VARTAN OSKANIAN HELD MEETINGS IN ABU DHABI
Pan Armenian News
03.10.2005 03:56
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Minister Oskanian visited Abu Dhabi, on the occasion
of the groundbreaking of the Armenian Embassy building in the United
Arab Emirates. Large number of representatives of the government,
together with the diplomatic corps, and members of the Armenian
community from throughout the Emirates were present. In a brief
ceremony, Minister spoke, followed by Ambassador Arshak Poladian, and
then the first stones were laid for what will be a 7,000 sq. meter
building. During his visit, the Minister also met with Deputy Prime
Minister and State Minister for External Relations, Sheikh Hamdan
Ben Zayed Al Nahanyan. The two discussed bilateral and regional
issues, including Armenia’s having provided suitable embassy state
for the Emirates, which will be opening an embassy in Yerevan. The
Minister also met with Ahmad Bakr, the Deputy Director of the Abu
Dhabi Development Fund. The Minister described Armenia’s economic
development and prospects for growth.
From: Baghdasarian

BRIDGE 2006 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS FORUM TO BE HELD IN ARMENIA
Pan Armenian News
03.10.2005 03:46
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The third international business forum entitled
“Bridge 2006” will be held in Tsaghkadzor, Armenia, February 17-20,
2006.
Representatives of the business circles of Armenia, Belgium, Georgia,
Iran, Canada, Russia and other states, members of ministries and
chambers of commerce will take part in the conference. The conference
will be held with the assistance of the Armenian Ministry of Trade
and Economic Development, the Foreign Ministry, RA Central Bank and
the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen (Employers) of Armenia.

ARMENIAN FM CONFERS WITH UAE LEADERS
Armenpress
Oct 3, 2005
ABU DHABI, OCTOBER 3, ARMENPRESS: As reported earlier, the foundation
stone for the first Armenian embassy’s building in the UAE, was
laid down on October 1 by the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affaires,
Vartan Oskanian, who was accompanied by Abdullah Rashid Al Nuaimi ,
Director of Protocol in the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affaires and
Arshak Poladian, Armenian ambassador to the UAE.
Oskanian lauded the wise leadership of President H.H. Sheikh Khalifa
bin Zayed Al Nahyan as well as UAE-Armenia ties of cooperation,
which he described as ” continually growing”. He said the forthcoming
structure would be the first Armenian building in the entire Gulf
region and would be considered a symbol of cooperation and fraternity
between the UAE and Armenia. The ceremony was attended by heads of
Arab and foreign diplomatic missions in the country and members of
the Armenian community.
During his visit, the Minister also met with Deputy Prime Minister
and State Minister for External Relations, Sheikh Hamdan Ben Zayed
Al Nahanyan.
The two discussed bilateral and regional issues, including Armenia’s
having provided suitable embassy state for the Emirates, which will
be opening an embassy in Yerevan.
The Minister also met with Ahmad Bakr, the Deputy Director of the
Abu Dhabi Development Fund. The Minister described Armenia’s economic
development and prospects for growth.

IRAN’S AMBASSADOR EXPLAINS HIS GOVERNMENT POSITION ON IAEA RESOLUTION
Armenpress
Oct 3, 2005
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 3, ARMENPRESS: In a brief interview to Armenpress
Iran’s ambassador to Armenia, Alireza Haghighyan, explained his
government’s position on a recent resolution adopted by the Board of
Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding
Iran’s nuclear programs.
According to the ambassador, the resolution was an epitome of pressure
by certain powers with excessive ambitions on other members of the IAEA
Board of Governors and was politically motivated presenting illegal,
illogical demands to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and goes beyond
the obligations of the IAEA. Haghighyan went on saying that despite
numerous efforts of the states, sponsoring the resolution, it was
put to a vote, which is evidence of lack of international consensus
on Iran’s nuclear programs.
The ambassador said Iran has always remained committed to its
international obligations and all inspections and reports by the IAEA
clearly indicate compliance of Iran with the provisions of disarmament
treaties, especially with NPT and the peaceful nature of Iran’s
nuclear activities. The ambassador said Iran considers the excessive
insistence of the sponsors of this resolution on imposing illegal
conditions on Iran as a move in the direction of the deprivation of
all member states from their rights and welcomes all efforts aimed
at achieving success and full understanding on nuclear issues solely
in the framework of NPT, IAEA Statute and the Safeguard Agreement.
He said the Islamic Republic f Iran regards the IAEA and its Statute as
the only competent authority in creating nuclear technological balance
and views any irresponsible, unilateral and illegal interventions of
the Agency as a threat to future international management. He also
said submitting Iran’s nuclear dossier to UN Security Council does
not promote resolution of the issue.

EYES FULL OF ARMENIAN SORROW
By Nino Gvalia
The Messenger, Georgia
Oct 3 2005
Yuri Mechitov’s photo project at the Caucasian House
Yuri Mechitov
The portraits of Armenians from Tbilisi
Until October 5, the Caucasian House at 20 Galaktion Tabidze St. is
hosting an exhibition of locally renowned photographer Yuri Mechitov.
While entering the exhibition hall, your eyes may alight at a series of
portraits of different people – a shoemaker, an artist, a journalist,
a TV operator, a film director, a photographer – in a word; various
faces with individual life stories.
But what these people have common is that they are Armenians living in
Tbilisi. In addition, as the photographer noted, all his photo-heroes
have “Armenian sorrow” in their eyes. This sorrow, he says, is by
and large a product of the tragic history of the Armenian people,
though some of it is due to the rapid changes underway in their
native Tbilisi.
According to Yuri Mechitov, he has been working on this project for
approximately three years. As the photographer said, inspiration came
from the Armenian 19-century artist Akop Vovnatanian, who used to
paint Tbilisians. Consequently, this collection is entitled Armenians
from Tbilisi – dedication to Akop Vovnatanian.
“My mother was a true Armenian, but father had a more Georgian
orientation,” said Mechitov, adding that he is quite upset that
some want to “plant the seeds of animosity” against Armenians and
show these people from a negative perspective. “These people live in
Tbilisi and are patriots of the city, so with this collection I want
to express my respect to these Armenians,” added the photographer.
While asked to comment about this exhibition, artist and art
critic Nino Zaalishvili noted that she knows many people from this
series and has seen their portraits mostly in paintings, but not in
photographs. “These Armenians are real residents of Tbilisi and I
was very curious to see their portraits from Yuri Mechitov’s artistic
viewpoint,” Zaalishvili said.

POLITICAL CHANGE, GAS WOES TO COST GEORGIA IN 2006
By Christina Tashkevich
The Messenger, Georgia
Oct 3 2005
Saknavtobi official predicts natural gas prices to rise next year
The head of the Saknavtobi (the Georgian National Oil Corporation)
Advisory Committee Bhamy Shenoy thinks that Tbilgazi customers will
have to pay more for gas consumption next year, as international oil
prices are likely to remain around USD 50 to 55 per barrel in 2006.
Shenoy explained to The Messenger over the weekend that “since oil
competes with gas for many uses, the price of oil puts a ceiling on
the price of gas.”
He says that for the last two years Gazprom was selling gas to Georgia
at “a highly subsidized price.” However, Shenoy thinks that given “the
changed circumstances of the political landscape” between Russia and
Georgia, “Gazprom has no compulsion to sell gas at a subsidized price.”
“The only leverage Georgia has with Russia is the dependence of the
latter to supply its ally Armenia,” Shenoy said.
Representative of Gazprom in Georgia David Morchiladze confirmed
last Wednesday that Gazprom has already made its first offer to the
Georgian side about the cost of gas imports.
“The first offer by Gazprom at negotiations in Moscow was USD 110
[for 1000 cubic meters of gas instead of the previous USD 60],”
Morchiladze said. He added that Georgia plans to agree with Gazprom
on a 10-year contract.
The Russian company also demands that the Tbilisi gas distribution
company Tbilgazi pay off its existing debts to Gazprom’s subsidiary
company Gazexport. Tbilgazi still has a USD 5.7 million debt to cover.
“If Tbilgazi were to operate as a commercial company where losses are
kept to a minimum, this [paying higher price for gas] would not have
caused a big problem,” Shenoy said. Currently Tbilgazi is subsidized
by the government.
He added to the paper that a higher price for gas supply offered by
Gazprom is more “a political issue rather than an economic one.”
Shenoy thinks the South Caucasus (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum) pipeline can
become an alternative source of gas supply for Georgia when it goes
into operation.
“It will be an important new energy source for Georgia,” Head of BP
Georgia Wref Digings told the paper earlier this year. The pipeline
should start operation around October 2006. “The current agreement set
the prices at which Georgia can buy gas, which are quite advantageous,”
Digings said.
According to the gas sales contract between Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Turkey, Georgia will get 0.3 billion cubic meters rising to 0.8 bcm
a few years. Currently, Georgia’s demand for gas is about 1.3 bcm
per annum.

