The Jerusalem Report
February 7, 2005
DARK CONTINENT
by Paula Slier
As the world recalls Auschwitz, a museum in Rwanda looks to the
Holocaust’s themes of grief and hope
Paula Slier Kigali, Rwanda
The air is hot and sticky. Unpaved, red-earth streets wind past tiny
stone houses with corrugated-tin roofs that peep out from behind
one-room shops selling everything from raw meat to imported
chocolates. An occasional modern-looking two- or three-story building
punctuates the poverty. This is Kigali, capital of Rwanda, population
400,000.
A decade after the genocide in which close to a million people – over
a tenth of the population – were killed in a hundred days, Rwanda is
still struggling to rebuild itself. Most of the dead were members of
the Tutsi ethnic group and moderate members of the rival Hutu group;
most of the murderers were Hutus.
As the world prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation
of Auschwitz on January 27, a Jew visiting this sprawling city is
almost automatically drawn to a hilltop overlooking it, where the
Kigali Genocide Memorial serves as a reminder. Opened in April 2003,
it is situated next to mass graves in which more than a quarter of a
million victims are buried. Its pale pink walls and modern two-floor
structure are surrounded by memorial gardens where visitors are
invited to sit and reflect.
The ground floor of the museum documents the genocide and includes a
large chamber in which glass cabinets exhibit skulls, bones, clothing
remains and photographs of victims. Signs in French, English and the
local language, Kinyarwanda, cater to the hundreds of local and
foreign visitors each day. Upstairs, an exhibition entitled “Wasted
Lives” tells the story of other genocides, among them the murder of
the Hereros in Namibia in 1904, the Armenians in 1915-18, the
Cambodians in 1975-79 and most recently, Muslims and Christians in
the Balkans. Two rooms are devoted to Nazi Germany and the
extermination of the Jews, with special reference to the Treblinka
death camp, where almost the same number died as in Rwanda.
The themes of the museum resonate deeply for any Jew, including the
brutal horror of the murders, the inaction of the international
community, the need for education, reconciliation and rebuilding, the
mandate to care for survivors, the desire to honor the heroes who
saved innocent lives and, perhaps, the difficulty of dealing with the
genocide except as a nearly endless series of separate,
heart-wrenching details.
Two British brothers, Stephen and James Smith, are largely
responsible, through their organization, Aegis, the Genocide
Prevention Research Initiative, for the museum’s final configuration.
Hired by the Rwandan government to create and operate it for three
years (when it is expected to be self-sustaining and will be run by
the Kigali municipality), the Smiths were asked to base the
institution on the Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Center they created
near Nottingham in northern England. And that museum, in turn, was
inspired by the brothers’ visit 10 years ago to Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem.
In their early 20s at the time, they returned home and converted
their parents’ small non-denominational Christian conference center
in the Nottinghamshire countryside into a historical museum that
houses a permanent exhibition on the Holocaust, along with seminar
and film rooms, a library and bookshop. “We realized that the
Holocaust is not just a Jewish problem,” says younger brother James
Smith, Aegis executive director, now 35 and married to a Rwandan
genocide survivor he met while working in Rwanda. “It has
consequences for us all.”
Ironically, as the Nottingham Holocaust center was preparing to open
in 1994, the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia
highlighted the failure of the international community to either
predict or respond effectively to these new tragedies. “Our responses
to genocidal threats are characteristically reactive and too late,”
Smith notes.
Julien Apollon Kabahizi, the Aegis country manager in Rwanda, lost
four members of his immediate family and most of his extended family
in the genocide. He, too, criticizes the international community for
its inaction 10 years ago and is anguished over his country’s
difficulty in coming to terms with its past. He points out that many
of the schoolchildren coming through the museum – a large number of
them children of survivors or perpetrators – know little about the
genocide beyond what their parents have been willing to say. Although
every year, during the three months in which the genocide occurred,
media focus becomes intense, the genocide is not yet part of the
school curriculum, largely because educators are uncertain how to
present the material.
Emmanuel Mugenzira, 48, lost his entire family during the genocide.
Slightly hunched over and almost emaciated, Mugenzira stares across
the vacant school yard in the southern town of Murambi, where 50,000
people were killed. Left for dead himself by the killers, he still
has a deep bullet scar on his forehead. The government told Tutsis to
go to the schools for safety – but the government was Hutu, and
thousands of Tutsis were killed while hiding in classrooms.
