Word: armenia
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Similar pollution closed beaches on the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the English Channel. Killer hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean and floods devastated Bangladesh, reminders of nature's raw power. In Soviet Armenia a monstrous earthquake killed some 55,000 people. That too was a natural disaster, but its high casualty count, owing largely to the construction of cheap high-rise apartment blocks over a well-known fault area, illustrated the carelessness that has become humanity's habit in dealing with nature...
Many painful and poignant images have emerged from earthquake-devastated Armenia, but one scene last week seemed to capture perfectly the changes that the tragedy has wrought in the Soviet Union. There, at the same table in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, sat Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, representing a state that officially avows atheism, and Nobel peace laureate Mother Teresa, founder of the Roman Catholic Society of the Missionaries of Charity and one among 2,000 foreign volunteers taking part in the unprecedented relief effort. The tiny, veiled nun nodded approvingly as the Communist official showed...
...special Politburo commission supervising the relief efforts, offered a grim tally before he returned to Moscow. The number of dead, he reported, was certain to exceed 55,000. Relief workers had rescued 15,300, while 514,000 had been left homeless by the quake. The cost of rebuilding Armenia: much higher than the original estimate of $8 billion. Said a weary Ryzhkov: "A disaster is a serious test not only for friends but for leaders...
...greater challenges for President Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet leader has kept such a low profile since cutting short his journey abroad to fly to the earthquake zone that he seemed all but eclipsed by Ryzhkov in news reports. Gorbachev may have good reasons for turning the reconciliation work in Armenia over to others. His prestige there . has plummeted since Moscow refused to recognize Armenian claims to Nagorno- Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave in neighboring Azerbaijan that has been the focus of ethnic strife for the past ten months...
Compounding Gorbachev's problems is the bloody conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. In the days before and after the quake, tens of thousands of Armenians crossed the border into Soviet Armenia to escape violence, and many Azerbaijanis crossed the other way. Until Gorbachev rejected their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenians regarded Moscow as their champion. Now, said Lynch, Gorbachev "has come to represent in Armenian eyes everything they deeply resent about Moscow...