Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
July 12, 2006 Wednesday
THE KARABAKH FRACTURE;
Deployment of NATO contingents in the conflict area will dramatically
change the geopolitical situation in the Caucasus
by Andrei Korbut
THE PROBLEM OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH IS DETERIORATING FROM REGIONAL INTO
GLOBAL; Once a regional headache, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is
deteriorating into a geopolitical problem.
Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister, Serj Sargsjan, made a trip to
Moscow. Sargsjan came to the Russian capital from the OSCE summit in
Minsk where President of Armenia Robert Kocharjan had criticized OSCE
documents as “weak” in the matter of mechanism of military aid to
OSCE member states. Kocharjan was convinced of the necessity to
“specify parameters of the mechanism of military-technical assistance
to OSCE members against external aggression.” The president’s anxiety
is understandable. The latest attempt at negotiations with his
Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev being another fiasco, official
Baku is now obsessed with a military solution to the
Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict.
Addressing graduates from three military colleges, Aliyev once again
mentioned the possibility of “using strength of arms to restore
territorial integrity of the country.” “How much longer are we
supposed to waste our time in talks?” Aliyev said. “How much waiting
is needed? Our patience has its limits. Azerbaijan is a fast
developing country. Armenia is not our match economically,
politically, or from a military standpoint. Let them in Armenia give
a thought to where Azerbaijan will be a year or three or five from
now and where Armenia will be.”
Aliyev pointed out that Baku expected to earn $140 billion in
realization of oil projects in the next two decades. “We will use the
opportunity to strengthen the army so that it will be able to regain
our land at any moment,” he promised then to “his people”.
In the meantime, the United States is displaying more and more
interest in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution. That is essentially
why US Assistant Undersecretary for Europe and Eurasia Matthew Brize
was appointed the new American chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group. The
US Embassy in Yerevan has already published some principles of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution that Washington offers to the
OSCE Minsk Group. This is what is offered for discussion by
presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan;
– step-by-step withdrawal of Armenian armed formations from the areas
surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh;
– a special approach to the problems of the Kelbajar and Lachi
districts;
– a referendum or vote to define the legal status of
Nagorno-Karabakh;
– deployment of an international peacekeeping contingent in the
conflict area.
Neither Baku nor Yerevan accept all of that in total. Their
protestations notwithstanding, the Americans just may force a
peacekeeping operation on the warring sides, and deployment of
international peacekeepers in at least some conflict areas will mark
the beginning of a practical phase of conflict resolution. What
countries will these contingents represent? Experts suspect that they
will represent NATO countries. Baku does not mind but Yerevan seems
to mind it. Sergei Ivanov, Deputy Premier and Defense Minister of
Russia, visited Azerbaijan and Armenia in early 2006, and said that
it might be a Russian contingent in fact that would be deployed in
the conflict area.
Official Baku chose to ignore these words but Azerbaijani spokesmen
never miss a chance to point out that contingents of peacekeepers
must be international. Will Russia agree to that? The question is
quite serious, what with the Iranian factor and Washington’s resolve
to neutralize Tehran. Yerevan is thinking along these lines too as
Kocharjan admitted at the OSCE summit in Minsk. “Let us refrain from
the steps that may challenge the interests of OSCE members,” he urged
his colleagues from the Collective Security Council. Moscow in the
meantime seems to favor the idea of peacekeepers in the conflict
area. It is hardly surprising at this point (on the eve of the G8
summit) but what its stand on the matter will be afterwards?
Lieutenant General Yuri Netkachev, former second-in-command of the
Russian Army Group in the Caucasus, believes that it will be “a
geopolitical catastrophe” if Russia and Armenia are forced to accept
a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through NATO
peacekeepers. “The conflict will not be resolved,” Netkachev said,”
meaning that peacekeepers will remain here preparing everything for a
bridgehead for a NATO aggression against Iran.”
It follows that once a regional headache, the problem of
Nagorno-Karabakh is rapidly deteriorating into global. The United
States and its allies promote far-reaching plans. Moscow in its turn
has not defined its position yet and even that may undermine its
standing in the region.
Source: Voyenno-Promyshlenny Kurier, No 25, July 5 – 11, 2006, EV

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
July 12, 2006 Wednesday
NO WAY OF MAKING IT INTO GEORGIA
by Vasily Kashin
THE RUSSIAN-GEORGIAN CONFRONTATION IN SOUTH OSSETIA ELEVATES TO A NEW
LEVEL; Russia and Georgia: tension does not abate.
