Month: April 2007

HOW AVO MADE A NAME BEFORE BIG BROTHER STARTED WATCHING
by Pieter Tesch

Lloyd’s List, UK
April 19 2007

Review
A legendary figure who might not exist in today’s climate is lauded

WALES has gone "smoke free". Or rather, that is the government spin
on the situation. And Northern Ireland will be reunited with the rest
of Ireland next month, if only in the sense of harmonised anti-smoking
legislation.

Some might observe that legislation against personal liberty is
nothing new or particularly unusual in Irish history.

But who would have though that it would be the Celtic fringe that
led the way in passing laws that restrict personal liberties?

It might be easier to stomach if the public health had shown marked
improvement in the interim.

The initial assessment from Scotland a year after its own ban is that
people are not smoking any less and some say this is the story from
Ireland as well.

However, one result is that the pace of closure of traditional pubs
is quickening because not all old-style watering holes have space
for "smoking extensions" or the awnings springing up on the side of
Irish pubs.

The smarter alternative is to morph into the kind of gastro-pub so
beloved by the Blairite and Cameronist wings of the Islington-Notting
Hill axis.

It is no small irony that so many of our liberties – as well much of
our popular culture – were born in inns and coffee houses, and without
them one wonders whether such legendary figures as Avo Uvezian would
thrive or even exist.

It was Edward Sahakian of the Davidoff shop in St James’s who told
me his story when I dropped in the other day.

A fellow Armenian born in Beirut in 1926, Uvezian has had a colourful
career and at 81 he is still going strong, "touring as a jazz pianist
and loving all the good things in life, food, wine -and he can still
charm the ladies", according to Sahakian.

Born into a family of classical performers, young Avo became a jazz
musician making his name as a pianist and band leader of the Lebanon
Boys. In 1947 he emigrated to the US and, after serving in the Korean
war, he settled in Puerto Rico.

Here he discovered his love for cigars and was soon experimenting
with different blends for his custom-made products, sharing them with
guests at his club. And so the Avo brand was established.

The step to commercial production was taken during the 1980s when
he met master producer Hendrik Kelner in the Dominican Republic,
eventually becoming part of the Davidoff stable after the producer
recognised a kindred spirit.

The Domaine Avo range is being discontinued and replaced by the
XO series, explained Sahakian. But he stressed that Avo’s quality
commitment to aged and blended Dominican tobaccos was not being
compromised.

For instance the XO Trio Preludio is a lovely larger corona (15.2 cm,
40 ring gauge), selling in tube at £8.60. Likewise the XO Quartetto
Notturno, a smaller chubbier corona (12.7 cm, 42 ring), selling a
tube at £8.

They sit nicely with Davidoff’s other brands such as Griffin – its
tubed robusto (£8.80) or pyramide (£9.40). There is also a smaller
robusto Griffin tubed version available at £8.80.

But to spoil oneself one can still indulge in the Davidoff Millennium
robusto at £16.40 or pyramide at £18.30. "We still have a good stock
and I am sure Avo won’t mind," said Sahakian with a smile.

SmokeSignals

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US ASSAULT ON TURKEY
By Scott Sullivan

Assyrian International News Agency
April 19 2007

The US is on the brink of losing Turkey as a strategic partner. Three
highly controversial issues are in play. First, the Armenian genocide
resolution is now before Congress and is expected to pass. Second,
thanks to the passivity of US forces in Iraq, the PKK is secure in
guerrilla encampments in northern Iraq. The PKK is now carrying its
fight into Turkey from these camps, while the US ignores pleas from
Turkey to push the PKK out of northern Iraq. Third, with US approval,
the Kurds are pressuring Iraq’s government to advance a Kirkuk status
referendum, now scheduled for November 15, that would bring Kirkuk
and its vast oil wealth under Kurdish and PKK control.

Turkey’s loss on even one of these issues would have serious negative
consequences for Turkey’s military and civilian leadership. Turkey
could lose on all three. The anti-Turkey sentiment in Congress is
strong, Bill Clinton has just come out in support of the PKK, and Paul
Wolfowitz and the neo-cons have abandoned Turkey. In this regard, not
a single op-ed favorable to Turkey has been posted by the neo-cons,
who are now pro-Kurdish.

What about the Bush administration? Sadly, the most that the Bush
administration will for Turkey is attempt to convince the congressional
leadership to sideline the Armenian genocide resolution before it
comes to a vote in the House and the Senate. Even this might be
beyond the Bush administration’s reach given the Bush-Pelosi warfare
on foreign affairs.

In addition, the Bush Administration could approve one or two Turkish
raids on the PKK camps in northern Iraq. However, as a price for
this policy, the US may insist that Iraq’s proposal go forward for
the 15 November referendum that would transfer Kirkuk to the Kurdish
Regional Government.

Unfortunately for Turkey, under such a limited US policy, the PKK
will survive the Turkish raids and expand dramatically once the
Kirkuk referendum is approved. Turkey would be foolish to believe
that Kurdish leader Barzani would hold back the PKK once the Kirkuk
referendum is approved.

Moreover, the US is creating severe problems for Turkey in Iraq beyond
the Kirkuk referendum. The current US military policy is to stabilize
Baghdad first. This policy has the effect of projecting Iraq’s crisis
northward to Mosul, where Al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists can
find softer targets.I

In short, the Bush administration is now demanding that Turkey face
enormous risks by accepting PKK camps in northern Iraq, accepting the
transfer of Kirkuk to Kurdish control, and accepting a US policy in
Iraq that is driving Sunni terrorism to Mosul and northern Iraq.

What is worse, the US has permitted Iran to align with the Kurds and
virtually dominate the Baghdad government. Iran is the big winner
from US intervention in Iraq, while Turkey will be the big loser.

Again, the US is on the brink of losing Turkey as a strategic
partner. In compensation, the US will pick up the fascist Kurdish
leader Barzani, the PKK, and Iran. Perhaps President Bush and Bill
Clinton can explain how US interests are advanced by this US assault
on Turkey.

KHAZAR IBRAHIM: "ARMENIA’S CONSTRUCTIVE APPROACH IS NEEDED TO REACH REAL SOLUTION TO THE KARABAKH CONFLICT"

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 19 2007

"The real solution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict can be reached
if the two parties showed constructive approach and take into
consideration the territorial integrity of states under international
law principles," Foreign Ministry’s press secretary Khazar Ibrahim
said.

"There is a real paper on the table. I suppose Azerbaijan will not
step back. We could be close to a resolution. I can assure you we
have never been this close."

According to the Foreign Ministry press secretary, Azerbaijan
demonstrated such constructive approach.

"To achieve the mentioned ideal settlement of the problem, Armenia
should practically carry out opinions and thesis which is often
uttered by it," he underlined.

The diplomat said in this case, a solution based on realities can
be reached.

Armenian parliament speaker Tigran Torosian called the best solution
to the conflict based on conformation of nations’ self-determination
and territorial integrity principles.

TURKEY DETAINS 5 MORE IN CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY SLAYING
By Amberin Zaman

Voice of America
April 19 2007

Police in Turkey have detained five more suspects in connection with
an attack against a Christian publishing house in the conservative
eastern city of Malatya. Three employees were killed Wednesday by
knife-wielding assailants, who reportedly said they were acting to
protect Islam. From Istanbul, Amberin Zaman reports for the VOA.

Malatya Governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz, 19 Apr 2007 Governor Halil
Ibrahim Dasoz says police have arrested five more suspects, doubling
the number of people detained in connection with the attack on the
Zirve publishing house. The publisher distributes bibles and publishes
Christian material.

Dasoz told reporters that no links have been established between
the alleged killers and illegal Islamic groups. The three victims,
two Turkish citizens who were converts to Christianity and a German
Protestant, were found bound to chairs with their throats slit.

Turkish police officers detain a suspect following attack on a
publishing house in Malatya, southeastern Turkey, 18 Apr 2007 Turkish
media said the suspects were mainly students who lived at a hostel
run by an Islamic foundation.

Wednesday’s killings drew sharp protests from EU governments that
have long criticized Turkey over discrimination against non-Muslim
and non-Turkish minorities.

Last year, an Italian Catholic priest was shot dead by an
ultra-nationalist teenager in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. In
January, an ethnic-Armenian news editor, Hrant Dink, was gunned down
by a teenager in Istanbul, raising fears of a concerted campaign
against the country’s tiny Christian community.

The Chairman of Turkey’s Protestant Churches’ Union, Bedri Peker,
told a news conference anti-Christian sentiment has been fostered by
Turkey’s nationalist education system and encouraged by politicians
and the media.

Peker added that Turkey’s Christians have the right to worship freely
and spread their faith through peaceful means, but they are regarded
as what he called "spies and enemies of the state."

Ihsan Ozbek, the pastor of the Ankara-based Kurtulus Church that has
received many anonymous threats, told VOA in a telephone interview
that he blames the murders on a climate of intolerance towards
Christians. He added that no government official outside Malatya has
contacted church officials to offer condolences.

Turkey’s government, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a
former Islamist, has expressed concern over the spread of Christian
missionary activity in Turkey. Mehmet Aydin, minister of state in
charge of religious affairs, has called missionaries "separatist
and destructive."

There are mounting worries among pro-secular Turks that Mr. Erdogan
will make a bid for the presidency when the incumbent Ahmet Necdet
Sezer steps down in May. Throughout his seven-year term, Mr Sezer,
a former judge, blocked government moves he viewed as a threat to
the secular tenets laid down by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk.

Mr. Erdogan has not yet announced his intentions, but he has pledged
to remain faithful to Ataturk’s legacy.

TURKEY’S PRESIDENCY – A TURKISH TANGLE

The Economist, UK
April 19 2007

The argument over the presidency of Turkey turns even nastier

WAS it another provocation by the "deep state"-the shadowy alliance
of rogue security forces and ultra-nationalist thugs-aimed at
stopping Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
from becoming the country’s new president? Or the work of Islamist
extremists? Speculation raged after yet another attack, on April 18th,
on Christian targets, this time a publishing house that distributes
Bibles in the city of Malatya. The killers bound the hands and legs
of three men and then slit their throats. Two of the victims, one of
them German, died immediately; the third died in hospital.

Turkey’s Christians are saying they no longer feel safe. The interior
minister, Abdulkadir Aksu, declared that the real target was the
country’s stability. Last year an Italian priest was shot by a
nationalist teenager in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. In January
another teenager shot dead an Armenian news editor, Hrant Dink.

The latest attack took place as Mr Erdogan was meeting fellow leaders
of his ruling AK Party to decide if he should replace President Ahmet
Necdet Sezer, a fiercely secular former judge, when his seven-year
term ends in May. They urged Mr Erdogan not to run, but instead to
lead the party into November’s parliamentary election.

Some aides reckon that Mr Erdogan may not declare his intentions
until just before the April 25th registration deadline.

Yet the longer he waits, the greater secular opposition becomes. In
the past two weeks, the chief of the general staff, General Yasar
Buyukanit, has said that the new president should be pro-secular not
only "in words" but also "in spirit". Days later Mr Sezer repeated an
assertion by the general that secularism "faces its gravest threat"
since Ataturk founded the republic 84 years ago. The main opposition
party is threatening to boycott the parliamentary vote for president
if Mr Erdogan runs.

On April 14th over 300,000 Turks, chanting anti-government slogans
and waving Turkish flags, marched on Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara.

It was one of the biggest public rallies in recent history. Citing
"public sensitivities", Arzuhan Yalcindag, president of TUSIAD,
Turkey’s big industrialists’ lobby, said she did not believe Mr Erdogan
would become president. "It was a polite way of advising him not to,"
said a fellow businesswoman.

Yet contrary to claims by the hotchpotch of retired generals,
nationalists and anti-European Union activists who organised
the rally, many attendees seemed less concerned by Mr Erdogan’s
supposedly Islamist agenda than by a general malaise over their
future. This reflects several things: worries over globalisation,
violence in neighbouring Iraq, renewed Kurdish separatism, a feeling
of being slighted by the EU. Many are also disgruntled by the rampant
corruption of some AK officials that Mr Erdogan has failed to curb.

The bigger worry among Turkey’s Western friends is Mr Erdogan’s waning
interest in human rights. Neither he nor anybody in his cabinet uttered
a peep when 50 policemen recently stormed the offices of a liberal
weekly, Nokta. Acting on orders from a military prosecutor, they copied
the contents of every single computer, including journalists’ personal
e-mails, on the ground that they might contain "official secrets". The
order came after Nokta had published an internal military document
blacklisting selected journalists.

The magazine is also under investigation for running excerpts from a
retired admiral’s diary. In it he describes two planned coups against
Mr Erdogan in 2004 cooked up by four top military commanders.

Codenamed "Moonlight" and "Blonde Girl", the plots failed to gather
support from fellow officers, the admiral wrote, "because the
Turkish people don’t want coups anymore." Nokta’s managing editor,
Alper Gormus, says the only sympathy he has had is a bouquet of
chrysanthemums from a local AK official. Yet the government could
have prevented the raid if it wanted to, he says, "because it was
the justice minister who gave the final nod."

KARABAKH’S LONELIEST VILLAGE
By Lusine Musaelian in Jrakn

Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
April 19 2007

The Karapetian family live in total isolation – but long for
neighbours.

The village of Jrkan in Nagorny Karabakh has a population of just two.

Husband and wife Sanasar and Gohar Karapetian are the only inhabitants
– and they are not even natives of this ghostly village.

Jrakn is situated 100 kilometres – a two-hour car journey on rough
roads – from Stepanakert, capital of the unrecognised republic of
Nagorny Karabakh.

The Karapetians have lived here on their own for 11 years, deprived
of human contact. Their nearest neighbours live several km away and
it’s several months since Gohar, 58, and her husband, 63, last spoke
to anyone.

The nearest human habitation is the village of Norashen, a veritable
metropolis by comparison, with a population of 100 people living in
new houses built by the New York-based charity the Armenian General
Benevolent Union.

It’s a half hour walk from Jrakn to Norashen – but when the road
linking the two is covered in mud, which is often the case, it takes
much longer.

"Someone died in the next village," said Gohar. "We heard about it
and attended the funeral. Everybody was staring at us in surprise –
maybe we look different from everyone else. We shared food with them,
stayed there for a while and then came back.

"They also told us there that the United States wants to start a war
against our neighbour Iran. We got scared, and I prayed in my mind
to God asking him to prevent anything bad befalling us."

Sanasar barely takes part in our conversation and according to his
wife, "the poor man has grown shy due to lack of human contact".

The couple ended up re-settling in Jrakn in the south of Nagorny
Karabakh, after they lost their house in the devastating earthquake
that shook the Armenian city of Gyumri in 1988.

Their house was destroyed and nine of their relatives were buried
under the ruins. They were left with a bed, two sets of bed linen
and a fridge.

For a long time, they lived in a garage, before they decided to build
a new home in the Armenian-controlled territory of Karabakh.

Jrakn was also a bleak village of ruins when the couple arrived –
a victim of the bitter 1991-4 Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Karabakh.

Apart from their makeshift house, it still has nothing but ruins
and trees.

The Karapetians chose Jrakn purely by accident.

"Our friends advised us to leave for Karabakh saying it’s easier to
survive there," said Gohar. "We found a map of Karabakh, studied it
and picked Hadrut region. We managed to reach this village somehow.

The landscape is very beautiful and fertile. So we started living
here."

In the two years they spent building a new house, the couple had to
sleep in their car as there was nowhere else to live. "Sometimes I
woke at night in the car and saw the foxes and jackals surround our
car – it was very scary," said Gohar.

The Karapetians’ house looks more like a cabin with a cattle-shed and
a garden full of fruit trees standing in front of it. Sanasar built
a small garage to put his car in, but the car has long since given
up the ghost.

