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02/14/2005
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1) Turkish Businessman Sets Sights on ARF
2) Aliyev Unhappy With Karabagh Mediators
3) Car Bomb Kills Lebanon’s Former Prime Minister Hariri
4) Turkey Expresses Concern over Iraq Vote
1) Turkish Businessman Sets Sights on ARF
YEREVAN (RFE/RL)–Turkish businessman Kaan Soyak, called on the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF) on Monday to engage in “dialogue” with Turkey.
“I seriously invite them to Turkey for a dialogue. If Dashnaktsutyun [ARF]
agrees to engage in a dialogue with Turkey, I promise you that I will do my
best to organize it,” Kaan Soyak, one of the two co-chairmen of the
Turkish-Armenian Business Council (TABC), told a news conference in Yerevan.
Soyak failed to elaborate about the subject of his proposed talks, saying
only
that they could yield “serious results.” He also said he thinks the ARF is not
as fiercely anti-Turkish as many Turks believe.
“In Turkey, the Dashnaktsutyun [ARF] party has a negative image,” Soyak said.
“But if you ask for my opinion, I would describe the party and its leaders as
very serious and sensible.”
2) Aliyev Unhappy with Karabagh Mediators
(AFP)–The president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, on Monday criticized
mediators
seeking to resolve the conflict with Armenia over Mountainous Karabagh, and
threatened to use force.
“We are unhappy with the work of the Minsk group, which has failed to produce
any results,” Aliyev said in an interview with the Russian daily Nezavisimaya
Gazeta.
The Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States, and
operating under a mandate from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE), has been mediating peace talks between the two countries for
the
past decade.
Aliyev once again threatened that Azerbaijan would resort to force. “The
patience of the Azeri people has its limits. We can’t continue to negotiate
for
another 10 years. We will strengthen our army,” he said.
He also said he believed other international organizations could help resolve
the conflict. “That’s why we’ve raised this question in the United Nations and
the Council of Europe despite protests from the Armenians,” he said.
The conflict has cost an estimated 35,000 lives and forced about one million
people on both sides to flee their homes.
3) Car Bomb Kills Lebanon’s Former Prime Minister Hariri
BEIRUT (Reuters/Bloomberg)–A huge car bomb killed Lebanon’s former Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri and at least 12 other people on Monday in Beirut’s most
devastating attack since the 1975-90 civil war.
Hariri’s motorcade was blown up as it passed an exclusive section of the
Corniche, soon after he left a meeting at parliament to discuss elections in
May. Former Economy Minister Basil Fuleihan, riding in the convoy, was
critically wounded.
The explosion outside the St George Hotel gouged a deep crater out of the
road, ripped facades from luxury buildings, and set cars ablaze on streets
carpeted with rubble and broken glass. Officials said at least 100 people were
wounded.
Several of the vehicles from Hariri’s convoy were torn apart and set on fire
despite their armor plating.
“Everything around us collapsed,” a Syrian building worker at the site said.
“It was as if an earthquake hit the area.”
Hariri, a billionaire businessman, had resigned from government in October
but remained politically influential. He recently joined calls by the
opposition for Syrian troops to quit Lebanon in the run-up to the general
election.
“Syria regards this as an act of terrorism, a crime that seeks to destabilize
(Lebanon),” said Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhl-Allah.
He later told Al Jazeera television: “This comes at a time of great
international pressure on Lebanon and Syria which aims to realize Israel’s
desires in the region, and this act cannot be separated from these pressures.”
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the blast a “horrendous criminal
act.”
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud called an emergency cabinet meeting.
Rescue workers clawed at piles of debris across the street from the hotel.
Witnesses said at least five people had been buried there by the explosion.
The blast could be heard even outside the city limits and shattered
windows in
buildings hundreds of meters away.
Scores of firefighters doused the burning vehicles and bloodied survivors
were
taken away by ambulance. Hariri’s body, with wounds and burns to the face, was
taken to the American University Hospital where sympathizers gathered and
wept.
Prime Minister Omar Karami visited the bomb scene, surrounded by security
men.
Columns of dark acrid smoke rose across a clear blue sky and sea.
Bloody History of Car Bombs
Beirut was regularly rocked by car bombs throughout the civil war, when
fighting among ethnic, religious and political factions all but tore Lebanon
apart.
Neighboring Syria became the ever more dominant player during the conflict,
and its forces took much of the credit for bringing the war to a close.
But Lebanese voices calling for Damascus to pull out its 14,000 troops have
grown louder, backed by a UN Security Council resolution calling for their
withdrawal.
In October a remote-controlled car bomb wounded opposition parliamentarian
Marwan Hamadeh, soon after he resigned as economy minister in protest at the
extension of Syrian-backed President Lahoud’s term.
Mohammad Jihad Ahmed Jibril, a Palestinian military leader, was killed by a
bomb that ripped through his car in Beirut in May 2002. Earlier that year, a
bomb killed Elie Hobeika, a key figure in a massacre of Palestinian
refugees in
1982.
Hariri, 60, had held office for most of the past 12 years before quitting in
October 2004 amid a bitter rift with Lahoud.
The Sunni Muslim Hariri spent some 20 years in Saudi Arabia, where
construction deals made him a fortune that Forbes estimated at $3.8 billion in
2003.
Businessmen praised him for cutting through a paralyzed bureaucracy and
rebuilding war-shattered Beirut. But hopes that economic renaissance would
flower with a Middle East peace process wilted with it instead.
There was no claim of responsibility for the assassination and no obvious
suspect.
“This is the work of an intelligence service, not a small group,” said Rime
Allaf, Middle East analyst at London’s Royal Institute of International
Affairs.
“Whoever did it aimed at creating chaos in Lebanon and pointing the finger at
Syria. I can’t believe anyone in Syria could be naive enough to think that
this
would help them.”
She added: “The Israelis have been thought responsible for a number of
assassinations in Lebanon, but why would they want to stir things up now? The
Syrians must be very worried.”
Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, said: “I don’t think there will be any
gain from his death…I believe the moment is not a moment of pointing
fingers.”
Israel’s Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres said: “I have no idea who did this.
He lived in a dangerous country and they (the Lebanese government) should have
taken control over that country. Instead of this they surrendered to all kinds
of terrorists.”
French President Jacques Chirac called for an international inquiry into the
car bomb.
“(France) calls for an international inquiry to be held without delay to
determine the circumstances of, and responsibility for, this tragedy, before
punishing the culprits,” Chirac’s office said in a statement.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, speaking to reporters after meeting
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, said the attack had killed “one of the
most important leaders within Lebanon.”
“We should be very determined not to allow those extremists to sabotage the
efforts to bring freedom to the Lebanese in their own country,” Shalom said.
Born in the southern city of Sidon to a poor family, Hariri was a Sunni
Muslim
with seven children, according to his Web site. Hariri, who grew up in
poverty,
moved to Saudi Arabia in 1965 to work as a school teacher, where he made his
fortune by rebuilding palaces for the Saudi royal family. He made a fortune in
construction in the kingdom and owns Saudi Oger Ltd. He and his family are
worth $4.3 billion,
Forbes magazine said last year.
The Lebanese government declared three days of official mourning.
4) Turkey Expresses Concern over Iraq Vote
ANKARA (AP)–Turkey urged Iraqi electoral officials and the United Nations to
examine what it claimed were skewed Iraqi elections results released Sunday,
saying it was particularly concerned about vote tallies in the oil-rich and
ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.
Turkey has long complained that Kurdish groups were illegally moving Kurds
into Kirkuk, a strategic northern city, in an effort to tip the city’s
population balance in their favor.
Turkish officials did not make direct reference to the Kurds on Sunday, but
the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that voter turnout in some
regions was low and charged that there were “imbalanced results” in several
regions, including Kirkuk.
“It has emerged that certain elements have tried to influence the voting and
have made unfair gains from this,” the statement said, in an apparent
reference
to the Kurds. “As a result the Iraqi Interim Parliament won’t reflect the true
proportions of Iraqi society.”
Ankara fears that Kurdish domination of Kirkuk and oil fields near the city
would make a Kurdish state in northern Iraq viable. Such a state, Turkish
officials warn, could further inspire Turkey’s own rebellious Kurds, who have
been battling the Turkish army in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd who is Iraq’s interim foreign minister, said Turkey
had no cause for concern over strong Kurdish showing in Iraq’s elections.
“Definitely all their fears are misplaced,” he told CNN. “Iraq will remain
united. This Kurdish participation in the Iraqi elections and in the regional
election is reaffirmation of their commitment to a national unity of the
country.”
He said Kurds were seeking a democratic and pluralistic within a federal and
united Iraq.
“There is no conspiracy here,” he said. “Turkey should have no fears
whatsoever about the future of Iraq remaining a friendly country to them,
united but respecting the diversity of Iraqi society.”
The Turkish statement called on the election board to seriously consider
objections to the vote and urged the United Nations to take a “more active
role” and ensure that “the flaws, the disorder, and irregularities” of the
poll
were not repeated when Iraqis vote on a new constitution later this year.
Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslims won nearly half the votes in the Jan. 30
election, giving the community significant power but not enough parliamentary
seats to form a government on its own.
Two key Kurdish parties gained just over a quarter of votes cast, giving them
considerable support in the national assembly to preserve Kurdish autonomy in
northern Iraq.
In Kirkuk, Kurds took to the streets to celebrate the results of the
election.
Cars sped through the streets blaring their horns and waving Kurdistan flags
through a city that is fiercely divided between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Kurds.
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