RIA Novosti, Russia
Nov 30 2004
CONSTRUCTION OF IRAN-ARMENIA PIPELINE BEGINS
YEREVAN, November 30 (RIA Novosti, Gamlet Matevosyan) – A ceremony to
mark the beginning of construction of the Megri-Kadzharan section of
the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline will be held in southern Armenia’s
Syuni region on Tuesday.
A spokesman for Armenia’s government told RIA Novosti that Armenia
Prime Minister Andrianik Markaryan would lead a delegation at the
ceremony.
Mr. Markaryan will also attend the opening of the second Iran-Armenia
power lines.
A delegation from Iran, led by Energy Minister Habibollah Bitaraf,
will also attend the opening ceremony in the Syuni region.
Armenian Energy Ministry Levon Vardanyan said the construction of a
41km pipeline in Armenia would start with the Megri-Kadzharan
section. He said that Iran agreed to finance the project.
On May 13, 2004, Armenia and Iran signed a treaty in Yerevan on the
construction of the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline. Under the treaty,
Armenia will receive 36 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas over 20
years. Armenia will pay for the gas with electricity. The pipeline
will also allow Armenia to receive Turkmen gas transported through
Iran.
The construction of the pipeline, 700mm in diameter and 141km long,
is planned to be completed at the end of 2006. According to the
preliminary estimates, Armenia will invest about $90 million and Iran
will invest about $120 million in the construction.

The Messenger, Georgia
Nov 30 2004
Georgia, Azerbaijan discuss Red Bridge border closure
Officials in Tbilisi say rail traffic already restored and detained
freight flowing into Georgia
By Anna Arzanova
Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Georgia HE Ramiz Hasanov met with Georgian
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikheil Ukleba on November 29 to
discuss the several hundred freight cars being held up at the
Georgia-Azerbaijan border.
The rail-freight, excluding oil products, had been detained by the
Azeri side for over ten days now because of Azeri suspicions that
some of the cargo is destined for Armenia.
While Georgian media has reported there are more than 900 train cars
waiting to cross the border, Ambassador Hasanov said that the number
was in fact much lower.
“There are about 300 train cars loaded with different cargoes, and of
these only one or two belong to Georgia,” the ambassador told
journalists on Tuesday.
He also sought to downplay the amount of time the Georgian cars have
been waiting, saying that they “could have been lost somewhere,” and
stressing that “now the Customs Departments are working on this issue
and there won’t be any more questions regarding this.”
The Azerbaijani ambassador confirmed that the cargo destined for
Georgia and other countries is being held by customs officials
because of the belief that some of the cargo is in fact bound for
Armenia.
Azerbaijan and Georgia signed an agreement in June this year, an
agreement that has been ratified in Baku but not in Tbilisi, that no
cargo transported from Azerbaijan to Georgia would then continue to
any third country that would damage Azerbaijan, a tacit ban on
transshipping to Armenia.
“There is an agreement regarding the transit of cargo cross the
Azeri-Georgian border and we want all aspects of the agreement to be
fulfilled,” Hasanov explained.
“Imagine if we started supplying diesel fuel or some other product to
Abkhazia or South Ossetia: do you think this would infringe upon the
national interests of Georgia? Of course it would,” Hasanov said.
The ambassador said that both sides had reached an understanding of
this issue at his meeting with Ukleba and that Azerbaijan had
informed Georgia that no cargo bound for Georgia will be stopped.
“This is really the case. We reached an agreement and specialists
from our customs committee will arrive tomorrow. They will work
together with the specialists of the customs department of Georgia.
We cannot be sure where these train cars are destined, which is why
they were stopped.” stated Hasanov, explaining that specialists of
customs committee will determine where each train car is bound.
Speaking with the media on Monday, Deputy Minister Ukleba said that
train cars have already begun crossing the border, and confirmed that
representatives of the Azeri customs department would arrive on
Wednesday.
“After discussion of this issue there will be a decision regarding
the renewal of cargo transportation to Georgia, to wherever the
documents say it is destined,” Ukleba said.
Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania said that the government is working on
the issue. “I would not dramatize this issue because our appropriate
structures are working together with Azeri structures. I do not
expect that this problem will be aggravated,” he stated on Monday.
Also on Monday, the commercial director of the Georgian Railways
Ramaz Giorgadze left for Baku to negotiate with colleagues there.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Nov 30 2004
Azeri officer on trial in Hungary may be handed over to Azerbaijan

