Author: Chakhmakhchian Vatche

THE POPE, JIHAD, AND "DIALOGUE"

American Thinker, AZ
September 17th, 2006

The most important address commemorating 9/11/01 was delivered on
9/12/06, a day after the fifth anniversary of this cataclysmic act
of jihad terrorism. It was not delivered by President Bush, and was
not even pronounced in the United States. On September 12, 2006 at
the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture
("adding some allusions of the moment") entitled, "Faith, Reason and
the University".

Despite his critique of modern reason, Benedict argued that he did
not intend to promote a retrogression,

…back to the time before the Enlightenment and reject[ing] the
insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to
be acknowledged unreservedly: We are all grateful for the marvelous
possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in
humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover,
is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies
an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.

Christianity, the Pope maintained, was indelibly linked to reason
and he contrasted this view with those who believe in spreading their
faith by the sword. Benedict developed this argument by recounting the
late 14th century "Dialogue Held With A Certain Persian, the Worthy
Mouterizes, in Anakara of Galatia" between the Byzantine ruler Manuel
II Paleologus, and a well-educated Muslim interlocutor. The crux of
this part of his presentation, was the following:

Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the
soul. ‘God’, he [the Byzantine ruler] says, ‘is not pleased by blood –
and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born
of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs
the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence
and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a
strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening
a person with death’….

However, it is Benedict’s discussion of the Byzantine ruler’s allusions
to "…the theme of the jihad (holy war)"-Koran 2:256, "There is no
compulsion in religion", notwithstanding-that has unleashed a firestorm
of condemnation and violence from Muslims across the world. Here are
the words deemed so incendiary by both Muslim leaders, and the masses:

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment
accorded to those who have the ‘Book’ and the ‘infidels’, he [Manuel
II Paleologus] turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the
central question on the relationship between religion and violence
in general, in these words: ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that
was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such
as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’

The historical context for these words-which were likely written by
Manuel II Paleologus between 1391 and 1394-turns out be much more
banal, albeit unknown to fulminating Muslims (here; here),and Islamic
apologists of all ilks, especially the disingenuous Muslim (here;
here) and hand-wringing non-Muslim promoters of empty "civilizational
dialogue".

When Manuel II composed the Dialogue (which Pope Benedict excerpted),
the Byzantine ruler was little more than a glorified dhimmi vassal
of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, forced to accompany the latter on
a campaign through Anatolia. Earlier, Bayezid had compelled the
Byzantines under Manuel II to submit to additional humiliations and
impositions-heavier tribute, which was already onerous-as well as
the establishment of a special quarter in Constantinople devoted to
Turkish merchants, and the admission of an Ottoman kadi to arbitrate
the affairs of these Muslims.

During the campaign he was conscripted to join, Manuel II witnessed
with understandable melancholy the great metamorphosis-ethnic and
toponymic-of formerly Byzantine Asia Minor. The devastation, and
depopulation of these once flourishing regions was so extensive that
often, Manuel could no longer tell where he was. The still recognizable
Greek cities whose very names had been changed into something foreign
became a source of particular grief. It was during this unhappy sojourn
that Manuel II’s putative encounter with a Muslim theologian occurred,
ostensibly in Ankara.

Manuel II’s Dialogue was one of the later outpourings of a vigorous
Muslim-Christian polemic regarding Islam’s success, at (especially
Byzantine) Christianity’s expense, which persisted during the
11th through 15th centuries, and even beyond. The Muslim advocates’
(particularly the Turks) most prominent argument was the indisputable
evidence of Islam’s military triumphs over the Christians of Asia
Minor (especially Anatolia, in modern Turkey). These jihad conquests
were repeatedly advanced in the polemics of the Turks. The Christian
rebuttal, in contrast, hinged upon the ethical precepts of Muhammad and
the Koran. Christian interlocutors charged the Muslims with abiding
a religion which both condoned the life of a "lascivious murderer",
and claimed to give such a life divine sanction.

Manuel, and generations of Christian interlocutors, argued that the
"Christ-hating" barbarians could never overcome the "fortress of
belief," despite seizing lands and cities, extorting tribute and even
conscripting rulers to perform humiliating services.

Manuel II’s discussions with his Muslim counterpart simply conformed
to this pattern of polemical exchanges, repeated often, over at least
four centuries.

Returning to Pope Benedict’s now controversial lecture, even if one
accepts an apologetic interpretation of Koran 2:256 as prohibiting
forced conversion to Islam (see below), this verse was abrogated by
the verses of jihad, for example 9:5, and many others in sura 9, as
well as sura 8. Indeed Koran 9:5 alone is held to have abrogated (here,
pp. 67-75 ) as many as 100 pacific (or seemingly pacific verses).

Koranic sources, in particular the timeless war proclamation (the
Koran being the "uncreated word of Allah" for Muslims) on generic
pagans (not simply Arabian pagans), Koran 9:5, offers pagans the stark
"choice" of conversion or death:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever
ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare
for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and
pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving,
Merciful.

The idolatrous Hindus (and the same applies to enormous populations
of pagans/animists wherever Muslim jihadist armies encountered them
in history, including, sadly, contemporary Sudan), for example,
were enslaved in vast numbers during the waves of jihad conquests
that ravaged the Indian subcontinent for well over a half millennium
(beginning at the outset of the 8th century C.E.). And the guiding
principles of Islamic law regarding their fate -derived from Koran
9:5-were unequivocally coercive.

Jihad slavery also contributed substantively to the growth of the
Muslim population in India. K.S. Lal elucidates both of these points:

The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered
to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be
accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book – Christians
and Jews… Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against
idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death… The fact
was that the Muslim regime was giving [them] a choice between Islam
and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone;
but their dependents were made slaves.

They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time
if not immediately after captivity…slave taking in India was the most
flourishing and successful [Muslim] missionary activity…Every Sultan,
as [a] champion of Islam, considered it a political necessity to plant
or raise [the] Muslim population all over India for the Islamization
of the country and countering native resistance.

The late Rudi Paret was a seminal 20th century scholar of the Koran,
and its exegesis. Paret’s considered analysis of Koran 2:256, puts
this verse in the overall context of Koranic injunctions regarding
pagans, specifically, and further concludes that 2:256 is a statement
of resignation, not a prohibition on forced conversion.

After the community which the Prophet had established had extended
its power over the whole of Arabia, the pagan Arabs were forcefully
compelled to accept Islam stated more accurately, they had to choose
either to accept Islam or death in battle against the superior power
of the Muslims (cf. surahs 8:12; 47:4). This regulation was later
sanctioned in Islamic law. All this stands in open contradiction to
the alleged meaning of the Quranic statement, noted above: la ikraha
fi d-dini. The idolaters (mushrikun) were clearly compelled to accept
Islam – unless they preferred to let themselves be killed. [Note-Koran
9:5];

In view of these circumstances it makes sense to consider another
meaning. Perhaps originally the statement la ikraha fi d-dini did
not mean that in matters of religion one ought not to use compulsion
against another but that one could not use compulsion against another
(through the simple proclamation of religious truth).

Such coercion applies not only to "pagans". Princeton scholar Patricia
Crone makes the cogent argument that those of any faith may be forcibly
converted during acts of jihad resulting in captivity (including,
for example, the jihad kidnapping of the two Fox reporters, Centanni
and Wiig). In her recent analysis of the origins and development
of Islamic political thought, Dr. Crone makes an important nexus
between the mass captivity and enslavement of non-Muslims during
jihad campaigns, and the prominent role of coercion in these major
modalities of Islamization.

Following a successful jihad, she notes:

Male captives might be killed or enslaved, whatever their religious
affiliation. People of the Book were not protected by Islamic law
until they had accepted dhimma (Koran 9:29). Captives might also be
given the choice between Islam and death, or they might pronounce
the confession of faith of their own accord to avoid execution:
jurists ruled that their change of status was to be accepted even
though they had only converted out of fear.

An unapologetic view of Islamic history reveals that forced conversions
to Islam are not exceptional-they have been the norm, across three
continents-Asia, Africa, and Europe-for over 13 centuries.

Moreover, during jihad-even the jihad campaigns of the 20th century
[i.e., the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I,
the Moplah jihad in Southern India [1921], the jihad against the
Assyrians of Iraq [early 1930s], the jihads against the Chinese of
Indonesia and the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria in the 1960s,
and the jihad against the Christians and Animists of the southern
Sudan from 1983 to 2001], the dubious concept (see Paret, above) of
"no compulsion" (Koran 2:256; which was cited with tragic irony during
the Fox reporters "confessional"! ) , has always been meaningless.

A consistent practice was to enslave populations taken from outside
the boundaries of the "Dar al Islam", where Islamic rule (and Law)
prevailed. Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves, including children (for
example, the infamous devshirme system in Ottoman Turkey, which spanned
three centuries and enslaved 500,000 to one million Balkan Christian
adolescent males, forcibly converting them to Islam), were Islamized
within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased.

Two enduring and important mechanisms for this conversion were
concubinage and the slave militias-practices still evident in the
contemporary jihad waged by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government
against the southern Sudanese Christians and Animists . And Julia Duin
reported in early 2002 that murderous jihad terror campaigns-including,
prominently, forced conversions to Islam -continued to be waged
against the Christians of Indonesia’s Moluccan Islands.

Recently, at the close of a compelling, thoroughly documented address
(delivered April 2, 2006, at The Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida)
entitled, "Islam and Western Democracies," Cardinal George Pell,
the Archbishop of Sydney, posed four salient questions for his
erstwhile Muslim interlocutors wishing to engage in meaningful
interfaith dialogue:

1) Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated
by the verses of the sword? (see here, pp. 67-75 )

2) Is the program of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s
death Muslim armies reached Spain and India ) to be resumed when
possible?

3) Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe
would impose Shari’a (Islamic religious) law? (see here)

4) Can we discuss Islamic history (here and here)-even the
hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran (see here,
here, here, and here)-without threats of violence?

Dr. Habib Malik, in an eloquent address delivered February 3,
2003 at the at the 27th annual Council for Christian Colleges and
Universities Presidents Conference decried the platitudinous "least
common denominators" paradigm which dominates what he aptly termed
the contemporary "dialogue industry":

We’re all three Abrahamic religions, we’re the three Middle Eastern
monotheisms, the Isa of the Koran is really the same as the Jesus of
the New Testament….

This is politicized dialogue. This is dialogue for the sake
of dialogue. Philosophically speaking, this is what Kierkegaard
called idle talk, snakke in Danish; what Heidegger called Gerede;
what Sartre called bavardage. In other words, if this is dialogue,
it’s pathetic… it needs to be transcended, and specifically
to concentrate, to focus on the common ethical foundation for
most religions can also be very misleading. Because when you get
into the nitty-gritty, you find that even in what you supposed
were common ethical foundations, there are vast differences,
incompatibilities. Suicide bombers is one recent example. Condoned
by major authoritative Muslim voices; completely unacceptable by
Christianity.

Cardinal Pell’s unanswered questions highlight the predictable
failure of the feckless "We’re all three Abrahamic religions",
"dialogue for the sake of dialogue" approach to both Muslim-Christian,
and Muslim-Jewish dialogue.

Eschewing the comforting banalities of his predecessor, Benedict
XVI has acknowledged that real dialogue, as opposed to bavardage,
begins not by kissing the Koran, but reading it. Most importantly,
he is impatient with an interfaith dialogue between Muslims and
Christians limited to platitudes about "Abrahamic faiths", which
scrupulously avoids serious discussions of the living, sacralized
Islamic institution of jihad war.

Until Muslims evidence a willingness to engage in such forthright
discussions, Benedict appears to share Dr.

Malik’s sobering conclusions from his February 2003 speech: "One
certainly needs to be open at all times to learn from the Other,
including to learn at times that the Other right now has nothing to
teach me on a particular issue."

Andrew G. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad.

BERLIN: TRANSCENDING A CITY’S DIVIDES
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune

International Herald Tribune, France
Published: September 17, 2006

BERLIN For Hakan Sever, history comes with onions and garlic
sauce. From his family’s kebab cafe, not far from where the Berlin
Wall once stood, he has watched this city reinvent itself in one of
the most remarkable transformations of our modern world.

"Everything changes in this city all the time," says Sever, 34, as
his knife zigzags down a cone of lamb that weighs 30 kilograms, or
66 pounds, and is roasting on a vertical skewer. "The only thing that
doesn’t change," he adds, his blade resting for a moment in mid-air,
"is people’s appetite for doner kebab."

It is 5:05 p.m. and an Oriental breeze is blowing through Kreuzberg,
an eastern slice of what used to be West Berlin. The area is home to
about 26,000 of Berlin’s 142,000 residents of Turkish origin, among
them Sever, a wiry man with an animated smile. He arrived in 1977,
aged 6, when he stepped off a plane from eastern Turkey to join his
parents. Twelve years later, he looked on as the Wall fell and East
and West melded into one.

Now he spends his evenings crafting doner kebab, Turkish bread stuffed
with roasted lamb and a choice of vegetables and sauces. His cafe
bears the resolutely un-Turkish name of Bistro Bagdad. A colorful,
hungry crowd gathers outside his window, a microcosm of the city’s
3.4 million inhabitants.

"Look, today I sell doner to everyone," Sever beams, making a sweeping
hand movement. "Turkish people, German people, tourists – everyone
comes to eat doner.

If you want to meet this city, you don’t have to go anywhere. You
can just sit right here and wait. The city will come to you."

Doner kebab long ago replaced bratwurst as Germany’s favorite fast
food, and kebab vendors have become an immutable feature of Berlin’s
restless cityscape.

There are now an estimated 1,300 of them, more than in Istanbul,
according to the German Doner Federation.

They feed the city and transcend its many divides.

Five minutes into his shift, Sever has already stuffed, wrapped
and sold three kebabs: one with chili sauce to an American tourist,
one with no sauce to a Turkish woman in a Muslim head scarf and one
with an extra-generous helping of onions to a Western woman with more
tattoos than clothes.

"Next!" Sever cries. "With or without sauce?

Garlic-yogurt-chili-herbs?"

Doner kebab arrived in Berlin in the late 1970s after the first oil
shock, when tens of thousands of Turkish workers lost their jobs. Some,
like his uncle in 1977, found new work by opening kebab booths.

Sever served his first kebab in Kreuzberg as a teenager in 1983. Then
the area was the farthest edge of the Western capitalist world; now
it is an increasingly gentrified part of central Berlin. The subway
station across the road from the family cafe, Schlesisches Tor,
was the last stop before the Wall.

The street opposite leading to the River Spree was a lifeless
cul-de-sac.

It took Sever an hour to get to work in those days because buses and
cars had to follow the winding contours of the Wall. Today it takes him
10 minutes to arrive from Wedding, a neighborhood north of Kreuzberg.

"There were hardly any cars here and now it’s like the motorway,"
he recalls, his eyes wandering over the busy crossroad to the river
and into the past.

The Turkish grocery shop at the corner has been there as long as
Sever can remember. But the trendy cafes, the fusion restaurants,
the tourists and the students idly sipping their lattes are new. The
streets of Little Istanbul, as the area is still known, have changed
as history unfolded. So have Sever’s customers.

In the early years, he sold kebabs to an unlikely mix of Turkish
families and squatters from the leftist punk scene who had little more
in common than a life literally on the margins of West German society.

In 1989, he sold kebabs and Coca-Cola to some of the first East
Berliners to stream across the border. He watched their hopeful faces
appear on the Oberbaum Bridge, a majestic red-brick structure that
served as one of eight checkpoints during Berlin’s years as a divided
city. Crossing the bridge that had been the end of the world for them,
the East Berliners would empty the shelves in the nearby supermarket
and patiently line up outside the bank on the corner for their welcome
money – 100 Deutsche marks, or about $50.

Scores of them, whole families, slept on the pavement outside Bistro
Bagdad in the first few days of that memorable October, anxious not to
lose their place in line. One mother and her daughter ordered a Coke
with their kebab. When the girl tried to open the can, Sever recalled,
the mother grabbed her hand to stop her. "She told her it was for
Christmas, can you imagine?" he said. "I will never forget that."

Sever then headed east in a kebab van, eager to learn more about
the other half of his adoptive home country, a place that felt as
foreign to him as to any West Berliner at the time. But when angry
youths with shaved heads shouted racist insults at him during a wave
of xenophobia in eastern Germany in the early 1990s, he decided to
leave and never go back.