Russia closed Verkhny Lars, the only crossing point on the state
border official Tbilisi recognized as legitimate.
Sources in the Georgian Department of Border Police say that the
Russians closed Verkhny Lars on Saturday night citing the necessity
to repair the road leading to it. The Russians did not say when they
expected to open it again. An officer of the Caucasus Regional
Directorate of the Border Service of the Federal Security Service
claims that Verkhny Lars was closed for scheduled repairs and that
the Georgians had been informed of it months in advance. Nobody at
the Regional Directorate knows when the repairs will be over. The
Georgians are advised to use the crossing point on the border between
Russia and South Ossetia.
The Military Georgian Road where Verkhny Lars is located is the only
road by land between Russia and Georgia under Tbilisi’s control. A
ferry from Novorossiisk to Poti is the only alternative to it.
Georgian Senior Deputy Minister of Transportation, Natia Turnava,
maintains that 20-25% of the Russian-Georgian trade turnover passed
through Verkhny Lars before late 2005, when Russia slapped
restrictions on import of wines and carbonated water from Georgia.
The figure is much lower now. Verkhny Lars remains the main channel
the Georgians visiting Russia use. Alexander Skakov, Chief of the CIS
Department of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, claims that
the closed Verkhny Lars is not going to have a noticeable effect on
the macroeconomic situation. What it will have a crippling effect on
are small Georgian businesses.
Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab Nogaideli maintains in his turn that
the closed Verkhny Lars will have a thoroughly negative economic
effect on Armenia, the country Russia depends on Georgia for contacts
with. Indeed, the Armenian Transport Ministry claims that up to 20%
of transit shipments between Russia and Armenia passed through
Verkhny Lars in 2005.
Armenia did not respond in any manner. Georgia did. Tbilisi called it
an act of “economic and political pressure” and reiterated.
Yesterday, Georgian servicemen closed the Trans-Caucasus Highway
running across South Ossetia. It was done in the vicinity of the
settlement of Kekhvi located between the Rok Tunnel and Tskhinvali.
Whatever Russian citizens fail to produce Georgian visas are turned
back. (Most South Ossetians are citizens of Russia.)
Neither does the recent tragedy in Tskhinvali help matters. Secretary
of the Security Council, Oleg Alborov, perished in a remote-control
explosion in front of his house in Tskhinvali last Sunday. The
authorities of South Ossetia called it a despicable act of terrorism
and pinned the blame on Georgia. Interior Minister Mikhail Mindzayev
told INTERFAX news agency that the Georgian authorities compiled a
list of South Ossetian leaders marked for elimination prior to the
military invasion. Georgy Khaindrava, Georgian State Minister for
Conflict Resolution, denounced all accusations and called Alborov
“the most pro-Georgian” of all South Ossetian politicians. Aleksei
Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center does not think that
assassination of Alborov will provoke an armed confrontation but says
it will certainly mount tension on the eve of the G8 summit in Russia
and that the Kremlin could do without.
Source: Vedomosti, July 10, 2006, p. A2
Translated by A. Ignatkin

Russia doubles trade with Armenia on boost to exports
RosBusinessConsulting Database
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 10:40 AM EST
Trade between Russia and Armenia doubled to $130.3m in the first four
months of 2006 compared to the same period of the previous year,
the Russian Transportation Minister Igor Levitin was quoted by the
ministry’s press service as saying. Exports grew 135.7 percent to
$107.1m in January-April 2006, while imports rose 9 percent to $23.2m.

Shamil Basayev: A ruthless Chechen warlord who mocked the Kremlin
Agence France Presse — English
July 11, 2006 Tuesday 4:14 PM GMT
MOSCOW, July 11 2006 — Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who was
reported killed on Monday, masterminded horrific attacks across
Russia and openly mocked the Kremlin by remaining at large for more
than a decade.
Among dozens of other attacks against civilian and military targets,
Basayev, 41, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school hostage
siege in September 2004 in which 362 people were killed, including
186 children.
The bearded guerrilla leader was at the core of the fierce independence
fight in Chechnya in which as many as 100,000 civilians — about 10
percent of the population — are feared to have been killed since
December 1994.