The Hungarian parliament Ombudsman Barnabas Lenkovich, addressing the
third international conference of Ombudsmen, which started in Baku on
Monday, said workers of the entity he leads often visit the
Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov in detention.
Safarov is on trial in Hungary for killing an Armenian serviceman.
`There are no problems with the trial of Ramil Safarov. He will make
the statements he made in English before in Azerbaijani language
again. A translator has been therefore provided’, Lenkovich said.
He said that Safarov is satisfied with his treatment in detention and
is awaiting the court sentence. The Ombudsman said that Safarov’s
extradition to Azerbaijan is possible after the court issues a
ruling, but stressed the importance of signing a relevant treaty by
the two countries.
`The Hungarian legislation allows for such an agreement’, he said.
Lenkovich plans to meet with Safarov’s parents as well.*

Energy cooperation with Tajikistan useful for Russia – paper
Vecherniy Dushanbe, Dushanbe
26 Nov 04

The chairman of Russia’s national electricity grid is keen to
synchronize the Iranian energy system with those of the CIS and Baltic
states and says the Tajik energy minister can offer valuable
assistance in this, Tajikistan’s Vecherniy Dushanbe newspaper reported
on 26 November. The following are excerpts from the report:
Anatoliy Chubays, the chairman of the board of the Unified Energy
System of Russia joint-stock company, was recently re-elected chairman
of the CIS Electrical Energy Council for another year. This decision
was adopted by the council, which includes 12 CIS countries, during a
meeting in Baku on 19 October.
[Anatoliy] Chubays told journalists after the meeting that he was the
only one to vote against prolonging his authority. “I myself proposed
that a new chairman be elected, but my colleagues did not support me,”
he said. A. Chubays also said Jurabek Nurmahmadov, Tajik minister of
energy, was re-elected as the deputy chairman. [Passage omitted:
general detail]
On the subject of the benefit for Chubays, it is worth remembering an
intergovernmental agreement between Russia and Tajikistan, signed in
Dushanbe on 16 October this year, on the terms and conditions for
constructing the Sangtudin hydroelectric power station. According to
the agreement, Russia intends to invest about 250m dollars in the
construction of this station. Chubays has been planning the Unified
Energy System of Russia joint-stock company’s cooperation with
Tajikistan (naturally, for the benefit of the company), and via
Tajikistan with Iran. That is why he said in Dushanbe that the Unified
Energy System of Russia is interested in completing the construction
of the Sangtudin hydroelectric power station within the framework of
trilateral cooperation between Russia, Tajikistan and Iran.
But he then voiced his final aim in Baku: “My position is to actively
support the synchronizing of the Iranian energy system with those of
Armenia and Turkmenistan, and then to synchronize it with other CIS
countries.”
Chubays also said in the Azeri capital that he would soon visit Iran
for a detailed discussion of possible cooperation in synchronizing the
Iranian energy system with those of the CIS and Baltic countries.
“The Tajik energy minister can provide me with significant assistance
in implementing this programme,” Chubays said.
In fact, close cooperation between Chubays and Nurahmadov is
beneficial for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Tajik President
Emomali] Rahmonov as well, since electricity is a resource shaping
branch of the whole economy.
The next session of the CIS Electrical Energy Council will be held in
Tbilisi in April 2005.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Nov 30 2004
Gas pipeline to connect Iran, Armenia

Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markarian and Iranian Energy
Minister Habibullah Bitaraf are scheduled to meet in the Sunik
province on Tuesday to negotiate construction of a gas pipeline
connecting the two countries.
The pipeline is reportedly to be ready by 2007.
The issue was discussed during a recent visit by the Iranian
President Muhammad Khatami to Armenia.*

BP accused of discriminating against Azeri staff – paper
Ekho, Baku
30 Nov 04

Britain’s BP has been accused of discriminating against the local
staff in Azerbaijan at the 58th Rose-Roth seminar of the NATO
Parliamentary Assembly in Baku. Azerbaijani and Turkish MPs were
irritated by a BP official’s refusal to report on the salary of
locally employed people and that of expatriates, Azerbaijani newspaper
Ekho reported. Also discussed at the seminar was the security of
Caspian energy resources. The head of the Azerbaijani State Oil
Company, Natiq Aliyev, said that Baku, Tbilisi and Ankara had agreed
not to militarize transport communications, while taking measures
against possible acts of sabotage on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipeline. The following if the text of R. Orucov’s report by
Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 30 November headlined “Rose-Roth seminar
ends in accusations of BP”; subheadings have been inserted
editorially:
The 58th Rose-Roth seminar of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which
was held in our country for the first time, finished on 27
November. On the closing day, Azerbaijani Defence Minister Col-Gen
Safar Abiyev addressed the seminar.
Azerbaijan ready to host NATO exercises
In his remarks, the defence minister said that in its military policy
Azerbaijan was adhering to the concept of defence sufficiency – “the
ability to ward off any attacks”. Abiyev added that back in 1997
Azerbaijan set up a peacekeeping company to contribute to
international operations “which then grew into a battalion and now we
are preparing a brigade”. The minister said Azerbaijan was ready to
host any NATO exercises. He noted that the charters of active
participants in NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme contain an
article urging them to refrain from violating the territorial
integrity of neighbouring countries.
There is a total of 76,000 personnel in the Azerbaijani army
today. More than 4,000 civilian specialists work in the system of the
Defence Ministry and the figure is expected to rise, Abiyev said. He
also expressed his astonishment with the fact that certain western
countries are officially allocating millions of dollars in assistance
to Armenia and to the separatist regime in Nagornyy Karabakh every
year.
Caspian energy security discussed
The second half of the day was dedicated to the security of Caspian
energy resources. The president of the State Oil Company of the
Azerbaijani Republic [SOCAR], Natiq Aliyev, made a presentation,
saying that two countries, Iran and Turkmenistan, are still opposed to
dividing the Caspian, the idea supported by Azerbaijan, Russia and
Kazakhstan. Another issue is the delivery of energy resources to world
markets. “We have agreed with Georgia and Turkey to avoid the
militarization of transport communications and to take precautionary
measures. We are mindful of acts of sabotage aimed at undermining
major energy projects like the BTC [Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipeline].”
Speaking next was the sustainable development director of BP, Martin
Miles, who said the oil reserves of the Caspian are comparable with
those discovered in the North Sea. He said BP is the company that
operates transparently and respects human rights.
BP accused of discriminating against local staff
Then the floor was taken by a member of the Turkish parliament, Emin
Bilgic. “Mr Miles, you have spoken at length about transparency in
your work and respect for human rights. Then could you please say what
the difference is in the wages that BP pays to Azerbaijani and British
citizens for the same work? And what is BP’s revenue from the
production of Azerbaijani oil?”
Miles shied away from the question. “I would not like to discuss the
salary issue here,” he said. A few minutes later, a member of the
Azerbaijani parliament, Alimammad Nuriyev, said: “You haven’t answered
my Turkish colleague’s questions. Do you acknowledge that even though
there are many highly-qualified specialists in Azerbaijan, you prefer
to bring your specialists from abroad? Why? Why do you spend much
less money on environmental activities here than elsewhere?” Miles
said 80 per cent of BP’s 2,000-strong personnel in Azerbaijan are
local citizens.
“As for the difference in their salaries, I don’t think it is right to
disclose figures here,” he repeated.
And then the deputy speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament, Ziyafat
Asgarov, asked Miles directly: “But where can the salary question be
discussed then? You are using the resources of our country and the
rights of our citizens have to be taken into account. I constantly
receive complaints about violations of the labour legislation by BP,
people are made to work on holidays and days-off. We have tried to
look into the salary issue in parliament, but BP is not answering even
the legislature.”
The BP representative found nothing better to say than: “I don’t know
the details of the issue,” to which Asgarov replied: “Then you should
have told us from the very beginning that you are not competent enough
in the issue.”

Daily News, South Africa
Nov 30 2004
‘We were waiting for our time’
November 30, 2004
‘And every time he tried to eat, they kicked him in the face. And
then they told him to eat again!”
There’s uproarious laughter as the three men seated in the hotel room
reminisce about the abuse and torture they suffered in Black Beach
prison over the last eight months.
Laughter seems inappropriate, but it is no doubt the laughter of
relief. On Friday a judge acquitted these three – Mark Schmidt,
Americo Ribeiro and Ablo Augusto – on charges of participating in a
plot to topple Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in
a coup.
On Saturday afternoon they were free men, talking about their
experiences in a Malabo hotel before getting onto an aircraft on
Sunday to fly home.
Five other South Africans were not so lucky. Nic du Toit, charged
with being the ringleader of the group in Malabo, the country’s
capital, was sentenced to an effective 34 years in prison while the
others – George Alerson, Bone Boonzaaier, Jose Domingos and Sergio
Cardoso – each got an effective 17 years in prison. All were also
fined.
Mark Schmidt, the youngest of the South Africans, describes how he
walked wide-eyed into the catastrophe.
“I was working odd jobs, bringing in a little money. I got word from
Bone (Boonzaaier) that there was work for me (in Equatorial Guinea)
for $1 500 (R8 820). It wasn’t much in dollars, but it was double
what I was earning back home.”
“I saw this place as a good place for business. There was timber,
fishing, farming and transport. There was plenty.”
It all fell apart in the first week of March. “On Saturday the
soldiers and police were very busy all around us. We asked the people
what was going on and they said they were arresting strangers.”
On the morning of Monday, March 8, police surrounded
the house Schmidt and the crew of Armenian pilots were staying in.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was just the way they
handle transport problems around here,” said Schmidt.
Later that evening the soldiers and police made their move.
“Suddenly there was military everywhere, bursting through doors,
windows, lights everywhere. It was so scary. The soldiers were
reeking of alcohol and they were threatening us with weapons. They
threw me down and put a gun to my head. I thought I was going to die
right there,” said Schmidt.
Equatorial Guinean Minister Antonio Javier Nguema was also present at
the arrests, barking orders at the men. Later he was to join the men
in prison.
That night the men were all taken to Black Beach Prison where they
were thrown to-gether in a 20m x 4m cell with hands cuffed behind
their backs – and with more than 200 other foreigners.
This was to be their home for the next eight months, two weeks and
five days.
“Some of the guys were crying, begging for them to loosen the cuffs.
Every time you turned, even a little bit, the cuffs tightened more.
They’d just say: “Too tight?” Then they’d tighten it some more,” said
Augusto.
That day a cycle of system-atic torture started which was to continue
for 10 days.
Videotaped and beaten incessantly, the men were “encouraged” to tell
the truth. Nic du Toit and George Alerson were kept in separate cells
from the rest of the men for the first two months.
The men were taken in a seemingly random order for questioning with
beatings taking place at any time.
“I smiled and this military guy came up and gave me a moer se klap,”
said Schmidt.
But in a bizarre variation from the harsh treatment, the men were
given takeaway food the first week in jail.
“The food never tasted like anything because you were being beaten
while eating,” said Augusto.
“With your hands cuffed behind your back constantly you can’t do most
things. Not even use the toilet. I had to wipe Bone’s bum for him.
Every time I gave him shit he’d remind me that I wiped his bum,” said
Schmidt, making everybody in the room laugh.
Even washing was a humiliating affair and the first time the men were
allowed to wash was almost two weeks after their initial
incarceration.
Taken outside to a wire fence adjacent to the outside public, they
were stripped naked and with their hands still cuffed behind their
backs, one of the prisoners washed them.
“They took Sergio and Bone to a small, dark room where there is blood
splattered on the walls. I think people have died inside that room,”
said Augusto.
It was here the men say Nic was beaten and Sergio was given electric
shock treatment.
Many of the men were also subjected to torture with a lighter held
under their feet.
During Cardoso and Du Toit’s torture sessions, the second most
powerful and most feared man in Equatorial Guinea, Minister of
Security Manuel Mba, was present, said Augusto.
One group, who worked on a Wednesday, were particularly brutal and
seemed to take especially great delight in beating the men.
“They’d say: ‘Eat!’ So you eat and then, boom! they beat you and kick
your plate over. Then they say: ‘Eat!’ And it happens again and
again,” said Augusto.
Later the men learnt to eat and do everything by keeping their eyes
focused on the ground, never making eye contact which would instantly
be seen as a challenge and provoke an attack.
“If you look at anyone, it’s a sin.”
The German national Gerhard Menz died of malaria, according to the
Equatorial Guinean authorities. But the men speak of a different
course of events and cause of death.
“When they hit him, he never said a word,” said Augusto. But this
seemed to provoke the soldiers to beat him even more severely.
“After one beating, he started speaking in German, which he never did
before,” he continued.
Menz was looking in bad shape and repeated calls for medical
attention were ignored.
“They stripped him naked, picked him up and threw three buckets of
water over him. Then they put his body in front of us. His chest was
yellow and swollen and he was still muttering in German,” said
Augusto.
The old man Menz, an avid cigar connoisseur but noncigarette smoker,
asked his fellow inmates for a cigarette on that fateful day.
“We watched him die. We were waiting for our time also,” said
Augusto.
But, then, just as brutally and abruptly as their nightmare had
started, it stopped. The men believe that the death of Menz scared
the authorities.
Shortly after the arrests, Angolan authorities arrived to question
the Angolan-South Africans. Hot on their heels were Zimbabwean
investigators who spent a month questioning the men in minute detail.
Then it was the turn of the South African Scorpions.
After this, as the investi-gation shifted towards the financiers of
the coup, who had not been arrested, the prisoners, still in
leg-irons and handcuffs, were left to start accli-matising to life in
prison.
But Black Beach Prison is like no other. Or perhaps it is not so
different. If you have money, you can have comforts.
By contrast with the brutal-ity and harsh conditions, there was a
flourishing shebeen, and women are brought in to sleep with men for a
fee, and prisoners go walking around at night.
One of the warders was even taking Nigerian prisoners out of the
cells at night to steal cement at a construction site for him.
“I was in the shebeen and drinking a beer when one of the soldiers
(who had been beating them) apologised to me. He said he was just
following orders,” said Schmidt.
“The men who beat us, they are our friends now,” agrees Augusto.
After about two weeks in jail, Schmidt was made the cook in prison
and his leg-irons were removed.
“They’d take me into town with my long beard to do the shopping.
Meat, vegetables and stuff,” said Schmidt.
Schmidt was taken to the largest supermarket in town to shop for
groceries for the men.
All the men agree that they have found great solace in God while in
prison and used to avidly read the Bible and pray together.
As the trial dragged on the men drew some hope from
the government’s statements that it wanted to hold a trial that could
pass international scrutiny.
But throughout the trial, all evidence of torture was suppressed and
translations were often inaccurate and sometimes said exactly the
opposite of what witnesses said.
On judgement day the men stood mystified in the make-shift court room
in the Atepa Convention Centre for the last time as their fates were
read out in Spanish.
Only later in the cells were the men able to piece together what had
happened.
“Thank you God,” said Ribeiro.
“Happiness. I didn’t expect it,” said Augusto.
“I was just relieved,” said Schmidt.
But their personal joy was marred by the pain of leaving their
comrades behind. The Armenian aircrew were particularly shocked to
find five of them sentenced to 14 years each, with the pilot getting
21 years.
As talk turns to the men who are still sitting in Black Beach Prison,
Ribeiro, who had been silent throughout, closed his eyes and started
sobbing un-controllably, tears running over the lines of his
weathered face.
“When I left them I was crying. We were all crying,” stammered
Ribeiro.
“We told them to be strong, keep on praying and we’ll see you soon,”
said Augusto.
As free men, they hope to piece together the life they
once had.
Ribeiro plans to return to Mpumalanga with his common-law-wife and
hopes he can get his old job as a park ranger back.
Schmidt plans to look for a real job.
“You think a lot in prison. I don’t have qualifications, unless my
background in the army gets you a job,” he says.
But first things first.
“I’m going to make love. And then I want to get married
as soon as possible.” – Independent Foreign Service

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijna
Nov 30 2004
Azerbaijan not to allow cargo transit to Armenia – Azeri official

Hundreds of transit cargo trains have been withheld on the
Azerbaijani-Georgian border for three days. The contents of 309
carriages are suspected to have been en route to Armenia.
Commenting on the matter, First Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Abbasov
said that Azerbaijan can detain all consignments coming from other
countries en route to Georgia through its territory, if they are
further delivered to Armenia. He said that to prevent the transit
delivery of goods to Armenia, he met with Georgian President, Prime
Minister and Secretary of the Security Council last week and
officially informed them of such instances.
During the meetings, Abbasov urged the Georgian government to thwart
such cases and warned of detention of all kind of cargoes to be
dispatched to Georgia by Azerbaijan in order to protect the country’s
national interests.
Azerbaijan and Georgia have signed inter-governmental agreements on
transportation of transit and export consignments through the
former’s territory provided that they are not further passed on to
Armenia, Abbasov said.
Abbasov said, however, that there have been instances of cargo being
delivered to Armenia through Azerbaijan’s territory, in particular,
transit of oil products and fuel.
The First Deputy Prime Minister also underlined that the freight
trains, the destinations of which are determined, are allowed to
enter Georgia.
`Not a gram of fuel will be dispatched to aggressor Armenia, which
has occupied 20% of Azerbaijan’s territory, so that it could launch
new military attacks on our country,’ Abbasov said.
The spokesman for the Georgian Railway Office Stepnadze said the
Georgian side is not aware of any cargo transportation to Armenia.
`As far as we know, the consignments coming from Azerbaijan are not
transported to Armenia via Georgia.’
He said that according to the existing bilateral agreements, the
consignments may not be transported to a third country contradicting
the interests of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Stepnadze indicated that the
detention of railway carriages on the border will not affect
bilateral relations.
`There are no problems between the two countries and Azerbaijan
reserves the right to inspect any consignment.’

IranMania, Iran
Nov 30 2004
Armenia-Iran to build gas pipeline, share energy

LONDON, Nov 30 (IranMania) – According to Armenia’s Energy Ministry,
Armenia and neighbouring Iran are due Tuesday to launch construction
of a gas pipeline between their two countries, and also start using a
high-voltage energy line that would double exchanges of electrical
power.
The construction of the pipeline’s Armenian part would be funded by a
30-mln-dollar (25-mln-euro) loan from Iran to Armenia, the Ministry’s
spokeswoman Lusine Arutyunyan told AFP, adding that the 82-kilometer
energy line was also financed by Iran.
Armenia intended to repay the 8.4-mln-dollar loan for the power line
in supplies of electricity to Iran, she said.
The construction contract for the gas pipeline has been awarded to
Iranian company Sanir.
Iran and Armenia signed a contract in May under which Iran will
supply Armenia, a landlocked former Soviet republic which borders
Iran to the north, with a total of 36 billion cubic metres of gas
over a 20-year period, expected to start in early 2007.

Armenian ombudsman accuses Baku of putting pressure on Azeri officer’s trial
Noyan Tapan news agency, Yerevan
30 Nov 04
YEREVAN
The fact that the Azerbaijani side has invited the Hungarian
parliament commissioner for civil rights (ombudsman), Barnabas
Lenkovics, to meet the parents of Ramil Safarov, the murderer of
Armenian officer Gurgen Markaryan, is an attempt to put psychological
pressure, Armenian ombudsman Larisa Alaverdyan said in an interview
with our Noyan Tapan correspondent.
Thus, Mrs Alaverdyan stressed, the Azerbaijani side is continuing to
politicize issues, abusing the circumstance that Azerbaijan is the
host country of the 3rd international forum of European and CIS
ombudsmen. At the same time, she notes that the Hungarian ombudsman
will find it difficult to reject the proposal. “This testifies to the
low level of civilization, it is necessary to respect laws and
international norms of human rights,” the Armenian ombudsman stressed.
Pointing out that she has not received an invitation to the aforesaid
forum in Baku, Mrs Alaverdyan described “the crude technologies” of
Azerbaijani sources in covering the issue of her participation in the
Baku forum as “a base method of defiling the human rights sphere”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress