Author: admin

The Washington Times
June 22, 2004

United Press International

Serena wins opening match at Wimbledon

London, England, Jun. 22 (UPI) — Top seed Serena Williams opened
defense of her Wimbledon championship Tuesday with a 6-3-6-1 win over
over Jie Zheng of China

The 23-year-old American won easily despite committing more than
twice as many unforced errors than her opponent.

Rain forced officials to end play for the day with a number of matches
incomplete, including those involving highly seeded Andy Roddick and
Guillermo Coria.

Unseeded Russian Sandra Kleinova eliminated her sixth-seeded
countrywoman, Elena Dementieva, and Virginie Razzano of France knocked
out No. 8 Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia.

On the men’s side, fifth-seeded Tim Henman of England defeated Ruben
Ramirez Hidalgo of Spain 4-6 7-6 (8-6),6-4, 6-2.

Other men’s winners included ninth-seeded Carlos Moya of Spain,
14th-seeded Mardy Fish of the United States, Czech Jiro Novak, Spain’s
Feliciano Lopez, Sargis Sargsian of Armenia, Jan-Michael Gambill of
the United States and Russian Dmitry Tursunov, who beat countryman
Marat Safin.

Women advancing included Russians Nadia Petrova and Elena Bovina,
Patty Schnyder of Switzerland, American Meghann Shaughnessy and Marion
Bartoli of France, who ousted Chandra Rubin of the United States.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Georgia should rather strivie for joining CSTO than NATO

Pravda.RU:World

19:20 2004-06-22

Chairman of the State Duma (the lower house of parliament) committee
for CIS affairs and ties with countrymen Andrei Kokoshin believes
that it would be more logical for Georgia to strive for joining the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) than NATO. The CSTO
incorporates Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan.

“It would be more logical for Georgia to strive for joining the CSTO
since the new Georgian leadership has said many times of late about
its friendly feelings towards Russia, and its recognition of Russia’s
leading role in ensuring security and stability in the region,”
Kokoshin said on Tuesday in an interview with RIA Novosti.

According to him, the CSTO is more modern and flexible organization
than NATO, which was created after the cold war period and therefore
is not burdened by the past events.”

Kokoshin believes that the attempts of Georgian and some other
CIS countries’ representatives to use Russia-NATO cooperation
as an argument in favor of its entering NATO are “groundless and
illogical.” “Russia cooperates with NATO in combating terrorism, in
non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and in some other
areas where this cooperation is mutually beneficial and equal. But
this is achieved not always,” Kokoshin explained.

He also pointed out that “Russian and foreign experts differently
assess the effectiveness of such cooperation inside NATO as well,
not to mention its interaction with external partners.”

“The overwhelming majority of State Duma deputies have a negative
attitude to statements made by some Georgian officials about the
plans of its joining NATO,” Kokoshin stressed.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Australian
The Age, Australia
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Daily Telegraph, Australia
June 22 2004

NATO conference disrupted

>>From correspondents in Baku, Azerbaijan

A NATO conference in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan was
disrupted today when hardline nationalists tried to storm the hotel
where the meeting was taking place.

Police arrested 12 demonstrators, who were protesting against the
presence at the conference of two servicemen from the neighbouring
country of Armenia.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are officially in a state of war after
fighting in the early 1990s over the disputed enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh.

About 30 demonstrators broke through a police cordon outside the
venue for the meeting, a hotel in the Azeri capital, Baku, and
smashed the glass door of the conference hall, witnesses at the scene
told AFP.

They were prevented from getting into the hall by the hotel’s
security guards and were later detained by police. The meeting was
suspended for five minutes as a result of the disturbance.

Earlier, the protesters had marched through Baku carrying placards
with the slogans: “Armenians Out!” and “The Armenian criminals have
the blood of our people on their hands.”

“We will continue this protest action all day,” said Akif Nagi, who
led the demonstration. “Our aim is to force the Armenians to leave
the conference.”

The conference is being held to prepare for a training exercise of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, called “Cooperative Best
Effort,” which is due to take place in Azerbaijan later this year.

The conference is being attended by delegates from 24 NATO member
states and partner countries, including the two Armenian officers.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenia hopes for Iranian credit to build hydro plant

Interfax
June 22 2004

Yerevan. (Interfax) – Armenia is hoping to receive a credit from
Iran to build a hydroelectric plant on the Araks river, the cost of
which is estimated at $140 million, Armenian Energy Minister Armen
Movsisian told journalists.

