The Taipei Times
Sun, Jan 02, 2005

Ukraine celebrates a new beginning and hope for the future

AFP , KIEV
Sunday, Jan 02, 2005,Page 1

Advertising Ukraine looked with hope to the future yesterday at the onset of
the New Year after Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich resigned and all but
admitted losing last weekend’s historic presidential rerun vote.
In tumultuous scenes on Kiev’s main Independence Square, 100,000 people
packed into the city’s central point to ring in the New Year with victorious
opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili, who led a “rose” revolution in Tbilisi last year.

Speaking before the crowd as fireworks lit the night sky, Saakashvili hailed
Ukraine’s “orange revolution” that brought Yushchenko to power as “a triumph
of good over evil.”

Yushchenko — the declared winner of last Sunday’s presidential poll — took
center stage to reiterate that “Ukrainians had been independent for 13
years, but now they are free.”

Yanukovich resigned from his post and said that his appeals over the Dec. 26
vote were unlikely to be granted, but stopped short of conceding defeat in
the poll, which would have brought Ukraine’s six-week election saga to an
end.

“I have made a decision and am formally submitting my resignation,”
Yanukovich said in a televised address. “I find it impossible to occupy any
post in a government headed by these authorities.”

“Concerning the election results, we are keeping up the fight but I don’t
have much hope for a just decision from the central election commission and
the supreme court,” he said.

Yanukovich repeated his assertion that “external forces” were responsible
for his defeat in the Dec. 26 vote.

But he got no support from Ukraine’s outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who
called on the nation during his New Year address to “accept the democratic
choice” made in the presidential poll.

“In 2005 Ukraine will have a new president and the whole Ukraine must accept
this democratic choice as its own — because this man will need your
support,” he said without naming the election’s declared winner, Yushchenko.

Kuchma spoke as tens of thousands of people massed in Independence Square,
the epicenter of the “orange revolution” where shortly before midnight,
pro-West Yushchenko and Saa-kashvili basked in the success of their
respective peaceful uprisings against Soviet-era regimes.

Yushchenko’s “orange revolution” marked the second year in a row that
peaceful protests headed by a Western-leaning leader swept out a
Russia-friendly regime in an ex-Soviet nation.

Moscow has accused the US of fomenting the unrest in order to install allies
in its strategic backyard, charges that Washington has denied.

But opposition movements in authoritarian-leaning former Soviet republics
and Russia have hailed the peaceful uprisings and in the heat of the
“orange” demonstrations, Belarussians, Armenians, Azeris and Russians
mingled with Ukrainian protesters in central Kiev.

Yushchenko mounted 17 days of mass protests after he refused to concede
defeat to Yanukovich in a Nov. 21 runoff because of fraud.

The supreme court annulled the election due to massive ballot-rigging and
ordered a historic rerun vote, which Yushchenko won by more than 2.2 million
votes.
This story has been viewed 104 times.

The Jamestown Foundation
Thursday, December 2 — Volume 1, Issue 138

IN THIS ISSUE:
*Moscow slaps economic sanctions on Abkhazia
*Will Ukraine crisis make Moscow tighten its grasp on Central Asia?
*Kazakh election monitors found no problems with Ukrainian vote
*Baku asks UN to rule on Armenian settlements in Karabakh
————————————————————————

RUSSIA BLOCKADING ABKHAZIA TO OVERTURN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

On December 1, Russia’s government introduced a set of blockade
measures against Abkhazia for the declared purpose of preventing the
inauguration of president-elect Sergei Bagapsh, victor over the
Moscow-backed candidate Raul Khajimba in Abkhazia’s October 3
presidential election. Gennady Bukayev, an aide to Russian Prime
Minister Mikhail Fradkov, announced the sanctions at a news briefing
in Moscow.

The measures, mainly economic but also apparently entailing some
military aspects, include: cutting off the railway connection between
Abkhazia and Russia; severely restricting cross-border passage for
Abkhaz residents and transport at checkpoints manned by Russian border
troops on the so-called “Russian-Abkhaz border” (legally a section of
the Russia-Georgia border); quarantining the transport of Abkhaz-grown
citrus fruit to Russia at that border; placing Russia’s coastal navy
on alert along that border’s maritime sector; and preparing for a
complete blockade, “If further unlawful actions by Bagapsh result in a
further deterioration of the situation in Abkhazia.”

Bukayev was explicit about the sanctions’ political purpose: “The
Russian leadership supports the legitimate Abkhaz president Vladislav
Ardzinba’s decision to stage a new election for Abkhazia’s
presidency. Bagapsh and the criminal organizations that back him are
trying to seize power by force of arms. The Russian leadership has
made its earnest decision in order to prevent the escalation of
violence and ensure the safety of Russia’s citizens. These measures
are not directed at the people of Abkhazia and will be lifted as soon
as the situation stabilizes” (Interfax, NTV Mir, December 1).

It was apparently on November 25 that the Kremlin decided to step in
forcefully and reverse the momentum in Abkhazia toward recognition of
Bagapsh as winner and his scheduled inauguration on December
6. Consequently, and characteristically, Moscow’s rhetoric is now
“criminalizing” the president-elect, notwithstanding the fact that he
has been declared winner by Abkhazia’s electoral commission,
legislature, high court, and other bodies that Moscow itself had all
along touted as Abkhazia’s lawful bodies. The invocation of “Russia’s
citizens” is key to the above-referenced statement. Having conferred
its citizenship en masse to Abkhazia’s residents, Russia has until now
used this fait accompli to claim rights of protection over them. Now,
however, Moscow uses the same argument in claiming a right to impose
sanctions on “its” citizens. In sum, Russia reserves the right to deal
with “its” citizens as it sees fit. The message to Abkhazia is that
“stabilizing the situation” means overturning the election of Bagapsh
as a condition for lifting the Russian sanctions.

The sanctions’ impact could be devastating. Employment in Russia
(often in the shadow economy) and cross-border shuttle trading are
survival matters for Abkhazia’s residents. In winter, citrus fruit
exports to Russia are the main source of revenue. The “temporary”
sanctions are timed precisely to the citrus harvest in Abkhazia and
the pre-Christmas peak of Abkhaz citrus sales in Russian cities.

Governor Alexander Tkachov of Krasnodar Krai (adjacent to Abkhazia)
had called for the imposition of sanctions on November 22-23, publicly
urging that the border be closed in response to the political
situation in Abkhazia. He added a call for stopping the payment of
pensions to Abkhazia’s freshly baked Russian citizens, unless Bagapsh
yields ahead of December 6 (Itar-Tass, Interfax, November
22-23). Tkachov’s statements often seem out of line because he belongs
to the establishment’s ultra-nationalist fringe. However, it sometimes
turns out that he heralds government decisions shortly before these
are officially announced. For example, in August 2003 he urged the
construction of the dam in the Kerch Strait toward Tuzla Island,
encroaching on Ukraine’s territory — a move that soon turned out to
be Russian government policy. In June 2004, Tkachov threatened that
Cossack and other “volunteers” would be sent to South Ossetia against
Georgia; they were indeed sent and advertised by Russia’s authorities
shortly afterward.

The economic sanctions are clearly designed to pressure Bagapsh’s
supporters into withdrawing their support and accepting Ardzinba’s
decision to stage a new presidential election. But even the Russian
government functionary Nodar Khashba, a native Abkhaz recently
installed as prime minister in Sukhumi to support Ardzinba and
Khajimba, opposes the sanctions. Within hours of the Russian
government’s announcement, Khashba told Russian media, “Ordinary
inhabitants, an overwhelming majority of whom are Russia’s citizens,
must not be made to suffer.” Khashba announced that he would appeal to
the Russian government to rescind the sanctions, implying at the same
time that Moscow’s political demands should be met (Itar-Tass,
December 1).

In Sukhumi, the outgoing and deeply ailing president Ardzinba — or
those acting in his name — and hard-line pro-Moscow groups are using
the argument that a Bagapsh presidency would irreparably damage
Abkhazia’s relations with Russia (the sanctions are cited as evidence)
and conversely, overturning the election result and staging a new
election are prerequisites to restoring relations with
Russia. Ardzinba’s November 29 proclamation, and an accompanying
statement by paramilitary groups supporting him, vows to stop Bagapsh
supporters from duplicating in Abkhazia the current events in Ukraine
or the earlier ones in Tbilisi, Ajaria, and Serbia that led to regime
change (Apsnypress, November 29).

–Vladimir Socor

RUSSIA’S SECURITY INFLUENCE IN CENTRAL ASIA INCREASES AS UKRAINE
CRISIS UNFOLDS

Central Asian political leaders are watching events in Kyiv closely,
as the Ukrainian crisis may affect the future foreign policy choices
they make between the West and Russia. Meetings of the CIS Defense
Ministers Council, at the Staff for Coordinating Military Cooperation
in Moscow on November 25, indicated a strong desire for further
strengthening the existing CSTO security mechanisms within Central
Asia. Indeed, these meetings, partly under the umbrella of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), appear to pave the way
for the future expansion of the CSTO Rapid Deployment Forces (CRDF),
to as much as 10,000 personnel (Nezavisimaya gazeta, November 26).

Nikolai Bordyuzha, Secretary-General of the CSTO, confirmed the
interest in enhanced levels of CSTO military cooperation, as member
states examined a model concept for forming a joint group of troops in
the Central Asian region. In his words, the document approved at the
meeting provides for creating a large joint group of troops including
formations from the armed forces of CSTO states (Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan). This potentially numbers a total of
10,000 personnel. The group could therefore become up to four times
the current strength of the CRDF, currently tasked with operating in
Central Asia during a security crisis. Moscow’s foothold in this
mechanism is secure, since it has guaranteed the main striking force
of the group will be elements drawn from the Russian military base in
Tajikistan and its air force base in Kant, Kyrgyzstan.

Of course, attempts to strengthen Russia’s security influence within
Central Asia are not new, and have been a recurring theme in the
region since the deployment of U.S. and Western military forces into
the region in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. But
recent developments within Central Asian capitals seem to present a
window of opportunity for Moscow to reclaim lost ground in the region.

