Month: March 2007

‘FRENCH ATTITUDE IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY’
Selcuk GultaªLi Brussels

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 1 2007

Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister and a former prime minister
of Sweden, says the European Union has an immense strategic interest
in continuing accession talks with Turkey.

Carl Bildt: Turkey has changed. That is a good point you are raising.

What we have seen in the last years is a very impressive commitment to
reforms. We still have concerns on issues like 301, but there is no
question that the situation is fundamentally different from the past
in terms of commitments to human rights and in terms of commitments
to reforms.

One of the most vocal supporters of Turkey in Europe, Bildt says it is
sufficient to look at the map to see the huge strategic significance of
Turkey. In an exclusive interview with Today’s Zaman, Bildt says it is
now high time to act on behalf of the Turkish Cypriots and approve the
direct trade regulation. Bildt was given credit for his tough stance
on the Greek Cypriots in bringing the direct trade regulation back on
the agenda of the EU. Despite the decision on Dec. 11 to suspend eight
chapters relating to Turkish accession, the Swedish foreign minister
says there is no guarantee that there won’t be another crisis in the
next 15 days because of Greek Cypriot demands.

Though he avoids directly criticizing French presidential hopeful
Nicholas Sarkozy as he did in his blog before becoming foreign
minister, Bildt underlines that the decision to support Turkey’s
membership was taken years ago and recalls the fact that all EU
decisions occur with a compromise. On the Armenian question, Bildt
says the French way is not the right attitude. Giving examples from
his own country of Sweden, Bildt says history should be left to
historians. Implicitly criticizing the European leaders who hide
their bigotry behind public polls and are trying to block possible
Turkish membership, Bildt underlines that the hard decisions for the
EU were all made by decisive political leadership not by playing to
public opinion.

Bildt is strongly against Article 301 but still thinks Turkey has
improved much in the last couple of years. Answering the question
of why Sweden has become a champion of Turkey in the EU, when it
was one of the most critical in the 1990s, he gives a terse answer:
"Because Turkey changed."

Asked to explain what happened on Dec. 11, when the EU decided to
freeze accession talks with Turkey, Bildt, who was reportedly very
tough on the Greek Cypriots on that day, said: "There were quite a
number of ministers there that day. These ministers were all for the
continuation of talks with Turkey. It was very obvious that we needed
to freeze some chapters as was recommended by the commission. And
we had a discussion on how many chapters we should freeze and which
chapters. Then of course there was Cyprus. But I was not alone,
for sure. Had I been alone, we would not have been able to get
those decisions on Dec. 11. At the end of the day, we reached a
fair compromise.

You were critical of the freezing of the eight chapters at the
beginning, though.

My original position was that the number of chapters frozen should
have been fewer. But I had no difficulty in accepting those eight
chapters. I was very much concerned that some other chapters would
also be included.

In your now very popular article published at IHT on Nov. 7, 2006, you
wrote "We should not forget that these efforts did not fail because
of Turkey, but because key parts of the Greek Cypriot leadership
refused to accept a plan by the UN secretary-general that had the
clear support of the European Union." Do you think it was a mistake
to admit the Greek Cypriots without a solution?

No, I would not say that. History is what it is. We live history only
once. Your task is not to discuss on what happened in the past, but to
shape the future. That is what I am trying to do. I think the EU has
immense strategic interest in the continuation of accession process
with Turkey and as well as the eventual membership. We have also an
immense strategic interest in overcoming the division of Cyprus.

But the Greek Cypriots are blocking almost everything.

No. If you look at what we have achieved since December, we have
prepared four chapters and there was no blockage. That has been done
with the approval of Cyprus. So the balance in the compromise has
been reflected by them as well.

Mr. Lillikas, the Greek Cypriot foreign minister, hinted that they
could start asking for normalization. So there is no guarantee that
we will not bump into a wall again.

I wish there were more guarantees in life. But we reached a compromise
in December that has been respected by everyone so far, which includes
opening and closing new chapters.

Do you mean that the Cypriot blockage has been sorted out once and
for all after Dec. 11?

I cannot say that. Certainly I would not say that. The Cyprus
issue can always create numerous complications from many different
perspectives. That is going to take some time, we have a new UN
secretary-general and we do not know what role exactly he is going
to play.

There is no guarantee we will not face another crisis in the next 15
days, then.

Well, there is no guarantee that EU will not collapse. Guarantees are
not something we have in political life. We have a good compromise
that has been respected by everyone so far. There is no reason why
I would not assume it would be the case further on.

What will the EU do after 2009 if there is still no solution to the
ports issue? Another punishment for Turkey?

That remains to be seen. But if there is no solution, the eight
chapters won’t be reopened. It will also have ramifications for
the rest of the negotiating process. That is fairly obvious. These
eight chapters are essential parts of the process. They have to be
reopened. I understand that we are now entering the election period
in Turkey. It might be the case that we cannot witness much progress;
that remains to be seen. But it is an issue that has to be sorted
out in the coming years.

Do you think EU has let the Turkish Cypriots down by not keeping its
promise to implement the direct trade regulation?

Whether they were let down or not is not the question; they felt
they were let down. We know that Turkey should honor its obligation,
which is a legal one; at the same time we should understand that
we undertook an obligation as well. That might be a political one,
but that does not make much of a difference in my lexicon. It is high
time to put that issue back on the agenda.

In your blog on Sept. 10, 2006, you criticized Mr. Sarkozy’s position
on Turkey, arguing his position was "taking us to conflict — inside
the Union, but more importantly along some of its most critical
borders." Now he is about to be the next president of France.

That is from my blog before I became foreign minister. Today if I
were to correct myself, I would be more diplomatic, but the substance
would be the same. Mr. Sarkozy is undertaking a presidential election
campaign, and it is not up to us to judge his campaign tactics. We can
judge his policies when they eventually materialize. But the policies
of the EU have been decided by the EU. It is based on a compromise
between the different member countries. We do have a policy when it
comes to the accession of Turkey and it has been established for many
years. That is of course still the policy that will apply.

You also argued in that blog piece on Sarkozy that he "wants to
restrict membership to countries on the continent of Europe, although
it’s not clear if he wants to expel Cyprus, with its position off
the coast of Lebanon."

There are some people who are saying that Turkey is not in Europe.

But if Turkey is not in Europe, it becomes very difficult to place
where Cyprus is. In my opinion they are both firmly a part of Europe,
both in terms of geography and culture. So it is very difficult to
say one is part of Europe, and the other is not.

Sweden was one of the most vocal critics of Turkey in the 1980s and
1990s. Now you have become one of the champions of it. What changed?

