Ottawa Citizen, Canada
July 15, 2006 Saturday
Final Edition
A new Silk Road, or just a pipe dream?
Many believe the $4-billion BTC oil pipeline, meandering from
Azerbaijan to Turkey, may be the area’s salvation. Others, though,
suggest it is just another door leading to violence.
by Charles Enman, The Ottawa Citizen
It seemed like such a madcap scheme, the fodder for foolish spy movies
— building a 1,770-kilometre oil pipeline through land threatened
by earthquakes, political instability, geopolitical rivalries, and
even war. So, of the BTC pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan on the
Caspian Sea all the way to a Mediterranean seaport in Turkey, we may
say two things.
First, it did become fodder for a spy flick, the 1999 James Bond film,
The World Is Not Enough.
And second, it stepped magisterially from celluloid fantasy into
reality. After a three-year, $4-billion construction effort, the BTC
pipeline was opened officially only last Thursday.
Only the Druzhba pipeline from Russia to Europe is longer.
The pipeline takes its name from its route, beginning near Baku, the
capital of Azerbaijan, and running east and a bit north to Tbilisi,
the capital of Georgia, and finally meandering down to Ceyhan, on
Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.
It is an understatement to call this route something less than direct.
The shortest route to a seaport would be through Iran, but that
country, considered unreliable in many Western forums, was never
seriously considered.
To go directly west would take the pipeline through Armenia, which is
still technically at war with Azerbaijan on account of its occupation,
since the early 1990s, of Nagorno-Karabakh and several adjoining
regions of Azerbaijan. No go, in other words.
One could have chosen a northern route up to the Druzhba pipeline,
but that would leave transport of Caspian oil to Europe partly up to
the whims of Moscow, a possibility craved by none of the project’s
partners.
One of the driving forces behind the pipeline’s construction was the
late Haydar Aliyev, who led Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003. He came into
office when Azerbaijan was still suffering the political and economic
tumult that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union late in 1991.
Azerbaijan has huge offshore oil reserves in the Caspian Sea, and Mr.
Aliyev was canny at luring international oil companies in to exploit
them.
In the BTC project, British Petroleum became the lead partner, with
30.1 per cent of the shares, followed by Azerbaijan’s oil group Socar,
which holds 25 per cent. Other partners include American company
Unocal (8.9 per cent), Norway’s Statoil (8.71 per cent), Turkey’s TPAO
(6.53 per cent), and other companies from Italy, France and Japan.
There were many hesitations before proceeding. Four billion dollars
is no small sum, after all. For years, many referred to the project as
“the pipeline to nowhere.”
But oil prices in the neighbourhood of $70 per barrel have wonderful
levitating effects on the spirit, and one can be sure there were
smiles all around as Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Georgian
President Mikhail Saakashvili, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and
Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, and officials from 30 other countries,
inaugurated the pipeline in Ceyhan on Thursday.
Mr. Erdogan pronounced the pipeline “the Silk Road of the 21st
century.”
The pipeline has the capacity to deliver 50-million tonnes of crude oil
annually. That figure won’t be reached initially, but with Kazhakstan,
just east across the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan, having recently
agreed to use the pipeline for some of its own exports, early fears
that the pipeline would be underused are losing traction.
A Wall Street Journal article by Thomas Goltz on Thursday even
mentioned rumours that both Russia and Iran are considering the
possibility of transporting some of their oil on the new pipeline.
For the world oil market, 50-million tonnes of oil represents only
one per cent of global consumption. Still, in the Caucasus, that
figure represents big apples.
Over the next two decades, Azerbaijan alone expects to realize
$150 billion of revenue from its oil shipments. For a country of
eight-million people with per-capita GDP of $4,800 U.S., that is
a huge inflow. The government is setting up an oil fund, much like
Alberta’s Heritage Fund, to ensure that much of the revenue is saved
for future use.
Azerbaijan may have a more immediate use for the money. It remains
officially at war with Armenia over the latter country’s 13-year
occupation of 15 per cent of Azerbaijan’s land. Some 800,000 refugees
still live in mostly wretched circumstances.
In a recent interview, Maj.-Gen Ramiz Najafov spoke of the ongoing
buildup of the Azerbaijani armed forces. Next year, he said, the
country’s military budget alone will be larger than the total budget
of the Armenian government, which controls a population less than 40
per cent as large as Azerbaijan’s.
“We have shown patience in our resolve for a resolution, but our
patience is not endless,” Maj.-Gen. Najafov said.
The Azerbaijanis are encouraged in their resolve by the fact
that not one country has recognized a sovereign government in
Nagorno-Karabakh. But the world’s supportive platitudes do nothing
to change the facts on the ground.
In war, the advantage goes to the defender, and Armenia has had
13 years to entrench itself, allegedly with Russian military help,
on the land it conquered 13 years ago.
Azerbaijani oil revenues, in other words, may buy a fight, but not
a cakewalk.
Some have worried that the pipeline is vulnerable to sabotage. It runs
close to areas of secession in Russia and Turkey, and passes through
southern Georgia, which has many ethnic-Armenian residents, some of
whom fought for the independence of Nagorno-Karkabakh 13 years ago.
Against this dire possibility is the fact that the pipeline has been
buried along virtually all of its route, making things difficult
for saboteurs.
So, is the pipeline a “new Silk Road,” or a doorway to new violence?
That, like so much else, depends on human choice.
What we know today is that Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, with a
great deal of western corporate help, and money from the World Bank
and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, have pulled
off one of the great construction projects since the beginning of
this millennium.

Engineering wonder takes oil the long way round
by Oliver Poole in Ceyhan
The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
July 14, 2006 Friday
AT 1,100 miles long, crossing mountain ranges and 1,500 waterways,
the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline has been hailed as the first engineering
wonder of the 21st century.
A decade after it was conceived it finally opened yesterday at the
eastern Turkish port of Ceyhan.
An epic feat of construction that cost pounds 2.4 billion and employed
up to 22,000 workers at a time, the pipeline will ensure that the
precious reserves of the Caspian Basin – believed to be the largest
remaining oil deposit outside the Middle East – can now be pumped to
the edge of the Mediterranean and shipped on for the European market.
Starting in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the pipeline passes
through Tbilisi in Georgia before reaching Ceyhan, where it is
expected that a million barrels of crude oil will arrive each day
when the pipeline is working at full capacity.
Although it was two years behind schedule and pounds 600 million over
budget, the pipeline was hailed at an opening ceremony in Ceyhan
yesterday, where the presidents of the three countries were joined
by the head of BP, which leads the consortium that built and runs
the pipeline.
As the heads of state and hundreds of dignitaries watched, oil was
pumped into a tanker, the British Hawthorn, to be taken to Genoa in
Italy. Lord Browne, the chief executive of BP, described it as an
“historic achievement”.
It is certainly an impressive engineering feat. Some 150,000 pipes
were used and all were buried to avoid sabotage or theft. Each barrel
of oil takes about a year to make the journey from Azerbaijan to the
terminal in Turkey.
Its scale has more to do with geopolitical reasons than commercial
ones. A simpler route would have taken the oil from Baku through
Russia to the Baltic Sea or via Iran to the Persian Gulf. Neither
was acceptable to the United States, which insisted that “strategic
importance” had to be a priority.
Therefore the route west was chosen through “friendly” countries. It
first heads north-west as Azerbaijan is officially at war with its
western neighbour Armenia over a disputed border. Then it wiggles west
to avoid Georgian separatist movements, before taking a large detour
around Turkey’s troubled Kurdish regions in its eastern provinces
before finally going south.
The project was so politically charged that it has been alleged that
US backing for Georgian democrats in the country’s Rose Revolution
was due to the previous regime’s sudden cooling in its enthusiasm
for the project.
There was also little diplomatic support for pro-democracy activists
when Azerbaijan’s government remained in power last year after disputed
election results.
Russia was reportedly so angry at being snubbed that in 2003 it was
accused by Georgia of training ecological saboteurs to damage the
pipeline. It is also attempting to expand its existing pipeline from
the Caspian.
Michael Townshend, the executive in charge of the BP project, said
yesterday that the result had been worth the effort as its completion
would help ensure the West’s “energy security”.
“The project will export around one per cent of world oil production
so in that respect it is fairly small,” he said. “But where it becomes
important is that it is a new source of energy from a non-Opec source
and that means diversification.
“And that one per cent is 25 per cent of the expected increase in
the demand for oil over the next four years.”
A gas pipeline following an almost identical route is scheduled
to be completed by the end of this year. That will make it harder
for Russia to use its gas reserves for political leverage with its
neighbours and Europe as it did last year when it temporarily shut
off supplies to Ukraine over a pricing dispute.

ENLARGEMENT : EU WARNS TURKEY OVER SENTENCE AGAINST JOURNALIST
European Report
July 13, 2006
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn reacted with consternation on 12
July to the news that Turkey’s appeals court had upheld a suspended
prison sentence handed down to a Turkish-Armenian journalist for
insulting “Turkishness” in an article that appeared in 2004. The
Commissioner said of the latest complication in Turkey’s EU membership
bid that he was disappointed by the judgement in the case of Hrant
Dink, saying it limited the exercise of freedom of expression in
Turkey.
It is not the first time that the EU has complained about people
being prosecuted for expressing non-violent opinions in Turkey. But
European Commission officials said the latest development was of
particular concern because, being a final judgment issued by Turkey’s
highest jurisdiction, it would establish binding case law for lower
jurisdictions to follow. And there were still a number of similar
court cases pending.
Mr Rehn said the Turkish courts had not succeeded in establishing a
“positive case law” when interpreting the country’s new penal code
vis-a-vis relevant EU standards. He urged the Turkish authorities to
amend Article 301 of the code – on which the Dink decision was based –
and other vaguely formulated articles “in order to guarantee freedom
of expression in Turkey”. The Commissioner recalled that freedom of
expression was a key principle under the political criteria for EU
membership and “constitutes the core of democracy”.
The Commission said it would review the situation in the light of
the political membership criteria in its progress report on Turkey
expected in the autumn. Ankara has been coming under pressure from
the EU to meet obligations towards Cyprus and bring fresh impetus to
accession-related reforms.

I. Levitin and S. Sarkisyan Discuss RF-Armenia Cooperation
SKRIN Market & Corporate News
July 13, 2006 Thursday 3:02 PM GMT
Igor Levitin, the RF Transport Minister met Serg Sarkisyan, Armenian
Defense Minister in Erevan today, on June 12. The Ministers discussed
the results of Intergovernmental committee of economic development
in H1 of 2006, RZD-Partner.Com reported.
In particular, it was mentioned that OAO Gazprom – Armenia State
contract on Gasprom’s participation in refinery projects at the
Armenian territory was signed in H1 of 2006. Besides, the discussion
of IT-partnership and communication partnership is continued.
I. Levitin mentioned, that H1 RF-Armenia throughput nearly doubled
year-on-year and made $130.3 mln. Both Ministers mentioned that the
dynamics needs more convenient legislative base.
The 8th session of the committee will take place in Moscow, in
October 2006.

Last train with equipment leaves base Russia abandoning in Georgia
by Fyodor Zavyalov
ITAR-TASS News Agency
July 13, 2006 Thursday 12:46 PM EST
Last train with equipment and weaponry bound for a Russian military
base in Gumri, Armenia, has left base No. 12 of the Russian Group
of Troops in Trans-Caucasus, the press service of the North Caucasus
Military District said.
This is the sixth train taking weaponry and equipment to Gumri.
“They will be used to fill blank positions on the tables of equipment
of the base and to build up the stocks of material resources needed
for maintaining the necessary levels of combat readiness and life
support systems,” a source at the military district headquarters said.
Since the beginning of a pullout of Russian military bases from
Georgia, nine trains with weaponry and equipment have left for Russia
and another ten trains will be consigned before the end of the year.
Russian defence officials say the list of cargoes to be delivered to
Russia includes 400 units of defence technologies and over 1,500 tons
of equipment.
Russia is pulling its bases out of Georgia under provisions of
agreements with Georgian government.
All the steps under the agreements precisely match the plan the sides
approved earlier, the source said.

Film-maker’s new treat for martial arts fans
Aberdeen Evening Express
July 12, 2006 Wednesday
A Martial arts movie master has promised his latest release will be
a real treat for action fans.
Death List, from Aberdeen’s Ara Paiaya, will be premiered at the
Belmont Picturehouse on Belmont Street next month.
It was partially filmed in the Granite City and features legendary
kung fu actor Robert Tai and Jackie Chan’s producer Bey Logan.
Mr Paiaya, 28, plays a hitman who takes delight in cleaning criminals
off the streets.
The Armenian-born film-maker, who has lived in Aberdeen for 25 years,
said:
“It is a showcase of martial arts and I am pleased with how the film
turned out.”
Many of the cast and extras are from the city. Big Brother star and
Evening Express columnist Cameron Stout also appears.
Scenes were shot in London, Spain, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Death List is the fifth film from the former Cults Academy pupil and
Robert Gordon University graduate.
It will be shown at the Belmont on August 8 at 9pm.

Azerbaijani court jails three political activists
Agence France Presse — English
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 4:25 PM GMT
A court in Azerbaijan on Wednesday handed down sentences of up to
seven years to youth opposition activists charged with attempting to
overthrow the government, opposition parties said.
Three leaders of the Yeni Fikir (New Idea) movement, created ahead of
last year’s parliamentary elections to protest the rule of President
Ilham Aliyev, were sentenced in a closed session, one of the convicted
activists told AFP.
“We expected an unfair sentence because this was a political case
from the very beginning. The witnesses against us were government
agents and there was no hard evidence in the case,” said a leader of
Yeni Fikir, Said Nuri, who was given a five year suspended sentence
for health reasons.
Nuri said the defendants were planning to appeal the ruling and then
take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if it was not
overturned in Azerbaijan.
Yeni Fikir was one of a number of protest groups that sprang up ahead
of elections last November, which ended up giving Aliyev almost
total control of the parliament in a vote deemed undemocratic by
international monitors.
Yeni Fikir’s leader, Ruslan Bashirli, was sentenced to seven years
in prison and a third activist, Ramil Tagiyev, received four years.
All three were arrested just weeks ahead of the November poll for
plotting what prosecutors said was an uprising backed by the US-based
National Democratic Institute (NDI), a pressure group, and money from
Armenia’s government.
The Popular Front of Azerbaijan opposition party, which supports Yeni
Fikir, said the convictions were part of a wider political campaign
aimed at stifling dissent.
“This was a political order. The authorities are trying to limit the
activities of democratic youth organizations. At the same time we
have again been shown that the court system is in the grip of the
authorities,” said Isaak Alezoglu, a spokesman for the Popular Front.
NDI has denied training Yeni Fikir members to overthrow the government
but has been forced to curtail much of its activity in the oil-rich
republic after it was implicated in the plot.
International organizations have blamed Aliyev, who succeeded his
father as president in a controversial election in 2003, of stifling
media freedoms, cracking down on the right to freely assemble and
harassing the opposition.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU warns Ankara over ruling on Armenian journalist
Agence France Presse — English
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 10:59 AM GMT
BRUSSELS, July 12 2006 — The European Commission lamented Wednesday
a Turkish court ruling against an ethnic Armenian journalist for
“denigrating the Turkish national identity,” warning the case could
cloud Ankara’s EU hopes.
Commenting on an appeal court ruling on Hrant Dink, editor of the
bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, EU Enlargement Commissioner
Olli Rehn called on the Turkish government to bolster freedom of
speech in the country.
“I am disappointed by this judgement which limits the exercise of
freedom of expression in Turkey,” he said, following Tuesday’s court
ruling, the first such judgment based on article 301 of Turkey’s new
Penal Code.
He noted that ruling “will set the trend for lower jurisdiction to
follow when applying article 301 in the future,” adding: “This is
all the more serious since there are still a number of similar court
cases pending.”
“I would therefore urge the Turkish authorities to amend article 301
and other vaguely formulated articles in order to guarantee freedom
of expression in Turkey,” he said.
He underlined that freedom of expression is a key principle of the
EU’s so-called Copenhagen political criteria, which Ankara must adhere
to if it one day wants to join the currently 25-nation bloc.
“In any case, the Commission will review the situation in light of
the Copenhagen political criteria in its upcoming Progress Report,”
Rehn said, referring to an annual report on Ankara’s EU preparations
due in October.
Turkey began EU entry talks last October, but the negotiations are
likely to take at least a decade and Ankara has been warned there is
no guarantee of eventual membership.
Dink was convicted in October for an article about the collective
memory of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire,
which many countries recognize as genocide.
He now faces the risk of going to prison if he commits a similar
offense over the next five years.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish court upholds sentence for Armenian journalist
Agence France Presse — English
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 9:00 AM GMT
ISTANBUL, July 12 2006 — Turkey’s appeals court has upheld a
six-month suspended sentence against a Turkish-Armenian journalist for
“denigrating the Turkish national identity,” his lawyer said Wednesday.
Hrant Dink, editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos,
was convicted in October for an article about the collective memory
of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which
many countries recognize as genocide.
“The confirmation of the sentence is a very regrettable decision,
particularly because the chief prosecutor — in quite an unusual
move — objected to the conviction with very solid arguements,”
Dink’s lawyer Fethiye Cetin told AFP.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has repeatedly
warned that the prosecution of intellectuals and writers is casting
a pall on Ankara’s commitment to the bloc’s democratic norms.
Dink now faces the risk of going to prison if he commits a similar
offense over the next five years.
He is currently on trial in another freedom-of-speech case, in which he
risks up to three years in jail, on charges of attempting to influence
the judiciary in an editorial that criticized his first conviction.
Cetin said she was “more hopeful” about the outcome of that case.
The February 2004 article that led to Dink’s conviction complained
that hostility to Turks had become part of the Armenian identity.
Its most controversial phase called on Armenians to “cleanse the
impure blood of the Turk” from their veins.
The appeal court’s chief prosecutor argued that this was not an
insult to Turks but a metaphoric reference to the Armenians’ hostile
perception of Turks.
Public debate on the Armenian massacres has only recently begun
in Turkey.
Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered,
and campaign for the massacres to be internationally recognized
as genocide.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took
up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian
troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire during World War I.

FABULOUS BODY. .AND THE GIRL’S NICE TOO!
by ROSS KANIUK
Daily Star, UK
July 12, 2006 Wednesday
U.K. 1st Edition
A MYSTERY blonde brought a busy street to a standstill when she pulled
up in her GBP 1.1million Bugatti Veyron.
Everyone in the road stopped to admire the motor, the world’s fastest
and the rarest car in Britain.
Office workers and shoppers rushed outside to see what was causing
the commotion And they couldn’t help wondering who was the sexy beauty
in shades who stepped from its leather driver’s seat in Manchester.
Bugatti would not say who owned the 253mph car. Only 16 have been
delivered worldwide, three to Britain.
But spokesman Georges Keller added: “I do not believe any of the
original British buyers are celebrities.”
One well-known owner is multi-millionaire Bob Manoukian, who bought a
Veyron in a charity auction for GBP 1.1million – GBP 350,000 more than
the GBP 750,000 list price. It is not known where the former agent for
Prince Jefri, brother of the Sultan of Brunei, 59, keeps his Veyron.
A spokesman for the 58-year-old Armenian’s British company refused
to comment on the car Bugatti plan to make only 300 over five years –
meaning the motors’ value will be far higher than the original price.
Prospective buyers have to place a deposit of 300,000 euros (GBP
208,000) to join the year-long waiting list.
The Veyron’s eight-litre engine with four turbochargers can take the
curvy dream-car to 60mph in 2.5 seconds.
Inside is a hand-finished leather-andsuede cockpit and door pulls
made of polished aluminium.
But the fabulous motor hides a secret – the engine is made by
Volkswagen.
If you know the blonde driver call the Daily Star newdesk on 0871
5207373.