Baku Today, Azerbaijan
March 4 2005

Georgian Prime Minister to visit Baku

Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nugaideli is scheduled to arrive in
Baku on Friday.

Nugaideli will meet with President Ilham Aliyev, Prime Minister Artur
Rasizada, Speaker of the Milli Majlis (parliament) Murtuz Alasgarov
and other officials.

One of the issues to be discussed will be the tensions over the
detention of freight carriages on the Georgian-Azerbaijani border.

The Azerbaijani government suspects that some of the detained
consignments were intended to be illegally sent to Armenia through
Georgia.

SanJose Mercury News, CA
March 4 2005

A classic diner experience

SARA’S SERVES UP HEARTY BREAKFASTS AND CHEESE STEAKS
By Aleta Watson
Mercury News

Every neighborhood needs a breakfast place like Sara’s Kitchen, a
cheery, homey diner where the waitress calls you “Sweetie” and the
owner remembers your face.

Walk through the door of the converted drive-in and you’re greeted
like family with a smile and friendly salutation. Maria, the
nurturing waitress, offers steaming hot coffee as soon as you sit
down.

Diners come as much for the welcoming atmosphere as for the food,
which is honest, abundant and freshly prepared, although not
particularly distinguished. The simple menu runs to coffee shop
standards: omelets and two-egg specials at breakfast, burgers and
sandwiches at lunch. There aren’t many choices if you’re watching
your cholesterol.

Sara and Manny Manion opened the diner 12 years ago as a lunch place.
But people from the neighborhood began asking for eggs.

“My customers, they literally told me I’ve got to have breakfast,”
Sara Manion says with a laugh. “I have so many seniors come in here.
It became their kitchen, their second home.”

With its crisp blue and white paint job, the 50-seat restaurant
stands out in a neighborhood of modest bungalows and impressive
Victorians in the old quad area near Santa Clara University.

The narrow, low-ceilinged dining room was built as an A&W Drive-in in
1956. Today it’s a bright and airy place with blue vinyl banquettes,
checked tablecloths and a profusion of artificial flowers and plants.
A big-screen TV at one end runs constantly to keep single diners
company.

As the sign in the window indicates, breakfast is the big meal here.
The restaurant opens at 7 a.m. Tuesdays through Sundays to help
regulars get an early start on the day.

Eggs take center stage. Omelets are huge, three-egg productions
served with toast and with hash browns nicely crisped about the edges
but a little too soft in the center. Omelets come in 14 variations,
from a simple cheese ($7) to asparagus and bacon ($9.95).

The specials ($5.75-9.95) offer two eggs cooked any style with a
choice of accompaniments worthy of a butcher’s case — chicken-fried
steak, country sausage, ham, Italian sausage, linguica, turkey and
the classic bacon. My companion’s “over easy” eggs were properly
cooked with runny yolks and solid whites. Her bacon was still a bit
chewy — just the way she ordered it.

We shared a short stack of fluffy but ordinary pancakes ($3.95) and I
opted for the linguica scramble with home fries ($7.95). This was not
a dish for light eaters. The blue and white platter was almost
overflowing with big chunks of potato, well-browned but
under-seasoned, and a mildly spicy scramble, punched up with slices
of linguica and grilled onions and peppers under a blanket of cheddar
cheese. Puddles of grease gathered here and there.

A nice surprise was the decent Ahmad English No. 1 tea — with a hint
of bergamot — served in an elegant glass cup with boiling hot water.
I’ve become so accustomed to horrible tea in restaurants that I’m
delighted to get something drinkable.

Breakfast and lunch are served until 2:30 or 3 p.m. every day but
Monday. The diner closes for a couple of hours on weekdays and then
reopens at 4:30 p.m. for an early dinner. Although Sara’s offers
daily specials such as lamb shanks or teriyaki chicken with soup or
salad, the highlight of lunch and dinner is the cheese steak
sandwiches.

The diner had been a cheese steak stand when the Manions took it
over. Sara Manion, who’s from Armenia but is part Italian, kept the
sandwiches on the menu. “It’s really an Italian sandwich,” she
says, noting that Philadelphia’s cheese steaks trace their roots to
Italy.

She makes them with toasted hoagie rolls from Wilson’s Bakery. The
best are piled high with tender shavings of sirloin and crowned with
melted provolone and grilled onions. Mushrooms and three varieties of
grilled bell peppers add savor and zip to Sara’s Special ($6.50).

Don’t make the mistake of ordering your sandwich with the spongy,
unappetizing chunks of over-processed chicken breast. The teriyaki
version was cloying as well.

A cheese steak sandwich needs the texture of beef. If you’re trying
to cut down on fat, you shouldn’t be eating at Sara’s Kitchen anyway.

Sara’s Kitchen
1595 Franklin St., at Lincoln, Santa Clara.
(408) 247-7272

**

The Dish: The welcome is warm and the staff treats you like family at
this cheerful, homey diner known for its breakfasts and cheese steak
sandwiches.

Price range: Breakfast $3.95-9.95. Lunch and dinner $4.95-12.95.

Details: Beer and wine.

Pluses: Huge breakfasts and excellent Sara’s Special cheese steak
sandwich.

Minuses: Unappetizing cheese steak sandwich prepared with
over-processed chicken.

Hours: 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 4:30-8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays. 7 a.m.-3
p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.

Restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously. The Mercury News pays
for all meals.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
March 4 2005

`No Armenian prisoners withheld in Azerbaijan’

Baku, March 3, AssA-Irada
Three Azerbaijani soldiers, who fell captive in the Terter District
on February 15, may be exchanged for Armenian prisoners allegedly
withheld in Azerbaijan, a source from the state commission on
prisoners, hostages and missing persons of the self-proclaimed `Upper
Garabagh Republic’ told Radio Liberty.
The Azerbaijan Defence Ministry spokesman Ramiz Malikov, however,
refuted the report, saying that no Armenian prisoners are withheld in
Azerbaijan. Talks are currently underway on returning the Azerbaijani
soldiers home, he added.*

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Kazinform, Kazakhstan
March 4 2005

Paris meeting of foreign ministers cancelled

Baku. March 3. KAZINFORM. Scheduled for March 3 in Paris, the meeting
between Foreign Ministers Elmar Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan and Varan
Oskanyan of Armenia on finding peaceful solution to the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has been canceled
because of the Armenian Minister’s health problems, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan announced, Kazinform has learnt from
Azer-TAj.
According to the Ministry, Minister Elmar Mammadyarov now visiting
Prague has met with co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and the Head of
the organization’s mission recently visited Azerbaijan to check the
facts of settling ethnic Armenians in the occupied territories.

I-NewsWire Press Release
March 4 2005

HUMAN RIGHTS EXHIBITION OPENS AT HEADQUARTERS ON 4 MARCH

To mark the conclusion of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights
Education (1995-2004) and the launch of the new World Programme for
Human Rights Education (2005-2007), the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Postal
Administration (UNPA) are sponsoring the opening of an exhibit by the
Armenian artist Yuri Gevorgian in the South Gallery of the General
Assembly Visitors’ Lobby on Friday, 4 March.

i-Newswire, 2005-03-04 – The exhibit consists of six canvases — each
measuring 6 feet high and 55 inches wide — and is the largest
commissioned stamp art in the UNPA’s history. The artwork was
designed for commemorative stamps dedicated to human rights education
and encompasses a variety of themes set forth in the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the Preamble to the United Nations
Charter `to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the
dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and
women and of nations large and small’. The exhibit will be on
display in the South Gallery until 31 March.

In conjunction with this exhibit, there will be a reception and dance
recital from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the South Gallery. Statements will
be made by Mr. Gevorgian, the artist; Craig Mokhiber, Deputy Director
of the New York Office, OHCHR; and Robert Gray, Chief of the UNPA.

For more information about this exhibit, please call Jan Arnesen,
Department of Public Information ( DPI ), at tel.: ( 212 ) 963-8531;
Robert Stein ( UNPA ) at tel.: ( 212 ) 963-4329; or Sharon
Brandstein ( OHCHR ) at tel.: ( 212-963-7021 ) or visit the Web site
at

Related Web sites: Yuri Gevorgian: ; LKW Dance
Company: ; OHCHR: ; UNPA:

If you have questions regarding information in these press release
contact the company listed below. Please do not contact us as we are
unable to assist you with your inquiry. We disclaim any content
contained in this press release.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish Press
March 4 2005

Is Our Friendship With Germany Near An End?

BY MUSTAFA BALBAY

CUMHURIYET- The news from the EU isn’t encouraging at all. Here’s the
dilemma: The EU constantly delays its responsibilities toward Turkey,
while asking Turkey to do whatever it asks immediately and without
question.

Apparently, this dilemma will endure as long as our government fails
to take an appropriate stand against it.

Remarks made by the EU and Turkey both underline this double standard
chanted by every EU official visiting Turkey. There’s also been an
evident change in European governments’ policies against Turkey.

One example of this change is our disagreement with Germany on `the
Armenian issue.’ An elderly German priest named Johannes Lepsius
claims that he witnessed the Armenian genocide. His house is now
being used as a propaganda center. Angela Merkel, leader of the
German opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has presented a
resolution to the Federal Parliament that can be summarized as
follows:

‘During the Ottoman reign, Armenians were victims of a large-scale
genocide through which 1.2-1.5 million Armenians lost their lives. As
the legal successor of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey denies that such an
event happened. Turkey must show unconditional assent on this issue.’

German Ambassador to Ankara Wolf-Ruthart Born was recently summoned
to the Turkish Foreign Ministry and told that such initiatives would
have a negative effect on bilateral relations.

When I called Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, Turkey’s Ambassador to Berlin,
he gave me a brief and clear explanation of the matter:

`I’m afraid that the damage this resolution could cause will be wide,
deep and irreparable. We hope they will soon come to see this, and
we’re working to make this happen.’

In light of these recent events, the state of Turkey’s EU membership
process could be summed up like this: Neither grant full membership
to Turkey, nor allow it to go anywhere else.

The Messenger, Georgia
March 4 2005

European court rejects Armenian suit

According to the Azeri newspaper 525 Gazeta, the European Court of
Human Rights rejected as groundless the case regarding the so-called
“Armenian Genocide.”
According to Turkish media, Armenians expressed recently that
Turkey’s membership in the European Union is unacceptable for them
unless Ankara acknowledges the “Armenian Genocide.” The paper notes
that even the official inclusion of Turkey as a candidate for the
membership in the European Union contradicts with the legal documents
of the organization. Referring to this, the paper writes, the
European-Armenian Society (headquartered in Marseilles, France) filed
a case in the European Court regarding the exclusion of Turkey from
the list of the candidate countries for membership of the European
Union.
The European Court considered the Armenian suit recently, where the
representatives of the European-Armenian Society stated that the
European Parliament is the highest body of the European Union and as
such it can rule that failing to acknowledge the “genocide” makes
Turkey ineligible for membership in this organization.
“That is why this issue must be considered once again and the
decision of the European Union, which allowed Turkey to be included
in the list of candidate countries for membership in the EU, also
should be changed,” the paper notes.
Afterwards, the plaintiffs accused the judge of injustice and
partiality towards Turkey. Members of Armenian organizations of
Europe state that they will conduct demonstrations in order not to
allow Turkey to become a member of the European Union without
recognizing the so-called genocide. However, Turkish society as well
as the government positively assessed the decision of the European
court. The paper notes that this decision deadlocked Armenians and
they were forced to reconcile with defeat, because nobody will be
able to block Turkey on its path to becoming a member of the European
Union.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Messenger, Georgia
March 4 2005

Nogaideli in Azerbaijan

Georgian Premier Zurab Nogaideli is leaving on March 4 for Baku on a
two-day working visit, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Georgia reports.
According to Black Sea Press, he will meet with Azeri President
Ilkham Alyev and other senior officials to discuss a wide spectrum of
issues of bilateral cooperation, especially in the economic sphere.
The issue of the detention of railway cars with goods bound for
Georgia by Azeri Customs will also be in the focus of discussion.
Azerbaijan held some 1000 railway cars destined for Georgia back in
November on the grounds that Baku suspected some of the cargo may in
fact have been destined for Armenia. Of these. 320, mostly carrying
diesel fuel, grain, and liquid gas, remain stuck at the
Azerbaijan-Georgia border.
Within the frame of the visit Noghaideli will also lay a wreath at
the grave of late Azeri president Heidar Alyev.

The Globe and Mail, Canada
March 4 2005

All the right moves

By Liam Lacey
Friday, March 4, 2005 – Page R10

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

**½

Directed by Vikram Jayanti

Classification: G

Vikram Jayanti’s documentary about Garry Kasparov’s 1997 loss of a
chess match to an IBM computer begins by establishing the chess
master as a figure of historic importance. As a half-Armenian,
half-Jewish outsider, he rocked the Russian establishment when he
took the world chess championship from Anatoly Karpov in 1985. His
play over the next few years earned him the highest ranking in chess
history.

Kasparov is a compelling film subject: suave, sardonic and as
emotionally high-pitched as he is intellectually gifted. He takes the
film crew to Moscow, where his star first ascended, and later to
Manhattan, or “the scene of the crime,” where he met his defeat.

In 1996, he played an IBM computer called Deep Blue and won four
games to two. The next year, he was invited to play a second match
with an improved version of the computer, in an event carried live on
the Internet. Kasparov won the first game of the rematch. Then came
the second game, when the computer did not fall for Kasparov’s trap.
The world champion’s game unravelled and he eventually resigned,
inadvertently walking away from a possible draw. He drew three more
times before falling apart in the last game.

Newsweek called it “the brain’s last stand,” signalling the moment
when machines passed humans in intelligence. (The physical test,
presumably, was lost around the time John Henry “whupped that steel
on down.”) But is that what really happened?

Kasparov is convinced that IBM secretly used the computer and human
help to gain the advantage. The film makes a persuasive case that a
merely good chess player who could see the game’s big picture, armed
with the 200-million-moves-per-second calculating power of Deep Blue,
could defeat the champion. And he’s convinced that Deep Blue didn’t
consistently play like a machine, and subsequently learned that IBM
had secretly hired grandmasters to work on Deep Blue. IBM had both
motive and means. One of the team of programmers says he felt their
jobs were on the line. Contrary to ordinary practice, they did not
allow Kasparov to study any other games by Deep Blue. The stakes were
high: IBM stock rose a startling 15 per cent the day after the match.

The IBM computer scientists counter that Kasparov didn’t understand
how good their program was. They admit they tried to out-psych him,
which they managed to do. Nick De Firmian, who was one of the
grandmasters hired by the IBM team, has written: “Kasparov played
much worse than usual, trying a faulty anti-computer strategy when he
would likely have won by normal play.”

In overemphasizing the conspiracy case, Game Over moves from being a
compelling documentary to a frankly irritating one. There’s a
whispering voiceover, spooky low-camera angles and sinister music.
There’s also a story about an early version of Deep Blue, a
chess-playing machine called The Turk, which defeated Napoleon. Far
too often, the film returns to an animatronic figure in a turban
moving figures around a board. We also have clips of the 1927 silent
film The Chess Player, about the same machine, which is shown to be
secretly worked by magicians.

None of this solves the question of whether Kasparov lost or was
cheated. Whether in Moscow or New York, Kasparov found himself
playing a faceless enemy — the Soviet system in 1985 or IBM 11 years
later. When he starts talking about IBM supplying building passes
that didn’t work and telescopes glimpsed in office windows facing his
hotel, he sounds like he’s raving.

Chess is a game rife with paranoia — both American world champions
Bobby Fischer and Paul Morphy succumbed to the disease — and
Kasparov’s belief in IBM’s corporate greed isn’t convincing. Instead,
it’s tantalizingly conceivable, which is where the intrigue lies.
It’s not paranoia when they’re really out to get you, is it?

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Princeton Packet, NJ
March 4 2005

University to stage Prokofiev work after years of research.

Princeton University Professor Simon Morrison, a musicologist
specializing in Russian music and ballet, is consumed with a unique
fascination.
He said it began about three years ago while he was researching
French and Russian ballet for a book on the phenomenon of “lost
ballets,” and the extent to which surviving musical scores allow for
the reconstruction of these works.
In the course of his research, he encountered the work of theater
historian Lesley-Anne Sayers, who teaches at the Open University in
Britain. Professor Sayers wrote her dissertation on one of the great
lost ballets of the 20th century, “Le Pas d’Acier,” or “The Steel
Step,” by legendary Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, spending eight
years researching and creating models of the set.
“She and I hatched this idea of trying to stage this thing,”
Professor Morrison said. “Three years later, and a lot of
fund-raising, meetings and sorting out of logistical details, we will
perform this piece, re-created with a gorgeous set, student dancers,
student musicians and choreography by renowned choreographer
Millicent Hodson.
“This is essentially a world premiere, because the ballet was
never performed the way Prokofiev conceived it,” he added.
“Le Pas D’Acier” is scheduled to be performed 8 p.m. on April 7, 8
and 9 at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center for the
Performing Arts. Three short pieces thematically related to the
ballet, created by university composers and choreographers and
others, will open the production, the university said.
The ballet has a budget of more than $175,000. The production will
feature about 30 dancers and 60 musicians, all Princeton students, as
well as an elaborate set and custom-made costumes.
Prokofiev, arguably one of the most popular composers of the 20th
century, wrote such classics such as “Peter and the Wolf” and
“Cinderella.” He intended the little-known “Le Pas d’Acier” as a
dramatic story of factory life following the Russian Revolution. It
was to be a celebration of Soviet industrialization that Prokofiev
hoped would endear him to the authorities.
But budgetary constraints and a reshuffling of choreographers
resulted in a scaled-back version of the ballet that was performed in
Paris in 1927 by the Ballets Russes. The altered version mocked
industrialization rather than celebrating it, which didn’t go over
well with the Soviet bosses. The ballet has not been performed since
1931.
“‘Pas d’Acier’ caused a political scandal when it debuted in 1927,
because it ended up as a satire of Soviet society,” Professor
Morrison said.
The set for Princeton’s production is a replica of the one
originally planned for the ballet by Georgi Yakoulov. It is a
stylized mechanical world of brightly colored spinning wheels, gears,
levers and a rotating conveyor belt representing factory life. An
8-foot-tall replica of a train that emits steam from its smoke stack
will come into view partway through the ballet.
The $45,000 set, designed from Professor Sayers’ extensive
research, was constructed by members of the McCarter Theatre staff
and overseen by Darryl Waskow, managing director of the Program in
Theater and Dance.
“What’s fascinating about this piece is that it’s the only ballet
I know which involved the dancers building the set onstage, and it
makes sense,” Professor Morrison said. “It’s about factory life and
the constructivist art movement. The set in effect operates the
dancers.”
The ballet’s choreography has been re-created using action cues
and stage direction from the original musical score as well as
drawings and photos discovered by Professor Sayers in archives in
Paris, London and Armenia, the university said.
Princeton student dancers are drawn from an advanced contemporary
dance class taught by Professor Hodson, a ballet reconstructionist
and visiting fellow of the Humanities Council, and Rebecca Lazier, a
lecturer in the Humanities Council and theater and dance.
The costumes are being created by Ingrid Maurer, a New York City
costume designer, using drawings and photographs from the 1927
production. The Princeton University Orchestra, under the direction
of Michael Pratt, will perform Prokofiev’s score.
“For me, the great pleasure first and foremost is the students,”
Professor Morrison said. “That’s the greatest pleasure for me.
Second, this is an opportunity for myself and Lesley to translate
academic research into performance and practice.”