KurdishMedia, UK
July 29, 2004
IPA concerned about dangers threatening publishers in lead up to
consideration of Turkey’s membership in the EU.
BIA (Geneva) – The International Publishers Association (IPA) is
deeply concerned about the dangers that threaten Turkish publishers
when pursuing their profession.
“We call upon the Turkish authorities to implement the many reforms
that were passed. Implementation is key and must not surrender to
bureaucratic conservatism or any other hurdle,” says Ana-Maria
Cabanellas, President of the IPA.
On 15 July 2004, eight international NGOs met with Enlargement
Commissioner Günter Verheugen in Brussels to discuss the progress
made by Turkey in the field of Human Rights.
The Commission will issue a recommendation this September on whether
EU member states should start membership negotiations with Turkey in
December 2004 or not.
It is indeed in December that Heads of States and Governments will
decide on this. They have already indicated that they would follow
the recommendation issued by the Commission.
The IPA recalled that last year 43 books were banned and 37 writers
and 17 publishers were put on trial. To date in 2004, at least 15
books have been banned in Turkey.
While welcoming the legislative and constitutional changes in Turkey,
the IPA expressed its three main concerns:
1. The legal impediments to the practice of the right to freedom of
expression in Turkey;
2. The current tendency of Turkish Security Courts to harass writers,
journalists and publishers by putting them on trial more and more
often, fining them or just postponing their trials indefinitely;
3. The lack of implementation of legal reforms regarding freedom of
expression.
Lars Grahn, Chairman of IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee, says,
“The six following taboos are obvious hurdles to freedom of
expression and to publishing in Turkey: Position of the Military,
Kurdish Question, Armenian Genocide, Kemalism, Women’s Liberation and
Islamic Law.
“Treating writers, journalists and publishers as potential terrorists
or criminals and judging them in the same courts as drug traffickers
and/or real terrorists is unacceptable.” (YE)
* The IPA press statement was released on July 19, 2004
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ISN, Switzerland
July 29, 2004
The new ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia

Geostrategic considerations, the struggle against terrorism, and
concrete economic interests are among the intertwining strands of a
new ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia, with the US inheriting Britain’s
imperial role and trying to consolidate its post-Cold War sphere of
influence.

By Lutz Kleveman for ISN Security Watch
About two years ago, I visited the US airbase in Bagram, some thirty
miles north of the Afghan capital Kabul. A US Army public affairs
officer, a friendly Texan, gave me a tour of the sprawling camp, set
up after the ouster of the Taliban in December 2001. It was a clear
day, and one Chinook helicopter after the other took off to transport
combat troops into the nearby mountains. As we walked past the
endless rows of tents and men in desert camouflage uniforms, I
spotted a wooden pole carrying two makeshift street signs. They read
“Exxon Street” and “Petro Boulevard’. Slightly embarrassed, the PA
officer explained, “This is the fuel handlers’ workplace. The signs
are obviously a joke, a sort of irony.” As I am sure it was. It just
seemed an uncanny sight as I was researching the potential links
between the “war on terror” and US oil interests in Central Asia.
Strategic struggle for Wild East
I had already traveled thousands of miles from the Caucasus peaks
across the Caspian Sea and the Central Asian plains all the way down
to the Afghan Hindu Kush. On that journey I met with and interviewed
warlords, diplomats, politicians, generals, and oil bosses. They are
all players in a geo-strategic struggle that has become increasingly
intertwined with the war on terror: the “New Great Game”. In this
re-run of the first “Great Game,” the nineteenth-century imperial
rivalry between the British Empire and czarist Russia, powerful
players once again position themselves to control the heart of the
Eurasian landmass, left in a post-Soviet power vacuum. Today the US
has taken over the leading role from the British. Along with the
ever-present Russians, new regional powers such as China, Iran,
Turkey, and Pakistan have entered the arena, and transnational oil
corporations are also pursuing their own interests in a brash, Wild
East style. Since 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration has
undertaken a massive military buildup in Central Asia, deploying
thousands of US troops, not only in Afghanistan but also in the
republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia. These first US
combat troops on former Soviet territory have dramatically altered
the geo-strategic power equations in the region, with Washington
trying to seal the Cold War victory against Russia, contain Chinese
influence, and tighten the noose around Iran.
Oil giants covet Caspian riches
Most importantly, however, the Bush Administration is using the “war
on terror” to further US energy interests in Central Asia. The bad
news is that this dramatic geopolitical gamble involving thuggish
dictators and corrupt Saudi oil sheiks is likely to produce only more
terrorists, jeopardizing US prospects of victory. The main spoils in
today’s Great Game are the Caspian energy reserves, principally oil
and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the
world’s biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from
85 to 190 billion barrels of crude, worth up to US$5 trillion.
According the US Energy Department, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone
could sit on more than 130 billion barrels, more than three times the
US reserves. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and
British Petroleum have already invested more than US$30 billion in
new production facilities. The aggressive US pursuit of oil interests
in the Caspian did not start with the Bush Administration, but under
Clinton who personally conducted oil and pipeline diplomacy with
Caspian leaders. US industry leaders were impressed. “I cannot think
of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as
strategically significant as the Caspian,” declared Dick Cheney in
1998 in a speech to oil industrialists in Washington. Cheney was then
still CEO of the oil-services giant Halliburton. In May 2001 Cheney,
now US Vice President, recommended in the Administration’s seminal
National Energy Policy report that “the President make energy
security a priority of our trade and foreign policy,” singling out
the Caspian Basin as a “rapidly growing new area of supply.”
Chemical dependency
Keen to outdo Clinton’s oil record, the Bush Administration took the
new Great Game into its second round. With potential oil production
of up to 4.7 million barrels per day by 2010, the Caspian region has
become crucial to the US policy of “diversifying energy supply’. The
other major supplier is the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, where both the
Clinton and the Bush administrations have vigorously developed US oil
interests and strengthened ties with corrupt West African regimes.
The strategy of supply diversification is designed to wean the US off
its dependence on the Arab-dominated OPEC cartel, which has been
using its near-monopoly position as leverage against industrialized
countries. As global oil consumption keeps surging and many oil wells
outside the Middle East are nearing depletion, OPEC is in the long
run going to expand its share of the world market even further. At
the same time, the US will have to import more than two-thirds of its
total energy needs by 2010, mostly from the volatile Middle East.
Many people in Washington are particularly uncomfortable with the
growing turmoil in Saudi Arabia, whose terror ties have been exposed
since the 11 September 2001 terror attacks. As the recent bombings
and attacks on oil installations have shown, there is a growing risk
that radical Islamist groups could topple the corrupt Saud dynasty,
only to then stop the flow of oil to “infidels.” The consequences of
8 million barrels of oil – 10 per cent of global production –
disappearing from the world markets overnight would be disastrous.
Even without any such anti-Western revolution, the Saudi petrol is
already, as it were, ideologically contaminated. To supply the
ideological deficit left by lack of democracy, the Saudi ruling elite
relies on the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam – many of whose
preachers see no room for compromise with nations like the US.
Tapping new veins
To escape its Faustian pact with Saudi Arabia, the US has tried to
reduce its dependence on Saudi oil sheiks by seeking to secure access
to the fabulous oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Guinea and the
Caspian. Central Asia, however, is no less volatile than the Middle
East, and oil politics are only making matters worse: Fierce
conflicts have broken out over pipeline routes from the landlocked
Caspian region to high-sea ports. Russia, still regarding itself as
imperial overlord of its former colonies, promotes pipeline routes
across its territory, notably Chechnya, in the North Caucasus. China,
whose dependence on imported oil increases with its rapid
industrialization, wants to build eastbound pipelines from
Kazakhstan. Iran is offering its pipeline network for exports via the
Persian Gulf. By contrast, both the Clinton and Bush administrations
have championed two pipelines that would avoid both Russia and Iran.
One of them, first planned by the US oil company Unocal in the
mid-1990s, would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the
Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean. Several months after
the US-led overthrow of the Taliban regime Afghan President Hamid
Karzai, a former Unocal adviser, signed a treaty with Pakistani
leader Pervez Musharraf and the Turkmen dictator Saparmurat Niazov to
authorize construction of a US$3.2 billion gas pipeline through the
Herat-Kandahar corridor in Afghanistan, with a projected capacity of
about 1 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. A feasibility study is
under way, and a parallel pipeline for oil is also planned for a
later stage. So far, however, continuing warlordism in Afghanistan
has prevented any private investor from coming forward. Construction
has already begun on a gigantic, $3.8 billion oil pipeline from
Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku via neighboring Georgia to Turkey’s
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. British Petroleum Amoco, its main
operator, has invested billions in oil-rich Azerbaijan and can count
on firm political support from the Bush Administration, which
stationed about 500 elite troops in war-torn Georgia in May 2002.
Pipeline perpetuates instability
Controversial for environmental and social reasons, as it is unlikely
to alleviate poverty in the notoriously corrupt transit countries,
the pipeline project also perpetuates instability in the South
Caucasus. With thousands of Russian troops still stationed in Georgia
and Armenia, Moscow has for years sought to deter Western pipeline
investors by fomenting bloody ethnic conflicts near the pipeline
route, in the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and
in the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and
Adjaria. Washington’s Great Game opponents in Moscow and Beijing
resent the dramatically growing US influence in their strategic
backyard. Worried that the US presence might encourage internal
unrest in its predominantly Muslim Central Asian province of
Xingjian, China has recently held joint military exercises with
Kyrgyzstan. The Russian government initially tolerated the US
intrusion into its former empire, hoping Washington would in turn
ignore Russian atrocities in Chechnya. However, for the Kremlin, the
much-hyped “new strategic partnership” against terror between the
Kremlin and the White House has always been little more than a
tactical and temporary marriage of convenience to allow Russia’s
battered economy to recover with the help of capital from Western
companies. It is unthinkable for the majority of the Russian
establishment to permanently cede its hegemonic claims on Central
Asia. Russia’s Defense Ministry has repeatedly demanded that the US
pull out of Russia’s backyard within two years. Significantly,
President Putin has signed new security pacts with the Central Asian
rulers and last October personally opened a new Russian military base
in Kyrgyzstan. It is the first base Moscow has set up outside
Russia’s borders since the end of the cold war. Equipped with fighter
jets, it lies only thirty-five miles away from the US airbase.
Strange bedfellows
Besides raising the specter of interstate conflict, the Bush
Administration’s energy imperialism jeopardizes the few successes in
the war on terror. That is because the resentment US policies cause
in Central Asia makes it easier for al Qaida-like organizations to
recruit new fighters. They hate the US because in its search for
antiterrorist allies in the new Great Game, the Bush Administration
has wooed some of the region’s most brutal autocrats, including
Azerbaijan’s Heidar Aliev, Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbaev and
Pakistan’s Musharraf. The most tyrannical of Washington’s new allies
is Islam Karimov, the former Stalinist dictator of Uzbekistan who
allowed US troops to set up a large and permanent military base on
Uzbek soil during the Afghan campaign in late 2001. Ever since, the
Bush Administration has turned a blind eye to the Karimov regime’s
brutal suppression of opposition and Islamic groups. “Such people
must be shot in the head. If necessary, I will shoot them myself,”
Karimov once famously told his rubber-stamp parliament. Although the
US State Department acknowledges that Uzbek security forces use
“torture as a routine investigation technique,” Washington in 2002
gave the Karimov regime US$500 million in aid and rent payments for
the US airbase in Khanabad. Though Uzbek Muslims can be arrested
simply for wearing a long beard, the State Department also quietly
removed Uzbekistan from its annual list of countries where freedom of
religion is under threat. Even though the US this year held back
US$18 million in aid, Powell assured Karimov he was still in their
good books. “Uzbekistan is an important partner of the United States
in the war on terror and we have many shared strategic goals. This
decision does not mean that either our interests in the region or our
desire for continued cooperation with Uzbekistan has changed,” the
State Department said. The current US policy of aiding Central Asian
tyrants for the sake of oil politics repeats the very same mistakes
that gave rise to bin Ladenism in the 1980s and 1990s because their
disgusted subjects increasingly embrace militant Islam and virulent
anti-Americanism. Tellingly, Uzbekistan has recently seen a sharp
increase in terrorist activities, with several bomb attacks shaking
Tashkent in April, including the first-ever suicide bombings in
Central Asia. More than forty people died in gun battles between the
terrorists and security forces.
Alternatives to fossil fuels needed
The 11 September attacks have shown that the US government can no
longer afford to be indifferent toward how badly dictators in the
Middle East and Central Asia treat their people, as long as they keep
the oil flowing. So, while the war on terror may not be all about
oil, certainly in one sense it should be about just that. A bold
policy to reduce the addiction to oil would be a wise strategy to win
the epic struggle against terrorism. In the short term, this means
saving energy through more efficient technologies, necessary anyway
to slow the greenhouse effect and global warming. The Bush
Administration’s old-style energy policies of yet more fossil-fuel
production and waste are continuing in the wrong direction. It is
time to realize that more gas-guzzling Hummers on US highways only
lead to more Humvees (and US soldiers) near oilfields. What is
urgently needed instead – for security reasons – is a sustainable
alternative energy policy. Ultimately, no matter how cleverly the US
plays its cards in the New Great Game in Central Asia and no matter
how many military forces are deployed to protect oilfields and
pipelines, the oil infrastructure might prove too vulnerable to
terrorist attacks to guarantee a stable supply anyway. The Caspian
region may be the next big gas station but, as in the Middle East,
there are already a lot of men running around throwing matches.
Lutz Kleveman ([email protected]) is the author of The New Great
Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia (Atlantic Books, 2003,
).

Moscow Times, Russia
July 30, 2004
Fifty Years of Riffs
British and Russian bands honor a legendary guitar at a free festival
By Sergey Chernov
The Fender Stratocaster — the guitar of choice for all
self-respecting rock stars — celebrates its half-century this year.
And to mark the anniversary, over 20 bands from Britain and St.
Petersburg will take the stage in the Miller Fender Fest, a large
open-air event on Saturday.
The free event on Bolotnaya Ploshchad is one of an international
series of concerts held to mark the guitar’s 50th birthday, and will
showcase four British bands — King Adora, Mystery Juice, Gold Blade,
and Kaiser Chiefs — as well as top Russian acts on a total of five
stages.
The legendary electric guitar was designed by American inventor Leo
Fender in 1954. He was later quoted as saying that it was his attempt
to “design the best instrument in the world, once and for all.” Since
then it has been played by musicians including Eric Clapton, Buddy
Holly, Hank Marvin and Bob Dylan.

For John Robb, singer and guitarist of Manchester punk band Gold
Blade, who will perform on the main stage, the instrument is
associated with one star. “I think of Jimi Hendrix and it makes me
feel really good,” he wrote in an e-mail last week. “He was the
genius who made the Fender Strat great.” Robb chooses a Telecaster
himself, but the band uses Strats on some of their songs.
Meanwhile, another participant, Sergei Voronov of Moscow-based
blues-rock band Crossroadz, strums a guitar once owned by Keith
Richards of the Rolling Stones. While on tour in New York in 1988, a
session drummer introduced Voronov to Richards, according to
Crossroadz’s official biography. The rhythm guitarist invited him to
join him in the studio, and then gave him the 1959 instrument.
While celebrating the famous instrument, the festival does not lay
down a hard-and-fast rule about playing only Fender Stratocasters,
and the music will not focus on the classic rock that is primarily
associated with the Strat, instead ranging from ska to psychobilly
and electronic.
The British participants bring their own highly distinctive sounds.
Mystery Juice, from Edinburgh, plays a psychedelic mixture of blues,
hip-hop and Gaelic fiddle, while Birmingham’s King Adora performs
updated glam rock, complete with the dramatic makeup. The indie-rock
band Kaiser Chiefs, from Leeds, has drawn comparisons with Britain’s
recent music sensation Franz Ferdinand.
The Russian bands, most of whom hail from St. Petersburg, are even
more diverse in style. Markscheider Kunst performs Afro-Cuban style
with Russian lyrics, while Billy’s Band took its original inspiration
from Tom Waits, but has adapted his cabaret rock for domestic
consumption. Deadushki combines electronica and punk, and
Moscow-based Deti Picasso blends rock with Armenian folk.
“The main idea was to represent different acts that use a guitar one
way or another,” the festival’s co-promoter Dmitry Sidorov said last
week. “That may be music of different styles, including those using
electronic and ethnic elements.”
The Miller Fender Fest starts on Saturday at 1 p.m. on Bolotnaya
Ploshchad. Metro Tretyakovskaya. Info at

ArmenPress
July 29 2004
DOCUMENTARY AIMS TO PROVOKE DEBATES ON HOW TO END CONFLICTS
STEPANAKERT, JULY 29, ARMENPRESS: A documentary shot by Georgian
filmmakers in cooperation with their counterparts from the breakaway
region of Abkhazia and telling about the Armenian-Azeri dispute over
Nagorno Karabagh was shown to residents of Stepanakert, the capital
of Karabagh. The film became possible thanks to funding from Heinrich
Bell Foundation from Germany and the British Reconciliation Resources
organization.
Walter Kaufman, a representative of the Heinrich Bell Foundation
in the South Caucasus, said before the show of the documentary that
one of the major objectives of the Foundation in the region is to
help societies of the conflicting nations to restore the confidence.
The documentary, he said, was to show how people on different sides
of the barricades were looking at the conflict.
Mikhail Mirziashvili, one of the directors of the film, said: “You
will not find in this documentary an answer to a question as who is
to be blame for the conflict, who is right and who is wrong. We have
tried to describe the conflict from a human being’s viewpoint.”
According to him, one of the goals is to push people from rival
camps to start debates over what to do to and how to do to end
confrontation. Two other documentaries, shot by the same team and
telling about Georgia’s conflicts with South Ossetia and Abkhazia
will be also shown to Stepanakert residents

ArmenPress
July 29 2004
IFC, ARMECONOMBANK SIGN AGREEMENT FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
YEREVAN, JULY 29, ARMENPRESS: One of the leading Armenian
commercial banks, Armeconombank and the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) signed a two million credit agreement on Wednesday
to develop small and medium-size business and housing mortgage
credits.
Armeconombank managing director Ashot Osipyan said the credit will
be provided in two tranches – each with a five year of repayment
period. Central Bank chairman Tigran Sarkisian said cooperation with
foreign lending organizations gives the bank a good opportunity to
offer new services to its customers, particularly, concerning housing
mortgage credits. Osipyan said interest rates on housing mortgage
credits went down from 24-25 percent, when the bank started giving
such credits, to 16 percent now. He said the new loan will help to
take the rates down to 14 percent and extend the repayment period
from 4 to 5 years.
The great portion of the new loan–$1.5 million- will go for
business development and the rest will be added to housing mortgage
funds.
The director of IFC Central and Eastern Europe Department, Edward
Nassim, said this is the first time when the IFC provides a credit to
a commercial bank in Armenia. This proves that the situation in the
banking sector is improving, he added
Until now the IFC has invested in Armenia $7 million, of which $5
million in Marriott Armenia Hotel and $2 million to ACBA bank for
implementation of a leasing credit program.

ArmenPress
July 29 2004
CROSS-STONE FROM ARSHILE GORKY’S HOME BROUGHT TO YEREVAN
YEREVAN, JULY 29, ARMENPRESS: Badal Badalian, the chairman of a
Yerevan-based Arshile Gorky Foundation, showed reporters today a
khachkar (cross-stone) which he said he brought from the village of
Khorgom on the banks of Lake Van in Turkey, the native village of
Arshile Gorky, one of the most famous contemporary artists of the USA
and the founder of Abstract Surrealism.
Badalian said he and another Armenian painter were traveling
across Western Armenia, now in Turkey and visited Gorky’s village,
now populated, as he said, by ethnic Armenians, assimilated by local
Yezidis and were drinking water from a spring in the yard of Gorky’s
home when a stone on the earth caught their sight. A closer look
revealed it was a khachkar.
Yezidis allowed Armenians to take the khachkar, weighing some 100
kg, to Armenia. Badalian said today the cross on the stone might have
been carved by Gorky himself when he was 10 or 11.
Arshile Gorky, described by Andre Breton as the most important
painter in American history, was born in Western Armenia, in. In
1915, Gorky (Vostanik Adoyan) escaped Turkish massacres with
thousands of others refugees. After his mother died of famine, he
headed for the US. His whole life in the new country, which ended in
suicide, consisted of years of hard work and bitter struggle.
Tragically enough, the years in which his art was ascending to its
greatest heights were also the darkest in his life. His marriage was
disintegrating; he was operated on for colon cancer, and he lost many
works in a studio fire.

ArmenPress
July 29 2004
PRESIDENT KOCHARIAN TO WATCH OLYMPIC GAMES ON AUGUST 23
YEREVAN, JULY 29, ARMENPRESS: Iskhan Zakarian, chairman of a
government department on physical training and sports, said today
president Kocharian will travel to Greece on August 23 to watch
Olympic Games. The Armenian delegation to Athens is composed of 52
people, 6 of whom are sporting journalists.

ANS TV, Baku, in Azeri
28 Jul 04
Armenian women pleased with their life in Azerbaijan

[Presenter Natavan Babayeva] The arrest of members of the Karabakh
Liberation Organization [who protested against Armenian officers’
visit to Baku] and the fact that the Armenian officers had been
invited to Baku [to attend a NATO conference] were wrong decisions by
the Azerbaijani authorities. This is the opinion of Yevgeniya
Shagenovna Abdullayeva who thanks the government for allowing her to
live in Baku in conditions of freedom and normal ethnic relations.
[Correspondent over video of Baku] More than 20,000 Armenians live in
the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, today. We decided to knock on a number
of doors which have always been open to Armenians in Azerbaijan –
just to ask how they are doing. We failed to meet a woman called
Rimma because she was at work. But we got in touch with an Armenian
woman who introduced herself as Madina. She was guarded by her
Azerbaijani husband and sons.
[Madina] Why are you filming me? How can you do things like that
without telling me?
[Man in Russian] Don’t film.
[Correspondent] What are your relations with the government? Are they
normal?
[Madina speaking in Russian] Yes. I am not complaining. Thank God, I
never complain. Everything depends on God. What can we do?
[Correspondent] We knocked on an another door. Yevgeniya Shagenovna
Abdullayeva met us with real Azerbaijani hospitality. She said that
the Azerbaijani government does not discriminate against her. Her
Armenian background has not restricted her movements or wishes.
[Yevgeniya Abdullayeva] I can say that I am personally satisfied. If
I had not obeyed, I would have never stayed here. I have brought up
two children here over the entire period of the [Nagornyy Karabakh]
conflict since 1988. My daughter was six in 1988 and another daughter
was four. Since that time, I have brought them up, they have
graduated from school and university, my daughter is married, I
travel and talk freely. No, I have no problems.
[Correspondent] Her only problem is that she is a housewife. Although
she had worked as a language and literature teacher for 19 years, she
had to quit her favourite job. Not because of the Azerbaijanis’
attitude to her, but because she was ashamed of what the Armenians
had done to the Azerbaijanis.
[Yevgeniya Abdullayeva speaking in Azeri] When I quit my job, I was
asked why are you doing this, nobody has ever reproached you, you
have an Azerbaijani family and children. I said no, why shouldn’t I?
I thought afterwards that my decision was correct. Everything needs
to be respected. Why should I wait?
[Correspondent] The Armenian woman is pleased not only with the
principal of the school, but also with the peace policy conducted by
the state in which she lives. As for [Armenian President] Robert
Kocharyan, she condemns him for his desire to unleash a war.
[Yevgeniya Abdullayeva speaking in Azeri] Who is he? Maybe someone
knows him, why should I? I do not know him and do not want to. Why
should I? Only because I am Armenian? First, I am Armenian living
here. I have not seen him, I do not meet him and I do not want to
meet him. What kind of attitude should one have to a country that
wants a war? Any country, not only Armenia. Would you have a good
attitude to a country that wants to wage a war with you?
[Correspondent] She says that the 25 years of her free life among the
Azerbaijanis should serve as a warning to Armenia. But this Armenian
woman also spoke about our officials’ position on Karabakh.
[Yevgeniya Abdullayeva speaking in Azeri] My attitude is that it is a
difficult issue. There is a mother who has lost her three sons, God
forbid. One must cope with this, right? It is difficult, they [the
Azerbaijani authorities] probably should not have given permission
and they [Armenian officers] probably should not have come here. One
should take people’s feelings into account. This is my personal
opinion. Was there any need to touch a raw nerve? Those who suffer
suffer in any case, right? But what can we do? The government should
deal with this, right?
[Correspondent] You see, even the Baku Armenians realize this.
Zamina Aliyeva and Aytan Mammadova, ANS.

Azartac news agency, Baku, in Azeri
29 Jul 04
Georgian Armenians demand compensation for Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline

Tbilisi, 29 July, Azartac special correspondent Islam Aliyev: An
Azartac special correspondent reports that the Armenian population of
the village of Tabatskuri of Georgia’s Tsalka District is demanding
compensation for the section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline
which is being built on the plots of land owned by them. The
villagers staged a rally on 27 July and announced that a larger rally
would be staged if relevant organizations did not pay compensation to
them.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ekho, Baku, in Russian
29 Jul 04 pp 1, 2
Azeri diplomatic corps discusses its problems with cabinet – paper

A recent meeting between Azerbaijani ambassadors and government
members noted the importance of intensifying the work of the
country’s diplomatic missions abroad, the Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho
has said. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov stated that
it was necessary to continue the “unrelenting struggle” against
Armenian propaganda and to intensify propaganda and information work
using modern information technologies, according to the newspaper. In
turn, other ministers touched on the problems that their departments
encounter in their international activities and drew the ambassadors’
attention to the need to increase control over budget expenditure at
the embassies. In reply, the ambassadors spoke about problems in
performing banking transactions with Azerbaijan and voiced many other
complaints. The following is the text of R. Orucov and N. Aliyev
report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 29 July headlined “The
Foreign Ministry decided not to wash its dirty linen in public” and
subheaded “Although, according to some reports, it did announce the
recall of ambassadors from a number of countries”. Subheadings have
been inserted editorially:
Diplomatic missions have to intensify work
The first joint session of the country’s diplomatic corps ended in
Baku yesterday. It emerged yesterday that President Ilham Aliyev
called on the Azerbaijani embassies abroad to work with the mass
media more closely. “Great attention should be paid to this sphere,”
Aliyev said. He said that a special post should be created in the
embassies for this purpose. At present, the embassies react to some
events or publications post factum in most cases. In Aliyev’s
opinion, the embassies should be proactive and should strive to get
the reports that are advantageous to Azerbaijan published (Turan news
agency).
Most of yesterday’s meeting was taken by speeches of government
members. According to the press service of the Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministry, effectively all the main members of the cabinet took part
in the meeting yesterday. In his speech, Defence Minister Safar
Abiyev reminded the audience of the tasks that the head of state has
set for the diplomats. Then the floor was taken by Interior Minister
Ramil Usubov who spoke about the need to intensify the diplomatic
missions’ work in terms of combating crime and ensuring internal
security at the foreign relations level. In turn, National Security
Minister Eldar Mahmudov spoke about great similarities in the work of
the diplomats and staffers of the special services. He said that
close cooperation between all government structures to ensure
national security was very important.
It has to be noted that almost all the members of the Azerbaijani
government delivered their speeches yesterday. And they all spoke to
the ambassadors about the problems that their departments encounter
in their international activities.
Ambassadors raise problems
The ambassadors replied with their own questions and suggestions.
They identified as one of the major problems the issue of extending
the validity period of the passports of our countrymen abroad and
issuing them quickly. Incidentally, it was decided at the session to
send a high-level official from the Interior Ministry on a business
trip to the embassies in those countries where the problem exists
with the extension of the passport validity period in order to
elaborate jointly with the diplomats a plan of measures to resolve
this issue.
First Deputy Finance Minister Ilqar Fatizada drew the diplomats’
attention to the need to increase control over budget expenditure at
the embassies. He reminded them of the rules of using office cars and
of the need to elaborate normative documents to celebrate the
national holidays of Azerbaijan.
In reply, the ambassadors told the representatives of the ministries
of finance and taxation about big problems that the foreign missions
experience when performing banking transactions with the home
country. Complaints about many other issues were also voiced.
As diplomatic sources told Ekho, the concluding speech by the chief
of the Presidential Executive Staff, Ramiz Mehdiyev, proved to be
most interesting. Most of the speech was dedicated to describing
different flaws in the work of the embassies. Some reports about the
session also say that the fate of different diplomats was also
discussed, but no details have been disclosed yet.
Unrelenting struggle against Armenian propaganda
Incidentally, according to the Turan news agency, Foreign Minister
Elmar Mammadyarov said at the meeting that the Azerbaijani
ambassadors to the USA, Russia, France and Egypt would be recalled
soon. Touching on the main objectives of the Azerbaijani diplomatic
service, the minister noted that the unrelenting struggle should be
continued against Armenian propaganda which strives to “discredit”
Azerbaijan. Using modern information technologies, information and
propaganda work should be intensified both in Azerbaijan and abroad.
Activities directed at continuing the provision of aid to the
refugees and internally displaced persons should be carried out. The
foreign missions should closely follow the reports by the local mass
media about Azerbaijan, analyse them, and inform the Foreign Ministry
in time, Mammadyarov said. He pointed out the need to intensify
cooperation with the local and foreign mass media and to hold regular
news briefings. Mammadyarov also deems it important to broaden the
propaganda and information work using the Internet.
As one of the participants in the meeting noted in a conversation
with Ekho yesterday, “the event was very useful to all sides; I can
bring a visual example: yesterday some members of the diplomatic
corps saw one another for the first time in their lives.” He also
noted that some speeches touched on the financial activities of
ambassadors. But, he said, “nothing specific was said about recalling
some heads of missions,” although the source did not rule out the
possibility that the rotation of the ambassadors might take place.