BULGARIA READY TO ASSIST IN GARABAGH SETTLEMENT
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Posted June 19 2006
Baku, June 16, AssA-Irada
Sofia stands by to facilitate settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan
conflict over Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh, chairman of the Bulgarian
parliament’s committee on foreign policy Solomon Pasi visiting
Azerbaijan has said.
Azerbaijan’s integration into European organizations will help settle
the long-standing dispute and, as a member of NATO and the European
Union, Bulgaria is ready to provide assistance in this area.
Pasi said that his country, which once chaired the OSCE, now brokering
the peace process through its Minsk Group, is very familiar with the
ramifications of the conflict.
“The Bulgarian government is ready to avail of all the friendship
potential for Azerbaijan. Much work remains to be done,” Pasi said.

OIC SECRETARY GENERAL: “OCCUPATION OF THE AZERI TERRITORIES IS A PROBLEM NOT OF AZERBAIJAN ONLY BUT OF THE WHOLE MUSLIM WORLD”
Today, Azerbaijan
June 18 2006
OIC session to address broad agenda.
Representatives of 90 countries are to attend a session of the
Organization of the Islamic Conference’s (OIC) foreign ministers in
Baku on June 19-21, Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told a
news conference on Sunday, Interfax reports.
“Of the OIC’s 57 member-nations, 51 countries have already confirmed
their participation in the session. Another 33 countries will
be represented by their foreign ministers. The event will also
involve representatives of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other
international organizations,” he said.
The session’s agenda includes 99 issues, he said. “Among other matters,
we will discuss the occupation of the Azeri territories and assess
the damage caused by Armenia’s occupation of the Azeri territories
and the destruction of monuments there,” the minister said.
The participants in the meeting will also exchange their views on
the diplomatic impasse over Iran’s nuclear program, the situation in
Iraq and the Palestinian territories. “All these problems should be
resolved diplomatically,” Mammadyarov said.
The Muslim world’s role in global energy projects is crucial,
OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said at the same
news conference. He welcomed Kazakhstan’s decision to join the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
“We are entering a new epoch of global energy projects with the
participation of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other countries
of the Muslim world,” he said.
Ihsanoglu, however, expressed concern over security worldwide and the
situation in the Palestinian territories and other conflict-ridden
regions.
“Our aim is not to stay away from ongoing processes. We attach great
importance to cooperation in ensuring peace and security worldwide.
The Palestinian issue is a common problem facing the Muslim world. We
are concerned about continuing terrorist attacks that claim civilian
lives,” Ihsanoglu said.
“We are all concerned about Iran’s nuclear issue, the problem of Azeri
refugees from Nagorno Karabakh and the Palestinian issue. All these
problems have had a negative impact on security around the globe,”
he said.
“The occupation of the Azeri territories is a problem of Azerbaijan
and the Muslim world as a whole,” he said.
URL:

EU SLAMS TURKEY IN DRAFT PROGRESS REPORT -PAPER
Reuters, UK
June 18 2006
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The EU criticises the Turkish military’s role
in politics, a lack of reform and minority rights and relations
with Cyprus in the draft of a progress report due later this year,
a newspaper reported on Sunday.
The European Union is due to publish a progress report on
Ankara’s entry bid in October or November, a year after the start
of negotiations, which turned frosty on Friday when Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan said he would sooner see talks suspended than make
concessions over Cyprus.
Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper cited EU sources on Sunday as saying the
first draft criticised Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cyprus,
as the EU demands, before the bloc lifts trade restrictions on Turkish
Cypriots in breakaway northern Cyprus.
The paper said the draft also notes a slowdown in political reform,
the military’s continuing influence over political institutions and
calls for more work for judicial independence and rights for women
and minorities.
It says conditions in the poor, mainly Kurdish southeast, where
security forces are fighting separatist guerrillas, have deteriorated
and criticises relations with traditional enemies and neighbours
Greece and Armenia.
The European Commission’s enlargement spokeswoman, Krisztina Nagy,
said the report was still a long way off. “I don’t think a consolidated
draft report exists at this stage. In any case it is much too early
to speculate on its content,” she said.
The newspaper said the draft would be amended, but the sources did
not expect many fundamental changes.
