Russian Searchers Recover 2nd Flight Recorder From Armenian Airliner

RUSSIAN SEARCHERS RECOVER 2ND FLIGHT RECORDER FROM ARMENIAN AIRLINER

Pravda, Russia
May 24 2006

Russian searchers on Wednesday recovered the second flight recorder
from an Armenian airliner that crashed into the Black Sea three weeks
ago, killing all 113 people aboard, local media reported.

The flight data recorder was lifted by a diving apparatus from a
depth of about 1,640 feet (500 meters) after it was separated from
a thick layer of silt, said Transport Ministry spokeswoman Svetlana
Kryshtanovskaya, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency.

The so-called ‘black box” was discovered within 16 meters (50 feet)
from the spot where workers on Monday found the plane’s cockpit
voice recorder.

Russian television channels showed footage of a yellow,
remote-controlled apparatus lifting the red recorder from the sea
surface.

Investigators hope the two recorders will help answer why the Armavia
Airbus A-320 plane plunged into the sea on May 3 amid heavy rain and
poor visibility. The flight had been en route to the southern Russian
sea resort Sochi from the Armenian capital, Yerevan. All passengers
and crew members on board were killed.

Prosecutors almost immediately dismissed the possibility that
terrorists had brought the plane down, and officials point to rough
weather or pilot error as the likely cause. Armavia officials have
suggested, however, that air traffic controllers were at least partly
to blame, reports the AP.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Experts Will Be Able To Retrieve Data From A320 Black Boxes – Offici

EXPERTS WILL BE ABLE TO RETRIEVE DATA FROM A320 BLACK BOXES – OFFICIAL

Interfax, Russia
May 24 2006

SOCHI. May 24 (Interfax-South) – Technical commission experts will be
capable of retrieving the information stored on the black box flight
recorders from the Armenian Airlines Airbus A320 which crashed off
the Russian coast near Sochi on May 3, Tatyana Anodina, the Interstate
Aviation Committee chairperson, said.

“The voice recorders were affected by the aggressive marine environment
and the mechanical impact,” Anodina told journalists on Wednesday.

Search Team Recover Second ‘Black Box’ From Armenian Airliner

SEARCH TEAM RECOVER SECOND ‘BLACK BOX’ FROM ARMENIAN AIRLINER

MosNews, Russia
May 24 2006

MosNews

A Russian search team has recovered the second ‘black box’ flight
recorder from an Armenian airliner that crashed into the Black Sea
on 3 May, killing 113 people. Investigators hope it will help explain
the cause of the tragedy.

The first black box, which recorded conversations between the plane’s
pilot and crew was recovered on Monday. A special intergovernmental
investigation committee will be set up to decipher the flight data
from the plane, an air safety official told RIA Novosti.

The second flight recorder had been thought to be lying 3-5 meters
(10-16 feet) away from the first one, was actually located 16 meters
(about 40 feet) from the first recorder and was buried deeper in silt,
Svetlana Kryshtanovskaya, a Russian Transport ministry representative
said.

The airliner, operated by Armenia’s Airliner A320, crashed while flying
from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, in stormy weather 6 kilometers
(3.7 miles) from Russia’s Adler airport, which services the popular
resort of Sochi.

Most of the passengers were Armenian, but there were also 26 Russian
nationals. Among those on board were eight crew and six children.

Armavia, the airline which owned the plane, says that it was in
good condition and that the crew were experienced. The Airbus was
manufactured in 1995 and underwent checks last month, BBC reports.

Airbus Black Box’s Magnetic Tape Damaged, Official Says – 1

AIRBUS BLACK BOX’S MAGNETIC TAPE DAMAGED, OFFICIAL SAYS – 1

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 24 2006

(Adds paragraphs 2-3, 5)

SOCHI, Southern Russia, May 24 (RIA Novosti) – Experts may face
problems deciphering flight data from an Armenian Airbus that crashed
into the Black Sea May 3 as the magnetic tape of its cockpit flight
recorder was seriously damaged, an official said Wednesday.

Tatiana Anodina, head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said:
“The cockpit voice recorder has a magnetic tape and, therefore, is more
affected by the marine environment and serious mechanical effects.”

She said experts might have to decipher each fragment of the tape
separately, and that they may not be able to do this within the 15-day
timeframe announced earlier.

The recovery operation at the scene of the tragedy, which left 113
people dead, was officially declared over earlier Wednesday.

