Month: June 2005

Russian companies interested in cooperation with Georgia – Prime Minister Fradkov
RIA Novosti, Russia
June 3 2005
TBILISI, June 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russian companies are seriously
interested in cooperation with Georgia in the spheres of energy,
transport and metallurgy, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said
after talks with his Georgian counterpart Zurab Nogaideli.
“We regard energy, transport and metallurgy as most attractive spheres,
while Georgian companies are also interested in the Russian market,”
Fradkov said.
Fradkov, Nogaideli and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
discussed practical cooperation between the Russian electricity and
gas monopolies RAO UES and Gazprom and Georgian companies.
“We also discussed taxation issues and extractions from the free
trade zone hampering business development,” Fradkov said.
Fradkov and Nogaideli also discussed the restoration of railway
communications linking Russia, Georgia and Armenia via Abkhaz
territory. “We cannot miss this chance,” the prime minister said.
(With no direct railway communications between Russia and Georgia
special attention is given to the ferriage between the Russian port
of Kavkaz on the eastern shore of the Kerch Strait and the Georgian
port of Poti.)
Assessing the results of the talks, Fradkov said that the sides
discussed a number of problems and ways of their solution which will
promote the settlement of the Russian military bases issue.
Nogaideli said, in turn: “Our trade turnover totals $300 million
but this is not enough,” Fradkov said. “Let us reach $1 billion and
calm down.”

‘Comedy of Errors’
By BILL VARBLE and RICHARD MOESCHL
Mail Tribune, OR
June 3 2005
These days “The Comedy of Errors” gets done every which way but
straight. It’s been done as Edwardian farce, as Mardi Gras, as
something out of the Arabian Nights.
Shakespeare’s mistaken identity farce about two sets of twins was
presented last year by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as a ’50s Las
Vegas piece. Think Frank and Dino and the Rat Pack.
So what will Rogue Community College do with it? Would you believe
rubber chickens and belly dancers?
They’ll be there when RCC presents the play Friday through Monday,
June 3 through June 6, at The Warehouse at the corner of Ninth and
Bartlett streets in downtown Medford.
Performances will be available at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, at 2
p.m. Sunday and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
But the lines will be authentic “Comedy.”
“We’ve taken liberties with the play,” RCC’s Ron Danko says, “but
not with the language.”
The plot involves twin brothers who were separated as children, and
the brothers’ twin servants, who were, ahem, separated in the same
shipwreck (it’s all so airy that audiences usually suspend disbelief
willingly).
When Antipholus of Syracuse and his Dromio visit Ephesus, they do
not know that Antipholus of Ephesus and his Dromio live there. Nor
do they know that an execution is looming in which they have a role
to play. Let the confusion begin.
“The Comedy of Errors” is one of the earliest Shakespeare plays. It
is frothy but often highly entertaining.
Ephesus is in present-day Turkey, so the belly-dancing theme is not
that much of a stretch.
About those belly dancers.
“Ron called me on a Friday and said that there was belly dancing at
the brew pub,” says RCC’s John Cole, who teaches theater arts.
“When I saw them I said, ‘I have to have this in the play.’ We
have Suzanne Veach as choreographer. She is from the dance troupe
Shalomar. And we had a student who was studying belly dancing.”
Cole sees “Comedy” in part as “kind of an exercise in xenophobia” in
that Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse leap to the wrong conclusions
to explain the weird goings-on in a foreign port.
“They show up in an unusual place, and they freak out when they make
the assumption that everything around them is caused by sorcerers
and wizards,” Cole says.
Some productions cast two actors as the Antipholi and two as the
Dromios. Others (including the OSF in 2004) cast a single actor as
each set of twins, although this is challenging to stage.
This production takes both approaches. Matthew Adam Huffman plays
the Antipholi, but there are two Dromios. Scott Burditt is Dromio of
Syracuse. Aaron Findley is Dromio of Ephesus.
Twenty-four actors are cast. Ken Edwards is Solinus, and Mark Barsekian
is Egeon. Adriana is played by Krystal Brewer, and Luciana by MiLisa
Childers.
Peter Spring adds musical accompaniment.
“This might be the most talented cast we’ve assembled,” Danko says.