Turkey has changed. That is a good point you are raising. What we have
seen in the last years is a very impressive commitment to reforms. We
still have concerns on issues like 301, but there is no question that
the situation is fundamentally different from the past in terms of
commitments to human rights and in terms of commitments to reforms.

One day I read that the Austrians had saved Europe from the Turks,
the other day it was the Poles. Then I come across the Maltese,
they say they saved Europe from being "Turkified." Are you sometimes
surprised and disappointed about the amount of history Turkey’s
possible membership has evoked?

History plays its part in public opinion, in Turkey as well as in the
rest of Europe. The Treaty of Sevres still means something to Turks.

Some people have quite strong views about that and think Europe is
behaving in a way to resurrect it. So we are not alone to be affected
by history. Europe was consumed by religious wars, roughly a third
of the European population perished during the 30 Years War. The
Danes killed half of our nobility in 1520 in an event we called a
"bloodbath"; it is still a vivid memory in Sweden. It is no surprise
that some Europeans still remember the Turks at the gates of Vienna.

Have you been disappointed?

I am not the one to say history has no role; history plays a role.

The entire idea behind the EU project is to overcome the animosities
of the past but not to forget them, either. Having said that, we have
witnessed a fair deal of ignorance in the public debate about Turkey.

Since we are talking on history, what do you think of French efforts
to punish the deniers of the "Armenian genocide"? Europe rightly
criticizes 301, but is the French draft a European 301? Do you think
it is the right way?

No. That is not the way Swedes are doing it. We have a tradition of
a very wide interpretation of freedom of expression, and I think that
should be the way in a democratic society. So we tend to be critical
of 301, as you know. I do not think the French law will ever become
law, by the way; we are very critical of that tendency which aims to
restrict the freedom of expression. Questions of history should be left
to historians to debate. There is always a continuous revaluation of
history that is ongoing. We had a vigorous debate on our own history of
16th century, when the foundations of Sweden were laid. The king who
did all these things was a hero, now we have a re-evaluation. There
are now books about him that would have been difficult for publishers
to accept only 100 years ago.

When I read your article in the IHT, for a moment I was confused,
as if I were reading an American statesman so committed to Turkey’s
strategic importance. Not many European statesmen think like you.

I think you only need look at the map. The entire region around
the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Middle East — the
stability of these regions is of profound importance to the EU. I
think Turkey, with its secular democratic system and zeal for reform,
can project these values to the region, to a much wider area.

Have you received any criticism that you have exaggerated the strategic
significance of Turkey?

No, actually most people have essentially agreed with me, but some
have said that Turkey’s membership would be difficult to realize with
the current public opinion. That may be the case, but to overcome that
depends on a fair amount of political leadership and much the same of
political leadership in Turkey. There is certainly a need for political
leadership for these issues in Europe. Now that we are celebrating the
50th anniversary of EU, and when we look back pivotal decisions were
taken by decisive political leadership, be they the re-unification
of Germany or the introduction of the euro, or the expansion, they
have come from political leadership, not from public polls and opinion.

–Boundary_(ID_EMQQ/7+nIoCXk08R4k1yuQ)–

TURKEY PROTESTS CYPRUS-FRANCE MILITARY ACCORD

Assyrian International News Agency, CA
March 1 2007

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey protested a military cooperation accord
signed between France and Cyprus, saying Thursday that it threatened
stability in the eastern Mediterranean and would affect efforts to
reach a solution to the Cyprus problem.

The French Defense Ministry confirmed that a military agreement
with Cyprus was signed in Paris on Monday during a visit by the
Cypriot foreign minister, but did not provide further details. The
French Foreign Ministry said the accord was "standard" between two
EU members and that it involved military training and information-
and knowledge-sharing.

Turkey has vowed to defend the interests of Turkish Cypriots, and
stations some 40,000 troops on the north of the divided island.

"France’s signing of a military agreement with the Southern Cypriot
Greek Administration is a worrying development," Turkey’s Foreign
Ministry said in a statement Thursday. It said the accord contradicted
previous agreements on the island’s status and "represented a threat
to the stability and security of the Eastern Mediterranean."

Tensions over the status of Cyprus, an EU member, have thrown Turkey’s
European Union membership bid into disarray.

Turkey props up a government in northern Cyprus that no other country
in the world recognizes, and it refuses to recognize the Greek Cypriot
administration as the primary authority on the island.

This has also been a period of heightened tension in Turkish-French
relations. France’s parliament voted in October to approve a bill
that would criminalize denying that the mass killings of Armenians
by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century was genocide, prompting
Turkish trade organizations to call for a boycott of French companies
and the Turkish military to say it would break off all contacts with
its French counterparts.

Turkey vehemently denies that it committed genocide against Armenians,
saying they were killed in interethnic fighting as the Ottoman Empire
collapsed.

HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
Adam LeBor

The Nation, NY
March 1 2007

In the winter of 1992, at the height of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, I
interviewed a group of Bosnian Muslim refugees who had found sanctuary
in the Croatian city of Karlovac. Their accounts were confused
and confusing, but they shared a common thread. One after another,
the refugees reported that when the Serbs arrived in their towns and
villages they immediately rounded up community and religious leaders,
teachers and intellectuals. They were the first to be executed. I was
not sure whether to believe these traumatized, shattered survivors. I
should have.

It is one of history’s darker ironies that the Serb paramilitaries
of the 1990s who wiped out Bosnia’s Ottoman heritage used ethnic
cleansing methods honed by the Ottoman army eight decades earlier.

The Turks deployed the Bashi-Bazouks, former criminals released from
prison, during the Armenian genocide in 1915. The Bashi-Bazouks lived
off plunder and were granted a free hand to murder and rape. When the
campaign against the Armenians began, Turkish soldiers sealed off each
community and rounded up its leaders and other notables. They then
executed them in the public square. Many of the Serb paramilitaries
who committed the worst atrocities in Bosnia were also criminals,
released by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to do the regime’s
dirtiest work. Like their Turkish predecessors, the Serbs too had
lists, we now know, of those slated for execution when the ethnic
cleansing began. The men of Karlovac were telling the truth.

Genocide, or what we now define as genocide–the intentional
destruction of a national or ethnic group–is not a modern crime. The
Bible records repeated incidents of the warring peoples of the Near
East annihilating each other, but genocide is a modern term. It was
invented by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin. During the
1930s Lemkin lobbied the League of Nations, the predecessor of the
United Nations, for laws against the destruction of a people. In 1944
he published Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis
of Government, Proposals for Redress, the first work to contain the
word genocide, from genos, Greek for people or race, and caedere,
Latin for to cut or kill. Paradoxically, while genocide continues to
take place, the word has become so powerful that, to paraphrase Oscar
Wilde, it has almost become "the crime that dare not speak its name."

Consider the strange, if not perverse, reluctance of one of the
primary bodies charged with prosecuting war criminals to deliver a
guilty verdict for genocide. Gen. Radislav Krstic was the commander
of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb army, which carried out much
of the killing at Srebrenica, where in July 1995 8,000 Bosnian men
and boys were murdered. Krstic was indicted by the UN International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1998 on six
counts of genocide and crimes against humanity. In August 2001 he was
found guilty of genocide and sentenced to forty-six years in prison.

But the sentence was later reduced on appeal, to thirty-five years,
when the ICTY found Krstic guilty of the lesser charge of aiding and
abetting genocide.

The former speaker of the Bosnian Serb "parliament" Momcilo Krajisnik
was sentenced in September to twenty-seven years in prison for his
role in organizing the ethnic cleansing campaigns in 1992. Krajisnik
was the most senior Serbian indictee to be held at The Hague since the
death of Milosevic. He was found guilty of five counts of war crimes,
including persecution, extermination and forced transfer.

Judge Alphons Orie said that Krajisnik had played a crucial role
in conducting war crimes, and that the actus reus (guilty act) of
genocide had occurred. Nevertheless, the judges acquitted Krajisnik
of genocide, arguing that they had not received sufficient evidence of
genocidal intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat ethnic
groups. What this means is that the ICTY has ruled that genocide did
take place at Srebrenica in July 1995 and in eastern Bosnia in 1992,
but as of February 2007 no one has been found guilty of actually
committing these acts of genocide. On February 26 the International
Court of Justice, which deals with disputes between states, ruled that
Serbia was not guilty of genocide but had failed in its obligations
to prevent it at Srebrenica, further confusing matters.

Asimilarly arid debate shapes the discourse over Darfur. The Bush
Administration claims that a genocide is occurring there but refuses
to act under its obligations as a signatory to the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to stop
the killing. The UN refuses to use the G-word at all. In January
2005 it released a 176-page report on Darfur. It recorded that
government forces and their proxy militia, known as the Janjaweed,
engaged in widespread and systematic murder, rape and other forms
of sexual violence, torture, pillaging and forced displacement. The
report noted that despite the fact that two elements of genocide
"might be deduced"–the act of killing and the targeting of a
particular group–"the crucial element of genocidal intent appears
to be missing." As if that weren’t opaque enough, it added that some
individuals may have committed acts with "genocidal intent."

This endless hair-splitting greatly aids states that perpetrate
genocide. If nobody knows what genocide is, then how can anyone be
guilty of committing it? It detracts from the more important debate
of how to stop the ongoing killing in Darfur. Wrongly viewing Darfur
through the prism of the Iraq War, much of the left, both in the United
States and Europe, seems paralyzed by the fear of being seen to support
another overseas adventure. For all its complications–pre-existing
conflicts over water and agricultural land, desertification and
arbitrary international borders–the crisis in Darfur is also
simple. The Sudanese government is waging a sustained campaign of
murder, ethnic cleansing and displacement against the people of Darfur,
a campaign extensively documented by the UN, Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International, among others.

The slaughter could be curtailed or even brought to a close without
Western military intervention. Such steps might include: deploying
UN troops inside Sudan; deploying peacekeepers in Chad to prevent
cross-border raids; targeted sanctions on Sudan’s oil industry;
targeted sanctions on Sudanese government ministers, army and
intelligence officers; using US trade as a weapon to pressure China,
Sudan’s main sponsor, to stop the carnage; and even threats to boycott
the Beijing Olympics.

The obfuscation of the facts also buttresses the determination of
nations that have committed genocide to punish those few citizens who
dare to speak out. Consider, for example, the case of Turkey, which
still refuses to acknowledge its responsibility for the twentieth
century’s first genocide. A major difference between the destruction
of the Bosnians and that of the Armenians is that the former has
been thoroughly documented–most thoroughly in the United Nations’
own reports. (Though unable to prevent or stop genocide, the UN is
extremely proficient at documenting it, as evinced by its dossiers
on Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.) Yet even now in Turkey, a country
that seeks admission to the European Union, it remains hazardous to
discuss the actual fate of the Armenians. In 1915, about 1 million
Armenians were killed by deliberate murder, enforced starvation
and forced marches into barren plains with no food or water. Turkey
admits that between 300,000 and 600,000 Armenians died but blames
the general chaos of war. Those who contradict the official version
are dealt with harshly. The novelists Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006
Nobel Prize in Literature, and Elif Shafak have both faced charges
for the thought-crime of "insulting Turkishness," which can bring
three years in prison–Pamuk for telling a Swiss newspaper that
"30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands,
and nobody but me dares talk about it," Shafak because of a few
lines about the genocide spoken by an Armenian character in her novel
The Bastard of Istanbul [reviewed in this issue]. The charges were
dropped in both cases, but more recently another writer accused of
"insulting Turkishness"–Hrant Dink, editor of the Armenian-Turkish
newspaper Agos–was shot dead outside his Istanbul office.

Perhaps it is best that the Turkish historian Taner Akcam remain,
at least for a while, at the University of Minnesota, where he
teaches history. Pamuk referred to the genocide of the Armenians,
but Akcam has documented it. A Shameful Act is an important work of
record, comprehensively chronicling the destruction of the Armenians,
its causes, unfolding and consequences. Richly sourced, Akcam’s book
utilizes Ottoman materials and archives as well as American and German
documents. He writes: "What remains in the Ottoman archives and in
court records is sufficient to show that the CUP [Committee of Union
and Progress, a k a Young Turks] Central Committee, and the Special
Organization it set up to carry out its plan, did deliberately attempt
to destroy the Armenian population."

Here, at least, there seems no doubt about the question of genocidal
"intent." Akcam swiftly demolishes the argument that Armenians
were slaughtered because they had organized an uprising against
the authorities. What resistance there was came about because of
the deportations, not the other way around. The uprising in Urfa in
October 1915, for example, was launched by Armenians deported from
Van and Diyarbakir, since Urfa was a stop on the deportation route.

Yet the genocide of the Armenians, as horrific as it was, was
not an end in itself, Akcam argues. It was part of a process of
"homogenizing" the new Turkish state-to-be. Kurds and Arabs, Greeks
and Assyrians, were also ethnically cleansed at this time, although
not exterminated. This process was completed in 1923 when Greece
and Turkey compulsorily swapped their minorities, thus uprooting
perhaps 2 million people from the homelands where they had lived for
centuries. Just as Milosevic’s Greater Serbia could be built only on
the ashes of multiethnic Yugoslavia, so the new state envisioned by
the Young Turks demanded the destruction of the multinational Ottoman
Empire–an empire that, for all its faults, had allowed different
communities and minorities to live alongside one another for centuries.

In Terrible Fate, Benjamin Lieberman also traces the rise of ethnic
cleansing and mass murder to the collapse of empire: "As empires
broke apart into nation-states, processes of ethnic cleansing and
even genocide moved or eliminated many of the people who had once
lived under imperial rule." The great merit of the Ottoman and
Austro-Hungarian empires was that they were not nation-states but a
diversity of nations with a common citizenship. But what was once their
strength also doomed them, for Vienna and Constantinople had no means
of accommodating the rise of nineteenth-century nationalism, whether
Hungarian, Serbian, Greek or Arab. Lieberman, a professor of history
at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, has written a lively,
panoramic work with a fine eye for the human story. Using contemporary
accounts, eyewitness statements and diplomatic records, he examines
the Balkan wars of the late nineteenth century, the two world wars,
the Holocaust, the mass deportation of the Germans from Eastern Europe,
the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the continuing fallout
of the Ottoman Empire in Israel-Palestine, Cyprus and Iraq.

Lieberman argues persuasively that an intellectual focus on ethnic
cleansing, rather than nation-building, generates a dramatic shift
in our understanding of contemporary history. Ethnic cleansing
has repeatedly proved a necessary component of twentieth-century
nation-building: "The story of the rise of the nation-state, a triumph
of self-determination, becomes a story of tragedy for those who were
driven out." Among his examples is the Palestinian exodus of 1948,
and the creation of the State of Israel. Historians still argue
vociferously over how many Palestinians were expelled, evacuated
or simply fled in panic. Lieberman sidesteps this, arguing that
their exodus was not unique. Quite the opposite, in fact: "The Arab
departures from Israel seem mysterious only if viewed in isolation from
all comparable examples. Ethnic war in other former Ottoman regions
had displaced entire peoples, and ethnic war in Israel and Palestine
had much the same effect, though this war left some Arabs in Israel."

Lieberman writes movingly about one of the least reported instances
of ethnic cleansing in modern history: the expulsion of the ethnic
Germans of Eastern Europe after the defeat of the Third Reich.

Perhaps 12 million people fled or were ethnically cleansed, the single
largest population movement in modern European history.

For years this remained a taboo subject inside Germany, the preserve
of right-wing expellees’ groups, and even now it remains delicate.

Gunter Grass’s 2002 novel Crabwalk, which recounts the sinking of the
German refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945, finally forced
the Volksdeutsch exodus into the public arena. But in neighboring
countries there is a sense that the ethnic Germans got what they
deserved. The Germans of the Sudetenland had ushered Hitler’s army
into Czechoslovakia. The Swabians of Hungary helped keep the country’s
wartime ruler, Adm. Miklos Horthy, in the Axis when he began to waver
and consider joining the Allies.

Yet how many of the Volksdeutsch were guilty of war crimes? The
exodus brought to an end historic European communities: The Saxons of
Romania, the Danube Swabians and the Prussians of the Baltic coast
have now all but vanished. The victors were sometimes murderous:
Czech soldiers seized a train filled with German refugees, ordered
them off and shot 265 of them. In Komotau, in northwest Bohemia,
Czech forces ordered the entire male population aged between 13 and
65 to the town square and made 100 men remove their clothes, sing the
German national anthem and proclaim, "We thank our Fuhrer." A dozen
or so were then beaten to death.

Almost fifty years later, in 1992, similar atrocities were taking
place in the Serb concentration camps of northern Bosnia, such as
Omarska and Trnopolje. The same sentiments were used to justify them.

"They had committed war crimes, and now it is the other way around,"
proclaimed Milan Kovacevic, who ran Omarska. "They" were Croats and
Bosnians, and the "war crimes" had been committed during World War
II. As a baby Kovacevic had lived in Jasenovac, the main Croatian
concentration camp; as an adult he was running one, Michael Mann
observes. Like Lieberman, Mann, a professor of sociology at UCLA, has
written a broad study of genocide and ethnic cleansing, including the
Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Yugoslav wars and Rwanda. But
The Dark Side of Democracy is drier and more theoretical. Mann begins
his work with eight theses. Some merely state the obvious in academic
language: "stably institutionalized democracies are less likely than
either democratizing or authoritarian regimes to commit murderous
cleansing," which is hardly news, and "Regimes that are actually
perpetrating murderous cleansing are never democratic, since that
would be a contradiction in terms." His core argument is that murderous
ethnic cleansing results from a confusion of democracy with the demands
of the dominant ethnic group in extreme conditions. Thus "ordinary
people are brought by normal social structures into committing
murderous ethnic cleansing," assuming that "ordinary" does not mean
having an innate lust for killing. But this seems less an argument
about the dark side of "democracy" than about mob rule. At times
Mann’s book reads like a thesis in search of a reality.

Democracy means more than a simple parliamentary majority. It demands
stable, independent institutions, the rule of law and an independent
judiciary, all of which help prevent mass murder.

Mann writes perceptively of what he calls "genocidal democracies
in the New World," including Spanish Mexico, Australia and German
South West Africa, where genocide occurred in the midst of struggles
between colonists and natives over resources. He is strong on the
United States’s own genocidal history. This country, after all, was
founded on the deliberate destruction of its indigenous inhabitants
and their communities. Thomas Jefferson, its third President, drove
his compatriots on to slaughter the American Indians. "In war,"
Jefferson declared, "they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all
of them." And so they did, quite quickly. Between 1848 and 1860 the
Indian population of California fell from 150,000 to 31,000, with
most casualties caused by disease, starvation or deliberate killing.

One of Mann’s most interesting chapters looks at Stalin, Mao and Pol
Pot and what he calls "classicide," the elimination of the bourgeoisie
as these dictators struggled to impose a "revolutionary vision of a
future industrial society" on an agrarian one. Mann argues that both
"radical ethnonationalism" and "revolutionary Communism" fostered
organic ideas about "we, the people," whether as a nation or a
class. And both legitimized mass slaughter as part of that group’s
mission. This is an important point, and Mann makes it well: A powerful
sense of collective identity, no matter how inorganic or manufactured,
seems a vital precondition for the group to undertake its genocidal
"mission" and to view it as legitimate.

Mann is wrong, however, to argue that ethnic cleansing is "essentially
modern." It is true that cheap and effective weaponry–none more so
than the AK-47 assault rifle–has increased the number of victims
and the frequency of conflict. But ethnic cleansing and genocide
are arguably merely modern terms for one of humanity’s oldest–and
cruelest–pastimes. As long as humans have sought control over
resources such as land, water and food supplies, they have been
prepared to kill and lay waste to defend their assets.

As Mark Levene writes: "The path to genocide is in part, deeply
embedded in the human record and…facets of it are actually very
evident in ancient, classical, as well as more recent, pre-modern
times." Consider God’s instruction to the twelve tribes when they
arrived in what would become the land of Israel, as recorded in
Deuteronomy 7:1 and 7:2:

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the
Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites,
and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations
greater and mightier than thou;  And when the Lord thy God shall
deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy
them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.

Not only should the indigenous people be "utterly destroyed"; it was
also forbidden to marry either their sons or their daughters. King
Saul was commanded to wipe out the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant
and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." The Israelites–if these
accounts are accurate–were hardly unique in their enthusiasm for
smiting their enemies. As Levene notes: "This was clearly an ancient
Near Eastern norm." Levene, who teaches history at the University
of Southampton in Britain, has published the first two volumes of an
ambitious four-volume study, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State.

This is a discursive rather than a chronological or episodic work.

Levene argues that the centrality of the Holocaust has warped scholarly
priorities by obscuring the linkage between the extermination of
the Jews and earlier genocides. The Holocaust was unique in its
industrialization of mass murder but was also part of a grim historical
continuum. Hitler himself was well aware of the extermination of the
Armenians. In his secret speech to Wehrmacht commanders in August
1939, Hitler lauded Genghis Khan’s killing machine before asking,
"Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?"

Levene suggests that the terror of the Jacobin era in Revolutionary
France may be a prototype of later genocides. The thud of the
guillotine was a necessary precursor of a sense of "nation-state
one-ness," in which all citizens enjoyed equal rights in a "new
secular order" where disobedience, or exclusion, would be answered
with death. This echoes Mann’s arguments about the importance of
communal identity, whether class or nation-based. But whatever the
criteria for membership of the modern body politic, the wretched
inhabitants of European colonies were not included. The contrast,
Levene writes, between the absence of genocide in Europe before
1914 and "the crescendo of genocidal assaults in response to native
resistance in Africa, Asia and the Pacific at the fin-de-siècle high
point of the Western imperialist surge, is very noteworthy." These
themes are examined in greater depth in Volume II, The Rise of
the West and the Coming of Genocide. Here Levene ranges widely and
insightfully, examining mass delusions, conspiracy theories, the
rise and collapse of empires, and the cost of nationhood. Levene’s
predilection for academic base-touching and extended definitions of
terms and arguments may prove tiresome for the nonspecialist reader.

Nonetheless, if the following two volumes maintain the standards
set here, his series will be a major contribution to the field of
genocide studies.

Does it matter, then, whether General Krstic or Momcilo Krajisnik is
found guilty of genocide rather than ethnic cleansing? Perhaps not.

For despite Lemkin’s codification and subsequent international
jurisprudence, genocide, arguably, is not a distinctive phenomenon
but merely the ultimate conclusion of ethnic cleansing, itself
an age-old custom of human history. We may now be socialized not
to kill, but many of us can also be reprogrammed without too much
effort. In Warsaw in 1941, or Vukovar in 1991, the veneer of modern
civilization was thin and easy to shatter. A manufactured sense of
threat, a spreading sense of fear, the use of the broadcast media to
spread hate and issue instructions, the identification of those with
different surnames or religious faiths as a dehumanized "other," the
provision of weapons–these are often sufficient to turn a proportion
of everyday people into killers and torturers. Milan Kovacevic, the
commander of Omarska, was no uneducated brute. He was an anesthetist
and the director of Prijedor hospital. He later said: "What we did
was not the same as Auschwitz or Dachau, but it was a mistake. It
was planned to have a camp for people, but not a concentration
camp…. I cannot explain the loss of control…. You could call it
collective madness." Kovacevic was eventually indicted for genocide
and arrested. He died peacefully in his cell at the UN detention center
in 1998. But even now, in Darfur, the collective madness continues.

As Taner Akcam argues: "Every group is inherently capable of
violence; when the right conditions arise this potential may easily
become reality, and on the slightest of pretexts. There are no
exceptions." History, and today’s headlines, prove both Kovacevic
and Akcam right.

r

–Boundary_(ID_odtnyOAB2kQZzruAQAhgUw)–

THE MATTER WITH IRAN
Fred Halliday

Open Democracy, UK
March 1 2007

The key to understanding Iran’s contemporary role in the middle east
is less its millennia of statehood or its Shi’a identity than its
political dynamic as a revolutionary state, says Fred Halliday.

A few years ago, during a visit to Tehran to give some lectures at
the foreign ministry research and training institute, I was taken
to lunch by a senior Iranian diplomat at a once fashionable Italian
restaurant in the northern middle-class suburb of Tajrish. Educated
as a scientist in the United States before the 1979 revolution,
he had been an important figure in the post-revolutionary regime,
and later a senior diplomat. I had met him at various conferences
on European-Iranian relations and we had struck up something of
a rapport. On this occasion, after the usual semi-official tour
d’horizon, we began talking about the early history of the Iranian
revolution and of its foreign policy.

"We made three big mistakes", he said: first, in holding the
American diplomats hostages for a year and a half and thereby deeply
antagonising the US; second, by not accepting the very favourable peace
which Saddam Hussein had offered in the summer of 1982, when Iran had
the upper hand in the war, then already two years old; and third – to
me the most surprising of his points – in not supporting the communist
regime that came to power in Afghanistan in 1978, and instead backing
the pro-American guerrillas that (with eventual success) opposed them.

The reflections of this diplomat are of considerable relevance to the
situation in which Iran finds itself today. For sure, the pressure
being put on Iran by the US is arrogant and in many ways illegal. For
Washington to protest about Iranian "interference" in Iraq when it
is the US which invaded the country in 2003, and when it is Iranian
allies (if not clients) who staff much of the government and armed
forces of Iraq, is also ridiculous. So too is the attempt to blame
Iran for the spread of Sunni terrorism, including al-Qaida activities,
in the region. No country has a greater interest in the stability of
Iraq than Iran, a point Washington has stupidly failed to note these
four years past.

Yet there is another side to the US-Iranian polarisation that could
prove dangerous not only to Washington but also the Islamic Republic
and which arises from the miscalculations of the Iranian leadership
itself. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has made himself popular in much
of the Arab world, and among Muslims more broadly, for his outspoken
denunciations of the US. He has also heartened many by his calls for
the destruction of Israel (something he did indeed call for, despite
claims by some inside and outside Iran that he was mistranslated: the
words mahv bayad bashad [must be wiped out] leave no room for doubt).

Yet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also thrown caution, and a due evaluation
of the enmity and strength of his enemies, to the wind. (Ayatollah
Khomeini once rebuked Ali Akbar Velayati for following him in a
violent denunciation of Saudi Arabia, reminding the longstanding
the foreign minister that it was his job to maintain relations with
other states.) At the same time the president has indulged in a set
of ill-conceived economic policies at home, squandering oil revenue
to boost consumption, launching retrograde educational and cultural
campaigns against secularism, while failing to meet the campaign
promises to the poor that, in 2005, secured his surprise election.

The failure of his candidates to prevail in the December 2006 elections
to the Expediency Council, an important constitutional watchdog,
and a growth of criticism even from conservatives and other clerics,
augurs ill for his future.

No one can tell where the current confrontation between Tehran
and Washington will lead to. Perhaps, as a result of impatience,
miscalculation or innate risk-taking, Iran and the US will be at war in
the near future. Or it may prove to be the case that both are playing
for time: the Iranians want to spin out negotiations with the west
over the nuclear issue until the US position in Iraq is even weaker,
the US may want to stay its hand in the hope that domestic economic
and social problems will further weaken the regime and allow them to
precipitate political upheaval. Everything is possible.

The roots of turbulence

In this context it is worth looking more closely at the way in which
Iran formulates its foreign policy, and the roots of its high-risk
policy. Much is made of the fact that Iran is an ancient imperial
power, one of the four countries in the world – along with China, Egypt
and Yemen – which can claim continuity as a state over 3,000 years.

It may also be some satisfaction to Iranian leaders that with
their influence in Lebanon and Palestine, Iran now has a military
emplacement on the shores of the Mediterranean for the first time since
the Achaemenid empire (c 550-350 BCE). Moreover, Iran’s aspiration to
nuclear capability, in whatever form, is as much due to the aspiration
to be a major power as to military factors, just as is the retention
of what are in practice useless and expensive weapons by Britain
and France.

Certainly, Iranian official, and popular, attitudes towards nearly
all their neighbours (with the interesting exception of the Armenians)
are replete with prejudice and a sense of superiority.

"You colonialists left your goat’s droppings around the region,
but sooner or later we will sweep them away", one interlocutor in
Tehran said to me. When I asked what these "goat’s droppings" were,
he replied: "Pakistan, Iraq and Israel".

It is in part this self-perception which explains one of the most
constant features of Iranian foreign policy over the past century,
and one to which my diplomat companion was drawing attention during
our lunch in Tehran: namely, the recurrent tendency of Iranian leaders
to overplay their hand. Even a brief list is striking:

in the second world war, Reza Shah, the first of the two Pahlavi
monarchs, thought he could balance British and Russian pressure by
maintaining relations with Germany, but in the end, and as soon as
Russia entered the war in 1941, Iran was invaded and Reza Shah sent
off to exile in Mauritius in the early 1950s, the nationalist prime
minister Mohammad Mossadeq thought he could nationalise Iranian oil
(hitherto a monopoly of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, today’s BP) on
his own terms and avoid a compromise with western governments: in the
end, he was overthrown in the CIA and MI6 coup of August 1953 during
the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini failed to grasp the
Iraqi near-surrender of 1982, a consequence of his belief that Iranian
forces could topple the Iraqi regime and impose a Shi’a substitute;
the result was six more years of war, the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Iranians, the entry of the US navy into the war on the
side of the Iraqis, and (in August 1988) a far less favourable peace.

Much is made too of the fact that Iran is the most important Shi’a
state and that the last great Persian dynasty, the Safavid (1502-1736)
made Shi’ism a powerful political and military, as well as cultural,
force in the region, a rival for centuries to the Sunni Ottoman empire
to the west. This Shi’a identity, one that the mullahs have in any
case overblown, has also proved to be a mixed blessing for the Islamic
republic; for many outside Iran – and even for Shi’a in countries like
Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – Iran’s projection of its Shi’ism has
put them in a difficult situation, not least for the implied claim
of the superior authority of clergy, and politicians, based inside
Iran. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shi’a cleric in Iraq, and
himself an Iranian, has long sought to limit such influence, as has,
in a much rougher way, the rising Shi’a leader, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iran’s imperial and nationalist past and its Shi’a identity, are
not, however, enough to explain the noisy and risky policy Iran
is pursuing today. Here two other factors need to be brought into
account. The first is that Iran is an oil-producing country, a fact
that, especially at a time of high oil prices, gives to the state
some leeway simultaneously to mollify the people and pursue expensive
military programmes.

The problem is that these expenditures do little to alleviate the
long-term problems of the economy and are usually, is the Iranian case,
and also that of Venezuela, accompanied by much waste, corruption
and factionalism. In this regard, Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez are two
of a kind: intoxicated with their own rhetoric, insouciant about the
longer term economic development of their oil industries and economy
as a whole, and wilfully provocative, towards the United States and
immediate neighbours alike, in foreign policy.

The second and indeed the most important (and neglected) factor
explaining contemporary Iran, however, is a fact evident in its
historical origin, policy and rhetoric: that the Islamic Republic of
Iran is a country that has emerged from a revolution and that this
revolution has far from lost its dynamic, at home or abroad.

It is not in the imperial dreams of ancient Persia, or the global
vision of Shi’a clergy, but in the repetition by Iran of the same
policies, aspirations and mistakes of previous revolutionary regimes,
from France in the 1790s, to Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s that the
underlying logic of its actions can be seen.

The trap of revolution

The Iranian revolution of 1978-79 was, as much as those of France,
Russia, China or Cuba, one of the major social and political
upheavals of modern history. Like its predecessors, it set out not
only to transform its own internal system – for sure at a high cost
in repression, wastage and illusion – but to export revolution. And
this Iran did: to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon in the 1980s and now to
Palestine and, in much more favourable circumstances thanks to the US,
to Iraq again. It can indeed be argued that it is the confrontation
between internationalist revolutionary Iran on one side, and the US
and its regional allies on the other, that has been the major axis
of conflict in the middle east this past quarter of a century. By
comparison, America’s war with Sunni, al-Qaida-type, militancy is a
secondary affair.

Here, however, Iran has fallen into the traps and illusions of
other revolutionaries. Like the French revolutionaries, the Iranians
proclaim themselves to be at once the friend of all the oppressed
and "a great nation" (a phrase Khomeini used that echoed, whether
wittingly or not, the Jacobins of 1793). Like the early Bolsheviks,
the Islamic revolutionaries began their revolution thinking diplomacy
was an oppression and should be swept aside – hence the detention of
the US diplomats as hostages. Like the Cubans and Chinese, they have
combined unofficial supplies of arms, training and finance to their
revolutionary allies with the, calculated, intervention of their
armed forces.

All of this has its cost. The gradual moderation of Iran under the
presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1987-2005) reflected a sense of
exhaustion after the eight-year war with Iraq and a desire for more
normal external relations with the outside world, like the period of
the Girondins in the France of the late 1790s, or the policies of Liu
Shao-chi in China of the early 1960s: but as in those other cases,
and as in the USSR of Stalin in the 1930s, there were those who
wanted to go in a very different direction, and proceeded to tighten
the screws of repression, and raise confrontational rhetoric once
again. A comparison could indeed be made with the Russia of the early
1930s or the China of the 1960s, and say that Iran under Ahmadinejad
is now going through its "third period" or a mild replica of the
"cultural revolution".

How long this can continue is anyone’s guess; but it is likely to
be years, perhaps many, before the Islamic revolution has run its
course. Even Cuba, weak and exposed by comparison, has sustained
its defiance and its model for well over four decades now. Yet even
without war with the US, the risks and the costs (as many people in
Iran realise only too well) are high.

Here, and again in a spirit of comparison, it is worth recalling the
words of one of the wisest observers of modern revolutions, the now
sadly deceased Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski. His book The Soccer
War contains a passage observing the Algeria of the mid-1960s under
Ahmad Ben Bella that apply to all revolutions, uncannily so in the
case of Iran today:

"Algeria became the pivotal Third World state, but the cost of its
status – above all the financial cost – was staggering. It ate up
millions of dollars for which the country had a crying need …

Gradually, the gap between Ben Bella’s domestic and foreign
policies grew wider. The contrast deepened. Algeria had earned an
international reputation as a revolution state … it was an example
for the non-European continents, a model, bright and entrancing;
while at home, the country was stagnating; the unemployed filled
the square of every city; there was no investment; illiteracy ruled,
bureaucracy, reaction, fanaticism ran riot; intrigues absorbed the
attention of the government … The country cannot carry the burden
of these polices. It cannot afford to and it has no interest in them."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his advisers, and those of Hugo Chavez too,
would do well to read and ponder these words.

‘IMPEACHMENT BLOC’ AMONG ARMENIAN VOTE CONTENDERS
By Ruzanna Stepanian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
March 1 2007

A small opposition alliance pursuing the single goal of impeaching
President Robert Kocharian was officially registered to contest the
May 12 parliamentary elections on Thursday.

The bloc bearing the English-language name Impeachment formally
consists of two small parties supporting former President Levon
Ter-Petrosian. But the driving force behind it is the Aylentrank
(Alternative) movement that was launched late last year by a group
of prominent politicians and intellectuals in opposition to Kocharian.

Some of them, notably former parliament speaker Babken Ararktsian,
used to hold senior positions in the Ter-Petrosian administration.

Others are much younger Western-oriented figures like Nikol Pashinian,
editor of "Haykakan Zhamanak," Armenia’s best-selling daily. Pashinian
told RFE/RL that Impeachment’s list of candidates will be submitted
to the Central Election Commission (CEC) by Saturday.

As well as campaigning for regime change, Aylentrank claims to offer
an ideological alternative to Armenia’s current leadership, which
it accuses of rolling back political reforms and endangering the
country’s sovereignty. The movement embarked on a campaign of rallies
on February 20 in a bid to win over the hearts and minds of Armenians.

However, its first rally was attended by up to 1,000 people,
highlighting Ter-Petrosian allies’ persisting lack of popularity. The
next Aylentrank gathering is scheduled for Friday.

Aylentrank leaders hoped that Impeachment would unite a wide range
of big and small opposition parties refusing to recognize Kocharian’s
legitimacy. But none of the opposition heavyweights has shown interest
in the initiative. Even some Ter-Petrosian allies are skeptical
about it.

Meanwhile, the Kocharian-controlled CEC voiced no objections to the
bloc’s name as it promptly registered Impeachment in the presence of
journalists. Still, the CEC chairman, Garegin Azarian, had trouble
uttering the word "impeachment" during the public ceremony, cutting
short his customary congratulation of a newly registered election
contender. "We congratulate … ," Azarian paused, grinning. "I had
better not say that. Let’s move on," he added.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HOUSE DEMOLITIONS CONTINUE IN YEREVAN
By Shakeh Avoyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
March 1 2007

Security forces used force to evict on Thursday yet another family
in downtown Yerevan whose old house has been confiscated by the state
to be torn down by private real estate developers.

The family of nine persons were forced out of their eight-room property
after refusing to accept a $23,000 compensation offered by municipal
authorities. Citing "public needs," the authorities have decided to
give it to the owner of an adjacent building housing a night club
and a department store.

The evicted residents say the proposed compensation is worth a
fraction of the market value of their home and insufficient even
for buying a tiny apartment on the city outskirts. The authorities
counter that the sum is modest partly because some parts of the house
were constructed illegally.

The main house owner, Samvel Gharibian, has unsuccessfully challenged
his family’s displacement in two courts. He filed an appeal to
Armenia’s Court of Cassation and is currently awaiting a judgment.

Justice Ministry bailiffs, backed up by special police, cited the
lower court rulings as they broke into Gharibian’s house. His wife and
one of the daughters put up fierce resistance to the law-enforcement
officers, screaming and condemning them as "fascists." The pregnant
young woman was injured in the scuffle and required medical assistance.

In the meantime, dozens of other people, who have already been evicted
from other old neighborhoods of Yerevan, gathered outside in a show of
solidarity with the Gharibian family. "You don’t defend the interests
of the people," one man shouted at the bailiffs.

"I’m not the one who is forcing them out," countered one of the
officials.

Hundreds of families have been affected by the ongoing controversial
redevelopment which is rapidly changing the city center. Many of them
have been similarly unhappy with the modest amount of compensations,
alleging high-level government corruption. Some have resisted eviction
by filing lawsuits and even building barricades.

The Armenian constitution stipulates that private property can
be taken away by the state "only in exceptional cases involving
overriding public interests, in a manner defined by law, and with
a prior commensurate compensation." The process has until now
been regulated only by government directives, however. Armenia’s
Constitutional Court effectively declared it illegal in April, but
stopped short of ordering the authorities to return the increasingly
expensive land to their former owners. It only ordered the government
to pass a bill regulating all aspects of urban development.

The government-controlled parliament approved such a bill last November
amid strong protests from the opposition minority which considers it
too discretionary. It essentially allows the authorities to continue
to demolish old houses in the capital and other parts of the country
by simply invoking "needs of the public and the state."

The government again used that prerogative at a weekly meeting on
Thursday, approving redevelopment projects in some parts of the
Armenian capital. A government press release did not specify those
areas.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

INDICTED MP SNUBBED BY OWN PARTY
By Ruzanna Stepanian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
March 1 2007

Hakob Hakobian, a controversial lawmaker prosecuted for tax evasion
and assault, will not be backed by his governing Republican Party
of Armenia (HHK) in the upcoming parliamentary elections, it emerged
on Thursday.

The HHK decided late Wednesday to endorse instead a newly retired
top army general who will be running for parliament in Hakobian’s
single-mandate constituency covering the southern town of Echmiadzin
and surrounding villages. The move set the stage for one of the most
intriguing and potentially tense individual election races.

Major-General Seyran Saroyan was relieved of his duties as commander of
Armenia’s Fourth Army Corps last month to be able to participate in the
May 12 polls. Media reports said the HHK leadership wants Saroyan to
unseat Hakobian as it considers the latter a political liability. Both
men have extensive business interests in the area south of Yerevan.

Hakobian, who joined the HHK last year, was charged with "hooliganism,"
tax evasion and other financial irregularities in October immediately
after fellow lawmakers agreed to lift his legal immunity from
prosecution. The charges stem from a mass brawl at a gas distribution
facility near Yerevan that was allegedly provoked by the wealthy
parliamentarian. State prosecutors completed a criminal investigation
into the incident in January and were due to forward the case to the
court shortly.

Hakobian, better known as "Choyt," said the decision not to back his
reelection bid was made by "one or two" top Republicans, rather than
the party’s governing board. "My friends tell me that such an issue
was not even discussed by the board last night," he told RFE/RL. "I
don’t know why they decided so."

Asked how he plans to compete with the feared general, the 43-year-old
said, "I’m not going to compete. I’m just going to present my programs
to the people and the people will decide whom to vote for."

Hakobian also insisted that he will not drop out of the race. "Do I
look like a man who would quit mid-way through the race?" he said.

AIMOC TO SUE COMPANIES EXPLOITING GOLD FIELDS IN OCCUPIED AZERI LANDS

Today, Azerbaijan
March 1 2007

Azerbaijan International Mining Operating Company wants an
international monitoring group to be sent to the occupied Azerbaijani
lands in order to get acquainted with the situation of gold fields,
AIMOC President Rza Veziri told.

"We have appealed to the UN and Armenian government to ensure the
security. Armenia hasn’t answered to the appeal so far which proves
that Armenia exploits these fields illegally," he said.

Veziri noted that AIMOC has sent protest letter to the governments
of the countries of which companies are engaged in illegal gold
extraction in Nagorno Karabakh territory.

AIMOC is preparing necessary documents to bring those companies to
the international court, APA reports.

URL:

USE OF FORCE IN IRAN WOULD THREATEN CENTRAL ASIA – CSTO

RIA Novosti
17:01|01/ 03/ 2007

DUSHANBE, March 1 (RIA Novosti) – A possible military operation
against Iran would jeopardize the security of the Central Asian states,
the head of a post-Soviet security group said Thursday.

Iran has been at the center of international concerns since January
2006 over its nuclear program, which some countries, particularly the
United States, suspect is geared toward nuclear weapons development.

Reports in the Western media say the U.S. could start a war against
Iran at any moment.

"Air strikes on Iran will not stop its nuclear program," Nikolai
Bordyuzha, general secretary of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, told a news conference after a meeting with Tajik
President Emomali Rakhmonov.

Russia, a key economic partner of Iran, has consistently supported
the Islamic Republic’s right to nuclear power under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and has resisted the imposition of
harsh sanctions.

Russia is building a nuclear power plant in Bushehr in southern Iran,
a project worth $1 billion, on a contract signed in 1995.

Bordyuzha said the situation in Afghanistan also threatens the Central
Asian countries, adding that NATO has shown no interest in cooperating
with the CSTO in the country.

Afghanistan has regained its position as the world’s top drug producer
since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. Illegal drug
production and trade is the only source of income for many in the
war-torn southwest Asian nation, and is a major source of financing
for Islamist militants.

CSTO members – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – use the organization as a platform for
fighting drug trafficking, terrorism, and organized crime, and have
pledged to provide immediate military assistance to each other in
the event of an attack. The bloc has a Collective Rapid Reaction
Force deployed in Central Asia, and is continuing to build up its
military forces.

Two CSTO members, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, share borders with
Afghanistan and are major trafficking routes for drug smugglers from
the country. Heroin and other drugs from Afghanistan have also flooded
Russia and other ex-Soviet states since the 1990s.

PARLIAMENT OF TURKEY TO GIVE LEGISLATORS BOOKLETS IN WHICH ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS DISPROVED

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Mar 01 2007

ANKARA, MARCH 1, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The Grand National
Assembly of Turkey published booklets and books which will be given
to 550 American legislators to prevent discussion of the resolution
concerning the Armenian Genocide recognition at the U.S. Congress
House of Representatives and to propagate official position of Ankara
in that issue.

The second delegation of the Turkish Parliament leaving for Washington
on March 11 will undertake that "mission." The first delegation left
on February 26.

The booklets were published in the English, French, German, Turkish
and Italian languages. Those will be sent to parliaments of other
countries as well.

The booklets and books were published under the control of Egemen
Bagis, the Chairman of the Turkish-American Parliamentary Friendship
Group as well as of Aziz Akgul, the deputy of the Justice and
Development Party ruling in Turkey elected from Diyarbakir. They got
the documents "disproving" the genocide from the History Institute
of Turkey.

As the Turkish "Zaman" daily states, the first 4 pages of the booklet
tell about "events" of 1915-1918, and 14 pages "prove" as if those
"events" may not be qualified as a genocide.

Bagis expressed confidence that the U.S. Congress will not accept
that resolution: "I do not think that the United States will make
such a great mistake.

The U.S. will not be caught in the Armenian Diaspora’s trap."