The flavor and physical setting of the city's culture is locked up in the vernacular wooden houses of the 19th century, ... And I fear for them now. These are fragile buildings.

All the people, their houses and culture are still encapsulated there as they were in 1815.

The struggle between the local power brokers and satraps and the president is the invisible real politics, ... are preoccupied with elections, the relation between the president and the parliament.

Given that (city officials) have done nothing for the preservation cause, and indeed have done a lot of damage to it, (are they) going to seize on this as an opportunity for mass demolition, in order to build something akin to Houston?

clean-sweep whole neighborhoods, in the name of 'health' and 'safety' and 'a great future' and all that, and end up doing what Ceausescu did to Bucharest. And then it will be gone.

The United States doesn't want to control this region, but it doesn't want anyone else to, either.