Basayev claimed that the devastation wreaked by Russia’s military
campaigns on the Chechen people, including the death of many of his
own relatives, justified attacks on Russian civilians.
But he was also widely regarded as an exceptional and fearless military
commander whose rag-tag forces inflicted major defeats on the Russian
army in Grozny and the Caucasus mountains.
He became legendary for his ability to escape capture, despite multiple
wounds, including the loss of his right lower leg on a landmine five
years ago, and a 10 million dollar bounty on his head.
But he lost support among ordinary Chechens when he embraced radical
Islam in the late 1990s. Many blamed him for provoking a second
conflict in 1999 after having masterminded the defeat of Russian
troops in a first 1994-1996 war in Chechnya.
As figurehead of the rebels’ extremist wing, Basayev increasingly
abandoned his nationalist credentials for a radical Islamist agenda,
becoming the link between Chechnya and the worldwide Islamic jihad
movement.
Born in 1965, Basayev was raised in Dyshne-Vedeno, a Chechen village
at the heart of territory with a tradition of rebellion against
Moscow. He claimed his ancestors fought alongside Imam Shamil, the
legendary 19th century resistance warrior.
He studied in Moscow and began dealing in imported computers in the
last days of the Soviet Union. Then in August 1991 he joined a group
of Chechens supporting President Boris Yeltsin at the Moscow White
House to resist a communist coup.
In November 1991, Basayev and two others hijacked a Russian plane
from Mineralniye Vody in southern Russia and flew to Turkey to promote
Chechnya’s independence struggle. They were later released by Turkish
authorities.
During the 1990s, Basayev fought against Armenian troops in
Nagorno-Karabakh and against Georgian forces in the breakaway province
of Abkhazia.
In Abkhazia he was widely rumoured to have been supported by Russia’s
military intelligence forces, the GRU, as part of Moscow’s support
for the separatist Abkhaz against the Georgians.
He is also believed to have taken men for training in Afghanistan.
In the first Chechen war Basayev emerged as the most effective field
commander.
At the height of the conflict in 1995 Basayev and a small group of
men took hostage hundreds of people in a hospital in the southwest
Russian town of Budyonnovsk.
The ruthless and utterly unexpected raid forced the Russian government
into suspending military operations in Chechnya and beginning peace
negotiations.
When these broke down, Basayev was the principal commander in the rebel
recapture of Grozny in August 1996 — one of the biggest humiliations
the modern Russian military has faced.
In 1999, he provided the Russian government with an excuse to
re-occupy Chechnya by leading a failed foray into Dagestan, a province
neighbouring Chechnya, to try and provoke an Islamist uprising.
Moscow was repeatedly shamed by Basayev’s ability to move freely
around the Caucasus mountains region for more than a decade.
A network of corrupt Russian officials was reported to have helped
him to swap the caves and forests of the mountains for comfortable
safehouses in Chechnya and far beyond.
“He doesn’t have to run around the mountains,” Taus Dzhabrailov,
a top official in the Kremlin-installed Chechen government, told AFP
earlier. “He is driven around comfortably in jeeps. He just pays.”
In 2005, Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky filmed an interview with
Basayev aired on US television network ABC in which the warlord issued
threats of new Beslan-style attacks should Russia fail to stop what
he called “genocide” in Chechnya.
Basayev, who lost 11 relatives in a Russian air attack on Vedeno in
1995, mocked his pursuers, saying: “Don’t tell me they’re trying to
find me. I’m trying to find them.”
sms-dt/gk

REPLICA OF HISTORICAL ARMENIAN SAILING SHIP ARRIVES IN ESTONIAN CAPITAL
Baltic News Service
July 11, 2006 Tuesday 11:57 PM EET
A replica of a historical Armenian sailing ship currently on a voyage
round Europe has arrived in Tallinn.
The vessel named after the medieval Armenian kingdom of Cilicia was
built to a 13-century design near the Armenian capital Yerevan and
transported from their by road to the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti
where its trip started.
The leader of the expedition, president of the nautical club Ayas
Karen Balayan said the ship is retracing the travels of Cilician
merchants who maintained close commercial ties with European ports
in the 13th century.
The Cilicia has already crossed seven seas and visited 22 countries
during its voyage.
The expedition is arranged in two stages: the ship first sailed from
Poti to Venice where it spent the winter, and this spring it headed
from Venice to Amsterdam and from there to northern Europe.
