Bidders vie for $5bn MGM studio

Bidders vie for $5bn MGM studio

By Peter Thal Larsen and James Politi in New York

Financial Times
Jul 02, 2004

Shares in MGM rose yesterday amid hopes that a bidding war is about to
break out for the last independent Hollywood studio.

Time Warner has made a preliminary offer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which
values the studio at slightly less than a $5bn cash and debt bid from
Sony, people familiar with the talks said.

However, Time Warner’s bid could prove more attractive because it
involves paying Kirk Kerkorian, the billionaire investor who has a
controlling stake in MGM, in shares rather than cash.

Time Warner has examined a purchase of MGM several times in the
past. A deal is also considered less of a priority for Time Warner
than for Sony, which needs to bulk up its film library.

MGM told investors at its annual meeting on Tuesday that it was still
considering multiple options for its future.

“As it turned out, we have more strategic alternatives available to us
than we realised,” said Alex Yemenidjian, chief executive.

Talks are expected to continue for the next few weeks, and no
announcement is imminent. MGM shares closed up 56 cents at $12.66.

While Sony is seen as the more motivated buyer, Time Warner has a
close knowledge of the studio.

People close to the negotiations said it may also be interested
because MGM has the rights to distribute any film based on The Hobbit,
the book by JR R Tolkien which preceded the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Time Warner’s New Line Cinema subsidiary released the Lord of the
Rings films, which have taken almost $3bn at the box office
worldwide. It also has the rights to make a movie version of The
Hobbit, but would have to come to an agreement with MGM before it
could be released. Given the huge success of Lord of the Rings, those
distribution rights could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

That said, there are no current plans to make the film as Peter
Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the Lord of the Rings series
who would be the most likely to lead the production, is currently
working on a version of King Kong.

Time Warner’s offer, which is non-binding and subject to due
diligence, envisages paying MGM’s public shareholders around $13 per
share in cash – similar to Sony’s proposal.

However, Mr Kerkorian would then receive Time Warner shares in
exchange for his MGM stock at a lower valuation.

BAKU: Azerbaijan increases military spending by over 34m dollars

Azerbaijan increases military spending by over 34m dollars

ANS TV, Baku
30 Jun 04

[Presenter] Azerbaijan, which is at war with Armenia, has increased
its military spending.

[Correspondent over video of marching soldiers] Another step has been
taken to strengthen the national army. According to changes in the
2004 budget, 171bn manats [34.9m dollars] will be allocated for
defence expenditure. This pertains to the strengthening of the
Azerbaijani Defence Ministry’s material and technical base, to the
development of the military and industrial complex and to the payrise
for servicemen.

[Azerbaijani Finance Minister Avaz Alakbarov, speaking at a news
conference] This makes up 2.3 per cent of the GDP. It’s not a large
figure. One should make strong efforts to find 171bn manats and
finance something. Therefore, I think the president’s step is very
necessary and timely.

[Passage omitted: financial details]

[Correspondent] To recap, a lot of attention is being paid to military
cooperation during the Azerbaijani president’s visits abroad.

[Passage omitted: documents signed in the military sphere during
Aliyev’s recent visits to Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Turkey]

[Correspondent] It is no coincidence that these measures and
statements on the liberation of the occupied lands in a military way
have caused some concern in Armenia. For instance, reports by
Armenia’s Regnum [as heard] news agency allow us to say that the
Armenians are unable to fight a war. They are trying to conceal this
with the opinion that the Azerbaijani army is weak. Such an opinion by
the Armenians seems to be absurd if we take into account that Armenia
and Azerbaijan allocated 86m and 147m dollars respectively for
military spending in their 2004 state budgets and that Azerbaijan has
now added 34m dollars to the this amount.

According to military experts, it’s impossible to establish a strong
army with Armenia’s weak economy. The Armenian army’s material and
technical base cannot withstand competition with Azerbaijan in this
sphere.

Zamina Aliyeva, Anar Cabrayilli and Elxan Huseynov, ANS.

Books: An accidental hero returns

The Independent
June 25, 2004

BOOKS: AN ACCIDENTAL HERO RETURNS

by Boyd Tonkin

Painted in a strident maroon, with running-boards worthy of a
gangster flick, the 1947 Ford Pilot buzzes down the quiet midsummer
roads of south Norfolk like a hummingbird across a cowslip meadow.
Somehow, Louis de Bernieres’ choice of vehicle fits his persona, and
his fiction. It’s colourful, idiosyncratic, out-of-time, but sturdy
and resilient. We’re on the way back to the rail station nearest to
the slowly renovated former rectory where he lives with his partner,
Cathy, an actress and director, when he mentions an emotional storm
that struck in his late twenties. This turning-point made the young
teacher – heartbroken by a failed affair, stressed-out by his job –
think again about the prospect of a literary career.

Or, rather, he says that in that crucible of crisis, he “remembered
that I wanted to be a writer”. So a novelist’s progress that has
thrilled and delighted armies of readers around the globe comes to
sound like a minor errand recollected on a whim. In the de Bernieres
universe, chance and design, the big picture and the foreground
detail, always intersect, always interact.

At the close of his sixth novel, Birds Without Wings (Secker &
Warburg, pounds 17.99), the Muslim potter Iskander reflects on the
tragic expulsion of his Christian neighbours from the home that they
shared on the south-western coast of Turkey until the early 1920s. He
decides that “everything that happened was made to do so by the great
world”.

De Bernieres, you feel, partakes of that suspicion of the “great
world”. Take next week, which contains a momentous day for him. He’s
due to take a Grade Five flute exam. He already plays the clarinet
and oboe, as well as the classical guitar and (yes, of course) the
mandolin, and gigs with an Oxford-based ensemble: “I only have one
track on which I star, which is five minutes of variations on
Greensleeves’.” In his living room, looking out on secluded lawns, a
piano stands ready for musical visitors to accompany him. “To play
with proper musicians, you’ve got be be good enough,” he says.

Something else of note happens next week. This is, of course, the
release of the most eagerly-awaited novel of the year, a full decade
after Captain Corelli’s Mandolin started to pluck the heartstrings of
millions. And so the “great world” beats a path to his tucked-away
door in Norfolk, while its stocky, laid-back target improves his
flute technique and frets about “the publicity machine”. He laments
that, “The funny thing about being a writer is that people find
hundreds of ways of interrupting you, continuously.”

Such as – turning up for interviews and asking questions that focus
on notions of well-planned structure, rather than the serendipity de
Bernieres prefers. Set between 1900 and 1923, Birds Without Wings
traces through its small-town microcosm the dismemberment of the
decadent but tolerant Ottoman Empire, after “the hell’s broth of
religious and nationalist hatred had been stirred up by a multitude
of village Hitlers”. In contrast, says the author, “the thing about
the Ottomans is that they weren’t prodigiously effective oppressors.
As long as you paid your taxes, you were really quite all right.” The
novel celebrates the day-to-day deals of a mongrel Mediterranean
backwater, in which Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Armenians all
rub along.

To trace the demise of this lazy, multi-cultural idyll, it switches
between voices and tones that embody the ramshackle, easy-going world
that new divisions will destroy. We follow the growing-up of
too-beautiful Philothei and the tragic outcome of her betrothal to
the goatherd Ibrahim; the curious menage of the proud landowner,
Rustem Bey, and his concubine, Leyla; the fate of the saintly imam,
Abdulhamid Hodja; and the friends Abdul and Nicos, aka “Blackbird”
and “Robin”, whose answering bird-whistles lend the book an auditory
sign of the ties that bind these vulnerable “birds without wings”. In
Turkey, children still blow these uncannily convincing whistles, one
of which the author fetches to demonstrate – piercingly – for me.

Yet, when I ask de Bernieres about the novel’s cunning architecture,
with its sly shifts of register and mood, he replies that, “Your
question implies a greater degree of self-consciousness than I have.
I just write whatever occurs to me.” He does reveal that he wrote the
opening of the novel long ago, then the end, then filled the middle:
“The book just grew up organically in a rather strange way.”

In his fiction, as in his craft-filled leisure-time of antique motor-
parts and broken instruments, de Bernieres loves what the French call
bricolage: running repairs, on-the-spot fixes, DIY make-do-and-mend.
The hubris of the grand plan repels him, in politics and art.
Suitably enough, the Greek ethnic expansionism of the early 20th
century went by the name of the “Big Idea” – just the kind of thing
that de Bernieres loathes. “I really hate and despise nationalism,”
he affirms. “What other people regard as liberation movements I
regard as really stupid and unnecessary interruptions of a peaceful
life.” Those thuggish interruptors, again.

It was alien nationalism that cursed the Turkish “ghost town” de
Bernieres discovered on holiday in the mid-1990s: a “beautiful,
melancholy place”, whose desolation planted the seed of his novel.
Birds Without Wings paints this remote paradise of mingled blood and
mutual respect, and shows how the nationalist serpent slid into it.
And, in the background, the career of the greatest nationalist of all
unfolds in snappy, newsreel-like scenes: Mustafa Kemal, victor at
Gallipoli, supplanter of the Sultan and, as “Ataturk”, the father of
modern Turkey. “He has a quality of myth about him I didn’t want to
disrupt,” says de Bernieres.

Before the calamity, make-do-and-mend suits the people of the town
down to their harsh but herb-rich ground. That goes for passion as
well as politics. If the doomed devotion of Ibrahim and Philothei
punctuates the book, its unexpected emotional – and erotic – heart
emerges in the blooming tenderness between the stiff squire Rustem
Bey and Leyla: his Greek mistress, bought from a house of ill repute
in Istanbul. De Bernieres has been thinking “about the variety of
human love – the enormous number of ways one can love, or learn to
love. It struck me as possible that a woman who was bought could
learn to love and respect her buyer, and vice versa.”

In counterpoint to the varieties of love, Birds Without Wings
delivers the hideous violence of mechanised warfare. Its 100-page
centrepiece, in which Karatavuk (“Blackbird”) recounts the terror,
squalor and fitful heroism of the Gallipoli campaign, will have
critics reaching for their War and Peace. In truth, de Bernieres (who
learned his craft from the works of Marquez) is too centrifugal and
carnivalesque a novelist for the Tolstoy comparison. However, he
makes of the carnage a mesmerising patchwork of horror, humour and
humanity. “If I can tell it in someone else’s voice,” says the army
officer’s son, and Sandhurst drop-out, of the savagery that haunts
both this novel and Captain Corelli, “it somehow makes it less like
me being obsessed by it.”

Visiting the battle sites, he found their past darkness made all too
visible. “The bones of the corpses come to the surface,” he recalls.
“I found quantities of bones when I was there. You look on the war
memorials and it says, Their name liveth for evermore.’ And you have
this totally anonymous bone in your hand.”

None of the peoples of that fractured region has ever quite buried
the bones of this grim era. So he did “from time to time have the
sense of playing with fire”, even though the novel depicts harmony as
a social norm. “I’m sure there will be Armenians, Greeks and Turks
who are upset by this book,” he says, merrily. “The aim is to upset
them all equally… I think it’s quite possible I’ll be assassinated
at a reading one day. I don’t think it’ll be by a fanatic, but by a
lunatic.”

He guffaws, as he often does. For de Bernieres, heaven can wait.
Indeed, it transpires that this plan-averse improviser has his next
three or four books mapped out, not to mention the flute, the guitars
(and mandolins), the unrestored rooms – and the 1947 Ford Pilot. You
sense that this cheerful busyness brings its own reward. And this is
just the tranquil Eden that, in his novel, the townspeople lose when
the murderous “great world” arrives on their doorstop. May he (and
we) never live in such interesting times.

Biography

LOUIS DE BERNIERES

Louis de Bernieres was born in 1954 to a family of Huguenot descent.
He went to Bradfield School on an army scholarship. Briefly a
Sandhurst cadet, he dropped out to work in Colombia before studying
philosophy at Manchester University. He later became a teacher. The
War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (1990) was followed by Senor Vivo
and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman.
In 1993, he was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British
novelists. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) won the Commonwealth
Writers Prize. In the UK , it has sold more than 2.5 million copies.
In 2002, he published Red Dog, a novel for children set in Australia.
Next week, Birds Without Wings appears from Secker & Warburg. He
lives in south Norfolk with his partner.

Former Soviet republics put finishing touches on Eurasian integratio

Former Soviet republics put finishing touches on Eurasian integration deal
by BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA; Associated Press Writer

Associated Press Worldstream
June 17, 2004 Thursday

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Senior officials from five former Soviet
republics put the final touches Thursday on draft agreements aimed
at pushing forward their economic integration.

The agreements on adoption of unified laws and circulation of
securities among the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Community
will be signed by the nations’ leaders Friday in the Kazakh capital
Astana. The group also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan.

Gregori Rapota, the group’s secretary-general, said Thursday the
agreement on common laws would be a “first step toward handing
over some (lawmaking) functions to a supranational parliament.” The
securities agreement would help ensure free capital flow between the
countries, he said.

The nations’ deputy prime ministers also discussed plans to
introduce favorable railway tariffs and create a joint water and
energy consortium to end regional disputes over sharing resources,
said Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Sauat Mynbayev.

The Eurasian Economic Community was founded in 2000 to restore lost
economic ties after the 1991 Soviet collapse. Russia has 40 percent
of the voting rights in the organization and covers 40 percent of
its budget.

In February, the countries agreed to form a customs union by 2006.
The nations have a total population of more than 180 million.

The five countries are also working on creating a transport union and
coordinated migration policies, and are discussing unified energy and
agricultural markets. They also plan to move toward a single currency.

Three other former Soviet republics – Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine –
have observer status in the group.

The group’s summit Friday will be followed by a meeting of leaders
of the Collective Security Treaty, a security alliance including the
five economic community members and Armenia.

Friday’s meetings in Astana come after a summit Thursday of a security
grouping of China, Russia and four former Soviet republics in Central
Asia in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.

DETROIT: Armenian school puts students in multicultural USA

Armenian school puts students in multicultural USA

School honors rich heritage; Southfield’s Manoogian emphasizes Armenian
culture and history

The Detroit News
Neighborhood News (Southfield / Oak Park, MI)
June 7-13, 2004
Section U
Page 7U

By Andrea Bogos, The Detroit News

SOUTHFIELD — Armenian culture is everywhere at the AGBU Alex & Marie
Manoogian School.

It is on a stage with the kindergarten students rehearsing for their
upcoming graduation singing “I wish I could fly to Armenia.”

It is in the classroom with the eigth- and 11th-grade students
presenting projects about the future of Armenian heritage on topics like
an Armenian monastery and a famous Armenian artist.

It is also on the walls of the school, with pictures of past graduates
and the painted words “It’s easy to be born Armenian, but it is
difficult to remain one.”

Heritage is everywhere at this Armenian General Benevolent Union Alex &
Marie Manoogian School, and it is weaved into a curriculum that offers
students from kindergarten through 12th grade a unique education.

“It teaches me about my heritage,” said Vatche Bassmagian, 16, of
Southfield. “You’re a name here and not a number.”

The school will turn 35 in October and this summer will undergo an
expansion and renovation project, including a new media center and new
classrooms.

Started by Armenian philanthropist Alex Manoogian of Detroit, the school
stands by its mission to provide a quality education while enriching
students about Armenian history, regardless of whether they are of
Armenian heritage. About 65 percent of students are Armenian.

The Manoogian School offers free classes for students in grades K-12 and
a tuition-based prekindergarten program. Since the school became a
charter school 10 years ago, enrollment has jumped from 150 to 370.

Families typically find out about the school through word of mouth, said
Hosep Torossian, the assistant principal. With a population of 30,000
Armenians in Metro Detroit, the need for the school is there, he said.

“The community is strong and there is a demand to perpetuate the
culture,” Torossian said. “Not only are we exposing them to culture, but
also they learn world history.”

Coupled with the education is the close bonds students make while at
school, said Principal Nadya Sarafian.

“They know who they are and where they came from,” Dr. Sarafian said.
“Many of the students build life-long relationships.”

The school commemorates the Armenian genocide and has hosted guest
speakers, like a popular Armenian pop singer. Faculty and students agree
the experience at the school is well-rounded.

“The teachers care about you here,” said Rusha Waad, 16.

Sebouh Avedikian teaches Armenian language and history classes. He said
what students learn can be applied in many ways in their lives.

“It is a multicultural USA,” he said. “Here they learn about their
neighbors and most importantly, tolerance.”

One of the seven members of the first graduating class, Dr. Linda Darian
Karibian, now sends her daughter Ani to the school and volunteers for
field trips and to give students free dental check-ups.

“The aspect of preserving our Armenian heritage is very important,” she
said. “It’s a caring and nurturing environment, which is important for a
child’s development.”

You can reach Andrea Bogos at (313) 222-2613 or ([email protected]).

ABOUT THE SCHOOL
– Where it is: 22001 Northwestern Highway, Southfield, Michigan.
– Tuition: Free for students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
– Students attending all grades and preschool: 370
– Class size: The range is 19 to 28 students per classroom.
– Age: The school celebrates its 35th year in October.
– Phone: (248) 569-2988.
Source: Assistant Principal Hosep Torossian.

Photo caption: “The Armenian General Benevolent Union Alex & Marie
Manoogian School in Southfield teaches Armenian heritage to students
like Paulina Sidi and Alex Baljian. ‘You’re a name here and not a
number,’ said student Vatche Bassmagian”. Photo credit: Elizabeth Conley
/ Special to The Detroit News.

Photo caption: “Kindergartners rehearse a song and dance for graduation
ceremonies. The school stands by its mission to provide a quality
education while enriching students about Armenian history.” Photo
credit: John M. Galloway / Special to The Detroit News.

Photo caption: “Mher Tcholakian stretches his muscles on the Manoogian
school playground. The heritage-based school turns 35 in October.” Photo
credit: John M. Galloway / Special to The Detroit News.

BAKU: We are well aware of what occurs in Southern Caucasus,says Gen

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
June 11 2004

WE ARE WELL AWARE OF WHAT OCCURS ON SOUTHERN CAUCASUS
[June 11, 2004, 11:42:29]

These words have been told by the deputy chief of Headquarters of the
US European Command general Charles Wald at the meeting with Minister
of Defiance of Azerbaijan, colonel-general Safar Abiyev.

As was stated from the press-service of the ministry, Mr. Safar
Abiyev, having noted, that similar meetings have strategic character
and that the USA pays great attention to Azerbaijan, reminded that the
situation in region of the South Caucasus continues to remain intense,
and a part of lands of Azerbaijan to this day is under occupation of
Armenia. He added: ¡°It is impossible to freeze the Armenia-Azerbaijan
conflict. It is high time to call a spade a spade and it is necessary
to recognize Armenia as a state ¨C aggressor¡±.

General Charles Wald has thanked for reception, saying that shares his
views on the stated idea, and has emphasized, that present position
in region of the South Caucasus is under the control of the largest
international organizations of the world. We are well aware of what
occurs in the region¡±, he said.

Minister Safar Abiyev has told that Azerbaijan seriously prepares
for ¡°Cooperative Best Effort-04 ¡± exercises, which will take place
in September of this year within the framework of the NATO ¡°PfP¡±
program.

Having noted, that carrying out in Azerbaijan similar exercises is
very significant event which even brings Azerbaijan with the NATO
closer, the American general has told: ¡°The US European Command of
Armed Forces thinks much of cooperation with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan
is a state having great authority in the region. Relations between
the USA and Azerbaijan are improving and our relations are long-term.
The US and Azerbaijan have common strategic interests.

Minister of Defense of Azerbaijan has noted, that cooperation of
Azerbaijan and the USA every day becomes closer, he has also reminded
on importance of cancellation of the 907 Section to the ¡°Freedom
Support Act¡±.

In the meeting on which the wide exchange of opinions on questions of
the international and regional safety was held, also presenting was
the Charge d’Affaires of the US embassy in Baku Nancy §®celdowney,
and the military attach¨¦ lieutenant colonel Brendan Mcalon.

Conversations with the dead: The bones of massacre victims …

Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada)
June 6, 2004 Sunday Final Edition

Conversations with the dead: The bones of massacre victims have a lot
to say to a forensic anthropologist

by Tom Hawthorn

The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in
Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo by Clea Koff; Knopf Canada;
271 pages; $34.95

One murder is a crime. One hundred murders, or 1,000, or 10,000,
or tens of thousands, are also crimes, although the enormity of the
wrongdoing is so great, so unbelievable, that it becomes possible
for the perpetrators to lie and cover up, making accomplices of so
many others.

Hitler, the mass murderer against whom other monsters are measured,
knew this well. Preparing plans for the extermination of the European
Jews, Hitler notoriously dismissed concerns about future world
opinion. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?” he said. Indeed, when earlier this year Canada’s House
of Commons belatedly condemned those deaths more than eight decades
after the fact, the vote was denounced by the Turkish government and
its supporters as being misinformed and unhelpful.

For survivors and grieving relatives, the horror of murder is
compounded by denying the fact.

Bearing witness is an antidote to such sickness. So, the Holocaust
memoir becomes a genre because it is necessary to count as many
survivors and name as many victims as possible, if we are to take
seriously the solemn promise of “never again.”

Yet, the past decade has provided a brutal awakening for those of
us under age 65 who ever wondered how the world could ignore the
deliberate and organized slaughter of so many people.

In Rwanda, political leaders squawked orders for mass murder over
the radio. In Serbia, otherwise decent people suspended disbelief and
accepted government propaganda denying the existence of mass graves.
In Canada, we tsk-tsked over news of the latest atrocities, our sense
of moral superiority once again affirmed.

Even as a teenager, Clea Koff knew the world’s atrocities demanded
a response from her. Raised in Africa, England and the United
States, this daughter of a Tanzanian mother and American father,
both documentary filmmakers, quips that she learned about the
lumpenproletariat at the supper table before she knew about Bert and
Ernie on television.

Fascinated by the nature of death even as a girl, she collected dead
birds and studied them as prelude to backyard burial.

Koff found inspiration for a career as a forensic anthropologist from
two sources: a television documentary on bodies preserved in the ash
from an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and Clyde Snow’s book, Witnesses
from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell, which describes efforts to
find the remains of the “disappeared” victims of Argentina’s bloody
military junta of the 1970s and 1980s.

“I had known for years that my goal was to help end human rights abuses
by proving to would-be killers that bones can talk,” she writes in The
Bone Woman, a compelling personal chronicle of months spent rooting
around in mass graves.

Koff was sent to Africa in 1996 with the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a United Nations organization formed
to bring the killers to justice. (Koff also worked for ICTY, the
tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.) She works with the remains of
murder victims, of which there is no shortage. The violence in Rwanda
was so widespread that it quickly claimed some 800,000 victims, the
vast majority killed by hand, usually by machete. Imagine every man,
woman and child in Vancouver and Burnaby hacked to death, some left
to rot where they fell, others thrown into pits and covered with dirt.

Koff finds Rwanda a beautiful, verdant land, where the serene setting
of the church at Kibuye masks the horror inflicted and a menace still
not dissipated.

While some skeletons display wounds to the arms and hands, others
bear only the fatal blows.

“The absence of defence wounds gave my image of that massacre an eerie
calmness; did people take the blows as though taking the sacrament?”

She finds herself smiling a lot in Rwanda, an incongruous reaction
to so horrid a killing field. “It is because I see not just death,
about which I can do nothing, but bones and teeth and hair, which I
can do something about …”

Bones offer clues as to age, sex, height, ancestry and cause of
death. Koff and her colleagues scrape away dirt until they uncover
remains, exchanging a pickaxe for a trowel for a pair of chopsticks
for the delicate task of flicking dirt from between finger joints.

A rational scientist, Koff has a poet’s eye in describing her
discoveries, noting in one case how “the big toe phalange (is) chunky
like a baby carrot, the other phalanges more like small licorice
pieces, held in anatomical position by a sock because the flesh of
the foot has decomposed.”

Descriptions of much of her work are not for the faint of heart (and
those now eating breakfast may wish to skip a few paragraphs). Koff
copes daily with ammonia fumes from intestines as well as saponified
remains, a state of decomposition in which skin remains tender. “If
you puncture it, something not dissimilar to cottage cheese came
foaming out …”

The smells of decomposition — “one being sharp and ripe, the other
thick and ‘hairy’ ” — permeates her own clothing, a scent she cannot
avoid even while eating lunch.

These horrors fuel nightmares that she duly records, yet an event
she witnesses causes her greater distress.

One fine evening as Koff dines al fresco on the shores of Lake Kivu,
her reverie is disturbed by a sickening sight: two desperate men
in the water being shot to death by uniformed Rwandan soldiers. “I
couldn’t conceive of which ‘side’ they were on, which side we were
thought to be on, or, indeed, if there were any sides.”

Seeking explanation, she is told the dead men were insurgents from
Zaire. The information is useless, for she has no means of judging
its accuracy.

“I hated the impotence of not being able to do more than just report
the killings and I hated the fear I now felt for my own life, even
though the bullets

hadn’t been directed at me or my teammates. And, insult upon insult,
I hated the fact I got to leave this place so easily.”

The Bone Woman was written from Koff’s journal entries, a strength
in retelling the small incidents of her labours, a weakness when
recounting the petty disputes one expects among colleagues working in
such hostile and unpalatable circumstances. She dislikes the teasing
she endures from teammates after telling a Reuter reporter that she
talks to the uncovered skeletons: “We’re coming. We’re coming to
take you out.” Her complaint is so overshadowed by the enormity of
the crimes in which she works daily as to seem callow and naive. Her
reaction is understandable perhaps for someone who marks her 24th
birthday literally up to her elbows in viscera.

Koff also exhumes bodies from mass graves in the former Yugoslavia
(“where the people who committed the crimes we would be uncovering
were still at large”) at Cerska, Nova Kasaba and a rubbish pit at
Ovcara, where missing men from the hospital at Vukovar had been dumped.

“These bodies, by their very presence, were dismantling years of the
perpetrators’ propaganda that the grave didn’t exist, that the missing
men were probably larking about in Italy, that a crime against humanity
hadn’t taken place five years earlier,” she writes.

Her work does not so much bring resolution to the crime, by uncovering
the assailant and having them punished, as restore the humanity to
those whose lives were taken. Long after the book is closed, a reader
remembers the woman in Rwanda with plastic pink necklaces; the hospital
patient who secreted his X rays in his clothing (for identification
after death? because he believed he was going to another hospital?);
the boy in Kosovo whose grave held marbles, a child’s plaything and
a reminder of our necessary outrage at his murder.

Tom Hawthorn is a Victoria reporter who last reviewed Conrad Black’s
biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Times Colonist.

ANKARA: Djivan Gasparyan to Perform in Ankara

Djivan Gasparyan to Perform in Ankara

Zaman
06.05.2004 Saturday

World famous pipe player, Djivan Gasparyan, will perform at the Middle
Eastern Technical University (ODTU) tonight.

His work includes contributions to the scores of ‘Gladiator’, ‘Call
to Sin’ and ‘Dead Man Walking.’

Djivan Gasparyan arranged a press meeting before the concert.

“This is the first time I have visited Ankara,” Gasparyan said
during a press conference. “Before coming here however, I heard many
things… Ankara is a city of universities and a city that shows
interest in this kind of music. The concert which I will give in
Ankara will be different from the concerts I have given in other
parts of the world,”

He commented that his reception in Turkey was unexpectedly warm. Born
in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia in 1934, Gasparyan has worked
with Armenian musicians for 50 years. Gasparyan is also a professor
in the Yerevan State Conservatory.

Turkey slams ‘Israeli terrorism’

Turkey slams ‘Israeli terrorism’

Thursday, 3 June, 2004, 10:35 GMT 11:35 UK
BBC News World Edition

Many Palestinians have been made homeless in the past month

Turkey’s prime minister has repeated an accusation that Israel was
practising “state terrorism” against Palestinians.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israelis were persecuting Palestinians just
as Jews were persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition 500 years ago.

Israel was “bombing civilians, killing people without any
considerations – children, women, the elderly – razing buildings
using bulldozers,” he said.

Israel has called for “more solidarity” from Turkey, its closest
regional ally.

Jews were the victims [in Spain]. Today Palestinians are the victims
and the people of Israel are treating Palestinians as they were
treated 500 years ago

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Mr Erdogan was giving his first interview to the Israeli media since he
caused dismay in Israel last month by calling its military operations
in the southern Gaza town of Rafah “state terrorism”.

At the time Israel’s foreign ministry issued an unusual rebuke to
Ankara, saying his comments were “extremely regrettable” and Turkey,
which had also fallen prey to “cruel terrorism”, was expected to show
“more understanding and solidarity”.

But in the interview published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on
Thursday, Mr Erdogan said his relationship with Israelis and Jews
in general was free of problems and that his criticism was solely
directed at the right-wing coalition government of Ariel Sharon.

“We are in favour of the peace process being regenerated, and the
government of Israel has not contributed to our efforts to do so,”
he said.

Close ties

Mr Erdogan stressed that Turks had once “opened their hearts and homes”
to Jews who fled from the Inquisition and now they wanted to mediate
between Israel and other countries in the Middle East to achieve peace.

Erdogan leads an Islamic-rooted party in Turkey’s secular system

But he stood by his earlier accusation that Israel was practising
“state terrorism” against Palestinians.

“When you look at the structure of what has happened, how else can
you interpret it?” he said.

Israel usually enjoys very close relations with Turkey, its strongest
military and trade partner in the Middle East region.

Mr Erdogan went on to make an apparently veiled criticism of another
ally, Washington, calling for a more multilateral approach in its
“global war on terrorism”.

“Saying ‘I am the strong one, so I can name anyone I want as a
terrorist and anyone I want as a criminal and just kill them and go’
– that mentality is wrong,” he said.

“All those responsible are losing their credibility with every passing
day… You must have followed what kind of reactions the pictures
of the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison [in Iraq] received,” he added.

The interview ends with Mr Erdogan sending “shalom” to all the citizens
of Israel, especially the ones who emigrated from Turkey.

Armenian opposition leader says “prominent” activists arrested

Armenian opposition leader says “prominent” activists arrested

Noyan Tapan news agency
1 Jun 04

Yerevan, 1 June: The secretary of the National Unity Party’s
territorial organization, Simon Amirkhanyan, and his colleague,
Razmik Kchoyan, were arrested in the town of Gavar in Gegarkunik
Region on 31 May, chairman of the party Artashes Gegamyan said.

According to him, they are being blamed for telling people of
Gavar District, in particular, in the villages of Karmir, Gandzak
and Sarukhan and the town of Gavar about a meeting of MPs from the
National Unity faction with their voters scheduled for 2 June.

According to Gegamyan, [Armenian President] Robert Kocharyan is behind
the arrests. He said that by this move Kocharyan wanted to show to the
Orinats Yerkir [Law-Governed Country] Party and its leader that though
the marzapet [head] of Gegarkunik was one of the prominent members of
the Orinats Yerkir Party, however, this was of no significance to him.

Gegamyan has not yet reported the arrests to Jerzy Jaskiernia [PACE’s
co-rapporteur on Armenia], because he believes that “we should resolve
our domestic problems within the country and appeal to the Council
of Europe only in case of obstacles”.