“Most of the killers were my neighbors,” Mugenzira recalls. “They
burned my house, they looted everything I had. I am the only Tutsi
living in Murambi now, and I am scared. But they can’t kill me, I’m
already dead. I come here every day to look after my family.” In a
reaction that echoes that of many Holocaust survivors, particularly
right after the war, he adds, “I wish I had died with them.”
As in other genocides, there are not only victims and perpetrators
but also “righteous gentiles.” Marck Msabimana, a Hutu married to a
Tutsi and a former soldier in the Rwandan army, risked his life to
save his wife and her family. “I kept on telling Tutsis to come and
hide in my house, especially the ones who were my wife’s friends. I
hid them under the bed, in the ceiling, in the cupboard. The first
time the Hutus came looking, there were 40 people in my house. I was
very scared hiding them, especially when I found out that outside,
people were collecting money to pay someone to kill me because they
suspected me.” They had collected 26,000 Rwandan francs (about $ 50),
he recalls, but the killer wanted 30,000.
National reconciliation remains a crucial issue in Rwanda. Unlike
Jews, who could leave Europe after the Holocaust, Tutsi survivors
must live with their former killers, including neighbors and even
family members. They know that not all the Hutus regret what occurred
and that some may still dream of a world without Tutsis, as the Nazis
dreamed of a world without Jews. Except for the hope that the
brutality will not erupt again, many survivors in Rwanda would find
it difficult to go on with their lives. Msabimana says he is
convinced that another genocide could never again happen in Rwanda,
that the lessons of the past have been learned – but he offers no
reasons for his hope.
For Emmanuel Muvunyi, the 33-year-old director of the department of
education’s student financing agency, his department’s efforts to
include genocide in the required school curriculum are part of
ensuring a peaceful future for Rwanda. Fluent in English and
passionate in his speech, Muvunyi, who participated in a month-long
educational program in Israel in 2002, insists that the lessons of
the Rwandan genocide are the same as those of the Holocaust: that
racism must be fought and that the intervention of international
organizations is crucial.
But he sees important differences between the Rwandan experience and
the Holocaust. “In Rwanda, the genocide was faster and there was the
deliberate negligence of the United Nations,” he says. After World
War II, the Allied powers mounted the Nuremberg trials, but the era
of public tribunals to deal with war criminals was short, and many
murderers were never prosecuted. In Rwanda, “gacaca” (literally,
“sit-on-the-grass”) village courts are being held all around the
country to try the more than 80,000 alleged killers still in the
country’s prisons.
An estimated 2 million Hutus fled to the Democratic Republic of
Congo. While many may merely fear Tutsi reprisals should they return,
others are armed members of Hutu militias who dream of returning to
Rwanda to continue the killing.
Ezra Birinjira is a Hutu pastor who infiltrated back into the
country, after four years in a Congolese refugee camp, in a group
caught by Rwandan troops. He denies having killed anyone and insists
that he fled the country only out of fear of Tutsi revenge. “I came
back so that I could reach my home. Then I surrendered,” he says.
After his capture, he was required, as are all Hutu returnees, to
take part in a course, organized by the National Unity and
Reconciliation Commission (NURC), to learn “how to follow the rules
of the new Rwandan government and not to start segregating” Hutus
from Tutsis. Established in March 1999 by an act of parliament, the
NURC hopes that national unity and reconciliation can be developed
through social and economic projects. Among its initiatives are
programs throughout the country that bring together survivors with
perpetrators who have served time in jail.
Just under 8 million people live in Rwanda now, 90 percent of them
engaged in subsistence agriculture. A fledgling democracy with few
natural resources, landlocked and with only tea and coffee as
important exports, it is a nation that was constructed by Western
powers. Before colonization by Belgium began in 1916, Hutus and
Tutsis lived side by side in peace. But the dynamics of colonization,
with Europeans manipulating and using the tribes to entrench their
own power, created festering inequalities and jealousies that erupted
when the country’s Hutu president was killed, his plane shot down,
presumably by Tutsi conspirators, in April 1994. Within hours, Hutus
avenging his death began killing both Tutsis and moderate Hutus, who
represented political opposition.
Jews coined the phrase “Never Again!” as a refusal, after the
Holocaust, ever to submit again to the centuries of persecutions and
pogroms that had led to it. But in Rwanda the phrase is commonly used
in a more universalistic sense. For example, survivor Kabahizi, the
Aegis representative, asks, “When they said ‘Never Again!’ after the
Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?” His is
both a cry of grief for what happened to his own people and an
accusation against those who could have helped but did not.