In all ports the vessel visits a cultural program is put on and
meetings with local Armenian communities take place.
“The aim of the expedition is to remind the world that the ancient
Armenia was a maritime nation and had a merchant fleet of its own,”
Yuri Vartanyan, a member of the Amrenian Society in Estonia, told BNS.
The present-day Armenia does not have a maritime border.
The Cilicia will at the end of this week sail from Tallinn to St.
Petersburg, Russia and from there along rivers to the Black Sea. The
final leg of its journey will take it by road from Poti back to
Armenia.

Obituary of Shamil Basayev Chechen rebel leader responsible for
notorious acts of terrorism, including the school siege at Beslan
The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
July 11, 2006 Tuesday
SHAMIL BASAYEV, who was killed yesterday aged 41, was a hero to his
people in the Republic of Chechnya; elsewhere he was regarded as one
of the world’s most infamous terrorists.
The Chechens are a brave mountain race not noted for their
squeamishness; but there are those who would say that Basayev scaled
new heights of barbarity.
He achieved international notoriety in June 1995 when he led an attack
on a hospital at the city of Budyonnovsk, in southern Russia.
There was further revulsion in October 2003, when his Chechen militants
took 800 people hostage at a Moscow theatre. Two days later Russian
special forces stormed the building; 129 hostages died, along with
41 terrorists.
Basayev also took responsibility for the Beslan school siege of
September 2004; on the third day of the siege shooting broke out
between the terrorists and the Russian security forces, resulting in
the deaths of 344 civilians, 186 of them children.
The Russian government put a price on the rebel leader’s head, offering
a reward of 300 million roubles ($10 million) for information leading
to his capture. Although Basayev did not participate in the atrocity
at Beslan, he claimed to have organised it, boasting that the whole
operation cost only 8,000 euros.
In an an interview broadcast on American television last year he was
happy to describe himself as “a bad guy, a bandit, a terrorist”. His
justification was that the Russians had “officially” killed 40,000
Chechen children, and were therefore terrorists as well.
Shamil Salmanovich Basayev was born on January 14 1965 at Vedeno, in
south-east Chechnya. His family is said to have had a long history of
involvement in Chechen resistance to Russian rule, and he was named
after Imam Shamil, who led the mountain tribes’ resistance against
the Tsarist armies in the 19th century.
His grandfather fought in the abortive attempt to create a breakaway
North Caucasus Emirate after the Russian Revolution, and the Basayevs,
along with much of the rest of the Chechen population, were deported
to Kazakhstan. They were allowed to return in 1957.
After leaving school Basayev served for two years as a fireman in the
Soviet army. He then worked at a state farm in the Volgograd region
of southern Russia before moving to Moscow, where he unsuccessfully
applied to read Law at Moscow State University. Instead he enrolled at
the Moscow Institute of Land-Construction before deciding to become
a computer salesman. A colleague later claimed that Basayev was more
interested in playing video games than in selling computers, and that
he appeared preoccupied with the career of Che Guevara.
Basayev is said to have taken to the streets of Moscow in support of
Boris Yeltsin when Communist hardliners attempted to stage a coup in
August 1991.
Two months later, however, the Chechen nationalist leader, Dzhokhar
Dudayev, unilaterally declared independence from Russia, and Yeltsin
declared a state of emergency and sent troops to the border with
Chechnya.
In response, Basayev and two others hijacked an Aeroflot passenger
plane bound for Ankara, threatening to blow it up unless the state of
emergency was lifted. On this occasion the crisis was resolved without
loss of life, and the hijackers were allowed to return to Chechnya.
In 1992 Basayev was fighting with the separatists in Abkhazia, a
breakaway region of Georgia. After the Georgian government’s forces
were defeated in October 1992, the ethnic Georgian population of the
region was driven out; Basayev’s unit is said to have killed thousands
of Georgian civilians, and it became the core of his “Abkhaz Battalion”
in the first Chechen war.
Basayev is also said to have fought with Azerbaijani forces in their
war against Armenian separatists in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh,
and to have established links with al-Qa’eda in Afghanistan. He was
later to subscribe to the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Islam.
There have been claims that he became an important figure in the
Chechen mafia, and was involved in drug-dealing. Certainly he appeared
to have access to considerable sums of money: he came to own several
large houses and was able to finance his own private militia.
But he himself maintained that he was supported by private benefactors.
In December 1994 the Russians invaded Chechnya in an attempt to
depose Dudayev, who appointed Basayev one of his military commanders;
by now his “Abkhaz Battalion” was 2,000-strong. After a gruelling
three-month campaign, the Russians took Grozny, Chechnya’s capital,
and the Chechens were forced into the hills.
The “Abkhaz Battalion” had lost all but about 200 of its men, and
on June 3 1995 a Russian air raid on Basayev’s home town killed 11
members of his family, including his wife and two children.
Less than a fortnight later Basayev led the attack on Budyonnovsk
hospital, 90 miles north of the Chechen border. For several days 1,500
people were held hostage inside the hospital, and more than 100 of
them died when Russian special forces unsuccessfully attempted to
storm the building.
Basayev was demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.
While he failed to achieve this aim, he did succeed in negotiating
a halt to the Russian advance and the prospect of peace talks before
he and his fellow terrorists were allowed to escape back to Chechnya.
In 1996 Basayev was appointed commander of the Chechen forces, and in
August that year he led a successful operation to retake Grozny. The
Russians were forced to the negotiating table, and Chechnya effectively
achieved its independence. Basayev ran for the presidency of his
country, coming second to Aslan Maskhadov with 23.5 per cent of the
vote. In early 1998 Maskhadov appointed him prime minister; having
served his six-month term, Basayev stepped down, having failed to
make good his promise to crack down on crime and kidnapping.
In August 1999 Basayev and the Saudi terrorist known as Khattab led a
2,000-strong army of Islamic fundamentalists in an unsuccessful attempt
to help Dagestani Wahhabists to take over neighbouring Dagestan and
establish a new Chechen-Dagestan Islamic republic.
Meanwhile, in September that year, a number of Russian apartment blocks
were bombed, killing 293 people. Basayev denied that he was involved,
as did President Maskhadov, but the Russians had lost patience and
sent forces back into Chechnya.
As the Chechen rebels withdrew from Grozny in January 2000 Basayev
stepped on a landmine, and had to have a foot amputated. The operation
was videotaped and later televised, viewers seeing the foot being
removed under local anaesthetic while Basayev looked on impassively.
On December 27 2002 Chechen suicide bombers destroyed the republic’s
pro-Russian government’s headquarters in Grozny, killing about 80
people. Basayev claimed responsibility, saying that he had personally
detonated the bombs by remote control. He also claimed responsibility
for the bomb which killed the pro-Russian Chechen president Akhmad
Kadyrov at a stadium in Grozny in May 2004, and for the deaths of
10 people killed by a suicide bomber outside a Moscow metro station
in August.
He rejoined the Chechen separatist government in August 2005,
taking the post of deputy prime minister. Less than a fortnight ago,
Chechnya’s new separatist leader, Doku Umarov, named Basayev as his
vice-president.
Basayev received the highest awards of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
(the separatists’ name for the once-independent republic of Chechnya):
“K’oman Siy” (honour of the nation) and “K’oman Turpal”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

GERMAN COLONY HOTEL PLANS STIR DEBATE
by Jonathan Pearlman
The Jerusalem Report
July 24, 2006
A plan to build two high-rise hotels at the northern end of Jerusalem’s
German Colony is facing staunch opposition from residents, who say the
buildings will mar the residential nature of the leafy neighborhood.
A campaign against the hotels was launched after the district planning
commission made public plans for a 14-story Four Seasons Hotel at
the beginning of the colony’s main artery, Emek Refaim Street, in an
empty lot just south of Liberty Bell Park. Across the road, at the
corner of Emek Refaim and Bethlehem Road, developers are planning
the separate 12-story Colony Hotel and residential complex.
The latter will be built over the top of a 19th-century Armenian
church, which served as a community center for the German Templers
who founded the German Colony.
Residents say the hotels are at odds with the low-rise stone
houses built by the German Protestants around the turn of the 20th
century that still set the tone of the area, one of Jerusalem’s
most affluent. A community action group, run by employees of the
neighborhood’s International Center for Culture and Youth, has
hired architects, lawyers and conservation experts to examine the
plans and will submit an objection to the planning commission. The
group’s coordinator, Marik Shtern, told The Report the hotels would
set a dangerous precedent and could result in further high-rise
blocks being built around the nearby old train station and inside the
neighborhood. “Instead of the arch of trees that lead up to the German
Colony, we will have big blocks of walls of up to 50 meters high,”
he said. “You don’t have to live in the neighborhood to see it as a
personal assault.”
