December 14, 2012

RUSSIA STEPS BACK FROM ENVOY’S COMMENTS ON SYRIA

[Mr. Lukashevich said that Russia was not carrying out any discussions with the United States about Mr. Assad’s future, shooting down widespread speculation that Russia could help arrange the president’s safe passage out of Syria. He said he had restated Russia’s insistence on a negotiated solution “hundreds of times” in recent months. ]

Assad’s Grip on Power Is Questioned
MOSCOW — The Russian Foreign Ministry distanced itself on Friday from comments by its Middle East envoy, who was widely quoted a day earlier as saying that rebels in Syria may defeat the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, and said Russia’s insistence on a political solution to the Syrian crisis will never change.
“We have never changed our position and will not change it,” said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr K. Lukashevich, at a briefing. He rejected a comment made by a State Department spokesman on Thursday that Moscow had “woken up” and changed its position as dynamics shifted on the battlefield, saying “we have never been asleep.”
Mr. Lukashevich said that Russia was not carrying out any discussions with the United States about Mr. Assad’s future, shooting down widespread speculation that Russia could help arrange the president’s safe passage out of Syria. He said he had restated Russia’s insistence on a negotiated solution “hundreds of times” in recent months.
“In the given situation, we are not talking about the fate of leaders, we are talking about the fate of people,” he said.
Mr. Lukashevich was seeking to calm speculation prompted on Thursday, when Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory group, that it was “impossible to rule out a victory of the Syrian opposition,” in comments that were immediately made public by Russian wire services.
The statement appeared to signal a turn in the nearly two-year-old conflict and was seen in the West as evidence that Mr. Assad was losing politically as well as militarily.
An earlier statement from the Foreign Ministry which was published on its Web site on Friday, said that Mr. Bogdanov “has not given any announcements or special interviews to journalists in recent days,” suggesting that his comments were given informally and not meant for publication.
It also framed his comments about rebel gains differently, saying he was simply repeating — and not confirming — the rebels’ claims about military advances.
“In this context, Mr. Bogdanov once more underlined the principled Russian position about the necessity of a political solution” to the crisis, the statement said. It did not deny that Mr. Bogdanov made the extensive comments, which were disseminated by Russian news agencies that were present at the hearing.
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, said that to the best of his knowledge, the comments represented an “expert assessment” of events on the ground in Syria, but were not intended for publication.
“The only conclusion we can make is that the Russian Foreign Ministry is very realistic about what is happening there,” he said. “There are no illusions about the trend. But we can understand the Russian position has not changed.”
In his briefing on Friday, Mr. Lukashevich also said Russia has been working with Ukraine to ensure the safety of Ankhar Kochneva, a Ukrainian journalist and translator who was captured two months ago by a Syrian militant group. Her captors have threatened to kill her unless they receive a ransom of $50 million, according to Ukrainian news sources.
In a video posted on the Internet last month, Ms. Kochneva was filmed saying she worked for Russian intelligence services, although it is not clear whether she spoke voluntarily.
Mr. Lukashevich noted that Ms. Kochneva’s captors had posted a video on YouTube on Thursday threatening to attack Russian and Ukrainian diplomatic missions, and he said Russia would take all necessary measures to protect its diplomats. A spokesman at the Russian Embassy in Damascus, the Syrian capital, told Interfax on Thursday that he saw no sharp deterioration in conditions and it is not yet necessary to evacuate personnel.
Ukraine has announced it is beefing up security at its facility in Damascus, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman this week called on the Syrian government to “take more active and effective measures to secure the release of the kidnapped Ukrainian woman.”
“We’re expecting concrete results,” said the spokesman, Oleksandr Dykusarov, according to the Interfax news service.
@The New York Times

IN KERALA, A DISTINCTLYINDIAN ART FAIR WITH INTERNATIONAL APPEAL

[Mr. Neto, who had labored through the night, had his installations in place by then. But not every artist had managed that. Instead of an orderly display of paintings and sculpture, one encountered the chaotic scramble of industry on Wednesday -- hammering, soldering and whirring sounds filled the air. India, with its penchant for last-minute event preparation, seems to have created a new type of art fair, the art-in-progress show. ]
KOCHI -- In a dank, musty loft at Moidu's Heritage, an unused warehouse in Fort Kochi, Kerala, the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto stood precariously on a stool.
He had only a few hours to get his work installed before the Kochi-Muziris Biennale would kick off, and things were not going well. Clad in a white dhoti and T-shirt, he stretched the ends of a piece of cotton fabric and hooked it onto nails on the wooden rafters. His frustration was palpable. The muggy weather and the lack of electricity in the building were hampering his progress. "My work is all about tension. It gets incorporated into my art," he muttered.
The three-month-long biennale, India's first, started this week with a nod to the mystical: At exactly noon on Dec. 12, 2012, the wrought-iron gates of Aspinwall House, a sea-facing colonial-era spice house that is one of the main venues, was thrown open to the public.
Mr. Neto, who had labored through the night, had his installations in place by then. But not every artist had managed that. Instead of an orderly display of paintings and sculpture, one encountered the chaotic scramble of industry on Wednesday -- hammering, soldering and whirring sounds filled the air. India, with its penchant for last-minute event preparation, seems to have created a new type of art fair, the art-in-progress show.
Critics and art lovers, far removed from clinical, impersonal gallery spaces, seemed delighted by this unusual engagement with artists. The creation of art, they said, is another dimension that needs to be explored. "One rarely gets to see artists at work at other biennales," said the Beirut-based critic Kaelen Wilson-Goldie. "It is interesting to see how an artist tries to solve the problem of a particular environment and create something."
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale seeks to "invoke the historic cosmopolitan legacy of Kochi and its predecessor, the ancient port of Muziris," according to the fair's curators. Muziris is thought to have been involved in the spice trade as early as the third century B.C., trading with Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Jews and Arabs. It is said to have been wiped out in 1341, when the Periyar River flooded, after which the town of Cochin, 20 miles to the south, rose to commercial prominence. (Cochin was renamed Kochi in 1996.)
Eighty-eight artists from 24 countries are showcasing their work in 10 different venues in Kochi, including the Fort Kochi neighborhood . Some 85 percent of the work is site-specific, created with the surroundings and history of Kochi in mind. "Some of the rooms had cracked floors and broken tiles, but it was stunning to see they were able to use that space," said the Delhi-based curator Ina Puri. "The subjects were global, like migration and the dispossessed, but the works were conceived to ensure that the flavors were distinctly Indian."
For more information on the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, see the fair's Web site.