“This is standard EU criticism of Turkey,” said an official in Brussels
who asked not to be named. “It was present in last year’s report and
it is likely to be in this year’s report.”
EU leaders at a summit in Brussels on Friday replied to Erdogan’s
Cyprus comments by calling on Turkey to let shipping from the tiny
Mediterranean island use Turkish ports this year.
Last week Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was quoted
as saying membership talks should be frozen if Turkey does not open
its ports this year.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has said Turkey, which is not
expected to join the wealthy bloc until 2015 at the earliest, could
be heading for a “train crash” in its accession process and has urged
Ankara to step up reforms.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ALIYEV: “UN RESOLUTIONS ON OCCUPATION OF AZERBAIJANI LANDS MUST BE IMPLEMENTED”
Today, Azerbaijan
June 18 2006
“Azerbaijan is working on strengthening of railway system between
Europe and Asia,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in
his address at 2nd summit of Conference on Interaction and
Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in Kazakhstan.
He stated that one of the priorities of the region is to set up Great
Silk Way communication. He also said that official Baku is ready to
deal with its part of the work on North-South Transport Corridor.
Mr. Aliyev also touched on threats to the region countries and drew
the attention to international terrorism. Stressing the importance
of combining the efforts of all the countries against international
terrorism, Mr. Aliyev said that Azerbaijan has been suffering terrorism
and Armenian terror acts against Azerbaijan claimed thousands of
people.
He said that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands and accused
international organizations and great powers of double standards in
approaching the occupation fact.
“Over one million Azerbaijan were ejected from their motherland. The
world closes eyes to this fact.”
He also mentioned four UN resolutions on the occupation of Azerbaijani
lands by Armenia and urged to implement them, APA reports.
URL:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

‘WE HAVE TO STAY IN IRAQ,’ SOROS SAYS
George Rush and Joanna Molloy Star Talk
Monterey County Herald, CA
June 18 2006
Billionaire George Soros spent a fortune trying to pry President
Bush out of the White House. But the Democratic Midas agrees with
the president that we can’t pull out of Iraq now.
“Unfortunately, many countries have a national narrative that condemns
them to keep on defending a cause that is really indefensible,”
the Open Society founder said Monday at the Core Club party for his
book “The Age of Fallibility.” “The Turks can’t admit the massacre of
Armenians, for example. We have been better in the past at recognizing
our sins. I’m afraid that we have to recognize that was a terrible
mistake.
“I can’t expect President Bush to do that,” Soros allowed. “That
would be out of keeping for anybody. What’s worse, I think we
actually have to stay in Iraq for a while. If we left, we would have
a conflagration. We are sitting on a civil war. Therefore, American
soldiers have to continue giving their lives to a bad cause.”
Soros said Bush was right to invade Afghanistan, because that “was
where Bin Laden was located.” He also conceded that, since pre-war
Iraq was “a magnet for general terrorists,” the U.S. occupation may
“have deflected a terrorist attack” here. But Soros argued that,
thanks to Bush’s policies, “The danger of a terrorist attack is
greater since 9/11. We may actually be growing terrorist cells.”
P.S. Soros was downright courtly toward the Bushies compared with
Sen. John Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, who snarled Tuesday at White
House adviser Karl Rove for accusing Kerry and fellow Vietnam vet
Rep. John Murtha of “cutting and running” from the war.
“The closest Karl Rove ever came to combat was these last months
spent worrying his cellmates might rough him up in prison,” said
Wade. “This porcine political operative can’t cut and run from the
truth any longer. When it came to Iraq, this administration chose to
cut and run from sound intelligence and good diplomacy…. In November,
Americans will cut and run from this Republican Congress.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ADDRESS OF ALIYEV AT THE 2ND SUMMIT OF CICA
AzerTag, Azerbaijan
June 17 2006
Dear Mr. Chairman!
Dear Heads of State and Government!
Ladies and gentlemen!
First of all, I would like to express gratitude to Nursultan Abishovich
Nazarbayev for the hospitality and excellent organization of the
summit.
We consider the 2nd CICA summit as an event of great importance in
terms of further coordination of our states’ efforts to strengthen
security measures in the region and establish effective economic
cooperation.
