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To: Yaacov who wrote (15126)	10/31/1999 6:37:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

>>>>An upsurge in violence would have serious international repercussions for a region that carries major oil pipelines and acts as a land bridge between Christianity and Islam; Asia and Europe. An upsurge in violence would have serious international repercussions for a region that carries major oil pipelines and acts as a land bridge between Christianity and Islam; Asia and Europe. >>> THOUSANDS of Armenians paid their last respects yesterday to their murdered Prime Minister Vazgen Sarksyan and the other senior officials gunned down in parliament last week. The mourning took place amid growing concern that the power vacuum created by the slaughter could further destabilise the Caucasus region of the old Soviet Union. About 20,000 people lined up in Yerevan's Freedom Square to enter the Opera House, where the bodies of Sarksyan, the Speaker of Parliament Karen Demirchyan, and five of the six other victims lay in state. The body of the eighth victim was claimed by his family for a private burial. They died on Wednesday when four nationalist gunmen stormed parliament and sprayed the chamber with bullets in front of television cameras. Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, who has flown to Yerevan to attend today's funeral, said: "This is a difficult, sad and mournful day for Armenia. Millions of Russians empathise with you." The presence in the capital of both Mr Putin and Strobe Talbott, the United States Deputy Secretary of State, underlines the seriousness with which last week's events are being viewed. With Russia already embroiled in a dangerous battle to curb Islamic militants in nearby Chechnya, genuine fears are mounting of a return to the turmoil that rocked the Transcaucasus in the early Nineties after the Soviet collapse. An upsurge in violence would have serious international repercussions for a region that carries major oil pipelines and acts as a land bridge between Christianity and Islam; Asia and Europe. The relative stability of recent years in the Transcaucasus states of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan has been attributed to the emergence of strong local leaders. Premier Sarksyan, the 40-year-old ex-teacher whose large, bearded presence prompted one commentator to compare him to an orang-utan, owed his power to his popularity with the armed forces, which, as the former defence minister, he created virtually from scratch. This support had enabled him to make significant progress on the issue of Nagorno Karabakh, the mainly Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan that has long been a source of tension and conflict between the neighbouring states. Genuine progress had been made in diplomatic efforts to resolve the problem, which accounted for Mr Talbott's presence in Yerevan only hours before the bloody assault on parliament. Washington's policymakers believe that the deaths of the senior Armenian officials will delay - and at worst jeopardise - a peace settlement over Karabakh. For the time being, Georgia and Azerbaijan, the former Soviet republics next to Armenia, look stable enough. Both are ruled over by powerful former Communist Party bosses who tolerate little opposition. After independence, both had their fair share of civil wars and coups. But, under Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia and Haydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan, there is no doubt who is in charge - a local arrangement the West heartily approves of. All the same, the very dominance of Mr Aliyev and Mr Shevardnadze means that, if anything were ever to happen to either leader, the whole region could quickly descend into turmoil. In Azerbaijan, the 76-year-old president is at last feeling mortal. He is certainly not the man he was at the start of his career - in the Stalin-era security organs. The dismissal last week of several senior officials provoked whispers that all was not well in the Baku government. On the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr Shevardnadze, 71, is being feted as a visionary former Soviet foreign minister, now seen as a friend of the West. However, he cannot afford to be complacent about his survival, either, having been the target of numerous assassination attempts. In Armenia, President Robert Kocharyan now carries the burdens of state alone. He has appeared in public only briefly since helping to negotiate the gunmen's surrender and the release of the hostages in parliament on Thursday. After a short audience with the President on Friday, Mr Talbott said he was impressed by Mr Kocharyan's "strength and determination" - qualities he will need if he is to save his country from yet more anguish. The small state, with a population of just over three million, is now trying to live down its new reputation as a place where gunmen can burst into parliament with assault rifles under their coats and kill the premier. Spectacular yet senseless - and quick to descend into bathos as the gunmen later apologised and insisted they had wanted only to give people "a fright" in their protest against corruption and poverty - the tragedy confirmed Armenians' fears about their talent for creating chaos out of nothing. telegraph.co.uk