Glasgow Daily Record, UK
June 16 2004
I’VE BEEN IDLE FOR A YEAR COS THEY’RE ALL SO SCARED OF ME KNOCKING
THEM OUT
ABELYAN FIRES WARNING SCOTT
By Hugh Keevins
WILLIAM ABELYAN was once expelled from a Californian college for
decking a member of the school gridiron team.
Now he insists he’s come to Scotland to teach Scott Harrison a lesson
on Saturday and leave with the WBO featherweight title as his diploma
in determination.
The self-confessed Armenian immigrant punk turned upright citizen
says he got fed up being a troublemaker as soon as he realised there
was money in knocking people unconscious for a living.
Abelyan has been out of the ring for over a year and he boasts it is
because American or Mexican fighters are too scared to go anywhere
near him.
He said: ‘I couldn’t get a fight because I knock people down.
‘Or else I make them retire from boxing completely.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I read an old man like Manuel Medina had
gone 12 rounds with Harrison and then taken his title on points.
‘I was once a sparring partner for Medina and I knocked him down
twice.’
Harrison paid Abelyan money to step aside and give up his right to
fight Medina for the title which the Scot won back last November.
But even Harrison’s manager Frank Maloney won’t predict anything
other than a nail-biting bout.
Maloney said: ‘I wouldn’t have taken on this fight for Scott if there
had been a way of avoiding Abelyan.
‘But it’s a mandatory defence and the truth is that Scott is fighting
for his career.
‘Abelyan is a master boxer and his people fancy this fight big time.
‘Scott will need to rip him apart like a lion with a piece of meat
between his teeth if he wants to win against Abelyan.
‘There are massive pay days at stake and this will be one of the
best fights Scotland has ever seen. I am very concerned because there
might be no way back for Scott if he loses this one.’
In Abelyan’s camp,however, there wasno such fear.
Trainer Don House said: ‘I think Harrison is a decent fighter.
‘I would like to thank him for holding on to our belt until we could
get here to take it back to the States.William hasn’t fought for a
year but he is ready to take on anybody,anytime.
‘He could find harder fighters than Harrison if hewent to Mexico.
‘Sometimes it’s good to have some time out of the ring but we’ve
never stopped working in the gym.’
Abelyan arrived in the USA from Armenia when hewas eight years old
and regards his adopted country as his home.
But it took him time to remember that California was the Sunshine
State and didn’t welcome his dark side.
He said: ‘I never went back to school after they threw me out for
fighting.
‘I graduated through a home correspondence course.
‘But I got fed up with being a troublemaker and channelled my
aggression into boxing.
‘I’m not a fighter in the ring. I am a tactician and Harrison will
find out the difference between one and the other from the moment
the bell sounds to start the first round on Saturday night.
‘The ring is my house and from what I have seen of Harrison so far,
he reminds me of a Mexican fighter. He has no real movement but just
comes on to you.
‘My dream is to hold a world title and he is standing between me and
my destiny.
‘I don’t think I have had the best win of my career so far. I believe
that has still to come on Saturday night.’

Harrison will have his hands full
DARRYL BROADFOOT
The Herald, UK
June 16 2004
June 16 2004
RISKY Business could not have been a more appropriate billing for
Scott Harrison’s World Boxing Organisation featherweight title
defence against William Abelyan.
The Armenian-American arrived in Glasgow’s east end yesterday to
finalise preparations for what he believes will be the fulfilment of
his destiny at the Braehead Arena on Saturday. The credence given to
such boasts is often diluted when the jive-talking stops and the
jabbing begins.
Yet the undercurrent of trepidation spun by Frank Warren to promote
the fight was accentuated at Morrison’s Gym.
Abelyan, the WBO’s mandatory challenger, made little attempt to
disguise his contempt for Harrison. “I can’t believe his fight with
Medina went 11 rounds,” he said of Harrison’s successful rematch with
the Mexican in November.
“He is an old man. I sparred with him before his IBF fight and
dropped him a couple of times. I am coming here to take the belt
home.”
Don House, Abelyan’s trainer, agrees. “William has fought smaller
names in Mexico who are better this guy,” he said.
The 25-year-old Abelyan, who pulled out of the original date in March
with a shoulder injury and replaced by Walter Estrada, did not falter
when invited to explain his grounds for optimism.
Nor was he willing to accept that a year’s inactivity – he has not
fought since his three-round dismantling of Alejandro Estrada in
three rounds in Los Angeles last June – will put paid to the lofty
ambitions of the Abelyan camp.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to fight; nobody wanted to fight me,” he
said, a claim greeted with scepticism by Harrison’s manager, Frank
Maloney. “Scott is a fighter; I am a boxer. He is like a Mexican, he
will just come straight at me and then I will do my business.”
Maloney hopes the former high school tearaway does not wreak havoc on
Saturday and deny Harrison his shot at the big names. “I’m very
concerned about this guy,” he said. “If he loses this, there is no
rematch clause because it is a mandatory defence.”
Mike Tyson is set to make his latest comeback against Irishman Kevin
McBride on July 30. The finishing touches are being put on a deal
which could have the fight staged in Louisville, birthplace of
Muhammad Ali.

Abelyan: Harrison is there for taking
STEPHEN HALLIDAY
The Scotsman, UK
June 16 2004
WILLIAM Abelyan will be a long way from home on Saturday night but
if the Armenian-born, California-based mandatory challenger to Scott
Harrison’s WBO featherweight title is to be believed, the Braehead
Arena will be the scene of a comfortable coronation.
The 25-year-old, fighting outside the United States for the first time
in his six-year career, provided a withering and dismissive analysis
of Harrison yesterday as he met the Scottish media for the first time.
Dethroning Scotland’s world champion, according to Abelyan, will be
little more than a formality. He bases his claim on the evidence of
Harrison’s contests with Mexican veteran Manuel Medina last year. The
Scot, of course, slumped to a shock points loss to Medina in July
before regaining his belt with an 11th-round knockout in the rematch
four months later.
“I can’t believe Medina went the distance and then another 11 rounds
with Harrison,” said Abelyan. “I was Medina’s sparring partner and
I put him on the canvas twice. Medina is an old man.
“For me, Scott Harrison is a typical, come-forward fighter. He is a
strong kid, no doubt about it, but he just comes straight on to you.
There is no movement. I will be ready for him. I’m not going to say
I’ll knock him out, but I will do my stuff in the ring on Saturday
and the knockout will come.
“I’m a boxer, not a fighter, and I will show what’s going to happen
on Saturday. It’s nothing personal as far as I’m concerned, I’m just
here to become the world champion and take the belt home.
“I haven’t fought for a year, because everyone wants to avoid me.
When I become champion, they will all have to fight me.”
Don House, Abelyan’s trainer, echoed his boxer’s confidence. “Scott’s
a decent fighter but he doesn’t possess anything I’m worried about,”
said House. “William has fought tougher guys in the past and I’d just
like to thank Scott for allowing us to come here and win the belt.”
The taunts are unlikely to disconcert highly-motivated Harrison,
whose preparations for the second defence of his second reign as
champion were disrupted by his court appearance last week which saw
him found not guilty of assault.
Frank Maloney, Harrison’s manager, issued a vote of confidence in
his man, but not without some reservations.
“I am concerned about Abelyan,” said Maloney. “I would have preferred
to avoid this fight, but it’s typical of Scott that he didn’t want
to go down another route. Most guys who have had the problems Scott
went through over the past week would have cried off, but Scott isn’t
most guys. He is either incredibly single-minded or just has a screw
missing, I’ve never worked with anyone like him.
“Scott won’t be able to take a backward step in this fight, he’s
going to have to corner Abelyan and slow him down. I think that’s what
will happen but Scott is fighting for his career. Unlike with Medina,
if Scott loses this one, there is no rematch clause. Win it, though,
and there are some massive paydays ahead.”

MALONEY EXPECTING CLASSIC
sportinglife.com, UK
June 16 2004
Frank Maloney claims Scott Harrison’s WBO featherweight title defence
against William ‘The Conqueror’ Abelyan could be a Scottish boxing
spectacle – but admits he is not certain the Cambuslang fighter can
hold on to his belt.
Harrison takes on the American-based Armenian at Braehead Arena on
Saturday night in a mandatory defence of his title.
And a nervous Maloney, Harrison’s manager, is expecting fireworks in
front of up to 6,000 frenzied Scots fans.
He said: “This will be one of the best fights the Scottish public
will ever see. I really believe that.
“It will be as exciting as the England versus France game although I
hope the result goes the other way.
“But I’m very concerned. It’s not a fight that I would have taken if
it had not been mandatory.
“And if Scott loses then there’s no rematch clause, no matter what we
try to do – and anything can happen on the night.
“Scott knows there’s lots of big names out there and big pay days
ahead but Abelyan hasn’t come over here just to pick up the pay
cheque – he fancies it big time.
“Scott Harrison is fighting for his career but it shows you the
difference between him and every other fighter in this country. I’ve
worked with him and Lennox Lewis and neither of them avoided anyone.
“But Scott needs to rip the heart out of Abelyan like a lion. He
can’t take a backward step during the fight and he has to wear him
down.”
Abelyan, who had to pull out of the first proposed meeting with
Harrison in March when he injured a shoulder, has now not seen any
ring action in over a year but the confident 25-year-old insists his
inactivity will not hamper his chances.
He said: “I didn’t want to take the fight when I was injured but my
shoulder is feeling good now and I feel a lot stronger.
“It’s not a problem that I’ve been out for so long. I couldn’t get a
fight.
“Boxers didn’t want to fight me because I knock people out.”
Abelyan’s trainer Don House was also confident that his man would be
more than a match for Harrison.
He said: “I like Scott, he’s a decent fighter and I respect all
fighters and respect all world champions. But I’d like to thank him
for holding on to the belt that we came here to get.
“This won’t be Williams’ toughest fight. He has fought small-name
Mexicans who are better so there’s nothing there that we’re worried
about.”
From: Baghdasarian

Baku Today
June 16 2004
Motives For Murdering Of “Black Colonel” Not Clear Yet, Head
Prosecutor Says
Baku Today 16/06/2004 11:19
Motives of the murdering of the vice-president of Azerbaijan Football
Federations’ Association have not been established yet, Zahid Qaralov,
head of the General Prosecutor’s office, told reporters on Tuesday.
“It may be related to his personal affairs or career. But we don’t
know for sure yet,” said Qaralov while attending the funeral of Fatulla
Huseynov, who was shot to death early Monday in front of the building
he lived.
Huseynov, also deputy head of the opposition Justice party, was found
fatally wounded in his car around 7 a.m., the neighbors said. He had
got five bullets by a Russian-made Makarov pistol in his head and
chest, police said.
The murdered had been working for law enforcement bodies for long
years. He also had gained an appellation, “Black Colonel,” during
the 1991-94 war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Dozens of languages spoken across East Valley
By Gary Nelson, Tribune
East Valley Tribune, AZ
June 16 2004
Urdu is spoken here. So are Tagalog, Gujarathi and Laotian. The East
Valley, in fact, is a vivid tapestry of the world’s most familiar,
and some of its most exotic, tongues.
That picture emerges from a vast database of languages spoken in
virtually every neighborhood in the United States. It is sponsored
by the Modern Language Association, a New York City-based academic
organization that crunched U.S. Census data gathered in April 2000
to find out who speaks what, and where. The Web site is being made
public today.
The data could be a gold mine for marketers and a tool for civic
leaders and governments. Beyond that, it paints the East Valley as
a multilingual melting pot, broken down ZIP code by ZIP code.
English, of course, is by far the most prevalent language spoken in
East Valley homes. Spanish, as you would expect, is second.
Yiddish is quite a bit farther down the list — one of the least-spoken
languages in Arizona. If, however, you happen to be one of the two
Yiddish-speaking residents of the 85262 ZIP code in north Scottsdale,
don’t despair. The rest of Scottsdale has 268 others. And if you feel
like taking a drive, Queen Creek has five.
Perhaps the least linguistically diverse of larger East Valley cities
is Apache Junction. Of the 40 non-English languages and language
groups listed, 20 are not represented there. But if you’re looking
for someone in Apache Junction who can order Polish sausage in Polish
or French toast in French, you can find 83 who speak the former and
182 the latter.
The most polyglot neighborhood in the East Valley? That’s little
surprise: The 85282 ZIP code in Tempe, near Arizona State University.
Within that small area you can hear every language but Armenian and
Miao, a tongue of Southeast Asia. A few of the languages are a bit on
the rare side, though. See that little group huddled in the corner
of the coffee shop? They may be all four people in ZIP code 85282
who speak French Creole — the only four people in all of Tempe who do.
As for Miao, it’s the only language on the list that’s not spoken
in a single East Valley home. You can find pockets of Armenian here
and there, however, including five in Paradise Valley and 14 in Mesa.
Mesa’s Armenian speakers are all bunched in the city’s north-central
85213 ZIP code.
If the East Valley is beginning to sound like lobby conversation at
the United Nations, that’s just a reflection of what’s happening all
over the country, said Rosemary G. Feal, the executive director of
the Modern Language Association.
”So often, when we think of languages and cultures that are not
Anglophone America, we think of the world out there — foreign,”
she said. ”We don’t necessarily realize how, in our own American
globalized society, we’ve got all these linguistic resources woven
into the fabric.”
That should give some comfort to the one lonely soul in Scottsdale’s
85262 ZIP code who speaks an unspecified Slavic language.
Take heart. You’ll likely have company soon.
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.

World Team wins Petrosian Memorial by a point
Chessbase News, Germany
June 16 2004
16.06.2004 A heroic comeback by the Petrosian team in the final two
rounds fell a point short. Anand-Kasparov was one of several short
draws in the final round. Vaganian had the only win of the round, an
impressive bind against Adams. Gelfand, once Petrosian’s star pupil,
battled hard for the full point against Bacrot to no avail. Report
and games.
Team Petrosian comeback falls just short
Round 6 (June 15, 2004)
Petrosian Team 3-3 World Team
Kasparov (3.5/6) ½-½ Anand (3.5/6)
Leko (4) ½-½ Vallejo (3)
Gelfand (2) ½-½ Bacrot (3.5)
Akopian (2.5) ½-½ Svidler (4)
Vaganian (3.5) 1-0 Adams (3)
Lputian (2) ½-½ van Wely (1.5)
Final overall score:
World Team: 18.5 – 17.5 Petrosian Team
It was a valiant effort, but the Petrosian team fell short by the
thinnest possible margin at the end. After looking overmatched in the
first half, the ‘friends of Armenia’ squad didn’t lose a game in the
final two rounds and almost climbed back from a four-point deficit.
It was a great match, and it was fitting that the Petrosian Memorial
was a team event. Tigran Petrosian consistently put up phenomenal
scores in team events throughout his career. An incredible six times
he got the best score in the Olympiads playing for the USSR over a
20-year span.
After five draws Rafael Vaganian bared his teeth and squashed Mickey
Adams in what must have been one of the ugliest losses in the
Englishman’s career. It will also provide a lift for club players
everywhere who adore the Stonewall variation of the Colle, a rare
bird at the GM level. Vaganian got a knight on d6 that will keep
Adams up nights and then squeezed before finally administering the
coup de grace with a pawn breakthrough.
It was a good reminder that Vaganian was considered one of the
toughest players in the world for several decades and he admirably
carried the mantle of Armenian chess after Petrosian. He was playing
in the Soviet championship before Adams was born!
With Anand coming off of a loss and with his team leading by two
points we didn’t really expect a battle royal against Kasparov. The
world number one strayed from his usual Najdorf to play Kramnik’s
(and everyone else’s) favorite, the Sveshnikov. It isn’t the first
time Kasparov has ventured it, and there was no question about
preparation since the players followed the most popular line all the
way to move 20. Anand had reached this position before, last year
against Kramnik, and here tried to change the move order up, but
didn’t get anywhere. The draw was agreed on move 26.
Akopian-Svidler and Vallejo-Leko were short draws. Lputian and van
Wely sparred more seriously. The Armenian played a nice petite
combination (that’s English for petit combinaison) and got a pleasant
position with black, but allowed a repetition check. Then it was up
to Petrosian’s star pupil, Boris Gelfand. He tried his best to grind
out a win against Bacrot but the Frenchman defended well to split the
point and preserve his team’s one-point victory.
There’s no “I” in “team”, so you can’t place blame on anyone or give
particular credit, but we will anyway because we get paid by the word
around here. Standout performances by Bacrot and Vaganian cancelled
out on the scoreboard. Both team leaders were outscored by the second
boards. If you have to look for a difference-maker you find Gelfand’s
-2 performance. He played 132 points below his 2714 rating and didn’t
score a win.
Vaganian – Adams after 36…g5
This knightmare of a game came to a merciful end when Vaganian
finally played 37.d5! If Black captures with the e-pawn Nf5+ wins the
house with a triple attack. Instead Adams played 37…Bxd5 38.Nxb5
and resigned.
van Wely – Lputian after 23.Qc3
Lputian finds a clever way to keep a knight off of b5 and to activate
his rooks. 23…Bxa4 24.Nxa4 Rea8 25.Nxc4 desperado 25…Rxa4 26.Nb2
Ra2 and they played a repetition a few moves later.

RUSSIAN MAMMOTH TAKES FIRM STANDING IN ARMENIA
RIA Novosti, Russia
June 15 2004
YEREVAN, June 15 (RIA Novosti) – President Robert Kocharyan is
enthusiastic as Russia’s industrial holding Volgaburmach has appeared
in his country. “It will be a partner to rely on,” he says.
The President received Andrei Ischuk, company Directors’ Board
chairman, yesterday, reports the presidential press service. The
conferees discussed drafting progress on a final version of a contract
for the Volgaburmach to overtake the entire stock of the Armenian-based
Nairit research-cum-production amalgamation, on the world’s Top Five
list of chloroprene rubber manufacturers.
Mr. Ischuk offered to the President an investment programme, and
blueprints to improve the company and bring it back to full capacity.
A contract on which the Volgaburmach will acquire complete Nairit
stock was signed in Yerevan, April 16.
The Volgaburmach possesses 14 factories and 11 construction and
assembly offices. Its consolidated turnover exceeded US$200 million
last year.

Romancing the stones
The Guardian, UK
June 16 2004
Julian Cope may well be the only antiquarian researcher to have
appeared on Top of the Pops while stoned on acid. He talks to John
Vidal about why we venerate landscape, the politics of heritage,
shamanism, and the prehistoric nature of football worship
Julian Cope, a middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap, is sitting
under a great oak at Avebury, one of Britain’s finest megalithic sites,
holding forth on what makes a place hallowed. There are, he says, tens
of thousands of stone circles, dolmans, amphitheatres and monuments,
but these are mere pointers. “The sacred landscape is everywhere,”
he says. “Britain’s ancientness shocks me. It’s all there, just below
the surface. You can peel it away like the skin of an onion.”
Cope is an expert on stone circles, but he’s not your average
antiquarian researcher. Rock star, self-styled shaman and goddess
worshipper, his conversation roams from druids (“an elite bunch
of control freaks”) to planning policy (he calls for a new era of
megalith-building in Britain).One minute he is learnedly discussing
alignments of stones with a passer-by, the next he’s leaping around
imitating a horned God. The heritage industry, environmentalism,
prehistoric culture and the goalkeeper-as-shaman are all on his
idiosyncratic agenda.
Places can be both modern and sacred, he ruminates. The best examples
are Avebury, Stonehenge, and especially Glastonbury, where people
today still go to from the city in an updated version of western
worship. But the examples are not exclusively ancient. St Paul’s
cathedral in London is sacred – though the technological age,
embodied in the modern city buildings that surround it and dominate
it, has sapped some of its power. The Twin Towers of New York, Cope
argues, represented a sacred landscape for Americans. Each culture,
he suggests, can make its own temples.
Cope is singular. He was the lead singer of post-punk indie band,
The Teardrop Explodes, who shone brilliantly for a couple of
amphetamine-fuelled years in the early 1980s. He became a cult
solo rocker, and author of two critically-acclaimed volumes of
autobiography. He may, too, be the only bona fide antiquarian
researcher to have performed on Top of the Pops while on acid,
and to have posed naked (for an album cover) beneath the shell of a
giant turtle.
More recently, he gave two talks at the British Museum about the norse
divinity Odin – an occasion noted for his appearance in five-inch
platform shoes and the fact that his hairspray forced the evacuation
of the building after setting off fire alarms.
He plays the fool, but he certainly isn’t one. Four years ago,
his eight-year study of the ancient sites of Britain, The Modern
Antiquarian, did as much as a thousand archaeologists and academics to
drag late-prehistoric megalithic cultural studies into the present. It
sold more than 40,000 copies in hardback and won the respect of many
of Britain’s leading researchers. What impressed the academics was
not just the fact that, unlike them, he had the time and money to
visit almost every one of the hundreds of sites that litter Britain,
but that the infectious enthusiasm and knowledge of this errant,
sometimes absurd, genius was filled with the kind of insights that
could never come from the mainstream.
Cope may follow a long and honourable line of 18th- and 19th-century
amateur antiquarians who meticulously recorded ancient sites and tried
to interpret pre-history, but his take is equally informed by rock
‘n’ roll, and his experience of wildness and shamanism.
The megalith builders, he says, were these islands’ first settlers,
and humanity’s first known monument builders. Their urge to mark the
environment they lived in with monuments came out of reverence for
the sun and the moon, but also, he says, from the deep and abiding
urge to make human significance from land scape – something which,
he says, still deeply informs the British, who venerate both landscape
and the past more than in any other country in Europe.
“The stones and circles of Britain are absolutely central to who we
are today,” he says. “They have defined and shaped our society. Our
understanding of them makes us who we are. It shapes us, enriches
our culture, and allows us to reflect on our own obsessions.”
A few weeks ago, he visited the small Nine Ladies stone circle in the
Peak District national park, just a few hundred yards from where a
quarry company plans to extract millions of tonnes of stone. On one
level, he says, he was shocked by the threatened disturbance and the
“fucked up” quarriers; but he was also heartened by the intuitive
defence of the stones by a group of protesters who have been camped
in the woods nearby for more than three years.
Cope, an evironmentalist, is no stranger to protest, notably at the
Newbury bypass, where he donned the white hats of the roadbuilders
and started ordering around the security guards. But the Nine Ladies
protest at Stanton Lees also made him think about how the British have,
almost uniquely, held on to their past. He has just finished a massive
book on the ancient cultures of Europe, visiting more than 400 sites –
from the temple circles of Ireland to the stone boats of Scandinavia
and the megaliths of Armenia and the Mediterranean. He found many
in a sorry state, un appreciated or even knocked down. “We dont know
how blessed we are with our monuments,” he says. “In some places in
Iberia, you have to wade through human excrement to reach rock-cut
tombs.” Moreover, there is little study being done. Even though the
earliest neolithic settlers [in Crete] were the originators of the
Greek myths, little is known about them.
The significance of the stones in Britain, he suggets, is not
dissimilar to what it was thousands of years ago. “The Peak District
national park is now a vast sanctuary for the hundreds of thousands
of people who live near it, just as in the past the megalith builders
turned the whole area into a huge limestone sanctuary reflecting the
monumental landscape.”
We should, he says, think differently about landscape today, not be
so precious about monuments, and think about using it to reflect our
own age and obsessions.
“My idea of beauty is first based on what I know about it, and then
on what it looks like,” Cope says. “Perhaps we should set windfarms
up in lines or in circles. Let’s be monumental about them.” Giant
sculptures such as the Angel of the North come, he says, from the
same urge to give meaning to place.
The heritage conservation industry is, he suggests, overprotective.
He would see nothing wrong with people today re-erecting fallen
monuments, or even re-arranging the stones, just as the megalith
builders themselves thought nothing about dismantling some structures,
carting them off to make new monuments and changing their significance
according to the needs of the times.
He deplores the kind of insensitive roadbuilding seen at Stonehenge
or Newbury, which can carelessly destroy ancient landscapes, yet
he is no lover of the government’s obsessive protectionism that
lists up to 400,000 buildings and preserves landscapes in aspic as
some kind of romanticisation. “Often, it’s for no other reason than
that something is old,” he says. “That’s got to be total bullshit.
Something is only beautiful because of what it stands for. Some of our
destroyed castles are symbolic of terrible things, and are a mess. Why
preserve the Byker estate in Newcastle? It’s a monument to suffering.”
One of the roles of the modern rock star, he suggests, is to be the
shaman in society, opening the doors of the “underground”. “It’s
as close to the shaman’s contribution in prehistoric society as you
can possibly get,” he argues. “The shaman beating on the rotten log
in Cheddar Gorge would have used the stack of speakers today. I see
myself as a shaman. We have this idea that the shaman was insane,
but I think he filtered through all society. You have always have to
have people howling at the moon.”
We are much closer to our ancient roots than we might think, he says.
“Jim Morrison was probably the first to recognise the role of the
rock ‘n’ roller as shaman,” Cope says. “It was the Doors’ epics,
such as The End and When the Music’s Over, that tipped the audience
into the magical netherworld of ritual death and resurrection. Even
a really shit band in a youth club has a barbarian eloquence. It’s
a religion substitute.”
He sees echoes of prehistory cultures in everything. “Look at
football worship,” he says. “All those people gathered in an unroofed
stadium [is] not unlike what must have gone on in pagan sanctuaries.
The goalkeeper is the ultimate shaman, guarding the gates to the
underground, wearing the No 1 jersey in a different colour and not
seeming to be part of the team. We’ve never lost it. Modern beliefs
that we are at the tail end of a culture that is killing itself is
just bollocks.”
What of today’s archaeologists, picking away at our past? “They’re
like fucking mystics,” he says. He loves and respects them, but cannot
help winding them up. “I went down to one site wearing my Archbishop
Makarios hat. ‘I’m here to declaim loudly,’ I said. ‘You spend 16
hours a day pissing around in the wind and the rain. If that’s not
mystic, what is?’
“I think it’s essential there’s someone like me, if only to wind them
up. I’m past the stage of trying to theorise about these places. I
know what I believe, but I’m more interested in getting other people
to see for themselves.”
Cope stops for breath and, as if reviewing his role in life, remarks:
“In the end, I’m not a very good rock ‘n’ roller, but I’m a very good
Julian Cope.”
· As the summer solstice approaches, historian Andy Worthington
discusses sacred landscapes, public access and the politics of heritage
at SocietyGuardian.co.uk/environment
· More about Julian Cope at

ARMENIAN OFFICER KILLED IN FIGHTING NEAR AZERI BORDER
By Gevorg Stamboltsian
Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
June 16 2004
YEREVAN, 16.06.04. An Armenian army officer was shot dead last week
in a fierce cross-border firefight with Azerbaijani forces in the
northern Tavush region which heightened military tension in the area,
the Armenian military revealed on Tuesday.
It also emerged that the fighting prompted urgent intervention
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe which
has been monitoring the decade-long regime of ceasefire along
the Armenian-Azerbaijani frontier and the line of contact east of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Colonel-General Mikael Harutiunian, chief of staff of Armenia’s Armed
Forces, said skirmishes erupted after Azerbaijani troops occupied
a hill in a no-man’s land near the regional town of Ijevan which
overlooks a local water reservoir. He said Armenian forces responded
by moving their positions forward in order to defend a nearby facility
that pumps irrigation water to five local villages.
Harutiunian said the slain Armenian officer had the rank of
lieutenant but refused to disclose his identity. He also claimed
that the Azerbaijani side suffered more casualties. “It’s hard for
me to give a number, but we do know that many died on their side,”
he told reporters.
The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said in a separate statement that OSCE
officials began an urgent monitoring of the situation in the area at
the weekend and are trying to defuse the tensions. Harutiunian said
his troops will not pull pack to their previous positions unless the
Azerbaijanis withdraw from the hill. “Once they leave the hill and
ensure the safe work of the pump station we will make a corresponding
decision,” he said.
The incident highlighted the shaky nature of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
ceasefire, the tenth anniversary of which was marked last month.
Although the truce has largely held, hundreds of soldiers from both
sides are believed to have died in skirmishes periodically reported
from the line of contact. The most serious of them occur on the
Karabakh frontline which has the heaviest troop concentration.
RFE/RL