The Asian region is the most dynamically developing region in the
world; today and in the future, prospects of its development will
open new opportunities for more effective cooperation in all areas.
Our countries have high-level political ties, and we are bound
up with regional issues. However, we would like to have more
achievements and advancements also in economic cooperation. In this
context, realization of the important transportation projects that
we are planning can create new conditions for regional development;
this is an important element of strengthening security measures and
stability in our region. Azerbaijan, in its turn, is ready to play
a substantial role in transportation and communication projects. We
are active participants of the project Transport Corridor East-West.
Issues concerning restoration of the historical Silk Road are of great
interest for both regional development and Europe-Asia relations. Now,
we are actively involved in the important Europe-Asia railway
communication project, and in this one, Azerbaijan is a natural
bridge connecting Asia and Europe, and our aim is to strengthen
this structure, and create beneficial conditions for our partners,
and thereby enable our countries to use their potential in full
measure. We attach great attention to the project Transport Corridor
North-South, in which Azerbaijan is also an active participant,
and is ready to place its infrastructure at the disposal of the
partner-countries. Development of any state is possible only if
stability is ensured. Positive example of our states proves that
development and social consensus exist where there is stability. The
rapid growth of our economies is a graphic evidence of that. However,
a big threat also exists in our region. It has already been mentioned
today. First of all, it is the international terrorism, which can
seriously blast our plans and lead to unpredictable consequences. The
experience proved it impossible to fight this evil alone. It is
necessary to consolidate efforts of all states, have common approach
and get rid of double standards one in this issue. Terrorism has
no nationality or religion, and serious efforts are needed for the
common approach. There are no bad terrorist organizations or neutral
terrorist organizations – common approach should be applied to all
of them. As a country which suffered from terrorism is participating
in a number of events aimed at fighting terrorism, and we will do
continue to work in this direction. Armenian terrorist committed 32
terror acts in our country killing two thousand innocent people. The
pain terrorism inflicted on our people is well known. So, I want to
repeat that only joint efforts and common approach can allow us to
overcome the evil. Another potential and practical threat is the
unresolved conflicts in our region. Azerbaijan is the country 20%
of territory of which has been under Armenian occupation for over 10
years. As a result of the ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis, over
a million of our citizens are refugees and internally displaced. We
believe that the resolutions adopted by authoritative international
organizations on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict will be realized.
Unfortunately, UN’s four resolutions have not yet been fulfilled.
These resolutions demand unconditional withdrawal of the occupation
forces from the territory of Azerbaijan. The principle of territorial
integrity and inviolability of borders is a standard principle of
international law, and must be observed undeviatingly. As for the
issue of security for minorities in the territories of our countries,
practically each of them has ethnic minorities. To be a minority,
however, does not mean the right to demand separation of the territory
the minority lives in or to pursue policy of aggressive separatism. The
Declaration to be signed today determines it clearly.
Territorial integrity and fighting separatism are the firm elements
of regional development and security. Conniving separatist tendencies
and applying in this context double standard approach – to think
that violation of territorial integrity is possible in one place and
is not in other one will lead to catastrophic consequences for many
countries and the whole world. Therefore, there is a need to think
seriously about it and develop a common approach to resolution of
such problems. There is a quite positive experience of autonomies in
the world. They exist in both Asian and European regions. So, each
conflict of this kind should be settled only and only in the frame
work of the international legal norms, and under the conditions of
strengthening confidence measures.
Azerbaijan considers its participation in regional cooperation as
a very important element of its foreign policy. We believe that
cooperation in the Asian region will further develop due to both
economic potential and political interaction of our countries. For
our part, we are ready and we intend to be actively involved in all
regional projects.
Thank you for your attention.

GEORGIA CAN ISOLATE ARMENIA WITHOUT THE US HELP
Regnum Agency, Russia
June 17 2006
“If the US companies refuse to finance the project of the
Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku railway construction, as the House of
Representatives Committee of the US Congress has advised them to do,
there are other countries and other institutions, such as Eurobank,
the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Black Sea
Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB), IFC, and many others who can take
part in the project,” the Georgian Minister of Economic Development
Irakly Chogovadze commented to the press on the decision of the House
of Representatives committee on financial services to ban financing
of the mentioned project with the US moneys.