Kazakhstan has been the only Central Asian member of the CSTO that has
espoused clearly autonomous and pro-Western military cooperation
policies. While the others have more readily accepted
collective-security arrangements with Russia as the linchpin in this
system, Kazakhstan, for instance, has advanced its plans to forge
ahead with reforming and building its Navy in the Caspian Sea by 2007
with U.S. support. However, as the situation in Ukraine is played out,
there will be clear lessons for those pursuing pro-Western policies in
Kazakhstan, which may favor Moscow’s efforts to stem the westward
drift of the former Soviet republics along its borders.

On November 25 in Moscow, a protocol was finally ratified that creates
the legal basis for increasing and offering supplies of military
hardware to CSTO countries at preferential financial rates. Valery
Loshchinin, Russia’s First Deputy Foreign Minister, believes that the
agreement will facilitate further military integration among CSTO
member states and compel greater levels of security cooperation.

Kazakhstan’s military reform priorities, announced on November 26,
included a commitment to raise the level of defense spending from one
percent of GDP to 1.2 percent by 2007. The Kazakhstani Ministry of
Defense also defined a set of priority investment projects, which will
be implemented in the next three years. These include constructing
housing in Astana, military facilities in the country’s south and
west, improving the facilities of military airfields, and building a
national defense university, as well as developing modernized
communications systems. All these plans, from the Caspian-orientated
military facilities in Kazakhstan’s western region to procurement of
communications equipment, demand closer cooperation with the United
States and Western countries in order to be effective.

Kozy-Korpesh Dzhanburchin, Deputy Defense Minister for Economy and
Finance, commented that Kazakhstan is determined to tailor its
military development to its security needs: “In accordance with
national security priorities, close attention is currently being paid
to the southern and western directions, where military and other
facilities are planned to be built actively as well,”
(Interfax-Kazakhstan, November 25).

The uncertain political situation in Ukraine, a key state for the
future transportation of Central Asian energy into European markets,
has raised fears among the governing elites in Central Asia
considering overtly pursuing close relations with the United
States. The impetus towards democracy, notoriously slow in these
states, is a risk that each has weighed carefully in recent years,
while recognizing that similar pressures do not attend close relations
with Moscow. Elections looming in Uzbekistan later in December and
those in 2005 in Kyrgyzstan, coupled with the recent bombings of Otan
offices in Almaty, (see EDM, November 30) magnify still further the
concerns in the regions’ capitals. For the Soviet-bred autocrats
running these states, democracy may be coming too close to the
region. In security terms at least, Moscow has prepared the ground for
improved levels of security integration, should its uncertain allies
in Central Asia choose this option.

–Roger N. McDermott

KAZAKHSTAN’S OPPOSITION TAKING NOTES ON YUSHCHENKO’S STRATEGY

With their own presidential election drawing nearer, officials in
Astana might prefer to turn off all television channels broadcasting
the contentious presidential election events in Ukraine. Instead,
state-run media in Kazakhstan have done little more than re-broadcast
a few images of the street demonstrations in Kyiv every day.

In contrast to the seeming indifference of state officials toward the
Ukrainian elections, a group of opposition leaders flew to Kyiv to
observe the November 21 runoff. On returning home, one observer,
Marzhan Aspandiyarova, a leader of Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan
(DCK), said that she was impressed by the transparency of election
procedures at the polling stations she visited in Ukraine. She said
there were fewer cases of vote stealing and fraud than in
Kazakhstan. Unlike Kazakhs, Aspandiyarova speculated that Ukrainians
did not tolerate any pressure from the authorities. She also admitted
that the opposition movement in Kazakhstan failed to rally people for
mass protests after the September parliamentary elections, which the
opposition declared to be unfair and illegitimate. According to
Aspandiyarova, the roots of the Kazakh opposition’s weakness lie in
the fact that many of its leaders come from government or business
circles (navi.kz, December 1).

Indeed, the popular support enjoyed by the opposition after the
creation of Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan has waned since the
September elections. One explanation for that appears to be the
relative social and economic stability and much-publicized government
programs to reduce the rate of unemployment, solve housing problems,
and raise pensions. These steps, however belated, are helping the
state to disarm the opposition ahead of the 2006 presidential
elections. However, Tolen Tokhtasynov, a member of the Coordinating
Council of Opposition Forces in Kazakhstan who also observed the
Ukrainian elections, believes that the main reason for the dwindling
popularity of the opposition in Kazakhstan is the inability of its
ambitious leaders to work out a common strategy. Nevertheless, he is
convinced that in the upcoming elections, the main opposition groups
— the DCK, the pro-democratic Ak Zhol party, and the Communist Party
of Kazakhstan — will join forces and put up a single candidate for
the presidency. Paradoxically, Tokhtasynov, a prominent opposition
figure and irreconcilable critic of the regime, thinks that Dariga
Nazarbayeva, the daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev would be
the best choice for this position (navi.kz, December 1).

The assertions that the opposition in Kazakhstan is not as active as
it is in Ukraine or Georgia may be only partly true. Protests over the
controversial September parliamentary elections are ongoing. The
co-chairman of Ak Zhol, Alikhan Baimenov won a seat on the party-list
ballot but has refused to work in the newly elected parliament,
alleging that the elections were undemocratic and unfair and that it
is unethical to be part of the “illegitimate” parliament. But such
isolated protests go almost unnoticed by the general public, which was
greatly influenced by the observers who overwhelmingly recognized the
parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan as democratic and free of
serious violations. In this situation, the opposition is largely seen
as a power-hungry political force without any clearly defined and
socially important objectives. “Our opposition would like to pose as
staunch fighters like the Ukrainian ranks. But three major political
organizations [international observers] could not convincingly show
the world the shortcomings of the parliamentary elections in
Kazakhstan. The Ukrainian elections revealed how immature and weak are
our democratic groups, which are incapable of consistently defending
the interests of the people who follow them,” writes the independent
weekly Altyn Orda (Altyn Orda, November 26).

It is hard to imagine the Ukrainian scenario playing out in
Kazakhstan’s presidential elections, although the alignment of
political forces and the authoritarian system inherited from the
totalitarian Soviet system display some similarity. Political analyst
Dos Koshim, an observer in Ukraine, argues that Ukrainian-style
standoffs between the opposition and the ruling elite cannot take
place in Kazakhstan, where the society is split into Kazakh- and
Russian- speaking populations, rather than united for a common
political goal. Any political action not supported by Kazakhs is
doomed to failure. But if the state does not make an effort to improve
the current course of social and political development, it may lead to
a crisis of Ukrainian proportions in the next decade (Ak Zhol
Kazakhstan, November 26).

Some analysts hold the view that the outcome of the Ukrainian election
crisis may have palpable geopolitical consequences for Kazakhstan,
rather than an impact on its internal policy. If Russia loses Ukraine,
then it will probably strengthen its military and political presence
in Kazakhstan, using such instruments as the Eurasian Economic
Community. The director of the Kazakh Institute of Socio-Economic
Analysis and Forecasting, Sabit Zusupov, warns that by openly
interfering with the election process in Ukraine, Russia revealed its
geopolitical intentions and resorted to a hard-line policy reminiscent
of the Cold War era (Epoha, November 26). Official sources in
Kazakhstan, unlike opposition media and independent analysts, are too
circumspect to express their views on the Ukrainian elections. Perhaps
this wait-and-see attitude is the best policy for the Nazarbayev
regime in this unpredictable and precarious situation.

–Marat Yermukanov

AZERBAIJAN TAKES KARABAKH CASE TO THE UN: A STEP BACK OR FORWARD?

Perhaps for the first time in the past ten years, Azerbaijan has
departed from the traditional path of peace negotiation on the
Karabakh conflict and taken its case to the UN General Assembly. On
November 23, the plenary meeting of the 59th session of the General
Assembly began discussing an Azerbaijan-sponsored resolution entitled,
“The Situation in the Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan.” Since 1993
the Karabakh peace process has been under the patronage of the OSCE’s
Minsk group, co-chaired by Russia, the United States, and France. This
latest action taken by Azerbaijan’s political leadership shows Baku’s
desire to seek alternative ways to break the deadlocked process.

Speaking at the session, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister, Elmar
Mammadyarov, noted that for the past ten years Azerbaijan had remained
committed to the 1994 cease-fire, which indicated the country’s desire
to solve the conflict through negotiation. At the same time,
Mammadyarov expressed Azerbaijan’s concern over Armenia’s growing
settlement programs in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. “While
the negotiations are being held, the Armenian side is conducting a
mass settlement of the occupied territories . . . This program is
implemented by the Department of Refugees and IDPs [internally
displaced persons] of the Armenian government and is called ‘Return to
Karabakh.’ It is financed by a special fund in Armenia in violation of
UN General Assembly resolutions, international humanitarian law, and
the Geneva Convention of 1949,” he noted (Turan Info, November 24).

The Azerbaijani side claims that thousands of Armenian families have
been settled in Lachin, Kelbadjar, and other occupied regions of
Azerbaijan, with the aim of increasing the Armenian population in
Karabakh to 300,000 by 2010. Armenia vigorously denies this. Armen
Martirosyan, Armenia’s representative to the UN, has noted that the
Armenian government was not supporting this process and that there was
no need for the UN to interfere in this issue, the Azerbaijani daily
Zerkalo reported on November 25. “Nagorno-Karabakh has never been and
will never become part of Azerbaijan,” Martirosyan added.

Meanwhile, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian warned that
discussing the Karabakh conflict at the UN General Assembly could put
an end to the ongoing “Prague talks” between the foreign ministers of
Armenia and Azerbaijan. “Should Azerbaijan choose the latter approach
[taking the issue to other venues, seeking separate solutions], the
Azerbaijani authorities will have to negotiate with the
Nagorno-Karabakh leadership” (RFE/RL Newsline, November
10). Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev, while attending the 55th
anniversary of the “Oil Rocks” city on the Caspian Sea on November 22,
said that these statements cause him only a “smile,” and he noted that
it was Armenia who is behind the occupation of the Azerbaijani
territories, not Karabakh (Turan Info, November 22).

Interestingly enough, the Azerbaijani government initiative has
sparked opposition even among the co-chairs of the Minsk group.
Speaking on behalf of the three co-chairs, U.S. representative Susan
Moore noted that Azerbaijani concerns could have been addressed by the
OSCE and that she supported the idea of a fact-finding mission within
the framework of the Minsk group (Echo, November 24). The three
co-chairs have asked the UN General Assembly not to take any action
that could negatively affect their efforts.

The Azerbaijani leadership has tried to convince the interested
parties that their initiative with the UN is not an effort to derail
the existing Minsk process. “Azerbaijan does not put the solution of
the conflict within the UN as a goal” said Deputy Foreign Minister
Araz Azimov (525-ci Gazet, November 27). Yet, perceiving the draft
resolution as Azerbaijan’s attempt to seek alternative ways to solve
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia and the co-chairs of the Minsk
group became fearful of opening Pandora’s box. Armenian Diaspora
groups in the United States have launched a broad campaign against the
draft resolution. A press release from the Armenian National Committee
of America reported that Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), known for
his strong support of Armenia, was urging U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell and U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Danforth to vote “no”
on the “destructive resolution” (, November 23).

Azerbaijan, meanwhile, sees no concrete results from the ten years of
activity by the Minsk group and therefore feels pressured to knock on
other doors. Recently, the Council of Europe’s political committee
began discussing a report on the Karabakh conflict prepared by British
deputies David Atkinson and Terry Davis.

–Fariz Ismailzade

————————————————————————
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Copyright (c) 1983-2004 The Jamestown Foundation.

MehrNews.com, Iran
Jan 2 2005

Ups and downs in Ankara-Tel Aviv ties

TEHRAN, Jan. 2 (MNA) — The Turkish Foreign Ministry recently
announced that Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul would be visiting Israel
in early January.
During his two-day stay, Gul will also visit the new Palestine
Authority officials who took charge after the death of Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat.

The talks will focus on Turkey-Israel ties, Turkey-Palestine ties,
the Middle East peace process, and other regional and international
developments.

Ankara and Tel Aviv had previously signed significant political,
economic, and security agreements. However, the countries’ ties were
restrained somewhat after the Justice and Development (AK) Party
gained power in Turkey and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
announced in a press conference that all countries were required to
respect international law but Israel was the only regime that had not
done so.

Prior to these remarks, Turkey had also expressed its displeasure
over the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli troops.

In addition, Turkey suffered certain setbacks in its military ties
with Israel, and animosity toward the Zionist regime increased among
the Turkish populace following the crash of a plane which Israeli
technicians had recently repaired.

Also, the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin further
complicated Turkey’s internal situation.

Erdogan criticized Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for rejecting
Turkey’s offer to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

`Turkey wants to see peace established in the Middle East, but
unfortunately Sharon does not help us in this process and his troops’
recent attacks against the Rafah refugees are proof of this fact,’ he
said.

The Zionist regime then attempted to improve its ties with Turkey by
dispatching delegations to the country. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert visited Turkey to start a new round of economic talks,
but Erdogan’s refusal to meet him cooled ties between the two
countries.

Olmert tried to patch up ties, saying that he did not think Erdogan
regarded Israel as a terrorist government because he knew it was the
country making the most serious efforts to combat terrorism.

Then a delegation of officials from the Turkish Justice Ministry and
the AK Party traveled to Tel Aviv to hold talks with high-ranking
Israeli officials.

During the visit, AK Party leader Saban Disli and his deputies
visited Israel’s National Security Council in order to discuss
military and security cooperation.

The efforts of the Zionist lobby in the United States to promote a
strengthening of ties between Turkey and Israel should also be
mentioned.

Over the past several years, the Zionist regime has attempted to
expand its relations with Turkey due to its strategic position
straddling Europe and the greater Middle East and its rich resources,
most notably its plentiful supplies of water, which is a key issue in
the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Turkey intends to maintain its military superiority over
its two rivals, Greece and Cyprus, by expanding its military
cooperation with Israel.

It also hopes to take advantage of the influence of the Zionist lobby
in the U.S. in its accession talks with the European Union as well as
in the issue of Turkey’s dispute with the Armenians.

In addition, the Turkey-Israel-Azerbaijan partnership for cooperation
has received the support of the United States. An Israeli daily
recently revealed that U.S. President George W. Bush told Erdogan to
abandon his détente policy and normalize Turkey’s ties with Israel
during the recent NATO meeting.

The paper added that Washington fears that tension among its allies
in the region could be detrimental to U.S. interests in the Middle
East.

This is because U.S. officials believe that the
Turkey-Israel-Azerbaijan partnership could neutralize the efforts of
what they call the Iran-Armenia-Greece partnership.

The Daily Star, Bangladesh
Jan 2 2005

Perspectives
Turkey’s rocky road to EU
M Abdul Hafiz

The Ottomans once entered Europe as conquerors causing a measure of
trepidation among the Europeans who cowered at the Ottomans’
triumphant advance into their continent, traditionally the abode of
Christendom. They could be repulsed from the gate of Vienna only in
1683. But for several centuries the ottomans were the virtual master
of Europe. It is an irony that their descendants today have been
knocking on EU’s door for last forty years to get an entry into
European Union — a regional forum for mutual benefit at the best.
The EU’s public and politicians both have made its membership
discriminatory and are uneasy about Turkey’s large population,
relative poverty and above all Islam, the religion of 70 million
Turks, even though the country has a secular constitution.

When compared with some of the new entrants of EU from former
communist block Turkey is much more deserving case in terms of its
socio-economic advancement. Not only the country has one of the
fastest growing economies of Europe its geographical location is a
strategic asset for Europe. Turkey’s membership of the EU will boost
EU’s global standing, infuse much needed dynamism into EU’ flagging
economy and help Europeans build bridge with the Islamic world as
well as 15 million Muslims living in Europe itself. Also by admitting
a country which has long been member of NATO military alliance but
kept out of EU for a host of political, social and religious reason
— the decision to open entry talks with Ankara — will set the EU on
course for even more significant transformation.

Yet the pronouncement of EU leaders meeting on December 16-17 fell
far short of expectation that they would signal a go-ahead for
membership talk. Instead they offered for talk with strict new
conditions which may indeed be difficult to meet. They want the Prime
Minister Recep Teyyip Erdogan to recognise Greek Cyprus, accept all
time restriction on labour migration to the EU and agree that entry
talks could be put on backburner any time if there is Turkish
slippage on political reforms.

The conditions are indeed disincentive considering that Turkey has
been waiting for the entry into Europe since 1963 when it was given
the associate membership of the European common market. In contrast
last May Slovakia and Estonia joined EU within only four years and
Poland within six years of the negotiation. Two Balkan countries,
Bulgaria and Romania are in the line and would most probably become
member by 2007. For Turkey the observers predict that the entry
negotiations may drag on till 2015. For Turks it is an insult upon
injury.

Although all leading European powers have supported Turkey’s
membership bid but those supports do not seem to be substantiated by
any active steps. Deep down there is a lot of reservations about the
very idea of a large Muslim country becoming the member of virtually
a Christian club. Turkey, it is feared, would overtake Germany, the
EU’ most populous country — a prospect which few Europeans entertain
charitably.

The EU and Turkey took a fateful decision weeks before on the
settlement over Cyprus — much as it is to be desired. But it could
not conceal the collisions between different values and between the
aims of the decision makers and the instinct of their people that lie
ahead. Nothing illustrated so well the disjunction between carefully
formulated common aspiration and the reality of divergent values. The
entry negotiation, if any, is likely to be tough as can be gauged
from the warnings of Romano

Pradi, the chairman of European Commission. He warned that the talks
would not be open-ended and the EU could call off the process if
Ankara did not continue to move forward on reforms. It is in spite of
Ankara staying firm in its drive to ease European concerns. Erdogan
and his ministers have in the mean time spent time sweet-talking EU
leaders and European big business while Turkish artists showcased the
country’s modern and traditional culture. Although Erdogan’s justice
party is also an Islamic party, but very significantly the prime
minister has shed the ex-prime minister Erbakan’s extremist pollicies
and took up a moderate policy which alone could lead to the
conditional ‘yes’ by the EU in October last.

Yet unfortunately many in the EU have, off late, put emotion and
prejudice ahead of rational debate on the pros and cons of Turkey’s
membership. Although Gerhard Schroeder is a supporter of Turkey’s
entry but the biggest opposition to Turkish membership is now found
in Germany where already more than 3m Turks live. The Germans fear
that their country will be

swamped by Turks once they are granted membership of EU which does
not impose any restriction on transborder movement of population.
French President Chirac, once willing to admit Turkey into EU is also
lukewarm now and his country demands that Turkey can at best be given
a privileged relationship with EU, but not membership.

EU fretting over relation with Turkey is not new. The current EU
discussions on the issue has become even more difficult because of
many Europeans’ post 9/11 weariness of Islam and Muslims. As a result
some of the arguments put forward by Turko-sceptics in Europe
illustrate an unabashed anti-Islam bias. At

times their demands almost border on claiming Turks to purge
themselves of past sins — their conduct of the imperial days with
regards to the Slavs or Armenians.

A former EU high-up Frit Bolkestin finds in Turkish entry into EU a
denial of its repulsion from the gate of Vienna. The French Prime
Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin warns against allowing the ‘river of
Islam’ to mingle with European secularism. Former French president
Valery Giscard d’Estaing cautioned that Turkey inside Europe will
mean the end of the bloc’s dream of ever closer union. The attitude
on both sides has recently hardened when Mr Ergodan, the Turkish
prime minister categorically said that Turkey has no intention of
trading its social and cultural values for EU membership.

There are however silver linings for Turkey because it can count on a
number of strong friends and allies, including Britain’s Tony Blair
and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as well as the leaders of
Spain and Italy. The European Commission itself is on Turkey’s side,
announcing in October last that Ankara had met all the key
pro-democracy and human rights standard to join the EU. It will be
interesting to see whether basically an Asian country with barely 3
percent of its territory lying in Europe will at long last be the
proud member of EU for which it had to wait for 41 years and pass the
litmus test. Even if it does the road will remain rocky till the
last.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.

Boston Globe, MA
Jan 2 2005

Peter Aharon Goolkasian, 94; freethinker put talents to use
By Avi Steinberg, Globe Correspondent

Peter Aharon Goolkasian, a druggist, inventor, and artist, died Dec.
21 in Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Jamaica Plain. He
was 94.

A survivor of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, Mr. Goolkasian was
unusually candid about his experience with human brutality, but he
was never defined by it. “He was a great lover of life, never bitter,
and despite losing almost his entire family, he was one of the most
optimistic people I knew,” said his daughter, Dianne Goolkasian
Rahbee.

Although he never returned to his native Armenia, Mr. Goolkasian
planted and maintained a mulberry tree, a tree common in his
homeland, in his backyard as a reminder of his lost home. “Even
before ethnic pride was popular, my father instilled us with pride in
who we are and where we came from,” said his other daughter,
Priscilla DerAnanian.

Born in 1910, he was a young child when the genocide swept through
his homeland. He was eventually brought to Boston and raised by his
uncle and mother. He decided to go into the family business of
running pharmacies, and after graduating from the Massachusetts
College of Pharmacy, settled in Waltham with his young family and ran
his own shop. Over the years he owned and worked at various
apothecaries in the Boston area, including Beacon Hill’s Clough &
Shackley.

Having gone into the family business as a matter largely of duty and
convenience, Mr. Goolkasian undertook a midlife career change and
pursued what had been until then only a hobby: electronics. He worked
for Honeywell then Bolt, Beranek and Newman.

Known for his lively intellect and impulse for tinkering, Mr.
Goolkasian was responsible for a number of patented inventions:
“tooth-ease pads,” colored flames for birthday candles, and a heart
pulse monitor used for patients during surgery, according to family
members. Before tape-recording technology was widely available, he
once fashioned a recording device out of a Coca-Cola box for his
young daughter to use when practicing the piano.

After his retirement, Mr. Goolkasian had time to pursue other
passions, such as fashioning stained-glass lamps and gem faceting.
His sold his gems, cut in a special style that he devised, to area
jewelers.

At age 84, Mr. Goolkasian decided that it was time to commit his
story to paper and wrote a frank memoir, “My Life,” which was
published privately by his family. His book, which he dedicated to
“all those people in the family of humanity that have suffered from
man’s inhumanity to man,” was received warmly in a letter by Elie
Weisel.

Mr. Goolkasian also penned a collection of essays, “Deliberations
Today for a Better Tomorrow,” on topics ranging from children to
religion to mythology and the environment. “He was a freethinker,
always eager to give advice. Once we gave him a computer, there was
no stopping him,” recalled his daughter Priscilla.

“He enjoyed life and took pleasure in all living things,” said
Priscilla. “He never used insecticides or fenced his garden because
he wanted to share it with everyone, even with the animals in the
yard.”

Besides his daughters, Mr. Goolkasian leaves his wife of 67 years,
Isabelle; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Funeral services were held Dec. 24 in Holy Trinity Armenian Church in
Cambridge. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Acton.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FrontLine, India
Volume 22 – Issue 01, Jan. 01 – 14, 2005
India’s National Magazine

REVIEW ARTICLE

Islam – a Russian perspective

A.G. NOORANI

“A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles
from the Rock of Gibraltar to the Banks of the Loire; the repetition
of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of
Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more
impassable than the Nile or the Euphrates and the Arabian fleet might
have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.
Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the
schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised
people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”

– Edward Gibbon; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Modern
Library, 1781; Vol. II, page 801.

GIBBON was relieved that “from such calamities was Christendom
relieved by the genius and fortune of one man”, Charles Martel. He
defeated at Poitiers (Tours), not far from Paris, in 732 the forces
of Abd al-Rahman. A few years later, the Arabs returned to invade
France, in alliance with Maurontinos, the Duke of Marseilles. But, by
759 their expulsion was complete.

When Prophet Muhammad died in 632, Islam was confined to the Arabian
Peninsula. After his death it spread with extraordinary speed from
North Africa to Persia. Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638. By the
13th and 14th centuries Muslims ruled in India, Indonesia and parts
of China. In the 8th and 9th centuries Spain, Sicily and parts of
France were conquered. Reverses came not long after Baghdad fell to
the Mongols in 1055. In Spain, the Christian Reconquista movement
conquered the last Arab stronghold, Granada, in 1492. Arab rule had
lasted in Spain for nearly eight centuries. However, in 1453
Constantinople fell to the force of Sultan Mehmed II. In European
eyes, the Turks had taken over from the Arabs as “the Islamic threat
to Christian Europe”.

The Ottoman Empire spread from Turkey to Europe. The Turks twice
knocked at the gates of Vienna, in 1529 and 1683, but were repulsed.
For five hundred years the Ottomans were Europe’s most feared enemy.
In the first decade of the 19th Century, their Empire spread across
North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
and the lower reaches of the Danube. In 1918 the Ottoman Empire was
liquidated. The British and the French carved it up. Britain acquired
Palestine in order, as the archives have revealed, to establish
Jewish rule there. Thus was Israel born in 1948. For over 175 years
Christendom had launched seven Crusades against Muslim rulers from
1095 to 1270.

Over the centuries European writers from Dante to Muir denigrated the
Prophet of Islam. Defeat and humiliation of “the enemy” did not
arrest this trend. A school of European scholars, however, dissented
and enriched the study of Islam by its labours. Reading the Western,
especially the American, press after 9/11, one is struck by its
unconcealed prejudice against Muslims and Islam, which Edward W. Said
so thoroughly exposed. It is, perhaps, natural to hate those one has
wronged. History shapes perceptions, popular as well as scholarly;
except for scholars who rise above the past.

How did history shape Russian perceptions of Islam? Hitherto, we had
only the West European and American reactions to “the spectre of
Islam”. We now have a rare exposition of The Great Confrontation as
viewed from Moscow. Ilya Gaiduk is a senior research fellow at the
Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and
has also been a fellow of the Cold War International History Project
at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, D.C. His book The Soviet
Union and the Vietnam War won high praise (Frontline, May 30, 1997).

President George W. Bush once famously called the “War on Terrorism”
a “crusade”. President Vladimir Putin has not far lagged behind in
his characterisation of the war in Chechnya. Fortunately there are
those who differ with him. C.J. Chivers and Lee Myers of The New York
Times reported the view held by “Russian and international officials
and experts” in Moscow recently: “Chechnya’s militant separatists
have received money, men, training and ideological inspiration from
international organisations, but they remain an indigenous and
largely self-sustaining force motivated by rationalist more than
Islamic goals” and “the principal motivation for Chechnya’s
guerrillas remains independence” (International Herald Tribune,
September 13, 2004).

It would be unfortunate if Russia were to emulate American attitudes.
A Report of the Defence Science Advisory Board, an advisory panel of
the Pentagon, criticised the U.S. for failing to explain its
“diplomatic and military actions to the Muslim world but it warns
that no public relations plan or information operation can defend
America from flawed policies” (International Herald Tribune, November
25, 2004). The U.S. is in a quagmire of its own creation in West
Asia. Russia can yet resolve the Chechen issue.

Ilya Gaiduk’s scholarly work offers a view of the past and the
present, which is refreshingly different from the view widely
prevalent in the U.S. and Europe. “The case of Chechnya well
illustrates the use of Islam as a tool to fulfil political ambitions”
(emphasis added, throughout). The idea for the book occurred to him
long before 9/11. He sought to study the diverse forces that worked
in history to create “a long and, at first glance, incessant war
between European powers and the world of Islam”. Was it religion or
power that tore apart the two civilisations? This idea of a clash of
civilisations between Islam and the West appeared initially in the
article “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, written by Bernard Lewis, and
published in September 1990 in the Atlantic Monthly. It acquired
worldwide popularity after the publication in Foreign Affairs of an
article by Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”
Huntington wrote that in the years ahead the “clash of civilisations
will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations
will be battle lines of the future”. After 9/11, Lewis gave tutorials
to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Edward Said was not the only one to
censure Lewis.

William Dalrymple’s surgery is as effective in his brilliant review
article (“The Truth About Muslims”, The New York Review of Books;
November 4, 2004). He establishes with copious references that
“throughout history, Muslims and Christians have traded, studied,
negotiated, and loved across the porous frontiers of religious
differences. Probe relations between the two civilisations at any
period of history, and you find that the neat civilisational blocks
imagined by writers such as Bernard Lewis or Samuel Huntington soon
dissolve.”

By the late 18th century the Muslim world’s misfortunes had begun.
Intellectual stagnation preceded military and political decline. The
West’s progress in science, in which the Arabs were once more
advanced, had little impact on Muslim minds. In the 19th and 20th
centuries European colonial rule was imposed on Arab and Asian lands
with ease, thanks to achievements in science and technology.

“The Christian victories of the last two decades of the seventeenth
century and the shift of fortunes in the struggle against the Ottoman
Empire cannot be measured only in terms of military and territorial
gains. They must be placed in a broader perspective of trends in
European development, precursors of the coming expansion of Europe
and its future world dominance. After hard times dating from the
mid-14th century – when, as a result of the `closing of Europe’s
internal and external frontiers’, society had entered a period of
stagnation and even decline; when the Black Death had arrived from
central Asia and wiped out one-third of the population in a number of
regions and brought progress in every field to a standstill; when
Europe’s capitalistic innovations had proved inadequate and its
economy unable to survive the Hundred Years War and the advancing
Ottomans on its borders – the sixteenth century marked the beginning
of `an unstoppable process of economic development and technological
innovation’ which made Europe the world’s commercial and military
leader.”

MANDEL NGAN/ AFP

Friday prayers at a mosque in New York. The Western, especially the
American, press displayed unconcealed prejudice against Muslims and
Islam after 9/11.

Gaiduk is scrupulously fair in his recall of the past: “The Caliph
Umar entered the city in the company of the Christian patriarch
Sophronius, after having given him assurances that the lives and
property of the Christian population would be respected and their
holy places left intact. As if to confirm this promise, he prayed
outside the church of the Holy Sepulchre in order to prevent the
Muslims from claiming ownership of the church. He also visited the
holy places of Judaism and Islam, the Temple and the sacred rock on
Mount Moriah. From Umar’s behaviour it becomes evident that the
Muslims firmly intended to respect the rights of the Jews and
Christians for whom Jerusalem was likewise the Holy City” (vide Umar
by Shibli Numani; Oxford; pages 157, Rs.225).

HOW and why did the Muslim world lag behind the West? Muslims, in
India particularly, would do well to ponder over Gaiduk’s answer. It
bears quotation, in extenso: “For centuries the Muslim world had
displayed its superiority in political, military, and intellectual
activities. With a religion considered to be God’s final revelation,
proud of their conquests and achievements, the Muslims could afford
to be insulated. They despised other peoples who had not yet become
adherents of the true religion but who eventually were destined to be
included in the House of Islam, whether by force or voluntarily. Yet
Islam’s `iron curtain’ isolated Muslims from the outside world and
proved to be fateful. When history took a new turn, Islamic
civilisation’s response to new challenges was insufficient and
ineffective… .

“The decay of Islam was not unavoidable, nor can it be attributed to
inherent defects of religious obscurantism or political weakness. It
is reasonable to conclude that if the processes of modernisation had
not occurred in Europe when they did, they could have occurred at
another time in the realm of Islam. But events in Christian Europe
exerted a strong influence on Islam, compounding its internal
weaknesses and in many ways accentuating them. In other words, the
period of relative decay that the Muslim world entered in the
seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, and that might have
been temporary or even transitory on the way to a new expansion, was
significantly transformed by a rapidly developing and expanding
Europe… . The Muslims deprived themselves not only of the knowledge
and experience of other peoples but, more important, of an
understanding of developments in other lands.”

It was a direct consequence of what Iqbal aptly called the closing of
the gate of ijtihad (reason) in the Muslim world. Even more important
than territorial acquisitions was the preponderance of the European
powers in technology, productivity, commerce and intellectual
activity. What Gaiduk writes of the Ottoman empire is as true of the
Moghul Empire, other rulers in India and, for that matter, other
countries in Asia. After tracing the expansion of Britain, France,
Germany, Italy and Portugal in Asia and Africa, he turns to another
European power, Russia. It “quickly expanded its possessions at the
expense of Muslim states. By 1828 the Russian Tsars had established
their rule over most of the territory that now forms three
Trans-Caucasian States – Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan – which had
previously belonged to the Ottoman or Persian empires or had been
contested by them. By mid-century the Russians were generally able to
crush popular resistance in the Caucasus, in the long war against
Adyges, Kabarda, Chechens, Ingush, and Dagestanis. They now turned to
Turkestan, inhabited by nomad tribes and a sedentary population, a
region of fertile oases controlled by the emirate of Bukhara and the
Khanates of Kokand in the Fergana Valley and of Khiva in Khorezm to
the south of the Aral Sea. The Russian conquest of the area began in
1855 when a column under the command of General Mikhail Chernyaev
moved into Turkestan, seizing Tashkent in May 1865 and Samarkand in
May 1868. After the defeat of his forces at the battle of Zerabulak,
the emir of Bukhara was obliged to sign a treaty by which his state
was placed under Russian protection. Khiva’s turn came in 1873, and
Kokand was invaded in 1875 and the Khanate – Russia’s most dangerous
enemy in Central Asia abolished. The conquest was rounded off between
1873 and 1881 by the occupation of the Turkmen country.” The great
game between British and Russian Empires had begun. It was to have
fateful consequences for India’s borders in the north-west.

The hour of decline did throw up Muslim thinkers of first rank bar a
few like Camal al-Din al Afghani, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Chiragh Ali
who was even more daring than Sir Syed. “As Islam lost its position
in the world and gradually retreated under the pressure of an
expanding Europe, Muslims sought explanations. Why was it that a
once-flourishing and powerful civilisation, which had demonstrated
its superiority for centuries and had radiated the light of its
cultural and spiritual achievements to the remotest corners of the
world, now had succumbed before the advance of a previously weak and
barbarous Europe?” That question haunts them, still; but it does not
prod much introspection, except among a minority.

And what a past it was: “Can one overestimate the great service of
Islamic civilisation? It preserved for Europe – when it was rapidly
disintegrating under the pressure of the barbaric invasions – ancient
Greek philosophy, geography, astronomy, and medicine; and it
supplemented these libraries of thought with its own knowledge, which
was respected by St. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura da Bagnoregio,
and praised by the great medieval poet of the Divine Comedy, Dante
Aligieri. Islam played a key role in the formation of European
civilisation, though it did so unwittingly. Much depended on the
ability of Europe, like that of a pupil, to absorb what was useful
and develop it. Islam at first was a willy-nilly tutor, but it became
a willy-nilly pupil when Europeans preponderated in science,
technology, politics and culture.”

Gaiduk’s reflections on the present situation are tinged with
empathy. He criticises his country’s policies in Central Asia in the
past and explains how they fuelled fundamentalism and praises Iran’s
President Mohammed Khatami for his advocacy of a dialogue between
civilisations. His book is one of the most insightful works to appear
in recent years.

Andrew Wheatcroft’s book on the same subject, a product of a decade’s
labour, is a straightforward history of the conflict between
Christendom and Islam in many lands from 638 to 2002. His is also a
plea for dialogue and reconciliation. The book is ably researched and
profusely illustrated.

Malise Ruthven’s books Islam in the World and Islam: A Very Short
Introduction were highly praised. Azim Nanji is Director of the
Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. They have compiled a
Historical Atlas of Islam since its birth to the present times. It is
a work of learning and labour. Both, the texts and the accompanying
maps, help one to understand how history unfolded itself in the
far-flung reaches of the Islamic World from Africa to China, across
the Balkans, Central, South-East Asia. Merely to mention some of the
chapters is to appreciate the magnitude of the effort – Sufi Orders
1100-1900; expanding cities; impact of oil; water resources; the arms
trade; Muslims in Western Europe and North America; Islamic Arts;
Muslim cinema; Internet use; democracy, censorship, human rights and
civil society; modern movements, organisations and influences. It is
an invaluable and indispensable work.

POLITICAL confrontation and intellectual stagnation marked the recent
past. What of the present? Gilles Kepel, Professor of Middle East
Studies at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris, wrote a
notable work The Revenge of God describing the rise of fundamentalism
in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim world. His book Jihad takes off
from 9/11 to trace the emergence of “the militant Islamic movement”
in the last 25 years in what he calls “a religious era” in Egypt,
Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria and various other
countries. He paints with a broad brush on a broad canvas, not least
in the chapter on Osama bin Laden. The point about the “decline of
Islamism” is well taken. Prof. Oliver Roy’s The Failure of Political
Islam remains by far the best work on this subject.

Kepel rightly avers that at the dawn of the millennium, the
initiative was with these regimes that had emerged victorious from
confrontation with the Islamist movement. Only, there was no central
Islamic movement in these countries, but local groups, which spoke in
the name of Islam to promote their political agenda. This is not to
deny liaisons; but the movement in Indonesia, for example, has
nothing to do with its counterparts in, say, Egypt or Afghanistan. He
ably demonstrates that “violence in itself… has proved to be a
death trap for Islamists as a whole”, but he does not reflect much on
the fragmented state of the movement.

The War for Muslim Minds is much more sound in its analyses. Kepel
begins with a thorough exposure of American neoconservatives’
calculations on redrawing the map in West Asia. These “self-declared
champions of Israel as a predominantly `Jewish State’ saw the Oslo
peace process as a trap” for Israel. In think tanks, in the media and
on university campuses they began drawing up schemes and proceeded to
lobby for regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria. 9/11 was seen “as a
tragic opportunity to sell their radical new deal for the Middle East
[West Asia] to the shell-shocked Bush Administration.”

MORTEZA NIKOUBAZL/ REUTERS

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, praised for his advocacy of a
dialogue between civilisations.
Islamism that used violence has failed. But its outlook and strategy
are not shared by young second-generation Muslim immigrants in Europe
who have never lived in a predominantly Muslim country and who have
experienced personal freedom, liberal education and economic
opportunity in democratic societies. Kepel insightfully opines “the
most important battle in the war for Muslim minds during the next
decade will be fought not in Palestine or Iraq but in these
communities of believers on the outskirts of London, Paris, and other
European cities, where Islam is already a growing part of the West.
If European societies are able to integrate these Muslim populations,
handicapped as they are by dispossession, and steer them toward
prosperity, this new generation of Muslims may become the Islamic
vanguard of the next decade, offering their co-religionists a new
vision of the faith and way out of the dead-end politics that has
paralysed their countries of origin.”

One wishes Kepel had considered the role liberal Islamists play in
moulding the minds of Muslims who are prepared to study and reflect.
It is only fair to point out that integration of Muslims in European
societies, especially the young, depends at least as much on European
governments and societies as on the Muslims and their leaders. Their
progress will be of immense relevance to Muslims of India and vice
versa.

There are, fortunately, men of wisdom and goodwill in both
civilisations, who advocate the path of conciliation. Vartan
Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, who was
born to American parents in Iran, is a highly respected figure. He
renders service in drawing attention to two neglected features –
diversity in the Muslim world and the voices of moderation in its
midst. Among them is Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. He does
not stop at dispelling myths about Islam and Muslims but proceeds to
advocate a “universal ethic of human understanding” in an effort to
promote inter-faith dialogue.

One can only hope that Muslims of India will bestir themselves and
reflect on the causes of their intellectual stagnation and the rise
of “leaders” who feast themselves on their sad condition today like
parasites.

——————————————————————————–
The Great Confrontation: Europe and Islam Through the Centuries by
Ilya V. Gaiduk; Ivan R. Dee, Chicago; pages 254, $26.
Historical Atlas of Islam by Malise Ruthven with Azim Nanji; Harvard
University Press; pages 208, $35.
The War for Muslim Minds: Islam & the West by Gilles Kepel; Harvard
University Press; pages 327, $23.95.
Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel; Harvard
University Press; pages 454, $15.95.
Infidels: The Conflict between Christendom and Islam 638-2002 by
Andrew Wheatcroft; Viking; pages 443, £15.
Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith by Vartan Gregorian; Brookings
Institution Press; pages 164.
To Be A Muslim: Islam Peace and Democracy by Prince El Hassan bin
Talal; Oxford University Press, Karachi; pages 82, Rs.250.

RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY UPS SCALE OF COMBAT TRAINING – EXPERT

Strana.Ru web site, Moscow
28 Dec 04

The Russian Defence Ministry has increased the scale of international
and domestic combat training over 2004 against the backdrop of various
scandals, major administrative reshuffles in the ministry amidst growing
social and economic tension in the Armed Forces, argues a Russian
expert. Nikita Petrov recalls that President Vladimir Putin has
assessed the work of the military department in 2004 as “satisfactory”
and tries to present his view of what went on behind the stage. The
following is the excerpt of an article entitled “Defence Ministry:
Year of Scandals and Exercises” carried by Russian Strana.Ru web site
on 28 December; subheadings have been inserted editorially:

Scandals

The year 2004 began for the Defence Ministry with a scandal (the
Auditing Chamber accused the Defence Ministry of systematic financial
violations and nonspecific expenditure of funds – it was a matter of
almost R14bn) and is ending with a scandal, precedents for which in
the Russian Armed Forces don’t come to mind. The latest scandal was
about personnel: the head of RF Armed Forces Main Combat Training
Directorate, Col-Gen Aleksandr Skorodumov, submitted his
resignation. The Russian Armed Forces’ main “warrior” departed,
slamming the door loudly and clearly spoiling slightly the pre-holiday
mood of Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov and his closest entourage.

The general openly accused the department heads of the disintegration
of the Armed Forces and of such unpleasant things as, for example, the
procedure for appointments to high command positions “through good
connections”.

Commander-in-chief of the Ground Troops and Deputy Defence Minister
Army Gen Nikolay Kormiltsev departed with approximately the very same
words one and a half months before this (President and Supreme
Commander Putin appointed a new Commander-in-chief of the Ground
Troops on 5 November. The choice fell on Col-Gen Aleksey Maslov, who
previously held the posts of the chief of staff and first deputy
commander of the North Caucasus Military District. Reports appeared
alleging that until recently Hero of Russia, Commander-in-chief of the
Air Force Army Gen Vladimir Mikhaylov was also planning to leave his
command.

But of course, the scandal of the year in the Defence Ministry was the
removal of Army Gen Anatoliy Kvashnin from the post of chief of the RF
Armed Forces General Staff, which happened this summer. It ended the
many months of conflict between Ivanov and his former first deputy,
who had his own views, which he didn’t hide, on ways of organizational
development and on further prospects of the Russian Armed Forces.

The head of the Russian military department achieved Kvashnin’s
removal under the pretext of an urgent General Staff reform –
observers began speaking about a possible purge within the walls of
the “main military brain”. Kvashnin’s first deputy, Yuriy Baluyevskiy,
who for the most part had worked on RF Armed Forces international
cooperation, was appointed in his place.

Strictly speaking, the “purge” (as, by the way, also the General Staff
reform in the strictest terms) ended with this. Now observers are
saying that Ivanov simply got rid of Kvashnin, who was inconvenient
for him, and put in his place Baluyevskiy, who goes along with
everything (the scandalous nature of this decision also lies in the
fact that Baluyevskiy’s last command position in the troops was as a
company commander).

The year also proved rich in scandals for Commander-in-chief of the
Navy Fleet Adm Vladimir Kuroyedov. In particular, the Admiral
“expertly” set up RF President Putin during ballistic missile launches
from a submerged condition, which were executed in February during the
joint strategic command and staff drill of Leningrad, Moscow and
Volga-Ural Military Districts and Northern Fleet. The main objective
of these manoeuvres, which were called Bezopasnost-2004, was to check
combat readiness of the navy’s forces and its naval strategic nuclear
component.

Up to 10 surface ships and support vessels participated in the
exercise on the part of the fleet. They included the heavy
aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov,
heavy nuclear powered guided missile cruiser Petr Velikiy, six
strategic missile submarines and multipurpose nuclear submarines, ASW
aircraft, ship-based helicopters and fighter aviation of the Northern
Fleet Air Force, and around 5,000 servicemen.

According to the scenario of the manoeuvres, the crew of the strategic
missile submarine Novomoskovsk was to execute the firing of an RSM-54
intercontinental ballistic missile (Skiff by NATO classification)
against the Kura combat field on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Strictly
speaking, the commander-in-chief of the Navy was at fault not only for
the fact that it was his subordinates who were unable to launch the
missile with a nuclear warhead at the necessary moment, but also for
the fact that a specially invited RF President Putin with his entire
retinue was awaiting this launch directly at sea. And Admiral
Kuroyedov found nothing more suitable than to explain to the press and
public that the President had been freezing in the cold wind awaiting
specifically a “simulated launch”.

The commander-in-chief of the Navy thundered once more to the entire
world, declaring that the heavy nuclear powered guided missile cruiser
Petr Velikiy, the Northern Fleet flagship, could blow up at any moment
because of her “terrible condition”. The scandal turned out to be
grandiose and also moved to the international level – the
international public and particularly Scandinavian countries
neighbouring on Murmansk Region, was very concerned with the condition
of the nuclear powered cruiser and with the prospect of getting a
“second Chernobyl”.

But despite all these “mistakes”, Kuroyedov wasn’t dismissed. (Passage
omitted) Moreover, his contract was extended for a minimum of another
year after he already had reached the maximum age of 60 for military
service.

The arrest and conviction in Qatar of two Russians accused of
murdering Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, one of the leaders of the Chechen
separatists, was yet another weighty scandal, and again at the
international level. The foreign mass media wrote that these people
were officers of the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence
Directorate and were working in Qatar “by personal direction” of
Defence Minister Ivanov. Strictly speaking, it also was scandalous
that despite all of Russia’s requests and persuasions, on 30 June a
Qatar court sentenced the Russians to life imprisonment, which under
local laws meant 25 years. At the end of the year, however, Russian
diplomacy and special services achieved a clear success – the Russians
returned to Russia after having been sentenced in Qatar literally a
few days before.

We also will note on this list repeated statements by senior Russian
military leaders and by the defence minister himself about “the
possibilities of Russia’s delivery of preventive strikes” against
terrorist bases “no matter where they might be” (and such bases also
can be in the United States). Observers noted that such “words without
actions” only do harm to Russia’s image. And we will recall the
constant statements by official Moscow about the presence of
ultramodern models of arms in Russian Army and Navy arsenals for which
there are no analogues in the world or defence against them. At the
rates of the state’s deliveries of new equipment to the troops – this
year, for example, it is only four new tanks – such statements at the
very least generate incomprehension both in Russia as well as in the
West.

Administrative reform

Organizing the military department structure in accordance with
demands of the administrative reform conducted this year in Russia’s
system of executive authority also affected the generals. Under the
new structure, the head of the Defence Ministry was left with four
deputies in place of the nine which existed before this. Today this is
Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defence Minister Col-Gen Yuriy
Baluyevskiy, First Deputy Col-Gen Aleksandr Belousov, Chief of Armed
Forces Armaments and Deputy Defence Minister Army Gen Aleksey
Moskovskiy and Chief of Armed Forces Rear Services and Deputy Defence
Minister Army Gen Vladimir Isakov.

In the military department itself there appeared a central apparatus,
the numerical strength of which was set at 10,000 persons; a defence
minister’s staff; as well as various services both within as well as
under the ministry itself. Also included in the senior leadership of
today’s Defence Ministry are chiefs of the services which were created
– Col-Gen Anatoliy Grebenyuk, chief of the troops billeting and
construction service; Army Gen Nikolay Pankov, personnel and education
service; Lyubov Kudelina, economics and finance service; and Andrey
Chobotov, chief of the defence minister’s staff.

Additionally accruing to the Defence Ministry in 2004 were the former
Federal Service of the Railway Troops, which in the military
department became simply the Railway Troops, and the former Federal
Service for Special Construction (now the Federal Agency for Special
Construction under the Defence Ministry). The military department
also received management and financial flows of federal services for
the state defence order, for military-technical cooperation, and for
technical and export control. Added to them as well was control over
the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy within the context of the nuclear
weapons complex.

Speaking at the traditional November RF Armed Forces leadership
conference, Ivanov declared that further optimization of the Armed
Forces composition, structure and numerical strength was named in
particular as one of the most important in determining missions for
the concluding year of 2004. This task, which involved the conduct of
table of organization measures, was fulfilled in practically all
military command and control entities, branches, combat arms, military
districts and fleets. According to the RF defence minister’s data, the
overall strength of the Armed Forces, counting the Railway Troops
integrated into their makeup, will be 1,207,000 servicemen and 876,000
civilian personnel as of 1 January 2005.

The missions and priorities of entities of operational command and
control of troops and of the client are being separated in the Defence
Ministry for the first time beginning this year. The first entities
concentrate efforts on planning and ensuring that the existing arms
and military equipment inventory is kept in a combat-ready condition,
and the unified entity for orders concentrates on planning and
supporting developments and deliveries of new and modernized
arms. Thus, the orders management system will be centralized and
removed from the sphere of activity of command elements of branches
and combat arms. This in turn should permit essentially realizing a
unified military-technical and pricing policy, reducing the number of
different types of arms and military equipment being developed,
conducting unified bidding, and creating conditions for the transition
to a unified system of technical support of the Armed Forces and other
troops – in general, saving money for the country.

One of the most important aspects of Defence Ministry work in 2004
(and this is presented this way by the military department itself) was
implementation of the federal targeted programme “Transition to
Manning a Number of Formations and Military Units with Servicemen
Performing Contract Military Service” for 2004-2007.

One of the results of this activity is to be the creation of
preconditions for reducing the term of conscripted military service to
one year as of 2008. Ivanov believes this “will have a positive
effect on the accumulation of militarily trained manpower mobilization
resources in the Armed Forces reserve”.

Within the scope of implementing the federal targeted “contract”
programme, the transition of the 42nd Motor-Rifle Division stationed
on the territory of Chechnya to a contract method of manning will be
completely finished already by the end of this year. This division
will be the second formation after the 76th Airborne Division manned
exclusively by contract servicemen (this year the airborne personnel
were inspected repeatedly at all levels – it’s believed that the
experiment with a fully contract division “succeeded”).

As a result, the Defence Ministry is completely giving up the practice
of sending servicemen performing conscripted service to
Chechnya. Without doubt, this indeed will increase the effectiveness
of operations of military units and subunits in the region and will
permit reducing losses among personnel taking part in eliminating the
illegal armed groups and task forces.

Specialists are placed on guard, however, by the fact that R17bn
(according to other data, R20.9bn) have been allocated for measures
for the transition to contract manning for 2005. If annual
expenditures per contract soldier are taken as R100,000, and this is
only on the order of R8,000-9,000 per month, then it’s possible to
hire 170,000 soldiers. This is approximately a fourth of the present
draft contingent, and not at all the planned 50 per cent, but for that
money you can’t even recruit a fourth of a fourth.

Against this background, hopes for entry into force of the Law “On
Alternative Civilian Service” as of 1 January 2005 weren’t borne out –
less than 500 persons will serve on an alternative basis in this
draft. In any case, it’s becoming more difficult to man the Armed
Forces from year to year. In the opinion of the military, the stable
trend towards a reduction in the proportion of citizens “really called
up for military service” especially exacerbates the situation. Today
military commissariats place only every ninth young lad of draft age
in formation (10 years ago this proportion was three times
higher). The rest either are exempted entirely from military service
on legal grounds or have the right to a deferment. Therefore the
Defence Ministry and power committees of both houses of Parliament
supporting it are developing a strategy for reducing the number of
grounds for deferment – today our country has 34 categories of
citizens who legally are not called up for military service.

Exercises

Against this background, the scale of combat training clearly is
growing in the Russian Armed Forces. The new wave of NATO enlargement
which occurred this year – NATO was joined in particular by the former
Soviet Baltic republics – was among the preconditions for this. Let’s
recall that Russia didn’t agree that there was a need for this
enlargement and considers it “erroneous”. Nevertheless, the Defence
Ministry is working actively with NATO, and specifically along the
combat training line – the sides are training to operate together.

The military department itself considers the following to be the most
important events carried out in the army and navy in 2004. They
include, for example, the conduct of a large number of large-scale
naval exercises, including in coordination with naval forces of NATO
member countries. Among them were those such as the Russian-Italian
exercise in the Ionian Sea involving a detachment of Black Sea Fleet
ships headed by the Guards guided missile cruiser Moskva, and the
Russian-French exercise in the North Atlantic (on its completion, the
nuclear submarine Vepr paid an unofficial call on the French Navy Base
of Brest, which was the first call by a Russian nuclear submarine on a
foreign port in history).

In addition, the Russian-American Northern Eagle-2004 manoeuvres also
stood out this year. The large ASW ships Severomorsk and Admiral
Levchenko took part in them on the Russian side. Detachments of
Russian combatant ships also took part in the NATO combat operation
Active Endeavour, aimed at strengthening the regime of
nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery
vehicles. The heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Flota Sovetskogo
Soyuza Kuznetsov went out on combat patrol duty (before this our
aircraft carrier had performed missions only of one combat patrol duty
– in the winter of 1995-1996). Strategic missile submarines executed
ten launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles during 2004. In
the outgoing year RF Navy ships performed an overall total of more
than 50 deployments, within the scope of which there were 27 calls on
ports of 17 states.

Intensive combat training – large-scale exercises – also was conducted
this year in other branches and arms of the Armed Forces. For example,
operational-tactical exercise Mobilnost-2004 was conducted. It
rehearsed problems of the mobility of mixed forces and the
redeployment of permanent readiness subunits and units from the
European part of the country to the Far-Eastern region for performing
missions of ensuring Russia’s military security. A total of around 800
servicemen with arms and combat equipment from the makeup of permanent
readiness units were redeployed by air transport. Around 50 aircraft
of Air Force Military-Transport Aviation and of the Transport Ministry
and over 100 pieces of armoured and motor vehicles were in action in
the exercise.

The Defence Ministry considers the special tactical exercise
Avariya-2004 to be another important event of this year. It was
conducted jointly with the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy at one of
the military department’s facilities situated in Murmansk Oblast. The
objective of the manoeuvres was the practical rehearsal of problems of
organizing protection of nuclear weapons against attempts at
unsanctioned access and of mopping up in the aftermath of an accident
in case terrorist acts were committed. There were 2,000 servicemen and
over 500 pieces of special equipment in action in the exercise. One
feature of the exercise was the presence of 49 representatives from 17
NATO member states as observers. At the end of the exercise Ivanov
noted that despite statements being heard abroad from time to time
about problems allegedly existing in Russia with the security of
nuclear weapons, the NATO people were able to be convinced of the
opposite with their own eyes.

We also will note the August joint exercise Rubezh-2004 with permanent
working bodies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and with
armed forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization member
states. One version of a possible exacerbation of the
military-political situation in the Central Asiatic collective
security region was made the basis of its concept. It envisaged
coordinated actions of bandit force elements to conduct terrorist acts
and destabilize the situation on the territory of region states. A
total of over 1,000 servicemen, around 100 pieces of armoured
equipment and over 30 aircraft and helicopters were in action in the
joint exercise. We also will note that the 201st Motor-Rifle Division
stationed in Tajikistan and covering Russia’s southern borders was
reorganized as a Russian military base this year.

In 2004 there was a command and staff drill with command and control
entities and alert duty forces of the Joint Air Defence System of CIS
member states. This multilateral drill was conducted in accordance
with the plan of joint activities for 2004. In addition to the Russian
side, air defence command elements of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan and Ukraine and these states’ air defence forces assigned
to the joint system took part in the drill. The actions of drill
participants were coordinated from the Russian Air Force Central
Command Post.

Finances

But the most acute problem of today’s Russian Armed Forces remains the
socioeconomic situation of servicemen and their families. Based on
results of the outgoing year, it can be said that it only has
deteriorated. Ivanov cited the following data at the November RF Armed
Forces leadership conference. As of today over 34 per cent of
servicemen’s families have income per family member below the
subsistence level prevailing in the regions. Around 90,000 are not
provided with permanent housing and approximately 45,500 are not
provided with official housing (Chief of Defence Ministry Main
Billeting and Maintenance Directorate Col-Gen Vlasov recently declared
that the Armed Forces need on the order of 500,000 apartments for the
country). “Naturally, we can’t be reconciled with such a state of
affairs, and specific steps are being taken to improve the situation,”
declared the defence minister.

The following evidently should be included among such steps. The
federal law “On the Mortgage Savings System of Housing Support for
Servicemen” was adopted this year. It places an entirely new mechanism
in effect for providing servicemen with housing. Its chief merit is
that it is called upon simultaneously to motivate a serviceman’s
presence in Armed Forces ranks.

Thus, the state will open savings accounts for officers and contract
personnel beginning in 2005. The new system is intended for those who
enter officer service after 1 January 2005 and for contract privates
who have served at least three years – this is approximately 60,000
persons. A savings account will be opened for each one into which
money will be transferred annually. The bill’s authors figure that
after 20 years the accumulated amount should suffice to buy an
apartment with an overall area of 54 square meters. And servicemen are
motivated to accumulate, which means also to serve longer – developers
of the law presume that after 30 years the money then will suffice for
96 square meters. A serviceman will be able to receive the money only
after 20 years of service, or after 10 years if he is discharged for a
valid reason – for state of health, in connection with a reduction, or
because of family circumstances.

If an officer leaves the Armed Forces after having served less than 10
years, his savings simply “burn up” and are returned to the state. By
the way, if an officer doesn’t wish to wait, then in just three years
he receives the right to buy an apartment with the help of a mortgage,
and the state will pay the interest on the credit. The defence
minister asserted: “It’s understandable that the results of the effect
of the new system will tell only after a few years, but the increase
in waiting lists for obtaining housing nevertheless will be halted,
especially as in parallel with this servicemen will be provided as
before with housing certificates and with official apartments which
are being built”.

We also will note the strange “situation of the year” with pay and
allowances. On 4 November military department head Ivanov signed an
order according to which all generals, officers and warrant officers
in the Defence Ministry central apparatus will receive increased pay
(in addition to the pay, they will continue to receive an additional
payment for rank, seniority and subsistence allowance). In the troops
they already have begun calculating that “according to the new way” a
major general will receive approximately R15,000 instead of the
previous R12,000, a colonel will put R10,000 in his pocket instead of
the previous R7,000-8,000, and a lieutenant around R6,000 instead of
R3,000-4,000.

As it turned out, though, the Armed Forces had misheard. According to
the defence minister’s order, it was a matter of increasing pay and
allowances of servicemen only in the Defence Ministry central
apparatus. Let’s recall that this “circle of the chosen” numbers only
on the order of 10,000 persons. Under the new conditions Ivanov
himself (together with the other power ministers, we will note) will
earn R92,880 per month (instead of the previous R17,950). Everyone
who is lower will receive appreciably less than the minister, but
these amounts, too, are impressive against the background of military
officers’ paltry incomes (R4,000 for a platoon commander).

The Defence Ministry declared that it had been forced to undertake
that increase: the “brain of the Army” – the General Staff – and other
key structures of the military department are scattering because of
the small pay rates. But experts believe that Ivanov thereby is
creating “two armies – a staff army with good pay and a pauper,
trench, army.” We will note that criticism of actions taken by the
military department heads forced them to declare that a draft
regulatory legal instrument is being prepared envisaging a similar
increase in pay and allowances for servicemen performing contract
military service at the tactical level.

The year 2004 also will go down in Russian Armed Forces history as a
year of cancellation of practically all benefits for servicemen and
their families. Compensation is envisaged in place of what was taken
away, but one and one-half months before the innovations enter into
force no one is explaining to them what the amount of such
compensation will be.

And so from 1 January 2005 servicemen will begin to travel on public
transport on “their own hard-earned money”. Servicemen now have the
right to receive an interest-free loan of 12 pay rates once during
service for acquiring essential property – as of 1 January 2005 the
amount of and procedure for such payment will be determined by the
government. Rations or compensation amounting to their cost are issued
to the military today. As of January of next year rations will be
envisaged only for those serving in the Far North, and compensation is
envisaged for everyone “in an amount to be determined by the
government.” Servicemen’s rights to free financial assistance to
purchase housing (75 per cent of the cost of housing for those who
have served from 10 to 25 years, or 100 per cent for those who have
served over 25 years) and to priority entry into housing cooperatives
have been cancelled. Restrictions on time periods for mandatory
provision of housing to servicemen on arrival at the chosen place of
residence after discharge are removed as of 1 January – previously
this was legislatively prescribed to be done no later than within a
three-month period. Free treatment in military medical establishments
for servicemen’s wives and children and the provision of places in
kindergartens and schools for their children on a priority basis are
being cancelled.