He said that Armenia plans to repay the credit with supplies of
electricity to Iran.

The minister said that there are plans to build two identical
hydroelectric plants on the Araks river – the Megrin Hydroelectric
Plant on Armenian territory and the Karachilar Hydroelectric Plant
in Iran. Movsisian said that in the coming two months a feasibility
study would be prepared for the construction of Megrin Hydroelectric
Plant. Construction is set to begin in mid-2005 and an agreement with
Iran will be signed by the end of this year.

The minister said that the plant will have a capacity of 140
megawatts and will produce 841 million kWh of electricity per year.
For comparison he said that 30 small hydro plants are operating in
Armenia, producing a total of 600 million kWh of electricity per
year. He said that the new plant would be the best in Armenia as
regards its technical and economic parameters and in time it is planned
to build a whole chain of plants on the Araks river together with Iran.

The Armenian government and Energy Ministry are currently working on a
program to develop alternative energy production, to ensure Armenia’s
security in the event of Armenian Nuclear Power Plant closing. The
main emphasis in this program is being placed on developing hydro
production.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Harrison’s place in history assured
Stephen Halliday at Braehead Arena

The Scotsman – United Kingdom
Jun 21, 2004

THE superlatives flowed almost as fluently as the barrage of punches
which took Scott Harrison into the history books on Saturday night
but no matter the praise heaped upon him, actions speak so much louder
than words for Scotland’s WBO featherweight champion.

Even compared to the legendary Roberto Duran by understandably jubilant
manager Frank Maloney in the wake of his breathtaking third round
stoppage of mandatory challenger William Abelyan at the Braehead Arena,
Harrison’s performance issued a proclamation to the rest of the nine
stone division’s elite that he is more than ready to stake his claim
as the finest of them all.

Injin Chi, the explosive WBC champion from South Korea, is first on
the wish-list of Harrison’s promoters as the 26-year-old pursues his
dream of unifying the titles. Boxing politics may yet conspire to deny
Harrison the marquee fights he craves against IBF and WBA champion
Juan Manuel Marquez of Mexico or his Filipino rival Manny Pacquiao,
but there can be no doubt now that the Glaswegian belongs in such
elevated company.

Saturday’s defence of his title was widely predicted to be Harrison’s
most difficult yet against the Armenian-born Californian southpaw
with a reputation as the wild card of the division, a man capable of
seriously ruffling the smoothest of feathers.

While Harrison’s ruthless dismantling of an opponent ranked in the
top ten by three of the major sanctioning bodies will not receive as
much exposure in the Las Vegas Sun as it does in the Scottish one,
he can be sure this result will be duly noted on the influential
American boxing scene.

“I believe I am the best featherweight in the world,” said Harrison,
“and I just want the opportunity to prove it. I want to collect all the
belts I can, I want the unification fights. After that, my goal is to
move up to super-featherweight and become a two-weight world champion.

“I honestly don’t think about the money. What’s more important to me
is the chance to go down in history for a long, long time. Anyway,
if you keep winning world title fights, you don’t have to worry about
the money, it will come automatically.

“I think I’m just about getting to my peak now but at the same
time I feel I can jump up another level or two if I need to in the
big unification fights. I want to keep busy now and I want to keep
making history.”

His defeat of Abelyan was Harrison’s fifth victory in a world title
contest, drawing him level with Jim Watt’s record for a Scottish
boxer. It now seems inconceivable that he will not go on to become
his country’s most successful pugilist of all time.

Despite well-publicised personal difficulties Harrison encountered
in the build-up to the contest, cleared of an assault charge just
nine days earlier, there was a hugely impressive, almost serene focus
about the champion as he entered the ring.

Any fears that the anger he had expressed over both the court case
and Abelyan’s pre-fight taunts would result in a dangerous lack of
concentration were erased from the opening bell as Harrison settled
into a slick rhythm of controlled aggression.

The challenger paid for opting to share the centre of the ring in
the first round, Harrison catching him repeatedly with straight right
hands and clipping left hooks to take the session convincingly. The
second round saw Abelyan switch to the kind of tactics widely expected
of him, circling the ring defensively and landing several accurate
counter punches on the advancing champion.

It was enough to win Abelyan the round and suggested Harrison may be
in for as long and troubling an evening predicted. Instead, it was
simply the cue for the Scot to produce arguably the most impressive
round of his career to date.