If the project of construction the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku
railway will be economically sound, it will be implemented, Irakly
Chogovadze declared. Today, the minister noted, the work on the
project is going through its first stage, until the consortium for its
implementation is created and the required funds are found. The project
cost is estimated at $400mln, so the issue of the US participation
in it has not even been discussed yet. Georgia’s state minister on
reform coordination issues Kakha Bendukidze told journalists that the
project was quite interesting and could be economically sound. However,
it could only be realized in the long term, since the calculations
that were submitted on the project hardly look convincing.
Issues of the railway construction, including the one of its technical
and economic assessments prepared by the Turkish Yuksel Domonik Company
are expected to be discussed at the meeting of Azerbaijan, Georgia,
and Turkey representatives that will be held soon in Kazakhstan.
The railway construction project involves building the 98 kilometers
long Kars-Akhalkalaki railroad and renovation of the railway section
of the Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi rout.
The House of Representatives committee on financial assistance has
recently advised not to finance the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku
railway construction by-passing the existing but currently
non-operative due to the closure of the Armenian-Turkish border
Kars-Giumri-Tbilisi-Baku railroad.
Earlier, a pro-Armenian lobby in the US Congress headed by Congressman
Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) addressed a letter
to the State Secretary Condoleezza Rice appealing to her to refrain
from financing the project that is conflicting with the long-term
Washington interests in the region.
A number of European politicians also commented on the inexpediency
of this particular project and any other communication project that
would go around Armenia. They contend that Turkey has to normalize
its relations with all neighboring countries, including Armenia,
before it accesses the EU. This normalization should involve opening
the border with Armenia.
Armenian specialists lean to the view that constructing a railway
from Turkey to Georgia and then to Azerbaijan around Armenia will
terminate Armenia’s communication development and make its isolation
complete. Besides, the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi railway construction
project is not included in the international TRACECA program. It
stipulates the necessity of involvement of the Kars-Gyumri-Tbilisi
railroad.
Armenian government authorities have also spoken against the project.
Particularly, Armenian Minister of Transport and Communications
Andranik Manukyan announced earlier that Armenia will do the utmost
to resist the Kars-Akhalkalaki railroad construction since it is not
beneficial not only to Armenia but also to the whole region.
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan said that Azerbaijan
and Georgia have no moral right to allocate funds for the
Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku railway construction. Investing in the
construction is senseless, for the countries participating in the
project are already connected by a railway communication through the
Armenian territory, he argued.

SYRIA: LIFT THE VEIL AND DISCOVER AN ENIGMA
Mary Wakefield
The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
June 18, 2006 Sunday
As the midday call to prayer spread out into Damascus last week,
I felt a burst of anxiety. There were bullet holes in the roof of
the El Hamidiyeh souq – a legacy of the troubled French mandate –
and the floor was dotted with circles of sunlight. Women in black
burqas drifted past, the tiny spotlights sliding over the folds of
their nylon skirts, then men in white dresses, looking too young for
their serious beards.
Day one in Syria and I felt jumpy, and judged. By the north gate
of the Great Umayyad mosque, I put on a vast, grey, polyester burqa
(mandatory for girl tourists), took off my shoes and stepped inside.
What was I expecting? Obvious fanatics? Wall-eyed mullahs and cowed
women? Instead, Syria’s most sacred Islamic space looked like a
crèche. The vast courtyard was wriggling with children; boys knelt
over remote-control cars, girls held hands, skipped, dragged toddlers
backwards across the slippery marble. Beneath the 8th-century mosaics
of Islamic paradise – trees and citadels in green and gold – young
mothers and their husbands gossiped, glanced at me and laughed.
With each new day in Syria, the idea I had arrived with – of an
aggressive country, repressive, hungry for jihad – diverged more
sharply from the Syria in front of me: young, peaceful, hungry mostly
just for kebabs. Not that one refuted the other exactly, more that
both pictures, though contradictory, seemed to be equally true.
It is a fact, for instance, that Syria is only a mock democracy.
Bashar al-Assad, like his father before him, is in effect a dictator
who owes his authority to the army and the dreaded Mukhabarat, the
secret police. Last Sunday, Abdel Halim Khaddam, the exiled leader
of the opposition, claimed that Assad had ordered his assassination;
in a week or so, the UN will probably conclude that Syria’s military
intelligence (headed by Bashar’s brother-in-law) was behind the
assassination of the liberal Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
Many “dissidents” – a lawyer, a writer, a human rights activist –
have been arrested by the regime.
Even so, Assad’s Ba’ath party is a long way from Saddam’s. It has
lifted the ban on internet access and mobile phones, and ordinary
Syrians seem free not just from fear, but from regular Western
misanthropy as well. Throughout Syria, passers-by paused to say
“welcome” and invite me in for mint tea – no furtive looks, no
soviet-style reluctance to be singled out.
For most of us, Syria is the sugar daddy of Islamic terror, riddled
with al-Qaeda training camps, funding Hamas and the Hezbollah, goading
deranged Iraqi insurgents into battle with the Christian West. But
within its borders, there’s the sort of mutual respect between the
different faiths that Bradford can only dream of. Syria is a refuge
for Armenian Christians driven out of Turkey and for Nestorians who
have fled Iraq.
In the Christian town of Maaloula, some of the last remaining speakers
of Aramaic dedicate themselves to keeping the language of Christ
alive. At the heart of the Umayyad mosque in old Damascus, octogenarian
Muslim men whisper prayers at the tomb of John the Baptist’s head. “I
love Christians,” said a Sunni man as the crusader castle, Krak des
Chevaliers, appeared through the windows of our bus. He kissed the
tips of his fingers and closed his eyes.
“Christians are people of the Book. We are all sons of God.”
On my last day in Aleppo, half-lost somewhere in the 18 miles of
covered souq, I stopped beside a juice bar to wonder whether a glass
of squashed strawberries would be nice. “What nationality are you?”
said the juice-man. “English,” I said. “Tony Blair? George Bush?”
he asked. “Yes,” I said firmly, though a curious crowd had begun to
gather and to my right, a fat, blind man selling piles of crushed
cumin was ignoring customers so as to listen in.
Then the juice-man put his hands in the air and began to smile.
“Crazy!” he said. “They’re crazy!” Then in Arabic: “Majnoon!” Soon
everybody was shouting, “Tony Blair! George Bush! Majnoon!” and
laughing, and patting me sympathetically on the back.
Mary Wakefield is assistant editor of The Spectator.
–Boundary_(ID_M8CT4bjczfI93bXbHN89iQ) —

THE TIES THAT DIVIDE: TURKEY AND ARMENIA
The Economist
June 17, 2006
U.S. Edition
Trying to improve a troubled relationship
Locals dream of reopening the frontier between Turkey and Armenia
NAIF ALIBEYOGLU, mayor of Kars, a town bordering Armenia, has a
dream. He pictures a party of Turkish officials embracing their
Armenian counterparts in the middle of an ancient bridge over the
river that divides their countries. Reduced by war and neglect to
a pair of greyish stone stumps on opposite banks of the river, its
condition is an apt symbol for relations between the two countries.
The bridge, part of the historic site of Ani (see box), would in theory
be easy to reconstruct. Fixing the broader relationship between Turkey
and Armenia promises to be a great deal harder.
Turkey was among the first countries to recognise Armenia when it
emerged from the Soviet Union’s wreckage in 1991. But bitter arguments
over the fate of the Ottoman Armenians-did the mass killings of 1915
constitute genocide?-together with lingering border disputes have
stood in the way of formal ties. The estrangement deepened in 1993
when Turkey sealed its land frontier with Armenia (while still allowing
direct air travel). The Turks acted after Armenian forces had occupied
a chunk of Azerbaijan in a war over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Years of secret talks between Turkish and Armenian diplomats-the
latest of which were held in Vienna in March- have failed to ease
tensions. And this is despite vigorous backing for renewed ties from
both America and the European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join.
Mr Alibeyoglu, who is from Turkey’s ruling AK party, says the
people of Kars are paying the price. With average annual incomes of
only $823, Kars is among the country’s poorest and most neglected
provinces. Yet before the cold war Kars was among the young republic’s
most progressive places. It is vividly evoked in “Snow”, a novel by
Turkey’s most famous writer, Orhan Pamuk. Locals would attend the
theatre and ballet and dine on caviar and champagne. Such tastes were
inherited from former Russian occupiers, whose traces can still be
detected in the grandeur of its Tsarist-era architecture.
Mr Alibeyoglu, whose penchant for wine and naughty sculptures would
have gone unnoticed in those days, now sees a chance to reverse
his city’s decline, but only if Turkey unconditionally reopens its
borders. By doing this, Turkey would regain some moral high ground,
as well as securing access to strategic markets in Central Asia
and beyond. Kars could even become a regional hub in the Caucasus,
especially if a rail link to Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, were
restored. Trade volumes between the two countries, now averaging
a measly $100m a year, almost all of it conducted via Georgia,
should soar.
There is more. As many as 200,000 members of the Armenian diaspora
return to their homeland every year. Many would like to cross the
border into Turkey in order to visit Armenian archaeological sites.
The tourist trade could be worth millions of dollars. “They would also
meet Turks and realise they aren’t quite as evil as they imagined,”
adds Kaan Soyak, co-chairman of the Turkish-Armenian Business
Development Council.
But how to break the diplomatic deadlock? Mr Alibeyoglu’s answer is to
take matters into his own hands. In 2000 he drove to the Armenian town
of Gyumri, where he appeared on television with his fellow mayor and
appealed for peace. This autumn, Mr Alibeyoglu will host a festival
that features, for a second time, performers from Armenia, Georgia
and Azerbaijan. The Armenians will have to make a tortuous journey via
the Turkish cities of Trabzon and Istanbul. But the mayor hopes that,
one day soon, their journey will be much quicker.

HAUNTED BY HISTORY; ANI, A DISPUTED CITY
The Economist
June 17, 2006
U.S. Edition
Efforts to excavate and conserve a little-known historical site are
snarled up by regional rivalries
The ruins of a contested capital are still hostage to geopolitics
WHATEVER you think about ghosts, it is hard to speak of this desolate
plateau on Turkey’s eastern edge without using the word “haunted”. A
millennium ago, Ani rivalled Byzantium as one of the great cities
of the Christian world. At its height, the Armenian capital had
over 100,000 inhabitants. Now all that stands is an impressive wall,
and the gaunt but beautiful remains of churches and mosques randomly
scattered across a vast expanse of grassy earth. On a hot day in early
summer, with flowers blooming and birds swooping through the ruins,
the place is utterly empty.
Ani’s location at one of Eurasia’s nodal points, where rival
civilisations either clash or co-operate, has been both a blessing and
a curse. The “silk route” linking Byzantium with China ran through
it. But less than a century after it became the Armenian capital in
961, the city began falling victim to waves of conquerors, including
Seljuk Turks, Georgians and Mongols. In 1319 it was devastated by
an earthquake.
Even as a ruin, Ani has been a disputed city. In 1921 when most
of the site was ceded to Turkey, the Armenians were dismayed. They
have since accused the Turks of neglecting the place in a spirit of
chauvinism. The Turks retort that Ani’s remains have been shaken by
blasts from a quarry on the Armenian side of the border.
Turkey’s authorities insist that they are doing their best to conserve
and develop the site. “By restoring Ani, we’ll make a contribution
to humanity,” says Mehmet Ufuk Erden, the local governor. “We will
start with one church and one mosque, and over time we will include
every single monument.” The culture ministry has listed Ani, with
an Armenian church on an island in Lake Van, among the sites it is
keenest to conserve. For a country that was reluctant, until recently,
to accept the cultural heritage of non-Turks, this is a big change.
But some scholars say more is needed. “Piecemeal restoration is no
substitute for a master plan for Ani as a whole,” argues Stefaan
Poortman of the Global Heritage Fund, a California-based conservation
group that helps to manage endangered historic sites. And making a
master plan for a site straddling two countries is impossible unless
they co-operate. Could it happen? In September, some 14 Black Sea
countries hope to meet in Istanbul to dicuss their cultural heritage.
So Turks and Armenians will get a chance to talk about Ani, if
history’s ghosts can be exorcised.