RESIDENTS OF OCCUPIED ARMENIAN TERRITORIES APPEAL TO EUROPEAN COURT

PanArmenian News
Dec 16 2004

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Representatives of the families of those deported
in 1991-1992 from the Armenian-populated regions of Getashen and
Shahumian have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights against
Azerbaijan. It is being done on the initiative of Shahumian-Getashen
philanthropic society. The suit will specifically raise the issue of
protection of the right for property of those deported. It should
be reminded that residents of Getashen sub-region of North Artsakh
(Karabakh), populated by Armenians, were deported and partially
killed in the course of Ring joint operation of the soviet army
and the Azeri OMON in 1991. One of the goals of the operation was to
“frighten” Armenians, who headed for the independence from the USSR and
“encourage” the Azeris faithful to the Soviet authorities. The soviet
army launched the cleansing operation in Getashen May 1. Here we cite
an extract from the telegram of Getashen residents of May 4, 1991:
“The soviet army annihilates us. Helicopters fire on us from the sky,
tanks trample us on the ground, Azeri OMON take our children, women and
the elderly hostage from our homes and yards, break their hands and
legs, ribs, scalp them and stab them. We stood firm for three years,
but we cannot resist to the soviet army, our husbands cannot protect
us with hunting guns the army destroys us, making to recognize the
Azerbaijan authority and leave native villages. But they don’t even
let us flee – they fire upon us.” Residents of NKR Shahumian region,
which is at present occupied by Azerbaijan, were banished from their
houses in 1992 after the Azeri managed to seize the region with the
assistance of the bribed Russian generals. You can find addinional
details of the Ring operation and others at

PRESS RELEASE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Australia & New Zealand
10 Macquarie Street
Chatswood NSW 2067
AUSTRALIA
Contact: Laura Artinian
Tel: (02) 9419-8056
Fax: (02) 9904-8446
Email: [email protected]

20 December 2004

DEACON ORDAINED FOR SERVICE IN CHURCH IN SYDNEY

Sydney, Australia – On Sunday, 19th December, 2004 in the Armenian Apostolic
Church of Holy Resurrection, His Eminence Archbishop Aghan Baliozian,
Primate of the Diocese of Australia & New Zealand ordained Acolyte Shnork
Nigoghossian as Deacon. Also partaking in the ceremony were Reverend Father
Norayr Patanian, Reverend Father Bartev Karakashian, Deacons, Acolytes and
the Church Lousavorich Choir.

Deacon Shnork is the seventh ordained deacon of the Church of Holy
Resurrection.

During the ordination rite, through prayers and blessings, the
newly-ordained received the order of sub-deacon and deacon. It was deeply
moving when he committed himself to the service of God in front of the
congregation, humbly kneeling before the altar with arms raised and ears
blocked rejecting earthly standards.

The new order grants Deacon Shnork the privilege to perform sacred rituals
in the church that includes censing, chanting the Gospel reading during the
Divine Liturgy, and transferring the veiled chalice containing the gifts
(bread and wine) to the priest during The Eucharist.

The word “deacon” means “one who serves”. The position is believed to have
its origin rooted with the Apostles in the Jerusalem church. The primary
role of the deacon then was to care for the physical needs of the
congregation, a role which continues until today in traditional churches.

St Paul writes in his first letter to Timothy “Deacons are to be men worthy
of respect, sincere .. they must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith
with a clear conscience.”

Deacon Shnork Nigoghossian has served the Armenian Apostolic Church over the
past 15 years. He was born in Istanbul, Turkey, is married to Askanoush
and has two children. For many years, Deacon Shnork has been actively
involved in all aspects of church life.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Tigran Petrosian Memorial Tournament

Chessbase News, Germany
Dec 19 2004

18.12.2004 An international Internet chess tournament is taking
place, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the birth of the 9th
world champion, Tigran Petrosian. Four teams, from Russia, China,
France and Armenia, are participating, with none of the players
leaving their places of residence. More…

Tigran Petrosian Memorial Internet Tournament
The six round tournament will take place each day from December 18-23
with games starting at 12:00 noon in Paris, 14:00 in St. Petersburg.
15:00 in Yerevan and 19:00 in Beijing.

