Month: October 2005

Turan news agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 7 2005

Azeri court sentences three former POWs for high treason

The Azerbaijani court for grave crimes has sentenced three national
army servicemen to long prison terms for high treason, Turan news
agency has reported. The three were charged with desertion and
contacts with the Armenian intelligence service while in captivity.

The court sentenced Sgt Ruslan Bakirov and Pte Xayal Abdullayev to 12
and Pte Hikmat Tagiyev to 11 years’ imprisonment after they pleaded
partly guilty.

In February 2005, the three servicemen deserted from their military
unit and went to the Armenian-controlled part of Azerbaijan’s Tartar
District where they established contacts with the Armenian
intelligence service, Turan said. They were handed over to Azerbaijan
in May 2005 and then arrested and put on trial, the agency added.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Public Television of Armenia
Oct 7 2005

Cooperation with Russia, NATO guarantees Armenia’s security – defence
minister

[Presenter] The parties to the Karabakh conflict were very close to
reaching an agreement in 2001, but they failed to achieve a final
result. The mediators are tired of delays in the conflict settlement.
In order to settle the conflict, the Armenian and Azerbaijani
leaderships need to demonstrate political will and NATO and the USA
have sufficient will and resources to assist the conflict settlement,
the US ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, has said at NATO’s Rose
Roth seminar.

Armenian Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan spoke about conflicts in
the South Caucasus, noting that the armies of the region’s three
countries were established in wartime and are still far from
international standards. Armenia is in favour of regional cooperation
within the framework of the Partnership for Peace programme, an idea
which Azerbaijan has rejected. The minister said that now it is
necessary to achieve stable and guaranteed truce.

[Serzh Sarkisyan speaking at the Rose Roth seminar] Armenia is taking
an active part in various security projects in order to set up a
strong security system. Armenia is cooperating with the [CIS]
Collective Security Treaty Organization and NATO today, which allows
the Armenian armed forces to establish cooperation in line with
different international military standards. Armenian-Russian
bilateral military cooperation within the framework of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization and the development of cooperation with
NATO and the USA guarantee Armenia’s security.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Mediamax News Agency, Russia
Oct 6 2005

Armenia, Azerbaijan reach “unprecedented” rapprochement on Karabakh –
minister

Yerevan, 6 October: Armenia and Azerbaijan have reached an
“unprecedented” rapprochement of the positions on principled issues
of the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan said in Yerevan today. He said this at a
meeting with journalists after addressing the seminar entitled
“Security in the South Caucasus” organized by the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly and the Armenian National Assembly.

Oskanyan said that the future status of Nagornyy Karabakh, problems
of the territories [adjacent to Nagornyy Karabakh] and guarantees of
security were among the “principled issues”, regarding which the
sides had managed to get their positions closer.

The minister pointed out that “there is no a new completed
[settlement] package on the table [of negotiations], but there are
specific ideas”.

“After all, after beginning to debate all these elements in detail,
one could expect a written document,” Oskanyan said. He advised to
wait for the end of the November parliamentary election in
Azerbaijan, “after which the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group will
boost the negotiations”.

Commenting on the statement of his Azerbaijani counterpart that
Yerevan and Baku have reached an agreement on mine clearing, the
Armenian foreign minister said that official agreements have not been
reached yet.

The Armenian foreign minister also said that only the OSCE Minsk
Group had an “exclusive mandate” for the settlement of the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict, but “the discussion of this problem within the
framework of other organizations is acceptable and may be useful”.

At the same time, Oskanyan stressed that the discussion of the
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict in various organizations and resolutions
adopted as a result of them “cannot replace the negotiations”.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
October 7, 2005 Friday
Final Edition

Egoyan’s Truth lost in the layers: Bacon, Firth shine despite
narrative mess

by Jay Stone, CanWest News Service

Where The Truth Lies
Starring: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth.
Directed and written by Atom Egoyan
Rating 2 1/2 out of five

– – –

Director Atom Egoyan makes movies that are very much about the
moviemaking process: not cameras and film stock, but how a filmmaker
sees a story, how he plucks one narrative out of the multitudes that
surround any event.