Closing down the space Abelyan was attempting to create, Harrison
regained total control of the flow of the contest. Another jolting
right hand staggered and dropped Abelyan for the first time, the
stunned challenger continuing after an eight count from American
referee Samuel Viruet. There was no respite, Harrison sensing the
opportunity for an early night and refusing to let Abelyan off
the hook.

A blistering combination sent him to the canvas again, Abelyan this
time sprawling forward in disarray and looking unlikely to beat the
count. Bravely, he did, but when Harrison swarmed in again, Viruet
stepped in to call a halt at 1m 45sec of the round.

“Scott made a statement tonight, not just to British boxing where he
is now the country’s number one fighter ahead of Ricky Hatton and Joe
Calzaghe, but to the rest of the boxing world,” said manager Maloney.

“I don’t think anyone in the featherweight division can beat him. He
is a modern-day Roberto Duran, he will fight anyone and he does it
for the glory and for pride in his country.

“My only disappointment was that we didn’t have a sell-out for this
fight. I know it was on and off a few times, which made it difficult,
but Scott is the most successful sportsman in Scotland and I hope
the people will really get behind him.

“If we can bring Injin Chi here, a guy who loves to come forward and
fight, it would be a massive fight for Scott and for Scotland.”

Chi, the 30-year-old Korean who travelled to Manchester earlier this
year to stop Michael Brodie and claim the WBC title, is scheduled to
make the first defence of his belt against Eiichi Sugama of Japan
in Seoul on 24 July. With the WBC last week filing for bankruptcy
after losing a dollars 31 million lawsuit to German boxer Graciano
Rocchigiani, the organisation’s future is clearly in some doubt but a
fight with Chi would remain a major attraction for Harrison no matter
how many titles are on the line.

“It would be a great fight for Scott,” said his father and trainer
Peter Harrison, “and those are the kind of tests he wants now. He has
never shirked anyone and he will fight any featherweight out there.”

Glasgow super-featherweight Willie Limond convincingly won a gruelling
battle against crude French champion Youssef Djibaba, to lift the
vacant European Union title.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PM TO ATTEND GERMAN-ARMENIAN ECONOMIC COOPERATION CONFERENCE IN BERLIN

ArmenPress
June 21 2004

YEREVAN, JUNE 21, ARMENPRESS: Armenian prime minister Andranik
Margarian is leaving fro Germany on June 22 to attend a German-Armenian
Economic Cooperation Conference. The government press office said,
finance and economy minister Vartan Khachatrian, who is also the
co-chairman of a German-Armenian inter-governmental commission on
economic cooperation, trade and economic development minister Karen
Chshmaritian, Central Bank governor Tigran Sarkisian, chief of customs
service Armen Avetisian, the head of the Armenian Development agency,
other officials, more than two dozens of businessmen and reporters
will accompany the prime minister.

In Berlin Margarian will also have meetings with deputy chancellor
and foreign minister Joschka Fischer, chairman of Berlin parliament
Walter Momper, Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereith and other officials.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SOLUTION IN UNITY

Azat Artsakh – Republic of Nagorno Karabakh (NKR)
June 21 2004

“Because recently a number of European organizations including the
Minsk Group, of course, pay more attention to the regulation of the
NK question, this conference and the members of parliament who have
arrived from different countries of the world, may essentially favour
the formation of the public opinion on the problem in the international
organizations. This is one of the main ways of favouring the fair
settlement of the problem by the foreign members of parliament
friends of the Armenian nation,” said the speaker of the National
Assembly of NKR to journalists during the Armenian Conference of the
Parliamentarian Friendship. Oleg Yessayan answered a number of other
questions. – Mr. Yessayan, what is your opinion on this undertaking? –
Consistent accomplishment of unity should be a law for a divided
nation. Especially in this stage when Armenia and other young states
face numerous problems therefore further maintenance of unity is
essential to their solution. And one of the main steps to achieve it
is this conference. It is unique in its kind and we hope that this
conference will be accomplished and its further activity will enable
to discuss a number of questions referring Karabakh as well. – In your
opinion can this conference have a positive effect on the favourable
and positive settlement of the Karabakh conflict? – Representatives of
many states which member all the international organizations engaged in
the settlement of the Karabakh issue participate in this conference and
naturally each of them, though imagining the ways of fair settlement
may try to ask the opinion of their colleagues as well. And besides all
the important conditions there is one, no less important problem – the
opinion of the international community. And the members of parliament
of different countries have their big role in its formation. – What
other important steps of the Armenian lobbing can you mention? – I can
mention two important steps. First, we may discuss with our colleagues
from different countries problems concerning further development of the
Karabakh economy. And second, the activity of Armenian parliamentarians
in different international organizations directed at the settlement
of the Karabakh issue within the framework of the political aspect of
the issue. Finally, each of them is member of a different country and
each of them certainly can favour the formation of the approach of the
parliament of his country. – There are rumours that the question of
returning by Karabakh the three adjacent territories to the Republic
of Azerbaijan is discussed. – I have never heard such formulations
and neither participated in such discussions. I do not think that
such discussion ever took place. I also learned about this from
the mass media that allegedly such discussion took place with the
participation of the Karabakh government, but I state officially that
this is disinformation. – And if suppose such a suggestion was made,
I this case what is your position? – If Karabakh considered it absurd
to return five regions for opening of some railroad, why do you think
that it will agree to return three?

CHRISTINE MNATSAKANIAN

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

INCREASING BIRTHRATE IS A PRIORITY

Azat Artsakh – Republic of Nagorno Karabakh (NKR)
June 21 2004

For countries with small population the growth of the number of the
population is very important. This importance is more apparent for
countries that survived war. Of course, it is not easy to restore the
social and economic state of the population having passed through
war. In the recent decade in Karabakh not only the government but
also different organizations undertook a number of measures for
increasing birthrate. Families having 4 and more children under 18
receive monthly benefits of 2000 drams for each child (by January 1,
2004 there are 1160 such families in Karabakh). Armenian Evangelist
Society also provides aid. About 325 families in the republic receive
food and money once in three months. In 2004 “Karabakh Telecom”
provides 5 thousand drams to each child in socially insecure families
having 4 and more children. The department for problems of family
and children of the NKR Ministry of Social Security informed that
of the 223 families 71 (321 children) have already received their
sums. According to the head of the department Samvel Dadassian,
by the decision N 62 of the government of NKR made on November 26,
2002 for the aim of stimulating birthrate, favouring the growth of
the number of population, improving the material security of the
growing generation at the town and regional branches of “Artsakhbank”
accounts are opened in the name of the child born in the family. For
the third child 700 US dollars, fourth child 1000 US dollars, for
the fifth and the next children 1500 US dollars, for the fifth child
1500 US dollars, for the sixth and seventh child 2000 US dollars,
for the tenth and the next children 3000 US dollars. According to S.
Dadassian, after the birth of fourth and the next children for all
the schoolchildren in the family the payment for the textbooks is
compensated by the government, and in the regions families having
more than 5 children under 18 receive monthly compensation for 60
kW/h of electricity. In the regions after the birth of the tenth
and next children the family receives only once 5000 US dollars.
Generally large families are socially insecure especially when its
members do not work. One of them is the family of Avetis Abrahamian.
Before the Artsakh war they lived in Russia. In 1990 they returned
to Artsakh to defend their native land. By the way, their fourth
child was born here. Now the family Abrahamian has eight children
(4 boys and 4 girls), soon the ninth will be born. “Frankly speaking
we do not know whom to turn to for help. I applied to many places for
work but never received a positive answer. I applied to the City Hall
for the question of repairing the apartment but I was refused for the
reason of the lack of financial means. So far we have been living in
two rooms and the third which serves as a sitting room does not have
floor. After all this I come to the conclusion that the contribution
of the defenders of the fatherland is not appreciated,” says A.
Abrahamian. Nevertheless, the family expects with hope for the new
apartment to be built and improvement of their social conditions. In
reference to the question of providing flats to large families the
head of the department for problems of family and children stated
that houses are being built for families in the regions having 7 and
more children under 18. In 2000-2003 50 houses were built for large
families in the regions. This year it is planned to build 25 houses.
Building of 15 has already started, the others are prepared. As
to the families living in the capital in 2005 houses will be built
for families having 6 and more children. The family Abrahamian is
among them.

ANAHIT DANIELIAN

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Sudan’s Final Solution
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 19, 2004
The New York Times

LONG THE SUDAN-CHAD BORDER — In my last column, I wrote about
Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old woman whose world began to
collapse in March, when the Janjaweed Arab militia burned her village
and slaughtered her parents.

Similar atrocities were happening all over Darfur, in western Sudan,
leaving 1.2 million people homeless. Refugees tell consistent tales of
murder, pillage and rape against the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit tribes
by the Arabs driving them away.

As this genocide unfolded, the West largely ignored it. That was not
an option for Ms. Khattar and her husband, Ali Daoud.

The night after the village massacre, survivors slipped out of the
forest to salvage any belongings and bury their dead. They found the
bodies of Ms. Khattar’s mother and father; her father’s corpse had
been thrown in a well to poison the water supply. Ms. Khattar was now
responsible for her 3-year-old sister as well as her own two children.

Then, as they prepared the bodies, one moved. Hussein Bashir Abakr, 19,
had been shot in the neck and mouth and left for dead, but he was still
alive. His parents had both been killed, along with all his siblings
except for one brother, who had been shot in the foot but escaped.

That brother, Nuradin, gave up his duty to bury their parents,
choosing instead to carry Hussein into the forest and to try to
nurse him with traditional medicines. Nuradin’s bullet wound made
every step agonizing, but he was determined to save the only member
of his family left. Over the next 46 nights, Nuradin dragged himself
and his brother toward Chad.

Finally, they staggered over the dry riverbed marking the border,
where I found them. Hussein has lost part of his tongue and many of
his teeth and cannot eat solid food. He is sick and inconsolable;
his wife and baby were carried off by the Janjaweed and haven’t been
seen since. As I interviewed him, he bent over to retch every couple
of minutes, Nuradin still cradling him tenderly.

Ms. Khattar and most of the other villagers decided they could not
make the long trek to Chad. So they inched forward at night to find
refuge on a nearby mountain.

Every other night, she crept down the mountain to fetch water, risking
kidnapping by the Janjaweed. “It was so hard in the mountains,”
Ms. Khattar recalled. “There were snakes and scorpions, and a
constant fear of the Janjaweed.” Six-foot cobras have killed some
of the refugees. To feed her children, Ms. Khattar boiled leaves and
plants normally eaten only by camels. Even so, her mother-in-law died.

Officially, Sudan had agreed to a cease-fire in Darfur. But at the
end of May, a Sudanese military plane spotted the villagers’ hideout,
and soon after, the Janjaweed attacked.

“Ali had told me: `If the Janjaweed attack, don’t try to save me. You
can’t help. Don’t get angry. Just keep the children and run away to
Bahai [in Chad]. Don’t shout or say anything,’ ” Ms. Khattar said. So
she hid in a hollow with the children, peeking out occasionally. She
saw the Janjaweed round up all the villagers, including her husband
and his three young brothers: Moussa, 8, Mochtar, 6, and Muhammad,
4. “Even the boys,” she remembers. “They tied their hands like this”
— she motioned with her arms in front of her — “and then forced
them to lie on the ground.” Then, she says, the males were all shot
to death, while women were taken away to be raped.

There were 45 corpses, all killed because of the color of their skin,
part of an officially sanctioned drive by Sudan’s Arab government to
purge the western Sudanese countryside of black-skinned non-Arabs.

The Sudanese authorities, much like the Turks in 1915 and the Nazis in
the 1930’s, apparently calculated that genocide offered considerable
domestic benefits — like the long-term stability to be achieved by
a “final solution” of conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs — and
that the world would not really care very much. It looks as if the
Sudanese bet correctly.

Perhaps Americans truly don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of
lives at stake — we have other problems, and Darfur is far away. But
my hunch is that if we could just meet the victims, we would not be
willing to acquiesce in genocide.

After two Janjaweed attacks, Ms. Khattar was left a widow, responsible
for three small, starving children in a land where showing her face
would mean rape or death. I’ll continue her saga in Wednesday’s
column.  

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

All hail Kerko, king of the billion dollar buyout
By Richard Siklos (Filed: 20/06/2004)

The Telegraph, UK
June 20 2004

Ace Greenberg, the legendary former head of investment bank Bear
Stearns, once admonished a colleague who questioned the wily ways
of Kirk Kerkorian: “Don’t ever tell Babe Ruth how to hold his bat.”
(Translation for UK relevance: “Don’t tell Becks how to lace his
boots”.)

In an age of wannabes and poseurs, when it comes to power-broking
mastery, Kerkorian is the real deal – the Warren Buffett of buyouts.
This week, in what ought to be the gloaming of his career (he’s 87),
he’s in the midst of wangling his biggest trade yet – getting out
of one fantastically glamorous but sometimes spivvy industry while
beefing up in, well, another fantastically glamorous but sometimes
spivvy industry.

Kerkorian is on the verge of selling the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie
studio to a venture between Sony and two private equity groups for
$5bn (£2.7bn), not counting a $1.4bn tax-free dividend cheque he
banked from the company last month.

Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corporation paid $1.3bn for MGM in 1996 and –
get this – this would mark the third time since 1969 he has bought
and sold the place (first to Ted Turner, then to Carlo Paretti),
making buckets of cash each time.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday, his MGM Mirage hotel and casino company
sealed a deal to pay $4.8bn for the Mandalay Resort Group, the Las
Vegas-based company. The confluence of these deals is a bit of a
coincidence, given that Kerkorian has been trying to unload MGM for
a while, and has been gobbling up properties on the Las Vegas strip
for years. But you’ve still got to admire the octogenarian’s sheer
audacity.

As a result of the Mandalay purchase, Kerkorian will be the biggest
casino boss in Vegas history – bigger than Bugsy Seagal, bigger than
Howard Hughes, bigger than Steve Wynn, whose renowned Bellagio resort
he swallowed up four years ago in a hostile takeover.

In total, Kerkorian will preside over 11 casino resorts on the famed
strip alone, including the Mirage, Excalibur and Luxor. Kerkorian’s
empire would also include 17 other gambling halls in Nevada, other
corners of the US, and Australia. His MGM Grand resort is already
the biggest venue in Vegas, but if the Mandalay deal passes muster
with regulators he’ll control more than half the hotel rooms and 40
per cent of the slot machines in town. As one wag put it in a local
Las Vegas paper: “It gives them the ability to cater to everyone,
from Joe Six Pack to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.”

As far as MGM the movie studio goes, did you catch its last cinematic
blockbuster? Me neither, but that’s because the studio has produced a
lot more forgettable duds than mega-hits. Its main success has been
the James Bond series and a string of low-budget, sequel-friendly
releases such as Jeepers Creepers and Barbershop. But the value of MGM
apparently lies in the vault of 4,000 old movies, including The Wizard
of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Rocky and Annie Hall, that are expected
to have new legs in this age of re-mastered DVDs and video-on-demand.

“Kirk is not a Hollywood person, he’s a money person,” fellow
billionaire David Geffen recently told Variety magazine. “He’s a
businessman, he’s not nostalgic and sentimental.”

Kerko (as he was known) was born in Fresno, California, to a family
of raisin farmers, and his life followed a fairly epic path from
there including dropping out of school at 13, a stint as a captain
in the Royal Air Force during World War II – he ferried planes back
and forth from Canada – and a successful career as a prizefighter
with the nickname “Rifle Right”.

Apparently he queues for movies and has never ordered up a private
screening of one of MGM’s movies. Although he never gives interviews,
Kerkorian’s friends and executives take pains to point out that rather
than being a Howard Hughes-esque recluse, he just couldn’t care less
about publicity. His top managers bash the tennis ball with him on
weekends at his Beverly Hills mansion. His company’s odd title is an
amalgam of his daughters’ names – Tracy and Linda. Worth around $6bn
he’s given some $150m to various causes in Armenia, but adamantly
refused invitations to have boulevards, airports and schools there
named after him.

In the business world, there are few destinations that have emptied
more pocketbooks and broken more dreams than Vegas and Hollywood. As if
conquering them wasn’t enough, who can forget Kerkorian’s bold play to
take over the automaker Chrysler in the 1990s? Even more entertaining
has been his ongoing $3bn lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler over the
1998 merger that created the auto giant.

The billionaire testified in a Detroit court in February that he
was deceived by DaimlerChrysler chairman Juergen Schrempp’s public
statement that it would be a “merger of equals”. (German executives
from the Daimler side ended up dominating the top jobs, but the
company has dismissed his claim as frivolous.) When DaimlerChrysler
lawyers tried to point out that Kerkorian, then Chrysler’s biggest
shareholder, hadn’t even read the deal’s final prospectus before
backing the merger, Kerkorian exploded in court: “I looked at the
merger as honest. We didn’t look in every nook and cranny for deceit,
but it was there.” A verdict in that case is expected this fall.

So what makes King Kirk run? No one can really say. Maybe he’s just
trying to save up a little for his retirement.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress