Arminfo, Yerevan, in Russian
16 Sep 06
REFERRAL TO UN TO SLOW DOWN KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS – ARMENIAN MINISTER
Yerevan, 16 September: The initiative of GUAM [Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova] to discuss “frozen” conflicts at the UN
General Assembly is a new challenge for Armenia, Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan told journalists after the annual meeting of
Armenian ambassadors today.
He said this initiative envisages some qualitative and quantitative
changes in the format of discussions on the problem. “We are not only
dealing with Azerbaijan here, but also with four different countries
which, in turn, have their friends, which expands the circule of
interests,” the Armenian foreign minister said.
He said that this requires more active diplomatic efforts. At the
same time, the minister pointed out that if a resolution is put up
for debate, Armenia will be able to achieve an acceptable
formulation. “But generally speaking, we think that this initiative
diverts attention from the main goal – the Minsk process, and might
even slows it down,” the minister said.
The minister added that there are serious prospects for a positive
result in the Minsk process. “Perhaps, this is the reason. The
pressure on Azerbaijan is growing, and they are trying to divert
attention. According to my impression from the latest meeting, what
the co-chairmen want is to ‘revive’ the document that is on the
negotiating table regarding which we had expressed our positive
opinion. In fact, Azerbaijan’s activity at the UN coincides with the
co-chairmen’s activity to ‘revive’ the document and achieve positive
changes by the end of the year,” the minister pointed out.
“If process is referred to the UN, Karabakh should definitely be
involved in it,” Oskanyan said.
[Passage omitted: Oskanyan spoke about the UN’s work and UN
resolutions on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict]

ANS TV, Baku, in Azeri
16 Sep 06
ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER REFUSES TO MEET AZERI COUNTERPART – AZERI TV
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan has refused to meet his
Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov.
In an interview with reporters, Oskanyan said the two ministers were
not planning to meet. The Armenian foreign minister said he viewed
individual meetings with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in the future
as more realistic.
Oskanyan said his failure to meet Mammadyarov was due to the UN
General Assembly putting frozen conflicts in GUAM [a regional
alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova] member states
on its agenda at the request of GUAM.
But Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has said Baku has no information
about this.
Mammadyarov and Oskanyan were scheduled to meet on 24-25 September.

The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
September 16, 2006 Saturday
The man of pleasure, the aristocrat and the belly-dancer
by Jane Stevenson
The Ruby in her Navel
by Barry Unsworth
336pp, Hamish Hamilton, pounds 17.99
T pounds 15.99 (plus pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4112
This lushly written novel is set in one of the most extraordinary
cultures ever to have existed, 12th-century Sicily. When the Normans,
those austere Christian descendants of the Vikings, went native in
the Mediterranean, they created a dazzlingly sophisticated hybrid
civilisation. Barry Unsworth’s evocation of this exquisite world of
perfumed silk, mosaics and tinkling fountains is a brilliant example
of the historical novelist’s art. Every detail carries conviction
but, far more importantly, what is going on in Thurstan Beauchamps’s
head is also perfectly realised. He is a product of a world in which
loyalty is a central virtue, knighthood is not a joke and the code of
courtly love still rules. He finds himself poised between two women,
the Norman aristocrat he has worshipped since childhood, and an
independent-minded Armenian belly-dancer; spiritual versus fleshly
love.
Or so he thinks. I do not want to give away the twists and turns of
this eminently well-plotted story, but in the course of the
narrative, all his faiths are tested, including his beliefs about
women. The novel is entirely successful as a romance, or a story
about growing up and growing out of unexamined assumptions. But
beneath the surface, some serious ideas are moving. Thurstan is the
king’s Purveyor of Pleasures. It is his job to find new sources of
entertainment and bring them to Palermo: a job that lends itself to
being combined with espionage and undercover activity. He works under
Yusuf ibn Mansur in the finance department, or diwan of control, for
Norman Sicily is a mixed culture of Normans, Byzantines, Arabs and
Jews.
In the 12th century, Western and Eastern Christendom had a heritage
of mutual suspicion, which arose partly from ideology and politics,
partly from fundamental cultural differences but, beyond that, Norman
Sicily was an experiment in Christian and Muslim coexistence. For
various reasons, Thurstan’s world was an irritant to both Eastern and
Western emperors, an experiment that many people wanted to see fail.
This was the era of the crusades, and King Roger’s realm was a direct
affront to the Christian fundamentalists from the West, who insisted
that Christians and Arabs were inescapably opposed, and any attempt
at dialogue was not only doomed, but damned.
There are lessons here for our own time, but Unsworth is not in the
business of big statements. He addresses the problem of a genuinely
multicultural society with subtlety, and asks the crucial question:
can people whose cultural heritage is completely different ever
really trust one another? Trust, not love, is at the heart of this
novel. Thurstan is trusted by Yusuf, and proud to be so trusted, but
Yusuf’s mind proceeds along different tracks from Thurstan’s; they
understand one another up to a point, but only by a continuous effort
of imagination, and there is much that Thurstan sees only when it is
too late. Content to serve his king, he fails to see the depths of
treachery and bad faith that surround the court at Palermo.
When the novel opens, Thurstan sees the royal household as something
that has risen above the petty strivings of ordinary mortals. To him,
King Roger is a remote and glorious figure. By the time his story
comes to an end, he has looked the king in the eye, and has come to
understand that the strife between nations is larger and more cruel
than that between factions within a society, but not intrinsically
different.
In an attempt to balance his various loyalties, Thurstan is driven to
commit gross injustice and to betray one of the people he holds most
dear. Ultimately, he has no choice but to walk away from everything
he has ever valued – though in the process, he must make another leap
of faith, in an unexpected direction. Love, trust and honour exist,
he finds; but not where he has been taught to look for them.

The Scotsman, UK
September 16, 2006, Saturday
Critique Edition
Burning Questions
WHY SHOULD SCOTLAND CARE ABOUT CENSORSHIP IN TURKEY?
THESE are tough times for freedom of speech in Turkey. Next week Elif
Shafak comes before the courts for writing a novel in which one
character makes a passing mention of Turkey’s role in the Armenian
massacres. A fortnight further on, and another best-selling Turkish
woman writer, Ipek Calislar, goes on trial for claiming that the
country’s founder, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, dressed up as a woman.
Well, that’s fair enough, isn’t it? You’d expect people to be a bit
upset if it turns out that he was a secret Eddie Izzard.
Don’t be stupid. And anyway, he wasn’t. All Ataturk did was escape a
besieged house by wearing a woman’s chador. It meant that he avoided
being assassinated in 1923. And all Mrs Calislar did was mention the
episode in her biography of Ataturk’s wife. The story came from an
eyewitness to Ataturk’s escape who told it to someone she
interviewed.
I don’t see what the problem is. It’s just like Bonnie Prince Charlie
dressing up as a woman to foil the redcoats. In any case, ingenuity,
resourcefulness and cunning are what you’d want to find in a leader,
aren’t they?
Turks don’t see it like that. They’ve been gradually shaving off bits
of their laws that Europe doesn’t like, but they’ve still got this
catch-all law banning anyone from “insulting Turkishness” –
everything from saying Turks massacred Armenians to insulting the
army, the judges, or Ataturk himself. Which is why there are 45
writers and journalists facing those kinds of trials right now.
I still don’t get it. If Turkey wants to join the European Union –
and I know most Turks do – all of this is going to be used as
evidence that it’s still not fit to do so. So who benefits from all
these cases?
Now you’re on to something. Suppose you are a Turkish nationalist
lawyer. The last thing you’d want would be to link up with Brussels,
lose your currency, standardise the laws, lose sovereignty to
Brussels – all the usual stuff. And you know just how badly putting a
heavily pregnant novelist like Elif Shafak on trial, or threatening a
historian with jail just for writing up historical evidence, will
play with the EU.
I’m starting to understand this. It’s like they’re using something
good to smash something they hate. They know how much Europe needs a
secular modern Muslim state right now, the kind of country in which
women writers aren’t silent and submissive but just as actively
involved in culture, politics and debate as they are here, and
they’ll do what they can to prevent it. And putting bestselling
writers – like Orhan Pamuk, earlier this year – on trial fits the
bill perfectly. They’ll probably argue that no-one gets hurt because
the verdict is usually a suspended sentence and thedemonstrations
outside and inside the courtroom make great propaganda. And they’ll
forget all about the stress it puts on the writers, and how Turkey’s
creative life is slowly being stifled in the process.
Got it in one. Cynical bastards, aren’t they?

Sunday Telegraph (Australia)
September 17, 2006 Sunday
Inside Entertainment Edition
Hotel a gem of colonial elegance
MATP
by LEAH CREIGHTON
There aren’t many places that make you feel like landed gentry in
shorts and thongs. The Eastern and Oriental Hotel, in Georgetown,
Penang, is one of those rare places.
It’s also an undisturbed portal back to a time of British colonial
elegance.
Built in 1885 by the Armenian Sarkies brothers, of Raffles Singapore
fame, the E&O quickly became one of the British Empire’s finest
hotels.
It boasted Moorish minarets, a spacious, domed lobby and ”the
longest seafront in the world”.
By 1927, the E&O was being advertised as ”The Premier Hotel East of
the Suez” — with more than a hundred rooms and hot and cold running
water.
Its guests included Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks and Hermann Hesse.
Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham are also reported to have
written extensively there.
Today’s Georgetown — sinking slowly into charming decrepitation —
is a strange
setting for the opulence of the Eastern and Oriental.
In its steaming, streaming streets, scores of hawkers, as sun-dried
as their wares, call out for custom.
Kerbside eateries hum with diners, and the aromas of roasted meats,
nuts and sweet ices curl into the humid and heavy air.
Gradually, like the intermittent rain that drenches you by degrees,
you feel a strength and pride in these people who have experienced
colonial rule and lived to tell the tale — in their own language,
and with their own leadership.
The Eastern and Oriental is one of the few reminders of this period
in Penang’s history. Like a slightly aloof matriarch, its imposing
white colonial facade stands just outside the bustling city centre.
Ushered inside by porters dressed in period safari suits and pith
helmets, you instantly morph into the era.
In a ballroom-sized reception hall, the immaculate customer manager
greets guests with a chilled martini glass of the fresh-fruitiest
cocktail that liquor never graced. (This, after all, is a Muslim
country, where drinking isn’t the norm.)
In the long, white-and-wooden hallways, etched with the heel marks of
a thousand guests, ornate ashtrays hold grey sand stamped with the
hotel’s initials. It’s meticulously restored after every extinguished
butt.
There’s soft music emanating from the pool area, and fresh violet
orchids are scattered around my waterfront room.
It’s filled with the sound of soft-slapping waves on the low-walled
walkway, where a lone antique cannon sits as a reminder of less
peaceful times.
There’s a parlour-sized bathroom with his-and-her areas and a
bacchanalian bath. This place feels six-star, without even having a
flat-screen TV.
A solid armoire from the 19th century dominates the bedroom. Behind
its thick doors, you can imagine lace petticoats beneath
whalebone-fortified skirts and pressed safari suits, redolent with
the smell of lavender, cigars and mothballs.
There are five eateries in the hotel, the most famous being Sarkies
Corner.
Each morning, Sarkies is decked in bone-white china and steaming
trays of Malaysian nasi goreng, Chinese yum cha, fried American
morsels, English teas and lots of Japanese delicacies.
* The writer was a guest of the Eastern and Oriental Hotel.
THE Eastern and Oriental Hotel isat 10 Lebuh Farquhar, Georgetown,
Penang, Malaysia;
Prices range from about $300 (850ringgits) a night for a doubledeluxe
suite up to $4200(12,000 ringgits) for theultimate E&Osuite.
Malaysian Airlines flies from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur twice aday, with
10 flights a day from Kuala Lumpur to Penang.

Les Echos , France
14 septembre 2006
L’Année de l’Arménie en France
Cinq cents manifestations mettant en valeur le patrimoine mais aussi
«la vitalité de la scène artistique contemporaine» arménienne, seront
organisées à Paris et en province dans le cadre de l’Année de
l’Arménie en France, du 21 septembre prochain au 14 juillet 2007.
Symboliquement, «Arménie mon amie» s’ouvrira le jour de la fête
nationale arménienne et s’achèvera celui de la fête nationale
française. Parmi les temps forts, le patrimoine sera à l’honneur,
avec l’exposition «Armenia sacra» au musée du Louvre, consacrée à
l’art chrétien des Arméniens, depuis leur conversion au début du IVe
siècle jusqu’au XIXe. Autre exposition, «Les douze capitales
d’Arménie», à la Conciergerie à Paris, sera articulée autour des
douze villes qui ont jalonné 3.000 ans d’histoire de l’Arménie. Une
exposition au musée Jean-Moulin à Paris rendra hommage à Missak
Manouchian, chef du groupe FTP (francs-tireurs partisans) de
l’«affiche rouge», exécuté en février 1944 par les nazis avec 22
autres résistants. D’autres expositions seront présentées à Marseille
(«Arménie, la magie de l’écrit»), Lyon («Ors et trésors d’Arménie»),
Faymoreau, en Vendée («Trésors d’Arménie») ou Strasbourg («30 livres
précieux de la bibliothèque nationale d’Erevan»).