PM: ONLY THREE AUTONOMIES IN GEORGIA
The Messenger, Georgia
Oct 3 2005
During his visit to Armenia, the Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab
Noghaideli told reporters that organizations in the Samtske-Javakheti
region that demand autonomy for the region do not enjoy real wide
public support. The Armenian news agency ARKA reported him as saying:
“Three autonomies – Adjara, Abkhazia and South Ossetia – will remain
in Georgia as it is.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

GUILTY AS CHARGED
By Patrick Watson
Advertiser Adelaide, Australia
Oct 3 2005
AN INTERVIEW with Diamanda Galas is a bit like meeting St Peter. It
could go either way. “I’ve had eight or 10 interviews this morning.
Some journalists ask the most stupid f…ing questions. I might go
hang myself in the bathroom,” she says.
It’s the kind of threat that, perhaps, holds just a hint of truth.
After all, this is the same woman who wrote The S… of God, walked
the streets as a prostitute in Oakland, California, and has dedicated
four albums to the AIDS epidemic.
A classically trained pianist with an opera singer’s voice of four
octaves, Diamanda Galas has been performing her frighteningly haunting
ballads since 1978.
On her upcoming tour, Guilty Guilty Guilty, she promises a program
of homicidal love songs, including Johnny Cash’s Long Black Veil,
Edith Piaf’s Heaven Have Mercy, and Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome
I Could Cry.
They’re not exactly the kind of genres you’d associate with the gaunt
Galas, but at least the subject matter rings true. “Morbidity and
depression aren’t fascinating. It just happens to exist in everything,
like everything else. I’ve my share of the s… that life is composed
of,” she says.
“The stoics said if you expect from life only happiness, you’re a
fool. They had it figured out. I don’t make it up. I’m not fascinated
about going through morbid states, but when I talk about it, I talk
about it in an undiluted way.”
The LA Weekly called her “the original badass musician”.
It seems to make sense, particularly for the blatantly nonconformist
artist who has previously written works such as Plague Mass, Concert
for the Damned and something called Defixiones, a meditation on the
Armenian genocide and the politically co-operative denial of it. She
is, she confesses, a ratbag of the worst kind and rejects most of
what society has to offer.
“It’s just a different way of doing it. People think that’s so
depressing and so desperate and it’s so this and that. In fact,
there’s no more to it than Greek women who mourn the dead saying
hello to those below,” she explains.
“It’s not scary music. What is scary to me is not to be able to
express myself. Not expressing myself, now that’s really scary.”
Asked what she thinks about being labelled the “princess of darkness”
and she is outraged: “I’m not the princess, I’m the queen of
darkness. I don’t address these things at all.”
She also hates the term “Goth”: “In America, you’re either black,
white or Hispanic. They look at my white skin and black hair and say
Gothic. They don’t see that I’m Greek.
“Lots of people come up with different opinions. I just do what I do.”
Which includes, of course, her legendary fascination with AIDS:
“When I become involved with an issue like that, it’s not going to
last just two months. It’s a lot of work. It takes years to get to it.
“You have to look at opportunistic infections, medicines, suicide.
Most artists exhaust a subject in five minutes and tomorrow will be
in Hawaii.”
But despite the jutting bones, the black clothes, the skin pallor
and the pagan poetry, Diamanda Gala says she’s just a musician. And,
like many, she feels she’s often misunderstood. Not that she cares.
“I think I’m the most lovable individual in the f…ing world,”
she says.
“And, in case you’re wondering, I’m not going to go hang myself in
the toilet after this interview.”
Diamanda Galas performs Guilty, Guilty, Guilty at the Adelaide Town
Hall on October 16 at 8pm. Bookings at BASS.