"They told me to go home and to stop stealing their jobs," he said. "I
offered one of them work in my van, by the oven. He lasted all of five
minutes. I told him, ‘See, you don’t want my job, it’s not a fun job.’"

Fun it is not, to cut meat beside an oven that radiates heat of more
than 80 degrees Celsius (175 degrees Fahrenheit). But Sever said he
loves his work because of the constant contact with people.

"In here," Sever tapped his chest bone, "I carry the life stories of
my customers." He likened kebab vendors to 24-hour psychiatrists who
provide succor for everyone from the lovelorn to those having trouble
digesting the tectonic shifts of the last two decades.

Backpacking tourists find their way to Sever’s booth after visiting
the so-called East Side Gallery on the other side of the river, which
is in fact not a gallery but the longest remaining stretch of the
Berlin Wall, adorned with paintings and graffiti. Taxi drivers stop in
before the evening shift. Techno aficionados come to eat when other
people sleep. There is Berlin’s legendary army of eternal students,
its growing unemployed population, its gangs of young Turkish men
and its many eccentric artists.

Many of them are poor and many would not want to live anywhere else.

Kebabs here are cheaper than in any other West European capital,
Sever says; indeed, the basic doner costs [email protected] in Berlin, ~@4 in
Paris. Lattes and rents are cheaper, too. International investors
are still buying property and half the world’s cranes are divided
between Shanghai and Berlin, tour guides will proudly tell you.

"All that building work," Sever said. "What will the city look like
when they are done?"

Sever does not have a German passport and Germany, he says, is not
home. Neither is Igdir, the Turkish village near the Armenian border
where he spent the first seven years of his life.

His home is Berlin.

"Ich bin ein Berliner," he joked, and he meant it.

He described his bond with his adopted home city as a happy arranged
marriage, like the one with his cousin Meleg. His father brought her
over from Anatolia 11 years ago and she is now the mother of his two
children, 9-year-old twins.

"There is no passion in an arranged marriage, but you face life
together, you share life, you build respect and your roots intertwine,"
he explained. "Then one day maybe you wake up and you love."

His roots go deep in Berlin. He was taught by the same primary school
teacher who is now teaching his children. He supported Germany in
the recent soccer World Cup; a small German flag still adorns his
Volkswagen. He wears socks in his sandals as only Germans seem to do.

But he is all too aware that many Germans still think of Turks like
him as guests, not permanent residents.

"When my father arrived in Germany in 1963 as a guest worker, he was
greeted with flowers at the airport – and now they want to get rid
of us," he said and broke into a self-confident chuckle. "But when
we Turks set up shop somewhere we don’t leave."

When Sever finishes his shift at 11 p.m., he counts his tips: a
disappointing [email protected], or $1.40. But then he becomes protective of
the city and his customers.

"People in Berlin have no money. It’s O.K.," he said, his smile back
in full force. "If they were rich, maybe they would stop coming to
eat my doner."

MOSCOW’S NEW SCHOOL LOOKS WEST
by Della Bradshaw

Financial Times
17 September 2006 Sunday 7:36:59 PM GMT

It is not often that a brand new business school sets up shop, let
alone one that has the vocal support of national government and the
financial support of local and international businessmen. But then,
not everywhere is Moscow and not every business school founder commands
the respect of Ruben Vardanian, chairman and chief executive of Troika
Dialog, the investment bank.

At just 38, Mr Vardanian, born in Armenia, is already head of Russia’s
biggest investment company, has been named Russia’s Entrepreneur of
the Year (2005) by Ernst & Young, and has even been the subject of
a business school case study on leadership, written by Manfred Kets
de Vries, the veteran Insead professor. Now he has decided that what
Russia needs is a world-class business school and he is going to make
sure it happens.

On Thursday, it is hoped that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin
will lay the foundation stone for the new school, to be called the
Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, in Skolkovo on Moscow’s western
fringes. Mr Putin is so pleased with the plan that he has declared
the school a "national project".

Mr Vardanian has not only wooed the Russian president. He has persuaded
12 like-minded Russian business oligarchs and two non-Russian investors
each to stump up $5m (GBP2.66m) to finance the school. These include
Shiv Vikram Khemka, vice-chairman of the Sun Group in India and an
MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; and
Roman Abramovich, probably most famous outside Russia as the owner
of the English premiership soccer club Chelsea.

Mr Vardanian says his first reason for establishing the school was
personal. "My son is 11 years old. My kids should at least have the
choice of studying in Barcelona, London, the US or Moscow."

Second he says the main resource that Russia is missing is people:
"Russia’s future lies in its people, not its oil and gas." He believes
that emerging markets such as China, India and Russia are becoming
more interesting, not only for natives of those countries who want
to return home but for companies too. "More foreign companies want
to set up in Moscow," he says.

While Russian universities have a powerful academic reputation in the
sciences, they have no history in teaching western-style management.

About 110 MBA programmes are already taught in Russia, says Mr
Vardanian. "It’s name is an MBA, but…" he shrugs.

Mr Vardanian, a great bear of a man, visited 18 business schools
worldwide before deciding how he wanted the Moscow school to be run.

What he didn’t want, he says, is a school where professors taught
students in order to fund their own research. Instead, he decided on
a business school along the lines of IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland?

"very business-orientated, practical. We’re doing a lot to link the
business education to the reality."

Three of the founding donors have already been persuaded to give
annual master classes at the school, which will be run like a business,
not a university.

Mr Vardanian plans for the school to have executive short programmes in
2007 with a pilot 25 or 50 students enrolled on the 18-month full-time
MBA programme in 2008. The campus, which has been designed by David
Adjaye, the London-based architect who also designed the Nobel Peace
Centre in Oslo, Norway, will open in September 2009.

"The concept is to have everything in place by 2012," says Mr
Vardanian. The plan is to break even in 2015.

Professors will be paid as if they were working on Wall Street or
in the City a salary with bonuses. The tenure system, beloved of US
academic institutions, is out.

Coming from a family where his father and grandfather were professors
of architecture and history respectively, Mr Vardanian understands
the appeal of an academic life, but he believes researching and
teaching history is very different from researching and teaching
management. "For business education [the tenure system] is the wrong
concept. The main problem is trying to build a new school on a new
concept."

One of the biggest differences between the Moscow School of Management
and more traditional business schools will be the school’s emphasis on
developing leaders who are risk-takers. While other schools may judge
the success of their programme by the corporate clout that their alumni
hold, the Moscow school believes a sign of success will be if 20-25 per
cent of graduates own their own businesses five years after graduation.

"We want to encourage more people in Russia to take risks," says Mr
Vardanian. Some $40m of the initial funding will go into a venture
fund to finance new ventures.

Another difference is that the school will teach initially in English
but eventually in four languages English, Russian, Spanish and Chinese.

Finding the right faculty will be the tough part, says Danica Purg,
founder and dean of the IEDC-Bled School of Management in Slovenia
and a member of the advisory board for the Moscow school. "The biggest
challenge for them [the Moscow school] is to match their big ambitions
with reality. They need to develop their own professors.

They will need a lot of academic support," she says.

Schools in other developing countries, notably China and India,
have secured their reputation by attracting home Chinese or Indian
professors who were trained in the US or Europe every top business
school employs Indian and Chinese nationals. The same does not apply
to Russian nationals.

For example, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, with which Mr
Vardanian says the Moscow school already has close links, was set up
with help from two US schools, the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
University. Dipak Jain, now dean of Kellogg, was previously dean
at ISB.

Without similar emotional ties or very large sums of money the new
Moscow venture is unlikely to find support from the US.

For this reason, Mr Vardanian is seeking partnerships in other emerging
markets, notably South America.

That said, the remuneration for faculty will be competitive with
top international business schools, but Professor Purg believes it
will not be the money that persuades faculty to teach there. "In my
experience professors don’t go where there is money but where there
is a challenge."

Mr Vardanian will hope she is right. He is planning to appoint 10
Russian professors and 20 non-Russian professors along with 70-100
visiting faculty, largely from business schools in other emerging
economies.

Most significant in the hiring process is the dean’s job or, to
be more precise, the appointment of two deans, one Russian, one
non-Russian. The Russian will be Andrei Volkov, deputy minister for
science and education and head of the education expert group for
Russia’s presidency of the Group of Eight industrial nations.

Headhunters Heidrick & Struggles have been appointed to find the
second co-dean and an announcement is expected next spring. Mr
Vardanian will remain as president of the school.

Widely regarded as the one of the most respectable of Russia’s
self-made men, Mr Vardanian has continually expounded the need for
stronger corporate governance in Russia. The school will practise what
it preaches, he says. "The school needs to show success, transparency
and corporate governance. It needs to be well-managed."

This will be corporate governance Russian-style, however. Mr Vardanian
has no intention of handing over the reins altogether, but he and the
two co-deans will form the triumvirate that manages the school. "The
triangle needs to work together well," he says.

Compromise will be the order of the day.

Whether the school will be able to attract a high-calibre international
dean under these strictures is debatable, particularly as the co-deans
will also report to the board. "The manager is there to execute the
plan and he has to report to the board. We have to show that we are
like any other company."

"The problem," he concedes, "will be getting someone who wants to
play by these new rules."

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 15 2006

Jacques Chirac to arrive in Armenia on an official visit
16.09.2006 12:34

September 29 The President of France Jacques Chirac will arrive in
Armenia on an official visit.
RA President’s Press Secretary Viktor Soghomonyan informed that
during the visit Presidents of Armenia and France Robert Kocharyan
and Jacques Chirac will have a meeting, following which the leaders
of the two countries will give a joint press conference. The
Presidents will participate the festive ceremony of opening the
Square of the French Republic in Yerevan and will attend Charles
Aznavour’s concert at the Republic Square.
In the framework of the visit Jacques Chirac will attend the Mother
See of Holy Echmiadzin and will have a meeting with the Catholicos of
All Armenians Garegin II. The French President will lay a wreath of
flowers at the memorial to the Armenian Genocide victims. The visit
will be completed on October 1.

Agence France Presse
16 septembre 2006 samedi 9:48 AM GMT

Chirac en Arménie (29 septembre-1er octobre): Aznavour et Karabakh au menu

Le président français Jacques Chirac se rendra en visite en Arménie
du 29 septembre au 1er octobre, où il assistera à un concert du
chanteur Charles Aznavour et évoquera le problème du conflit du
Nagorny-Karabakh, a annoncé samedi la présidence arménienne.

Il s’agit de la première visite officielle du président français dans
cette ex-république soviétique du Caucase du Sud. Il sera accompagné
de son épouse Bernadette, de ministres et d’hommes d’affaires, a
déclaré à l’AFP le porte-parole du président Robert Kotcharian,
Viktor Sogomonian.

Il assistera le 30 septembre à un concert du chanteur et compositeur
français d’origine arménienne Charles Aznavour, adulé en Arménie, sur
la place de la République, dans le centre d’Erevan, en ouverture de
l’Année de la France en Arménie.

Soulignant les "liens traditionnels d’amitié" entre l’Arménie et la
France, où vit une importante diaspora arménienne, M. Sogomonian a
précisé que la question du Nagorny-Karabakh serait au menu des
discussions, la France faisant partie du groupe de médiateurs de
l’OSCE.

L’Azerbaïdjan et l’Arménie campent depuis des années sur leurs
positions concernant le conflit qui les oppose au Nagorny Karabakh,
une enclave habitée en majorité par des Arméniens et qui a fait
sécession de l’Azerbaïdjan après un conflit débuté à la fin des
années 1980.

Un cessez-le-feu est intervenu en 1994, mais la situation reste
tendue.

La France avait accueilli en février des pourparlers entre le
président azerbaïdjanais Ilham Aliev et Robert Kotcharian, qui
s’étaient soldées par une absence totale de progrès.

Le président Chirac se rendra également au mémorial des victimes du
génocide arménien de 1915 sous l’empire ottoman, non reconnu par la
Turquie.

Panorama.am

15:05 16/09/06

COCHAIRS TRY TO REVIVE THE PROPOSED PEACE DEAL

The move of Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement to
U.N. is a new challenge for Armenia, Vartan Oskanyan,
foreign minister of Armenia, said pointing out to some
qualitative and quantitative changes. `We will have to
deal with four different countries and not only with
Azerbaijan. Each of these countries has its circle of
friends. So, the scope of interests enlarges,’ he
said. However, Oskanyan expressed his readiness to
`enter into concrete discussions when there is a
resolution.’ Anyway, he said it changes the focus of
attention from the main process.

The minister said OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs want to
revive the peace deal which was approved by the
Armenian side and to record positive move by the end
of this year. He also said if the conflict gets into
U.N., Nagorno Karabakh should become part of the
negotiations. `U.N. is comprised of 159 countries
which have no idea about the process and have no
interests. They can vote based on political sympathies
for this or that side. We cannot leave the fate of
Karabakh to the vote of some countries in Latin
America and the Caribbean islands. This means that
Karabakh must be a part of the process. It does not
mean that Armenia will not be involved. It will but
only with Karabakh,’ the minister said. /Panorama.am/

TURKEY HAS NO CHANCES TO BECOME FULLY EUROPEAN COUNTRY

PanARMENIAN.Net
14.09.2006 17:37 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey will hardly leave EU talks, but it cannot meet
all European criteria, political scientist Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan
told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter. In his words, the logic of development
of the talks suggests that Turkey, even having the direct and rather
aggressive support of Washington, does not have chances to become a
European country in the foreseeable future. "The process of sobering up
will be painless: Ankara understands that Turks never were a European
people. At that Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan underscored that by declaring
"secularity", Turkey is held by military bayonets.

"However, this state of affairs cannot be sustained perpetually,
at least as army is a creation of the people. Turkey will finally
return to pan-Turkism ideology, as it is their true religion," the
political scientist said.

NO PROGRESS IN SEARCH FOR SCHOOL FIREBOMBER
By Janice Arnold
Staff Reporter

The Canadan Jewish News
September 14, 2006

MONTREAL – The perpetrator of a Molotov-cocktail attack on a chassidic
boys’ school in Montreal over Labour Day weekend remains at large
despite the act having been videotaped by the school’s surveillance
camera and despite a $5,000 reward offered by an anonymous donor for
information leading to his arrest.

The images released by police show, from an angle, a masked
black-haired man, seemingly in his 20s and apparently alone, wearing
a beige top and beige pants reaching to below the knees. He is seen
lighting an accelerant and throwing it through a glass panel of the
main entrance of the Skver community’s Toldos Yakov Yosef school in
the city’s Outremont neighbourhood shortly after midnight on Saturday,
Sept. 2.

In the last frame, he removes his hood-like mask as he flees.

School and Jewish community officials told a press conference last
week that they’re confident and grateful police are putting the
necessary resources into their investigation.

The community and police, however, differ on the motivation for
the crime.

Police have so far not labelled the incident a hate crime, because
of the absence of evidence such as graffiti or phone calls, and are
treating it as arson.

But Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith Canada and Toldos
leaders are convinced the perpetrator deliberately targeted a
Jewish institution. No one was in the school at the time. About a
dozen teenaged students had left the building only about 20 minutes
beforehand.

Damage was limited to the school’s vestibule because sprinklers put out
the fire and the fire department responded quickly, school director
Binyomin Mayer said. He thanked the school’s non-Jewish neighbours
for immediately alerting police and coming to see if anyone was on
the premises.

The school reopened the next day, but it estimates it will cost
$150,000 to repair damage and add new security features.

Asked if he thought there was a connection between the incident and the
recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Rabbi Reuben Poupko, co-chair of the
Montreal Jewish Security Advisory Committee, told reporters that it’s
"a fair question to wonder whether the gathering of 15,000 Quebecers
under the flag of Hezbollah – unfortunately further legitimized by
the presence of politicians – creates an atmosphere where fanatics
draw the conclusion that violence against Jews is somehow acceptable."

He said many in the community have been asking themselves that
question. Rabbi Poupko was referring to the Aug. 6 demonstration
against the recent war in which three politicians – Bloc Quebecois
leader Gilles Duceppe, Parti Quebecois leader Andre Boisclair and
federal Liberal MP Denis Coderre – participated prominently.

At the press conference, held three days after the firebombing,
community officials asked that political leaders forcefully denounce
the Toldos attack. But reaction was slow and scattered, unlike the
firebombing of United Talmud Torahs’ library in April 2004, when
politicians at all levels, including then-prime minister Paul Martin,
immediately condemned the act. (Prime Minister Stephen Harper has
yet to issue a statement.)

Duceppe was one of the first politicians to condemn the incident and
affirm that Quebecers do not tolerate any such "hateful act whoever
it is directed at, or for whatever reason." Boisclair soon after
denounced the incident as well.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest said: "No one can determine at this point
if it was motivated by hate.

But nonetheless I think it is important that all Quebec see very
clearly on this issue that we are a society of tolerance, that we
are a society that encourages free speech and that we should not and
cannot tolerate these kinds of acts."

Federal Liberal leadership candidate and Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison
visited the school to express his revulsion against what he called
an act of "terrorism" against children and education.

NDP leader Jack Layton likewise stated: "How could someone be so
callous as to attempt to strike terror into the hearts of young
children?"

Alex Werzberger, president of the Coalition of Chassidic Organizations
of Outremont, pointed out there is an Armenian church and school two
blocks away from Toldos, as well as a French school on a nearby block,
which suggests to him that the perpetrator had "his pick of schools"
but went for the Jewish one.

"You can’t put any other spin on it than anti-Semitism."

Werzberger said there hasn’t been a serious anti-Semitic incident in
Outremont for a long time, nor has there been any recent contentious
issue, such as disputes over shul locations, parking problems or an
eruv, which were all prominent several years ago.

"Other than someone yelling ‘damned Jews,’ which is almost a daily
occurrence, there has been nothing," he said.

FEDERATION CJA, which co-ordinates community security, is re-evaluating
security at Jewish schools and other institutions in the wake of
the incident, but it did not raise its threat-assessment level as a
result of the incident. It continues to call for "heightened vigilance"
and implementation of existing procedures.

Since the UTT firebombing, the federation has had a full-time community
security director, Michel Bujold, formerly in charge of security at
Concordia University. He was on the Toldos crime scene about three
hours later.

After UTT, Combined Jewish Appeal raised $2.3 million specifically
for security, and all 40 school and day-care sites were assessed by
a U.S security professional. Toldos was found to be at risk and CJA
heavily subsidized the installation of a surveillance camera. The
school, located a former industrial area that is now mainly home to
condominiums, has been defaced with swastikas in the past. Its girls’
school is down the street, as is a Belzer chassidic school.

CJC Quebec region chair Jeffrey Boro said it will be determined if
additional security at the schools is needed. Rabbi Poupko said the
incident proved that the security structure in place worked well and
the community’s investment paid off.

The psychological damage from the attack may last a while, Mayer
said. Some Toldos students, especially those between six and 12, are
showing signs of anxiety and counsellors have been hired to help them.

Toldos has about 250 boys from age three to 16, Mayer said. There
are about 200 Skver families in Montreal.

Originally from Ukraine, the community is headquartered near Spring
Valley, N. Y., where its Grand Rebbe, David Twersky, lives.

Boro, a criminal lawyer by profession, admitted that no matter how
many layers of security are in place, there’s no way to totally
prevent acts such as the firebombing.

"What we have to do is educate people. Civil discourse is the rule
of the day. We have to continue outreach programs and show people we
are not so different."

The UTT firebombing was immediately called a hate crime by police
because of a note left at the school, but the perpetrator was not
charged with a hate crime.

Sleiman El-Merhebi, 20, was released from a federal prison in May
after serving two-thirds of a 40-month sentence.

A date for his mother’s trial is to be set Sept. 25.

Rouba El-Merhebi Fahd is charged with being an accessory after the
fact of her son’s crime.

WAGING A CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARY WAR
By Irfan Yusuf

On Line opinion, Australia
Sept 11 2006

September 11, 2001 is seen as the beginning of a new (and very heated)
Cold War. Writing in The Australian on August 11, Dr Tanveer Ahmed
described politicised Islamic extremism as the new Marxism, an
apparently monolithic force at war with an allegedly monolithic West.

Ahmed’s description of politicised Islamic extremism has been broadened
by more jaundiced commentators. Addressing a dinner hosted by Quadrant
magazine, former "Joh-for-PM" campaigner John Stone referred to
"Australia’s Muslim problem" and "the Islamic cancer in our body
politic".

Perhaps more subtly, Canadian theatre critic Mark Steyn warned
Sydney-siders in August of the dangers of "resurgent Islam". He
even suggested that the best antidote to conversion was convincing
potential converts that it’s better to be Australian or American or
British "or even French" than to be Muslim. As if being Western and
Muslim were mutually exclusive categories.

More than September 11, it was last years July 7 London bombings that
brought home the real possibility of terrorist threats from home-grown
sources. Sadly, such security threats are still used as an excuse
to wage a cultural revolutionary war which seeks to replace decades
of liberal democratic multi-cultural consensus with an illiberal,
almost Soviet-style government-enforced mono-cultural experiment.

All this raises a number of questions. Does the existence of multiple
cultures affect national security? If so, to what extent? If
integration is an ideal, how should it be implemented? Should
governments implement culture? Will the complete integration of all
minority groups ensure security risks are minimised?

For the likes of Steyn and Stone, any multiculturalism involving
nominally Muslim migrants necessarily represents a security risk.

Their generally crude analysis seeks to identify common features
allegedly forming an essential part of a monolithic Muslim culture.

Such simplistic formulations are not supported by even anecdotal
evidence. In January I witnessed Indonesian Muslim artists perform
the Ramayana ballet to a largely Muslim audience in an ancient
Hindu temple complex located in the city of Yogyakarta, the cultural
heartland of Javanese Islam. Such a performance by Muslims would be
deemed sacrilegious in the Indian sub-Continent.

To speak of a single monolithic Muslim culture, whether in Australia
or elsewhere, is as absurd as to speak of a single Christian culture.

Brazilian Catholics have more in common with Brazilian Muslims than
with Lithuanian Catholics. Lebanese Muslims have more in common with
Lebanese Maronites than with South African Muslims.

If culture and terror were related, security officials should keep
close watch on a range of communities. Writing in the Canberra Times
on September 9, ANU Researcher Clive Williams provides a litany of
terrorist incidents going back to 1868 when a Victorian Irishman
belonging to a predecessor organisation to the IRA shot the visiting
Duke of Edinburgh.

Recent incidents include the 1980 assassination of the Turkish
Consul-General and his bodyguard by Armenian extremists believed to
be protected by local Armenians. The same group struck again about
six years later in Melbourne.

Other groups believed to be responsible for terrorist attacks include
the Ananda Marga sect and the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood.

Muslim involvement in terrorist incidents includes deportation of
Mohammad Hassanein in 1996 for attempting to attack local Jewish
community targets.

Terrorism is hardly a mono-cultural affair, either in Australia or
elsewhere. Hence, simplistic remarks by the Prime Minister about
some Muslims refusing to integrate display a profound ignorance of
the history, politics and motivations of terrorist groups.

Howard has rarely shown much sophistication in his understanding
of Australia’s non-Western cultures. One of his former staffers,
conservative columnist Gerard Henderson, commented on this in
the Melbourne Age on May 25, 2004. Henderson wrote of "the one
significant blot on [Howard’s] record in public life … a certain
lack of empathy in dealing with individuals with whom he does not
identify at a personal level: for example, Asian Australians in the
late 1980s and asylum seekers in the early 21st century".

Howard has repeatedly claimed Muslim migrants to be a new wave of
migration, separate from Asian and European migration waves of the mid
to late 20th centuries. This is historical revisionism at its worst,
and most unbecoming of a leader so intent on our school children
being taught "accurate" history.

One needn’t be a professor of history or demography to know that
Muslims have been represented in all major waves of migration during
the 20th century. For instance, post-war European migration included
significant numbers of Yugoslav, Albanian, Turkish, Cypriot and Middle
Eastern Muslim migrants.

The first book on Islamic theology published in Australia was authored
by Imam Imamovic, a Brisbane-based writer from the former Yugoslavia
who wrote his book in the early part of the 20th century.

The first mosque built in Sydney, known as the Sydney Mosque, was
established by Turks in the Inner-Western suburb of Erskenville during
the 1950’s.

On ABC TV’s Four-Corners aired to coincide with the September 11
attacks, Howard repeats his claim that a small section of Muslim
communities refuses to integrate. He goes further, saying: "And I
would like the rest of the Islamic community to join the rest of the
Australian community in making sure that the views and attitudes of
that small minority do not have adverse consequences."

Howard’s ambiguous reference to "adverse consequences" is most
unhelpful. His inability to identify precisely what these consequences
are means he cannot identify exactly how "the rest of the Australian
community" have been working.

Presuming adverse consequences means security threats, Howard’s
comments reflect a profound and fundamental ignorance of efforts
made by Muslim communities to combat extremism, including individual
Muslims reporting suspicious behaviour to authorities. Howard’s views
contrast with those expressed by law enforcement officials (including
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty) that Muslim efforts have
been crucial in catching suspects and averting terrorist attacks.

Perhaps the real problem is that Howard insists putting ordinary
Muslims in a lose-lose situation. He has hand-picked a small number
of Muslims to advise him as part of a "Muslim Community Reference
Group". His choice of Muslims is dominated by men of his own generation
who are generally as out-of-touch with mainstream Muslims as he is.

Howard’s choice of Muslim advisers is reflective of his choice of
Muslim "leaders" joining him for a summit in August 2005. Howard’s
leaders were dominated by first generation migrant males of Howard’s
age group, men who routinely exclude and alienate women and youth
from community management roles.

It seems Howard wants to have the right to select which Muslims he
talks to, and then reserves the right to criticise all Muslims should
his chosen Muslims say the wrong things. If Howard were genuine
about involving Muslim communities in decision-making on combating
extremism, he might appoint mainstream Muslims who have made their
mark on mainstream Australia, even if it means appointing people who
will effectively challenge his views on culture and security.

If Howard were serious about national security, he might also consider
following the lead of his Deputy. Peter Costello has shown a far more
sophisticated understanding of the relationship between culture and
national security. Costello understands it isn’t the wrong culture
that presents a security threat. Rather, it is the absence of genuinely
Islamic culture which is the problem.

In his February address to the Sydney Institute, Costello spoke of
young Muslims in "a twilight zone where the values of their parents’
old country have been lost but the values of the new country not
fully embraced".

Further Costello has emphasised on the need for Muslim religious
leaders to provide a greater degree of pastoral care to converts,
saying leaders should "make it clear to would-be converts that when
you join this religion you do not join a radical political ideology".

Costello’s remarks, though crude and inaccurate in some senses,
display a more sophisticated understanding of how the relative
ignorance and zeal of young people and converts can be trapped by
fringe extremists. Costello doesn’t see Islam itself as a problem,
nor does he make any claims about Muslim cultures. He is more concerned
with ensuring ordinary sincere Australian Muslims are not manipulated
by foreign extremists.

Of course, it is easy for Muslim leaders to blame politicians for
their woes. I believe Muslim leaders should be selective in how they
respond, particularly to Howard’s ill-considered remarks. Muslim
leaders should display more political sophistication, and appreciate
that Howard’s rhetoric is probably more determined by interest rates
and the unpopularity of his industrial relations laws than by any
concern for the nation’s cultural health or security.

Muslim leaders should seize upon Howard’s admission that at least 99
per cent of Muslim Australians are fully integrated. It is difficult
to fund similar endorsement of any other ethnic or faith community
in Australia. It certainly flies in the face of infantile commentary
often found in metropolitan tabloids.

Muslim leaders of Mr Howard’s generation should heed the lesson that
Mr Howard refuses to heed. They should step down when alternative
and effective leadership is available. Muslim organisations are in
desperate need of generational change. Younger Muslims, including
and especially women, must form part of this change.

Articulate Muslim women are far more capable of effecting positive
change for Muslim women than neurotic feminists and cultural
chauvinists that congregate on the op-ed pages of allegedly Australian
newspapers. Muslim women need to come forward and take their rightful
place as leaders of Muslim Australia. Their voices need to be heard,
and they need to take control of decision making on issues affecting
them and all women.

Further, Muslims need to ensure that a diversity of Muslim voices
are heard from across the cultural, sectarian, gender and political
divide. There is no reason why debates within the Muslim community
cannot be discussed in the public arena where followers of other
traditions can share their experiences.

In this respect, Muslim leaders must continue to strengthen their ties
with their Jewish brethren. Australian Jews share profound cultural
and religious similarities with Australian Muslims, who can learn
much from Jewish experience in terms of community structure and
infrastructure development.

Finally, Muslims need to invest a good amount of time and money
in decent PR. They need to ensure that Australians are made aware
of Muslim values to the extent that irrelevant middle-aged male
politicians are no longer able to claim that Muslims should ensure
their women are treated with as much disdain as Mr Howard’s faction
of the NSW Liberal Party treats female preselection candidates.

Ordinary Australians do have legitimate fears about security. They have
even greater fears about rising home loan interest rates, conservative
opposition to life-saving scientific research and workplace relations
policies that remove job security. One way we can address these real
issues is if Muslims allay Australian fears about Islam. In doing
so, we can ensure governments cannot shirk their responsibilities by
hiding behind the sound of dog whistles.

Inner City Press, NY
Sept 7 2006

The UN and Nagorno-Karabakh: Flurries of Activity Leave Frozen
Conflicts Unchanged; Updates on Gaza, Gavels and Gbagbo

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

UNITED NATIONS, September 7 — The UN General Assembly met past 6
p.m. Thursday to approve by consensus a resolution entitled "The
situation in the occupied territories"… of Azerbaijan. Armenia
disassociated itself from the consensus, expressing its displeasure
at the title and at the notion of its dispute with Azerbaijan being
considered in the UN. Other self-declared stakeholders in this frozen
conflict by proxy spoke before the resolution passed. The United
States, which considers itself an interested party with respect to
every disagreement and territory, spoke in favor of the resolution.

So did Ukraine, on behalf of "the GUAM states" — Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova. Turkey spoke in favor, as did Pakistan on
behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

All this diplomatic firepower was brought to bear on a
final resolution consisting of five paragraphs, primarily directing
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to assess
fires in the affected territories, to involve the UN Environment
Program in rehabilitation and to report back to the UN General
Assembly by April 30, 2007.

Still waiting, per WFP

What were the two days of negotiations about? asked an
observer in the General Assembly’s cheap seats, where few of the
headphones are working.

Armenia does not want to the issue before the UN, and
objects to the phrase "occupied territories of Azerbaijan" when
referring to Nagorno-Karabakh and environs.

If the UN is involved in the Palestinian occupied
territories, about which an UN agency gave a briefing on Thursday,
and in similar issues in Abkhazia, why has it not been involved in
Nagorno – Karabakh? What is the UN’s involvement in Nagorno –
Karabakh?

The UN Security Council passed four resolutions on
Nagorno – Karabakh between April and November of 1993. Resolution 822
called for a cessation of hostilities. Resolutions 853, 874 and 884
continued in that vein. The ceasefire, such as it was and is, was
negotiated by Russia in May 1994. Since then the main venue of
action, or inaction, has been the 11-nation Minsk Group of the OSCE,
with Russia, France and the U.S. as co-chairs. Since all three are
members of the UN Security Council’s Permanent Five, with veto
rights, one might wonder why they prefer this other venue. To assess
UN involvement in the territories in 2006, Inner City Press on
Wednesday asked the UN Spokesman’s Office. The oral answer was that
even the UN Development Program has no operations in Nagorno –
Karabakh, only the World Food Program. Then on Thursday the following
was provided:

The Joint UNEP / OCHA Environment Unit has been working in close
collaboration with colleagues in UNEP, who have been in direct
contact with representatives from Azerbaijan and Armenia and the
OSCE, which sent a mission to the region in July of this year. The
Joint Unit, through our relationship with the Global Fire Monitoring
Centre, which is our partner on forest fire-related matters,
identified experts last month who could, potentially, go on an
assessment mission. The OSCE has been requested to undertake another
mission and is considering it. It sought UNEP’s advice on experts,
which in turn contacted the Joint Unit. We have, therefore, brokered
a relationship between the Global Fire Monitoring Centre and the
OSCE. So our identified experts are speaking with staff from OSCE.

The Joint Unit will continue to support all those involved in this
issue.

There are areas in the world which the UN does not impact
via Security Council resolutions, but in which it is a major
humanitarian player. Nagorno-Karabakh, like for another example
Casamance in Senegal, is not one of those regions. It is sometimes
said that if you live in a region in the clutches of one of the
Permanent Five members of the Security Council, you’re out of luck at
the UN. But the list of those out of luck at the UN is longer than
that. And Nagorno – Karabakh… is on that list.

In the General Assembly chamber, the scaffolding is now
done, so the meeting was held there. The first part of the meeting,
headlined by Jan Eliasson and Mark Malloch Brown, concerned conflict
prevention. Sitting in the lower audience seats, few of the
headphones worked or provided sound. Sitting behind the S’s, one
could see that among those nations not attending the GA session on
conflict prevention was… Sierra Leone, regarding which
Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently issued a report, S/2006/695,
stating in part that "the continued border dispute between Sierra
Leone and Guinea remains a source of serious concern." While the
report does not name it, the dispute surrounds the diamond-rich town
of Yenga. As usual, follow the money.

Regarding another, higher profile occupied territory,
Thursday at noon the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) briefing on Gaza revealed among
other things that while the U.S. Overseas Private Investment
Corporation says it will pay on its insurance policy on the Gaza
power station, rebuilding will take 18 months and power is for now
sporadic.

At UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric’s noon briefing, Inner
City Press asked three questions, one of which, concerning housing
subsidies by governments to UN employees, was summarily preempted
with the statement that an answer will come in the near future. On
Cote D’Ivoire, where a toxic dumping has resulted in the disbanding
of the cabinet, the UN Spokesman responded that the Ivorian prime
minister called the UN’s head of peacekeeping and, as usually,
everyone should stay calm. The benefits of this chaos to
still-in-power Laurent Gbagbo are apparent to some. On whether the
UN’s envoy on extra-judicial killings will as requested visit Nigeria
as well as Lebanon, a response one supposes will come.

Mr. Dujarric’s sometimes-fellow briefer at noon, Pragati Pascale,
gave a preview of the afternoon’s General Assembly action including
on Nagorno – Karabakh, then fielded following her statement about a
gavel passing, fielded a strange but concrete question about whether
it was the same unique gavel, with wood looking like flame, used when
the budget cap was lifted. Even before 5 p.m. she responded: "
President Eliasson will, indeed, pass the fancy ceremonial gavel to
the incoming President. This was a gift to the General Assembly from
Iceland. President Eliasson did receive a copy of the gavel from the
Secretary-General at the end of the main part of the session last
December, so he can take that home as a remembrance of his time
here." Speak, memory! So to their detriment say those of Karabakh…

Feedback: editorial [at] innercitypress.com

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At the UN, Micro-States Simmer Under the Assembly’s Surface, While
Incoming Council President Dodges Most Questions

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

UNITED NATIONS, September 5 — Nagorno Karabakh, one of the world
most frozen and forgotten conflicts, surfaced at the UN on Tuesday,
if only for ten minutes. The General Assembly was scheduled to vote
on a resolution concerning fires in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan. The diplomats assembled, or began to assemble, at 4 p.m..

At 4:15 it was announced that in light of ongoing negotiations, the
meeting was cancelled, perhaps to reconvene Wednesday at 11:30.

Sources close to the negotiations told Inner City Press
that the rub is paragraph 4 of the draft resolution, which requests
that the Secretary-General report to the UN General Assembly on the
conflict. Armenia wants the matter to remain before the Minsk Group
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has
presided over the problem for more than a decade. Leading the OSCE’s
Minsk Group are Russia, France and the United States, members of the
veto-wielding Permanent Five on the UN Security Council, nations
which Azerbaijan claims have ignored its sovereignty as well as
blocking Security Council action, as for example Russia has on
Chechnya.

Of the fires, Azerbaijan has characterized them as
Armenian arson, and has asked for international pressure to allow it
to reach the disputed territories where the fires have been.

Nagorno-Karabakh, per WFP

At a July 13, 2006 briefing on the BTC pipeline, Inner
City Press asked the Ambassador of Azerbaijan Yashar Aliyev about the
pipeline’s avoidance of Armenia. We cannot deal with them until they
stop occupying our territory, Ambassador Aliyev said. "You mean
Nagorno – Karabakh?" Not only that, Amb. Aliyev answered. That’s only
four percent. Few people know this, but Armenia has occupied twenty
percent of our territory.

Both Amenia’s Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and UN
Ambassador Armen Martirosian have said publicly in the past month
that if Azerbaijan continues pushing the issue before the United
Nations, the existing peace talks will stop. Armenian sources
privately speak more darkly of an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova, collectively intent on involving the UN in
reigning in their breakaway regions including South Ossetia,
Nagorno-Karabakh and Transdniestria — examples of what some call the
micro-states. Armenia is concerned that in the UN as opposed to OSCE,
Azerbaijan might be able to rally Islamic nations to its side.

It is not only to predominantly Muslim nations that the
Azeri’s are reaching out. The nation’s foreign minister Elmar
Mammadyarov met recently with this Swedish counterpart Jan Eliasson,
the outgoing president of the General Assembly.

Following Tuesday’s General Assembly postponement, Inner
City Press asked Mr. Eliasson if, in light of his involvement in
reaching the 1994 cease-fire, he thinks the GA might have more luck
solving the Nagorno-Karabakh than the OSCE has.

"I hope so," he said. "I’m in favor of an active General
Assembly." He recounted his shuttle diplomacy to Baku in the early
90s. And then he was gone.

Elsewhere in the UN at Tuesday, the income president of
the Security Council, Greek Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis held a
press conference on the Council’s plan of work for September. Inner
City Press asked when the Council will get the long-awaited briefing
on violations of the arms embargo on Somalia. Amb. Vassilakis
responded about a meeting on September 25, at Kenya’s request, on the
idea of the IGAD force in Somalia. Inner City Press asked what has
happened with the resolution on the Lord’s Resistance Army of which
the UK has spoken so much. It will be up to them to introduce the
motion," Amb. Vassilakis replied. He did not reply on the issue of
the outstanding International Criminal Court indictments against LRA
leaders including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti.

Inner City Press asked why, on Ivory Coast, the
long-delayed report by the Secretary-General’s expert on the
prevention of genocide has not been released. In this response, Amb.

Vassilakis grew animated, saying that one has to choose between
justice and peace. This implies that the finished report identifies
alleged perpetrators, as pertains to genocide, but is being withheld
either to facilitate peace, which has not come, or as negotiating
leverage over some of the perpetrators. To be continued, throughout
the month.

Rare UN Sunshine From If Not In Chad While Blind on Somalia and
Zimbabwe, UNDP With Shell in its Ear on Nigeria

BYLINE: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

UNITED NATIONS, August 29 — In Chad there are ninety political
parties and over seventy rebel groups, with a focus on overthrowing
Idriss Deby. Meanwhile Deby last Friday ordered Chevron and Petronas
out of the country, for failure to pay taxes.

Chad is the fifth poorest country in the world, with countries in
turmoil or trouble along at least half of its perimeter. To the west,
Niger and to the east, on the other side of camps housing over
200,000 refugees from Darfur, lies Sudan. To the south, the Central
African Republic with its own rebel groups. In the tri-border area
of the Sudan, Chad and the CAR is a lawless zone of mercenaries for
hire, and area none of the three governments control.

Tuesday the head of the UN’s operations in Chad, Kingsley
Amaning, provided reporters a lengthy and well-received briefing. He
began by sketching how the situation in Darfur is further
destabilizing Chad, spreading ethnic conflict and banditry across
borders. Mr. Amaning said that alongside 90 political parties, the
roster of rebel groups has grown from 47 to 72. Inner City Press
asked, as even invited political parties have, why the rebels are
excluded from Deby’s new national dialogue. There are a dozen refugee
camps in eastern Chad, each with fifteen to twenty thousand
residents, in a region where the average town size is only three
thousand. In fact, Mr. Amaning said, right now "the quality of life
of the refugees is higher than the quality of life of the local
population."

Mr. Amaning, originally from Ghana and having previously
served the UN in Guinea, has been in Chad for a year and a half.

During that time, rebels marching on the capital N’djamena were
stopped only by a bomb dropped by the French air force. A colleague
of Mr. Amaning, OCHA Chad desk officer Aurelien Buffler, noted in an
interview that the official description of the French bomb was a
"warming shot." He added that Chad is not even on the agenda of the
Security Council and that raising funds for development is difficult,
since donors don’t know where the money goes. Later this week 25
donors led by Canada will meet with Mr. Amaning in UN Headquarters.

The dichotomy seems to be that while emergency humanitarian funds can
be raised, long-term funds for development are more difficult. Mr.

Amaning said, "Humanitarians get resources, but we don’t follow up
political solutions with development so that people have jobs."

Refugees in Chad per UNHCR

Inner City Press interviewed Mr. Amaning after the
briefing, and asked him first about specific vulnerable refugee camps
near the border with Darfur, Am Nabak and Ouve Casson. Mr. Amaning
confirmed that these camps will be moved, belated, to a lot north of
Biltine, now that it’s thought there is underground water on the
government-owned site.

Turning to history, the UN Security Council, history and
one of its veto-wielding Permanent Five, Inner City Press asked about
France’s involvement. Mr. Amaning said that the UN principles are to
oppose violent takeovers and to encourage dialogue. "I tell the
French Ambassador that instead of trying to explain what type of
intervention that was," Mr. Amaning said, referring to France’s
bomb-drop in support of Idriss Deby, "they should say they did it on
behalf of the international community, so there would be no violent
overthrow."

Speaking more generally, or regionally, Mr. Amaning said,
"If we do not stabilize Darfur," weapons will continue to spread
throughout the region. "It’s a line that’s going to join up… from
DRC through Central Africa to the northern part of Uganda, to Chad
and the Sudan — where are we going?" At least Mr. Amaning is
asking.

For weeks Inner City Press has asked all and sundry in UN
Headquarters to confirm or deny that Ethiopian troops are present in
Somalia. Kofi Annan’s representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny
Fall, skirted the issue despite six questions from Inner City Press
last time he was in New York. Mr. Fall’s spokesman has told Inner
City Press to look elsewhere, since his office does not have a
monitoring mandate in Somalia. In a stakeout interview, the head of
the UN’s Department of Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari responded
with generalities. An email followed, that DPA relies for information
on Mr. Fall’s office — which has not monitoring mandate.

Kofi Annan’s spokesman’s office suggested that Inner City
Press contact the members of the group monitoring the UN’s Somalia
arms embargo. Group member Joel Salek confirmed receipt of Inner City
Press’ request, but said he would "give floor to Bruno [Schiemsky],
the Chairman of our Group, to answer your questions." Time passed,
Inner City Press sent a second request. Mr. Schiemsky responded,
"Sorry, at this stage I have no comments. I need first to brief the
Sanctions Committee" of the Security Council.

Tuesday at the Security Council stakeout, Inner City
Press asked UK Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry who in the UN can speak
regarding Somalia. Amb. Jones Parry responded that the UK is working
on a resolution. Video here.

But when Inner City Press five minutes later asked the President
of the Council, Ghana’s Nana Effah-Apenteng, about Amb. Jones Parry’s
resolution, the Ghanaian Ambassador said no resolution has been
introduced. Video here. Meanwhile the Horn of Africa slides toward
regional war.

Earlier this year at the African Union summit in Banjul,
Kofi Annal pulled back from involvement in Zimbabwe, saying he was
deferring to the new mediator Ben Mkapa. Now documents from the AU
submit show that Mkapa never accepted the role of mediator. Tuesday
Inner City Press asked Kofi Annan’s spokesman if this now means that
the Secretary-General will re-engage. Video here, at Minute 21:50.

The spokesman said he will respond; this has not taken place by 6
p.m. deadline.

Nor as the spokesman answered Inner City Press’ question
of Monday, about why UNDP took funding from Shell Petroleum to write
a report on human development in the Niger Delta, where Shell has a
long record of violating human rights. I will get you an answer, the
spokesman said. We’re still waiting…

At the UN, from Casamance to Transdniestria, Kosovans to Lezgines,
Micro-States as Powerful’s Playthings

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN

UNITED NATIONS, August 25 — Because they are so often forgotten,
today’s report is micro-states. The thread ran through UN
Headquarters on Friday, from noon briefing to stakeout to UNCA Club
upstairs. Kofi Annan’s spokesman on his way to the podium stopped to
tell Inner City Press not to ask certain questions. Some involved the
housing subsidy story below, one involved the Casamance region of
Senegal, where fighting is raging and refugees flee.

Thursday Inner City Press had asked who in the UN, other than the
refugee agency UNHCR, was addressing Casamance. Friday the spokesman
whispered, "On Casamance I don’t have anything more than when UNHCR
has said." So instead Inner City Press asked about a seminal
micro-state, Kosovo. At a press conference hours earlier in Pristina,
the UN’s mediator Martii Ahtisaari had announced that no package will
be put before the Security Council in September. Inner City Press
asked, but what of the postponed municipal elections? Video here, at
Minute 29.

The spokesman’s office arranged a conference call to
UNMIK in Pristina, where the acting press chief said no elections can
be held in the winter anyway. The OSCE, he said, estimates that to
schedule elections takes at least six months. So much for local
democracy, even in areas run by the UN. Kofi Annan’s incoming envoy
to Kosovo should have a better answer. We’ll see. Other data the
spokesman belated provided on Friday is being analyzed.

The micro-states theory is that if Kosovo becomes fully
independent, the same will happen — or be called for by Russia — in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Transdniestria and even Ajara in
Georgia. From this list we can drill down even keeper. Inner City
Press asked Kazakh Ambassador Yerzhan Kazykhanov about a civil
disturbance earlier in the week in Aktau on the Caspian coast,
involving attacks on immigrants from the striving micro-state of
Chechnya, on Azeris and the little-known Lezgines, who come from
Dagestan.

"There are many groups," the Kazakh Ambassador said, adding that
his recent flight from Almaty to Aqtobe took nearly four hours. On
the map he pointed at Oral and noted that World War II passed
through. In his prepared remarks, Kazakhstan’s Ambassador stressed,
not without reason, that the "closure of the Semipalatinsk testing
site was one of the most significant events in the field of nuclear
disarmament." Asked about Kazakhstan’s joint anti-terror operations
with China in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, like Chechnya
another potential micro-state blocked by one of the Permanent Five on
the UN Security Council, the Kazakh Ambassador assured that the
fighting of terror has nothing to do with refugees. We’ll see.

Slovakian limbo per UNHCR

But back to the micro-state of Casamance, which was part
of what’s now Guinea-Bissau until France took it. The civil strife
dates back at least to 1982, and yet the UN and Security Council do
nothing about it. At a stakeout interview on Friday afternoon, Inner
City Press asked the Council’s president Nana Effah-Apenteng if
Casamance is on his radar. No, the Ghanaian Ambassador replied.

"Maybe you are more up-to-date on this issue than I am." Video here,
at Minute 8:47. A well placed source upstairs at the UN noted that
Senegal keeps it quiet. As Chechnya is to Russia, in a sense,
Casamance is to Senegal. Ah, the micro-states…

At deadline in Conference Room 3 in the basement, the disability
rights convention was being endlessly discussed. Ten days ago the
chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention, Don MacKay, said
that if current efforts to block the creation of a treaty monitoring
body are successful, the Convention may well not be enacted. "And
that would be shabby treatment," Mr. MacKay said, citing a long
history of societies’ discrimination against the disabled.

Click here for video and here for the text of the draft Convention.

Inner City Press asked if the United States is among the
countries opposing any monitoring of countries’ performance under the
Convention, similar to the approach the U.S. took in derailing the
Small Arms meeting at the UN earlier this year. Mr. MacKay
acknowledged that the U.S. is among six or seven countries raising
such concerns, but stated that the U.S. position does not seem
"doctrinal" or doctrinaire.

The afternoon the conference would wrap up, the UN briefer Thomas
Schindlmayr resisted naming the countries opposed for example to the
reference to countries’ occupation. One journalist loudly left the
room. Later this list became clear, including the U.S., Australia,
Israel. And at 7:52 p.m., amid applause, the report was adopted.

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