James Smith, too, understands the phrase to refer to a commitment
undertaken long ago by the international community that genocide will
never occur again. “The genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia threw into relief the failure of the international community
to either predict or respond effectively to these unfolding
tragedies,” Smith said in a telephone interview. “We have no model to
prevent genocide,” he muses, “just principles about our
responsibility to protect.”
It is estimated that 200 million people were murdered by
state-sponsored targeting of civilians in the last century. Another
million lives are at risk today in Sudan. A hillside overlooking the
poverty-stricken city of Kilgari holds the most recent testimony to
both human ferociousness and human hope.
SIDEBAR
Making the Choice to Heal
Tali Nates’s father was a Schindler survivor; her mother fled Warsaw
in the early 1930s. From childhood, says the Tel Aviv-born mother of
two, she felt a calling to pursue a profession that taught the
consequences of intolerance. Now 43 and living in South Africa, where
she lectures and facilitates anti-prejudice and human-rights
workshops, Nates, blue eyes flashing as she speaks and one hand
continuously flicking back curls of reddish-orange hair that keep
falling into her face, remains passionate about the mission she set
for herself long ago.
“I felt a connection between the genocide in Rwanda and the
Holocaust,” she says. “I hoped that by exploring and understanding
man’s immense cruelty to his neighbors, I would perhaps find the key
to educating future generations not to harm one another.” For seven
years she headed the education department at the privately funded
Foundation for Tolerance Education in Johannesburg, a project that
used the experiences of apartheid, the Holocaust and the Rwandan
genocide to teach universal lessons of tolerance, acceptance and
human rights. She has trained hundreds of teachers and thousands of
students in South Africa and now assists with teacher-training
programs in Rwanda; she expects to run seminars this year for the
Rwandan Ministry of Education and the Kigali Memorial Center.
“Rwanda was a Holocaust,” she says. “It was a Holocaust in Africa, in
a place the world didn’t know or care about. It happened to people
who were different and ‘less important’ than ‘us.’ For me, the
Ntarama church (where some 4,000 Tutsis were murdered with grenades
and machetes) felt like Auschwitz. But do we need to compare the two
genocides? They both ended in the silence of millions who could still
have been with us. And after every genocide the world says, ‘Never
Again!’ Until the next time, that is.”
Nates moved to South Africa in 1985 to marry a South African she met
while he was visiting Israel. In 1994, when the genocide was
happening in Rwanda, she recalls watching it “helplessly” on the news
in suburban comfort. “When I lectured about the Holocaust to
students, I always devoted a few lessons to the world’s reaction – to
how little was done. And here I was, living in a world that was doing
nothing about another mass murder. I felt that I betrayed my
grandmother and aunts who were murdered in Belzec if I stayed
silent.” At the Foundation for Tolerance Education in 1998, she
decided to create a “tolerance program” about Rwanda. Rwandan
survivors and refugees in South Africa helped her put together a
program “about people’s choices – the perpetrators, bystanders,
victims and rescuers – and the consequences of those choices,” she
explains.
Last year, she visited Rwanda at last. “I am alive because another
man in another time made a choice and rescued my father. This was a
different country, a different time, different circumstances – but so
many things were familiar and similar. Holding hands with one of the
survivors who lost all her family in the genocide, I felt we were
sisters.”
P.S.

Agence France Presse — English
February 6, 2005
Iran denies responsibility for Georgian PM’s death

TEHRAN
Iran moved Sunday to deny any role or responsibility in the death of
Georgian prime minister Zurab Zhvania, killed by carbon monoxide
fumes from a heater made in the Islamic republic.
“Many such heaters were exported to Georgia, and many are being used
in Iran.
But nobody has ever died,” insisted foreign ministry spokesman Hamid
Reza Asefi. He said reports on the circumstances of the death
“indicate a faulty installation”.
“Of course we feel sorry over the death of the Georgian prime
minister, and we have sent a message of condolence,” Asefi said. “It
was a sad accident. We have good relations with Georgia and we were
truly saddened.”
The 41-year-old prime minister, who was due to be buried later
Sunday, was found by his bodyguards slumped over a table in an
apartment on the outskirts of Tbilisi early Thursday — sending shock
waves through the former Soviet republic.
He appeared to have succumbed to carbon monoxide fumes from an
inadequately ventilated room heater — manufactured by the Nik-Kala
heater factory in Karaj, a satellite city of Tehran.
Also denying any responsibility was Ali Soleimani, Nik-Kala’s
managing director.
“Not only the Georgians but most residents of the new republics do
not have the culture of using gas heaters,” Soleimani told the Shargh
newspaper.
