written by Thomas de Waal, was published by Open
Democracy on 10 May 2006, titled “Abkhazia’s dream of freedom”
“A mile from the Black Sea in central Abkhazia you can see the
crimson-and-mustard striped domes of New Athos, a grand 19th-century
monastery built at the height of the czarist empire. Nearby is a
green-roofed wooden building camouflaged by the bedraggled palm trees
into the hillside, a house that you would only spot if you knew it
was there. It is Joseph Stalin’s dacha – or rather one of them,
because this small strip of enchanted coastline was his favoured
holiday destination.
When I visited in February 2006, the dacha was shut up, but you could
peer through the crystal-paned windows to see a long oblong table and
sixteen chairs in a meeting room, a cinema booth with the reels of
film still stacked there and a billiard table with dusty white balls.
The rest of the grounds had gone to ruin as surely as Stalin’s Soviet
Union and we clambered through broken walls and decades of matted
leaves to an eyrie, where the generalissimo would have taken his
evening stroll and looked out across the Black Sea.
As I wandered round this forlorn estate, I wondered what the ghost of
Stalin would make of it. Not only has his superpower fallen apart,
but even tiny Abkhazia, his favourite holiday spot, is a destitute
territory detached from Georgia and outside international
jurisdiction.
Yet his affection was one of the reasons for the disaster that has
befallen Abkhazia. It was fated to be perhaps both the most
privileged and most cursed part of the Soviet Union. Privileged,
because everyone from Leon Trotsky to Mikhail Gorbachev, but
especially Stalin, came and rested here; cursed, because although the
Soviet elite loved Abkhazia it did not necessarily care about its
inhabitants.
A twilight country
Abkhazia was one of those once-cosmopolitan Soviet territories all
too vulnerable to the jealousies and rivalries produced by what Terry
Martin has called “the affirmative-action empire”. In the 1920s it
was a thoroughly multi-ethnic land with trading links across the
Black Sea, a thriving tobacco industry and Turkish the lingua franca.
The Abkhaz, who are ethnic kin of the Circassians of the north
Caucasus, were the largest ethnic group but not the majority.
By 1991 the Abkhaz comprised less than one fifth of the population,
thanks in large part to mass settlement by ethnic Georgians in the
mid-Soviet period, encouraged by Stalin and his chief Georgian
henchman, Lavrenti Beria. The Abkhaz resented the Georgianification
brought by the incomers, while the Georgians resented the way the
small “titular” minority dominated all major positions in the
republic.
That is all a distant memory. The Georgians are gone, driven out at
the end of the bitter war of 1992-93. Abkhazia’s population, once
half a million, is now less than half that. Sukhumi, once a city of
Greek tobacco-merchants, then of Georgian workers, is still
half-ruined, grass growing in the streets.
Abkhazia has become one of those twilight territories that exist on
the map and have a functioning government, parliament and press, but
are international pariahs, unrecognised, told by visiting dignitaries
that they are actually part of Georgia.
Yet virtually nothing is left to remind you of Georgia and the
younger generation does not even understand the Georgian language.
Instead the Russians have adopted Abkhazia and are gently annexing
it. The currency is the rouble, Moscow pays Russian pensions and
gives out Russian passports, the Russian tourists have started coming
back and Russian companies and ministries are renting out guest
houses and sanatoria. Above the resort town of Gagra stands the
elegant Armenia Sanatorium, an illustration of Abkhazia’s bizarre
history. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev got married here in 1992 – he
was part of the broad anti-Georgian alliance of Cossacks, north
Caucasians and Russian special forces that helped the Abkhaz – and
now the sanatorium is leased out to the Russian defence ministry.
Yet it would be a mistake, one most distant observers make, to regard
Abkhazia merely as some kind of rogue Russian puppet-state. In terms
of democracy and civil society, it is no more criminal or corrupt
than any other part of the Caucasus. Its black economy is more
developed because all transactions are done in cash, but it is also a
lot poorer so there is less to steal than in Georgia, Armenia or
Azerbaijan.
As for the Russians, the Abkhaz are Caucasians after all and know
their history, in which Russia has been the imperial overlord as much
as Georgia has. Most people are grateful that someone is restoring
their economy. But Abkhaz intellectuals are nagged by anxiety,
worrying that they have broken away from what the Soviet dissident
Andrei Sakharov called the “little empire” of Georgia only to be
swallowed up by a resurgent nationalist Russia that seeks to use
Abkhazia for its own ends in its efforts to humiliate pro-western
Georgia.
In a small but brave act of protest in October-December 2004, the
Abkhaz made it clear they were not Russian poodles. Moscow decided
that it wanted former prime minister Raul Khajimba to be the next
president and sent PR-experts, pop stars and Kremlin advisers to
Abkhazia to make sure he was safely elected. But the opposition
candidate, former energy boss Sergei Bagapsh, was declared the winner
of the election and fought a desperate battle to have the result
recognised. In the end, after weeks of failed intimidation and
bullying of the Abkhaz opposition, Moscow climbed down and Bagapsh
became president with Khajimba his vice-president.
Bagapsh was in genial form when I visited him. I believed him when he
said he bore no grudge against the Russian officials who had tried to
destroy him but now greeted him amiably as though nothing had
happened. Bigger things are on his mind. He wanted to talk about
Kosovo and its status talks, which are expected to lead to full
independence.
President Vladimir Putin had deftly stirred things up on 31 January
2006 when he said at a Kremlin press conference: “If someone believes
that Kosovo should be granted full independence as a state, then why
should we deny it to the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians?”
Bagapsh argued fiercely that where Kosovo should lead, Abkhazia
should follow. Bagapsh said: “If the issue of Kosovo is settled (in
favour of independence) let’s say, and not the issue of Abkhazia,
that is a policy purely of double standards.”
It is an argument to which I am quite sympathetic. The Abkhaz are
entitled to look around and see double standards: that the west wants
to “reward” Kosovo for its loyalty after the Nato intervention
against Slobodan Milosevic, while retaining a soft spot for Georgia
by insisting that its territorial integrity is inviolable. Yet if you
were on the receiving end of Georgian armed thugs threatening your
existence rather than Serbian armed thugs, that distinction seems
rather arbitrary. The two cases are certainly not so far apart to be
judged by entirely different standards.
That applies too to the counter-argument that Serbs or Georgians
might wish to make. There is also the matter of those refugees. The
Serbs comprised a far smaller proportion of the population of pre-war
Kosovo. Thousands of them have left. They are the ones who have the
right to set the Kosovo government an exam on whether it is fit to
become a proper sovereign state that looks after its minorities.
Sukhumi waits
In Abkhazia that exam would be even harder. True, some 40,000
Georgians have returned to the southern district of Gali inside
Abkhazia. But they live a precarious existence there, preyed on by
militias and gangsters – Georgian as well as Abkhaz – and vulnerable
to immediate expulsion should the Georgian-Abkhaz peace process break
down.
What about the remaining Georgians, I asked Bagapsh, estimated to be
up to a quarter of a million and comprising half Abkhazia’s pre-war
population? If you followed the Kosovo model to its logical
conclusion, then they should be allowed full right of return.
Naturally, the president replied that Abkhazia should get its
independence first, then invite the Georgians back. But he did at
least concede that “there are more obligations sometimes than
privileges” in being a sovereign state and that it was a tricky
process.
One thing is certain: there is something deeply unsatisfactory about
the intellectual framework around the “frozen conflicts” of the
Caucasus – Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The
unrecognised separatist territories are told that the Soviet borders
are inviolable and that in effect any moves they may make to
democratise themselves are irrelevant. The Kosovo process is useful
because it challenges those assumptions. Surely, now that the
precedent has been set, the debate has to be about democracy and
minority rights more than about territorial integrity.
I remembered what a Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian had said to me, a
question I found unanswerable at the time. “So we were inside
Azerbaijan for seventy years. How many years do we have to spend
outside Azerbaijan for the world to recognise that we have left them
behind for good – twenty, thirty, seventy?”
If the Abkhaz can put together a democratic case for greater
recognition by the outside world, I for one will be glad. And if
Stalin spins a little more in his grave on Red Square, so much the
better.”
Thomas de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting in London.

Ecumenical News International, Switzerland
Sept 2 2006
Israeli bombs united Christians, Muslims in Lebanon, says envoy
Peter Kenny and Stephen Brown
Geneva (ENI). Lebanon’s minister of culture, Tarek Mitri, says the 34
days of fierce fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah movement
forged unity between the country’s Muslims and Christians, despite
many people questioning why the war started.
“Lebanon is still besieged,” said Mitri, despite United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1701 passed on 12 August. “We hear every
day of new conditions that Israel is imposing,” said Mitri saying its
southern neighbour was refusing lift a blockade it imposed in early
July. This began after Lebanon-based Hezbollah seized two Israeli
soldiers and Israel replied with a month-long bombardment.
The Lebanese minister was speaking to journalists on 2 September
during a meeting of the central committee, or main governing body, of
the Geneva-based World Council of Churches where he was responsible
for Christian-Muslim dialogue from 1991 to 2005.
“Lebanon thinks of itself as a society that is tolerant, pluralistic
and democratic,” said Mitri, who represented his country as foreign
minister at the United Nations in New York in August, while the UN
Security Council resolution seeking a halt to fighting was being
hammered out.
Mitri said because he was dispatched to New York he was not able to
meet a WCC delegation that included a Roman Catholic bishop, which
travelled to Beirut, Jerusalem and Ramallah during the fighting. It
was under the leadership of the Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, who is
also the president of the Conference of European Churches.
Earlier in the week, de Clermont reported back to the WCC leaders
about the visit. “The unanimous message we received in Lebanon from
both the non-Christians and Christians whom we met, that a
democratic, multicultural and multi-confessional Lebanon is not only
possible, but is needed to guarantee peace throughout the Middle
East,” he said.
Addressing the WCC governing body, Mitri said the people of Lebanon
had drawn encouragement from the solidarity shown by groups like the
WCC.
“Some of you may have lived in areas that are besieged and the visit
of friends from different parts of the world is a gift from God,”
said Mitri appealing to the church grouping not only to help the flow
of humanitarian aid but also to pressure governments for the peace
process in the region to be resumed.
“Spare no effort as well to allow small countries such as Lebanon to
survive,” urged Mitri, who is a scholar of Christian-Muslim relations
published in Arabic, French and English. “That means pressure on
Israel.”
The first meeting in Geneva of the WCC’s main decision-making central
committee since it was elected in February in Brazil at a once every
seven year assembly, is paying special attention to the role that
churches can play in the Middle East.
And answering a question on how US denominations could help Lebanon,
Mitri said, “The American people in general and the churches in
particular have a real role in challenging the blanket demonisation
of people and religion in the name of the global war on terror.”
Mitri noted at his press conference there had been a history of good
relations between Christians and Muslims since the end of a civil war
during the 1970s, but there had not always been good relations
between religious communities.
“It is not religious wars that have divided us, but wars that divided
religious communities,” said Mitri who studied chemistry and
philosophy at the American University of Beirut and holds a social
science doctorate from the University of Paris-X.
Explaining the complexity of Lebanese politics, and the difficulty of
classifying religious identity, Mitri cited the fact that Hezbollah
has a parliamentary ally in Michel Aoun, a Christian Maronite general
during Lebanon’s 1970s civil war, who has the backing of many
Christians.
Mitri said of Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement: “The movement is not
particular friends of ours [the current Lebanese government].” But
its alliance with Hezbollah had helped ease political tensions
between Muslims and Christians, he noted.
During the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, Mitri said most of the
victims of the bombing of “150 000 homes” were Shiite Muslims. “Many
of them were welcomed in Christian houses and monasteries,” he said,
noting that, “in a fractured society like ours this is always a
pleasant surprise.”
:: Muslims and Muslim related groups make up almost 60 per cent of
Lebanon’s population. Shiite, Sunni, Druze, Isma’ilite, Alawite or
Nusayri are seen comprising this group. The 39 per cent of the
Lebanon population that is Christian is made up of Maronite
Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholics, Armenian Orthodox,
Syrian Catholics, Armenian Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Roman
Catholics, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Copts, and Protestants. Other
religious groups are believed to account for just over 1.3 per cent
of its population.
:: Under Lebanon’s laws; the president is required to be a Maronite
Christian; the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the
Parliament, a Shiite Muslim.