At his best, in such films as Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter,
Egoyan’s elusiveness helps strengthen the story by giving us several
versions of it, allowing a mosaic itself to become a character, or a
mystery.

Author Russell Banks, who wrote the novel on which The Sweet
Hereafter was based, was undoubtedly thinking of Egoyan when he said
turning a book into a movie was like smashing a stained-glass window
and making a vase out of the shards. The trouble with this approach
is that it can also put so many layers between us and the story that
the movie becomes about the layers.

Ararat, a highly personal Egoyan film about the Armenian holocaust,
was filmed as a movie-within-a-movie, an approach that cooled the
passions disastrously: the anger or the mourning that must have
fuelled the desire to tell the tale in the first place was replaced
by a meditation on memory, and tragedy seemed like device.

The same problems arise with Where The Truth Lies, a neo-noir full of
highly watchable, lurid subject matter — Hollywood celebrity, a
murder mystery, lots of sex — that has become a jumble of confusing
viewpoints and chronologies.

This is Egoyan’s biggest movie to date ($25 million), featuring the
biggest stars he has ever worked with in Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth,
but the combination of accessible material and name talent has
overwhelmed his vision. You can almost feel Bacon and Firth aching to
break through the layers of technique.The result is artificial and,
in the last reel, absurd.

Bacon and Firth play Lanny and Vince, a famous comedy/singing act of
the 1950s who enjoy a gaudy, Vegas-style success, access to many
lovely women and a wise guy’s knowledge about the benefits of
celebrity.

However, there is a scandal in their lives when a blond turns up dead
in their hotel bathtub.The act dissolves, Lanny and Vince stop
talking to one another, and the mystery of the blond is never solved.

Years later, a reporter named Karen O’Connor (Alison Lohman,
overwhelmed by the task) sets out to write a tell-all book that will
unveil the mystery.

At the end, we finally learn what happened with Lanny and Vince, and
the upshot turns out to be such an ancient movie joke that you wonder
if it was meant as a parody of some of the routines the boys used in
their heyday.

Egoyan tells this story from several points of view and in different
timeframes, a commentary on the unreliability of the narrator,
perhaps, but a son-of-a-gun for the viewer trying to keep things
straight or, more importantly, believable.

Within a glittery production design, much of Where The Truth Lies
seems stagy and fake, and you suspect that not all is a purposeful
metaphor for the mists of the past.

The sex scenes, including the famous menage-a-trois among Lanny,
Vince and a hotel chambermaid (Rachel Blanchard) — the scene that
earned Egoyan the harmful NC-17 rating in the United States — are
oddly unerotic.

The shock of seeing stars the magnitude of Bacon and Firth engaging
in a naked frolic is only part of the reason. There’s also a cool,
distancing effect in Egoyan’s direction that makes the episodes seem
almost laughable.

Within this fractured mystery are several enjoyable episodes,
including a scene in which Karen meets Lanny and his butler (David
Hayman) on a 1970s airplane whose first-class section is as
wonderfully retro as an arborite kitchenette, and scenes from the
telethon in which Bacon and Firth persuade us that, all expectations
to the contrary, they could have been a successful act.

Bacon is especially good as the hip, womanizing Lanny, who is smarter
than he seems and Firth has a light touch that darkens later as the
reporter edges closer to the truth.

By then, though, Where The Truth Lies has collapsed into a pile of
good intentions and narrative obsessions. This was to be Egoyan’s
breakthrough into the mainstream, but it is too complex, too thought
out and neither the truth nor the lies seems to have any reality.

GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: Courtesy, Alliance Atlantis; Kevin Bacon, left, Rachel
Blanchard and Colin Firth in Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s Where
the Truth Lies.

Associated Press Worldstream
Oct 7 2005

Armenian-Turkish journalist convicted, sentenced for remarks
insulting Turks

An Istanbul court on Friday convicted an Armenian-Turkish journalist
of making remarks insulting to Turks in an article he wrote last
year, the journalist said.

Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen and editor of the bilingual
Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos, was convicted under a clause in the
Turkish penal code that makes it a crime to insult the Turkish
national character.

Dink said he was given a six-month suspended sentence, which means he
will not serve prison time unless he repeats the offense.

In a series of articles written in 2004, Dink urged Armenians in the
diaspora to get rid of the “poisoning effect” of their history in
Turkey and focus on the welfare of Armenia, said Karin Karakasli, an
editor at the newspaper. She said the court took the article out of
context, saying it meant that Turkish blood is poison.

The European Union has asked Turkey to change its law making it a
crime to insult the national identity or risk endangering its EU bid.

Turkey officially opened EU membership negotiations early Tuesday,
but its bid is opposed by a majority of Europeans.

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
October 7, 2005, Friday

CAUCASUS TRANSIT

SOURCE: Voyenno-Promyshlenny Kurier, No 37, October 5 – 10, 2005, p.
3

by Sergei Minasjan, Director of the Research Center of the Caucasus
Regional Security and Integration of the Russian-Armenian (Slav)
State University

WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN MILITARY BASES FROM GEORGIA MAY POSE THREATS TO
NATIONAL SECURITY OF ARMENIA

Withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia (as far as Moscow
and Tbilisi are concerned, its schedule checks with the May 30
accord) may pose unexpected threats to the future of the
Russian-Armenian military cooperation and even national security of
Armenia.

Russia claims to have kept its commitments (2005) concerning transfer
of objects to Georgia and withdrawal of its bases from Batumi and
Akhalkalaki. Objects of the Russian Army Group in the Caucasus were
turned over to the Georgians in accordance with the existing
regulations to preclude complaints concerning their condition.

A delegation of the Russian Foreign Ministry under Ambassador Igor
Savolsky visited Tbilisi to discuss the process of withdrawal of the
Russian military bases. Negotiations over a legally binding document
on the withdrawal took place.

According to Savolsky, two-day consultations in Tbilisi were supposed
to dwell on the problems of Russian military transit to Armenia via
Georgia. It seems to be a major obstacle. Tbilisi does not want
Russian convoys to be escorted by Russian servicemen wielding arms.
It insists on having the Russian servicemen unarmed, their own
security seen to by the armed Georgians. In this manner, what Georgia
essentially aspires to is control over Russian troops’ military
communications in the region.

It is clear already that Georgia’s obstinacy on the matter will make
problems for the 102nd Russian Military Base in Armenia. Once the
bases are out of Georgia, it will remain the only Russian combat
ready military object in the southern part of the Caucasus with a
clear status (discounting the Gabala radar in Azerbaijan that
monitors missile launchers from the Indian Ocean, but that is a
different matter). If therefore maintenance of the Russian military
base in Armenia becomes dependant on Georgia with its clear
pro-Washington and pro-Brussels attitude, it will raise questions of
expediency of Russia’s military presence in the region. Professor
Anatoly Tsyganok, a prominent military analyst, claims that
withdrawal of military bases from Georgia compromises the
Russian-Armenian military cooperation because it will disrupt the
single antiaircraft defense system in the south (a lot of its command
posts have been in Georgia ever since the Soviet era). It will
grossly affect air control in the southern part of the Caucasus and
efficiency of the Armenian antiaircraft defense linked to the Russian
antiaircraft defense system.

There is more to it. Georgian military expert Irakly Aladashvili
points out that withdrawal of the Russian bases will make bringing
supplies to the base in Armenia much more problematic and – even
worse – jeopardize military transit into this country, an active
member of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization. In a
crisis (say, another round of hostilities with Azerbaijan), Armenia’s
allies from the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization will find
sending its weapons and military hardware extremely difficult.
Aladashvili is concerned that Georgia “will try to prevent additional
shipments of Russian arms across its territory” to “retain
neutrality”. It is clear, however, that Georgia will not be regarded
as an objectively neutral country because it will help isolate
Armenia from the rest of the world. (Armenia lacks access to the sea,
it has been blocked by Turkey and Azerbaijan for over a decade
already.)

There is another important aspect of the withdrawal that may pose a
threat to national security of Armenia. Georgian experts maintain
that even with the bases pulled out, Russia and its “sympathizers” in
the former Georgian autonomies and areas populated with ethnic
minorities will go on posing a threat to Georgia. Alexander Rusetsky,
a prominent expert of the SCIRS (Georgian Center of Security
Analysis), maintains in one of his articles that “Russia’s clout with
the southern part of the Caucasus is dwindling but its presence
(military presence included) in Georgia is inevitable in the
foreseeable future. An end may be put to it only through a massacre
and complete extermination or expulsion of pro-Russian politicians
and citizenry. First and foremost from the territory of Abkhazia, the
former South Ossetian Autonomous Region, and Samtskhe-Djavakheti. We
cannot expect the process to be as subtle as it was in Adjaria in May
2004.” It follows that once the Russian military bases are out of
Georgia, the Georgian authorities may bring up the matter of
termination of Russian peacekeepers’ mission in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia and mount a campaign to “neutralize” Armenian “politicians
and citizenry” in Djavakheti…

Gela Bezhuashvili, Secretary of the National Security Council,
clarified his position on the first point in an interview with Novye
Izvestia on September 5. “Our dissatisfaction with how Russian
peacekeepers perform in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are
well-grounded,” he said. “Peacekeeping mandate of these operations is
obsolete. Unless radical measures are taken to ameliorate the
situation, we will insist on amendment of the mandate and structure
of peacekeeping contingents.” No more need be said. Tbilisi only has
to bide its time and wait for the bases to be out of Georgia.

As for the situation in Samtskhe-Djavakheti, not everything with it
is that clear. There is no saying to what extent official Tbilisi
shares the expert’s views. It is clear in any case that as soon as
the 62nd Russian Military Base in Akhalkalaki is history, the
Georgian authorities may forget their loudly proclaimed determination
to handle the political and socioeconomic problems the Armenian
population of the region is facing. Should Tbilisi try a military
solution, including actions against Armenian political groups and
movements, it will become another threat to national security of
Armenia. Official Yerevan will not remain indifferent to the lot of
the Armenian population of Djavakheti.

Translated by A. Ignatkin

EUObserver.com
October 7, 2005

Fresh controversy between Ankara and Brussels over Cyprus

by Mark Beunderman

ANCHORS: Lisbeth Kirk

Just days after the historic opening of Turkish EU membership talks,
fresh controversy has already emerged between Ankara and Brussels
over Cyprus.

Just days after the historic opening of Turkish EU membership talks,
fresh controversy has already emerged between Ankara and Brussels
over Cyprus.

The spat concerns Ankara’s implementation of a customs agreement with
the EU, which it agreed to extend to all new EU member states in June
– including Cyprus, which Turkey refuses to recognise.

In practical terms, this means that Turkey is obliged to stop
blocking Cypriot ships and planes from its territory.

During a visit to Turkey on Thursday (6 October), EU enlargement
commissioner Olli Rehn said, according to press reports, that the EU
expects Turkey’s parliament to ratify the agreement “without delay
and in good faith”.

Ankara must then fully implement the agreement, he added.

But in a TV interview, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
reacted by saying that “there’s no need to rush” in ratifying the
agreement.

Mr Erdogan said that the EU should instead first open trade to the
Turkish-occupied northern part of Cyprus, and release its financial
aid package for northern Cyprus which is now being blocked by the
Cypriot government.

An EU financial aid package of 259 million euros to Turkish Cypriots,
which was offered in April 2004 when Greek Cypriots voted down a UN
reunification plan, is still waiting to be released from EU coffers.

The Cypriot government is blocking the release of the package, as it
disagrees with a free trade scheme for Northern Cyprus, which the
Commission proposed later.

Nicosia argues that free trade with the north would mean a de facto
recognition of the Turkish-occupied North.

The Commission’s efforts to push Ankara to implement the customs
agreement were dealt a blow last week, as a majority in the European
Parliament suspended the EU’s own ratification of the deal, arguing
that there were not enough assurances on Ankara’s commitment to the
customs agreement.

Mr Rehn said the parliament’s move did “not strengthen our position
in urging Turkey to stick to its commitment.”

Human rights record

Now that Turkey has started accession talks with Brussels, further
difficulties are set to arise over what is expected to be a highly
critical report by the commission on human rights, to be released in
November.

Mr Rehn urged Ankara on Thursday to step up political reforms warning
that the EU executive would in its regular progress report, due next
month, point to Turkish human rights shortcomings.

“This means rigorously implementing political reforms in the areas of
the rule of law, human rights, women’s rights, the rights of
religious communities and trade unions”, Mr Rehn said.

He added that this implied “to make the rule of law an everyday
reality in all walks of life”.

The commission in the up-run to accession talks already expressed
serious concern over Ankara’s actual implementation of its political
reforms.

Brussels’ concern focussed recently on the decision by a Turkish
court to file charges against the author, Orhan Pamuk, who had raised
the issue of the Armenian genocide in 1915.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s charges against Mr Pamuk were made despite
a new penal code along EU standards that Ankara was forced to adopt
as a condition to open accession talks.

Mr Rehn in September called the move by the Turkish prosecutor a
“provocation”.

Zaman, Turkey
Oct 8 2005

European Politicians Think `Kurdish is Still Prohibited in Turkey’
By Habib Guler
Published: Friday, October 07, 2005
zaman.com

European Parliament (EP) Human Rights Subcommittee members visiting
Turkish Parliament experienced difficult moments when they asked
questions that revealed a lack of information.

Human Rights Commission Head Mehmet Elkatmis replied to the question
of when Kurdish will be permitted in Turkey saying, `Education and
broadcasting in Kurdish is free in Turkey.’ The delegation, under the
presidency of Helene Flautre, French member of EP, was informed by
Elkatmis about the developments in turkey. Flautre spoke at the
beginning of the meeting and congratulated Turkey for its efforts to
enter the EU. However the EP delegation asked questions about the
agenda in the part of the meeting which was closed to the press and
were surprised when they got answers they did not expect. It is
reported that the EP authorities brought a staged photo shot at
Bakirkoy Mental Institution and which had been published in some
newspapers in Europe recently and asked about torturing in Turkey.
Elkatmis said that the photo describes a scene which was totally made
up and emphasized that there is no tolerance to torture in Turkey.
Polish member Jozef Pinior raised the case opened against Orhan Pamuk
after he affirmed the Armenian Genocide in an interview and asked
when Turkey will change its policy on its history. Elkatmis replied
`The case against Orhan Pamuk can be seen in any country. There were
punishments for the ones who speak for Jews in Poland. There is an
investigation against the President of Turkish Historical Society
(TTK) Yusuf Halacoglu in Switzerland for denying the Armenian
Genocide. Armenians occupied 20 percent of the lands of Azerbaijan
and massacred 250,000 Azeri. Why do not you ever raise questions
about that?’

EP members said after they had eaten that they were impressed that
they had been served food even though the people welcoming them were
fasting for Ramadan.

Noyan Tapan News Agency
Oct 7 2005

ROBERT KOCHARIAN: “KARABAKH INDEPENDENCE IS IN NO WAY CONNECTED WITH
PRINCIPLE OF TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY”

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 7, NOYAN TAPAN. The independence of Nagorno Karabakh
is in no way connected with the principle of territorial integrity.
RA President Robert Kocharian declared it at the October 7 briefing
in connection with the visit of Latvian President to Armenia.

He explained that after the disintegration of the USSR two states
were proclaimed in its territory – the Nagorno Karabakh Republic that
established independence by a referendum and the Republic of
Azerbaijan that restored its independence of 1918. “NKR has been
never included in the independent Azerbaijan. I don’t remember a case
when territorial integrity was spoken about in the process of
disintegration of an empire as it’s not clear whose territorial
integrity is meant here,” RA President highlighted.

Robert Kocharian mentioned that after the disintegration of the USSR
not only 15 new states were formed – some restored their statehood,
some new states were formed, but the entire political map of Europe
changed: 5 new states were formed in the Balkans, the formation of
the 6th state is underway, Czechoslovakia disintegrated dividing into
2 parts and the two German states united. “Whose territorial
integrity is meant when global changes take place conected with such
a fenomenon as disintegration of the USSR?”

At the same time Robert Kocharian highlighted that Armenia has never
been against the importance of the principle of territorial integrity
and sees no contradiction between the principles of territorial
integrity and self-determination of peoples, the Karabakh issue “just
didn’t contain the territorial integrity that can be placed under
such a principle and respect this principle.”

Answering the question of a Latvian journalist, what is the
President’s conception about the settlement of the conflict that
would satisfy “both sides,” R.Kocharian mentioned that first of all
Nagorno Karabakh people’s opinion must be taken into consideration,
with whom and how it wants to live: “I don’t think that a solution
satisfying all sides of the conflict can be made but I have no doubt
that the issue must be solved proceeding from the principle of
peoples’ right of self-determination applied in Karabakh since the
first days of the movement.”

The Latvian President in her turn mentioned that in this issue her
country shares the neutral position of the European Union. “Of
course, we accept the principle of territorial integrity not
depreciating in this respect people’s right of self-determination,”
the Latvian President declared. She emphasized that over the past
years the principle of territorial integrity has been playing an
important part in elaboration of policy, but in case of Karabakh
Latvia greets peaceful negotiations expressing its assistance to the
efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group in searching for conflict’s solution.

“Judging by your statements one may suppose that for Latvia the
principle of peoples’ self-determination is less important than the
principle of territorial integrity,” answering this question,
Vike-Freiberga mentioned: “In this issue Latvia holds the position of
the European Union and doesn’t say anything that can differ from this
position.”

Noyan Tapan News Agency
Oct 7 2005

PRESENTATION OF PERSIAN POET AND TRANSLATOR AHMAD NURIZADE’S THREE
BOOKS IN YEREVAN

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 7, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. “Ahmad Nurizade is
the only foreign poet writing in Armenian who in his fatherland,
Iran, holds propaganda of the Armenian culture and literature,” Levon
Ananian, the Chairman of the Writers’ Union of Armenia mentioned at
the October 6 presentation of three books, “100 Years Armenian
Poetry,” “Hail, Armenians” and “Night of Solitude and Dreams” by
Ahmad Nurizade, a Persian poet and translator. Nurizade’s poems
written in Armenian language are presented in the last two books.

L.Ananian mentioned that Nurizade’s translations from Armenian into
Persian made dozens of volumes. According to him, pages of Iranian
press are also full of interviews with Nurizade, and the Armenian
culture, Armenian people and friendship of centuries between the two
countries is in the pivot of all publications.

“Armenians and Persians have almost the same traditions and attach
importance to keeping national traditions. Nurizade attempts to serve
Armenian national values to his people and by this he destroys those
borders that there are between the two countries,” L.Ananian
mentioned. He also informed that the third volume of the Persian
poet’s poems written in Armenian will be published soon.

According to Reza Atufi, the Consulor on Culture of the IRI Embassy
to the RA, Armenian and Iranian cutures have come from old centuries,
and even somehow influnced on other civilizations of the world.
R.Atufi finds that though friendship between the two countries has a
history of milleniums, however, circles of Armenian-Iranian
cooperation must be widened even more.