Agence France Presse — English
April 26, 2006 Wednesday 10:59 PM GMT
Three Armenian soldiers wounded on Azerbaijani border: Armenian
ministry
Three Armenian soldiers have been wounded by shots coming from across
the border with Azerbaijan, in violation of the ceasefire observed by
the two estranged countries, Armenia’s defense ministry said in a
statement late Wednesday.
Two of the soldiers were wounded late Tuesday, and another one early
Wednesday on Armenia’s north-eastern border with Azerbaijan, the
ministry said.
“The defense ministry refutes declarations by the Azerbaijani side,
according to which the Armenian side started the shooting. In both
cases, the Armenian side refrained from shooting back,” the statement
said.
Armenian and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war over the
Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, which seceded from
Azerbaijan in the early 1980s.
The conflict claimed 25,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands
of people, ending in a 1994 ceasefire. Since then, tensions have
remained high between the two countries and incidents occur
regularly, with each side blaming the other.

South Wales Echo
April 26, 2006, Wednesday
City Final Edition
Service to mark genocide
Cardiff council has been urged to formally recognise the Armenian
genocide of 1915 with a vote.
South Wales’ small Armenian community gathered at the Temple of Peace
in Cathays Park yesterday for a service to remember the killing of
1.5 million people in eastern Turkey during World War I. Around 50
people with links to the region live in South Wales.
Riverside councillor Gwenllian Lansdown told them: ‘I also think that
it would be fitting for Cardiff council to formally recognise the
Armenian genocide, as other councils have done.’

Time Out
April 26, 2006
Music – Live preview – Mahmoud Ahmed – Hammersmith Palais; Thursday
by John Lewis
Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie may have been the subject of
thousands of Rasta anthems, but his own favourite music was a brass
band that he heard on a state visit to Jerusalem in 1923. So taken
was the Lion of Judah that he hired a group of Armenian saxophone
players as his official musicians, unwittingly introducing Ethiopia
to jazz instrumentation. As a result, Addis Ababa became host to a
burgeoning jazz and R&B scene; a scene that exploded in the early
’60s when Haile Selassie welcomed 6,000 US ‘peace corps’ into the
country.
Mahmoud Ahmed is the most famous product of this ‘golden age’ of
Ethiopian jazz that thrived until Selassie was deposed in 1974.
Ahmed’s legendary early ’70s LPs like ‘Ere Mela Mela’ still sound
remarkable today – hypnotic funk beats, wah-wah guitars, Stax-style
horn riffs and snake-charmer saxophones, all rumbling under Ahmed’s
passionate, wailing Arabic-inflected vocals.
Despite making music for nearly 50 years, his spellbinding show at
last year’s WOMAD festival was his first ever in the UK. This London
debut sees him share the bill with El Tanbura, a highly rhythmic Sufi
outfit of Egyptian fishermen. The concert celebrates music of the
Nile, but Mahmoud Ahmed’s lopsided funk really does sound like
something from a parallel universe – think a Bollywood singer jamming
with Fela Kuti on Motown and you’re nearly there. Amazingly, all the
best things about his ’70s albums are still intact. The bass and
drums are still hypnotically funky; the rasping horn section still
sound like they’re playing in a nearby toilet; and even at the age of
65, Ahmed’s voice is still sensational.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 28, 2006 Friday 09:50 AM EST
Suspected killer of Armenian released on recognizance
City prosecutors on Friday released on recognizance an 11th-form
schoolboy, who was detained over the murder of Armenian national
Vagan Abramyants at the Pushkinskaya subway station.
“Although the schoolboy has been released on recognizance,
investigators still consider him a suspect,” lawyer Simon Tsaturyan
told Itar-Tass…
In his opinion, it was a hate-based murder.
“The investigators now have to ascertain the degree of his
involvement in the murder of Vagan Abramyants, and whether he knew
the persons who attacked him,” Tsaturyan said.
On April 22, a group of 12 young men, who knew each other, gathered
at the Pushkinskaya subway station. They were waiting for a friend.
At that time, six or seven youngsters got off the train headed for
Vykhino, and a fistfight broke out
Vagan Abramyants, a student of the Moscow University of Management,
was stabbed in the chest and died on the spot.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 28, 2006
Putin, Kocharyan discuss Russian-Armenian cooperation by phone
The Russian and Armenian presidents, Vladimir Putin and Robert
Kocharyan, had a telephone conversation on Friday, the Russian
presidential press service said.
Putin and Kocharyan discussed central issues of Russian-Armenian
cooperation, including “further strengthening of interaction in the
multilateral format,” the press service said.
Putin and Kocharyan also focused on the agenda of future contacts.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 28, 2006
Police give details of attack on policemen in south Moscow
MOSCOW, April 28
Police have established the details of an attack on a police patrol
in southern Moscow early on Friday, in which two policemen were
killed, law enforcement sources have told Itar-Tass.
They said occupants of an apartment house in Kirovogradskaya Street
had called the police and reported that calls for help could be heard
from one of the apartments. A police patrol was rushed to the site to
check.
“A family of Armenian nationals lives in the apartment where six
Georgian nationals rushed in early in the morning. Most likely it was
a criminal account-settling,” the source said.
According to eyewitnesses, when the criminals saw a police car, they
staged an ambush in the apartment. When the policemen entered the
apartment, they opened fire with automatic weapons.
Both policemen, a senior lieutenant and a senior sergeant, died at
the site, the sources said. Six attackers climbed out of the window
and disappeared.
Moscow police have launched an all-Moscow operation trying to seize
the criminals.

South China Morning Post
April 27, 2006 Thursday
Oil-addicted Americans feeling the pinch at the pump
Anger at rising travel costs is fuelling a political row as the US
pays the price for its excesses, says Markus Gaertner
Karapet Galajyan is angry. “This is crazy,” the Armenian-born taxi
driver complained as he rushed his passenger from the Los Angeles
International Airport to a glitzy Beverly Hills hotel.
While navigating the congested six-lane Highway 405, Mr Galajyan
recalled his latest painful experience at one of the city’s countless
petrol stations. The 42-year-old had just filled the tank of his
minibus taxi, paying US$3.19 per gallon – 16 per cent more than he
paid a month ago.
The average price for regular unleaded petrol in the US is now
US$2.91, and over US$3 per gallon in Washington DC, Los Angeles and
New York, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
“How am I supposed to feed my family?” asked Mr Galajyan. “Each time
I stop at a petrol station, the prices have gone up again.” After oil
prices reached an all-time high of more than US$75 per barrel on
April 21, the “pain at the pump” seems to have reached a climax for
the oil-addicted Americans.
Escalating prices have sparked public outrage, prompted a
mud-slinging match between Republicans and Democrats in Washington,
and put oil executives back in the hot seat. US news channels are
dedicating almost as much coverage to the public outcry as they did
to the Iraq war in the early stages.
Incidents of consumer anger have made headlines across the country,
including the killing of a petrol station owner in Alabama last week
by a driver attempting to steal US$52 worth of petrol.
Across the country, drivers are scouring the internet for the
cheapest petrol stations. The online competitive intelligence service
Hitwise reported that, in the past month, searches for
petrol-price-related terms have risen by 300 per cent.
Search words such as “electric cars” registered increases of up to
2,900 per cent. Websites such as are reporting
dramatic traffic increases.
Americans are increasingly switching to public transport. Washington
DC’s Metrorail, the capital area’s train system, had the
sixth-busiest day in its history last Thursday. In Salt Lake City,
passenger numbers are up 50 per cent on the 30km light-rail system.
Pawnshops report much higher traffic with customers who need cash for
the petrol pump.
The relentless surge in prices is not only threatening to exhaust US
consumers. It has become US President George W. Bush’s latest
headache and the hottest topic for the mid-term elections later in
the year. The timing couldn’t be worse, with the entire House of
Representatives and one-third of the Senate facing elections in
November.
In the past couple of days, Democrats, who are the minority in both
chambers of Congress, made high petrol prices the subject of their
appearances. Last Saturday, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said in a
weekly radio address that the president’s policies amount to
“billion-dollar giveaways to the oil companies”. Democratic Senator
Charles Schumer from New York called the surging petrol prices a
“wake-up call” for America.
Republicans were quick to respond on this emotional and sensitive
topic. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Republican leader Bill
Frist sent the president a letter on Monday, calling on him to
conduct an intense investigation into whether there is any
price-fixing, collusion, gouging or other anti-competitive practices.