All this of course hardly will increase the country’s defence
capability.

Prime Minister fears contaminated referendum

Reformatorisch Dagblad (Dutch daily newspaper)

December 22, 2004

Part of the article about a debate in Dutch parliament on the conclusions of
EU summit in Brussels. During this debate a motion was adopted urging the
Dutch government to bring up the recognition of the the Armenian Genocide in
its dialogue with Turkey during the EU accession negotiations. the Armenian
question.

See the complete article in Dutch:

… Almost all factions in Dutch parliament expressed their
disappointment about the fact that the EU has not made the recognition
of the Armenian Genocide as condition for the start of the accession
negotiations with Turkey. The Chamber unanimously adopted a motion of
Christian Union leader Rouvoet, that calls the government to bring up
in its dialogue with Turkey continuously and expressly the recognition
of the Armenian Genocide.

Never before the entire House of Representatives expressly pronounced
on the Genocide of 1915 of the Armenians by the Turks. The Armenian
Federation expressed satisfaction on Tuesday about the fact “that now
also the Netherlands recognises the Genocide.” …

NKR PRESIDENT’S CONGRATULATION

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
01 Jan 05

Life moves ahead. Little time is left until the moment when will
announce the beginning of the year 2005. Undoubtedly, each of us is
hopeful that all our cherished hopes will come true in the New Year. I
wish that the New Year bea peaceful year and we may live and work
quietly, bring up our children, and make Artsakh more beautiful and
strong. The passing year was successful for the country in all
respects. We did not undergo political and social shocks. Owing to the
reforms carried out in the country economic growth and a stable
tendency of increasing volume of production were reported. Economic
growth fulfils its main task, i.e. improvement of quality of life. In
the passing year the government was able to increase the salaries of
state budget-paid workers, benefits and allowances paid to the
families of killed and missing azatamartiks, the disabled, veterans of
war, large families. Next year the government will begin building
homes for socially insecure families. Pensions and other benefits will
be increased. The salaries of workers of health, education, culture
and sport will increase as well. I want to mention especially that in
the statebudget 2005 expenses on social needs were increased by 30 per
cent. In the passing year basis was provided for the rapid completion
of the highway “North-South” which has a strategic, economic and
social importance for Artsakh. Once again I want to thank our
compatriots abroad and the friends of Artsakh for their active
participation in the telethon held in the USA in November to aid the
Republic of Nagorni Karabakh and congratulate them on Christmas and
the NewYear. I characterize the unprecedented success of the telethon
as the confidence of the Diaspora in the public, political, social and
economic reforms, steps directed at building a civil society in
Artsakh. Proud of our success, at the same time we are bolder in
revealing the drawbacks hindering the development of Artsakh. The
principle evaluation of the activity of authorities was given at the
republic consultation of all the branches of power of Nagorni
Karabakh. It was mentioned that care for everyday needs of our
citizens must become the main problem of each official person. In the
passing year the army was strengthened even more, its effectiveness
was increased. The problems of the NKR Defence Army, including social
problems, remain in the center of attention of the government. The
power of our army enables us to conduct a successful foreign policy
directed at the protection of the interests of Artsakh and its people
abroad.

I assure that every attempt on the part of Azerbaijan to disturb the
peaceful creative life of our people will receive an adequate
counterblow from the NKR Defence Army. I am sure that we have all the
opportunities to improve our life, develop Artsakh. Therefore all of
us and each of us must be the creator of our country and not mere
viewers. I wish you a Happy New Year, good health, unity, love and
mutual understanding. Let the year 2005 bring peace and prosperity to
your families and fill your homes with warmth and happiness. Happy
holiday, friends.

AA.
01-01-2005

Los Angeles Daily News
Jan 1 2005

Valley’s reps look back at victories great and small!w off

By Lisa Friedman
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Forget civics class. In the real world of Capitol Hill
politics, only one thing can make a bill become a law: power.
Those who have it — generally members of the majority party and
politicians who stick around Washington long enough — can boast at
the year’s end about all the new laws bearing their imprint.

Those who don’t — more junior or minority party members — call it a
win when they can get a few paragraphs tacked onto a larger piece of
legislation.

So it went for most San Fernando Valley lawmakers looking back upon
the 108th Congress.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys, described the year as one of more
work than accomplishments — both for Congress as a whole and him
personally.

“No one could say this was a productive year. I got some things done,
but nowhere near what I wanted,” he said.

Berman described his 2004 legislative successes — one reforming the
mechanism through which copyright royalty rates are distributed, and
another authorizing scholarships to American schools in Arab
countries as “boring, but important.”

The scholarships, which will go toward helping poor and middle-class
Muslim students attend American-sponsored schools, was included in a
bill overhauling intelligence services but was not funded. Berman had
asked for $15 million.

He called the scholarships “a long-term investment in producing
leaders of the future” and vowed to secure money for them in 2005.

Immigration reform, perhaps Berman’s top legislative priority, ran
into election-year paralysis.

His bill to allow about 500,000 illegal immigrants establish legal
residency, known as AgJobs, had support from more than 60 lawmakers.
Half were Republicans. Yet with a contentious presidential campaign
under way, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist blocked it from coming
to the floor.

Berman said he will reintroduce the bill in January. He said he was
encouraged that President Bush recently renewed his quest for a
guest-worker plan.

“It sounds to me that the White House is interested in seeing if they
can try and solve this problem, and I think Democrats should be
willing to work with them,” Berman said.

Congress also stagnated on another top Berman priority, helping the
movie industry combat piracy. The House passed legislation he wrote
with Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, to increase penalties, but the Senate
did not. The issue is another Berman said he expects to tackle “real
early” in the 109th Congress.

Finally, legislation to restrict some law enforcement measures in the
Patriot Act also went nowhere. But, Berman said, he intended that
bill as more of a “marker” to lay out concerns that should be
addressed when the House debates whether or how to continue the USA
Patriot Act.

Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, counts nearly a dozen elements
of the intelligence reform bill as stemming from his office.

They include changing the way the State Department designates foreign
terrorist groups so that it is the responsibility of the group, and
not the U.S. government, to prove the group is no longer engaging in
terrorist acts.

They also include demanding passenger inspections at more foreign
airports and creating a unified system for transliterating names into
the Roman alphabet to help standardize name-based “watch” lists.

“Speaking for myself, we had an extremely productive year,” Gallegly
said.

Gallegly found little movement, however, in his efforts to curb
illegal immigration and particularly to block acceptance of foreign
consular identification cards. He vowed to be on the forefront of
that debate in 2005, as well as efforts to block illegal immigrants
from driver’s licenses.

Another legislative disappointment came in the form of bear baiting.
Gallegly’s bill, which would have banned the practice of setting out
large piles of food and then lying in wait, faced massive opposition
from the hunting lobby. Gallegly said he doesn’t know if he will
re-introduce the bill but noted that some states have started to ban
the practice.

Finally, he hailed the little-noticed passage of the Korean Defense
Service Medal, to be given to members of the armed forces who served
in Korea after July 1954, when the Pentagon stopped issuing the Korea
Service Medal.

Two bills authored by Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Santa Clarita,
made it into law this year.

One places restrictions on the ownership and sales of tigers, lions
and other big cats to anyone other than zoos, exhibitors and those
certified to handle and care for the animals.

Another bill offers grants to states that help individuals with
disabilities to access “assistive technology.”

A leading member of the House Education Committee, McKeon also worked
language into an education bill ensuring that funding increases for
students with disabilities be passed directly to the local level.
McKeon said the measure stemmed from reports that California was
using the money intended for students with disabilities for unrelated
programs, or to help mask the budget deficit.

“That was a good victory for us,” McKeon said of the provision.

Yet with reauthorization of the higher education act and welfare
reform still on the table, McKeon said his 2005 goals remain similar
to the ones he had going into 2004. He blamed the Senate for much of
Congress’ inaction.

“The Senate never even dropped a bill,” he said of the education
measure. “I think they just figured early on they weren’t going to be
able to get it done, so they didn’t even address it. But I think
we’re going to be able to move early next year.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, managed this year to expand DNA
analysis, establish a U.S. trade representative for intellectual
property rights and help hybrid-car drivers save toll money.

He also worked some language on nuclear non-proliferation into the
intelligence bill, including a provision defining the crime of
assembling a radioactive dirty bomb and allowing prosecutors to use
racketeering laws to investigate and prosecute people trading in
nuclear technology.

Schiff, who helped found a Democrat study group on non-proliferation,
said he intends to make that issue one of his top priorities in 2005.

One bill Schiff said he plans to introduce in January will deal a
comprehensive global cleanup of nuclear material in a way he vowed
“goes beyond anything I’ve seen before.”

Schiff failed to secure passage of an amendment recognizing the
Armenian genocide. But, he called language that was approved and
later stripped from a bill at the insistence of House Speaker Dennis
Hastert “a symbolic victory.”

“Given that next year is the 90th anniversary (of the genocide),
we’re going to make a big push.”

Also still lingering is legislation expanding the Santa Monica
Mountains National Recreation Area to include more of the mountains
near La Crescenta, Santa Clarita, Simi and Conejo valleys, as well as
the Arroyo Seco.

“We got very close,” Schiff said. “I’m hoping we’ll find smoother
passage this year.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, counted among his accomplishments
extending a $2,000 tax credit for hybrid-car owners and stopping what
he described as “some really bad Republican ideas.”

One of those measures he worked against was a restructuring of the
federal-state securities regulation, which Sherman argued would
destroy state securities laws. A former certified public accountant,
Sherman also fiercely opposed bills by Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora,
changing the rules for employee stock options, which Sherman said
would deprive investors of information.

A measure on presidential succession, which Sherman started working
on well before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, received praise
from constitutional scholars and other lawmakers in 2004 but saw no
movement.

Sherman said he plans to reintroduce the bill yet is not getting his
hopes up about passage.

“Just because it’s important does not mean there’s anybody in
Washington that cares a whole lot about it,” he said.

Sherman also said Iran will continue to top his foreign policy
agenda. He managed to work in language promoting democracy in Iran
into the intelligence bill, but said he was still waiting for
Republican leaders to hold hearings on the country’s development of
nuclear weapons.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress