An American invasion of Iraq would lead to a more serious dilution of the operations, Delhi fears. India has an enormous interest in seeing al-Qaeda rooted out. M H Ansari, a former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the weekly news magazine Outlook that "India should be happy with the status quo where there's no strategic hostility to New Delhi in the Arab world and there's $10 billion trade with the Gulf countries." While India's support will not influence US decisions on Iraq, New Delhi's position on the evolving situation is of some significance. India not joining an anti-Iraq coalition in the event of an attack on that country will underscore the fact that democracies do not go to war easily. For long, the US, while willing to overlook India's trade ties with Iraq, has been peeved with its reluctance to vote with Washington in the UN on key global issues.

It was early afternoon on November 6th, 1907, before Charles found a villager who could show him the site of the inscribed statue. It was the last night of Ramadan, and on the next morning the villagers celebrated with their guests. The expedition beat the worst of the snows and was in the lowlands of northern Mesopotamia by December. As they made their way to the regional center, Diyarbakır, they heard that the city was in revolt: the local worthies had occupied the telegraph office to protest the depredations enacted by a local chieftain. The travellers were a day's march behind the imperial troops who had been sent in to quell the rebellion, and who frequently left the roadside inns in a deplorable state. If you have any concerns concerning where and ways to utilize Diyarbakir Eskort, you can contact us at our web-page. Wrench supplemented his notes on the "first Babylonian dynasty" with a clutch of pressed flowers. Drawing of the early medieval Deyrulzafaran, "the saffron monastery," located outside of Mardin.

For Sterrett, the expedition of 1907-08 was only the first step in an ambitious long-term plan for archaeological research in the Eastern Mediterranean. To launch his plan, Sterrett selected three recent Cornell alums. Their leader, Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead, already projects a serious, scholarly air in his yearbook photo of 1902, whose caption jokingly alludes to his freshman ambition "of teaching Armenian history to Professor Schmidt." In 1907, just before crossing to Europe, Olmstead received his Ph.D. Cornell with a dissertation on Assyrian history. Olmstead's two younger companions, Benson Charles and Jesse Wrench, were both members of the class of 1906. They had spent 1904-05 traveling in Syria and Palestine, where they rowed the Dead Sea and practiced making the "squeezes," replicas of inscriptions made by pounding wet paper onto the stone surface and letting it dry, that would form one the expedition's primary occupations. Olmstead, Wrench, and Charles made their separate ways to Athens, whence they sailed together for Istanbul.

As the expedition moved out of the Hittite heartlands, we begin to see in Wrench's fieldbooks the beginnings of a new interest in the medieval architecture of the Syriac-speaking Christian communities. The first drawing to appear in his notes is a hastily-sketched plan of the early medieval Deyrulzafaran, "the saffron monastery," located outside of Mardin. Underneath he has copied the Syriac inscription that he found above the door. A few days later and a few pages further, we find a drawing of the late antique church of Mar Yakub in Nusaybin. When, in the following year, Wrench made his way back to Istanbul, he took a long detour through the Tur Abdin, the heartland of Syriac monasticism. The expedition frequently visited American missionaries along their route, celebrating Christmas in Mardin with the local mission of the American Board in Turkey. But as they pressed on across the steppes that today form the far northeastern corner of Syria, the strains of six months' steady travel began to show.

It is unlikely that it will commit combat troops. Foreign Minister Phil Goff spelled out New Zealand's position during a 40-minute meeting yesterday with US charge d'affairs Phil Wall, second-in-charge at the American Embassy in Wellington. The meeting was held at Mr Wall's request as Washington sounds out about 50 countries on possible contributions to an American-led force. After the meeting, Mr Goff said Mr Wall had outlined contingency plans for action if Iraq did not comply with the requirements of the UN Security Council. For this reason and as a contingency against Iraqi refusal to comply, the United States is seeking possible contributions for military or humanitarian assistance if force is used against Iraq." Mr Goff told Mr Wall that New Zealand would consider calls for assistance if action against Iraq was UN-mandated and within international law. "However, I reiterated that these conditions needed to be met, and that New Zealand's strong view was that force should be used only as a last resort.

In a statement of support to Baghdad, India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said this week that he hoped there would be no war in Iraq. India has consistently expressed its opposition to the unilateral use of force against Iraq and it has consistently called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis within the UN framework. In an interview with the Arab media late in August, Vajpayee was asked what he thought of President George W Bush's axis of evil definition and whether India would support US military action against Iraq to effect a regime change. He responded, "India is vitally interested in the peace and prosperity of the Gulf region and has, therefore, supported all efforts to defuse the crisis relating to Iraq. In that respect, India supports the resumption of diplomatic efforts under the auspices of the United Nations." India has kept a low profile on the Iraq crisis in recent weeks, refraining from commenting on the various proposals that were being considered by the Security Council.