“The Georgian and Russian officials are the ones to blame. We have
published manuals in Armenian and Russian giving the right
instructions. We have emphasized that the heaters are to be installed
by our representatives in those countries.”

ANSA Notiziario Generale in Italiano
February 6, 2005
GENOCIDIO ARMENI: FRANCIA, MINISTRO INDUSTRIA CONTRO ERDOGAN
PARIGI
(ANSA) – PARIGI, 6 FEB – Gli interlocutori turchi della
missione parlamentare francese guidata dal presidente
dell’assemblea nazionale Jean-Louis Debre che si e’ recata ad
Ankara ed Istanbul si sono mostrati delusi o meravigliati dalla
resistenza al progetto di adesione turca all’Unione europea,
soprattutto a causa del mancato riconoscimento da parte della
Turchia del genocidio degli armeni del 1915.

Ma il ministro dell’industria francese Patrick Devedjian si
e detto a sua volta scioccato dal fatto che il primo ministro
turco Recep Tayyip Erdogan non sapesse che in Francia “400 mila
armeni potevano far saltare il referendum” sull’adesione della
Turchia all’Unione europea. “Sono rimasto molto sorpreso – ha
detto il ministro – della brutalita’ della risposta del primo
ministro turco. Sono shockato perche in un certo modo sembrava
esprimere il rammarico che ci fossero ancora 400 mila armeni
sopravissuti in Francia”.

Devedjian ritiene che Erdogan non sembra “aver capito che,
ad esempio, l’Olocausto non indigna solo gli ebrei ma tutti i
democratici” mentre “dovrebbe capire che l’Europa si e
ricostruita sulla base della riconciliazione dei popoli”. Da
questo punto di vista “Erdogan ha ancora delle cose da
imparare”. Il parlamento francese ha riconosciuto nel 2001 che
quella contro gli armeni e’ stata una forma di genocidio.
(ANSA).

Stuff.co.nz, New Zealand
Feb 6 2005
Cher bliss in NZ

It may be her farewell tour, but Cher is going out with a bang, not a
whimper, writes Michelle Hurley.
She’s the queen of camp glamour who longs for a spell on a ranch. An
unabashed narcissist who has melded five decades of stardom with a
lifelong commitment to left-wing politics. A woman who has reinvented
herself more often – and more successfully – than Madonna. She’s Cher
– inimitable, trashy and more durable than a Toyota Hilux – and she’s
coming here.
It will be Cher’s first – and final – performance in New Zealand and
her concerts in Auckland and Christchurch this month promise to be
wildly over-the-top, with myriad costume changes and special effects,
a sequined cross between Liberace and Cirque du Soleil. And, aside
from a tricky moment where Cher scales down a chandelier in the
middle of belting out her dance anthem “Believe”, she promises no
lip-synching. “It’s absolutely 100% the full show,” she says from her
ocean-view Mediterranean renaissance mansion in Malibu.
The two New Zealand shows are at the tail end of what is billed “The
Farewell Tour”. Cher then heads to Australia before returning to the
US for the tour’s final – and 325th – performance at the Hollywood
Bowl in Los Angeles on April 30. So after three years, more than 3000
costume changes and playing in front of more than 3 million devotees,
it’s finally about to end.
“I’ve had a great time doing it, babe,” she says in her soporific
slow drawl. “I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t enjoyed it.” It’s
helped by the tour having “a real family atmosphere, nobody complains
and everybody gets along”, with much of the crew having worked for
her for years.
It’s been five decades in the spotlight for the daughter of a
French-Cherokee mother and Armenian father, born Cherilyn Sarkasian
La Pierre in 1946. She first came to our attention in the 1960s and
’70s via her hit songs and The Sonny and Cher Show, the TV show in
which she starred with then-husband Sonny Bono before spending much
of the ’80s being famous largely for her Bob Mackie-designed Oscar
gowns in which she most closely resembled a black and white peacock
(this was in the decade before the stars hired stylists, although
Cher still delights in giving the Academy a non-verbal f-k you in her
choice of attire). About this time she also earned her stripes as a
serious actress, appearing in Silkwood, The Witches of Eastwick, Mask
and the one for which she got the Oscar nod: Moonstruck.
And of course, there was her return to the top of the pop charts with
the nuclear-powered dance track “If I Could Turn Back Time”, helped
along by the video to accompany the song, where she flaunted her
rock-hard bod to thousands of ecstatic sailors on a US Navy
battleship.
