Azerbaijan court sentences NATO protesters

The News, Pakistan
Aug 31 2004

BAKU: A court in the former Soviet republic of Azerbiajan handed
out prison sentences Monday to protesters who had tried to storm
a conference of NATO officials in the Azeri capital two months
ago. The court found six protesters guilty of public order offences
and resisting arrest, and ordered that they should be sent to prison
for terms ranging from three to five years. The protesters had been
demonstrating about the presence at the NATO meeting of two officers
from Armenia’s armed forces. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war in
the early 1990s over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The
two neighbouring countries remain at a state of war, though there
is no large-scale fighting. Among those sentenced Monday was Akif
Nagi, leader of the hardline Karabakh Liberation Organisation,
which favours new military action against Armenia. He was given five
years in jail. Supporters and relatives of the convicted men staged
a protest in the courtroom when the sentences were handed down but
police dispersed them.

Radical group members get 4 to 6 years in prison

Assa-Irada
Aug 31 2004

Baku, August 30, AssA-Irada

The verdict on the Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO) chairman
Akif Naghi and five members of the organization, who were arrested
during the June 22 picket in a protest against the participation of
Armenian officers in a NATO conference held in Baku on June 21-23,
was uttered at the Nasimi district court on Monday.

The GLO chairman was sentenced to 5 years in jail, four members of
the organization to 4 years and deputy chairman, the Garabagh war
invalid Firudin Mammadov to 3 years.

The radical group members are accused of resisting police, blocking the
road on Tbilisi Avenue and disturbing the work of a NATO preparatory
conference held at the Europe Hotel within the Partnership for
Peace program and causing damage worth 1.700 million manats ($340)
to the hotel.*

Japan to take care of Azeri refugees until their repatriation

Assa-Irada
Aug 31 2004

Baku, August 30, AssA-Irada

The Upper Garabagh conflict was the focus of the meeting of Akira
Amari, head of the Japanese-Azerbaijani inter-parliamentary friendship
league, with Speaker of the Milli Majlis (parliament) Murtuz Alasgarov
on Monday.

Alasgarov expressed his disappointment by Armenia’s ignoring four
resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council and double-standard
approach of some countries to the issue.

Voicing his satisfaction with Japan’s position on the Upper Garabagh
conflict, Alasgarov restated that Azerbaijan will never give in an inch
of its territory. The Speaker said that Japan has financed 65 projects
implemented in Azerbaijan so far and appreciated the services of
Japanese Ambassador to Azerbaijan Toshiyuki Fujiwara in this respect.

Amari, in his turn, underlined that the Japanese government will
take care of the Azerbaijani refugees until they return to their
native lands.

Touching upon the Upper Garabagh conflict, Amari stressed that his
country supports Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and backs the
peaceful settlement of the conflict.*

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN PRIME MINISTER RECEIVED GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA HAIKE PEITSCH

ArmenPress
Aug 31 2004

YEREVAN, AUGUST 31, ARMENPRESS: Armenian prime minister Andranik
Margarian received today German ambassador to Armenia Ms. Haike
Peitsch. The prime minister congratulated the ambassador on handing
over her credentials in our country and wished her success in
her tenuret. The prime minister said that her participation in
Armenian-German economic forum even before taking up the post of
an ambassador indicates her interest in strengthening and further
developing Armenian-German ties which gives hope that the ambassador
will succeed in her endeavors.

Armenian government press services reported that both sides mentioned
that though German government implements a number of programs in
the Armenian economy, there are still wide opportunities to enlarge
cooperation both in political and economic fields between the two
countries.

Apart from bilateral partnership, the prime minister underscored
balanced economic policy within the region on the sidelines of
development projects implemented by Germany. Praising more active
economic and political involvement of European Union in the region,
the prime minister underscored cooperation with Germany also in the
context of European integration.

During the meeting the ambassador Haike Peitsch asked about Armenia’s
participation in NATO military exercises, to which the prime
minister answered that Armenia has expressed about its willingness
to participate, however, some political forces in Azerbaijan try
to impede that. According to prime minister, the news releases
indicate that Azerbaijani authorities have called for responsibility
the anti-Armenian protestors which shows that Azerbaijan is also
interested in Armenian participation in the military exercises.

At the end of the meeting, the sides assured readiness for joint work
to contribute to strengthening of Armenian-German relations.

OSKANIAN-MAMEDIAROV MEETING USEFUL AND POSITIVE

ArmenPress
Aug 31 2004

PRAGUE, AUGUST 31, ARMENPRESS: Armenian and Azeri foreign ministers
Vardan Oskanian and Elmar Mamediarov held their regular meeting
on Karabakh conflict resolution yesterday in Prague. According to
Armenian foreign ministry press services, present were at the meeting
American, Russian and French co-chairs of Minsk Group Steven Mann, Yuri
Merzliakov, Anry Jakolen and Andrey Kasprchik, personal representative
of OSCE president in action. As before, the meeting did not have a
special agenda.

Armenian and Azeri foreign minister went on to discuss different
standpoints on Karabakh conflict resolution and issues relating to
prospects of conflict resolution, continuing exchange of opinions
started in the previous three meetings.

The present said the regular meeting of the ministers was useful
and positive.

MINISTERS OF ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN DISCUSS KARABAKH IN PRAGUE

Czech News Agency
August 30, 2004

PRAGUE, Aug 30 (CTK) – Various aspects of the process of a peaceful
solution to the Armenian-Azeri dispute over the province of
Nagorno-Karabakh were discussed by the foreign ministers of Armenia
and Azerbaijan, Vardan Oskanyan and Elmar Mamedyarov, in Prague today.

The talks, which had been mediated by the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), were also attended by members
of the OSCE Minsk group from Russia, France and the United States,
the Russian RIA Novosti agency said.

Only snippets of information about the results of the meeting have
been provided. According to available reports, the talks did not have
a precise programme.

The negotiating sides exchanged views on various aspects of the
solutions to the problems in Nagorno-Karabakh, where national disputes
persists.

In the Soviet times, Karabakh, a territory populated by Christian
ethnic Armenians, was assigned to mainly Muslim, Turkic-speaking
Azerbaijan.

The Prague meeting was the fourth meeting between Oskanyan and
Mamedyarov. The previous talks were held in June, also in Prague.

CTK failed to find out whether the Czech side joined the debate and
how. The Czech Foreign Ministry spokesman had no information about
the meeting.

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
August 30, 2004, Monday

ARMENIA’S DEFENSE MINISTER DOESN’T RULE OUT THE OPPORTUNITY OF
HOSTING U.S. BASES IN AZERBAIJAN

“Azerbaijan is very likely to host U.S. military bases,” Armenia’s
Defense Minister Serzhik Sarkisyan said at a press conference. In his
words, any comments are pointless since this is the mutual issue of
the U.S. and Azerbaijan.

“We cannot direct them whether to station military bases on their
territory or not,” the minister said and noted that this process
would last above 5 or even 10 years. “At the same time, Azerbaijan’s
statements that Russian military bases in Armenia exacerbate tension
in the entire region are nothing more than words,” Armenia’s defense
minister said.

Source: Regnum news agency, August 27, 2004

REGULAR EXERCISES OF THE UNITED RUSSIAN-ARMENIAN TROOPS LAUNCHED

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
August 30, 2004, Monday

The exercises have been launched at the marshal Bagramyan Center in
Armenia. The firing practice is scheduled for August 27, the closing
day. The exercises are aimed at practicing the defense interaction
of the sides, which will be represented by the mechanized infantry,
fighting and assault aviation, antiaircraft artillery units. A
reinforced mechanized infantry regiment will take part on behalf of
Armenia and servicemen of the 102nd Military Base of Russia (stationed
in Armenia) will represent Russia. Lieutenant General Mikhail Grigoryan
of Armenia is head of the exercises.

Source: Krasnaya Zvezda, August 26, 2004, p. 3

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
August 30, 2004, Monday

MOUNTAINOUS TASK FORCE

SOURCE: Rossiya, No. 32, August 26 – September 1, 2004, p. 11

by Leonid Malakhovsky

August has been an uneasy month at the Russian Defense Ministry:
it only has a month to draw up and submit the plans of setting up
and training two new Special Forces brigades, designed for actions
in mountainous landscapes. The president hinted at a recent Cabinet
meeting that he had given this order to the defense minister long
ago and time has come to see the results. Sergei Ivanov managed to
put off the report for the only month, within which the documents to
be submitted to the president are to be given their definitive form.

