Armenia the third in the 15th international “Slavyanski Bazar” festival
ArmRadio.am
14.07.2006 14:45
Karine Asryan of Armenia and Chicks of Italy took th ethird place
at the 15th international “Slavyanski Bazar” festival of pop songs,
receiving also a financial prize.
The Embassy of the Republic of Belarus told “Arminfo” Agency that
Oksana Bogoslovskaya of Russia took the Grand Prix of the international
festival. Natalia Gordienko of Moldova and Alexey Goman of Russia took
the first and second prizes correspondingly. Marina Vasilevskaya of
Belarus was awarded a special prize after Vladimir Mulyavin.
All n all 23 young singers from 20 countries were participating in
the 15th international “Slavyanski Bazar” festival of pop songs

European Commission welcomes opening of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline
ArmRadio.am
14.07.2006 16:02
The European Commission welcomes opening of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline.
“Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline will improve the security in regard
to the supply of oil and diversification of its ways, which is one
of our political objectives,” European Commissioner on Energy Andres
Pibalgsi said in as statement disseminated in Brussels. Yesterday he
participated in the official opening ceremony of the pipeline.
It is expected that by 2008 the volume of oil transported through
BTC will reach 1 million barrels or 50 million tones annually.

ARMENIA SCIENTISTS FIND ANCESTORS OF DINOSAURUSES
Minsk, July 13. ArmInfo. The expedition of the Armenian scientists
found the ancestors of dinosauruses in the Klyapino Kormyanskiy region
of Byelorussia.
“Yerkramas” informed ArmInfo that these amphibious newts are 20 cm and
are considered the ancestors of the dinosauruses. These newts can even
grown in special conditions. Sahak Atanesian, Doctor of Aetiology,
head of “Uniecofor” union, stated that they have been carrying out
special researches on newts in Armenia. The scientists have recreated
special conditions of the Jurassic period for the newts.
The discovery of the Armenian scientists is of special importance for
Byelorussia, as the pectinate newts are included in the Red Book. The
Armenian expedition has found an entirely unknown dwelling place of
the pectinate newts in the swamp near Klyapino village.

RA JUSTICE MINISTER:IF YOUR DOG BITES A PASSER-BY, YOU WILL HAVE TO
BEAR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THAT
Yerevan, July 13. ArmInfo. RA Justice Minister David Haroutiunian
suggested to make a number of amendments in the current Administrative
Code of Armenia. He informed the journalists about this today, when
representing the initiative to make amendments to RA Administrative
Code. He said that the suggested amendments are conditioned by the
life and the court practice. He meant the unfair court verdicts that
were taken because of the drawbacks in the laws.
In particular, he stated that according to the current law, the
parents should bear responsibility for the damage made by a child
under 14, if it isn’t proved that the damage was made because of the
parents. The minister suggests to exclude this part, i.e. the parents
should always be responsible for the actions of children under 14.
The same thing concerns the educational or other institutions in
which charge the children are of. In the given case that institution
is as responsible, as the parents are. The next amendment concerns
the owner of an object in case of making a harm. The minister brought
the example when an upper neighbor pours you with water. “According
to the current legislation, the responsibility should bear the one
who makes the damage, i.e. the water. We suggest to make the owner
of the property bear responsibility,” he said. Besides, the owner
of the animal that bit someone should also bear responsibility for,
notwithstanding whether the animal escaped, was lost or is in the
charge of another man.
The minister also touched upon the so-called sources of special danger
that include the transport, the electricity lines, etc. In this case,
the owners should bear responsibility, if it isn’t proved that the
damage was made because of the suffered side. The owners also should
make compensations, if it is proved that the sources went out of
control without the awareness of the owner, for example, the sources
were stolen. In these cases, the owner is responsible, if the owner
didn’t take relevant measures to return his property. At the same
time, if the object is given to another person on legal grounds, the
owner is still responsible. For example, if you trusted your car to
someone who ran over a passer-by, the owner of the car is responsible
for the incident. The minister also touched upon the amendments in
the Criminal Code.

REFUGEES FORM AZERBAIJAN URGE ILHAM ALIYEV TO RECOGNIZE INDEPENDENCE
OF NAGORNY KARABAKH FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF PEACE IN REGION
Yerevan, July 13. ArmInfo. A network of a civil society “Refugees
and International Law” presenting the interests of 500,000 Armenian
refugees from Azerbaijani SSR and Nakhijevan appealed to the President
of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev for recognition of the independence of
Nagorny Karabakh.
In their appeal, the refugees, in particular, say that in response to
the political issues raised by the Armenian population, the authorities
of the Azerbaijani SSR applied force, organizing pogroms, murders
and deportation of Armenians from Sumgait, Kirovabad, Gazakh, Tovuz,
Baku and other towns having large Armenian population.
However, local Armenians could not defend themselves. Afterwards,
a second stage-expulsion of the autonomous Armenian population from
the villages of Karabakh started. Then, the Azerbaijani authorities
initiated large scale military actions against the Nagorny Karabakh
Republic that declared independence basing on the will of the
population of Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Region, Shahumyan region
and Getashen sub-region. Then, NKR was in a full blockade due to its
enclave geographical position. The Azerbaijani Republic was defeated.
The borders of NKR and AR were changed as well. The Constitutional
Act on the state independence of Azerbaijani SSR dated 18 October
1991 contains a refusal of Azerbaijan from legal succession of the
Azerbaijan SSR. It not only means that Armenians expelled from the
Azerbaijani SSR cannot rely on the AR authorities in protection of
their rights, but also that AR can claim only part of the territories
of Azerbaijani SSR, created as “union of Armenians and Muslims.”
The atmosphere of armenophobia in AR, the memory of the tragic past
makes impossible the return of Armenians refugees to Azerbaijani
SSR and Nakhijevan. Taking into account the given realities,
Armenian refugees recognize NKR as the only legal successor of
Azerbaijani SSR, the refugees say. In their statement dated June 30,
the refugees applied to NKR authorities for relevant conditions for
their resettlement in the territories under the jurisdiction of NKR and
transfer of these territories to them on the private property rights.
It will partially cover their direct material losses. As regards
indirect losses, the refugees connect them with the privatization in
Azerbaijani Republic. They were illegally deprived of participation
in this process. The refugees believe it fair if Azerbaijani
authorities propose acceptable and adequate mechanisms of providing
Armenian refugees with a share from the profits from recovery,
processing, transportation and sale of oil and gas. And about the
most important. Of course, we are for durable peace based on mutual
protection and respect of interests. Recognition of NKR’s independence
by Azerbaijan will be the best guarantee of peace and prosperity in
the region, the refugees say.

U.S.-based Turkish professor facing trial over controversial book
AP Worldstream; Jul 14, 2006
A University of Arizona assistant professor has been charged in Turkey
with “insulting Turkishness” and could face a prison sentence.
Elif Shafak, who is a Turkish citizen, said she will stand trial
because of the words uttered by fictional Armenian characters in
her novel “The Bastard of Istanbul” _ a book she wrote while she was
living in Tucson.
In the book, an Armenian character refers to “Turkish butchers.”
The Turkish government and some international historians reject the
claim that a mass evacuation and related deaths of up to 1.5 million
Armenians living in Turkey from 1915 to 1923 was genocide. Turkey
also says the death toll is inflated.
Most Armenian and Western scholars say the massacres were genocide,
but Turkey has denied it, saying only that many Armenians died
of starvation, disease and exposure on forced marches to Syria in
retaliation against the Christian minority for reportedly collaborating
with Russia during World War I.
Shafak, 35, is on a one-year leave from her teaching post in the UA’s
department of Near Eastern studies.
She said her book was released in Turkey on March 8 and already has
sold more than 50,000 copies.
The charges against Shafak were filed under the controversial Article
301 of the Turkish Criminal Code.
The European Union has frequently warned Turkey that its efforts
to join the bloc could be hampered by Article 301, which sets out
penalties for insulting the Turkish Republic, its officials, or
“Turkishness,” and has been used to bring charges against dozens of
journalists, publishers and scholars.
No trial date has been set yet, Shafak said. Her case has been reported
in the Turkish media but has not been confirmed by prosecutors or
court officials.
Shafak said her book “questions two big taboos, one of them a political
taboo _ the Armenian Question _ and the other a sexual taboo _
incest. So it was not easy to digest for some people and it caused
a lot of stir.”

Kasparov makes his first political move on Putin
By Emma Cowing
The Scotsman – United Kingdom; Jul 14, 2006
MOSCOW in March is not a welcoming place. The temperature hovers
around the -4C mark, the sun sets before 5pm, and a filthy slush coats
the darkened streets. So it is unsurprising that in this cold, dark
month Marina Litvinovich, a pretty blonde 31-year-old PR specialist,
was hurrying to get to her car after a late night at work. Leaving her
office about 9pm, she started to make her way down the city’s Makarenko
Street. She had almost reached her car when, without warning, she felt
a blow to her head from behind. Although she was immediately knocked
out cold, her attackers continued to beat her. She lay unconscious on
the freezing ground for around 20 minutes and, drowsily coming round,
knew what she had to do. She picked up her mobile phone and called
not the police, but her boss: Garry Kasparov, the world’s greatest
chess player.
The brutal attack on Litvinovich – two of her teeth were knocked out,
she suffered injuries to her face and ribs, but escaped lasting damage
– is merely one incident in a catalogue of intimidation toward Kasparov
and his staff since he made the surprising announcement last March
that he intended to retire from the international chess circuit to
enter Russian politics – a move that prompted one chess fan to hit
him over the head with a chessboard and shout: “I admired you as a
chess player, but you gave that up for politics!”
A long-time critic of the Putin regime, Kasparov means business. He
has his own political organisation, the United Civil Front, bodyguards
that would put George Bush’s to shame and plans to run for the Russian
presidency in 2008. In the West, he hit the headlines this week for
organising an alternative G8 summit in Moscow, just days before the
real summit goes ahead in Putin’s native St Petersburg.
The alternative summit has been a publicity coup for Kasparov.
Scheduled in order to cause maximum embarrassment to the Kremlin,
he attracted the likes of Anthony Brenton, the British ambassador,
who gave a speech at one of its forums, and Daniel Fried, the US
assistant secretary of state, who defended his appearance, saying
“if Russian officials attended a summit organised by the Democrats –
the American opposition – we wouldn’t regard it as anything other than
[them] doing their job”. But while some of the summit’s attendees from
the West may have been coy about their real reasons for showing up,
Kasparov was in no doubt that the meeting was a chance to attack the
Russian president. “Democracy is not a bargaining chip,” he railed
during a speech. “This is a fundamental issue. The West should not
pretend Mr Putin is a member of this club [the G8]”.
KASPAROV COULD BE playing with fire. He claims more than 20 of his
supporters have been attacked over the past few weeks, while Kasparov
himself was apparently roughed up by Interior Ministry troops last
May. Venues where he has been scheduled to speak have suddenly lost
electrical power or been pronounced “full”; he has had ketchup-covered
eggs thrown at him, and police have dogged his every move. Others have
fared far worse: oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky is currently in
prison for fraud and tax evasion, though many suspect this is because
he was planning on financing the opposition.
“It stands to reason that all this is orchestrated by those who
don’t want us in politics,” Kasparov said recently. “That means the
authorities.”
Kasparov and his team have been putting their noses where they are
not wanted. It is believed the attack on Litvinovich was motivated
by investigations she had been doing on the 2004 siege of Beslan. She
edits a website entitled The Truth about Beslan, which makes a number
of allegations as to how the government and the army handled the
siege and its aftermath, and includes testimonies from parents and
victims alleging that they were not protected by their country.
“There are new and interesting facts that are serious enough and
important,” she told a Russian radio station after the attack. “It
seems to me most regrettable that this upsets some people.”
In a country where chess is viewed in much the same way as professional
tennis is in the US, Kasparov is an A-List celebrity.
Broodingly handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and dark soulful eyes,