Mr Bush has offered remedies to the situation on national airwaves
almost daily since the oil price reached its record high. On Tuesday,
he announced that he would free up oil that was added to the nation’s
emergency reserves and waive rules that were creating bottlenecks in
US petrol markets.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, located in salt caverns deep
underground along the US Gulf coast, serves as an emergency supply in
the event of a sudden disruption from producers or refiners. The
government has been adding an average of 25,000 barrels of oil per
day to the reserve so far this year. The US imports about 10 million
barrels a day.
Democrats blasted Mr Bush after his announcement. Congressman Eliot
Engel, a New York Democrat, said the president “offered a piecemeal
approach”. Mr Bush also ordered the Justice Department to check for
possible price manipulation.
Last weekend, he visited California, home of the highest petrol
prices in the nation, in order to promote his initiative on
alternative fuels. Mr Bush again branded America’s oil addiction as
harmful to the economy and national security. The US needs to import
60 per cent of the oil it consumes.
After some months of relief, oil executives, who were questioned
before a joint Senate committee hearing on energy prices after
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, were back in the hot seat. The
combined 2005 earnings of Exxon Mobil – the world’s biggest oil
company – BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Conoco Phillips topped
US$111 billion. In an April 6-9 Washington Post/ABC News poll, 70 per
cent of US adults said the recent petrol price increases were causing
them financial hardship.
The outrage over oil and petrol prices is more than just another
embarrassing subject in a scandal-ridden presidency.
“Record-high petrol prices are enforcing a growing sense that this
country is headed in the wrong direction,” said David Gergen, an
adviser to five former US presidents. Already widespread anger over
the administration’s handling of the Iraq war and the latest efforts
to criminalise illegal immigrants have sent the president’s approval
ratings to new lows.
“We’re going to have a tough summer,” admitted even Mr Bush, who
warned consumers last weekend that prices were likely to go even
higher in the coming months.
The high prices are also threatening US industries that have been
struggling for years. Two of America’s five biggest airlines, Delta
Air and Northwest, are in bankruptcy proceedings. Delta filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last September and has tried to
eliminate US$1.9 billion in annual costs. The company has had US$12.3
billion in losses since 2000.
High petrol prices have also deepened the crisis of Detroit’s leading
automobile companies. They slashed sales of General Motors and Ford’s
petrol-guzzling SUVs. General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner is struggling
to recover from a US$10.6 billion net loss last year after Toyota and
Honda increased sales. General Motors’ share of the US market slid to
26.2 per cent last year, the lowest since 1925. Last year, for the
first time, Toyota produced more cars in the US than General Motors.
The petro-political fears are sparked by several factors.
Contributing to the record prices is the instability in the Middle
East and uncertainty over supply from oil-rich nations. Supply
concerns in Nigeria, still recovering from an uprising among farmers,
are another factor. Increasing competition from China and India has
contributed for some time already.
Independent oil experts such as energy trader Boone Pickens are not
sure whether the oil price rage will calm down any time soon.
On Tuesday, Mr Pickens said at the 2006 Global Conference, organised
by the Milken Institute in Los Angeles, that for the foreseeable
future demand for oil would outpace supply because production could
not expand beyond 85 million barrels a day.
The reasons for that, according to the hedge fund manager from
Dallas, are dwindling reserves and a big question mark over new ones
with significant size.

Agence France Presse — English
April 28, 2006 Friday 5:07 PM GMT
US and Azerbaijan leaders discuss Iran, democracy, energy issues
WASHINGTON, April 28 2006
US President George W. Bush met Friday with his Azerbaijan
counterpart Ilham Aliyev for talks that centered on Iran, energy
issues and the need for the Central Asian state to implement
democratic reforms.
“We talked about the need for the world to see a modern Muslim
country that is able to provide for its citizens and that understands
that democracy is the wave of the future,” Bush told reporters after
the meeting.
He added that the two men had also discussed the nuclear standoff
with Iran and that he had assured Aliyev of Washington’s “desire to
solve this problem diplomatically and peacefully”.
Azerbaijan shares a 600-kilometer (380-mile) border with Iran and as
such is considered an important ally to the United States. Aliyev,
however, has made clear that his country would not take part in any
possible military operations against its neighbor.
The 44-year-old leader, who had sought the White House meeting since
taking office in a widely criticized election in 2003, said he hoped
to strengthen bilateral relations and welcomed Washington’s
assistance in exploiting Caspian oil and gas reserves.
“We are very grateful for the leadership of the United States in
promoting energy security issues in the region, in assisting us to
create a solid transportation infrastructure which will allow us to
develop full-scale Caspian oil and gas reserves and to deliver them
to the international markets,” he said.
Tapping into Azerbaijan’s important oil and gas reserves are seen by
Washington as a way of offsetting European dependence on Russian
energy supplies.
A 1,760-kilometer (1,100-mile) long pipeline with an annual capacity
to carry 50 million tonnes of crude oil from the Caspian Sea off
Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is expected
to begin operating this summer.
Aliyev said he had discussed in his meeting with Bush the issue of
the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been controlled
since the early 1990s by its majority ethnic-Armenian population, and
hoped for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
His visit to Washington has raised eyebrows in many circles, with
critics pointing to Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record and charges
by various groups — including anti-corruption watchdog Transparency
International — that the country is one of the most corrupt
worldwide.
But analysts say the Bush administration has no other option but to
befriend Aliyev, and point to Azerbaijan’s oil and gas riches and its
strategic location as the driving factor behind the warm welcome he
received at the White House.
During his four-day visit to the United States that ends Friday,
Aliyev played down concerns about human rights in his country but
pledged to continue implementing democratic reforms.
He said he was very satisfied with his visit to Washington and hoped
for continued cooperation with the United States on various fronts,
including Iraq and Afghanistan, where Azerbaijan has contributed
troops.

Newsday (New York)
April 28, 2006 Friday
NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
Lost in his native Cuba
BY JOHN ANDERSON. SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY
(1 1/2 STARS) THE LOST CITY (R). Andy Garcia’s lopsided idyll about
the Havana of his boyhood and the Cuba of his dreams. With Bill
Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Inés Sastre, Tomas Milian. Written by G.
Cabrera Infante. Directed by Garcia. 2:23 (violence). At the Sunshine
Cinemas and AMC Empire, Manhattan.
When ethnic pride comes in the door, filmmaking savvy seems to jump
out the window. Two examples: Atom Egoyan’s Armenian genocide soaper,
“Ararat,” and Roman Polanski’s Warsaw ghetto melodrama, “The
Pianist,” movies wherein gifted directors were reduced to lumber
salesmen by the weight of history and the memory of their mothers.
Add to this lackluster list “The Lost City,” which was clearly a
labor of love for Andy Garcia, and for the rest of us will simply be
laborious (ta-dum). Born in Cuba, Garcia became part of the
post-Castro exodus at age 5, and “The Lost City” seems like a film
he’s been nursing in his bosom since he first sighted Miami. His
intentions are admirable, Fidel Castro being indefensible. But his
primary purpose is pushing an agenda, so the movie becomes
indefensible.
Why Garcia and screenwriter G. Cabrera Infante decided to make “The
Lost City” into a melange of “The Godfather” and “Casablanca” is
anyone’s guess. (Why would Garcia remind us he was in “Godfather:
Part III”?) Garcia plays Fico Fellove, owner of the club El Tropico
and the eldest of three brothers – each of whom will follow a
different path in the Cuban revolution. Luis (Nestor Carbonell) joins
a bourgeoise insurrection that wants to topple President Fulgencio
Batista (Juan Fernández) without handing the country over to the
untrustworthy Castro. Ricardo (Enrique Murciano) will go completely
native, adopting the khakis and beard of a true believer and turn on
his own family. (His resemblance to a movie Judas – the old Judas –
has got to be intentional).
Fico is apolitical, devoted to the music that both his club and the
movie showcase. But he’s forced, naturally, into taking a stand.
“The Lost City” might have been a tidy, well-wrought story with 45
minutes cut, but it is bloated beyond redemption. Despite
invigorating performances by Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman – the
latter as Meyer Lansky, the former as a kind of comedic Greek chorus
in shorts – the film is so transparent in its sentiments that it
can’t be taken seriously.
Once Castro comes to power, the cruelty goes nationwide. So does the
stupidity: A Castro functionary (Elizabeth Peña) orders Fico to ban
saxophones from his club, because the sax was invented by a Belgian
and Belgium had a shameful record in Africa.
Nowhere near the attention is paid to the crimes of the U.S.-backed
Batista, which is what got Castro his foothold to begin with. But
“The Lost City” isn’t history. Nor is it very good filmmaking.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Moscow News (Russia)
April 28, 2006
LATEST STABBING DEATH A MYSTERY
By Julia Duchovny The Moscow News
The brutal knifing death of an ethnic Armenian student in a crowded
subway station Saturday afternoon sent shockwaves through a society
already weary with allegations of xenophobia and the debates that
rage around it.
The media has been quick to report attacks against non-Russians,
making them appear more frequent in the last months, while rights
groups warn of growing nationalist tensions across the country. The
act of violence itself is often buried beneath speculations of
various political motivations, and the incident involving Vigen
Abramyants was further complicated by conflicting reports among
police, witnesses, and family.
Racial Hatred or Teenage Spat?
According to initial reports, Vigen (also reported as Vagan)
Abramyants, 17, waiting with friends in the middle of the platform at
central Moscow’s crowded Pushkinskaya Station, when a gang of about
20 young men in black with shaved heads attacked the group, targeting
Abramyants and stabbing him in the heart. The attackers then
dispersed, while Abramyants died in the arms of a friend before help
arrived.
The story changed Monday, however, as police announced that they had
captured a suspect who confessed to the killing. Denis Kulagin, 17,
was said to have been among the group of friends Abramyants had been
waiting with. According to police reports, Kulagin came to the
station with his girlfriend, Zhanna Nefedova, and was waiting for a
group of football fans. Abramyants was in that group and said
something insulting to Zhanna, after which Kulagin allegedly stabbed
him with a knife. “We can definitely say that the killing occurred as
a result of a disagreement,” a police source was quoted by the
state-owned RIA Novosti news agency as saying, “and there was no
racial motivations in this case.”
Some Russian media immediately denounced the official version as
incorrect. The Gazeta daily reported that investigators had a tape of
video surveillance in the station depicting a group of young people
standing on the platform, with one of the individuals suddenly
falling to the ground. The daily quoted the Abramyants family’s
attorney, Simon Tsaturyan, as saying that prosecutors refused to show
him the tape, claiming it did not exist. Izvestia cited the same
tape, but said that the recording showed no signs of skinheads.
But another problem was that there was no knife. The Izvestia daily
reported visiting Zhanna’s family and learning that police had raided
their apartment searching for the weapon. More troubling still was an
interview given by Kulagin’s mother, Olga, to the Komsomolskaya
Pravda tabloid, alleging police pressure. “We were given a choice,”
she reportedly said, “either Denis goes to jail for fifteen years for
a racially-motivated murder, or he gets less if it was over a common
dispute. They promised a suspended sentence…
I insisted that Denis sign the confession that the conflict arose
because of the girl. Then when I got home I realized I had broken his
life.”
The account given by Zhanna’s mother, Olga Nefedova, in an interview
published by Izvestia strangely coincided with Olga Kulagina’s.
Nefedova reportedly did not allow journalists to talk to her
daughter, but recalled how Zhanna spoke of a group of skinheads
looking for a victim. Nefedova denied that Kulagin really killed the
student, and said he told Zhanna to run when the attackers approached
them. Zhanna never actually saw Abramyants getting stabbed, but told
her mother she saw a knife in one of the attacker’s hands.
By Wednesday, police told news agencies they were investigating two
versions of the incident, and could not rule out either Kulagin’s
involvement, nor a racially-motivated attack by skinheads. Kulagin,
who, despite being a minor, was interrogated without an attorney or
his mother present, withdrew his confession.
Subway Fury or Provocative Rumor?
Moscow police were already on heightened alert the weekend of the
killing. Hitler’s birthday is April 20, while two football matches
were being hosted in the city, which tend to draw crowds of rowdy
fans onto public transportation. By Monday, Russian newspapers and
blogs were awash with reports of football hooligans beating up
non-Russians on the Moscow subway. Official reports confirmed another
killing, meanwhile: a Tajik was stabbed to death.
But in another incident Saturday, a few Muscovites reported over the
Internet of being in the middle of a hooligan attack as a group of
young people stormed into a subway car and began beating up
passengers. According to one witness, one of the most seriously
injured victims was a man of non-Russian ethnicity. But there were
several aspects that made the entire story suspect. After the
Gazeta.ru online newspaper ran it, the two witnesses who had first
written about the story in Livejournal deleted their posts.
Meanwhile, the subway police told Gazeta.ru they had heard nothing
whatsoever of the incident. Despite a long thread in Gazeta.ru’s
forum describing similar incidents all over the city, some
journalists became wary that some of these reports were part of a
disinformation campaign – echoing long-time conspiracy theories among
nationalist bloggers that attacks against non-Russians were nothing
but a propaganda campaign to discredit Russia itself.MN