It’s this indifference to being cool or tasteful, along with a
propensity to speak her mind, that has won her so many fans, but when
asked how much of her success is down to doing whatever the hell she
wants, she gives a perversely modest answer.
“You know, I think it’s mostly to do with luck. It’s some sort of
timing. I know people a lot more talented than I am that just never
really made it,” she says before laughing. “And I know people a lot
less talented that have made it to everyone’s genuine surprise.”
Luck, timing – and a formidable work ethic. By the time she wraps up
this tour, Cher will have spent close to three years on the road; an
insane amount of time to spend touring but one she justifies by it
being her last world tour. “I think you get to the point of
diminishing returns and this show is really good, so I wouldn’t want
to come back and not be as good as the last time. It’s hard, but you
make a commitment to it and just do it.”
At least the touring takes her mind off the fact that George W Bush
is still in the Oval Office, despite Cher’s best efforts to help oust
him. She spent weeks campaigning for John Kerry, in what was often a
hostile political climate for celebrities who hitched their wagon to
the Democrats. “I was terrified to speak out, but then I just thought
I have to do it, I have to speak my mind.”
When she found herself on the receiving end of derisory comments from
radio shock-jocks, she put the boot on the other foot and told them:
“Yes, I’m getting on this programme because I’m me, but just because
I’m a celebrity doesn’t mean I don’t get to have my basic American
rights to speak my opinion.”
And if George gets too much, there is always New Zealand to escape
to. Yes, Cher has seen The Lord of the Rings, and as a result, thinks
New Zealand is “the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen”, even if it
was digitally enhanced. While here, she is on the hunt for “a little
piece of property”, preferably by the ocean. “Though don’t worry, I’m
not planning on asking for a lot of land, just a tiny little bit. I
think it seems a bit over the top to come in and buy a gigantic piece
of property in somebody else’s country.”
And when the tour finally finishes, what’s next in the life of the
galactic superstar? “The only thing I know I’m going to do when the
tour finishes is I’m going to go work on a cattle ranch for a while.”
Er, why?
“It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.”
For it seems the plastic-fantastic, super-groomed one has another,
earthier side. “When I was young, I ran everywhere, I climbed the
highest trees, I played baseball and football – I was a real tomboy.”
Even now, she says, she’s clad in old sweat pants, ugg boots and
T-shirt, with no make-up and her hair in a ponytail. “I like it.”
So will we see tomboy Cher on show? “Oh no,” she laughs. “I still
enjoy glamming myself up for my shows, it wouldn’t be any fun for me
if I just came out in a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt.”
And don’t the fans expect it anyway?
“I think they do, and they won’t be disappointed.”
Cher plays North Harbour Stadium, Auckland, on Sunday February 20 and
Westpac Stadium, Christchurch on Tuesday February 22. Tickets
available from Ticketek.

MehrNews.com, Iran
Feb 6 2005
Iran, Nigeria cooperation on electricity will be finalized soon
TEHRAN, Feb. 6 – Iran and Nigeria’s agreement to overhaul Nigerian
electricity installations will be finalized within the next two
months, noted managing director of SANIR Inc.
`According to the agreement, Iran will overhaul a hydropower plant,
high voltage electricity posts and some other electricity
installations in that country’, Iran’s Petroenergy Information
Network (PIN) quoted Alireza Kadkhodaii as saying on Sunday.
He noted that, the 50-million euro contract will be finalized within
the next two coming months.
Elsewhere in his comments, Kadkhodaii said that Iran’s foreign
projects amounted to over one billion dollars however, he added that
contracts valued at 500 million dollars that are in the process of
finalization, should be added to the amount.
He also explained that Iran is currently cooperating with
Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Nigeria and Syria on
electricity projects in those countries.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azad Hye, United Arab Emirates
Feb 3 2005
Iraqi Armenians: Learning democracy the hard way
AZAD-HYE (3 February 2005): Last Sunday was a day of hope for Iraq.
Unexpected number of Iraqi marched to cast their votes in the first
ever democratic election in a country that has a history of many
thousand years (just like Armenia). The voters ignored the fact that
balloting stations were declared as attacking targets by insurgents.
Iraqis broke the barrier of fear, which for decades kept them away
from politics. The news of successful Iraqi elections spread all
around the world and mainly to the Arab societies. It is an irony
that the only two free elections in the Arab World were conducted in
places where occupation troops exist: Palestine and Iraq. Some will
wonder if Arabs are really capable of achieving democracy without
foreign intervention. Yet there is another question far more
intriguing: Will the voting process in Iraq stir democratic changes
in the Arab World and in neighboring Iran?
ARMENIAN REALITY IN IRAQ:
Although it is difficult to live in a country where basic security
needs are not fulfilled and the number of minority groups is
dwindling (only in recent ten years, half a million Christians have
migrated from Iraq, reducing their overall figure to less than 700
thousand), still it is worth to learn something from the democratic
process of Sunday’s elections.
To see how far the Iraqi Armenians can be from democratic practices,
we will narrate the story of Father Ararad, which took place last
year.
“To Defrock or not to Defrock?”
To defrock a priest is to deprive him of the right to exercise the
functions of the priestly office. Various religions have different
procedures for doing this. But what is the procedure in our Church?
On 12th January 2004 the following Press Release was issued by the
`Information Services of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin’:
“His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All
Armenians, issued a Pontifical Order whereby Rev. Fr. Ararat
Hovsepian from the Armenian Diocese of Iraq, has been defrocked. From
this time forward, he shall be called by his baptismal name of Norayr
Hovsepian, and be recognized as a member of the laity. The order
issued on January 9, is based upon information and petitions provided
by the Primate and the National Central Committee of the Diocese,
that the priest has exhibited demeanour and conduct unbecoming of a
clergyman”.
This Pontifical Order does not explain what exactly Rev. Fr. Ararat
Hovsepian did to deserve being defrocked. “Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary” explains “unbecoming” as “not suiting a particular
person” or “not appropriate or acceptable”. The Press Release
mentions that the Order “is based upon information and petitions
provided by the Primate and the National Central Committee of the
Diocese”. It is interesting to know what kind of investigation has
been carried on to verify the source of this information and whether
it was conducted in professional manner.
Father Ararat (about 38 years old), a graduate of Babel Theological
Faculty in Baghdad (seminar for Christian theological education in
Iraq), aspired, after decades of stagnation, to introduce a new wave
of thinking in the Armenian reality in Baghdad, Believing that the
time has come for some change, he started to print a newsletter,
where he expressed his views about how to improve the community life
and how to introduce new measures of accountability, especially in
the financial field. He also preached openness in discussing vital
issues concerning the youth.

Armenian paper questions motives for Russian minister’s Azeri visit
Hayots Ashkarh, Yerevan
4 Feb 05
By Vardan Grigoryan
Over the past few days the Azerbaijani press and the press sponsored
by the Armenian Pan-National Movement, which often carries quotes from
Azerbaijani press articles, are trying to present Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Baku as a sign of changes in the
Russian position on the Karabakh issue.
Certainly the current attempt to look for “a skeleton in the cupboard”
in Armenian-Russian relations is not the first one. It is also obvious
that the hullabaloo was created by certain forces who want to force
Russia leave the region. They are trying to present the Russian
foreign minister’s visit to Baku and Ilham Aliyev’s statements that
there were no unresolved problems in relations between the two
countries as a sign of Russia’s changed position on the Karabakh issue
in favour of Azerbaijan.
The political reasons for the attempts to create problems in
Armenian-Russian relations are clear, let us try to understand the
other side of the problem: why is our strategic partner Russia
becoming increasingly interested in Azerbaijan, and together with Iran
is attempting to please it?
The problem is that some people, who are trying to look for and find
in Russian foreign policy changes directed against Armenian interests,
do not want to notice another important fact. After losing Ukraine and
as a result finding its opportunities for moving towards the West
limited, the southern direction has automatically become a priority
for Russia in the context of the policy being implemented in the whole
of Eurasia. And this has led to Russian diplomacy increasing its
efforts in the direction of interaction with Iran, the Arab world,
Turkey and other southern neighbours. Azerbaijan is in this direction,
via which Russia is trying to establish railway connections with Iran
for access to the Persian Gulf. Thus, changes are really taking place
in the foreign policy of Russia, but not in the direction expected by
those forces which are interested in withdrawing Russia from our
region, and those mass media outlets of our country that are carrying
such reports.
Russia is not losing interest in our region, on the contrary the South
Caucasus will increasingly become the focus of its attention. Under
the circumstances Russia’s attempts to build highways and
communication links towards the south will result in further efforts
together with Iran to remove Azerbaijan from the strategic programmes
of the West and increase pressure on Georgia sharply. But Armenia
will continue to remain a stable basis for Russia’s attempts to extend
its sphere of influence in the South Caucasus.
A situation has now been created whereby a quick settlement of the
Karabakh issue is becoming a mechanism for counteracting Russia’s
aspiration to the South Caucasus. Therefore it’s no accident that the
Karabakh issue will be on the agenda of the upcoming Bush-Putin
meeting in Bratislava. Under the circumstances Russia would naturally
try to remove the pressure by trying to please Azerbaijan as much as
possible on the one hand, and on the other hand by demonstrating its
impartial position on the Karabakh issue.
The question is: does this mean that Russia may support Azerbaijan and
put pressure on Armenia to achieve a quick settlement of the Karabakh
issue. To think seriously about this, means that Russia wants to cut
the “branch” which is its backbone. Because in a real policy the
existence of the status quo around Karabakh is the only “backbone”
which “preserves” the southern direction of the Russian policy.

Sofia News Agency, Bulgaria
Feb 6 2005
Varna Struggles to Return to Normal Life
Politics: 6 February 2005, Sunday.
After three days tightly embraced by blizzards, stormy winds and
freezing temperatures, the residents of “sea capital” Varna started
to return slowly to normal life with streets now cleaned up and food
supplies renewed.
Upon the initiative of local governor, six Orthodox churches, the
Armenian church and the mosque of the city opened doors to start a
campaign of handing out food supplies.
Schools of Varna will remain closed until next Monday, Mayor Kiril
Yordanov announced, but kindergartens will continue working as to
date.
Varna has been one of nine districts of Eastern Bulgaria to declare a
state of emergency after two-meter snowcover and hurricane winds made
any traffic in the region impossible.
All transport and track facilities, supported by the army, have
struggled since Thursday to clean up snow drifts and reach remote
areas, some of which have been left without electricity and running
water for two days.
Hundreds of automobiles, buses and trucks have stuck in the snow
drifts. Emergency management operations are continuing to provide
people with victuals, as well as with medical and transport aid.
The ports of Varna started receiving cargo ships only and unloading
them and the city airport also relaunched operation on Saturday.
In this grave situation temperatures dropped down to minus 20 degrees
in some north-west regions, while the country’s roads remain icy and
dangerous for driving.

Reuters.uk, UK
Feb 6 2005
Brown pledges international debt relief
Sun Feb 6, 2005 1:42 PM GMT

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will provide immediate debt relief for 19
of the world’s poorest countries in a move that will cost 26.5
million this year.
Chancellor Gordon Brown’s pledge came after the Group of Seven rich
nations agreed at the weekend that they are willing to provide up to
100 percent debt relief owed by impoverished countries to the
international institutions.
“The 100 per cent debt summit this year has started with one major
breakthrough: a victory in the fight to make today’s poverty
history,” Brown wrote in a letter to the organisers of the Make
Poverty History campaign, released by the Treasury on Sunday.
Currently, about 80 percent of the debt faced by the poorest
countries is owed to organisations like the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank.
While proposals on how to write off IMF debt will be brought forward
in April, Brown wants the richest donor countries to take over a
proportionate share of the debt and has taken the lead on this by
agreeing to underwrite 10 percent of the total.
On his recent visit to Africa, Brown signed agreements with Tanzania
and Mozambique to take over 10 percent of their debt to the World
Bank and African Development Bank, and said that the same offer was
potentially available to the world’s 70 poorest countries provided
they met the conditions for relief.
Similar agreements have now been reached with 17 more poor countries:
Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritania,
Niger, Senegal, Uganda, Bolivia, Guyana, Nicaragua, Armenia,
Mongolia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

New York Times
Feb 6 2005
One Singer Offers Another’s Writing
ANNE MIDGETTE
Viardot-Garcia: Songs
Isabel Bayrakdarian, soprano; Serouj Kradjian, pianist. Analekta AN 2
9903; CD.
THIS recording links two singers who are increasingly in the
spotlight. One is Isabel Bayrakdarian, a striking Canadian-Armenian
soprano. The other is Pauline Viardot-Garcia, who was recently the
focus of an evening at the New York Festival of Song and an opera
performance at Caramoor.
The main difference is that Viardot-Garcia has been dead for almost
95 years. She was also, however, a composer; her songs are
delightful, and Ms. Bayrakdarian does them vivacious justice.
Viardot-Garcia kept her compositional aspirations relatively modest,
but she performed her songs herself, often, both on tour and after
her retirement at 42. She continued to write music for her salons
until she was into her 80’s.
Her songs form a bright bouquet in an array of languages (French,
German and Italian) and styles. This CD includes four of her
arrangements of mazurkas by Chopin – “Seize Ans,” for instance, is
based on the Mazurka in A flat (Op. 50, No. 2) – approved by Chopin
himself. He was one of a circle of close friends that included pretty
much all the major musical figures of Europe in Viardot-Garcia’s very
long day, from Liszt (who taught her piano) to Massenet.
Ms. Bayrakdarian is a fine interpreter of this music. Her voice has a
brilliance and a lightness that don’t prevent it from descending to
darker nether regions (in “Die Sterne”) or swelling to near-operatic
fortes (in “Grands Oiseaux Blancs”). She genuinely engages with what
she is singing, and there is a hint of a laugh in her voice that
lifts the music with an infectious lilt.
“Chanson de la Pluie,” with its pitter-pattering raindrop
accompaniment, is a nice measure of her brightness, of Serouj
Kradjian’s agility at the piano and of the generally appealing nature
of the disc.
ANNE MIDGETTE
Alessandro Scarlatti: ‘Griselda’
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, conducted by René Jacobs. Harmonia
Mundi France HMC 901805.07; three CD’s.
THE conductor René Jacobs has played a notable role in the Handel
opera boom. But the fixation on Handel, he is out to show, has
obscured other worthy Baroque opera composers, notably Alessandro
Scarlatti.
Mr. Jacobs’s latest recording from Harmonia Mundi France is an
account of Scarlatti’s impressive final opera, “Griselda,” first
performed in Rome in 1721. Scarlatti wrote a staggering number of
operas: more than 100.
Most are unknown, and many are no doubt standard fare. But “Griselda”
was a special case, a semiprivate commission for a major theater in
Rome. Scarlatti thought of it as a summation, Mr. Jacobs suggests in
booklet notes, a chance to fulfill his highest aims.
The story concerns King Gualtiero of Sicily, who has married a
shepherdess, Griselda. His subjects, affronted that he has made a
commoner their queen, demand that he renounce her.
The complicated plot turns on the king’s effort to prove Griselda’s
noble character by subjecting her to a series of feigned rejections
and insults. She proves steadfast and wins the admiration of the
Sicilian people, and all ends happily.
The opera runs some three hours, and almost every moment offers rich
pleasures: lyrically enchanting arias in which virtuosic flights
never seem extraneous displays; elaborate and surely paced
recitatives; elegant ensembles; savvy instrumental writing.
The top-notch cast is headed by the rich-voiced soprano Dorothea
Röschmann, in the title role, and the fine young countertenor
Lawrence Zazzo, as Gualtiero. The excellent tenor Kobie van Rensburg,
who made an impressive Metropolitan Opera debut this season in
Handel’s “Rodelinda,” sings Prince Corrado, the king’s friend.
Conducting the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Mr. Jacobs elicits a
performance at once stylistically informed and wonderfully
spontaneous.
ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Mahler: Orchestral Song Cycles
Violeta Urmana, soprano; Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano; Thomas
Quasthoff, bass-baritone; Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Pierre
Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon B0003894-02; CD.
IS one excellent album more treasurable than half a great one?
This is an excellent album. In comparison with their performances on
a Mahler recording of 1999 – “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” also on
Deutsche Grammophon – Thomas Quasthoff is expectedly strong in
“Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen” (“Songs of a Wayfarer”) and Anne
Sofie von Otter gratifyingly so in “Kindertotenlieder” (“Songs on the
Death of Children”).
Ms. von Otter, a superb mezzo-soprano, sounded disappointingly wan in
that earlier recording, perhaps because of vocal problems she was
having around the time. But Mr. Quasthoff, at his rough-hewn best in
some of Mahler’s earthiest music, was a force of nature. And the
Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado, drove the
earthiness home.
Mr. Quasthoff’s approach is slightly more refined here, in keeping
with the nature of the music, but he lacks nothing in expressiveness
and sheer beauty of tone. Ms. von Otter brings the needed poignancy,
anguish and consolation to the role of a bereft mother.
Violetta Urmana shows the power needed to stand up to Mahler’s
orchestra in the Rückert Songs. And though she undercuts some of the
more restful and luminous moments with an intense vibrato, she can
spin a sweet and lovely pianissimo.
The disc is only enhanced by the vibrant playing of the Vienna
Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon’s recording
gives full and accurate voice to those colorful and piquant, if not
gamy, Viennese woodwinds.
There is every reason to buy this record. All it lacks is the bolt of
revelation that comes with the sense that a work has found its ideal
interpreter. For that you should return to Mr. Quasthoff in “Des
Knaben Wunderhorn.”
JAMES R. OESTREICH