The Economist
Aug 18 2005
For jihadist, read anarchist
Aug 18th 2005
>>From The Economist print edition
Mary Evans
Repression did little to stop anarchist violence. But eventually the
world moved on and the movement withered
BOMBS, beards and backpacks: these are the distinguishing marks, at
least in the popular imagination, of the terror-mongers who either
incite or carry out the explosions that periodically rock the cities
of the western world. A century or so ago it was not so different:
bombs, beards and fizzing fuses. The worries generated by the two
waves of terror, the responses to them and some of their other
characteristics are also similar. The spasm of anarchist violence
that was at its most convulsive in the 1880s and 1890s was felt, if
indirectly, in every continent. It claimed hundreds of lives,
including those of several heads of government, aroused widespread
fear and prompted quantities of new laws and restrictions. But it
passed. Jihadism is certainly not a lineal descendant of anarchism:
far from it. Even so, the parallels between the anarchist bombings of
the 19th century and the Islamist ones of today may be instructive.
Islamists, or at least those of the Osama bin Laden stripe, have
several aims. Some-such as the desire “to regain Palestine”, to
avenge the killing of “our nation’s sons” and to expel all “infidel
armies” from “the land of Muhammad”-could be those of any
conventional national-liberation movement. Others are more
millenarian: to bring everyone to Islam, which, says Mr bin Laden,
“is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice
between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed
and persecuted.” All this will come to pass once everyone is living
in an Islamic state, a caliphate governed by sharia law. Hence “the
martyrdom operations against the enemy” and the promise of paradise
for those who carry them out.
Lessons from the 19th-century anarchists
Aug 18th 2005
Terrorism and civil liberties
Aug 11th 2005
Northern Ireland
Jul 28th 2005
Islam
Terrorism
Click to buy from Amazon.com: “The Secret Agent”, by Joseph Conrad
(Amazon.co.uk); “The Devils”, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Amazon.co.uk).
Anarchy Archives, an online research centre, provides information and
links about Proudhon, Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin and anarchist
history. The Observer publishes Mr bin Laden’s “Letter to America”.
The Council on Foreign Relations has resources about terrorism.
Anarchists have always believed in the antithesis of a Muslim state.
They want a world without rule. Their first great theoretician,
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, wanted to abolish centralised government
altogether. This, though, would not bring the chaos with which the
word anarchy is often considered synonymous. On the contrary, a sort
of harmonious order would ensue, the state being replaced by a system
of autonomous groups and communities, glued together by contract and
mutual interest in place of laws. Justice, argued this essentially
non-violent man, was the “central star” governing society.
Though Proudhon is remembered for the dictum, “Property is theft!” he
actually believed that a man had the right to possess a house, some
land and the tools to work it. This was too much for Mikhail Bakunin,
a revolutionary nationalist turned anarchist who believed in
collective ownership of the means of production. He believed, too,
that “the passion for destruction is also a creative urge,” which was
not a description of the regenerative workings of capitalism but a
call to the barricades. Regeneration, however, was very much an
anarchist theme, just as it is a jihadist one. As one of anarchism’s
leading interpreters, George Woodcock, has put it, “It is through the
wrecks of empires and faiths that the anarchists have always seen the
glittering towers of their free world arising.”
What prompts the leap from idealistic thought to violent action is
largely a matter for conjecture. Every religion and almost every
philosophy has drawn adherents ready to shed blood, their own
included, and in the face of tyranny, poverty and exploitation, a
willingness to resort to force is not hard to understand. Both
anarchism and jihadism, though, have incorporated bloodshed into
their ideologies, or at least some of their zealots have. And both
have been ready to justify the killing not just of soldiers,
policemen and other agents of the state, but also of civilians.
The heads roll
For anarchists, the crucial theory was that developed in Italy, where
in 1876 Errico Malatesta put it thus: “The insurrectionary deed,
destined to affirm socialist principles by acts, is the most
efficacious means of propaganda.” This theory of “propaganda by deed”
was cheerfully promoted by another great anarchist thinker, Peter
Kropotkin, a Russian prince who became the toast of radical-chic
circles in Europe and America. Whether the theory truly tipped
non-violent musers into killers, or whether it merely gave a pretext
to psychopaths, simpletons and romantics to commit murders, is
unclear. The murders, however, are not in doubt. In deadly sequence,
anarchists claimed the lives of President Sadi Carnot of France
(1894), Antonio Canovas del Castillo, the prime minister of Spain
(1897), Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1898), King Umberto of Italy
(1900), President William McKinley of the United States (1901) and
Jose Canalejas y Mendez, another Spanish prime minister (1912).
Such assassinations, it may be argued, were less similar to
al-Qaeda’s than to those of the Narodniki, the members of the Russian
Party of the People’s Will, who believed in “destroying the most
powerful person in government” to undermine its prestige and arouse
the revolutionary spirit. This they had undoubtedly done in 1881 by
murdering Tsar Alexander II, even though he had been a reformer and,
indeed, a liberator of the serfs. In truth, the practice of
assassination is as old as the hills, though it got its name only in
the 11th-13th centuries when it was followed by the Nizari
Ismailiyun, a Shia sect that considered the murder of its
enemies-conducted under the influence of hashish (hence assassin)-to
be a religious duty.
Mr bin Laden would surely delight in some dramatic assassinations
today. Presidents and prime ministers, however, do not nowadays sit
reading the newspaper on the terraces of hotels where out-of-work
Italian printers wander round with revolvers in their pockets, as
Canovas did, or walk the streets of Madrid unprotected while looking
into bookshop windows, as Canalejas did. So Mr bin Laden must content
himself with the assertion that on September 11th, “God Almighty hit
the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its
greatest buildings…It was filled with terror from its north to its
south and from its east to its west.”
The anarchists, too, were happy to resort to more indiscriminate acts
of terror. “A pound of dynamite is worth a bushel of bullets,” said
August Spies, the editor of an anarchist newspaper in Chicago, in
1886. His readers evidently agreed. A bomb thrown soon afterwards was
to kill seven policemen breaking up a strikers’ gathering in the
city’s Haymarket Square.
France, too, had its dynamitards. One of their bombs blew up the
Restaurant Very in Paris in 1892. Another, some months later, which
was destined for a mining company’s offices, killed six policemen and
set off a flurry of wild rumours: acid had been placed in the city’s
water supply, it was said, churches had been mined and anarchists
lurked round every corner. A year later a young anarchist, unable to
earn enough to feed himself, his lover and his daughter, decided to
take his own life-and at the same time make a protest. Ready to bomb
but unwilling to kill, he packed some nails and a small charge of
explosive into a saucepan and lobbed it from the public gallery into
the Chamber of Deputies. Though it caused no deaths, he was
executed-and then avenged with another bomb, this one in the Terminus
cafe at the Gare St-Lazare which killed one customer and injured 19.
The perpetrator of this outrage, designed to “waken the masses”,
regretted only that it had not claimed more victims. A popular street
song boasted:
It will come, it will come,
Every bourgeois will have his bomb.
And many were inclined to agree. Four more bombs went off in Paris in
the next two months.
Other countries were hardly more peaceful. A bomb was lobbed into a
monarchist parade in Florence in 1878, another into a crowd in Pisa
two days later. In 1893, two bombs were thrown into the Teatro Liceo
in Barcelona, killing 22 opera-goers on the first night of the
season. A year later a French anarchist blew himself up by accident
in Greenwich Park in London, presumably on his way to the observatory
there. Two years later, at least six people taking part in a
religious procession in Barcelona were blown to bits by an anarchist
bomb. Countless attempts were also made on the lives of bigger names,
such as King Alfonso XII of Spain (1878), Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany
(May and June 1878), Andrew Carnegie’s business partner, Henry Clay
Frick (Pittsburgh, 1892), a Serbian minister (Paris, 1893) and King
Alfonso XIII and his English bride (Madrid, on their wedding day,
1906). In this last incident alone 20 bystanders died.
Then, as now, alarm and consternation broke out. Admittedly, violent
attacks on prominent figures were quite frequent: one American
president had been assassinated in 1865 (Lincoln) and another in 1881
(Garfield), and seven attempts were made on Queen Victoria’s life
before her reign ended in 1901, none of them by anarchists. Even so,
governments could hardly do nothing. The response of some was
repression and retribution, which often provoked further terrorist
violence. Germany arrested 500 people after the second attack on the
kaiser, many for “approving” of the attempts on his life. Spain was
particularly prone to round up the usual suspects and torture them,
though it also passed new laws. After the Liceo bombing, it brought
in courts-martial for all crimes committed with explosives, and only
military officers were allowed to be present during the trial of the
supposed bombers.
France, too, resorted to unusual measures. After the bombing of the
French Chamber of Deputies, 2,000 warrants were issued, anarchist
clubs and cafes were raided, papers were closed down and August
Vaillant, the bomber, was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death
in a day. An apologist who declared that not a single man in France
would grieve for the president if he confirmed the sentence (as he
did), and then was assassinated (as he was), was jailed for two years
for incitement to murder. The French parliament made it a crime not
just to incite sedition but also to justify it. Criminal
“associations of malefactors” were defined by intent rather than by
action, and all acts of anarchist propaganda were banned.
Similarly, in Britain soon after last month’s bombings, the prime
minister, Tony Blair, announced that “condoning or glorifying
terrorism” anywhere, not just in the United Kingdom, would become a
crime. Places of worship used as centres for “fomenting extremism”
are to be closed down. Measures will be taken to deport foreigners
“fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person’s beliefs,
or justifying or validating such violence.” Naturalised Britons
engaged in “extremism” will be stripped of their citizenship.
Jihadists, of course, cross borders, and many are presumed to be
indoctrinated by foreigners, even if they commit their deeds at home.
So it was too with the anarchists, even though they often plotted and
acted alone. Many of the ideas came from Russia. Besides Bakunin,
Russia also produced Kropotkin, “an uncompromising apostle of the
necessity of violence”, according to Barbara Tuchman in “The Proud
Tower”.
Italy, by contrast, produced many of the assassins: for example,
those who killed Carnot, Canovas, Empress Elizabeth and King Umberto.
It also exported utopians who founded anarchist settlements like the
Cecilia colony in Brazil. Germany, too, had its share of fanatics,
including Johann Most, the editor of an incendiary New York
newspaper, Freiheit, and many of the Jewish anarchists who
congregated in London’s East End. France also sent anarchos abroad: a
prominent theorist, Elisee Reclus, taught in Brussels. The man who
shot McKinley was the child of Polish immigrants to America. And
Switzerland, like England, played host to exiles who came and went
with considerable freedom.
No wonder, then, that anti-foreigner feeling ran high in many places.
In the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt asked Congress to
exclude anyone who believed in “anarchistic principles” and, by
treaty, to make the advocacy of killing an offence against
international law. Congress duly obliged with an act that kept out
anyone “teaching disbelief in or opposition to all organised
government”.
By then an international conference had been held (in 1898) at the
behest of Italy to seek help in fighting anarchism. The Italians did
not get all they wanted: Belgium, Britain and Switzerland refused to
abandon the right of asylum or to extradite suspected anarchists. But
in 1893, just after the Liceo bombing, Britain had reluctantly banned
open meetings of anarchists after the Liberal home secretary, H.H.
Asquith, had come under attack for allowing an anarchist meeting to
commemorate the Chicago Haymarket martyrs.
The vast majority of anarchists, like the vast majority of Islamists,
were not violent, and some of those who once believed in bloodshed,
notably Kropotkin, were to turn against it in time. But those who
relished indiscriminate violence used an argument with striking
similarities to that used by Mr bin Laden. Thus Emile Henry, who had
left the bomb in the cafe at the Gare St-Lazare, was to justify his
act by saying that those in the cafe were all “satisfied with the
established order, all the accomplices and employees of Property and
the State…There are no innocent bourgeois.” For his part, Mr bin
Laden, in his “Letter to America” of November 2002, justifies the
“aggression against civilians for crimes they did not commit” with a
slightly more sophisticated variant. They deserved to die, he said,
because, as American citizens, they had chosen “their government by
way of their own free will, a choice which stems from their agreement
to its policies.”
Such sentiments recall the characters of Conrad’s “The Secret Agent”
and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Devils”. Inspired by 19th-century anarchist
intellectuals and events, they describe men of almost autistic lack
of empathy and contorted moral sense. For Conrad’s protagonist,
nicknamed the Professor, the world’s morality
was artificial, corrupt and blasphemous. The way of even the most
justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised
into creeds. The Professor’s indignation found in itself a final
cause that absolved him from the sin of turning to destruction as the
agent of his ambition. To destroy public faith in legality was the
imperfect formula of his pedantic fanaticism; but the subconscious
conviction that the framework of an established social order cannot
be effectually shattered except by some form of collective or
individual violence was precise and correct. He was a moral
agent-that was settled in his mind. By exercising his agency with
ruthless defiance he procured for himself the appearances of power
and personal prestige. That was undeniable to his vengeful
bitterness. It pacified its unrest; and in their own way the most
ardent of revolutionaries are perhaps doing no more but seeking for
peace in common with the rest of mankind-the peace of soothed vanity,
of satisfied appetites, or perhaps of appeased conscience.
Anarchists like the Professor, a quiet man who went round with a bomb
in his pocket that he could detonate with the squeeze of a rubber
ball should he be arrested, were difficult to detect and impossible
to deter. So why did their wave of terror pass? Not, it seems,
because of the measures taken to deter them. The main reason, rather,
was that the world became consumed with the first world war, the
Russian revolution, the fight against fascism and the struggles
against colonialism. Another was that, after a while, the more
rational anarchists realised that terrorism seldom achieves the ends
desired of it-as the IRA has recently acknowledged.
But in truth the wave did not entirely pass; it merely changed. The
anarchist terrorists of 1880-1910 were replaced by other
terrorists-Fenians, Serb nationalists (one killed the Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and thus sparked the first world war), Bolsheviks, Dashnaks
(revolutionary Armenians), Poles, Macedonians, Hindu nationalists
(among them the killers of Mahatma Gandhi), fascists, Zionists,
Maoists, Guevarists, Black Panthers, Red Brigades, Red Army
Fractions, Palestinians and even al-Qaeda’s jihadists. Few of these
shared the anarchists’ explicit aims; all borrowed at least some of
their tactics and ideas.
And the world went on. It probably would even if yesterday’s
dynamitards become today’s plutoniumards. But terrorism is unlikely
to be expunged. As long as there are men like Conrad’s Professor,
there will be causes to excite them, and therefore deeds to terrify
their fellow citizens.
Sources:
“Anarchism”, by George Woodcock, Pelican Books, 1962.
“The Anarchists”, by James Joll, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964.
“The Proud Tower”, by Barbara W. Tuchman, Macmillan, 1962.
“How Russia Shaped the Modern World”, by Steven G. Marks, Princeton
University Press, 2003.
“East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914”, by William J. Fishman, Five
Leaves Publications, 2004.
“Violent London: 2,000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts”, by Clive
Bloom, Sidgwick & Jackson, 2003.

IRINnews.org, NY
Aug 18 2005
TURKMENISTAN: Focus on ethnic minorities
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
ANKARA, 18 Aug 2005 (IRIN) – The plight of ethnic minorities in
Turkmenistan remains bleak, despite claims to the contrary by the
Turkmen government during this month’s session of the United Nations
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
“Each of Turkmenistan’s ethnic and racial minorities bears a heavy
burden of discrimination and exclusion in the environment where
preferential treatment is openly afforded only to ethnic Turkmen,”
Robert Arsenault, president of the International League for Human
Rights (ILHR), asserted from New York. He went on to describe the
human rights situation in the largely desert but energy rich state,
as alarming.
“The president for life, Saparmurat Niyazov, has defined the newly
created country of Turkmenistan as the glorified home of ethnic
Turkmen,” Erika Dailey, director of the Open Society Institute’s
Turkmenistan Project, added from New York. “In that conceptualisation,
there is no room for non-ethnic Turkmen in Turkmenistan. So the
state has attempted to “turkmenify” its non-Turkmen population,”
added Dailey.
Their comments come during the 67th session of the CERD from
2-19 August, held in Geneva, to review anti-discrimination efforts
undertaken by the governments of Venezuela, Georgia, Zambia, Barbados,
Tanzania, Iceland, Turkmenistan and Nigeria. These countries were
among the 170 states which were party to the International Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The 18-member Committee, the first body created by the United
Nations to review actions by member states to fulfil obligations
under a specific human rights agreement, examines reports submitted
periodically by state parties on efforts to comply with the
Convention. Government representatives generally present the reports,
discuss the contents with Committee members and answer questions.
But reclusive Turkmenistan, a country of just five million, slightly
larger than California and wedged between Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Afghanistan and Iran, has been a ‘black hole’ as far as information
is concerned, since it gained independence following the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991.
President Niyazov has established a personality cult centred on
himself. Following an alleged attempt on his life in November
2002, human rights activists have reported a further tightening of
restrictions on travel, opposition members and the media. This has
prompted Human Rights Watch (HRW) to describe the hermit state as
being one of the most repressive countries in the world today.
GOVERNMENT POSITION
That lack of transparency was evident in Geneva, when in the official
report presented by Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov on 11
August, he concluded that there is no discrimination of national
minorities in the country. Yet according to rights activists, the
minister’s report raised many questions, which, when put, were either
answered evasively or not at all.
“There was a complete denial of the problem of ethnic minorities, as
well as the obvious facts of abusing the rights of ethnic minorities,”
Farid Tuhbatullin, chairman of the Vienna-based Turkmen Initiative
for Human Rights group, said. “It was an absolutely non-constructive
position. There was an absolute lack of understanding for a need of
dialogue between the government and NGOs, between Turkmenistan and
the UN,” said Tuhbatullin, citing conflicting statistical figures
provided by the government.
EXAMPLES OF DISCRIMINATION
According to activists, racial and ethnic minority populations were
excluded from employment in the public sector, denied access to
education in their native language, restricted in their practice of
religion and continuously intimidated by police.
“Employment in the public sector, which dominates the national economy,
is conditional on the fulfilment of the ‘third generation’ test,
requiring an applicant to prove his/her Turkmen ancestry for three
generations,” Arsenault said. He added that since 1991, Kazakh, Uzbek
and Armenian language schools have been closed, while instruction in
Russian has diminished greatly.
“Such important religious confessions as the Armenian Apostolic
Church and Shia Islam, remain unregistered and thus illegal,” the ILHR
official added. He noted that Uzbeks, traditionally a rural population
in the northern and eastern parts of the country, represent a special
case as they are viewed with particular suspicion by the authorities
as people not loyal to the regime.
Meanwhile, Dailey accused the government in the capital, Ashgabat,
of fabricating population data that significantly underestimated
the actual numbers of ethnic minorities in the country. In the
report to the UN CERD, for example, the Turkmen government claimed
that minorities make up only 5.4 percent of the population. However,
according to a 1995 population survey, Uzbeks made up 9.2 percent of
the population, though in a recent report to the UN, that figure was
placed at no more than 2 percent.
“Where could so many people have gone so quickly?” Dailey asked.
“Emigration of that magnitude would surely have been obvious to the
international community,” she explained, suggesting the more likely
explanation was some form of forced assimilation.
In a further discriminatory move, the government reportedly coerced
other Turkic people such as Uzbeks and Kazakhs, to assimilate and
“pass” as Turkmen under threat of a loss of job, which in Turkmenistan
is tantamount to being sentenced to a lifetime of poverty.
“Since the overwhelming majority of jobs in Turkmenistan are government
jobs, this form of discrimination is a powerful tool for promoting
the part of the population that the government wishes to see prosper
(ethnic Turkmen) and to impoverish those the government wishes to
see fail (ethnic minorities),” Dailey claimed.
To counter such possibilities, it is not unusual for non-ethnic Turkmen
to add a typical Turkmen ending to their last name, she said, while
others enter into fictitious marriages with ethnic Turkmen as a means
to secure Turkmen-sounding names. As for those who could not easily
“pass” as Turkmen – mainly Russians and Ukrainians – the government
purportedly undertakes measures to bring about their emigration.
In April 2003, the same day it signed a 25-year gas contract with the
Russian energy giant, Gazprom, Ashgabat withdrew recognition of dual
Turkmen-Russian citizenship.
“It forced such citizens – not all of whom were ethnic Russian,
but all of whom had Russia as a place of national origin – to either
renounce their Russian citizenship, or keep their Russian citizenship
but lose their property in Turkmenistan. It was a horrific and clearly
discriminatory Hobson’s Choice,” Dailey asserted.
Forced into a corner, according to an IRIN report in July 2003 [See:
;SelectRegion=Central_Asia&
SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN], thousands of ethnic Russians left the
country under an imposed deadline to choose.
CLAIMS OF FORCED RESETTLEMENT
Dailey also cited ‘ethnic internal exile’ as another example of
racial discrimination virtually unseen anywhere else in the world.
Domestic laws allow for the “resettlement” of five categories of
individuals, including those deemed “unworthy”, she claimed. She
noted that to date, some 25 families have already been “resettled”
with plans reportedly calling for the resettlement of up to 6,000
people to uninhabitable and barren regions of the country.
With limited access to the Central Asian state, such reports have yet
to be confirmed and consequently receive the international attention
they deserve, leaving outside observers in a quandary as to what they
can do.
A WAY FORWARD
According to Arsenault, Turkmenistan has made some responses to
criticism from the international community and individual states
in the past, with the relaxation of registration requirements for
religious groups and organisations in 2004 being a notable example.
“International institutions, such as the United Nations and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), need to
keep up the momentum by engaging the government of Turkmenistan in
meeting its obligations under international law,” he said. He added
that observers should not underestimate the role that countries
enjoying extensive bilateral relations with Turkmenistan – mainly
Turkey, Ukraine and Russia – could play.
Dailey, however, was more blunt. She said the best deterrent to ethnic
discrimination is international recognition and condemnation of the
country’s appalling human rights record. There should also be close
monitoring of the government’s compliance with measurable benchmarks
for stopping such practices – even in courts outside the country.
“The UN, in particular, can play an enormously constructive role
in calling for the government to account for its discriminatory
practices,” she emphasised.
In advance of the official presentation made by Turkmenistan to
the committee, ILHR and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights
presented a joint alternative report to the CERD members and NGO
representatives. They offered factual evidence of violations of the
rights of national minorities on behalf of the Turkmen state, as well
as an analysis of the state’s legislation showing certain laws that
contain discriminatory norms.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian TV, radio channels get broadcast licences
Arminfo
18 Aug 05
Yerevan, 18 August: The National Commission on TV and Radio of Armenia
[NCTR] today issued licenses to Armenia TV and Ar Mezhmaterikovaya
[Intercontinental] radio station as a result of an NCTR competition
announced on 1 July this year.
Armenia TV will broadcast on the following UHF TV channels to the
following Armenian towns: on channel 34 to Vedi, on channel 48 to
Dzhermuk, on channel 28 to Sevan, on channel 26 to Gyumri, on channel
27 to Razdan, on channel 28 to Aparan, on channel 45 to Ararat, on
channel 33 to Vardenis, on channel 25 to Vanadzor, on channel 21 to
Stepanavan and on channel 55 to Abovyan.
Armenia TV broadcasts will also be relayed on UHF TV channel 53 in
Noyemberyan, 25 in Idzhevan, 21 in Dilidzhan, 24 in Sisyan, 35 in
Goris and 25 in Kapan.
Armenia TV is planning to buy more powerful satellite equipment
soon and install new modern studios for live broadcasts and other
TV programmes.
The TV channel is fulfilling its commitment to ensure that 75 per
cent of evening broadcasts are national programmes and 50 per cent
are its own programmes.
In the meantime, Ar Mezhmaterikovaya radio station will broadcast on
105.2 MHz frequency to the village of Areg, 104.6 MHz to Vedi, 107.3
MHz to Yekhegnadzor, 106.8 MHz to Zovashen, 107.2 MHz to Vanadzor,
103.6 MHz to Gyumri, 103.9 MHz to Vayk, 104.4 MHz to Fantan and 103.2
MHz to the territory of the Sevan mountain crossing.

US envoy says Armenia, Azerbaijan may be close to Karabakh settlement
Ayastani Anrapetutyun, Yerevan
18 Aug 05
Excellent opportunities have opened up for the parties to the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict to pave the way to a settlement, the USA’s Karabakh
mediator Steven Mann has said in exclusive interview with Armenian
Ayastani Anrapetutyun newspaper. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are
committed to peace, there is mutual understanding, and the parties
are close to an agreement on some issues, Mann said. The following
is an excerpt from the interview by Tsovinar Nazaryan in Ayastani
Anrapetutyun on 18 August headlined “No party to negotiating process
can get 100 per cent of what it wants”; subheadings have been inserted
editorially:
[Ayastani Anrapetutyun correspondent Tsovinar Nazaryan] Mr Ambassador,
could you please first assess the current stage of the Karabakh
peace process?
[Steven Mann] During the last 18 months the Karabakh peace talks
have substantially intensified and there have been significant
meetings between the [Armenian and Azerbaijani] foreign ministers
and presidents. The USA highly appreciates this process.
[Nazaryan] Why exactly 18 months?
[Mann] The Prague process started 18 months ago. The foreign ministers
and the presidents had then confidential meetings with the Minsk Group
co-chairs. Since then discussions within the Minsk Group framework
have grown into professional talks.
Parties should show political will
[Nazaryan] Could you please specify what the talks have arrived at
so far – especially as in order to have some opinion the public first
have to have some picture of what is going on.
[Mann] No official agreement has been reached during the period. There
is mutual understanding, and the parties are close to an agreement on
some issues. Of course, nobody wants to break the confidentiality of
the process. But agreement is possible if the parties show political
will. This will allow them to iron out their differences.
[Nazaryan] Is the Minsk Group interested in involving Nagornyy Karabakh
in the peace process or is it taking any steps to that effect as
obviously it is Nagornyy Karabakh’s fate that is being decided?
[Mann] The talks are continuing in the Armenia-Azerbaijan format.
[Nazaryan] Are there any settlement scenarios applicable to the
Karabakh conflict or can the Karabakh peace process be a model itself?
[Mann] The Karabakh conflict is a special and unique conflict. During
my work in the USA I dealt with some conflicts. There are some
similarities but each conflict is unique. Of course, we can learn
some lessons from the Balkan or Asian conflicts but this particular
conflict has its peculiar background and conditions.
[Nazaryan] Some other international organizations have lately shown
enhanced interest in the conflict, in particular the Council of Europe
and the EU. Do you think they might have more effective negotiating
resources than the OSCE and particularly the Minsk Group?
[Mann] The outsiders can help, promote the process but it is up to
the conflicting parties to find a solution. On behalf of the USA I
can say that we would very much like to see the conflict resolved. In
this situation the USA is a good friend for both countries.
[passage omitted: Mann on opening of US embassy in Armenia, working
in oil and gas sphere in Azerbaijan]
Parties committed to peace
[Nazaryan] What about the US support of Nagornyy Karabakh? Does it
imply a special attitude towards the republic?
[Mann] You should not see much in this. The USA is providing Nagornyy
Karabakh with small humanitarian assistance with no political
implications.
[Nazaryan] People in Azerbaijan often speak about oil factor in
the Karabakh peace process. What will be more decisive here – oil
or democracy?
[Mann] In order to resolve the conflict the parties will have to show
political will and commitment towards mutual concessions.
[Nazaryan] How could you assess the commitment of the parties for
peace in terms of their public and governments?
[Mann] The commitment of the presidents is obvious. I am convinced that
both [Armenian President] Robert Kocharyan and [Azerbaijani President]
Ilham Aliyev sincerely want peace. As to the public, they obviously
want all but war. The history of the Caucasus is changing. And the
last we will have to see will hopefully be solutions presented to
the public for approval.
“Excellent opportunities” for future talks
[Nazaryan] Are you or the other Minsk Group co-chairs informed of the
limits of possible concessions by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagornyy
Karabakh?
[Mann] Lots of discussions are being held on this issue. There is
a good chance for each party to achieve most of its goals. Such
talks are very hard to hold but there are excellent opportunities
for further development. No party to a negotiating process can get
100 per cent of what it wants. But the parties to the Karabakh peace
process have real opportunities for paving a stable way to settlement
provided they show strong political will.
[Nazaryan] Could you specify what “excellent opportunities” you are
talking about? Are there proposals on paper? And generally, what do
you expect from the Kazan meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents?
[Mann] The “excellent” word would be better replaced by “reasonable”
and “professional”. I do not want to create an impression that this
all is very easy. This is a hard task but the parties have done much
in this direction. The USA is closely following the work carried out
since the beginning of the Prague Process. This period has laid the
foundations for the current stage leading to the Kazan meeting. The
USA expects the parties to use this opportunity for further dialogue
and talks – in the subsequent excellent periods as well.

Research and Markets: With a subscriber growth of over 50%, the chart Africa, Middle East & Russian Wireless Landscape represents the fastest growing wireless regions in the world
Business Wire; Aug 18, 2005
Research and Markets ()
has announced the addition of Africa, Middle East & Russian Wireless
Landscape Wallchart to their offering.
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growing wireless regions in the world. Africa, with the world’s lowest
penetration, holds huge opportunity for expansion, and has given birth
to a number of Africa focused service providers. On the other side
of the Red Sea, from Russia to Armenia and Turkey to Saudi Arabia,
strong infrastructure investment is underway by a mix of local and
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specialising in the gathering of wireless market intelligence, the
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a wealth of company specific and industry information, including:
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Market data:
— Subscribers per country
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— Equipment vendor market share (2.5G, 2.75G and 3G)
Coverage: 212 operators from Africa, Middle East, Moldova, Belarus,
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and Markets
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Top Council of Europe official to discuss polls, political prisoners in Baku
Turan news agency, Baku
17 Aug 05
Strasbourg, 17 August: The president of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe [PACE], Rene van der Linden, has given an
exclusive interview to Turan ahead of his visit to Azerbaijan on
21-24 August.
Asked about the range of issues to be discussed with the Azerbaijani
leadership, Linden said that the most important topic would be the
forthcoming parliamentary election in November.
“PACE said in June that the forthcoming poll would be a final
test of the country’s commitment to democracy. I will try to bring
this home to the Azerbaijani authorities and remind them of their
original responsibility for holding the election in conformity with
international standards. I expect to get firm assurances that the
forthcoming election will be fair and free. A total of 40 PACE members
will be involved in monitoring the polls,” van der Linden said.
“Besides, I will also discuss the problem of political prisoners, the
resolution of which was a key precondition for Azerbaijan’s accession
to the Council of Europe in 2001. But the problem has remained open
so far. PACE once again insisted last June on a prompt and final
solution to the problem of political prisoners. Incumbent President
[Ilham] Aliyev has done a lot and I will try to convince him not to
fail this process in its final stage,” the PACE president noted.
The talks in Baku will also focus on the progress of negotiations on
a peaceful solution to the Karabakh conflict. “PACE has intensified
its efforts in this area and Paris will host an important meeting of
all the key political players in a few months,” Linden said, but did
not specify details of the meeting and its participants.
Asked if PACE intended to insist on the adoption of the recommendations
of the Venice Commission on changing the electoral law by the
Azerbaijani authorities, the PACE head said this issue was raised
back at the June session. “Resolution 1456 unambiguously called on
Azerbaijan to change the Electoral Code and bring the electoral laws
into full conformity with the joint recommendations of the Venice
Commission and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human
Rights.”
Commenting on recent attacks on the headquarters of the People’s Front
of Azerbaijan Party and smear campaign tactics against the opposition,
Linden said he did not want to talk about this issue because of lack
of information. “Nevertheless, I am planning to discuss this issue
in meetings with the authorities and opposition politicians,” he
said. “It is indeed very alarming that such incidents are happening
with three months left till the parliamentary election. We believe
that the authorities should apply the relevant laws effectively and
without discrimination,” he concluded.

Concept of National Strategic Program for Export Promotion drafted
18.08.2005 16:32
YEREVAN (YERKIR) – A concept of the National Strategic Program for
Export Promotion has been drafted on the initiative of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Bureau and the party’s Armenia Supreme
Body, Armenpress reported.
Ara Nranian, ARF Bureau’s economic advisor, says the program was
drafted during a 1.5- year period and was sent to international and
local experts for consideration.
“We expect this concept to get the government’s approval and hope
a comprehensive program to boost export would be adopted based on
this document,” Nranian said, adding that economic growth rates in
Armenia are expected to shrink in the coming years since the domestic
resources for such growth are limited and the only way to keep the
country’s economy growing is to increase exports.
The document covers all the aspects of the export. One of the sectors
with great export potential is agriculture, Nranian says.

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT TO BE INTRODUCED AT COURTS IN ARMENIA
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16. ARMINFO. An automatic system of management will be
introduced at the courts in Armenia. One of the American firms engaged
in programming and recognized the winner office on implementation of
a credit program of judicial and legal reforms of thew WB will assume
the process of automation.
Press Secretary of the Cassation Court of Armenia Anna Lazarian
informed ARMINFO that the proposal on introduction of the system
in Armenia was made buy the DPK Consulting company. The company is
engaged in consultative support to the program of modernization of
courts. The system supposes management of the cases, budgetary funds,
cadre resources. It will be introduced at all the courts in Armenia,
and a centralized data base will ve created to coordinate the work.

JAPANESE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION DEMANDS EXPLANATIONS ON
TRANSFER OF SHARES OF ARMENIAN ELECTRIC NETWORKS TO RAO EES RUSSIA
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16. ARMINFO. Japanese Bank for International
Cooperation has expressed its displeasure over the uncertainty
following the transfer of the shares of Armenian Electric Networks
to RAO EES Russia and demands relevant explanations, says the head of
the development and foreign relations department of Armenia’s energy
ministry Levon Vardanyan.
He says that the displeasure was expressed during a JBIC mission’s
recent visit to Yerevan and their meetings with energy and finance
and economy ministry officials. The concern is quite understandable
– the Armenian government is puzzled itself as they have not no
specifications on the deal so far. Meanwhile the owner Midland
Resources Holding Ltd is obliged to respond to the government’s inquiry
by no later than Aug 17 otherwise Armenian Electric Networks may be
deprived of license. Vardanyan says that according to the Armenian
legislation the shares of a copmany cannot be sold or given to a
third person without a government permission.
Vardanyan says that during the JBIC mission Yerevan visit the sides
considered annoucing a new tender for modernizing 33 110 KV power
sub-stations of Armenia as the JBIC 1999 $30 mln loan has proved
insufficient with the first tender suspended because no condender
would obviously do with the above sum. And so JBIC is waiting for
explanations to know what it will further do in Armenia. The bank’s
biggest program in the country is the $150 mln loan for the underway
project to modernize the Yerevan Thermal Power Plant.
Expressing displeasure earlier were also USAID and WB. USAID has
even threatened to stop its programs in Armenia unless explanations
are received.

DRAFT CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FORMATION OF
PERFECT SYSTEM OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IN ARMENIA: ARMENIAN VICE
SPEAKER
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16. ARMINFO. There are many gaps and contradictions
in the provisions of the draft constitutional reforms in Armenia
regulating the rights and powers of the local self-government bodies.
Head of the NGO Democracy Vardan Poghosyan made this statement today
at discussions on the draft constitutional reforms organized by the
union of Communities of Armenia.
He stressed the provision providing the executive power with a right to
dismiss heads of communities elected by the people, which contradicts
to the European Charter on local self-government. Petrosyan also
emphasized the provision regulating the formation of community budgets,
He thinks the Constitution must have a provision providing for the
communities choosing the mechanisms of formation of their budgets
and the ways to use the funds. At the same time, Petrosyan thinks the
Constitution must also stipulate that the communities are responsible
for effective fulfillment of budgetary funds.
In his turn, Vice Speaker of Armenian Parliament Tigran Torosyan
stated that The draft constitutional reforms create opportunities for
formation of a perfect system of local self-government in Armenia. He
thinks there are problems which must be settled at a legislative
level. “However, to create a perfect state, we should be guided both
by the written ands not-written laws,” Torosyan says.
To note, the draft will be considered in the second reading by the
Armenian Parliament on August 29 in the course of an extraordinary
sitting of the parliament. In Nov 2005 the document will be set to
a national referendum. Adoption of the document requires 1/3 of the
total number of electors in the country that is some 800,000 citizens.