Ivanov’s forgetfulness is unlikely to be the reason why he proved to
be unprepared to report to Putin. Military analysts say that this
issue involves many problems and couldn’t be settled on impulse,
due to the specific existence, training and actions of the future
Special Forces brigade.

As a matter of fact, the present-day army structures have nothing
of what had been earlier called the professional mountainous unit.
Mountainous Special Forces of the 128th Regiment of the 7th Army
stationed in Armenia were among the last to cease its existence after
disintegration of the USSR. The units, which shielded mountain ranges
across the former Soviet border, were disbanded too. Russia’s modern
map has the Caucasian Mountains alone, which make the hottest spot
for a decade already.

>>From the very beginning the Chechen campaign made the security
structures to face a problem: how to act against gangsters in the
mountains? (…) Until now, the gangster groupings feel safe in
the mountains, which enables them to make blazing raids into calm
regions. When they faced the local landscape, Russian militants
said they’d be using bomb and artillery strikes to get rid of the
guerrillas. To all appearances, this phase has passed and it has been
decided to use the Special Forces units to capture the separatists.

This is where the notions were substituted. Common Special Forces
units were taken into the mountains. However, it is very hard for
them to act under specific conditions.

Finding the manpower for the mountainous Special Forces units is
the major problem which the Defense Ministry has encountered when
it started working out the concept of mountainous Special Forces
brigades. It was proposed to use the experience of those who had been
to Afghan mountains. This experience matters indeed, but since that
time those servicemen who are still in the army have grown to ranking
positions. Where could one get a platoon or a company commander? No
educational institutions are training mountainous officers. Skills
of mountainous operations were formerly taught in Vladikavkaz, but
this institution doesn’t exist for a long while.

(…)

By the way, the problem, which the Defense Ministry is trying to
settle now, had emerged in the Border Service much earlier. At
the initiative of Konstantin Totsky, former commander of the Border
Service, the border guards started formation of a special border unit
(as far as is known, in the vicinity of Mineralnye Vody). The border
guards, trained how to act in the mountains, equipped according to
the climate conditions and armed with most up-to-date weapons were
sent to the most vulnerable sectors of the Russian-Georgian border.
This was when the Border Service started forming an assault unit.
This group was to appear in 2003. When our reporter inquired about the
situation in the unit now, the regional border service headquarters
in the North Caucasus avoided any details and said that all border
guards assigned to this region are initially mountain shooters. It
could be that existence of new border units in the south of Russia
is indeed a military secret.

Very likely Yevgeniy Podkolzin, former Airborne Troops commander,
has unveiled this secret. In his words, in its due time the General
Staff refused to form a mountainous unit which could be used in
Chechnya. Besides, the general criticized the idea of using the
common Special Forces, even GRU Special Forces units. It is not
about weak professional skills of the Special Forces. Broad theaters
of operations, especially the mountains which require professional
skills, become extremely vulnerable.

It happened so: where mountains rise, the military and other security
structures form mountainous units. The Russian Defense Ministry wants
to keep pace with time. However, in Kyrgyzstan the National Guards
are fulfilling this mission (analog of the Russian internal troops).
The Pantera Special Forces unit, the first to be formed there,
excelled itself in the elimination of bandit groupings in Batken in
1999-2000. One more mountainous unit has been formed now. All officers
are being prepared in Turkey, which has educational institutions for
training mountainous Special Forces soldiers.

Ukraine is also involved in the innovations: its internal troops have
two units of mountainous shooters, which are stationed in Balaklava
and Simferopol. Given experience of our neighbors it is possible to
calculate the cost of a mountainous Special Forces unit.

Given the habitual allowance of a soldier from the plains, special
equipment is added in the mountains. Each soldier of a mountainous
Special Forces unit has above 40 pieces of individual ammunition, not
including the team equipment (tents, fuel, avalanche tents, etc.) –
20 pieces more. In addition, such units require most state-of-the-art
firearms, ammo and food. According to the most modest calculations
a mountain shooter is by tens of times more expensive than a plains
shooter.

However, the huge spending is unlikely to become the stumbling
block for creation of new military units in Russia – mountainous
Special Forces brigades. As promised by Ivanov, jointly with the
border guards such soldiers will cover the mountain passes of the
Big Caucasus neighboring Georgia, which is a strategic task. Military
experts tend to think that instability in this region, generated by
irreconcilable Chechen recluses has spurred up the Defense Ministry
to accelerate this step. The hastiness with which the mountainous
Special Forces are being born gives the only cause for concern. Any
trifle to be forgotten in the offices may cause adversity.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Sacred stories
by Michael Binyon

The Times (London)
August 31, 2004, Tuesday

RELISHES THE CHANCE TO SEE ARMENIAN ART IN LONDON

RARE and little-known examples of Armenian sacred art are to be
displayed in London next month in one of the biggest and most varied
exhibitions of the genre seen in Europe for years.

Situated at the crossroads between Asian, European and Byzantine
traditions, Armenian art has often been overlooked by collectors. But
Sam Fogg, a dealer in Asian manuscripts and medieval art, has been
collecting Armenian artefacts for 15 years, including manuscripts,
gospel books, icons and a rare carved wooden panel.

The display at his London gallery, running from September 23 until
October 15, will, he hopes, both rehabilitate a tradition largely
overlooked and undervalued and focus new attention on this unusual
synthesis from the best elements of Persian, Turkish, Greek and West
European art.

One of the world’s oldest Christian countries, Armenia has an Apostolic
Church that claims its foundation by the apostles Bartholomew and
Thaddeus. Christianity became the state religion in 300 AD, when St
Gregory the Illuminator converted the Arsacid King Tiridates III,
and Armenians have clung to their beliefs throughout a history of
oppression, dispersal and incorporation into the empires of their
neighbours.

Yet throughout the centuries of isolation among Muslim cultures, they
have produced distinctive works of art that celebrate the medieval
periods in Greater Armenia and the Kingdom of Cilicia -in modern Turkey
-while preserving their identity in subsequent times of hardship.

Nowadays, for the first time in centuries, Armenia is an independent
state, with the ancient spiritual centre of Etchmiadzin once again
flourishing as a cultural hub.

The exhibition, which begins, appropriately, on Armenian independence
day, September 23, is admittedly small in range and scale. There are
22 pieces, with no sculpture, no secular painting and only one rare
and beautiful 17th-century icon from the treasury of Etchmiadzin.
Armenian genius is shown mostly in the illustration of sacred books.

The most exquisite are the gospel illuminations. Unlike the work
of medieval European monks, the Armenians who painted the biblical
scenes and elaborate title-page decorations were celebrated in their
day and much in demand.

One of the finest is a gospel book by the artist Ghazar. Written in the
15th century, it includes four cut-down decorated pages on parchment
from two separate Cicilian Gospel books of the 12th century. Both are
of luxurious quality; the first (Matthew and Mark) is almost identical
to a gospel dated 1181 in the British Library, and the second (Luke
and John) has inscriptions on the reverse which record that the
book was commissioned by “the Crown Prince Kostandin, the King’s
Chamberlain”. According to Fogg’s scholarly and well-illustrated
catalogue, this must refer to the Cicilian Lord of Kopitar who was
present at the coronation of King Leo the Magnificent in 1198 at the
birth of the Kingdom of Cicilia.

Armenian art falls between several stools; being neither wholly Asian
nor European nor Byzantine, it is ignored by specialists in these
fields. Sadly, it has been largely ignored by Armenians themselves,
who have paid little attention to their heritage. There was a flurry
of interest in the 1920s, but that has subsided and, as a result,
what little comes on the market does not command vast prices.

Only three centres outside Armenia have good collections: the libraries
in Venice and Vienna and the monastery of St James in Jerusalem. Sam
Fogg hopes, however, that his careful assembly over the years of a
collection ranging from the 10th to 18th centuries, which shows how the
art evolved and adapted in such places as Constantinople or elsewhere
in the diaspora, will prompt interest by a museum in acquiring the
whole collection, more valuable as a whole than as separate pieces.

For the next month, however, it is free for anyone to admire.

Art of the Armenians, Sam Fogg gallery, W1, 020-7534 2122, Sept 23
to Oct 15