Armenia, Azerbaijan `Close To Karabakh Deal'

[Gavur]

Murats cultural learnings of Canada by Azerbaijan

charismatic azeri reporter goes on a mission to educate azeris about the great warring nation of canada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIs6zvuoa3o

[Joseph]

charismatic azeri reporter goes on a mission to educate azeris about the great warring nation of canada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIs6zvuoa3o

Burn!!!! Ouch!!!

[Helen]

Armenia, Azerbaijan Row Spills over into Football

Where will the two warring nations play their European qualification matches?

By Vafa Jafarova in Baku, Artur Nazarian in Yerevan and Naira Bulgadarian in Vanadzor (CRS No. 389 26-Apr-07)

A seemingly irresolvable row is growing over the location of European Championship qualifying football matches between the two implacable Caucasian foes, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

A meeting in Cardiff of the board of Europe’s governing football body UEFA on April 18 failed to determine where the two matches between the two sides, due to take place this autumn, should be held. Another meeting has been called for mid-July to rule on the issue.

According to the schedule for Group A, the first game between the two for qualification to the 2008 European Championship should take place in Baku on September 8, to be followed by a return match in Yerevan four days later.

However, although Armenia has agreed to host the Azerbaijani team, Azerbaijan is so far insisting that it will not allow the Armenians to play in Baku.

Before the qualifying draw took place, UEFA sent out a letter to all of Europe’s football authorities setting out the regulations for qualifying matches. The letter said that all teams should play their home games in their own countries and that the state should guarantee the security of visitors.

The Armenian football federation expressed its willingness to travel to Baku and then to host the Azerbaijanis in Yerevan. But Azerbaijan’s football federation, AFFA, and the country’s ministry of sport said it was impossible to receive the Armenians in Baku and suggested the matches should be played on neutral territory instead.

The two countries have been in a state of open or suspended conflict for almost two decades over the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh. Although open hostilities ended in a ceasefire 13 years ago, hundreds of thousands of refugees are unable to return home and large areas of Azerbaijan remain under the military control of Armenian forces.

A ceasefire line, manned by troops, divides the two sides and contacts between the two nationalities are extremely limited.

While many Armenians say they favour contact and collaboration, many Azerbaijanis say this is an attempt to normalise the status quo in the Armenians’ favour and they cannot countenance any contact with Armenians, “as long as they are occupying our land”.

Not just citizens of Armenia, but ethnic Armenians as a whole, are generally not permitted to visit Azerbaijan, ostensibly on security grounds. A handful of Azerbaijanis do visit Armenia, but are guarded by government security service personnel when they do so.

This makes the matter of organising two international football matches for both players and fans a big international headache.

Tigran Israelian, spokesman for Armenia’s football federation, said that his country was following UEFA’s recommendations and would take all necessary measures to ensure the Azerbaijan’s security in Yerevan.

“In UEFA’s statutes, it’s clearly stated that the receiving side is obliged to provide all security measures,” said Israelian. “Now UEFA has to take a final decision, as both sides have already set out their positions on these matches.”

Azerbaijan’s minister of youth and sport Azad Rahimov suggested that the two matches could be played instead in Austria, Switzerland or Ukraine.

“We cannot raise the flag and perform the national anthem of a country which is occupying a large part of our territory,” Rahimov told APA news agency. “There is also a technical aspect to the question, which is that we cannot guarantee the security of the whole team and of the fans.”

Akif Nagi of the Azerbaijani nationalist Karabakh Liberation Organisation went further, saying, “I can definitely say only one thing, so long as we are enemies any contact between us is out of the question.”

Boris Navasardian, president of the Yerevan Press Club, which has regular contacts with Azerbaijan, said he thought the security issue was a smokescreen.

“The authorities in both countries possess enough resources, both physical and propagandistic, to make sure the matches go ahead normally,” said Navasardian.

“I don’t want to create the impression that the Armenians are behaving constructively and the Azerbaijanis destructively,” he went on. “It’s simply that in the situation we have Armenia is taking tactical steps in order to demonstrate its constructive attitude and agreement for the game to take place in Yerevan, so as to win the advantage in the football contest.”

Football is not the only sport where Armenian and Azerbaijani sportsmen are scheduled to meet this year. This autumn Baku is due to stage the world wrestling championships and the top eight performers in each weight category will win the right to take part in the Olympic Games in Beijing next year.

Leva Vardanian, general secretary of Armenia’s wrestling federation, said that thus far he had been assured that Armenian wrestlers would be able to travel to Baku.

“The other day I met the president of the World Wrestling Federation and he assured me that they had talked to the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, and he had promised to provide security for the Armenians,” he said.

Azerbaijan’s sports minister Rahimov said that it was within his government’s power to provide security for the Armenian wrestlers – and that this was proof that his bid to exclude the football team was not a political decision.

No one in the ministry had an answer to IWPR’s question, “Will you raise the flag of Armenia and play the national anthem if an Armenian wrestler becomes world champion.”

Azerbaijani sports commentator Elnur Agayev said that no one in Azerbaijan believed that any of the Armenian wrestlers could achieve first place, but the Armenian football team was a more serious proposition. Several Armenian footballers play in top European clubs and the Armenian team stands a good chance of beating Azerbaijan – and if this happens there could be a risk of violence after the game.

Fuad Asadov, general secretary of AFFA, told IWPR he could not receive the Armenian football team in Baku – even if this meant suspension from UEFA. The very idea, he said, was “not serious”.

It seems likely at least that the match in Yerevan will go ahead because, according to the Armenian federation, if the visiting team refuses to show up, the home team will be awarded a 3-0 victory and the missing team may be disqualified from the next championship.

Most football fans in both countries are simply keenly looking forward to the games.

Azerbaijani fan, 22-year-old student Emil Jafarli, said he hoped Azerbaijan’s home match was in Baku because he could not afford to travel to another country. “Wherever the game happens, I hope that our boys win,” he said. “The fact that football has turned into politics is quite normal if you consider that we are enemies with Armenia.”

“Even in Soviet times matches between Yerevan’s Ararat and the Baku team Neftchi were very tense,” said Gevorg, a 36-year-old Armenian. “Then we were in the same country and although there weren’t any serious differences between us, there were sometimes really unpleasant incidents in the stands.”

Human rights activist Avaz Hassanov wants to see both matches take place in the home capitals.

“If we receive the Armenian team at home in Baku it means that we will achieve something positive in sorting out our relations,” said Hassanov. “Sport does not have a homeland or a nationality. And the Azerbaijani team will defeat the Armenian one with its beautiful game.”

Vafa Jafarova is a journalist with the Baku newspaper Khazri. Artur Nazarian is a reporter with the independent television company A1+ in Yerevan. Naira Bulgadarian is a reporter with the Civil Initiative newspaper in Vanadzor, Armenia. This article was written as part of IWPR’s Cross Caucasus Journalism Network project.

http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=335156&apc_state=henh

[Gavur]

Yerevan Dismisses Aliev Claims On Karabakh

By Ruzanna Khachatrian and Irina Hovannisian

Armenian leaders on Friday shrugged off Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev’s claims that they have agreed to the liberation of all seven Azerbaijani districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh as part of a peace accord currently discussed by the conflicting parties.

Aliev made the comments as he inaugurated a newly built settlement for Azerbaijani refugees near Baku earlier in the day. Azerbaijani media quoted him as saying that the Armenian side is ready to pull out of even the Lachin district which serves as the shortest overland link between Karabakh and Armenia proper. He said that under the terms of the peace deal proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group the land corridor would be temporarily controlled by international mediators before being placed under Azerbaijani control.

Armenian and Karabakh leaders have repeatedly said that Lachin’s return to Azerbaijan is non-negotiable. They have also set additional conditions for Armenian withdrawal from Kelbajar, the other Azerbaijani district sandwished between Armenia and Karabakh.

“I don’t known what goals the president of Azerbaijan is pursuing, but it is known to everyone that we have principles and those principles haven’t changed,” Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian told RFE/RL. “So take Aliev’s statements easy.”

“The statements relating to territorial concessions are untrue,” said Vahan Hovannisian, the deputy parliament speaker and a leader of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation. “This is not first such case in his political career.”

In his speech, Aliev also said that Karabakh’s status should be determined after the liberation of the Armenian-occpuied districts “within the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.” “Those [Karabakh Armenians] that want independence should move to Armenia,” he said.

The Minsk Group’s peace proposals seem to allow for international recognition of Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan by envisaging a referendum of self-determination in the Armenian-populated territory. The conflicting parties have yet to agree on the date and other practical modalities of the proposed vote.

In a recent interview with the French-Armenian magazine “Nouvelles d’Armenie,” Sarkisian said the Karabakh conflict can be resolved “only on the condition that Karabakh is will never be under Azerbaijani control.”

[Gavur]

Aliyev Sings The Old Song

ArmRadio.am
04.05.2007 13:23

Any solution of the Karabakh conflict is possible only in the framework
of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, Azeri President Ilham
Aliyev declared during the joint press conference with the President
of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, "AzerTag" state news agency reports.

"Azerbaijan will never agree to a settlement which will envisage the
secession of Nagorno Karabakh from Azerbaijan today, tomorrow or in
100 years," Aliyev repeated.

The Azerbaijani President concluded his speech with a threat: "Now
Armenia should choose: either they must continue to live with the
feat of just reward on the part of Azerbaijan or live in peace with
their neighbors in the region.

[Joseph]

Armenian documentary

Armenian Documentary Wins Tribeca Film Festival Prize
New York, May 4, Armenpress: A Story of People in War & Peace, directed by Armenian film director Vartan Hovhanesian, was recognized the winner of the 6th annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York in the category of Best New Documentary Filmmaker. The film is about the horrors of war and its effects that uses footage from the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Winner received $25,000 cash and the art award "Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg, South Africa," created by Bruce Weber.

This year's Festival included 157 features and 88 short films from 47 countries. The world competition winners were chosen from 18 narrative and 16 documentary features from 25 countries. Two awards were also given to honor New York films, which were chosen from 14 narrative and eight documentary features. Of the 62 short films in competition, awards were given for best narrative, best documentary and student visionary film.

The Tribeca Film Festival was founded in 2002 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff after the attacks on the World Trade Center to help economically and culturally revitalize Lower Manhattan through an annual celebration of film, music, and culture.

The Festival's mission is to assist filmmakers to reach the broadest possible audience, enable the international film community and the general public to experience the power of film, and to promote New York City as a major filmmaking center.

[Joseph]

Armenia and Karabakh mark V-Day and Shoushi Liberation Day on May 9
09.05.2007 09:00 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On May 9 Armenia marks the V-Day and the Day of Yerkrapah (Union of Volunteers of the Karabakh war). In connection with these holidays a number of events will be held in the republic. Particularly events of placing wreaths in “Yerablur” pantheon and Victory Park, as well as attending to the “Mother Armenia” museum are scheduled, Defense Ministry Spokesman colonel Seyran Shahsuvaryan told the PanARMENIAN.Net. Participants of events with a minute of silence will honor the memory of those who perished their lives during battles, after which a military parade will be held. A concert will be organized in the Republic Square, which will be concluded by fireworks.

On May 9 Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh mark not only as V-Day in the World War II, but also as Shoushi Liberation Day, as well as the foundation day of the NKR Defense Army.

On May 9 in the Revival Square of Stepanakert a military parade of NKR Defense Army will be held. After it the Armenian delegation at the head of President Robert Kocharian together with NKR leadership and President Arkadi Ghukassian will visit the Memorial Complex of Stepanakert. They will place wreaths to the monument in memory of those who died during the war. An event of placing flowers to the tank-monument that first attacked Shoushi will be organized in Shoushi. In the center of Shoushi officials will also lay flowers to the monument of Vazgen Sargsyan, military leader and Prime Minister of Armenia, who was killed during Armenian National Assembly’s session in 1999.

Besides the Center of Crafts will be opened in Shoushi. Also a photo exhibition entitled “Shoushi with Children’s eyes” will be held. Participants of events will attend the St. Kazanchetsost Church of Shoushi. The “Shoushi Revival” Fund will organize a number of events in Shoushi. Particularly it is going to open a movie theater in the town and conduct the “Golden Apricot” film festival. In the evening of May 8 video projection and presentation of the new general layout, as well as the new coat of arms and Fund’s plans for reconstructing the town will be shown on the walls of Shoushi fortress. In the evening President of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic Arkadi Ghukassian will held a reception. At the end a holiday concert with participation of local and invited singers will be organized in the Revival Square of Stepanakert. A mass firework will conclude the concert.

[Joseph]

Part I

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2007/130507Hookers.htm

How British Petroleum does business....


Hookers, spies, cases full of dollars...how BP spent £45m to win 'Wild East' oil rights

GLEN OWEN
UK Daily Mail
Sunday May 13, 2007

Comment: This story appeared early today on the Daily Mail website. It has since been pulled without explanation. If correct, this story could bring down the entire British government which is probably why it was immediately subject to a D notice - a British government order to censor a story. Look out for a big story on this tomorrow.

BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts.

The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant.

Les Abrahams, who led BP's successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics, today claims that Browne - who was forced to resign as chief executive last month after the collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday - presided over an "anything goes" regime of sexual licence, spying and financial sweeteners.

High life: Mr Abrahams, left, and another BP executive not linked to any impropriety with local girls in Azerbaijan

He also claims that Home Secretary John Reid was arrested at gunpoint on a BP-funded foreign trip for being out on the streets after a military curfew had been imposed.

Mr Abrahams tells how he spent £45 million in expenses over just four months of negotiations with Azerbaijan's state oil company.

Armed with a no-limit company credit card, he ordered supplies of champagne and caviar to be flown on company jets into the boomtown capital, Baku, to be consumed at the "sex parties".

Ex-BP boss Lord Browne
The hospitality continued in London, where prostitutes were hired on the BP credit card to entertain visiting Azerbaijanis.

Mr Abrahams, an engineer by training, joined BP in 1991, just as the disintegration of the Soviet Union had triggered a "new gold rush" by oil multi-nationals seeking a share of the 200 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea.

While employed by BP, Mr Abrahams says he was persuaded to work for MI6 by John Scarlett, now head of the service but then its head of station in Moscow.

He says he was passing information to Scarlett in faxes and at one-to-one meetings in the Russian capital.

He also claims that BP was working closely with MI6 at the highest levels to help it to win business in the region and influence the political complexion of governments.

Mr Abrahams worked for BP's XFI unit - Exploring Frontiers International - which specialises in opening new markets in often unstable parts of the world.

He said Lord Browne, then BP's head of exploration, allocated a budget of £45 million to cover the first year's costs of the Baku operation.

"The order came from Browne's aides to 'get them anything they want'.

"By 'them', they meant local officials in Azerbaijan," Mr Abrahams said.

"There were 20 or 30 people working on it at BP head office, and we soon had a steady stream of executives coming over as negotiators. We got through the money in just four months - after which it was simply increased without question."

He described a Wild West world in which oil executives with briefcases full of dollars rubbed shoulders with mafia members, prostitutes and fixers and cut their deals in smoke-filled back rooms.

"The BP officials would come out to Baku in groups of five or six, every week," he said.

"Sometimes I would charter an entire Boeing 757 to carry as few as seven staff. Their main base was the hard currency bar of the old Intourist hotel - so named because it accepted only dollars and was only open to foreigners.

"It was full of prostitutes and many of us, including me, used them on a regular basis, although we quickly established they all worked for the KGB.

"If we went back to the rooms, not only were they bugged, but the girls would quiz us closely about what we were doing and where we were going, and reported straight back to their handlers.

"Everywhere was bugged, and all the phones were tapped. One of our executives was recorded saying unflattering things about the president, and his comments were played back to us in a meeting with local state oil company officials.

"We were then told clearly that he was no longer welcome in the country."

Mr Abrahams helped to forge links with the local officials by throwing lavish parties. He said the Azerbaijani girls who worked in the BP office, which occupied a floor of the Sovietskaya hotel, would attend the parties and routinely provide "sexual favours".

They were also presumed to work for the local intelligence services.

"There was one girl, called Natasha, assigned to teach us Russian, but it usually ended up as more that that. She would use the intimate opportunity to ask us questions about what we were up to.

"Caviar and champagne were consumed at the parties, which would start in the bars but inevitably end with the girls in the rooms.

"We had a company American Express card with no name on it which we could use to draw out $10,000 a time to pay for entertaining without ever having to account for it.

"Our local fixer was called 'Zulfie', who would help find girls, drink and occasionally hashish. We always suspected he worked for the KGB, because he was so well connected.

"A lot of the BP men's marriages went wrong. Either they ended up with the local girls, or the wives would find out - often because the girls would ring their home numbers "by accident".

"I don't believe that Browne didn't know everything that was going on. He came out to Baku on five or six occasions."

Mr Abrahams, who left BP in 1994, said his first marriage buckled because of his work in Baku. He has since remarried and lives in West London with his new wife Lana and six-year-old daughter Anastasia. He now works as an adviser to the EU.

He said BP applied the same laissez-faire attitude to hospitality when Azerbaijani officials came to the UK during the negotiations.

"I was given a hotline number which connected to a desk in the Foreign Office. It meant visas could be granted instantly for the Azerbaijanis and collected on arrival at the airport, rather than taking the usual several weeks.

"We had bundles of cash to spend on them when they got here, and could again use the corporate card without restraint.

"We would typically have a dinner at which Lord Browne would be present, then he would go home and we would head off to somewhere like the Gaslight Club in Piccadilly - where girls would dance topless and you would get charged £250 for your drink.

"Our guests would usually want girls to go back with afterwards. Sometimes we could persuade the girls in the clubs, but more often we would just phone up an escort agency.

"We could charge them straight to the BP Amex card. But it sometimes became problematic. One group of Khazak Oil officials stripped their hotel rooms in Aberdeen bare, including the sheets and pillowcases, and they would usually clear out the minibars wherever they were staying."

All the entertaining paid off in September 1992 when BP signed a £300 million deal to exploit the Shah Deniz oilfields.

Mr Abrahams says that a key factor in securing the deal was an £8 million payment BP made that year to SOCAR, the state-owned oil company in Azerbaijan, for the right to use a construction yard on the edge of the Caspian Sea.

"It was effectively a sweetener to help to secure the deal - and it worked," he said.

Among the guests at a dinner and ceremony at Baku's Gulistan Palace to celebrate the Shah Deniz deal were Lord Browne and Baroness Thatcher.

Mr Abrahams says he was told to ensure that everything ran smoothly for the event, including meeting Browne's fastidious requirements.

"I had his favourite brand of water, Hildon, and his preferred foods flown out in advance, and I made sure money was paid for police escorts and to circumvent immigration procedures at the airport for Browne and his entourage.

"That evening, he personally handed me a briefcase containing a cheque for $30 million (£15million), to close the deal.

"He was so keen to wear a particular shirt, which he had left at the airport, that I persuaded the chief of police to close off the roads so his cavalcade could go via the airport to collect it."

In 1993, Mr Abrahams played host to a group of MPs who visited Baku as guests of BP, including Harold Elletson - then a Tory MP but now an adviser to the Liberal Democrats - and Home Secretary John Reid, a Shadow Defence Minister at the time.

"John flew out in the BP Gulfstream jet," he recalls.

"After dinner, we went drinking in the hard currency bar. He was drinking a lot - this was a year before he gave up for good - and I grew worried as it got closer to the time of the curfew imposed because of the tense political situation at the time.

[Joseph]

Part II

I said, 'Come on John, we have to get back to the hotel.' But as we left, he was swaying around and being very noisy.

"I urged him not to draw attention to us because we weren't meant to be still on the streets. But then a van load of police armed with Kalashnikovs pulled up and asked us what we were doing.

"He said, 'I am a British politician...' I urged him to be quiet, but then he said to one of the policemen, 'If you don't take that f***ing Kalashnikov out of my face I'm going to stick it up your f***ing a***.'

"With that, we were arrested and shoved at gunpoint into the back of the van.

"It was only after I persuaded the driver to go to the hotel to speak to the intelligence officer there that they released us. John had only about two hours' sleep, then was up at 5.30am to fly to the nearby war zone of Nagorno Karabakh. He was completely hung over."

Some of Mr Abrahams' most intriguing claims surround the alleged co-operation between BP and the British intelligence services to secure a more pro-Western, pro-business regime in the country.

He says the operation, masterminded by Scarlett in Moscow, contributed to the coup in May 1992 which saw President Ayaz Mutalibov toppled by Abulfaz Elchibey, and then to a second change a year later which saw Haydar Aliyev take power.

Just months after Aliyev was installed, BP signed the so-called 'contract of the century', a £5 billion deal which placed BP at the head of an oil exporting consortium.

John Scarlett, says Mr Abrahams, "approached me very subtly and asked me to help to gather information for him.

"Because my daily route to the construction yard passed the supply routes for Nagorno Karabakh, he asked me to report on troop and weapons movements. And BP's deputy representative in Russia seemed very close to the embassy, too.

"BP supported both coups, both through discreet moves and open political support. Our progress on the oil contracts improved considerably after the coups."

Subsequently released Turkish secret service documents claimed BP had discussed an 'arms for oil' deal with the assistance of MI6, under which the company would use intermediaries to supply weapons to Aliyev's supporters in return for the contract.

When the documents emerged in 2000, BP denied supplying arms - although sources admitted its representatives had "discussed the possibility".

A BP spokesman said last night of Mr Abrahams' claims: "There are some facts in his account that are accurate, but we don't recognise most of it. We regard it as fantasy."

A spokeswoman for John Reid said she had no comment and the Foreign Office said of Mr Abrahams' claims: "We neither confirm nor deny anyone's allegations in relation to intelligence matters."

[1.5 million]

Seems like business as normal...and no suprise that this is occuring in Aliyev Corporation (otherwise known as the nation of Azerbaijan)...seriously though - no one should be surprised about any of this - including MI6 and Russian Scurity Services [(ex) KGB] involvement - etc...it is a glimpse however about what Armenia is up against. And just imagine what "lobbying" American corporations are doing over there.....