he is one of Russia’s most recognisable figures. A child prodigy,
he was born in Azerbaijan on 16 April 1963 to an Armenian mother and
a Jewish father. His father died when he was just seven, and by eight
he was training at world-champion Mikhail Botvinnik’s chess school.
>From there it was a heady tumble into celebrity chess stardom. At 13 he
won the Soviet junior championship and started playing in tournaments
worldwide. By 15 he was a chess master. At 17 he won the world junior
championship. Part of Kasparov’s unblinkered view of Russia comes
from that early life on the chess circuit. Travelling the world as
a teenager, he saw the West as it really was, rather than the myth
spun by “invincible Mother Russia”.
AS A CHESS PLAYER, Kasparov’s career remains unparalleled. Named world
number one a record 23 times, he has won every major chess tournament
and achieved the highest ever official chess rating.
Perhaps his most famous encounter was with IBM’s Deep Blue, a computer
that defeated Kasparov in 1996, at the height of his career.
A year later Kasparov ordered a rematch, and won. He is not, it seems,
a man easily beaten. His decision to end his chess career last year
confounded the chess community, but few realised how seriously he
took his devotion to politics.
Politically, he has been described as a revolutionary. He has watched
with admiration the domino effect of revolutions in former Soviet
states such as Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Georgia, and feels something
similar must happen in Russia. His United Civic Front is a group of
around 2,000 oppositionists, including Communists, Putin defectors
and members of nationalist parties, and is lead by his Committee 2008:
Free Choice, a group 32 with differing politics.
Kasparov is keen to bring his message – that there must be change,
that Putin must not be allowed to win a third term, that Russia must
do more to embrace democracy – to those outside Russia’s political
and economic hubs, Moscow and St Petersburg.
Unlike many Russian politicians, he travels: not abroad, but within
his own country. He trundles up and down the Soviet highways attending
meetings, giving speeches, hammering home his message in the most
far-flung corners of the country.
This is partly because, as an opposition politician, the state-friendly
TV channels are unlikely to give him much time. But he also stated
in an interview with Atlantic Monthly in December last year that
the experience is like going to university. “I want to shift the
centre of political gravity from Moscow to the regions,” he told
the magazine. “To bring big politics down to the molecular level,
to show people how it affects them and how we can change policy to
change our lives.”
But Kasparov’s persona is not all sunshine and good political works.
For years there were rumours on the chess circuit of his overbearing
manner, and British grandmaster Nigel Short famously described
him as “a hairy ape”. He is known to be difficult and demanding,
and his private life is messy and complex. His first wife, Masha,
who lives in New Jersey with their 12-year-old daughter, won a court
order forbidding the child visiting Kasparov in Moscow, fearing if
she did she would not return to the US. He divorced his second wife,
Yulia, with whom he has a son, last year. He is currently dating a
beautiful young business graduate, Daria Tarasova.
So can the grandmaster turn president? He compares himself on the
political scale to Arnold Schwarzenegger – “economically conservative
but socially liberal” – although the celebrity comparison also rings
true. The only difference is that, while it has taken Schwarzenegger
years of political campaigning and donations to get to his current
position of Governor of California, Kasparov has caught serious
political attention in the West, has the highest political profile of
any Russian politician except Putin, and a good shot at the Russian
presidency come 2008, all within 18 months.
Perhaps we should not expect anything less from the man who has
dominated his sport for two decades. And perhaps politics has been
informing his chess for longer than we realised.
He is nothing if not determined. As he told an interviewer last year:
“I will stay in my country to fight for it; it is my country as much
as Mr Putin’s.”