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 17 2006
Vardan Oskanian: The Co-Chairs are aspiring to revive the Karabakh
settlement process
17.09.2006 16:24
During today’s meeting Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian and
heads of Armenian diplomatic corps discussed issues of countering the
new challenges our country faces, as well as questions of economy,
politics and transport. Reference was made to the GUAM initiative to
transfer the issue of frozen conflicts to UN General Assembly agenda.
In Vardan Oskanian’s words, inclusion of the question in the UN
agenda demands active diplomatic work from us.
`Azerbaijan’s efforts to transfer the Karabakh issue to the UN agenda
pursue the aim of diverting the attention from the Minsk Group
process,’ the Foreign Minister said. In his opinion, there are
positive prospects of achieving progress the OSCE framework.
`The Co-Chairs are aspiring to revive the document put on the table,
the principles of which are acceptable to us, RA Foreign Minister
stated.
Vardan Oskanian confirmed once again that in case Azerbaijan
transfers the Karabakh settlement process to the UN, Armenia will
stay evolved in the process but only together with Nagorno Karabakh.
Nevertheless, the Minister noted that the UN is not entitled to take
any decision.

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 15 2006
The US does not threaten, it just warns Armenia
15.09.2006 12:43
`We are actively working with RA Government and civil society to have
the upcoming elections be free and fair as possible,’ US Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State on Europe and Eurasia Matthew Bryza told
MEDIAMAX agency.
`I’m not about to come forth with any threats connected with the
Millennium Challenge Fund. However, the reality is that we take as a
basis the evaluations of the World Bank and the Freedom House. It is
theoretically possible that these evaluations will change if the
elections are too problematic and Armenia will no more correspond to
the Fund’s criteria. In this case we’ll be ready to suspend the
program. This is not a threat, I’m just establishing the fact. Out
objective is to do everything to avoid the slightest possibility of
this kind of scenario,’ Matthew Bryza said.

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 15 2006
The Karabakh conflict has no military solution, US Co-Chair of the
OSCE Minsk Group is confident
15.09.2006 12:20
US Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Matthew Bryza said in an
interview to MEDIAMAX agency that, `The statements in the region
should not include hatred or a threat of applying force, since the
Karabakh conflict has no military solution. This kind of solution
does not exist today. It will not exist in 10, 15, 30 or 50 years.’
Commenting on the mediators’ suggestion to hold a referendum in
Nagorno Karabakh, Matthew Bryza noted that the document including the
main principles includes the following terminology: referendum or
popular vote.
`Azerbaijan says that it means a popular vote and not a referendum,
referring to its Constitution, which says that all the citizens of
the country must participate in the referendum. In my opinion, the
Armenian side is not satisfied with this version, in case of which
the whole population of Azerbaijan will participate in the voting.
Thus, we must find a clever way and organize the voting process so
that it corresponds to the interests of both Armenia and Azerbaijan,
the US mediator said.

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 15 2006
Jacques Chirac to arrive in Armenia on an official visit
16.09.2006 12:34
September 29 The President of France Jacques Chirac will arrive in
Armenia on an official visit.
RA President’s Press Secretary Viktor Soghomonyan informed that
during the visit Presidents of Armenia and France Robert Kocharyan
and Jacques Chirac will have a meeting, following which the leaders
of the two countries will give a joint press conference. The
Presidents will participate the festive ceremony of opening the
Square of the French Republic in Yerevan and will attend Charles
Aznavour’s concert at the Republic Square.
In the framework of the visit Jacques Chirac will attend the Mother
See of Holy Echmiadzin and will have a meeting with the Catholicos of
All Armenians Garegin II. The French President will lay a wreath of
flowers at the memorial to the Armenian Genocide victims. The visit
will be completed on October 1.