U.N. food program to halt food aid for Azeri refugees displaced by war with Armenia
By AIDA SULTANOVA
The Associated Press
12/15/04 15:09 EST
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – The World Food Program said Wednesday that
it will halt food aid to nearly 140,000 Azeri refugees displaced by
the 1990s conflict with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
enclave by January if the U.N. agency does not receive more assistance.
WFP country director Rahman Chowdhury said the agency had halved
rations for refugees last month in an effort to stretch food
stocks. The WFP faces a US$10 million (euro7.5 million) shortfall
this year, he said, in part due to higher retail prices and rising
gasoline and natural gas prices.
He said only the food aid for 5,300 primary children would continue,
though on a limited basis.
“Most of the displaced are so poor they don’t have the means to buy
food,” Chowdhury said in a statement. “It’s a dreadful situation,
especially in the winter.”
Refugee rights activists said the decision was horrible. Vugar Gadirov,
who heads an Azeri organization looking after the needs of refugees,
said the WFP decision would be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
“Ending the aid is a harsh blow for these people, many of whom live
in the very worst conditions in tent camps, camps that don’t have
any amenities for living,” Gadirov said.
Government officials declined to comment on the WFP decision.
Most of the displaced live in western regions of Azerbaijan, not far
from Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, which ethnic Armenian forces seized
after several years of war in the early 1990s.
A cease-fire was signed in 1994, after 30,000 people were killed and
about 1 million were left homeless.
No agreement has been reached on the territory’s final status, and
the two countries have tense relations.

Armenia agrees to international monitoring in occupied lands – Azeri minister
Bilik Dunyasi news agency
16 Dec 04
Baku, 16 December: Armenia has given a green light to international
OSCE monitoring in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to find out
whether Yerevan is illegally settling those lands. The Armenian side
announced its agreement during the meeting of the foreign ministers of
the two conflicting countries in Sofia and Brussels in early December,
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has told journalists.
“The main issue now is to define the format of this mission and name
the date for its dispatch. We want it to happen as soon as possible,”
he said.
The minister said that it is reasonable to include the OSCE Minsk
Group co-chairmen, who are directly involved in the settlement of
the Karabakh conflict, in the monitoring mission. He also called on
Armenia to take a constructive position in the negotiating process.
“On the one hand, we are negotiating, but on the other, Armenia is
building illegal settlements in the occupied lands [of Azerbaijan]. One
cannot talk about serious negotiations in this case,” he said.
Mammadyarov welcomed the agreement with Armenia to continue the
negotiating process on the basis of the previous meetings in Prague. He
also said that specific directions of the further negotiations to solve
the Nagornyy Karabakh problem could be defined by the end of this year.
The minister called on the Minsk Group co-chairmen to be more active
in bringing the conflicting parties closer together.

Azerbaijan regrets being left out of major US aid programme – official
Ekspress, Baku
16 Dec 04
Text of Alakbar Raufoglu report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekspress on
16 December headlined “Why is Azerbaijan getting so little from the
‘American pie'” and subheaded “Baku hopes that the USA will include
Azerbaijan in the Millennium Challenge programme some day”
Baku regrets that Azerbaijan has not been included in the Millennium
Challenge programme, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud
Mammadquliyev said at a briefing yesterday.
“Regrettably, some Western pundits reckon that Azerbaijan still does
not meet some criteria for this. We have informed the USA of our view
in this regard,” the deputy minister said.
America plans to allocate assistance worth 90m dollars to Georgia
and 150m to Armenia under the Millennium Challenge Account. The Baku
government believes that Azerbaijan’s cooperation with the USA in
counterterrorism and other areas should have been considered when the
eligibility of countries was decided. “But regrettably, the main
focus was on human rights and the economy. We do not believe that
in these areas Azerbaijan is lagging behind Georgia and Armenia,”
Mammadquliyev said. “We are working on this evidence and will try to
become eligible for the programme in the future.”
Washington’s latest decision regarding military aid offered to Armenia
and Azerbaijan in 2005 has also caused concern in Baku. The document
endorsed by the US president envisages the allocation of equal sums
to Armenia and Azerbaijan, and allocates 3m dollars to Nagornyy
Karabakh. “America believes that this is humanitarian aid. However,
such a position seriously concerns us and we will try to prevent that,”
Mammadquliyev said.
The Foreign Ministry’s investigation into whether US companies invest
in Nagornyy Karabakh is nearing completion. Most of those companies
have been set up by the Armenian diaspora, Mammadquliyev said. “This
is the product of Armenian money and Armenian businessmen. But it
may be that their organization has been registered somewhere. We are
taking appropriate measures.”
Touching on Washington’s equal military assistance to Armenia and
Azerbaijan, the US ambassador to Azerbaijan, Reno Harnish, told
Ekspress newspaper the following: “Under the US Constitution, the
Congress plays the main role in taking such decisions. But foreign
assistance is only part of the aid rendered for security and fighting
global terrorism. We have a number of important projects related to
Azerbaijan. For instance, there is a US-Azerbaijan programme on the
protection of maritime borders and it has not been included in that
assistance. We also have an additional assistance programme related
to the training of peacekeeping forces.”

Azeri foreign minister, Belarusian minister note “successful” military ties
MPA news agency
16 Dec 04
Baku, 16 December: “Cooperation between Azerbaijan and Belarus
is developing successfully,” Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov has told the visiting Belarusian defence minister, Leanid
Maltsaw, at a meeting in Baku. Mammadyarov expressed the hope that
bilateral cooperation would expand after the opening of the Azerbaijani
embassy in Minsk.
Touching upon the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, Mammadyarov said that
the conflict will be resolved within the framework of Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity in accordance with international norms.
Minister Maltsaw pointed out the importance of using all the
opportunities for expanding bilateral relations. The fact that
Azerbaijan and Belarus are cooperating successfully in the military
sphere is also a sign of the development of bilateral relations in
the political and economic spheres, he said.
[Passage omitted: background of visit and known details]
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

REVIEWS: CLASSICAL – Andromeda Liberata Barbican London
The Independent – United Kingdom
Dec 16, 2004
Roderic Dunnett
FANS OF Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and The Four Seasons are waking up to the
fact that he was as prolific a composer of operas as Handel. In this,
they’re not far behind the performers: European ensembles – perhaps
judiciously – have been equally slow to reacquaint themselves with
the Venetian’s operas.
Still, 18th-century scholars – HC Robbins Landon and Jonathan
Keates among them – have always realised the potential riches to be
unearthed, as have the Italians since the composer Gian Francesco
Malipiero restored Vivaldi and other Italian Baroque masters in
the 1920s. But recently the sizzling Savaria Baroque Ensemble from
Hungary only produced a lacklustre revival of Vivaldi’s Il Tigrane
(Armenian shenanigans from Nero’s time) at St James’s in Piccadilly.
Andrea Marcon’s Venice Baroque Orchestra, which brought Vivaldi’s
Andromeda Liberata (whose authorship is partly disputed) to the
Barbican, is as deft if not as refined a group but here managed a much
better orchestral showing. There was much to admire in the searing
strings, the desirable lute playing and some fine oboes and horns. The
punters clearly adored it, and thronged to pay pounds 22 for the CD.
You’d think it was Handel. It wasn’t. Ultimately, Venice Baroque’s
over- forceful display proved scarcely better than the (that day)
subfusc Hungarians. Why? Because Marcon thundered through most of it
like a bull in a china shop. Would Vivaldi really have wanted Czech
soprano Katerina Beranova to roar the words “A mother in anguish,
I sighed”? Or as wonderful a Yugoslav mezzo as Marijana Mijanovic
to deliver “Ruscelletti limpidetti” – “Murmuring streamlets” – like
Niagara Falls in spate?
Any fault must lie with the Swiss-trained conductor, whose delivery
lacks the finesse he brings to scholarship and ensemble-coordinating:
Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic overcame Perseus’s initial
Romanesque stolidity to shine in “Sovvente il sole”; Beranova thundered
admirably in her own genuinely fiery arias; and Enrico Onofri brought
his apt Italian tenor to Daliso’s cheerful “Cupid’s dart” ditty.
The evening’s only revelation was the recently unchained Andromeda,
the Leipzig-trained Simone Kermes. Here at last was the loveliness,
the sensitivity, the rage and some gorgeous high notes in “Un occhio
amabile”, “Mi piace e mi diletta” and “Che e fenice”, which highlights
the opera’s links to Venice.
Lastly, the lavatories. The Barbican started the rot, and now the
new Covent Garden and – worse still – the new ENO offer only warm
water in their washrooms. “It has something to do with the way they’re
plumbed,” ventured Sir John Tusa, the Barbican’s general director, when
taxed with the question over the bar. Talk about a tepid truism. One
expects greater consideration for ticket-buying punters from our
finest artistic institutions. Replumb, please, all three.

Belarus, Azerbaijan sign military cooperation agreement
Belapan news agency
16 Dec 04
Minsk, 16 December: An intergovernmental agreement between Belarus
and Azerbaijan on military and military-technical cooperation was
signed in Baku on 15 December in the course of a two-day visit to that
country by a Belarusian military delegation led by Defence Minister
Col-Gen Leanid Maltsaw, foreign news agencies reported.
The document was signed by Maltsaw and Azeri Defence Minister Col-Gen
Safar Abiyev.
[Passage omitted: Abiyev briefed Maltsaw on Azerbaijan’s stance on
the conflict with Armenia.]
The Belarusian defence minister said that Belarus is ready for
cooperation with Azerbaijan in all areas, including the defence
sector, based on the two countries’ mutual interests. Speaking about
the settlement of the Armenian-Azeri conflict in Nagornyy Karabakh,
Maltsaw said that his country stands for the settlement of this
problem on the basis of international law.
[Passage omitted: Maltsaw had talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev see report by Turan news agency, Baku, in Russian 1719 gmt 15
Dec 04.]
The reaction of Armenia – Belarus’s partner in the Collective Security
Treaty Organization – to the stepping-up of Belarusian-Azerbaijani
contacts in the defence sector is not yet known.

Police in Slovakia break up gang of immigrant smugglers
The Associated Press
12/16/04 07:27 EST
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) – Railway police in Slovakia broke up a
gang of people smugglers who helped illegal migrants get into Austria,
officials said Thursday.
The 15-member gang was made up of Russians, Azerbaijanis, an Afghan,
an Armenian and Slovaks. One of the Slovaks was the head of a refugee
camp who illegally issued leave tickets to refugees.
The gang charged the migrants between US$200(euro150) and
US$600(euro448), said the head of Slovakia’s railway police, Tibor
Gaplovsky. Police estimate that the group earned some two million
koruna (US$69,300s, euro51,700).
The gang used trains or taxis to transport the refugees or just
walked them over to neighboring Austria. Police have been monitoring
the gang since 2003, and they estimated that the gang has helped at
least 115 migrants to get to Austria. Dozens of others were detained
in Slovakia.
An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 illegal migrants pass through
Slovakia on their way to the West every year, and nearly a third
are intercepted by police.

President wraps up visit to Great Britain
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Dec 16 2004
President Ilham Aliyev wrapped up his official visit to Great Britain
on Tuesday.
On the last day of the visit Aliyev met with British Prime Minister
Tony Blair. Prospects for bilateral relations, regional and
international cooperation and Azerbaijan’s integration into Europe
were discussed.
The parties gave a high assessment to the current level of ties and
discussed ways of settling the Upper Garabagh conflict.
During his two-day visit President Aliyev attended a conference
entitled “Azerbaijan’s investment opportunities – 2004” and the
signing ceremony of an agreement on financing Azerbaijan’s share in
the Shahdaniz project. He also met with the British Foreign Minister
and presidents of BP and the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development.*

USA plans to provide equal aid package to Azerbaijan, Armenia
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Dec 16 2004
The US Congress intends to provide equal assistance to Azerbaijan and
Armenia next year, the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Reno Harnish told
AssA-Irada on Wednesday.
The aid, to be allocated by foreign institutions, is a part of the
assistance rendered to Azerbaijan in the area of security and fighting
global terrorism, the ambassador noted.
Harnish also underlined that the United States earlier assisted
Azerbaijan in implementing programs concerning the country’s southern
borders and training of peacekeepers.
“We highly appreciate cooperation with Azerbaijan in the area of
security and fighting global terror,” said Harnish, adding that the
US administration plans to continue collaboration in this area in
the future.*

Section 907 to be repealed after Garabagh conflict is settled
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Dec 16 2004
The US Department of State will fully repeal the Section 907 it
passed on Azerbaijan after the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Upper
Garabagh is settled, the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Reno Harnish
told journalists on Wednesday.
Harnish said that the execution of Section 907 has been regularly
suspended by the US President every year since January 2002, which is
certainly based on Azerbaijan’s efforts at fighting global terrorism.
“The US is very pleased that meetings between the Azerbaijani and
Armenian foreign ministers on settling the Upper Garabagh conflict
continue and that further steps will be taken in this area in January.”
Harnish voiced a hope that such meetings will lead to a fair, long-term
resolution of the conflict through negotiations.*
From: Baghdasarian