EU FAILS TO BREAK DEADLOCK ON TURKEY
TVNZ, New Zealand
Oct 3 2005
Related Articles
Austria blocks EU Turkey agreement
Turkey: full EU membership only option
The start of Turkey’s historic accession talks with the European Union
was in jeopardy on Monday after EU foreign ministers failed to overcome
Austrian demands that it be offered an alternative to full membership.
EU president Britain said ministers would try again for a deal on
Monday morning but acknowledged that the planned 5 pm (1500 GMT)
opening ceremony was uncertain and could well slip.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said a planned review of Croatia’s
progress towards EU entry talks had been postponed and would have to
wait until Turkey was sorted out.
“It is a frustrating situation, but I hope and pray that we may be
able to reach agreement,” Straw told a post-midnight news conference
after five hours of tough wrangling with Austria.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn played down the threat to
Turkey’s 42-year-old entry bid, saying: “I am confident we will have
a positive outcome and start negotiations tomorrow.”
But a Turkish official said nerves in Ankara were “extremely stretched
… Every minute that passes is making things more bitter and it
won’t be nice starting negotiations with all these bruises.”
With Austrian voters overwhelmingly hostile to Turkey entry, Foreign
Minister Ursula Plassnik waged a lone battle demanding that the EU
spell out an alternative to full membership, not only in case Turkey
did not meet the criteria but also if the EU felt unable to absorb
the vast, populous, poor Muslim state.
Diplomats said the 24 other members insisted they could not make
any change to the central principle that the shared objective of the
negotiations would be accession.
“Isolation and pressure is never going to work in politics. It’s not
going to work inside the European Union, certainly not. The Union
should have and must have a different style,” Plassnik told reporters
after three tense meetings with Straw.
Asked whether Austria was prepared to veto the start of talks, she
said it took all 25 member states to agree.
Walk away?
Outgoing German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned his colleagues
that Turkey might walk away if the EU watered down the terms on offer
any further.
“If you want to open negotiations, you have to remember we have to
have someone to open them with,” a diplomat quoted him as telling
the meeting.
The EU has already irked Ankara by demanding that it recognise Cyprus
soon and open its ports and airports to traffic from the divided
Mediterranean island.
The European Parliament compounded Turkish irritation last week by
saying Turkey must recognise the 1915 killings of Armenians under
Ottoman rule as an act of genocide before it can join the wealthy
European family.
Fanning Turkish anxiety, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy
cast doubt in a radio interview on whether Turkey would ever join
the EU, saying the talks might end in an enhanced partnership instead.
Douste-Blazy, who stayed away from Sunday’s meeting and was not due
to be present for Monday’s planned start of talks, told Europe 1
radio that Turkey was a long way from having the same values, laws
and human rights as the European Union.
“I think it will be very hard for Turkey because we will be asking
a lot. We’re asking it to change its laws,” he said.
Straw told reporters he did not want to contemplate the possibility
of an Austrian veto. “Clearly that would represent a failure for the
EU,” he said before the meeting. “This is a crucial meeting for the
future of the European Union.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has made clear he will not
fly to Luxembourg until he has seen the negotiating mandate approved
unanimously by the EU.
EU diplomats had hoped Austria would ease its stance after voting
ended in regional elections in Styria province. Chancellor Wolfgang
Schuessel’s People’s Party lost power there for the first time since
1945 despite his brinkmanship on Turkey.
Schuessel has informally linked the Turkish issue to a demand that
the EU open accession talks immediately with Austria’s largely Roman
Catholic neighbour, Croatia.
But those talks have been frozen until Zagreb satisfies UN war crimes
prosecutor Carla del Ponte that it is cooperating fully in the hunt
for a fugitive indicted ex-general.
In an apparent effort to increase pressure on Austria, Straw postponed
a planned meeting with Del Ponte and the Croatian prime minister on
Monday until there was agreement on Turkey.

PROTESTERS RAIL AGAINST ‘TOO MANY ‘CONCESSIONS’
By Amberin Zaman in Ankara
The Daily Telegraph
Oct 3 2005
Tens of thousands of Turkish nationalists staged a huge show of
strength yesterday to protest at what they see as Christian Europe’s
efforts to shut its doors to Muslim Turkey.
Demonstrators flooded the streets of Ankara, the capital, to denounce
the campaign by the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to placate
the country’s critics in the EU.
“The concessions that you have made to the EU are dragging Turkey
toward darkness,” Devlet Bahceli, head of the Nationalist Action Party,
told flag-waving crowds, addressing Mr Erdogan.
“Don’t allow them [the EU] to impose more heavy conditions on
us…Reject those [membership] talks,” Mr Bahceli said.
The high turnout of protesters was a further sign of the wave of
nationalist sentiment sweeping Turkey on the eve of its scheduled
talks on EU membership.
Many Turks question whether Turkey should launch more reforms amid
receding hopes that it will ever become a full member.
The EU’s seemingly endless list of demands are perceived as a plot
to weaken, then dismember Turkey. The proof that such a policy is
Europe’s goal is supposedly demonstrated by its demands that Turkey
grant greater rights to Kurds, acknowledge the 1915 Armenian genocide
and make more concessions on Cyprus.
“The Europeans are playing games with us. Their real ambition is
to weaken Turkey, to make it their slave,” said Mehmet Korkmaz,
an electrician. The irony that tiny Austria, the most vociferous of
Turkey’s opponents, may yet extinguish Turkey’s long cherished EU
dream has been seized on by many. It was the defeat of the Ottoman
Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1683 that marked the beginning of
the decline of their once mighty empire.
But for every Eurosceptic Turk opinion polls show there are twice as
many who are in favour of the EU. Many value the process of integrating
into the EU, with its emphasis on human rights and the rule of law,
over actual membership itself.
Even Mr Bahceli stopped short yesterday of opposing EU membership,
focusing his wrath on the conditions of membership instead.
In the five years that have elapsed since EU leaders officially
anointed Turkey as a candidate for membership, improvements in the
country’s wobbly democracy have been huge.
The Kurds can now publish and broadcast in their previously banned
tongue. The share of education in the national budget has surpassed
that of the military. Capital punishment has been abolished and
marital rape is counted a criminal offence.
Although Turkey has been ruled by a group of former Islamists for
the past three years, there are few signs that it is sliding into
Shar’iah rule. After decades of crisis, the economy is booming.
Given the choice between swallowing their pride and negotiating with
the EU – even without the promise of full membership – or walking
away into an uncertain future, most Turks are still opting for Europe.