Azerbaijan condemns Armenian leader’s visit to breakaway region
ANS TV, Baku
2 Sep 05
[Presenter] Armenian President Robert Kocharyan today attended
festivities in Susa [a town in Karabakh populated mainly by Azeris
until 1992] and Xankandi [Stepanakert] organized by the Armenian
community of Nagornyy Karabakh and devoted to the 14th anniversary
of independence from Azerbaijan.
[Passage omitted: reported details]
[Correspondent over video of Bahmanov] The head of the Azerbaijani
community of Nagornyy Karabakh, Nizami Bahmanov, has said that
[Karabakh separatist leader] Arkadiy Gukasyan is deceiving the
Armenian community of Karabakh by issuing such statements. First, if
living standards were high and there was prosperity in Xankandi, its
population of 120,000 would not have fallen to 70,000. Moreover, 50 per
cent of the 70,000 have left this town. Most of them are now in Russia
and other countries. What Gukasyan says is aimed at consoling people.
As for Kocharyan’s participation in the festivities, on the one hand,
the Armenian authorities attend peace talks organized by the OSCE
Minsk Group, and on the other, they do such things.
Kocharyan’s visit to Susa and Xankandi proves that Armenia is an
aggressive country.
[Passage omitted: minor details]
[Bilik Dunyasi news agency has quoted the head of the press and
information department of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Tahir
Tagizada, as saying that Kocharyan’s visit to Karabakh “runs counter
to the priorities of the peace process”.]

OSCE envoy says Armenian constitutional reform “positive”
Mediamax news agency
2 Sep 05
Yerevan, 2 September: The head of the OSCE mission in Armenia, Vladimir
Pryakhin, today described as “positive” the process of constitutional
reform in Armenia.
Pryakhin said the constitutional amendments adopted by the parliament
in the second reading have considerably improved the document. The
head of the OSCE mission in Armenia described the constitutional
amendments as a product of joint work of the authorities, parliament,
civic society, opposition and international organizations. Meanwhile,
Pryakhin said the draft contained certain shortcomings and
contradictions.
“The failure of the constitutional referendum may hamper the process
of democratic reforms in Armenia,” the OSCE ambassador said. He also
said he hoped the majority would say “yes” to the reform.

British envoy says constitutional reform to ensure democracy in Armenia
Arminfo
2 Sep 05
Yerevan, 2 September: If the constitutional changes are approved
in the November referendum, it will ensure Armenia’s democratic
development, the British ambassador to Armenia, Thorda Abbott-Watt,
has told Arminfo.
“It is vital for Armenian citizens to realize this and participate
actively in the referendum,” the ambassador said. Commenting on
heated debates at extraordinary sessions of parliament about the draft
amendments and the opposition’s negative assessment of the document,
Abbott-Watt said the opposition’s presence at the extraordinary
sessions was a positive move.
Predicting the outcome of the upcoming referendum, the ambassador
expressed the hope that Armenia had learnt a lesson from the
bitter experience of the 2003 election and that the referendum on
constitutional changes would go without falsifications.
“The electoral institutions need to be improved, a lot needs to be
changed and we shall follow the process closely,” the ambassador said.

Karabakh leader rubbishes Azeri appeal to vote in November polls
Arminfo, Yerevan
2 Sep 05
Stepanakert, 2 September: “I am glad that Azerbaijan has a good sense
of humour,” Arkadiy Gukasyan, president of the Nagornyy Karabakh
republic [NKR], said today commenting on Azerbaijan’s appeal to
the residents of Nagornyy Karabakh to participate in the upcoming
parliamentary election in Azerbaijan.
A special Arminfo correspondent reports from Stepanakert that at
today’s festivities devoted to the 14th anniversary of Nagornyy
Karabakh’s independence, Gukasyan said that the NKR had already
been established. The NKR managed to defend its independence in very
complicated circumstances, i.e. in the situation of blockade and war
that was unleashed by Azerbaijan. “However, we won because we knew
we were defending our motherland.”
At the same time, the Karabakh leader expressed the confidence that
the NKR will succeed in establishing good and friendly relations
with all neighbours. “We are building a democratic state and going
forward.” Undoubtedly, we could have done more. However, in any case,
Nagornyy Karabakh is standing very firm on its own feet and I believe
it has a future,” Gukasyan said.
Commenting on the recent meeting between the presidents of Armenia
and Azerbaijan in Kazan, the Karabakh president said that the
negotiations are confidential and it would be wrong to reveal its
essence prematurely. “I think everything is developing in a usual
manner and there are no grounds for concern,” Gukasyan said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

BARRICADES AT THE CENTER OF YEREVAN
A1+
| 15:01:17 | 02-09-2005 | Social |
One of the central streets of Yerevan – the Buzand street near
the Republic square, has been “decorated” with barricades since
yesterday. They were built along the street at a distance of several
meters from one another. It is noteworthy that the raw material for
the barricades was the ruins of the houses leveled to earth “for
state needs”.
“Maybe the objection of the Buzand street residents will bring the
people to their senses so that they will fight for their pride and
their property”, says Sedrak Baghdasaryan, resident of the Buzand
street.
Besides the barricades, one can see chairs and sofas in the streets,
with whole families on them. “We took them out of the houses ourselves,
as we know that on Monday they will come and ruin everything”, says
Sedrak Baghdasaryan.
There is another scene in Buzand 23. Near the ruins a chair is
standing on which 65-year old Angela Mouradyan is sitting. She is
looking steadily at the ruins. She lived in that house for 40 years.
Yesterday, when the house was being destroyed before her eyes, she
tried to resist. As a result of it, she got several injuries on her
hands and legs.
By the way, despite yesterday’s hard rain, the family spent the night
outdoors. They also claim that the electric equipment of their house
has disappeared. They do not know where they can find it.

KARABAKH ISSUE PROTRACTED
A1+
| 13:12:10 | 03-09-2005 | Politics |
Taking into consideration the absence of any formal information board
member of the Armenian National Movement Vahagn Hovhannisyan gives
the following assessment to the current stage of the Karabakh conflict.
During recent 7 years no progress was fixed in the Karabakh conflict
settlement process. The incumbent leadership of Armenia and Azerbaija
are protracting the settlement in order to hold the power.
-In you opinion what are the Presidents of both states doing during
their meetings?
-They are just trying to show they are not inactive.
-Do you think they succeed? Don~Rt the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs
notice anything?
-One should not anchor big hopes with the Co-Chairs. They all have
different positions on the Karabakh issue.
-Rumors over the Karabakh conflict have become greater lately. How
do you explain that?
-The Co-Chairs themselves said that no document is ready yet. As
a matter of fact there is nobody now involved in the settlement
process. The conflict will be resolved only in case the Armenian and
Azerbaijani authorities are legal. Presently the Presidents of both
states are concerned over their own problems.
-Does it means that you bound the Karabakh settlement with Armenia
and Azerbaijan only? Doesn~Rt Karabakh have any role in this process?
-Since 1988, thanks to the incumbent, any role of Karabakh in the
process has been excluded. Levon Ter-Petrosyan once said that he will
signed the document only in case Karabakh approves it. The policy of
the incumbent leadership is quite opposite. Today Karabakh is a mere
observer. However it should be engaged the negotiations.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA’S BIGGEST MISTAKE
A1+
| 12:51:37 | 03-09-2005 | Politics |
Failed meeting and empty talks. This is the assessment given by NA
member Aram G. Sargsyan to the Kazan meeting of the Armenian and
Azerbaijani Presidents. To note, A. Sargsyan himself participates in
international meetings for the elaboration of the alternative ways
of the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
A model has been worked out by the representatives of Armenia,
Karabakh and Azerbaijan. According to A. Sargsyan, no one showed
any interest in the document except the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs,
who assessed it as positive.
~SThe interests of the Armenian people should be precisely expressed in
a corresponding concept, which is absent today. Azerbaijan toughens its
position day by day and it is rather surprising that Robert Kocharian
and Vartan Oskanian are constantly speaking of progress. However
Azerbaijan is not going to recognize the independence of Nagorno
Karabakh or its joining to Armenia. So what is the discussion held
about? If the issue of the returning of the territories is considered
while the status is not determined yet, so this can be rated as
treason~T, the deputy said.
In A. Sargsyan~Rs opinion, the policy pursued by the incumbent
is dangerous and erroneous and the first mistake Armenia made is
that it had not recognized the independence of Nagorno Karabakh
from Azerbaijan. ~SFrom Azerbaijan, I emphasize, because we have a
resolution of December 1 on unification. After all we should take
into account one important circumstance- Nagorno Karabakh is a
part of Armenia and was forcibly joined to Azerbaijan. If we forget
this fact the independence of NKR will become senseless. Presently
we know that that the people of Karabakh have declared NKR an
independent republic. This is their will and Armenia must recognize
the independence of Karabakh. After that Armenia should establish a
dialogue with Azerbaijan,~T he said.
The deputy is against the negotiation between Armenia and
Azerbaijan. He is convinced that the talks should be held by Azerbaijan
and NKR. However an Agreement of Armistice should be signed between
Azerbaijan and Armenia and this agreement will serve as a security
guarantee for Karabakh.
Lena Badeyan

Saturday Review: Essay: The devil’s progress: Modern social science
has banished concepts of good and evil. But, argues Amos Oz,
literature, from Shakespeare and Goethe to Grass and Boll, gives us
truer insights into human nature
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Sep 03, 2005
AMOS OZ
When I was a child in Jerusalem, our teacher at a Jewish orthodox
school taught us the book of Job. All Israeli children, to this day,
study the book of Job. Our teacher told us how Satan travelled all
the way from that book to the New Testament, and to Goethe’s Faust ,
and to many other works of literature. And although each writer made
something new of Satan, the devil, der Teufel , he was always the
very same Satan: cool, amused, sarcastic and sceptical. A
deconstructor of human faith, love and hope.
Job’s Satan, like Faust’s Satan, enters upon a wager. His big prize
is neither a hidden treasure, nor the heart of a beautiful woman, and
not even a promotion to a higher position in the heavenly hierarchy.
No: Satan enters a gamble out of some kind of didactic urge. He
wishes to make a point. To prove something, and to refute something
else. With enormous argumentative zeal, the biblical Satan and the
Aufklarung Satan try to show God and his angels that man, when given
the choice, will always opt for evil. He will choose bad over good,
willingly and consciously.
Shakespeare’s Iago may well have been motivated by a very similar
didactic zeal. Indeed, so it is with almost every thorough evildoer
in world literature. Perhaps this is why Satan is often so charming.
So beguiling. John Milton may have misunderstood the devil when he
called him “the infernal serpent”. Heinrich Heine knew better when he
wrote:
I call’d the devil, and he came,
And with wonder his form did I closely scan;
He is not ugly, and is not lame,
But really a handsome and charming man.
A man in the prime of life is the devil,
Obliging, a man of the world, and civil;
A diplomatist too, well skill’d in debate,
He talks quite glibly of church and state.
Man and the devil understood each other so well, because they were,
in some ways, so alike. In the book of Job, Satan, the perverse
educator, intimately understood how human pain breeds evil: “Put
forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee
to thy face”. And Shakespeare’s witches, in Macbeth , could sense the
arrival of an evil man from afar: “I feel a pricking in my thumb;
something wicked this way comes.” Goethe, for his part, observed that
the devil, like so many human beings, is simply a selfish charmer. ”
Der Teufel ist ein egotist .” The devil is an egotist. He only helps
others in order to serve his own ends. Not, as God and Kant would
have it, for the sake of the good deed alone.
And this is why, ever since the book of Job, and until not so long
ago, Satan, man and God lived in the same household. All three seemed
to know the difference between good and evil. God, man and the devil
knew that evil was evil and that good was good. God commanded one
option. Satan seduced to try the other. God and Satan played on the
same chessboard. Man was their game-piece. It was as simple as that.
Personally, I believe that every human being, in his or her heart of
hearts, is capable of telling good from bad. Even when they pretend
not to. We have all eaten from that tree of Eden whose full name is
the tree of knowledge of good from evil.
The same distinction may apply to truth and lies: just as it is
immensely difficult to define the truth, yet quite easy to smell a
lie, it may sometimes be hard to define good; but evil has its
unmistakable odour: every child knows what pain is. Therefore, each
time we deliberately inflict pain on another, we know what we are
doing. We are doing evil.
But the modern age has changed all that. It has blurred the clear
distinction that humanity has made since its early childhood, since
the Garden of Eden. Some time in the 19th century, not so long after
Goethe died, a new thinking entered western culture that brushed evil
aside, indeed denied its very existence. That intellectual innovation
was called social science. For the new, self-confident, exquisitely
rational, optimistic, thoroughly scientific practitioners of
psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics – evil was not an
issue. Come to think of it, neither was good. To this very day,
certain social scientists simply do not talk about good and evil. To
them, all human motives and actions derive from circumstances, which
are often beyond personal control. “Demons,” said Freud, “do not
exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic
activity of man.” We are controlled by our social background. For
about 100 years now, they have been telling us that we are motivated
exclusively by economic self-interest, that we are mere products of
our ethnic cultures, that we are no more than marionettes of our own
subconscious.
In other words, the modern social sciences were the first major
attempt to kick both good and evil off the human stage. For the first
time in their long history, good and bad were both overruled by the
idea that circumstances are always responsible for human decisions,
human actions and especially human suffering. Society is to blame.
Painful childhood is to blame. The political is to blame.
Colonialism. Imperialism. Zionism. Globalisation. What not. So began
the great world championship of victimhood.
For the first time since the book of Job, the devil found himself out
of a job. He could no longer play his ancient game with human minds.
Satan was dismissed. This was the modern age.
Well, the times may be changing again. Satan might have been sacked,
but he did not remain unemployed. The 20th century was the worst
arena of cold-blooded evil in human history. The social sciences
failed to predict, encounter, or even grasp this modern, highly
technologised evil. Very often, this 20th-century evil disguised
itself as world reforming, as idealism, as re-educating the masses or
“opening their eyes”. Totalitarianism was presented as secular
redemption for some, at the expense of millions of lives.
Today, having emerged from the evil of totalitarian rule, we have
enormous respect for cultures. For diversities. For pluralism. I know
some people are willing to kill anyone who is not a pluralist. Satan
was hired for work once again by postmodernism; but this time his job
is verging on kitsch: a small, secretive bunch of “shady forces” are
always guilty of everything, from poverty and discrimination, war and
global warming to September 11 and the tsunami. Ordinary people are
always innocent. Minorities are never to blame. Victims are, by
definition, morally pure. Did you notice that today, the devil never
seems to invade any individual person? We have no Fausts any more.
According to trendy discourse, evil is a conglomerate. Systems are
evil. Governments are bad. Faceless institutions run the world for
their own sinister gain. Satan is no longer in the details.
Individual men and women cannot be “bad”, in the ancient sense of the
book of Job, or Macbeth, of Iago, of Faust. You and I are always very
nice people. The devil is always the establishment. This is, in my
view, ethical kitsch.
Let us consult our own most gifted adviser, der Geheimrat
[councillor] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Let us look at his
West-Eastern Divan , one of the earliest great tributes of western
culture to its own curiosity and attraction to the east. Was Goethe a
condescending “orientalist”, as Edward Said might have him? Or was he
a multiculturalist, in the fashion of today’s guilt-ridden Europeans
paying lip service to everything distant, to everything different,
everything decisively non-European?
I think Goethe was neither an orientalist nor a multiculturalist. It
was not the extreme and imagined exoticism of the east that tempted
him, but the strong and fresh substance that eastern cultures,
eastern poetry and art may give to universal human truths and
feelings. The good, and indeed God, are universal:
God is of the east possess’d,
God is ruler of the west;
North and South alike, each land
Rests within His gentle hand.
Even more so, love is universal, whether it is for Gretchen or for
Zuleika. So a German poet may well write a love poem for an imagined
Persian woman. Or for a real Persian woman. And speak the truth. And
yet more touchingly, pain is universal. As one of the finest poems in
the West-Eastern Divan has it:
Let me Weep, hemmed-in by night,
In the boundless desert.
Camels are resting, likewise their drivers,
Calculating in silence the Armenian is awake;
But I, beside him, calculate the miles
That separate me from Zuleika, reiterate
The annoying bends that prolong journeys.
Let me weep. It is no shame.
Weeping men are good.
Didn’t Achilles weep for his Briseis?
Xerxes wept for his unfallen army;
Over his self-murdered darling
Alexander wept.
Let me weep. Tears give life to dust.
Already it’s greening.
Goethe does not recruit the east to prove anything. He takes humans,
all humans, seriously. East or west, good men weep.
I would like to take a moment here to weep for Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe. I would like to weep for Weimar. Because Goethe’s Weimar is
gone for good. Even Thomas Mann’s Weimar is gone and cannot return.
Not that Weimar today is not a pretty, well renovated historical
town. But Weimar today lies across the forest from Buchenwald.
We may lament the passing of memories, the fading of landscape, the
growth and change of old towns. But this is not what we are lamenting
in Goethe’s Weimar. Not the teeth of time, but the extreme and total
evil of man, have taken Goethe’s Weimar away from us.
Mann, in his novel Lotte in Weimar , made Charlotte Kestner, who was
once Lotte Buff, the real-life beloved of the young Werther, come to
visit the old and famous Goethe in Weimar. Lotte in Weimar is an
exquisite study in the slow fading of recollection: even when Goethe
was still alive, the old Goethe-Zeit was slipping away, becoming the
stuff of legend. That is normal; that is the way human life and
memory, human homes and streets, flow and ebb as history moves on.
But Goethe and his old love Lotte could still walk together to the
woodland outside the town of Weimar, and observe the blissful,
tranquil scenery of the Thuringian countryside. And maybe they could
walk up to the beautiful oak tree there, known for many years to come
as Goethe’s oak tree. And years went by, and generations died, but
the oak tree was still standing. Until it was bombed by an allied
aircraft toward the end of the second world war. And Weimar became
the neighbouring town, the “market town”, of death camp Buchenwald.
And so, the German Nazis killed not only their victims, but also the
slow ageing innocence of Weimar and Goethe and Lotte. The subtitle of
Lotte in Weimar is “The Beloved Returns”. But the beloved can no
longer return. Not for evermore.
Which brings me from Lotte Kestner-Buff to another Lotte, Lotte
Wreschner, the mother of my son-in-law. She was born in Frankfurt am
Main, 174 years after Goethe and not far from his house. Not for
nothing did the name Lotte run in her family: she grew up in a home
full of books, shelves upon shelves of German, Jewish and
German-Jewish spiritual treasures. Schiller and the Talmud. Heine and
Kant. Buber and Holderlin. All were there. One uncle was a rabbi, the
other a psychoanalyst. They all knew Goethe’s poetry by heart. The
Nazis imprisoned her, along with her mother and sister, and sent them
to Ravensbruck, where the mother died of typhus and hard labour. She
and her sister Margrit were transferred to Theresien-stadt. I wish I
could tell you that they were liberated from Theresienstadt by peace
demonstrators carrying placards saying “make love not war”. But in
fact they were set free not by pacifist idealists but by combat
soldiers wearing helmets and carrying machine guns. We Israeli peace
activists never forget this fact, even as we struggle against our
country’s attitude towards the Palestinians, even while we work for a
livable, peaceful compromise between Israel and Palestine.
Lotte and Margrit Wreschner came home to find all the books waiting,
but none of the family. Not a living soul. Margrit Wreschner can bear
witness to what all survivors of that mass murder can tell. There are
good people in the world. There are evil people in the world. Evil
cannot always be repelled by incantations, by demonstrations, by
social analysis or by psychoanalysis. Sometimes, in the last resort,
it has to be confronted by force.
In my view, the ultimate evil in the world is not war itself, but
aggression. Aggression is “the mother of all wars”. And sometimes
aggression has to be repelled by the force of arms before peace can
prevail.
Lotte Wreschner settled in Jerusalem. Eventually she became a leader
in the Israeli civil-rights movement, as well as a deputy mayor of
Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek. Her son Eli and my daughter Fania are
both civil rights and peace activists, as are my other children Galia
and Daniel.
Let me turn back to Goethe, and back to my feelings about Germany.
Goethe’s Faust reminds us forever that the devil is personal, not
impersonal. That the devil is putting every individual to the test,
which every one of us can pass or fail. That evil is tempting and
seducing. That aggression has a potential foothold inside every one
of us.
Personal good and evil are not the assets of any religion. They are
not necessarily religious terms. The choice whether to inflict pain
or not to inflict it, to look it in the face or to turn a blind eye
to it, to get personally involved in healing pain, like a devoted
country doctor, or to make do with organising angry demonstrations
and signing wholesale petitions – this spectrum of choice confronts
each one of us several times a day.
Of course, we might occasionally take wrong turns. But even as we
take a wrong turn, we still know what we are doing. We know the
difference between good and evil, between inflicting pain and
healing, between Goethe and Goebbels. Between Heine and Heydrich.
Between Weimar and Buchenwald. Between individual responsibility and
collective kitsch.
Let me conclude with one more personal recollection: as a very
nationalistic, even chauvinistic, little boy in Jerusalem of the
1940s, I vowed never to set foot on German soil, never even to buy
any German product. The only thing I could not boycott were German
books. If you boycott the books, I told myself, you will become a
little bit like “them”. At first I limited myself to reading the
pre-war German literature and the anti-Nazi writers. But later, in
the 1960s, I began to read, in Hebrew translations, the works of the
post-war generation of German writers and poets. In particular, the
works of the Group 47 writers led by Hans Werner Richter. They made
me imagine myself in their place. I’ll put it more sharply: they
seduced me to imagine myself in their stead, back in the dark years,
and just before the dark years, and just after.
Reading these authors, and others, I could no longer go on simply
hating everything German, past, present and future.
I believe that imagining the other is a powerful antidote to
fanaticism and hatred. I believe that books that make us imagine the
other, may turn us more immune to the ploys of the devil, including
the inner devil, the Mephisto of the heart. Thus, Gunter Grass and
Heinrich Boll, Ingeborg Bachmann and Uwe Johnson, and in particular
my beloved friend Siegfried Lenz, opened for me the door into
Germany. They, along with a number of dear personal German friends,
made me break my taboos and open my mind, and eventually my heart.
They re-introduced me to the healing powers of literature.
Imagining the other is not only an aesthetic tool. It is, in my view,
also a major moral imperative. And finally, imagining the other – if
you promise not to quote this little professional secret – imagining
the other is also a deep and very subtle human pleasure.
Amos Oz’s memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness is published in
paperback by Vintage. To order a copy for pounds 7.99 with free UK
p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. This article is
adapted from a speech given by Amos Oz when he was awarded the Goethe
prize in Frankfurt on August 28.

NO ARMENIAN WORDS
A1+
| 13:11:41 | 02-09-2005 | Politics |
In Azerbaijan the broadcasting of Armenian TV programs has been
prohibited. In Aghsou a tower has been erected which will not allow the
broadcasting of Armenian TV Channels in the territory of Azerbaijan,
day.az reports.
The same fate expects Irani TV programs. Another tower will be erected
in Larik to prohibit their broadcasting.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

KARABAKH ISSUE WILL NOT BE SETTLED IN NEAR FUTURE
A1+
| 16:14:55 | 03-09-2005 | Politics |
This the opinion of political scientist Alexander Iskandaryan,
interview with whom is presented below.
-No serious changes are taking place in the Karabakh
settlement. However the Minsk process that has been inactive since 1999
is being restores. As a matter of fact it is a positive step, however
it has nothing in common with the Karabakh conflict settlement, which
entirely depends on the will of the Azeri and Armenian Presidents.
-Does Armenia have will?
– Presently there is no ground for real negotiations. Today
expectations are contrary. Azerbaijan wishes to deport Armenians from
Karabakh, Armenia presses for Karabakh’s independence. The Minsk Group
is trying to achieved so-called “obliged peace”. However I think the
parties are not ready for compromise yet.
-They say that the legitimacy of Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliyev
should be used by the international community in the process of
imposing peace. Your comments, please.
-No, it’s not so. First of all no “obliged peace” is not observed
for the near future. Second, let’s take Islam Karimov or Alexander
Lukashenko. Thus the issue of legitimacy is not political but inner
political.