Four boards will face-off each day, as in the Olympiad, with each
opponent facing his corresponding board representative. Each country
will face each of the other three countries two times for a total of
six rounds. Fischer time control will be used (1 hour 30 minutes plus
15 minutes added at move 40; 30 second increments are added after
every move).

The overall prize fund is $55,000 with the following breakdown: 1st
place $20,000, 2nd place $15,000, 3rd place $12,000, 4th place
$8,000. The games will not be counted toward players’ official
ratings.

Armenia (average rating: 2626) France (average rating: 2627)
GM Aronian 2675 GM Lautier 2682
GM Lputian 2634 GM Fressinet 2640
GM Sargissian 2611 GM Bauer 2622
GM Art. Minasian 2581 GM Nataf 2565

Russia (average rating: 2688) China (average rating: 2590)
GM Svidler 2735 GM Bu 2615
GM Dreev 2698 GM Ni 2611
GM Khalifman 2669 GM Zhang 2596
GM Zvjaginsev 2650 GM Wang 2536

Tigran Petrosian
Tigran Petrosian was a legendary chess champion, an Armenian hero,
and a creative genius. Nearly twenty years after his passing, FIDE
has named 2004 in his honor, and the Tigran Petrosian memorial
internet tournament held from December 18-23 online is the last in a
string of tournaments in 2004 around the world held in his honor.
The legacy of Petrosian is at the same time profound and
multifaceted.

To Armenians around the world and in Armenia alike, Petrosian
symbolized the overcoming of the struggles of a downtrodden nation, a
nation which survived Genocide, the horrors of Stalin, and global
dispersion to cheer their favorite son toward victory. For Armenians
everywhere he embodied achievement of excellence in the most
intellectual and competitive of games. The boy who was born in
Tiflis, embraced in Armenia, rose to the heights in Moscow, and loved
by his compatriots around the world. He was a unique figure in modern
Armenian history, and his relationship to Armenians around the world
was similarly distinctive. After he lost both parents before he was
16, he became the adopted son of Armenians everywhere. Though some of
his compatriots around the world had no particular understanding of
the game of chess, they would flock to his games in tournaments held
in the farthest reaches around the globe – from South America to
Europe, from the Soviet Union to the USA. Everywhere, Petrosian was
greeted with fanfare, exhilaration and cheer.

His chess style was enigmatic, misunderstood, underappreciated. He
died much too young, living life with passion and exuberance until
cancer took him away from us much too prematurely. Like any champion,
his legacy is immortal, his games are creations which will be loved
forever, and we are the lucky ones to have benefited from his genius.
For the generations of chess fans who emulate him to the millions of
Armenians who cherish his memory, we are proud and honored to offer
this tournament to all to enjoy.

Divide and rule for Putin’s dreams

THE KOREA HERALD
December 20, 2004, Monday

To divide a people in order to conquer them is an immoral strategy
that has endured throughout recorded history. From Alexander the Great
to Stalin the Cruel, variants of that strategy have been used to keep
nations in thrall to the will of an emperor. We are now seeing this
strategy at work again as President Vladimir Putin stealthily seeks
to restore Kremlin supremacy over the lands treated as “lost” when
the USSR imploded in 1991. In so overplaying his hand in Ukraine’s
recent election, however, Putin clearly revealed to the world his
neo-imperialist designs.

In the wake of the euphoric mass protests in Kyiv, Russia’s president
has since said that he can work with whatever government Ukraine’s
people choose. These are mere words, for in mind and action Putin
does not want anyone to rule Ukraine that he has not put in place. No
price is too high to achieve that end, so traditional threats about
dividing Ukraine have been used. I speak as someone who has been
on the receiving end of Russian imperialist designs. When Lithuania
and then the other Baltic States – Estonia and Latvia – which were
occupied by Stalin early in WW II, seized their opportunity for
freedom in 1990-91, the Kremlin did not sit on its hands. It knew
that the rest of Russia’s colonies – the so-called “Soviet republics”
– would want to follow the ungrateful Baltic countries into freedom.

Although Russia’s rulers were by then communists in name only,
they didn’t hesitate to reach for the old Leninist recipes. They
began to foster and incite splits and confrontations. They stoked
supposed resentments among different national or ethnic communities
based on Lenin’s idea that even small groups of villages could demand
territorial autonomy.

Note the word “territory.” The demands were never about normal
cultural autonomy as a means of continued identity and supposed
self-protection. Only territorial autonomy, it seems, would do.

This way, minorities become easily manipulated majorities. Divide
enough, stoke enough resentment, and a nation becomes nothing more
than a ruined society within a national territory. Arm some of these
manufactured minority structures so that they can demand autonomy at
the barrel of a gun, and you get the kind of chaos the Kremlin can
use to reassert its control.

Fortunately, Lithuanians – as well as Estonians and Latvians –
understood this game. It failed also in Crimea when Russia sought to
deploy its old strategy of divide and rule there in 1991. But these
defeats did not inspire the Kremlin to abandon the basic strategy. On
the contrary, Russia’s imperial ambitions persisted, and persistence
has paid off.

Around the Black Sea, Russia has called into being a series of
artificial statelets. Georgia and Moldova have both been partitioned
through the creation of criminal mini-states nurtured by the Kremlin
and which remain under its military umbrella. Indeed, in the very
week that Putin was meddling in Ukraine’s presidential election,
he was threatening to blockade one of those statelets, Georgia’s
Abkhazia region, after it had the temerity to vote for a president
the Kremlin did not like.

Moldova has been particularly helpless in the face of the Kremlin’s
imperial designs. A huge Russian garrison remains deployed in
Transdneister, where it rules in collaboration with local gangs.
Proximity to this lawless territory has helped make Moldova the poorest
land in Europe. To the east, Armenia and Azerbaijan were pushed into
such bloody confrontation at the Kremlin’s instigation that the only
way for them to end their ethnic wars was to call in the Russians –
as in Transdneister – for a kind of “Pax Ruthena.”

Now Ukraine’s people may face a similar test after supporters of
Viktor Yanukovich threatened to seek autonomy should the rightful
winner of the country’s presidential vote, Viktor Yushchenko, actually
become president. Who can doubt that the hand of Russia is behind
this? Would Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzkhov, a loyal creature of Putin,
have dared to attend the rally where autonomy was demanded without
the sanction of the Kremlin’s elected monarch? Indeed, Putin openly
claims this part of Ukraine as a Russian “internal matter.”

It is to be hoped that Ukraine’s Russian-speaking citizens, having
witnessed the economic despair – and sometimes the bloodshed – caused
by the Kremlin’s manufactured pro-autonomy movements, will realize
that they are being turned into Putin’s pawns. The test for Viktor
Yushchenko and his Orange revolutionaries, as it was for Lithuania’s
democrats in 1990-91, is to show that democracy does not mean that
the majority suppresses any minority. Lithuania passed that test;
I am confident that Viktor Yushchenko and his team will do so as well.

But Europe and the world are also being tested. Russia is passing
from being the Russian Federation of Boris Yeltsin to a unitary
authoritarian regime under Vladimir Putin and his former KGB
colleagues. Europe, America, and the wider world must see Putin’s
so-called “managed democracy” in its true light, and must stand united
against his neo-imperialist dreams. The first step is to make Russia
honor its binding commitment to the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, as well as to the Council of Europe, to remove
its troops from Moldova and Georgia. Any plans to “defend” Yanukovich
and the eastern part of Ukraine by military force must be confronted.

Vytautas Landsbergis, Lith-uania’s first president after independence
from the Soviet Union, is now a member of the European Parliament. –
Ed.

Los Angeles Times
December 19, 2004 Sunday
Home Edition

BOOK REVIEW; Features Desk; Part R; Pg. 10

First Fiction

by Mark Rozzo

The Sucker’s Kiss
Alan Parker
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s: 352 pp., $23.95

The British film director Alan Parker (“The Commitments,”
“Mississippi Burning”) tries his hand at fiction in this rollicking
tale of a San Francisco pickpocket and his picaresque journey through
early 20th century America. The cutpurse in question is Tommy Moran,
an Irish kid with a droopy left eye and magic hands able to probe
strangers’ pockets without detection. As Tommy describes his talent,
“I could slide in and out of a sucker’s purse like melted butter.”
Left a virtual orphan after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he
zigzags back and forth across the country, landing in such archetypal
settings as Rudolph Valentino’s wake, the Kentucky Derby, a Jack
Dempsey fight, Niagara Falls and Coney Island. But much of “The
Sucker’s Kiss” (the title alludes to an especially challenging
face-to-face pickpocket maneuver) reads like a mash note to San
Francisco. Parker re-creates the 1906 quake with the imagination of a
brainy school kid fascinated by the rush of history.

In subsequent years (the novel takes us up to the Depression), we
discover the city’s ethnic nooks and crannies: Tommy’s best friend is
Sammy Liu, who works in one of his uncle’s hoodoo joints in Mah Fong
Alley and grows up to be an accomplished gangster. There are the
Italian households and groceries of North Beach, teeming with
laughter, kids and fagioli beans. And then there’s Napa, where Tommy
falls for an Italian-Armenian beauty named Effie and tries to lead a
straight life amid dappled hillsides and a faltering Prohibition-era
wine industry. Can he do an honest day’s work? Is there any point,
when Wall Street fat cats are thieves too?

This is an entertaining, if overheated, allegory of American avarice.
Capitalism is pickpocketry, sleight of hand, a ripping yarn. True to
his cinematic roots, Parker juices up the message with murders, mob
activity, bootlegging, crooked priests, pornography, infidelity and
the like to make clear, as Tommy puts it, “what a screwed-up place
America had become since Prohibition.” Parker might lack his hero’s
buttery touch, but, like Tommy, he has a remarkable flair for getting
away with stuff.

Utah children go head-to-head with chess champion
by Tyler Peterson Deseret Morning News

Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City)
December 19, 2004 Sunday

Local schoolchildren and Utah Chess Association members had the chance
to match wits with the current world open chess champion this weekend
at the McGillis School in Salt Lake City.

The Mountain West Chess Association paid for grand master Varuzhan
Akobian’s visit from his home in Los Angeles to teach strategies and
play a whole lot of chess — at times without looking at the board —
and against as many as 30 people at once. The event concludes today.

“It’s like having your favorite movie star come to town and stay at
your house,” said Grant Hodson, chess association president.

“That guy is awesome,” said Jeffrey Phillips, one of the association’s
top-ranked players.

Akobian moved with his family from his homeland of Armenia to Mongolia
in 1988 when he was only 5. Since 40 below zero temperatures in
Mongolia made it hard to play outside, Akobian’s father taught him
to play chess.

“Immediately I fell in love with the game,” Akobian said.

At age 9 he played in his first rated tournament, the Armenian Junior’s
Chess Championship, and won third place in his age group. A year
later he played in his first international competition and continued
to place high in other tournaments during the 1990s. In 2002, he won
first place in the 30th World Open. Akobian’s goal is to eventually
become world champion.

In the meantime, he plays chess for about four hours every day,
works out at the gym and spends time helping others improve their game.

Ryan Gould, an 11-year-old from Tooele, was one of many who sat across
from Akobian for a five-minute match on Saturday.

“I was only down a pawn in the endgame, but I still lost. It was
really hard,” he said.

Gould said it was cool to have the “once in a lifetime” chance to
go up against someone ranked as high as Akobian, which is the kind
of reaction organizer Kevin Heath hoped to get by bringing the grand
master to town.

“I wanted to stimulate the chess atmosphere” in Utah, he said.

Heath has two more chess celebrities lined up to visit. Gregory
Kaidanov, the highest-rated player in the United States, comes to
the McGillis School Jan. 8-10. The highest-rated woman player will
hopefully visit later next year, he said.

For more information visit E-mail:
[email protected]

“ASSYRIANS HIGHLY EVALUATE EDUCATION, WHILE EZDIS AND MOLOKANS RATE WORK HIGHER”

PanArmenian News
Dec 18 2004

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “Among the representatives of the Assyrian community
education is very highly evaluated both by the pupils and their
parents, while among Ezdis and Russian Molokans education takes the
second place after children’s participation in economic activities and
devotion to traditional values,” evidence the results of the research
on education issues among representatives of national minorities,
held by Hazarashen non-governmental organization. These were presented
by Chairman of the Department for National Minority and Religious
Affairs of the Armenian Government administration H. Kharatian at the
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences
of Armenia. The research was held in 26 settlements of Armenia that
are compactly inhabited by representatives of national minorities.

The Journal News.com, NY
Dec 19 2004

At 100, man has bounty of fond memories
By BOB BAIRD
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: December 19, 2004)

With about 160 residents, birthdays come frequently at the Nyack
Manor Nursing Home in Valley Cottage.

While each is a celebration of longevity, some like one the other
afternoon for Sam Frattarelli, take on special meaning.

Frattarelli, joined by about two dozen relatives and friends and
almost 100 other residents, was celebrating his 100th birthday, which
actually comes tomorrow.

Making the event, coordinated by activities director Melly
Resurreccion, all the more special is the fact that Frattarelli was
surrounded by five other centenarians who live at Nyack Manor.

Like Frattarelli, who worked long enough to have several careers, the
other centenarians have had fulfilling lives, with careers, family
and enriching involvement in their communities.

Frattarelli, whose first name is actually Severino, was born near
Rome on Dec. 20, 1904, and came to the United States when he was 18.
He worked in construction and then for a railroad. By the time he
retired after a career with Con Edison, he and his wife, Sylvia, had
opened a diner in the Bronx and built it into a restaurant and
catering business.

Now married for 75 years, Frattarelli met Sylvia when he was a border
with her extended family. They married when she was just 15. Together
they had three children who have given them seven grandchildren, 18
great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren. Their
great-granddaughter, Bethea Davis, watched with her son, Joshua
Davis, 6, as her other son, Christopher Torres, just seven months
old, bounced on Frattarelli’s knee.

There were many family celebrations over the years at Sylvia’s, the
restaurant in the Bronx, and at the 220-acre property they owned in
upstate Livingston Manor. But in 2001, Sam moved to Nyack Manor and
Sylvia to the Pearl River home of their daughter, Margaret Ferrusi.

While a Livingston Manor resident, Frattarelli was active in local
politics, which also is a passion for Mary Grace Devlin. When I first
interviewed her in December 1999, she was 100 and still living on her
own in West Haverstraw. She said then that she believed a lack of
faith and respect was at the root of society’s problems and blamed
liberal politicians from Fiorello LaGuardia right up into the 1960s
for what she saw as New York City’s decline. Five years later,
remembering our earlier conversation, she announced, “I’m still very
political.” A bit after we spoke that first time, she lived for a
couple of years with her daughter, Jerry Reynolds of Haverstraw,
before moving to Nyack Manor.

Anthony Cavallo and Sarah Tancer both turned 100 earlier this year.
He retired a half-century ago as a driver for the New York City
Department of Sanitation. He and his wife of more than 70 years,
Rose, raised two sons, Ernie and Gerry. Together, they traveled to
Europe, Puerto Rico and Bermuda. Tancer was born and raised in
Brooklyn and lived there until a move to Florida about 30 years ago.
She lived there on her own until about two years ago, when she came
to Nyack Manor. She had two children, seven grandchildren, two
great-grandchildren and a great-great-granddaughter, Angelica
Pagnozzi of Nanuet. She was visiting along with her grandmother,
Berna Maloney of Nanuet, who drops in on Tancer two or three times a
week.

Mary Tukdarian, 103, lived in the Bronx and then New City. She raised
two sons with her husband, Haig, who had fought in World War I. He
also had been a member of the Armenian Legion of the French Foreign
Legion and at the time of his death in 1992, was believed to have
been the group’s last living member.

Alice Haagensen, 104, has spent much of her adult life studying and
writing the history of Palisades and Snedens Landing. As recently as
2002, Haagensen combined with mystery writer Dorothy Salisbury Davis
on “Historic Houses of the Palisades,” published by the Palisades
Historical Committee and the Palisades Free Library. A year earlier,
Haagensen was honored with the Margaret B. and John R. Zehner Award
for information she provided when Palisades was designated
Orangetown’s second historic district in 1967.

According to Rosita Manzano, director of nursing at Nyack Manor, part
of the Northwoods Rehabilitation and Extended Care Facilities,
longevity of residents is steadily going up and changing the nature
of nursing homes.

It’s brought more aggressive patient management, she says, with a
veteran staff responding more vigorously to any change in a
resident’s health.

Except for some hearing difficulty, Frattarelli is in good shape — a
testament to years of hard work in Livingston Manor, where he
renovated the house, barns and garage and built a greenhouse. He grew
his own vegetables and fished trout from his own pond.

Holding his great-great-grandson, Frattarelli looks like he could
live out what Margaret Ferrusi says has always been her father’s
motto: “Another 50 years.”

–Boundary_(ID_s+1B8Lc8I8GGSmC6Org3nA)–

Turkish PM basks in EU triumph
Nicolas Rothwell, Middle East correspondent

The Australian
Dec 20 2004

TURKEY’S reformist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the man behind
his country’s successful bid to stage an entry to the European club,
returned home to his capital in triumph yesterday, and basked in a
ticker-tape parade before his jubilant supporters.

Mr Erdogan, a convinced democrat at the head of an Islamic-flavoured
party, was greeted by thousands in Ankara’s central square.

Confetti filled the air, and fireworks were let off in broad daylight
as he addressed the crowds in near-freezing temperatures.

The celebrations capped a week of high tension as the Turks watched
the progress of the Brussels summit, where Ankara’s bid to secure a
date for accession talks with the European Union was almost derailed
at the last moment.

Mr Erdogan, a politician who combines pragmatism and intense emotional
commitment, seized the high ground at once on his return, committing
his Government and nation to the path of continued social reforms
and economic development.

Despite fringe protests by hard-line leftists and right-wing
nationalists, Mr Erdogan stands at the head of a united country,
and his authority, after the drama of the Brussels summit and his
high-octane performance there, stands at a new level.

“Turkey has now turned a critical corner,” Mr Erdogan proclaimed,
to rolling cheers, as his listeners waved the Turkish flag and the
European Union banner.

“Our road is open, and you should not have any doubt about it. From
now on, democracy will have a different meaning – human rights and
freedoms will be practised in a more meaningful manner, and the economy
will perform better. Turkey will take its rightful place among modern
and civilised countries.”

These heady claims, and the general atmosphere of euphoria, have
combined to make this an extraordinary time across the diverse
nation of 70 million people, stretching from the frontiers of Iran
and Armenia to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Unalloyed national exultation of this kind has not been seen in Europe
since the collapse of Eastern communism in 1989.

Mr Erdogan’s words, and his broad message of progress, repeated
constantly in recent weeks, places him firmly in the tradition of the
nation’s Westernising founder, Kemal Ataturk, whose name has been on
everybody’s lips in recent days.

Mr Erdogan himself, in his proud and controlled performance at his
first press conference after the EU decision, pointedly invoked
Ataturk, and referred to Turkey’s European trajectory as a “second
great national revolution”.

Mr Erdogan’s work, though, is only just beginning. European leaders,
still sceptical about the implications of admitting a vast, rapidly
expanding and still-developing Muslim state into their union, have
stressed it may take 15 years before full membership is possible,
and they have refused to guarantee a successful conclusion to the
Turkish negotiations.

The critical stumbling block at the summit was Ankara’s position
on Cyprus.

Turkey occupies the northern part of the island and has for decades
refused to recognise the southern Republic of Cyprus – a full EU
member since May this year.

By giving an oral pledge on Friday to expand an EU trade protocol,
Ankara provided an intent to grant technical recognition to Cyprus,
and this highly unpopular concession will have to be finessed through
parliament by the Erdogan Government before the formal talks with
Europe begin on 3 October 2005.

“Our sensitivity about the issue is beyond comparison,” Mr Erdogan
insisted, while his Foreign Minister and key lieutenant in the talks,
Abdullah Gul, stressed there would be no recognition of Cyprus until
a lasting solution to the island’s political impasse has been found.

Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish minority also remains a chief
concern of EU member states, and assuaging European doubts on this
front will be one of the main tasks of the Government in Ankara over
the years ahead.

Kurdish leaders placed advertisements in European papers last week
appealing for quasi-autonomous status for the region: a move the
Turks will not condone, given their sensitivity to the threat of
territorial carve-up and the distinct possibility a Kurdish state
may emerge across the border in the north of war-torn Iraq.

Turkey under Mr Erdogan has transformed conditions in the Kurdish
southeastern region by permitting the public use of the Kurdish
language and removing pressure on Kurdish political leaders.

Mr Erdogan also faces the difficult task of maintaining his country’s
strong, and newly revived, sense of national unity during a period
of further sharp social and economic changes. He addressed this
point obliquely yesterday in pledging that all Turks, those from the
rural far east as much as those from the busy metropolis of Istanbul,
were of equal value.

Hard days lie ahead, as even Mr Erdogan’s most ardent admirers in
Turkey’s fractious media concede: the road before the country in its
bid for full admittance to the EU is still a long one.

But the sense of delight and fulfilment is keen, after almost four
decades of slow progress towards this goal. “We succeeded,” exclaimed
the weekend edition of the leading newspaper, Hurriyet – and of that,
at least, there could be no doubt.

–Boundary_(ID_zvKrouxzFdgeQg0S0IyxwQ)–

TOLL SYSTEM ‘WILL ADD TO BURDEN’
by Bassam Za’za’ and Bassma Al Jandaly, Staff Reporters

Gulf News, United Arab Emirates
December 19, 2004

Motorists publicly denounced the proposed toll system yesterday,
saying the new fee would only add to their already rapidly rising
cost of living.

Armen Hagobian, an Armenian manager who works in the tourism industry,
said the proposed toll system was a bad idea.

“I don’t think I can pay any fils for entering or leaving Dubai. On
the contrary, I believe that I should be paid for promoting Dubai
and bringing in tourists.

“If that means any additional infrastructure, which makes my life
easier, then I would agree to pay. Otherwise, I live in Sharjah because
the rents are much more affordable and reasonable than they are Dubai.

“If the authorities install the toll system, I am ready to leave my
Dubai office and move elsewhere.”

Ayman, a salesman working in a company in Dubai, echoed the same
feelings. “I live in Ajman and work in Dubai. I have to travel to
Dubai four times a day. I cannot afford an apartment in Dubai because
the rents are high.

“So what will I do after the implementation of the toll system? How
much do I have to pay per month? Shall I travel by boat to reach work
every day?” Ayman asked.

“If they offer cheap flats in Dubai, I will be the first to live
there, but it is too expensive for low income families,” said Amir,
a Pakistani.

Haytham Al Shami, a traffic analyst, said the use of a toll tax will
reduce traffic but it should be used during peak hours only and not
on the weekends. “If it is applied in a fair way, with a fair toll,
it is a good way to reduce traffic,” he said.

“Such a toll system is adopted in London, Paris and many other European
cities,” he said.

Jad Mustafa, a 25-year-old Lebanese who works as an account executive,
disagreed.

“This toll will increase workers’ expenses by Dh250 to Dh300 a month.
This system will increase traffic congestion if motorists were required
to stop and pay.

“Many Sharjah residents will be forced to move to Dubai. Some might
even leave the country because the only reason that brought them
here is to earn a living and save. The toll system will make life
more expensive. It’s going to be a huge burden.

“In the past few years, the cost of living in the UAE has taken off
like a rocket. The daily living expenses are increasing, and our
salaries are not,” said Mustafa.

Jamal Saif, newly married UAE national and government employee,
said he is against the toll system.

“We cannot afford to pay for petrol, especially after it recently
increased. Prices of food, vegetables, beverages and clothing have
also increased.

“I cannot imagine myself paying the toll. We already pay taxes,
known as road fees, about Dh250 in Dubai and Dh150 in Sharjah, when
renewing our car registration.”

Saif lives behind Al Qasimi hospital. He spends about three to four
hours a day on the roads between Sharjah and Dubai.

“Before installing the toll system, the authorities should consult the
people. If this toll system goes ahead, it would be an unreasonable
and illogical decision.

“I believe the government should be more careful when issuing new
drivers’ licences. Selling new cars to new drivers should also be
monitored,” he said.

A merchant at one shopping complex in Dubai said the toll system
would have a negative impact on business in Dubai.

“Citizens from other emirates come to Dubai for shopping. The toll
on entering the city, no matter how little, will drive them away,”
he said.

“Before installing the toll system, the authorities should consult
the people.

If this toll system goes ahead, it would be an unreasonable and
illogical decision.”