The airliner, operated by Armenia’s Armavia, crashed while flying
from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, in stormy weather 6 kilometers
(3.7 miles) from Russia’s Adler airport, which services the popular
resort of Sochi.

Flight Recorders From Sochi Crash To Be Deciphered In Russia

FLIGHT RECORDERS FROM SOCHI CRASH TO BE DECIPHERED IN RUSSIA

Interfax, Russia
May 24 2006

SOCHI. May 24(Interfax-South) – The black box flight recorder of the
Armenian Airlines Airbus A320 which crashed off the Russian coast
near Sochi on May 3 is to be deciphered at the Interstate Aviation
Committee’s base in Russia.

“French experts and their equipment will probably be involved as well,”
Committee Chairperson Tatyana Anodina told the press on Wednesday.

Flight Data Of Crashed Airbus To Be Deciphered In Russia

FLIGHT DATA OF CRASHED AIRBUS TO BE DECIPHERED IN RUSSIA

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 24 2006

(Adds paragraphs 4-8)

SOCHI, May 24 (RIA Novosti) – The flight data from an Armenian Airbus
that crashed into the Black Sea May 3, killing 113 people, will be
deciphered in Russia, an official said Wednesday.

Tatiana Anodina, head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said
French equipment could be used for deciphering the data.

The recovery operation at the scene of the tragedy was officially
declared over earlier Wednesday.

Rudolf Teimurazov, a representative of the Interstate Aviation
Committee, said earlier experts would need about a fortnight to
decipher the data.

He said the two black boxes, the second of which was recovered early
Wednesday morning from a depth of about 500 meters (1,640 feet),
would be handed over to the committee’s experts within the timeframe
set by a government commission.

“A government commission working at the crash site will set the date
for handing over the flight recorders to the Interstate Aviation
Committee,” he said. “Usually it takes experts about 15 days to
decipher flight data.”

He also said cockpit flight recorder’s information was on a magnetic
tape but the flight data from the other black box was on a hard drive.

The airliner, operated by Armenia’s Armavia, crashed while flying
from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, in stormy weather 6 kilometers
(3.7 miles) from Russia’s Adler airport, which services the popular
resort of Sochi.

BAKU: Azeri, Armenian Presidents To Supposedly Meet In Bucharest

AZERI, ARMENIAN PRESIDENTS TO SUPPOSEDLY MEET IN BUCHAREST
Author: S.Agayeva

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
May 24 2006

Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharyan
are supposedly meeting in Bucharest, Trend reports quoting Nikolae
Ureke, Romanian Ambassador to Azerbaijan.

Mr Ureke said the meeting may be held within their participation at
Black Sea Forum for Dialog and Partnership held June 5 in Romania’s
capital. This meeting requires some preconditions, diplomat said,
and cochairmen of MG OSCE shall draw necessary proposals.

Romania is going to do its best to facilitate the presidents’ meeting,
Ambassador said. Official Bucharest is going to put forward some
incentives on resolving frozen conflicts in Black Sea region that
prevent its economic development and pose threat to Romania’s national
security. Among these are conflicts in Pridnestrovye, Osetia and,
undoubtedly, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Somebody Here Is Not At All Telling The Truth

SOMEBODY HERE IS NOT AT ALL TELLING THE TRUTH
By Robert Fisk

Gulf Times, Qatar
May 24 2006

LONDON: A letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Saint
James arrived for me a few days ago, one of those missives that send
a shudder through the human soul. “You allege that an ‘Armenian
genocide’ took place in Eastern Anatolia in 1915,” His Excellency
Akin Alptuna told me. “I believe you have some misconceptions about
those events …”

Oh indeedy doody, I have. I am under the totally mistaken conception
that one and a half million Armenians were cruelly and deliberately
done to death by their Turkish Ottoman masters in 1915, that the
men were shot and knifed while their womenfolk were raped and
eviscerated and cremated and starved on death marches and their
children butchered. I have met a few of the survivors – liars to a
man and woman, if the Turkish ambassador to Britain is to be believed
– and I have seen the photographs taken of the victims by a brave
German photographer called Armen Wegner whose pictures must now,
I suppose, be consigned to the waste bins. So must the archives of
all those diplomats who courageously catalogued the mass murders
inflicted upon Turkey’s Christian population on the orders of the
gang of nationalists who ran the Ottoman government in 1915.

What would have been our reaction if the ambassador of Germany
had written a note to the same effect? “You allege that a ‘Jewish
genocide’ took place in Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1945 … I
believe you have some misconceptions about those events …’ Of
course, the moment such a letter became public, the ambassador of
Germany would be condemned by the Foreign Office, our man in Berlin
would – even the pusillanimous Blair might rise to the occasion –
be withdrawn for consultations and the European Union would debate
whether sanctions should be placed upon Germany.

But Alptuna need have no such worries. His country is not a member
of the European Union – it merely wishes to be – and it was Blair’s
craven administration that for many months tried to prevent Armenian
participation in Britain’s Holocaust Day.

Amid this chicanery, there are a few shining bright lights and I should
say at once that Alptuna’s letter is a grotesque representation of the
views of a growing number of Turkish citizens, a few of whom I have
the honour to know, who are convinced that the story of the great
evil visited upon the Armenians must be told in their country. So
why, oh why, I ask myself, are Alptuna and his colleagues in Paris
and Beirut and other cities still peddling this nonsense?

In Lebanon, for example, the Turkish embassy has sent a “communique”
to the local French-language L’Orient Le Jour newspaper, referring
to the “soi-disant (so-called) Armenian genocide” and asking why the
modern state of Armenia will not respond to the Turkish call for a
joint historical study to “examine the events” of 1915.

In fact, the Armenian President, Robert Kotcharian, will not respond
to such an invitation for the same reason that the world’s Jewish
community would not respond to the call for a similar examination
of the Jewish Holocaust from the Iranian president – because an
unprecedented international crime was committed, the mere questioning
of which would be an insult to the millions of victims who perished.

But the Turkish appeals are artfully concocted. In Beirut, they recall
the Allied catastrophe at Gallipoli in 1915 when British, French,
Australian and New Zealand troops suffered massive casualties at the
hands of the Turkish army. In all – including Turkish soldiers –
up to a quarter of a million men perished in the Dardanelles. The
Turkish embassy in Beirut rightly states that the belligerent nations
of Gallipoli have transformed these hostilities into gestures of
reconciliation, friendship and mutual respect. A good try. But the
bloodbath of Gallipoli did not involve the planned murder of hundreds
of thousands of British, French, Australian, New Zealand – and Turkish
– women and children.

But now for the bright lights. A group of “righteous Turks” are
challenging their government’s dishonest account of the 1915 genocide:
Ahmet Insel, Baskin Oran, Halil Berktay, Hrant Dink, Ragip Zarakolu and
others claim that the “democratic process” in Turkey will “chip away
at the darkness” and they seek help from Armenians in doing so. Yet
even they will refer only to the 1915 “disaster”, the “tragedy”,
and the “agony” of the Armenians. Dr Fatma Gocek of the University
of Michigan is among the bravest of those Turkish-born academics
who are fighting to confront the Ottoman Empire’s terror against the
Armenians. Yet she, too, objects to the use of the word genocide –
though she acknowledges its accuracy – on the grounds that it has
become “politicised” and thus hinders research.

I have some sympathy with this argument. Why make the job of honest
Turks more difficult when these good men and women are taking on
the might of Turkish nationalism? The problem is that other, more
disreputable folk are demanding the same deletion. Alputuna writes
to me – with awesome disingenuousness – that Armenians “have failed
to submit any irrefutable evidence to support their allegations of
genocide”. And he goes on to say that “genocide, as you are well aware,
has a quite specific legal definition” in the UN’s 1948 Convention. But
Alputuna is himself well aware – though he does not say so, of course –
that the definition of genocide was set out by Raphael Lemkin, a Jew,
in specific reference to the wholesale mass slaughter of the Armenians.

And all the while, new diplomatic archives are opening in the West
which reveal the smell of death – Armenian death – in their pages. I
quote here, for example, from the newly discovered account of Denmark’s
minister in Turkey during the World War I. “The Turks are vigorously
carrying through their cruel intention, to exterminate the Armenian
people,” Carl Wandel wrote on July 3, 1915. The Bishop of Karput
was ordered to leave Aleppo within 48 hours “and it has later been
learned that this Bishop and all the clergy that accompanied him
have been … killed between Diyarbekir and Urfa at a place where
approximately 1,700 Armenian families have suffered the same fate …

In Angora … approximately 6,000 men … have been shot on the road
… even here in Constantinople (Istanbul), Armenians are being
abducted and sent to Asia …” There is much, much more. Yet now
here is Alptuna in his letter to me: “In fact, the Armenians living
outside Eastern Armenia including Istanbul … were excluded from
deportation.” Somebody here is not telling the truth. The late Wandel
of Copenhagen? Or the Turkish ambassador to the Court of St James?

Expert: South Caucasus Is The Key Outlet For The US To Central Asia

EXPERT: SOUTH CAUCASUS IS THE KEY OUTLET FOR THE US TO CENTRAL ASIA

Regnum, Russia
May 24 2006

“Paradoxical as this may seem, the possible force outcome of the
US-Iran relations is good for both the opponents and the supporters
of a military action against Iran,” Karabakh political scientist
David Babayan says to REGNUM.

He notes that both inside and outside the US there are people who
support and oppose it.

“Many people understand that Iran is geo-strategically important not
only for the Middle East but also for the leading actors in the world
arena. Due to its geographical situation and economic potential that
country is a key target of the US foreign policy. Iran is an immediate
neighbor of the South Caucasus, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Iraq, the Persian Gulf. Without Iran, the US presence in those regions
will be problematic and expensive. That’s why the US simply needs
Iran as a partner,” says Babayan. He notes that Central Asia, the
South Caucasus and some other regions of the Middle and Central East
are quite vulnerable (there we have unstable Afghanistan and Kashmir)
and that Central Asia borders on Russia, who has quite strong positions
there. One cannot but consider China too, that borders on Central Asia,
Afghanistan and has close relations with Pakistan.

“Besides, today the key outlet for the US to Central Asia is the
South Caucasus, where there is no final stability either and where
Russia is also strong, especially economically. That’s why the West
needs a more stable way to Central Asia. The most reliable way seems
to be Iran. Iran has no borders with the US potential geo-political
rivals, it is stable, it has thousand-year-old culture and statehood
history. Besides, there is a very small possibility of expansionist
foreign policy in Iran, unlike Turkey, where officials now and then
appear with pan-Turkic statements. Even more, by gaining Iran over,
the US will make senseless the Central Asian and Middle East countries’
orientation towards its potential geo-political rivals – Russia and
China,” says Babayan.

If the US takes Iran in the sphere of its interests – by force or
by any other means – it will gain advantage not only in the region
but in the whole world and will hold this strategic initiative for
decades. “Although Iran has quite a strong military arsenal, in
quantity and quality it is not enough for rebuffing a well-organized
large-scale military operation; especially as before the operation –
if it is launched – the US will try to maximally damage Iran’s military
arsenal by massive air strikes. And if Iran acts like Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan or Iraq did – that is, if it continues deluding itself
that it can beat the Americans or NATO forces on its territory,
it is very much likely to be beaten itself,” says Babayan.

If the war still begins, it may well embrace the neighboring countries
too – something that will destabilize the whole region. “It is very
much possible that the conflicting sides will wage this war in an
asymmetrical way – that is, by holding force actions in their own
territories or the territories of their allies and, possibly, by using
radioactive matters. This is quite possible, especially as this is the
only way for Iran to hold out in the war or to prevent it at all,”
says Babayan. He notes that this is exactly what the opponents of
war can hope for – if the US fails in Iran – by losing the war or by
not starting it at all for fear of some unpredictable consequences –
it will have to review its foreign political strategy and, possibly,
to give up its military plans in other regions. “This will be a kind
of success for those outside the US, while for those inside it, this
will mean stability and hundreds, if not thousands, of saved lives
of American soldiers,” says Babayan.

ANKARA: Russian Historian: Turkey’s Recognition Of Armenian Massacre

RUSSIAN HISTORIAN: TURKEY’S RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN MASSACRE MATTER OF TIME

Journal of Turkish Weekly
May 24 2006

A Russian PhD in history Viktor Bezotosny told the Regnum news agency
that Turkey should recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915, as the
fact is grounded by undisputable proofs. Bezotosny is head of the
19th century department at the State Historical Museum in Russia.

According to Regnum, Bezotosny said the question of recognizing the
“historic truth” is a question of time.

“The whole world knows about the events of 1915 and calls them
Genocide. It’s strange, that only one country rejects it and tries
to misinterpret and escape from historic facts. There are good and
bad pages in history of any country.”

Adding that, “Well, they should be bold and take responsibility to tell
the truth, otherwise memory of those killed in those awful years is
being defiled,” Viktor Bezotosny is quoted as saying. The historian
believes that the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust are
results of domestic policies pursued by countries that committed
such villainy.

It is worth mentioning, Russia recognized the Armenian Genocide
officially. Fact of the Genocide was recognized by many countries,
including France, Uruguay, lower chamber of the Italian parliament,
several US states, parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium,
Wales, Swiss National Council, Canadian House of Commons and Polish
Seym.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress