Wine International, UK
Aug 15 2005
Ancient cellars found in Georgia
15 August 2005
By Richard Ross
Wine cellars containing a working grape press and numerous wine jars
dating from the late Middle Ages have been found in a village in
Southern Georgia.
The artefacts were discovered during work to lay a gas pipeline which
will cross from the Caspian Sea to Eastern Turkey.
The grape press is said to date from the 14th-16th century, and was
used to make Chacha, a local vodka made from grapes. Archaeologists
said the find helped to confirm their existing research into ancient
winemaking techniques.
While the finds are at least five hundred years old, they go nowhere
near the origins of winemaking in the country. Georgia is one of the
oldest winemaking nations in the world, along with neighbouring
Armenia, Turkey and Iran. The ancestors of modern wine grapes (Vitis
Vinifera) grew wild in the countryside, and the winemaking heritage
of the area may go as far back as 3000 BC.
Many of the techniques still used in domestic Georgian winemaking
have remained little changed for centuries. They include the practice
of burying jars full of wine up to their necks in the ground to
moderate temperatures, and to keep the wine relatively fresh.
Work on the pipeline has been halted until the archaeologists have
finished their investigations.

UN report condemns Oil-for-Food head for taking $ 150,000 kickback
by James Bone
The Times (London)
August 9, 2005, Tuesday
The UN is left reeling by revelations that its largest humanitarian
aid project had been corrupted, reports James Bone
The United Nations’ own inquiry into the Oil-for-Food scandal concluded
yesterday that the head of its largest humanitarian programme took
nearly $ 150,000 (£84,000) in kickbacks, most of it in stacks of
$100 bills.
Benon Sevan was accused of receiving the cash for steering Iraqi oil
contracts to a firm run by a brother-in-law and a cousin of Boutros
Boutros Ghali, the former UN chief.
The charge of outright corruption came in the report by the UN inquiry
led by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve. The
findings rocked the UN, where officials initially dismissed the
Oil-for-Food scandal as a vendetta by right-wing American politicians
angered by UN opposition to the war in Iraq.
Mr Volcker’s findings suggest that Saddam Hussein’s government
was successful in effectively bribing the head of the Oil-for-Food
programme for the entire six years of its existence. The Volcker
commission said that Mr Sevan, who had been struggling after losing
on the stock market, received $ 147,184 in cash from December 1998 to
January 2002. The money came from oil sales by a Panama-based company,
African Middle East Petroleum (AMEP), which was run by Dr Boutros
Ghali’s relatives.
But the company was only able to get the contracts -and pay the
kickbacks – because Iraq had allocated the oil to Mr Sevan. The
report found that Mr Sevan had conspired with AMEP’s owner, Fakhry
Abdelnour, a cousin of Dr Boutros Ghali, and an AMEP officer, Fred
Nadler, the brother of Dr Boutros Ghali’s wife, Leia.
It concluded that “Mr Sevan corruptly benefited from his request
and receipt of Iraqi oil allocations and that Mr Nadler and Mr
Abdelnour financially benefited from and assisted in Mr Sevan’s
corrupt activity”.
The report did not mention Dr Boutros Ghali but said there was no
evidence that other members of the Sevan or Nadler familes “acted
in a way that was wrong or improper”. According to the report, AMEP
bought and resold 7.3 million barrels of Iraqi oil allocated to Mr
Sevan for a $ 1.5 million profit.
About $ 580,000 was then transferred from AMEP to Mr Nadler’s account
under the name of Caisor Services in Geneva. Nearly $ 150,000 was
deposited in cash in theSevans’ New York bank accounts.
According to one witness, Mr Nadler allegedly told his money managers
that, in the words of the report, “there was no possibility that
anybody would prove that he had given any money to Mr Sevan as it
was all cash withdrawals -there was no paper trail”.
Mr Sevan denies any wrongdoing and said that the cash deposits came
from an aunt in his native Cyprus and that he declared them on his UN
tax returns, a claim the Volcker inquiry rejects. Now in Cyprus, Mr
Sevan resigned on Sunday from the $ 1-a-year retainer he has received
from the UN since retiring in 2003.Mr Volcker said that Mr Sevan was
the subject of a criminal inquiry and that he should be stripped of
diplomatic immunity.
Separately, the Volcker committee also found that Alexander Yakovlev,
a key UN procurement officer, had received more than $ 950,000 in
a bank account in Antigua from companies that won more than $ 79
million in UN business.
He was accused of soliciting a bribe from a company seeking an
oil-inspection contract in Iraq, although it is not clear the money
was paid. Mr Yakovlev, a Russian, resigned after it emerged that he
had got his son a job with a UN contractor.
He was arrested yesterday after the UN agreed to waive his diplomatic
immunity and pleaded guilty to three counts of money laundering, wire
fraud and conspiracy that each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.
The guilty plea suggests that Mr Yakovlev could strike a bargain to
give information about other UN officials in return for a reduced
sentence.
Mr Yakovlev is the first UN official to plead guilty to fraud in
the Oil-For Food scandal because one of the US charges against him
relates to providing inside information to a company seeking a UN
oil-inspection contract in Iraq.
A report is due next month on the business dealings of Kojo Annan,
the son of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General.
Leading article, page 15 Andrew Billen, T2, pages 6, 7
$ 64bn UN-supervised programme allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy food,
medicine and humanitarian supplies while under sanctions after 1990
invasion of Kuwait
THE SCHEME
1. Saddam Hussein allegedly awarded allocations of cutprice oil to
favoured politicians, officials, businessmen and journalists. A CIA
report in 2004 named hundreds of alleged recipients, including leading
officials in France and Russia
2. Allocation holders sold their oil to traders and received payments
for helping oil companies to win Iraqi oil contracts
3. UN oversaw contracts to release Iraqi crude for sale on world
market. Kickbacks were paid to Saddam
THE KEY PLAYERS
BENON SEVAN, right The Cypriot of Armenian descent who ran the
Oil-for-Food programme throughout its six-year existence is accused
of receiving millions of barrels of oil allocations on behalf of a
trading company run by a cousin of the former UN Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros Ghali. Investigators say he took at least $ 160,000
in kickbacks
BOUTROS BOUTROS GHALI, left The former Egyptian Foreign Minister
served as UN Secretary-General in 1992-96, during which time the UN
negotiated the terms of the Oil-for-Food programme, including allowing
Saddam Hussein to choose which companies he did business with
FRED NADLER The brother-in-law of Boutros Boutros Ghali and a friend
of Mr Sevan and Mr Abdelnour, previously described by the UN as the
likely intermediary between Mr Sevan and Mr Abdelnour. One of Mr
Abdelnour’s uncles is the lawyer for the Nadler family
FAKHRY ABDELNOUR Swiss-based Egyptian oil trader and cousin of Boutros
Boutros Ghali. He owns a Panama-based trading company called African
Middle East Petroleum (AMEP). The UN has reported that he went to
Iraq to handle oil allocations for Mr Sevan and that AMEP lifted
about 7.3m barrels of oil at a profit of more than $ 1.5m
THE OIL ALLOCATIONS
Oil allocations to Benon Sevan by Iraq:
1 1.8m barrels AMEP took delivery in November 1998
2 1m barrels First half of 1999. Oil not delivered
3 2m barrels AMEP took delivery in October-November 1999
4 1.5m barrels AMEP took delivery in April and June 2000
5 1.5m barrels AMEP took delivery of 951,655 barrels in November 2000
6 1m barrels AMEP took delivery in September 2001
7 2.5m barrels First half 2002. Oil not delivered
8 1.5m barrels Second half of 2002. Oil not delivered
9 1.5m barrels First half of 2003. Oil not delivered
–Boundary_(ID_P5BsCQ56Y+302tn67HMeBw)–

Russia’s Impexbank says bought 19.91% of Armenia’s Areximbank
Prime-Tass English-language Business Newswire
August 9, 2005
MOSCOW, Aug 9 (Prime-Tass) — Russia’s Impexbank has acquired a 19.91%
stake in Armenia’s Areximbank, or Armenian-Russian Export-Import Bank,
Impexbank said in a statement Tuesday.
The bank did not disclose the terms and the amount of the deal but
said that it had bought 9,559 common shares of Areximbank with a face
value of USD 100 each.
Impexbank did not say if it plans to increase its stake in Areximbank
in future.
Areximbank was established in 1998. The bank’s charter capital amounts
to USD 4.8 million.
As of April 1, Areximbank’s assets totaled USD 22.118 million and the
bank’s own capital was at USD 6.696 million. The bank’s liabilities
totaled USD 15.208 million.
Impexbank was established in 1993. As of July 1, the bank net assets
amounted to 42.958 billion rubles. (28.4355 rubles – U.S. USD 1) End

SWISS SENATE CANCELS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DEBATE
IPR Strategic Business Information Database
August 9, 2005
According to Aksam, the Swiss Senate decided over the weekend not
to debate the so-called Armenian genocide issue. The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee voted against considering the issue in the full
Senate, saying that the issue should instead be discussed between
Turkey and Armenia. Peter Briner, head of the committee, said that
the third countries should not point the finger at Turkey 90 years
after the events. Briner also said that Turkey has to look into
the Armenian issue if it wants to join the European Union, though
Switzerland itself is not a member of the bloc.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Guardian (Prince Edward Island), Canada
August 12, 2005 Friday
with Isabel Bayrakdarian
Who: Isabel Bayrakdarian.
Place of birth: Lebanon.
Currently resides: Toronto and Madrid (Spain).
Next concert: After the Indian River Festival concert on Aug. 14, it
will be the Opening Night Gala Concert in New York.
When and where: Sept 18, 2005 Metropolitan Opera House, New York.
Type of music performed: Opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, by Mozart, in the
role of Susanna
CDs released: Joyous Light, Azulao (2004 Juno for Best Classical
Album), Cleopatra (2005 Juno for Best Classical Album) and Pauline
Viardot: Songs
Most dominant musical influences: Armenian sacred music, Mozart,
Middle-Eastern music, and Fado (the folk music of Portugal).
Most important personal influences: Christian faith, the books of
Paulo Cuelho, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne!
Defining career moment: winning the Metropolitan Opera National
Council Auditions in 1997
What is it that inspires you to sing? By believing in yourself and
having faith in God, you can accomplish almost anything.
Favourite place to sing: Any concert hall which has excellent
acoustics.
Favourite song to perform: An Armenian lullaby called Oror which my
mother used to sing to me.
Favourite singer: Classical singer: Cecilia Bartoli and Renee
Fleming, and Non-Classical: Cesaria Evora
Favourite movie: The Princess Bride.
Favourite food: Sushi.
Person I most admire: My mom!
Best thing about being on the road: Seeing incredible new sights,
experiencing and living with different cultures and, of course,
shopping for unique items and gifts.
Worst thing about being on the road: Doing all the things above
without my husband, Serouj Kradjian, with whom to share everything!
Ultimate ambition: To still have the same wide-eyed enthusiasm and
joy about life and music 50 years down the road!
If you weren’t a singer, what career would you choose? Biomedical
Engineering, in which I actually hold an honours degree from
University of Toronto.
Website:
GRAPHIC: Isabel Bayrakdarian will be on stage at St. Mary’s Church in
Indian River on Aug. 14, as part of this year’s Indian River
Festival.

The Ottawa Sun, Canada
August 10, 2005 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
POLICE SAW NO SIGN OF ASSAULT, COURT TOLD;
WOMAN, EX-BEAU DROVE TO COP SHOP
BY DEREK PUDDICOMBE, OTTAWA SUN
A 39-YEAR-OLD Ottawa woman who said she feared for her life after
ending a relationship with her lover told court yesterday the man
had tried to pursue a romantic relationship 23 years earlier when
she was a teenager growing up in Armenia.
During her second day of testimony, Lillian Arakelyan, 39, said she
was 16 when Gagik Artsrunyan stalked and harassed her and made his
romantic intentions known but she rejected his advances.
Artsrunyan, who lives in Portland, Ore., is charged with assault,
two counts of criminal harassment, three counts of uttering threats
and forcible confinement.
Arakelyan disputed any suggestion by defence lawyer Rosalind Conway
she was the one who initiated any romantic involvement then or later.
“He was obsessed with me and harassed me,” she said, of their
relationship in Armenia. “He would wait outside of home and work and
wait for me.”
MET FOR COFFEE
Arakelyan, who arrived in Canada in 1998 to study at the University
of Ottawa, admitted to Conway that during those younger years she
met with Artsrunyan for coffee at least once.
During her two days of testimony, Arakelyan repeatedly told the court
she was beaten by the accused in her building’s underground parking
lot after being dragged from her car and thrown in the back seat of
Artsrunyan’s vehicle.
She said the assault came three months after she ended the
relationship.
During her cross-examination, Conway asked three officers who responded
to two separate incidents involving the former lovers if they had
noticed any bruising or evidence of assault.
“If that was the case, there would have been a different outcome,”
said Const. Chris O’Grady, denying he saw any visible marks the day
of the alleged assault.
On Monday, Arakelyan described that her former boyfriend arrived at
her Ottawa apartment from the U.S. and, after punching, kicking and
choking her, jumped into the back seat of her vehicle as she drove
to the Elgin St. police station.
Const. Trevor Archibald was at the police station the morning of Aug.
3, 2004 when the pair arrived.
Archibald told Conway during cross-examination he noticed Arakelyan
was “distraught” and obviously concerned Artsrunyan was in the city,
but didn’t notice any visible signs of a brutal struggle.
None of the officers questioned testified to having documented any
sign of a physical assault on Arakelyan.
After retrieving some belongings from Arakelyan’s residence,
officers told Artsrunyan not to have any further contact with his
former girlfriend.
The following day, Arakelyan called police again complaining Artsrunyan
had attempted on several occasions to contact her since being told
not to.
Police again retrieved some items Artsrunyan claimed Arakelyan had
and told him if he returned he would be arrested.
The trial continues in November.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

>>From rags to riches to ruined reputation
by: James Bone in New York and Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia
The Times (London)
August 9, 2005, Tuesday
Benon Sevan, a United Nations official who served in Afghanistan and
Iraq, allegedly took kickbacks after losing money in a stock fraud.
The investigation of the Oil-for-Food scandal, chaired by Paul Volcker,
blamed Mr Sevan’s “precarious personal financial condition” yesterday
for his decision to accept almost $ 150,000 (£84,000) in 1998 and 2002.
Mr Sevan earned $ 129,524 (£72,600) when he took over the Oil-For-Food
programme in 1997. His wife, Micheline, made $ 69,243 (£38,800)
as an assistant at the UN’s department of economic and social affairs.
The couple owned a house in Long Island, rented a flat in Manhattan
and had savings of less than $ 5,000 in their New York bank accounts.
But in 1996 Mr Sevan bought shares worth $ 180,000 using money from an
equity line of credit and taking a cash advance on his credit card. His
investment lost more than half of its value, partly because of a stock
fraud that led to the conviction of four brokers. From December 1996
to October 1998, Mr Sevan’s bank account was overdrawn 45 times and
his wife’s account was in the red 153 times.
A Cypriot-Armenian, Mr Sevan is in Cyprus, which does not extradite
its citizens.
Mr Sevan’s mother, Verginia, was a teenager when she gave birth out
of wedlock.
She was cast out by her family and his father is understood to have
refused to recognise him.Mr Sevan was supported by his mother’s
three sisters as he studied at the prestigious Melkonian Educational
Institute in Nicosia.
He went on to win a scholarship to Columbia University in New York
before joining the UN.
Mr Sevan maintains his innocence and claims to have received $ 160,000
in cash gifts from an aunt, Berdjouhi Zeitountsian, a retired civil
servant. She died last year aged 84 after falling down a lift shaft.
–Boundary_(ID_0eiqOVTyz6iFXdU63qrkVg)–

The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia)
August 13, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition
They hit the ground running: Destination marathoning is a great way
to see the world while staying in shape
Dianne Rinehart, Special to the Sun
On June 18, Jean Marmoreo and her husband Bob Ramsay found themselves
running in a marathon, one of many half-marathons and marathons they
jump at the chance to do each year.
But this one — held under the midnight sun on the summer solstice
in Tromso, Norway, at latitude 70, 100 kilometres north of the Arctic
Circle — was dramatically different from the rest.
“That was definitely the most exotic one I’ve done,” says Marmoreo,
a 62-year-old physician and veteran of 12 marathons and seven
half-marathons in destinations including New York City, Washington,
D.C., Santa Monica, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Chicago.
“The only place I haven’t run a marathon is in Toronto,” Marmoreo
laughs of her home (though she has run half-marathons here).
For Marmoreo and Ramsay, and hundreds of thousands of others around
the world, the ballooning-in-popularity sport of marathoning is
definitely about the destination.
Marmoreo and Ramsay first started running marathons annually in New
York City in 1994, running three consecutively.
“There was such a social experience there, we thought nowhere else
on earth could be like this,” she says.
But when Marmoreo didn’t make the lottery in the fourth year (the
marathon is so over-subscribed, organizers have to limit entries),
they decided to run in Santa Monica. That’s when they got the “new”
destination bug.
They followed that up with San Antonio. Then in 2001, they ended up
doing their first Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., at the
end of October, only about six weeks after 9-11. Running with marines
past the rubble of the Pentagon was such a moving experience that
they invited a few of their friends to train with them that winter and
join them the following fall. Eighty-five did, and Jean’s Marines was,
well, up and running!
And they haven’t stopped.
What has grown from a group of friends getting together to train
with Marmoreo and Ramsay in 2002, has now become a pack of more than
500 women training each year under the Jean’s Marines banner, with
alumnae starting up their own mini-pack destination marathon runs,
that have included Venice, Medoc, France, Ottawa, Niagara Falls,
Ont., and the uphill giant of them all, Jungfrau, Switzerland, run
by Jean’s Marine alumnus Arax Acemyan.
Before the 2002 Marine Corps marathon, Acemyan was a 50-plus, cigarette
smoking, self-described couch potato. But when she decided to train
for the Marine Corps marathon, she tossed the cigarettes — for good.
Then after finding out her ex-husband, whom she hadn’t seen in 10
years, was also training in Europe for a marathon in Jungfrau in
September, she decided to squeeze that one in before her Washington
training goal. The running course is gruelling. Bad enough a marathon
is 42 K, but this course additionally climbs a 2,000 metre-finish
line over the route. Despite the fact it took her almost seven hours
to complete — “but I got my medal” — and might have caused lesser
women to give up on the sport, Acemyan followed it up four weeks
later with the Marine Corps in Washington in just over five hours,
and hasn’t looked back.
In 2003 Acemyan, a 55-year-old fashion designer (her label is Arax)
and founder of Tailored Image, a company that teaches disabled people
how to groom themselves, ran the Venice marathon. Last year she ran
Medoc and this year she will do Chicago.
“I love to travel,” says Acemyan, who is of Armenian descent, and
originally from Istanbul. “And [marathons] are a goal for me to keep
in shape. If I didn’t have a goal I wouldn’t train.”
But the vacations aren’t solely about running. Marmoreo and Ramsay,
and two other Jean’s Marines-in-training, combined the Tromso run with
a spectacular vacation of sea kayaking, hiking, and ocean cruising.
And when Acemyan went to Venice, she and four other girlfriend running
mates stayed in the romantic city for nine days in an old palace
that had been converted to a bed and breakfast. “We did five trips,
ran the marathon, and ate and drank,” Acemyan remembers fondly.
When she ran the Medoc Marathon, where all 6,000 entrants dress up in
costumes, then race from chateau to chateau, tasting wine, slurping
oysters, and munching on cheeses en route, she spent two weeks away,
travelling with her group of running pals for a week to St. Emillion
before the marathon, and then on her own to Nice for another five
days after it.
In addition to the marathons, Acemyan has run the More magazine half
marathons — for women over 40 — in New York City twice, combining her
fashion design work with her favourite pastimes — travel and running.
Fellow Jean’s Marine alumnus Darlene Roth, 50, a nurse who has also run
the More half-marathon, says for her the marathon and the running are
the “icing on the cake.” The real goal is the destination travelling
with her girlfriends. She and her fellow travelling companions turned
the More half into a shopping and spa trip. “We’re a bunch of wild
women,” she says of the bonding that takes place during training
for each trip. “We just have a lot of fun.” Even training runs turn
into a bit of travel adventure, she says, with teammates picking a
“really nice restaurant” each week to run to. “Any pound you lose
[training] you gain back!”
Mila Luka, 38, a product manager with Bank of Montreal and mother of
two youngsters, was one of Acemyan’s four running mates along for the
Venice marathon. She found the marathon itself — especially because
she had flight problems getting there — not exactly “ideal.”
“But oh, but the food and the drinking!” she remembers of the group’s
routine to meet each night in a little bar for cocktails. “It was a
fabulous trip, fabulous food, fabulous wine and fabulous company.”
Luka combined the beauty of her trip to Venice with a trip to Trieste
to visit an aunt, who then accompanied her and her husband Chris to
Rijeka, Croatia, formerly Fiume, Italy, where her mother grew up.
It was her first trip to Italy.
Running in other countries “is a fabulous way to see a destination,”
she says. The Marine Corps Marathon’s Washington route — which she
ran twice — “was phenomenal. Anything you ever wanted to see in
Washington was on that route.”
And Luka has already set her sites on another destination marathon: Big
Sur in California, known for it’s tough up-and-downhill course along
the cliff-strewn, majestic Pacific coast. That in fact, is where one
of her fellow Jean’s Marines alumnae, Kaz Flinn, 43, vice-president of
government affairs and social responsibility at Scotiabank, completed
in April with fellow Jean’s Marines alumnus, Dr. Nandini Sathi.
“It’s one of the hardest in the world. It’s all hills. It’s very
challenging, but it’s amazing.”
Flinn turned the destination marathon into a chance to have
a California “girlfriends” outing with Sathi, who has run seven
marathons to Flinn’s three (Flinn’s two young children slow down the
pace of marathon commitments slightly!). “We spent two days in San
Francisco after the race. We had such a nice time together. It’s nice
to be away with a friend.”
And when the friends you’re travelling with are the friends
you’re training with, the ties that bind are strong. “It’s a girls’
connection. Think of the topics you cover and the depth of friendship
you build over six months of training together,” she says of the
weekly training runs that, closing in on the marathon date, last five
and more hours at a stretch.
“I will keep doing this,” says Flinn of destination marathoning. “I
absolutely love it. In fact I feel lost because I haven’t figured out
my next [destination] goal,” she says. Among those she is considering:
a marathon in Nova Scotia. “That’s where I’m from.”
To fill in the time between destination marathons, Flinn, like many
of her fellow Jean’s Marines, turns to halves to keep her in shape,
running them in Toronto, and nearby Mississauga, with plans to do
one in Ontario’s Prince Edward County this year.
Jane Somerville, 56, who ran the Marine Corps in 2002, has kept in
shape with half-marathons since, including at the Ottawa marathon on
the last weekend in May, twice. “It’s the capital of Canada and it’s
a perfect time to see the sights,” she says.
“The fact that when you’re running when you’re on a holiday,
compensates for all the wonderful food and drink you may have.”
In fact, even when she’s not planning a destination half-marathon,
Somerville, a book publisher and consultant, builds runs into her
travel plans. When she’s at her weekend country home north of Toronto,
she runs into town. And she has already arranged with tour organizers
for a trip she and her husband are taking from Split to Dubrovnic,
Croatia, this summer to be dropped off at one end of an island en
route, and picked up at the other end after she has run across it.
So adept at fitting runs into their travels are the Jean’s Marines
alumnae, that when Kerry Peacock, 45, a senior vice-president,
Corporate and Public Affairs, with TD Bank Financial Group, landed
in Chicago last year on a supposedly pure-pleasure trip and found out
a marathon was taking place the next day, she registered for the half.
Marmoreo, who was travelling with Peacock, remembers her and Ramsay’s
surprise: “We were just going out for our morning run at 8:30,”
says when we saw Kerry returning from competing the half!”
Peacock, a veteran of five marathons, says: “Destinations are the
only way to go!.”
As for Marmoreo, who will be running both the Chicago and Marine
Corps marathons this year, she says she plans to continue destination
marathoning for “as long as everything continues to let me.”
What’s next?
“Well we’re going to Australia and New Zealand in January and February,
and I’ll see what’s there.”
Dianne Rinehart, a Toronto-based freelance writer and former Vancouver
Sun reporter, ran the first “Jean’s Marine” Marine Corps Marathon in
Washington, D.C., in 2002 and has run three Vancouver Sun 10K runs
and several Toronto 10Ks.
WHERE TO GO:
There are hundreds of destination marathons around the world from
Brisbane to Madrid to Kigali to St. Petersburg.
For a complete inspiring list check out the International Marathons
Races Directory and Schedule at
GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: Destination marathons have given life a new impetus for
former self-confessed couch potato Arax Acemyan (in black on the right)
with other runners at an event in France.;
Photo: Bob Ramsay, Special to the Vancouver Sun; After finishing the
Midnight Sun Marathon in Tromso, Norway, Jean Marmoreo and Bob Ramsay
could enjoy some sea kayaking.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

National Post (Canada)
August 13, 2005 Saturday
Toronto Edition
Poverty, confusion and melancholy in 1950s Istanbul
Dan Rowe, Weekend Post
ISTANBUL: MEMORIES AND THE CITY
By Orhan Pamuk
Knopf
400 pp., $35.95
– – –
It’s a commonplace that a memoir by an established fiction author
will reveal a surprising or celebratory element of the writer’s past.
In the case of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City, there
are no such revelations or celebrations about his Turkish upbringing,
but the book does serve as a reminder of Pamuk’s considerable skill
and intelligence.
Turkey’s best-known novelist, Pamuk is the author of several books,
including The White Castle, My Name is Red (which in 2003 won the
IMPAC, the world’s richest literary prize) and Snow, released in an
English translation last year to wide acclaim. This fall, at the
Frankfurt Book Fair, Pamuk will collect the German book trade’s Peace
Prize.
Pamuk is also very outspoken. In February, he told a Swiss newspaper:
“Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in Turkey.
Almost no one dares speak but me, and the nationalists hate me for
that.” The comment earned him criminal charges in his homeland, not
to mention the scorn of Turkish officialdom.
In Istanbul, published in Turkey in 2003, Pamuk is considerably more
artful in his approach, making no direct reference to the Armenian
genocide. The book weaves the story of young Orhan — who wanted to
be a painter until his late teens — and his secular upper-class
family with evocative descriptions of the city’s dismal alleys and
vast waterways. It’s also the story of various writers and artists,
Turkish and Western, who travelled to Istanbul at the end of the
Ottoman Empire.
Pamuk is clearly a thorn in the side of the Turkish establishment.
Having lived for a time in New York City, he has many qualities that
might be described as Western, so his allegiances are not easy to pin
down. Throughout Istanbul, he longs for the city’s glory days at the
height of Ottoman rule. This yearning is especially evident in the
passages where he recalls watching as large homes burn along the
Bosphorus Strait. He also dabbles in Islam, even though his family
and their upper-class counterparts don’t approve.
Born in 1952, Pamuk lived at a time in Istanbul’s history when the
collective memory was fading and the current economic rebound, stoked
by the possibility of joining the European Union, was a long way off.
The prevailing mood in the city, he says, is one of melancholy —
huzun in Turkish — a mood that’s compounded by the architectural and
artistic glories of Istanbul.
“The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the
ruins,” Pamuk writes. “Many Western writers and travellers find this
charming … These ruins are reminders that the present city is so
poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its
former heights of wealth, power and culture. It is no more possible
to take pride in these neglected dwellings … than it is to rejoice
in the beautiful old houses that as a child I watched burn down one
by one.”
Pamuk returns to these themes throughout Istanbul and, with the help
of more than 200 well-chosen black-and-white photographs and a fine
translation by Maureen Freely, evokes this feeling with great skill.
Like Snow, this book builds slowly and steadily to an ending that is
not particularly shocking or revealing but wholly satisfying. And it
leaves you pleased that Pamuk chose writing instead of painting.
GRAPHIC: Black & White
Photo: BOOK COVER: ISTANBUL: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk;
Colour Photo: Simon Hayter, The Ottawa Citizen / “The people of
Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins,” says the
author, who longs for the city’s glory days.

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Aug 15 2005
ISSUES OF INTEGRATION OF AZERBAIJAN TO EU STRUCTURES DISCUSSED
[August 15, 2005, 23:06:06]
Foreign minister of the Azerbaijan Republic Elmar Mammadyarov on 15
August met the delegation headed by the secretary of state of the
Swedish Premier office Lars Danielsson, now visiting the country.
Noting that the key goal of the visit is to have comprehensive
information on the current situation in the country, discuss
opportunities for bilateral relations between two countries, Mr. Lars
Danielsson expressed pleasure to visit Azerbaijan.
Minister Mammadyarov highlighted on the economic and socio-political
situation in the Republic, on the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh
conflict and current status of the peace negotiations to resolve the
question, on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum
gas and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport large-scale energy and transport
projects, as well as on the works to integrate to the Europe and
Euro-Atlantic structures as priorities of the foreign policy of
Azerbaijan.
Minister Mammadyarov informed that Armenia has occupied 20 percent of
territory of the country, and pursued the policy of ethnic cleanse,
underlining necessity of resolution to the problem in the frame of
territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and noted that the occupation
factor is inadmissible in the XXI century, and that the problem
should find its solution in peace way and negotiations. Existent
of conflict in the region is major obstacle for integration to the
European structures, Mr. Mammadyarov emphasized.
The Minister spoke of the prospects of the cooperation of Azerbaijan
with the European structures, its steps made towards the “New
Neighboring Policy of Europe” and participation of the country in
the frame of NATO’s PfP program, as well as the democratic society
building process in the Republic.
In the meeting, also were exchanged views on a number of other
questions of regional and international significance, the reforms in
UN, humanitarian and social-economic situation in the Northern Cyprus
and others.