“They’re full of life.”
Cole says a student production of Shakespeare takes excruciating
discipline and has a steep learning curve.
The cast includes a disabled vet and an actor who’s legally blind.
Barsekian’s Armenian and Greek ancestors hail from the part of the
world where the play takes place. In addition to Egeon, he plays
Doctor Pinch and Luce, a maid. The play is Barsekian’s senior capstone
project at RCC.
“He is the funniest guy I’ve seen in a long time,” Danko says.
Cole says he expects as many as five students in the production to
go on to study theater.
He says the production got a huge boost when he visited a painting
class at RCC, and two women, Gigi Sharrow and Janet Eshoo, both
non-traditional students, said they wanted to help out. Sharrow and
Eshoo wound up making all the play’s hats and dyeing the costumes.
They built the belly-dance costumes from scratch and made others.
Jeanne Schraub and Ralph Henderson from the construction technology
department at RCC provided platforms for the stage.
In the past the warehouse space has been made into a proscenium
theater for RCC’s production of “Working,” into avenue seating for
“Twelfth Night” and even into a sort of three-quarter thrust stage for
“Spoon River.”
What next?
Cole describes its new incarnation as “a sort of
three-quartersavenuethrustenium.”
Like he says, “What could go wrong?”
“The Comedy of Errors” runs a little over two hours with an
intermission.

Russia did not intend to transfer bases to Abkhazia – ambassador at large
RIA Novosti, Russia
June 3 2005
MOSCOW, June 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia did not intend to transfer its
bases from Georgia to Abkhazia, Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador
at large Igor Savolsky said.
“We did not regard Abkhazia as a site for redeploying the bases. We
mentioned Armenia because the base in Akhalkalaki (Georgia) is located
100 km away from our base in Gyumri (Armenia),” Savolsky said.
However, it is hard to say what armaments and property will be
transferred to Armenia because exact terms of the withdrawal of
Russian bases in Georgia have not been fixed yet, he added.
“Anyway, military hardware and property will be transferred from one
Russian base to another. Nothing extraordinary is going to happen,”
he said. Therefore, Baku’s concerns that it will reinforce the Armenian
army are groundless.
“Russian military hardware will not be handed to the Armenian side.
It will be stationed at the Russian base,” Savolsky said.

Armenia Liberty – Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
June 3 2005
Dashnaks Plan Shift In Genocide Recognition Effort
By Ruzanna Stepanian
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) plans a major
shift in its decades-long campaign for international recognition
of the Armenian genocide that will aim to hold modern-day Turkey
accountable for the events of 1915-1918, it emerged on Friday.
Giro Manoyan, the spokesman for the pan-Armenian party’s governing
Bureau, said that genocide recognition alone would not restore historic
justice and that the international community should now “hold Turkey
accountable” for the extermination of some 1.5 million Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire.
“There is no longer a need to merely prove a historic fact,” Manoyan
told RFE/RL. He indicated that this will be at the heart of a planned
“adjustment” of the activities Dashnaktsutyun’s lobbying structures
in the United States, Europe and elsewhere in the world.
Representatives of those structures began on Friday a two-day meeting
to discuss the shift in the nationalist party’s emphases. The meeting
took place behind the closed doors.
The policy change is in tune with one of the main tenets of
Dashnaktsutyun which has never made secret of its desire to get Turkey
to not only admit to the genocide but also pay material compensation
to Armenia and descendants of genocide victims.
Earlier this year, Dashnaktsutyun accused the United States of prodding
Turkey to recognize the genocide “without consequences.” Its leaders
also want Yerevan to keep the door open for future territorial and
financial claims to Ankara.
“We believe that Armenia is unable to make such demands today,”
Manoyan told RFE/RL in April. “But this doesn’t mean that it will be
unable to do so tomorrow.”
This stance contrasts with the official position of the Armenian
government in which Dashnaktsutyun is represented with three
ministers. “We are not talking about compensations, this is only
about a moral issue,” President Robert Kocharian said recently.
Manoyan claimed on Friday that in seeking Turkish reparations the
Armenians can count on the support of countries like France that
want Turkey to address the genocide issue before joining the European
Union. “Incidentally, these are the countries that have said ‘no’ to
the EU constitution,” he said. “According to commentators in those
countries, the ‘no’ vote was in large part due to the prospect of
Turkey’s EU membership.”
However, neither France nor other EU nations that recognized the
Armenian genocide have ever called for Turkish reparations. In a
landmark 1987 resolution, the European Parliament stressed that
“neither political nor legal or material claims against present-day
Turkey can be derived from the recognition of this historical event
as an act of genocide.”

Russian armaments transferred from Georgia to Armenia will not exceed CFE Treaty norms
RIA Novosty, Russia
June 3 2005
MOSCOW, June 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russian armaments which will be
transferred from Georgia to Armenia will not exceed the norms set in
the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty.
Russia’s permanent representative at the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe Alexei Borodavkin said this at a session
of the OSCE Permanent Council.
Commenting on Azerbaijan’s concern over the transfer of Russian
armaments and military hardware from the bases in Georgia to Armenia,
Borodavkin said: “Such actions do not pose threat to the adjacent
states.”
Russian armaments and military hardware to be removed to Armenia
will not exceed the limits of CFE Treaty and will be under Russia’s
permanent and total control, he added.
Borodavkin said: “Russian and Georgian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov
and Salome Zurabishvili instructed their delegations at the military
talks to draft an agreement on the terms, functioning and withdrawal
of the Russian military bases from Batumi and Akhalkalaki and other
Russian military facilities in Georgia.”
“This work has already begun,” Borodavkin added.
Moreover, the sides came out for the resumption of Germany’s efforts
in the OSCE to set up an international mission for monitoring the
situation on the territory of the former Russian military base
in Gudauta in Abkhazia (a self-proclaimed republic in Georgia),
Borodavkin said.
The Russian and Georgian foreign ministries said that the withdrawal of
military hardware from the Russian bases would begin in 2005. At least
40 pieces will be pulled out by September 1, 2005. The withdrawal of
the Akhalkalaki base will be over before by the end of 2007 depending
on the weather. The withdrawal of the Batumi base and the command
of the Russian group of forces in the Transcaucasian region will be
completed during 2008.

Arabic News
June 3 2005
Detroit Islamic center opens largest mosque in united states
Regional-USA, Local, 6/3/2005
Fifteen years of planning, six years of building and $15 million went
into the creation of a new Detroit mosque that now ranks as the
largest mosque in the United States.ÊThe two-story building has room
for more than 1,000 people in the main prayer hall and over 2,000 in
the banquet hall.
The mosque, which opened on May 27, is part of the Islamic Center of
America (ICA), an organization founded in 1961 and currently under
the leadership of Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini.
Imam Qazwini, who was born in Karbala, Iraq, and studied Islamic
jurisprudence in Qum, Iran, came to the United States more than 12
years ago. He says he has been “impressed on how diverse this country
is and how Muslims are thriving in this country.” He was attracted to
Michigan because of its large concentration of Muslims and now feels
at home in what he refers to as the “American Middle East.”Ê
As the imam of a mosque in such a large and influential Muslim
community, Qazwini hopes to affect the area by working to create a
greater understanding of Islam. One of his personal goals, which he
hopes to achieve through his role in the center, is to establish an
interfaith program.Ê
“Due to the prominence of my center, I am given a golden opportunity
to build a bridge with non-Muslims … in the state of Michigan and
the United States as a whole,” he said.Ê
Already he has spoken at more than 170 colleges, universities and
churches since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In
addition, he noted that the mosque itself is located between two
churches: one Armenian and the other Greek Orthodox.Ê
In order to realize his goal of promoting interfaith understanding,
he plans to create an Interfaith Liaison Department, which will
spread the word of Islam, showing that it is “the word of peace, love
and mutual respect.”
Qazwini also intends to engage the community in the center’s
activities. His vision is to see the ICA as more than just a place
where people come to pray. Instead he “would like, for example, to
see youth taking over” and using the center as their platform.Ê
For now, the center is gaining recognition in the United States and
beyond. Al-Maktoum, a charitable organization based in Dubai, donated
$700,000 to the construction of the mosque in addition to the more
than $6 million that community members gave. Moreover, this summer
over 400 groups are scheduled to tour the mosque, which Qazwini
refers to as “a piece of art” and the governor of Michigan calls “a
jewel.”
The new Michigan mosque stands tall, visible even from airplanes
flying into Detroit, but according to Qazwini, the construction of
the building was only the first challenge. He now faces the task of
building the community.
–Boundary_(ID_CnNXI4EuO2jFbE2hiDtvRA)–

Talent show raises money for wounded veterans
By: Alice Tessier 06/03/2005
Brookfield Journal, CT
June 3 2005
It also raised money for Wounded Warriors, a non-profit organization
that seeks to meet unfilled needs of injured veterans of the Iraqi
and Afghanistani conflicts.
The “mega effort,” as First Selectman Jerry Murphy and his wife,
Susan, called it in their letter to the editor this week (see Page
4) was an unqualified success for BHS students Stephanie Davies and
Danielle Gaddy, whose senior project was to marshal support for the
organization.
It was also a source of great joy and satisfaction for Linda Davies,
Stephanie’s mother and the talent show’s producer.
“We had about 500 people every night, which for Brookfield is really
good and for Memorial Day weekend really very good,” she said. “And
we raised $15,000, which makes all the effort worthwhile.”
She dedicated the show to her 90-year-old father-“a proud American”-who
is a member of a Christian Armenian family that was persecuted in
Iran when he was very young.
“My father was 12 when he came to this country,” Mrs. Davies
recounted. “They got him out by dressing him up as a girl, and he lived
in a few other places before he came here. His father committed suicide
when he was imprisoned in Iran for refusing to give up his faith.”
“My dad always said that America would have to set foot in the Middle
East,” she continued. “Many people-not only Armenians but Lebanese,
Greeks, Syrians, Iranians …a large culture of Middle Eastern
people-came to this country because they wanted to be free.
“Freedom is for everybody,” Mrs. Davies continued. “No one is happy
unless he is free.”
“My father always said, ‘There is no prouder American than an
immigrant.’ That’s why doing this show was so important to me-it’s
for every soldier who went into war to help others be free,” the
Brookfield resident said. “I’m really patriotic because I came to this
realization through my family’s own history. They knew what they had
here, and they knew what that had to leave in order to survive.”
“I was a flower child, and I think that most of my generation feel
guilty about the way that those who served in Vietnam were treated
afterward,” Mrs. Davies said, referring those who advocated peace
during the Vietnam War era of the 1960s.
“It was a misinterpretation-we were never against them but the war.
In my age group we feel we didn’t do enough for them when they came
back from the war, and we feel guilty about the terrible effect it
had on them and for their whole life,” she added. “That’s why I think
there’s so much support for our soldiers fighting now, whether we
agree with this war [in Iraq] or not. We don’t want them to feel we
don’t appreciate them.”
The Davies family got in touch with a local serviceman serving
in Iraq-Army Lt. Tim Walsh-during the Christmas holidays. He not
only contributed photographs and a video illustration of what life
is like for the U.S. military troops in Iraq for the benefit show
but was also in the audience Sunday with his wife, Allison Ugosoli,
and family members to enjoy the talent show, which featured about 80
participants, according to the producer.
“In December, we got Tim Walsh’s name from the Hawleyville Post
Office,” said Mrs. Davies in an earlier interview. “We sent three
huge boxes of goodies and necessities for him and his fellow soldiers
in Iraq, [but] we had no idea that Tim was from Brookfield until he
wrote us a thank you letter.
“After finding out he graduated from BHS in 1986, we thought that
this was just meant to be,” she said. “We were already planning our
benefit/variety show … and asked Tim to make a movie for us.”
“Stand By Me” featured songs from Broadway musicals as well as
performances by members of the BHS Drama Club, the BHS Dance Team,
the BHS Drumline, Jean Pierre Ferragamo, pianist Elyssa Samsel,
students from the town’s four public schools and the Bhangra Dancers.

Home Sweet Homebuilder
By Stephen D. Simpson, CFA
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The Motley Fool
06/01/2005
Hey, anybody hear that we’re in a housing boom?
Yeah, I thought so.
One of the 10 largest homebuilders in the country, Hovnanian
Enterprises(NYSE: HOV), reported sound second-quarter results. Revenue
grew 32% for the quarter, and net income grew 51% with better margins.
Although new orders dipped a bit in the quarter, Hovnanian delivered
about 12% more homes in the quarter than during the year-ago period,
and the average selling prices of those homes climbed by about
18%. Backlog also grew strongly, whether measured in numbers of
homes (35.7%) or dollar value (61%). Stripping out unconsolidated
joint-venture contributions, both figures were still positive, with
homes increasing 12.5% and dollar value growing by almost 18%.
Also important, Hovnanian continues to report excellent efficiency
numbers. The annualized return on equity for the quarter exceeded 30%,
and the annualized return on assets is solidly in the double digits.
Of course, you can’t talk about a homebuilder without talking about the
housing bubble. Honestly, I’d rather go through a Novocain-free root
canal than talk about whether there is, or isn’t, a housing bubble
in the country. So I’ll say two things. First, if you really want to
hear about the housing market, watch the Fox News financial programs on
Saturday — that seems to be the only thing the people on those shows
want to talk about. Second, remember this: Whenever someone tells you
“It’s different this time,” it’s probably not different, and that
person is probably trying to sell you something you don’t really want.
Though Hovnanian carries a fair bit of debt, it’s not out of line with
similar builders. What’s more, the company generates solid margins
and returns on its capital. Like other homebuilders, Hovnanian trades
at a valuation that suggests we’re at or near peak cycle times. I’m
not inclined to disagree, but there’s no doubt that business today
is still quite strong.
Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any
stocks mentioned (that means he’s neither long nor short the shares).

TURKEY, ARMENIA MISS OPPORTUNITY FOR RAPPROCHEMENT
Emil Danielyan 6/03/05
EurasiaNet Organization
June 3 2005
An initiative to promote a thaw in Armenian-Turkish relations appears
to have fallen flat. The leaders of the two countries recently
exchanged unprecedented diplomatic notes that explored rapprochement
possibilities. But the letters did not achieve the desired effect of
easing decades of mutual animosity.
The inability of Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet on the sidelines of a Council
of Europe summit in Warsaw in mid-May signaled the collapse of the
rapprochement initiative.
Erdogan reportedly refused to meet Kocharian because of the latter’s
renewed calls during the summit for international recognition of
the 1915-1923 slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as genocide. Turkey vehemently denies that the mass
killings constituted a genocide, insisting that Ottoman Armenians
died in much smaller numbers and mainly as a result of civil strife.
Erdogan responded angrily to Kocharian’s statements at the summit.
“Turkey cannot accept such baseless allegations,” he told a separate
news conference in the Polish capital.
Armenia scoffed at the criticism of Turkish leaders, with Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian saying that policy makers in Ankara
“naively” thought that Kocharian himself would request a meeting
with Erdogan. Oskanian additionally accused the Turkish leadership of
insincerity, alleging that Ankara never had any intention of altering
its policy position.
“As a result of wrong Turkish calculations, the more or less favorable
atmosphere created by the exchange of letters was spoiled,” Oskanian
told Armenian state television on May 20. “We took a step backward
in Turkish-Armenian relations because of the Turks.”
Erdogan wrote to Kocharian in April suggesting that the two countries,
which have no diplomatic relations, set up a commission of historians
that would look into the 1915 events and determine whether they
were indeed a genocide. The unusual move came ahead of the April 24
worldwide ceremonies commemorating the 90th anniversary of the start
of mass killings and deportations. It was welcomed by the United
States and some European leaders.
But Kocharian effectively rejected the idea, contending that the
Armenian genocide was already an established fact. At the same time,
he called for the creation of an Armenian-Turkish inter-governmental
commission that would discuss all issues of mutual concern, including
the genocide controversy.
In response to Kocharian’s offer, Turkish officials suggested that
the two contending proposals could be combined. “On the one hand,
political relations could be established,” Erdogan said in a newspaper
interview on April 29. “On the other hand, the work (on the historical
archives) could continue.”
As leaders of the two countries engaged in political maneuvering
in late April and early May, speculation mounted that Kocharian and
Erdogan might hold their first-ever face-to-face meeting during the
Warsaw summit May 16-17. As it turned out, however, the parties did
not even come close to achieving a breakthrough in Warsaw.
Erdogan made clear afterward that a pre-condition for rapprochement
between Yerevan and Ankara was a settlement between Armenia and
Azerbaijan of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. [For background see
the Eurasia Insight archive]. Turkey maintains an economic embargo
against Armenia as part of an effort to provide diplomatic support
for Azerbaijan during the search for a lasting Karabakh peace deal.
[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
The Turkish prime minister also called on Armenia to halt efforts to
secure international recognition for the 1915-23 events as genocide.
The Turkish daily Zaman reported on May 31 that Ankara plans no
further diplomatic initiatives on the Armenian front.
The Armenian leadership, for its part, insists that the two nations
must establish diplomatic relations, and that Ankara must lift
the embargo against Armenia, before the two governments can tackle
contentious issues.
As Armenia and Turkey explored the rapprochement, the United States
remained diplomatically inactive, according to an Armenian source
privy to Turkish-Armenian dealings. US officials reportedly didn’t
offer to broker direct discussions between Kocharian and Erdogan in
Warsaw, dashing all hopes for such a meeting.
“The Bush administration has a long list of priorities when it
comes to Turkey, and I’m afraid that Armenian issues are the bottom
of that list,” David Phillips, a renowned scholar who chaired the
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), said in a recent
interview. TARC was a US-sponsored panel of retired diplomats and
pundits that operated between 2001-2004 to promote reconciliation.
Perhaps TARC’s important accomplishment during was a study jointly
commissioned by its Turkish and Armenian members from the International
Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), a New York-based human rights
organization. The ICTJ concluded in a 2003 report that the massacres
of Ottoman Armenians technically fit the definition of genocide set by
a 1948 UN convention. However, the ICTJ report also stressed that the
1948 Convention’s provisions did not allow “retroactive application”
to events that occurred prior to the treaty’s adoption. Thus, Armenians
could not use the convention to claim any material compensation from
modern-day Turkey.
At present, Turkey is facing strong pressure from the European Union
as Ankara prepares to open accession talks with the bloc in October.
France, for example, wants the genocide issue to be on the agenda of
those talks, with President Jacques Chirac repeatedly urging Turkey
to address its contentious past. [For background information see the
Eurasia Insight archive].
The issue is also used by opponents of Turkish membership in the EU.
Germany’s opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is well
placed to defeat incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social
Democrats in upcoming parliamentary elections, has sponsored
a Bundestag resolution calling on Ankara to “take historic
responsibility” for the 1915 massacres.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FEDERATION EURO-ARMENIENNE
pour la Justice et la Democratie
Avenue de la Renaissance 10
B-1000 Bruxelles
Tel: +32 2 732 70 26
Tel/Fax: +32 2 732 70 27
Email : [email protected]
COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE
pour diffusion immediate
1er juin 2005
Contact :Talline Tachdjian
Tel:+32 2 732 70 26
PENALISATION DU NEGATIONNISME : POSITIONS INCOHERENTES DU PS ET DE L’EXECUTIF BELGES
— La Ministre de la Justice confirme que les evenements de 1915 correspondent bien a un genocide
— Selon elle, ce genocide n’entre pas dans le cadre du projet de loi sanctionnant le negationnisme
Bruxelles, Belgique (31 mai 2005) – La Commission Justice du Senat
a examine ce jour le projet de loi n°3-1135, visant a reprimer la
negation, la minimisation, la justification ou l’approbation du
genocide commis par le regime national-socialiste allemand pendant
la seconde guerre mondiale. Mesdames Christine Defraigne (Mouvement
Reformateur) et Fauzaya Talhaoui (SP.A-SPIRIT) ont ete proposees et
designees rapporteurs du projet de loi.
Dans son expose introductif, Mme Laurette Onkelinx (PS), Ministre de
la Justice, a affirme qu’ ” au sujet des massacres et des deportations
qui se sont deroules en Turquie ottomane en 1915, a titre personnelle
et en tant que femme politique, [elle] souscrit totalement a la
resolution adoptee par le Senat en 1997 “. Elle ajouta que ” ces faits
correspondent bien aux critères enonces en 1948 par la Convention des
Nations unies […] pour definir le crime de genocide “. Cependant,
la Ministre a precise qu’ ” au nom de la separation des pouvoirs ,
elle se refuse a voir initier des poursuites sur base de l’opinion d’un
homme ou d’une femme politique ou sur base d’une decision ou d’une
resolution prise par un organisme politique “. Elle refuse ainsi de
se rallier aux amendements demandant la prise en compte du genocide
des Armeniens dans ce projet de loi, considerant que ce serait une
double violation du principe de separation des pouvoirs.
Durant les debats, differents senateurs ont exprime le souhait
d’auditionner des experts sur cette question. Le Senateur Alain
Destexhe a precise que le refus meme d’employer le mot de genocide
etait une forme de negation, en faisant reference aux propos du
Ministre bruxellois Emir Kir (PS).
M. Jean Cornil (PS) a rappele la position de son parti qui condamne
les massacres de 1915, en rappelant du bout des lèvres qu’il s’agissait
bien d’un genocide, dont il a neanmoins minimise la portee en precisant
qu’il n’avait pas ete reconnu par une juridiction internationale et
que ” seul un tribunal international pouvait qualifier l’histoire “.
Mme Isabelle Durant (Ecolo) s’est dit prete a retirer son amendement
pour ” faire le nettoyage necessaire ” dans le cadre du travail sur
ce projet de loi, mais qu’elle ne souhaitait pas omettre la question
du genocide armenien. Elle proposa une reconnaissance effective de
ce genocide par l’adoption d’une loi identique a la loi francaise
reconnaissant ” publiquement le genocide armenien de 1915 “.
A la question posee par M. Marcel Cheron – ” Que se passe-t-il si
dans ce pays un citoyen minimise le genocide armenien ?
La loi de 1995 est-elle applicable ? ” – le President de la Commission
Justice, Hugo Vandenberghe (CD&V) et Mme Onkelinx ont repondu par
l’affirmative s’il y a incitation a la haine.
Parmi les dix amendements deja deposes, certains, comme celui de Mme
Isabelle Durant et M. Marcel Cheron (Ecolo), et de M. Roelants du Viver
(MR), Christine Defraigne (MR), Alain Destexhe (MR) et Jean-Marie
Cheffert (MR), demandent implicitement l’inclusion du genocide
des Armeniens dans l’article 8 du projet de loi en se referant aux
resolutions adoptees par le Parlement belge et/ou europeen.
D’autres, adoptent une formulation plus explicite, comme l’amendement
des senateurs MR qui proposent de nommer specifiquement quatre cas
de genocide averes, ” le genocide des Juifs et des Tsiganes commis
pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, le genocide des Tutsi et Hutus
moderes commis par le regime Habyarimana et le Hutu Power au Rwanda,
le genocide des Cambodgiens commis par le regime des Khmers rouge
et le genocide des Armeniens commis par le regime Jeune-Turc sous
l’Empire Ottoman “.
Les amendements presentes par Mme Clotilde Nyssens (Centre democrate
humaniste) et par M. Willems (VLD), prefèrent maintenir le projet de
loi tel qu’il est actuellement, a savoir sans la mention du genocide
de 1915.
“Ceux qui s’abritent derrière les juridictions internationales
savent pertinemment qu’elles ne sont pas mandatees pour qualifier
et pour condamner le genocide des Armeniens. Toutes ces juridictions
n’ont pu etre mises en place que sous l’impulsion et avec la volonte
des autorites politiques ” a precise Laurent Leylekian, Directeur
de la Federation Euro-Armenienne. ” Il n’y a donc pas de scrupules
legalistes a avoir en la matière car c’est bien au legislateur de dire
le Droit. Mais si reellement la Ministre de la Justice est genee par
de telles considerations, elle devrait en coherence avec elle-meme
proposer et defendre la creation d’une juridiction internationale
chargee de juger le crime imprescriptible de l’Etat turc ” a conclu
Laurent Leylekian.
Le projet de loi sera a nouveau a l’ordre du jour de la Commission
Justice du Senat mardi prochain. Cette dernière examinera et votera
les amendements deposes.
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