Vardan Oskanyan: We are not about to participate in Azeri games
ArmRadio.am
14.07.2006 15:36
“We are not about to participate in Azeri games,” declared RA Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan, turning to those statements of Azerbaijan,
which assert that Armenians conflagrate the territories under their
control.
“I do not even want to spend time to discuss those kind of statements,”
Vardan Oskanyan said, noting that Azerbaijan is trying to direct
the attention of the international community away from its” barbaric
activity ” carried out in Azerbaijan, which resulted in the destruction
of a whole layer of the Armenian culture.

Thursday, July 13, 2006
******************************************
DON’T SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER
**************************************************
Almost all catastrophic blunders begin by exaggerating the importance of a blade of grass and ignoring the prairie. And such exaggerations come naturally to us because we live with ourselves 24/7 and think we harbor more complexities than the rest of mankind.
*
It is no exaggeration to say that World War I (which prepared the ground for World War II) began because a nobody assassinated another nobody in the middle of nowhere during a non-event. Why was this assassination so important? I suspect only a handful of specialized historians may have an answer, which may succeed only in exposing the absurdity of human conduct.
*
The happiest years of my life were when I knew nothing and understood even less. This may explain why most people prefer ignorance to knowledge; and if you dare to share your knowledge with them, they resent you; they may even hate you because they feel more comfortable in a world of clichés and platitudes. Clichés such as “first nation to convert to Christianity,” which is immediately and invariably followed by another first – “first nation to experience genocide in the 20th century.” Even clichés that open old wounds are welcome because they shift the burden of responsibility and guilt on others.
*
The other day I received an e-mail from a gentle reader that said, among other things, “How dare you think of yourself as a writer?” As a matter of fact, whenever I think of myself as a writer, I can’t write. The responsibility paralyzes me. Don’t think of me as a writer but as a fellow human being who for a few minutes every day likes to share his thoughts with a handful of readers who are absolutely free to ignore him.
#
Friday, July 14, 2006
**************************************
Can you imagine anything more tedious and unreadable than a work of fiction whose central character and narrator is a small-town clergyman? I would have answered that question with a resounding no, until I read Marilynne Robinson’s GILEAD; and when I finished reading it I felt as though I had lost a good friend. So I decided to reread it.
*
Another book I have been rereading is Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT, whose central two characters, wonderfully named Estragon and Vladimir, while waiting for someone whose arrival is perpetually postponed, spend their time verbally abusing each other, their final insult being “Critic!” Sounds familiar?
*
Luis Bunuel: “I am neither a believer nor an atheist, but the exact opposite.”
*
Nothing comes easier to an Armenian than to overestimate himself. If he is cunning, he will think of himself as intelligent. If he is intelligent, he will think he is wise. If he is talented, he will brag about his genius. Saroyan bragged about the fact that his initials were the same as Shakespeare’s. And then there is the type of Armenian who prides himself on his superior brand of Armenianism but who writes with the concentrated venom of a Turkish viper.
#
Saturday, July 15, 2006
*************************************
ON CORRUPTION
***************************
To be a writer does not mean to know and understanding everything or, for that matter, to be infallible. I don’t mind admitting that compared to what there is to know, what I know is no more than a drop in the ocean, and that there are a great many things that I don’t understand and I will never understand. On the subject of my deficiencies I could also add that I have experienced very little and done even less. But I can say one thing in my favor: I have at no time knowingly supported the corrupt or anyone who has abused his power by violating someone’s fundamental human right.
*
Whenever I speak of corruption, I am immediately, not to say automatically (that is to say, unthinkingly) informed by some readers that there is corruption everywhere, meaning, I might as well shut up and mind my own business. To these gentlemen I would like to ask: If, as you say, there is corruption everywhere, what exactly have you done to expose it? What are you doing to combat it? If you have done nothing, on whose side are you? Don’t you think it is the duty of all decent men to expose corruption and combat those who profit from it? If you have done nothing, why do you find it necessary to obstruct the path of those who, unlike you, refuse to come to terms with it? What makes you think the rest of mankind should accept you as a role model by adopting a passive stance? Doesn’t it ever occur to you that by explaining corruption and in the process justifying it, you may also be perpetuating and legitimizing it? Don’t you think to ignore the cry of victims means to be on the side of victimizers? And worse, much worse. Don’t you think by coming to terms with the corrupt of this world and by accepting it as if it were an inevitably fact of life, like death and taxes, you dishonor the memory of countless decent men throughout history who opposed corruption and abuses of power, and by doing so they risked their own lives?
*
If you tell me I take myself too seriously and that even if I were to scream at the top of my lungs for the next hundred years nothing will change and that if anything has changed during the last twenty or thirty years that I have been writing it has been for the worse, then I will reply by saying, at least I have harmed no one but myself. But if, and I say if, by what I have written I have made one or two individuals here and there, now and then, uncomfortable even if it means for a fraction of a second, then I don’t think it has all been for nothing.
#

Zhirayr Sefilian: “There is no Nagorno Karabakh conflict: the issue
has been settled long ago”
Regnum, Russia
July 12 2006
“There is no Nagorno Karabakh conflict, as the question was settled
long ago,” Defense of Liberated Territories public initiative
coordinator, former Commander of Shushi special battalion Zhirayr
Sefilian is quoted as saying at a news conference at the Armenian
National Press Club on July 12.
According to him, “there is no threat of losing these territories
either.” It has been said about surrender of the “liberated
territories” to Azerbaijan for 15 years, and ten years ago there was
a danger to lose them too, but all the processes have been shallow.
“Opinion of the Armenian authorities does not coincide with attitudes
of the people. If the government tires to cede these territories
to Azerbaijan, our people will react to it and will not allow it,”
Zhirayr Sefilian said adding that he would the first to initiate such
public protest.
According to him, the Nagorno Karabakh has already been settled:
“There is only a question of Azerbaijan.” “Why should we take into
account borders of a state that was established 90 years ago,” the
former commander announced adding that “existence of such artificial
state causes damage to the whole region.” The Defense of Liberated
Territories public initiative coordinator also noted that the US has
no interest in settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. “The USA
wishes to strengthen its positions in South Caucasus and by its policy
it is withdrawing Armenia from Russia’s influence, and the conflict
is of no concern to it,” noted Sefilian. He also believes that no
peacekeeping contingent will be deployed until there is a Russian
military base in Armenia’s territory. “Presence of two forces in the
region will aggravate the situation in the region and can provoke a
conflict situation,” he thinks.