ARTUR BROTHERS SHOULD BE ARRESTED IF THEY COME BACK, SAYS REPORT
Story by MUGUMO MUNENE
The Nation, Kenya
Aug. 30, 2006
If the bogus Armenian brothers return to the country, they should be
arrested and prosecuted for causing a security breach at Kenya’s main
airport, the Kiruki inquiry report suggests.
The list of offences they should be charged with includes assault,
creating disturbance in public, obstructing a customs officer on duty,
provoking members of the public by drawing guns and behaving in a
manner likely to cause a breach of peace.
Sources told the Nation yesterday that the commission believed that
there were other criminal offences that were possibly committed at
the Runda home of the Artur brothers.
These include robbery with violence, handling suspected stolen
property, possessing firearms without a certificate, forgery, holding
uncustomed goods, establishing radio communication without a licence
and fraudulent imitation of vehicle number plates.
According to government officials studying the document handed to
President Kibaki on Monday, the Kiruki commission also believed that
the brothers sought access to restricted areas in the airport to
enable them traffic in drugs.
The commission reportedly failed to unravel the identities of the
two brothers since they had been using stolen or fake travel documents.
The report falls in tandem with submissions by counsel assisting the
commission, Ms Dorcas Oduor, who said on the last day of the inquiry
that the brothers were international criminals who came to Kenya to
clean up illegal money.
According to investigations, Ms Oduor said, the Artur brothers engaged
only in cash transactions to disguise the suspect sources of their
money and to cloud possible investigations on their activities.
“We should not downplay the issues that have come out of the inquiry.
Tax evasion is a serious crime that is highly penalised in many
countries around the world. I can see a perfect case of money
laundering and the avoidance of Immigration laws. I can see a perfect
example of organised transnational crime,” said Ms Oduor.
Money laundering – taking money from crime and making it look clean
by putting it through a process that disguises its illegal origin – is
regarded as a serious crime in many countries but not under Kenyan law.
According to sources familiar with the report, Mr Artur Sargsyan –
the shorter and paler of the two brothers, the one who always wore
sunglasses, was a drug dealer who arrived in Kenya to find a safe
haven for his business. They were involved with a number of companies,
which were found to have engaged in a number of criminal activities.
The Kiruki team reportedly stated that it was difficult to establish
the exact business the Arturs were conducting in Kenya since they
had no offices, no bank accounts and no evidence of investment.
During the inquiry, the brothers were described as dubious
international criminals, undesirable characters and their criminal
activities during their nine-month stay in Kenya were exposed.
A shadowy identity, stolen cars, fake numbers plates, fake passports,
fake police identities, illicit firearms and ammunition, forgeries,
fraud, “outlandish and arrogant behaviour” described the character
and lifestyle of the Armenians as disclosed throughout the inquiry.
At one time, they even masqueraded as royalty, claiming that they were
from the monarchy in Armenia, a country which has not been ruled by
a queen or king for 1,500 years.
In her submissions, Ms Oduor said: “They had infiltrated many places
including the police and our security institutions. We should all
condemn their activities.”
However, the commission closed the public inquiry without taking
evidence from some business and social associates of the Artur brothers
and police officers who investigated them since March.
Police commissioner Hussein Ali who ordered the investigations in
March and suspended CID boss Joseph Kamau did not give evidence.
Neither did Nairobi CID boss Isaiah Osugo, detailed to investigate
the Arturs.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY BELONGS IN SYRIA
By Gabe Huck
National Catholic Reporter
Aug. 30, 2006
Mideast refugees find a home and haven in an unexpected place
We came back from 10 months in Damascus in mid-June and plan to
return to Syria early in September. When we speak about Syria with
small groups in homes or churches here these days, my wife always
makes a suggestion: Let’s start a movement to tow the Statue of
Liberty from the harbor in New York City to Syria’s Mediterranean
seaport at Latakia. That’s where it belongs if there’s anything at
all to this business about giving over “your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses.”
Just in these weeks we’ve been here in the United States, Syria has
again been the only place of refuge for the Lebanese whose homes
and jobs have been destroyed and whose lives have been endangered by
Israel’s air strikes. Even though Israel bombed the roads and bridges
that connect Beirut and Damascus, killing many, still hundreds of
thousands of Lebanese have gotten to the border. Did Syria have a
homeland security department there to decide who got in and who did
not? Did the refugees pass through any metal detector? I would be
surprised if anyone even asked them to put their meager baggage on
an x-ray belt.
Instead they probably heard: “Ahlan ou sahalan!” You are welcome! It
comes naturally to the lips of Syrians.
We have heard from friends in Damascus that public schools and other
institutions are being used to house these refugees. We have heard that
President Bashar al-Assad has asked households to open their doors
and give sanctuary to the stranger. One U.S. journalist suggested
this was a public relations move on Syria’s part. Some move. The
United States should hire that PR firm.
Americans should know that Syrians are good at this work of receiving
refugees. They have been practicing. If we go back a whole century,
we’ll find that Armenians were taken in. In 1948 and the years
following, tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israel’s seizure
of their homes and farms sought and received refuge in Syria. They and
their children and their children’s children are still there, unable
even to visit the land of their ancestors. The early Palestinian
camps in Damascus are now neighborhoods of four- and five-story
cinderblock apartments.
Then there are the Iraqis. As the U.S. occupation of Iraq grinds on
through its fourth year, more than half a million Iraqis have fled
to Syria and a like number to Jordan. Once again, Syria’s borders
were open. Iraqi children can enroll in Syrian schools. Iraqis
can seek work in an economy that already has much unemployment and
underemployment. Refugees do what refugees always do: find their
relatives, crowd into small apartments, find ways to earn enough
for dinner.
Syria and Jordan, two nations never mentioned among the big oil owners
of the Middle East, are the countries people go to for refuge.
Jordan, a U.S. ally, has grown stricter about who gets in and sends
some Iraqis back to Iraq. Syria has rules too, but the refugees seem
to stay on.
So who are these people who have been doing what the tall lady in
New York harbor used to do, opening that door? To start with, there
are only about 18 million Syrians. So go figure how many refugees the
United States would have to admit from Iraq to be in the same league
as Syria. The number comes to about 8 million, or a quarter of Iraq’s
population. But few of the refugees in Amman and in Damascus even
bother to apply for a visa of any kind to the United States. They
know the odds are overwhelmingly against their receiving even a
nonimmigrant visa, let alone an immigrant visa.
But wait, what about Iraqis still in Iraq? Don’t they apply at the
U.S. embassy there, now the largest embassy in the world we hear? No.
Iraqis are not allowed to apply for U.S. visas in Iraq. They must
make the dangerous journey to Amman or Damascus first. That in itself
determines that only a fraction of the Iraqis who take the Statue of
Liberty seriously ever get to apply for a U.S. visa.
And does the United States dare admit that Iraqis can be refugees at
all? What would that say about our invasion and occupation of Iraq?
But Syria, a nation somewhere near the bottom of the middle of the
heap — a Syrian uses in an average day about one-eighth the energy
allotted an American — still holds the gates open for Iraqis and
Lebanese. The United Nations gives some help too.
Americans today seem to have turned their back on the hospitality
they used to offer. They could do worse than to turn to Syria for
while a relatively poor country — and certainly an imperfect one in
many respects — Syria does a powerful amount of good to refugees in
desperate need.

DELEGATION OF INDIAN JEWELRY EXPORT PROMOTION COUNCIL TO TRAVEL TO YEREVAN
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Aug. 29, 2006
YEREVAN, August 29. /ARKA/. A delegation of Indian Council for
Precious Metals and Jewelry Export Promotion is to arrive in Yerevan
on Thursday. Armenian Trade and Economic Development Ministry’s press
office says Indian jewelry presentation will be held on August 31
in Yerevan.
A day later, on September 1, the delegation will meet Tigran Davtyan,
deputy minister, and Gagik Lazarian, the ministry official in charge
of precious stones and jewelry.
The ministry’s press report says the council is interested in
establishing business ties with former soviet republics.
The Indian delegation’s visit to Armenia is a part of its
South-Caucasian regional tour. The delegation is now in Azerbaijan
and on August 29 will head to Georgia and then to Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARF EXECUTIVE COUNCIL TO HOLD CONGRESS IN YEREVAN ON SEPT 7, 2006
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Aug. 29, 2006
YEREVAN, August 29. /ARKA/. The Executive Council of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF) “Dashnaktsutyun” is to hold its
10th congress in Yerevan on September 7, 2006, the head of the ARF
parliamentary faction Hrair Karapetyan told reporters.
According to him, the ARF “Dashnaktsutyun” has always been a party
directed by a collective body.
“It is the Executive Council’s congress that will settle all the
principal issues facing the party as well as determine its expectations
and policy,” he said.
Karapetyan pointed out that the congress will determine the party’s
strategy during the preparations for the parliamentary elections
scheduled for spring 2007.
The ARF “Dashnakstutyun” is one of the oldest political parties on
Armenia. It was founded in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia, in 1890.
The party has over 6,000 members in Armenia, exclusive of women’s
organizations and youth unions. The party has chapters in all
Armenians regions and in most Armenian communities. The ARF has 12
representatives to Armenia’s Parliament and four ministerial posts.
After the 2003 parliamentary elections the ARF Dashnaktsutyun,
Republican Party of Armenia and the Law-Governed Country Party formed
the ruling coalition. However, this May the Law-Governed Country
Party announced its secession from the coalition due to political
disagreements with the other coalition members.

ARMENIANS BID FAREWELL TO RENOWNED POETESS
By Gayane Danielian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Aug. 29, 2006
Thousands of people gathered near the Opera House in Yerevan on Tuesday
to attend the funeral of famous poetess and outstanding public figure
Silva Kaputikian.
Many of admirers of her poetry, among them thousands of ordinary
people, Diaspora Armenians, as well as politicians, came to bid
farewell to the women on the poetry of which generations of Armenians
were raised both in Armenia and abroad.
The funeral was organized by a government-appointed commission led
by Prime Minister Andranik Markarian.
“It is a great loss not only for our literature, but also for the
people. An intellectual who left us precepts about our fatherland,
language, about national values died,” Markarian said in his speech
at the funeral.
The poetess, who died last Friday, at the age of 87, is known for her
active civil position both in the communist times when she was in the
forefront of the Karabakh movement and also in the post-independence
years when, as her friends and colleagues say, she was not afraid
to raise a voice of protest against what she considered to be unjust
and unfair.
Kaputikian returned the Mesrop Mashtots Order she received from
the state for her merits as a poetess and public figure after the
authorities used violence against peaceful demonstrators in April 2004.
“When such people leave our lives, it is a loss for the entire
nation. And today I want to express my condolences to the whole
nation,” Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosian said about the poetess.
Head of the National Assembly’s Standing Commission on Science,
Education and Culture Affairs Hranush Hakobian said Kaputikian will
stay in the memory of Armenians as their national poetess. “She lived
a glorious life and the state and the nation is saying good-bye to
her in a solemn way,” she said.
His Holiness Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II was also among
those who came to bid farewell to Kaputikian.
When the coffin with Kaputikian’s body was to be placed onto a
catafalque on Abovian Street, a group of people volunteered to carry
‘the great daughter of the nation’ to the cemetery on their shoulders,
and they led the procession for about two kilometers to the Komitas
Pantheon where Kaputikian was buried next to great Armenian composer
Aram Khachatrian.

ETHNIC AZERI ACTIVIST SAYS FOREIGN SERVICES BEHIND REPORTED TROUBLE IN GEORGIA
Ekho, Baku
26 Aug 06
A leading member of an Azeri ethnic body in Georgia is perplexed
about recent unconfirmed media reports about a campaign by the
Georgian authorities against ethnic Azerbaijanis. In an interview
with Ekho newspaper, Zumrud Qurbanov said it was probable that the
foreign services of a number of countries were behind the recent
trouble in Kvemo Kartli Province and it is high time the Georgian
authorities expressed their view on the matter. The following are
excerpts from R.Orucov’s report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 26
August headlined “Who is stirring up trouble? Georgian Azerbaijanis
are lost in conjectures and official Tbilisi simply keeps silent”;
subheadings have been inserted editorially:
With some strange regularity more and more blatantly false reports have
been appearing in the local media recently about incidents allegedly
happening in eastern Georgia, in Kvemo Kartli Province which is
populated primarily by Azerbaijanis. The original information, as a
rule, comes from Baku, then it creates a natural stir in Georgia, and
finally, without being backed up by any facts, is somehow forgotten.
[Passage omitted: reports in Regnum agency about arrests of members
of National Assembly of Azerbaijanis of Georgia which turned out to
be false]
Yesterday, Ekho asked an inhabitant of Marneulskiy District, a
former Georgian MP and member of the board of the Qeyrat [Honour]
National Movement of Georgian Azerbaijanis, Zumrud Qurbanov, to give
his assessment of these events.
Insulting leaflets distributed
“To start with, all the cards have become shuffled, in the sense that
much is being hyped up. All kinds of factitious forces have joined
in the Georgian political game, and at times like these it is very
difficult to sort out what is the truth and what isn’t. Take a recent
incident when leaflets with an insulting content were distributed
en masse in our district. They carried the words: ‘Tatrebo (Tatars –
author’s note), the land is ours. You were warned in 1991 – Georgia for
the Georgians.’ These fliers were circulated around Marneuli, during
the night in 10-15 villages, and no-one noticed anybody. This is very
strange. Is someone carrying out somebody’s orders? After all, if these
actions are not being done openly, not by definite political forces,
and at the same time various statements are being heard from public
platforms, the people are at a loss to know where an attack might
come from, whether is it worth worrying about it, or whether it is
serious or not. Let us try and work out who is benefiting by all this.
“If one proceeds from the AzTV version, it is the Armenians who are
behind this. But I live here and I can see this is not the work
of Armenians. They are not interested in coming to Kvemo Kartli,
where none of them live, to set Azerbaijanis against Georgians. And,
incidentally, the Armenian media in Georgia has never paid any
attention to this, especially as Armeniaphobia has been spread among
the Georgians themselves.
“Of course, it is easy for the Azerbaijani and Georgian leadership
to attribute all these incidents to an Armenian trace. This helps
them to maintain political and economic relations at the present
level. In the past 15 years hundreds of interviews have appeared in
which Azeri and Georgian politicians accuse the Armenians alone of
all the sins of Kvemo Kartli. But if this is the case, then why in all
these years have they been unable to find a single Armenian who could
be accused of such actions? Where then are the authorities, where are
the special services? This is a very important question. I do not rule
out that these might be Armenians, but why then are the Georgian and
Azerbaijani special services not working together on this question?
Foreign services behind trouble
“On the other hand, Russia, too, has always been named as the third
force.
We all know that there are certain problems at the moment between
Georgia and Russia, and Russia has a vested interest in destabilizing
the situation in Georgia. Let us suppose that Moscow wants to create
the same tension in Akhalkalaki and Kvemo Kartli as in Abkhazia
and South Ossetia. But if the Russians are behind this, that means
some people here are working for their special services. Why, then,
has not a single case of the participation of the Russian special
services in these activities been proved based on the facts? Why is
nothing being done at all and all we get is empty statements?
“In other words, it cannot be ruled out that the special services of
various states are operating in Georgia today, and there are local
people who are serving the interests of different states. These
could be Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, and so on. For example,
instability in Georgia is of no benefit to Azerbaijan, since it is a
strategic partner for Baku, and it is important that everything here
is stable and normal. But then Azerbaijan must work side by side with
Georgia in all crimes against the Azeris.
“One thing is clear – some people are trying to exacerbate the
situation in Kvemo Kartli and to use it either against the state or
against the present government. But it is also perfectly possible
that this is being done not from outside but from within, simply to
give an impression that somebody is heating up the situation – in
other words, by the state itself. Here we have thousands of leaflets
being distributed surprisingly quickly and unnoticed.
“This caused excitement among the Azeris. If the government was
concerned, it would have immediately made a political statement about
it. But neither the country’s leadership nor the province has expressed
any opinion about what happened, and they could have reassured the
people and told them where they stood on it.
“But everyone is keeping silent. And people are starting to say that
it is not only external forces, but also the country’s authorities who
are benefiting from this. There are also Azeri emigres from Georgia
who are living in Russia and writing articles in which they sharply
and wrongly criticize the Georgian authorities, accusing them of things
that are not happening or which are not important (although there are
things which the authorities should be criticized for). And I have a
feeling that these people are operating artificially, again one does
not know on whose orders, so that in the future, when the Azeris have
a real problem, nobody pays any attention to our complaints and does
not take us seriously. Recently these people have been saying that
they killed some Azeris in Marneuli or they beat up some people and
detained them and their newspapers. But when one starts investigating
the facts, one suddenly discovers that one person was killed in an
accident, or something like that.
One gets as far as the deputy Interior Minister and finds out that
nobody of that name has been arrested.
“These people should be putting their questions in another way –
for example, why, when the Azeris are being treated unfairly, is not
one single investigation taken to its conclusion and it drags out for
years? It is not the Russians who are behind all this but some kind
of local forces who offend the Azeris when they feel like it and try
to portray us as professional swindlers.
All this is being done artificially. I would even suggest that it is
the Georgian special services, who have been given the task to prove to
everyone that there are no problems among the Georgian Azerbaijanis,
who are behind all this. Therefore, I think that the intelligence and
special services of many different states in the region, including
Georgian, are mixed up in all of this.
It may even be that they are working together on some issues. And by
the way, according to Georgian official data, 119,000 Azeris have
left Kvemo Kartli and the country as a whole for good in the past
ten years. This is 70-80 per cent of the overall number of people
who have left here. And nobody gives this a thought.”
Azerbaijani MP and a member of the interparliamentary group of
friendship between Georgia and Azerbaijan, Nasib Nasibli, found it
difficult to say who might be behind all the intrigues and provocations
of the past month in Kvemo Kartli.
“We want to know what is the official attitude of the Georgian
authorities to all this – how do they explain such incidents? But,
in theory, there are those who want the Azeris to quit Georgia. And
having followed all this for ten years, I believe there are certain
forces of a chauvinist hue in Georgia who are putting pressure on
the Azeris. That is a fact. On the other hand, theoretically, Russia,
too, has a vested interest in a pocket of tension being created there,
because of their relations with Georgia. It is a pity that we do not
hear anything from representatives of the Georgian leadership about
all this,” Nasibli said.

EU NEIGHBOURS DRIFTING INTO WAR, BRUSSELS WARNS
By Andrew Rettman
EUobserver.com, Belgium
Aug. 29, 2006
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Brussels has voiced alarm at the mounting
risk of open warfare in the EU’s southeast neighbours – Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan – amid European plans to sign new cooperation
pacts and build new pipelines in the region.
“Negative trends are coming together, the combination of which
is, frankly, alarming,” external relations commissioner Benita
Ferrero-Waldner said at an experts’ forum in Slovenia on Monday
(28 August), citing a recent upswing in aggressive rhetoric and
arms spending.
“Defence spending is going through the roof,” she stated, adding
“there is a serious danger of the rhetoric lowering the threshold
for war” in reference to the so-called “frozen conflicts” of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.
The three regions tore away from Georgia and Azerbaijan in three
separate conflicts in the early 1990s which together claimed some
35,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands before the various
warring parties ceased fire after reaching tense impasses.
Local diplomats say potshots are still exchanged “daily” on the
Nagorno-Karabakh border and “monthly” on the borders of the Georgian
territories, with one woman shot dead in fighting between Georgian
troops and Abkhazian separatists in the Kodori Gorge in July.
The International Crisis Group’s (ICG) Europe director, Nicholas Whyte,
shared Ms Ferrero-Waldner’s analysis, saying “That’s an extremely
reasonable concern…they are preparing for war.”
He cited potential Georgian military aggression in Abkhazia and
potential Azeri aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh as the most likely
threats to peace in the short term.
Preparing for war Georgia’s military budget proportionally increased
faster than any other country’s in the world last year, he stated,
while Azerbaijan has boasted that its military budget in 2007 will be
the size of the total budget of Armenia – its main aggressor in the
conflict over the ethnic-Armenian dominated Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Georgian and Azerbaijani diplomats in Brussels both say they
are committed to diplomatic conflict resolution under the various
multinational formats at work in the region, but Tbilisi sees Abkhazia
and South Ossetia as Russian-run mafia enclaves while Baku makes no
secret of its growing impatience with the status quo.
“[Displaced] Azerbaijani people have been waiting for the liberation
of the occupied territories, to return to their occupied lands for
15 years,” an Azeri diplomat told EUobserver. “It’s ridiculous to
wait for ever, to stand and do nothing.”
Russia is an added complicating factor in the region, with between
2,000 and 3,000 Russian “peacekeeping” troops stationed in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia as well as significant numbers in Armenia, with Moscow
issuing thousands of Russian passports to the Georgian separatists.
If fighting breaks out, the ICG’s Mr Whyte believes both Georgia and
Azerbaijan “are underestimating” the severity of the international
and Russian reaction, with Baku also underestimating the tactical
defensibility of Nagorno-Karabakh by an inferior force.
EU goals at risk Ms Ferrero-Waldner is planning to visit the region
in October to sign political and economic “action plans” for closer
EU integration, with the Georgian and Armenian action plan texts set
to “take note that [these countries] have expressed their European
aspirations” for future EU membership.
The texts are also set to give Georgia and Armenia the option to
formally “align themselves” with “some” future EU statements on common
foreign and security policy topics.
But the EU commissioner warned that sepratism could derail the
integration process, saying on 28 August that “the most important
impediments to the region’s development are the frozen conflicts.”
South Caucasus is strategically important to the EU, with Azerbaijani
oil already flowing from Baku via Georgia and Turkey to Europe
through the so-called BCT pipeline, and with plans afoot for major
gas pipelines to the EU from the Caspian Sea basin in the next five
to ten years.
Western analysts agree that the energy income to supplier state
Azerbaijan and transit state Georgia is helping to buy extra arms
and creating a bullish atmosphere however. “Oil is not helping to
lubricate conflict resolution,” Mr Whyte said.

AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTERS FAIL TO MEET IN SLOVENIA
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Aug. 29, 2006
Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers Elmar Mammadyarov and Vardan
Oskanian, who were attending the Caspian outlook-2008 international
conference in Slovenia, did not have negotiations for the settlement
of the Nagorno Garabagh conflict.
The Ministry told the APA it was due to co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk
Group Bernard Fassier (France) and Yuri Merzlyakov (Russia) not being
in Ljubljana.
Though Matthew Bryza, deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs & US co-chair of the Minsk Group, which is
mediating in the settlement of the conflict, attended the international
conference, he did not offer the foreign ministers to meet.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Taghizadeh told the APA Elmar
Mammadyarov is reported to have met with Matthew Bryza on the very day
he arrived in Slovenia and discussed the settlement of the conflict.
Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers are expected to continue
the negotiations within the Prague process in a European country in
mid September this year.

3 QUESTIONS WITH LEBANESE ARMENIAN SINGER NOURHANE
By Sherif Awad
Egypt Today, Egypt
Aug. 29, 2006
Nourhane and her passion for change
Lebanese Armenian singer Nourhane received the award for Best Young
Female Artist’s Voice for her latest video clip, Men Zaman(Long Time
Ago) at the 6th International Oscar Video Clip Festival that took
place in Cairo this past August.
In this clip, directed by Elie F. Habib and written and composed by
Marwan Khoury, Nourhane is a desperate lover who tries to warn her
man of an unknown danger, while in her first clip, “Habibi ya
Einy” (My Love, My Dear), directed by Walid Nassif, she portrayed
a woman able to turn the dullness of any place into a lively show.
Her second clip, Shaklo Keif saw Nourhane lead a feminist revolution
against her lover, throwing vegetables at his new car, ultimately
forcing him to raise the white flag.
Nourhane spoke last month with Contributing Writer Nadine Emile:
NOURHANE ON HER PASSION FOR CHANGE: Of course it is better for the
artist to be different, because not all the people have the same
tastes. For example, there are people who loved me in “Habibi
Ya Eini,” others in “Shaklo Keif,” and others were
crazy about my character in “Men Zaman.” The clip that
I am now in the process of making will have a completely different
character from all the ones I have made before. This clip is called
“Tab Wana Mali” — it’s an old folkloric song from
the movie Beyn El-Kasreyn (Palace Walk) by Naguib Mahfouz, and I
took the song and made a remix. I will shoot it in Egypt You know,
I was watching the movie and I really loved the song, that’s
why I decided that I wanted to do it.
ON SNUBBING BIG PRODUCTION COMPANIES: If I am going to be an artist
in these big companies just as a filling spot, then I do not want to.
I am more comfortable and happy this way — I’m in the
beginning of my career and I have the freedom to present my clips
or album in the time that I find suitable. But if there is a company
that will use me as a star, of course I can consider it.
ON THE PRICE OF SUCCESS: I don’t have the privacy I used to
have. My friends love to stay out late at night partying, I love that,
but I can’t. Still, it doesn’t matter ’cause my aim in
the end is to be a famous artist, so I gave it priority in my life.
photo at 020

COE TO REALIZE SERIES OF PROJECTS IN AZERBAIJAN FOR DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
Author: S.Agayeva
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Aug. 29, 2006
The Council of Europe (CE) intends to implement a series of projects
in Azerbaijan directed towards developing intercultural dialogue,
the representative of the CE Department on Protection of Cultural
Heritage Fransuaza Kondol told on August 29 in Baku during the
presentation of the project of tourism route “Aleksandr Duma in
Caucasus”, Trend reports.
The project has been created with the initiative of the Ministry of
Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan and supported by the CE Supervisory
Cultural Committee. Both sides consider that the project will serve
mutual understanding and mutual support between nations, development
of intercultural dialogue, as well as propaganda of the cultural
heritage of Caucasian nations.
Azerbaijan is interested in further development of the co-operation
with CE in the protection of cultural heritage, development of
intercultural dialogue with European nations, Deputy Minister of
Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan Sevda Mammadaliyeva said during the
presentation. In her opinion, this project will open the Caucasian
culture to Europe.
Also, the Deputy Minister voiced her concerns about the existence
of many military conflicts in Caucasus. She stressed that the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the territory of Azerbaijan and the
separatist conflicts in the Georgian territory impose serious obstacles
for the realization of such projects.
Besides, the presentation was attended by the representatives of the
Ministries of Culture and Tourism of Georgia, Dagestan, as well as
cultural attaches of the Russian and French Embassies in Azerbaijan.