Shtern said the group had collected about 3,500 signatures for a
petition against the hotels. The group also held a conference on July
2 featuring panel discussions with the architects Hillel Schocken and
David Guggenheim and prominent Jerusalem residents including the poet
Haim Gouri. “This is a beautiful and very precious part of Jerusalem,”
Gouri told The Report. “But if they build buildings that do not suit
the style of the area, it will not keep its character.”
The action group has also enlisted the aid of descendants of the
German Templers, who were deported by the British to Australia after
the outbreak of World War II. During a recent trip to Jerusalem,
about 20 descendants visited the site and wrote a letter of objection
to the council.
But the lawyer representing the two hotels, David Shimron, said they
were being built on unused blocks and would improve the neighborhood.
“It’s important to allow development that is reasonable and helps the
area progress,” he said, adding that the Four Seasons was unlikely to
rise higher than 12 stories. Plans for the Colony Hotel, which will be
funded mainly by U.S. investors, were yet to be submitted for approval,
but it would preserve the character of the church, Shimron maintained.
Anahid Ohannessian, an Armenian Christian who lives on the church
grounds disagrees. “The hotel will eat up my house and cover the
church. It is a very bad plan, both aesthetically and culturally,”
he told The Report.
Jonathan Pearlman

Russia ready to become guarantor of accords on Nagorno-Karabakh
ITAR-TASS News Agency
July 15, 2006 Saturday 05:17 PM EST
ST PETERSBURG, July 16 — Russia is ready to become a guarantor of
implementing agreements on Nagorno Karabakh by Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference on Sunday.
“The two countries should reach a compromise and Russia together
with its partners is ready to become a guarantor of implementing the
agreements,” he said.
Putin recalled that “most G8 countries try to help settle the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to a certain degree,” he said. French
President Jacques Chirac and U.S. President George W. Bush are actively
engaged in this process, he said.
“We want Armenia and Azerbaijan find a reasonable decision. We will
not impose our decision on them,” he said
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Jerusalem welcomes Canadian filmmakers
by Hannah Brown
The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2006, Sunday
An Oscar nominee and a Cannes prize winner are among Jerusalem Film
Festival’s distinguished early arrivals
A friendly unassuming group stopped by the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem on Wednesday night to have dinner with Tourism Minister
Isaac Herzog and a group of Israeli professionals. Nothing unusual
about that except that this group was the Canadian delegation to the
23rd Jerusalem Film Festival and included some of the world’s most
distinguished directors actors and producers.
The delegation which will be present at screenings panels and press
conferences includes Festival Achievement Award winners director
Atom Egoyan and producer Robert Lantos. Among Egoyan’s best-known
films are Exotica the Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat
which will be screened at the festival. Lantos has produced most of
Egoyan’s films as well as dozens of others including Sunshine and
the Oscar-nominated Being Julia. Both Egoyan and Lantos are longtime
supporters of the Jerusalem Film Festival and festival founder and
director Lia van Leer who attended the dinner spoke effusively about
their generosity over the years praising Egoyan for donating one
of his first films Family Viewing to the archives of the Jerusalem
Cinematheque after he presented it at the 1988 film festival.
The Hungarian-born Lantos who has lived and worked in Canada for
over 40 years spoke of how he first fell in love with Israel when
he visited the country with the Canadian Maccabiah team in 1969 (he
played on the water polo team). “This group of Canadian filmmakers
wanted to see the reality of Israel today he said.
Another delegation member, director Patricia Rozema (I’ve Heard
the Mermaids Singing and Mansfield Park, which will be screened
at the festival), was already enthusiastic about Jerusalem stone
architecture, and said she was eager to go on a scheduled walking
tour of the Old City.
Egoyan, who was born to an Armenian family in Cairo but was raised
in Canada, chatted about how he enjoys making contact with the
Armenian community here. He reminisced about meeting a Canadian from
his hometown on his last visit here, and asked questions about the
Israeli film industry as if he were a casual visitor and not one
of the world’s most celebrated directors. His wife, actress Arsinee
Khanjian, who has appeared in most of his films and works frequently
these days in France, joked about getting a place card with her son’s
name instead of her own.
Documentary filmmaker Simha Jacobovici, who became religious late
in his life and served in the artillery corps of the Israel Defense
Forces, introduced his five children and his wife proudly. His latest
documentary, The Exodus Decoded, an innovative look at the Bible,
was made with the assistance of Titanic director James Cameron and
will also be shown at the festival.
Actress Marie-Josee Croze smiled shyly when she was introduced,
knowing that most Israelis last saw her as a femme fatale involved
in the assassination of an Israeli intelligence officer in Steven
Spielberg’s Munich. The actress seemed relieved that at least one
dinner guest also recognized her from her charming comic turn in the
French film Mensonges et Trahisons, as well as from her performance
in The Barbarian Invasions, which won her the best actress award at
Cannes. Director/actor Paul Gross, who made the comic Men With Brooms,
one of the biggest box office hits in Canadian history, stood up and
let his dessert melt so that he could pose for photographs.
No one mentioned the one member of the delegation who dropped out
at the last moment, Sex and the City actress Kim Cattrall. They were
all far too gracious for that, and too busy thanking their hosts and
asking questions about Israel.
But don’t say Canadians don’t know how to have fun. Although they
had arrived in Israel just a few hours before the dinner and were
scheduled for a long walking tour the next day, after the Israeli
guests departed, quite a few of the Canadians made their way to the
hotel bar, where they had a couple of drinks and watched a little
World Cup soccer.
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE WINNER of the 2003 best actress prize at Cannes
Canadian film star Marie-Josee Croze celebrated the Jerusalem Film
Festival’s opening last week with Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog.
(Credit: Debbie Ben Ami Yerushalmy Magazine)

Le Monde, France
14 juillet 2006
Kirk Kerkorian L’homme de tous les jackpots;
Vendeur de journaux, boxeur, pilote d’avion, joueur de poker et
financier intraitable, le principal actionnaire individuel du
constructeur automobile americain, General Motors, est un homme
presse
par Eric Leser
C’est un joueur ne avec un sixième sens hors du commun pour detecter
de la valeur “, explique Lee Iacocca, ancien president de Chrysler.
Fils d’immigres armeniens, ne il y quatre-vingt- neuf ans en
Californie, le milliardaire Kirk Kerkorian est de son vivant un mythe
du capitalisme americain. Secret, reclus, craint, souvent compare a
Howard Hughes, il fuit comme la peste les mondanites et les medias.
Meme s’il possède un Boeing 737 et un yacht de 60 mètres et a un
faible pour les costumes Brioni, il cultive la discretion. Les
bureaux a Los Angeles de sa holding Tracinda, contraction des prenoms
de ses deux filles, Tracy et Linda, sont situes dans une petite rue
de Beverly Hills. Le nom de la societe ne figure meme pas sur la
porte. Il est pourtant l’archetype du capitaliste aventurier, du
joueur de poker avec des mises de centaines de millions de dollars.
Surnomme par la presse ” Capitaine Kirk “, il a reussi le tour de
force de vendre deux fois sa compagnie aerienne (Trans International
Airlines) et quatre fois la Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), le celèbre
studio hollywoodien dont a meme fini par heriter un temps le Credit
lyonnais. Utilisant le produit de la vente de la MGM en 1989 au
mafieux Giancarlo Parretti, il entre en decembre 1990 dans le capital
de Chrysler pour en devenir le principal actionnaire. Il veut en
prendre le contrôle, echoue, mais ramasse tout de meme un benefice de
plus de 1,7 milliard de dollars lorsque Chrysler est finalement
rachete par l’Allemand Daimler. Son irruption l’an dernier dans le
capital de General Motors (GM) semble obeir a la meme logique.
Les traits burines et la chevelure grise ondulante sur les rares
photographies, il apparaît dans le classement du magazine Forbes a la
19e place des fortunes americaines avec 10 milliards de dollars.
Selon la legende, elève turbulent, il est chasse de plusieurs ecoles
avant de multiplier les petits boulots pendant la Grande Depression
pour aider sa famille a survivre. A 9 ans, Kerkor vend des journaux.
A 13, il devient boxeur et americanise son prenom en Kirk. Sa
première vraie passion est l’aviation. Il obtient sa licence de
pilote de ligne en 1940 et fait voler pendant toute la guerre des
Mosquito flambant neufs du Canada a l’Ecosse pour la RAF britannique.
A la fin des annees 1940, il prend son essor, amenage un bimoteur et
transporte des accrocs du jeu, comme lui, de Los Angeles a Las Vegas
dans le Nevada. Il achète en 1947 pour 60 000 dollars une petite
compagnie qu’il rebaptise pompeusement la Trans International
Airlines. Il la vendra une première fois en 1962, la rachètera et la
cedera definitivement en 1968, realisant au passage une copieuse
plus-value.
Avec l’argent de la première vente en 1962, il realise une formidable
operation immobilière. Il met la main sur 32 hectares de terrain a
Las Vegas pour moins de 1 million de dollars. Il y construit trois
hôtels casinos, a l’epoque les plus grands du monde, et fait de cette
ville perdue au milieu du desert la capitale mondiale du jeu. Deux de
ces etablissements, le MGM Grand et le Hilton, brûlent
mysterieusement en 1980. Kirk Kerkorian prend alors ses distances
avec Las Vegas.
Entre-temps, il s’est lance dans le cinema. Il acquiert en 1969, pour
82 millions de dollars, 40 % des studios MGM. A la faveur d’une OPA
(offre publique d’achat) hostile, il prend en 1979 le contrôle de la
totalite du capital du studio, qu’il fusionne avec United Artists.
Selon une technique bien rodee, il vend et rachète ensuite a quatre
reprises la Metro Goldwyn Mayer, a Ted Turner en 1985, au groupe
australien Quintex en 1989, a Giancarlo Parretti, en fait le Credit
Lyonnais, en 1990, et a Sony l’an dernier. Il a constitue une bonne
partie de sa fortune avec ses allers et retours.
Avant de ceder le studio, a chaque fois, Kirk Kerkorian le vide d’une
bonne partie de sa substance financière. Cela lui permet de financer
ses aventures dans l’automobile et son retour a Las Vegas. Il est
redevenu le roi de la cite du jeu en mettant la main en 2000 sur le
groupe Mirage et en 2004 sur Mandalay Bay Resorts. Il contrôle la
moitie des grands hôtels casinos du ” strip ” (la grande avenue de la
cite du jeu).
” Quand vous etes un self-made-man, vous commencez tôt dans la vie.
Je ramenais de l’argent a la maison a l’âge de 9 ans. Vous avez alors
une volonte differente, bien plus forte qu’un heritier “, declarait
Kirk Kerkorian dans une rare interview accordee il y a de nombreuses
annees au Los Angeles Times. Il est fidèle a ses origines et a donne
des centaines de millions de dollars a l’Armenie pour construire des
routes, des ponts, restaurer l’Opera d’Erevan. Le gouvernement
armenien a voulu baptiser une avenue et meme un aeroport a son nom,
il a toujours refuse.
” Il est timide. Il n’a pas fait d’etudes. A la maison, ses parents,
qui ne savaient ni lire ni ecrire, parlaient l’armenien. Il a appris
l’anglais dans la rue. Cela ne l’empeche pas d’etre dans les affaires
le personnage le plus redoutable qui soit. Il ne fait aucun sentiment
et possède une determination incroyable. Ce n’est meme plus l’argent
qui le motive, mais le succès “, souligne l’economiste en chef de la
Comerica Bank, David Littman.
Après avoir pris, en 2005, 9,9 % du capital de GM, il entend
rentabiliser au plus vite son investissement de 1,5 milliard de
dollars. Carlos Ghosn, le patron de Renault et Nissan, encense par
les analystes financiers, est l’homme qu’il lui faut a la tete de GM.
Pour forcer la main du conseil d’administration de GM, Kirk Kerkorian
n’hesitera pas sur les moyens. Il ne l’a jamais fait.
Une semaine seulement après le dîner du 15 mai a Nashville dans le
Tennessee, où il evoquait pour la première fois avec Carlos Ghosn la
possibilite d’une entree dans le capital de GM, le magazine Business
Week s’interrogeait sur la possibilite de voir le patron de Renault
devenir le sauveur de General Motors. Les fuites avaient ete bien
organisees. Elles n’ont pas suffi.
Le milliardaire a alors adresse quelques semaines plus tard une
lettre au PDG de GM, Rick Wagoner, rendue publique a la fin du mois
dernier. Cette fois, General Motors, Renault et Nissan ont ete
contraints de negocier selon le calendrier dicte par Capitaine Kirk.
Eric Leser
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