Inside, the two rooms are gloomy and the concrete floor is muddy.

The Karapetians use one of the two rooms of the house as a storeroom,
keeping their crops of pumpkins, nuts and potatoes in one, while
the other serves as their bedroom and dining room. The windows are
covered with an oilcloth because "glassing them over requires lots
of money". The one source of light in the gloomy room is a dim bulb.

For heating fuel, they rely entirely on firewood, which has to be
fetched from a long distance. Water is collected from a nearby spring
and rainwater irrigates the garden. They have one cooking pan, which
they use to prepare food for themselves and their animals.

The couple’s only income is Gohar’s monthly pension of 10,000 drams
(28 US dollars). Her husband earns nothing because he lacks the
required documents.

"Thanks to Karabakh president Arkady Ghukasian my pension went up from
3000 to 10,000 drams. I wrote him a letter telling about my life. I
got nervous and excited when writing, and my tears made the letter
wet. I didn’t have any spare paper to write another one, so I sent
him a damp letter. Perhaps he felt how miserable we were and helped
us. May the Lord help him," said Gohar. She said that she uses the
extra money to pay electricity bills.

The couple are cut off from events in the rest of the world. They have
never had a television set in their house. There are no newspapers
even in the neighbouring village. The house contains neither a clock
nor a calendar. "We only know when it Friday as that’s the day when
soldiers march down by the lower path," said Sanasar.

They are not particularly interested in politics either, and when it
comes to the referendum on the constitution held in Nagorny Karabakh
last year, they say, "We never knew whether it passed or not."

The couple would like some neighbours, however, and according to
the Yerevan office of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, there
are plans to resettle Jrakn. The website of the AGBU says that the
charity plans to build 20 houses in the village by 2008, encouraging
Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan to settle here. It says that the
construction of the first ten houses will be finished by the first
quarter of 2007 and another ten houses will be built by summer 2008.

However, there is no sign of building work and the head of the
Migration, Refugees and Resettlement department in the Nagorny
Karabakh government, Serzh Amirkhanian, says there are no immediate
plans for reconstruction.

Meanwhile, Gohar and Sanasar would love to see their grandchildren
again in Armenia. Ever since they came here, they have not had the
opportunity to visit their family, still living in a garage in their
hometown of Gyumri.

"Every night I dream of Gyumri," said the grandmother. "I wish at
least two of them could come here, marry…and live…"

"We put our whole life into it, didn’t we?" added Gohar, saying that
they would never leave Jrakn after enduring so many hardships.

Lusine Musaelian is a reporter of Demo paper published in Nagorny
Karabakh and a participant in IWPR’s Cross-Caucasus Journalism
Network project.

TSARUKIAN AGAIN ABSENT AS PARTY CAMPAIGNS IN SOUTHERN ARMENIA
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 19 2007

The Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), one of the presumed favorites to
win the May 12 parliamentary elections, campaigned in the southern
Ararat region on Thursday in the mysterious absence of its leader,
businessman Gagik Tsarukian.

Senior BHK members gave conflicting explanations for Tsarukian’s
failure to attend this and other the pre-election events organized
by the party over the past week.

"He is absent because he is ill and lying in bed," Vartan Bostanjian, a
member of the party’s ruling council, told RFE/RL as he toured the area
along with several other BHK election candidates. "It’s not serious. He
just caught a cold. I also have a cold. Didn’t you notice that?"

"We had events yesterday as well and he wasn’t able to attend them,"
said Bostanjian. "I’m sure he will recuperate in the coming days."

The remarks contradicted what Gohar Yenokian, another senior BHK
figure, told more than 200 hundred supporters in the town of Ararat
moments before. "He is so confident that Ararat will elect him that he
decided to campaign in other places," she said, explaining Tsarukian’s
conspicuous absence from the event.

For his part, the party’s spokesman, Baghdasar Mherian, claimed
that the influential tycoon is too busy to attend all BHK meetings
with voters. "He has a very tight schedule and can not attend all
meetings," Mherian told RFE/RL, denying Yenokian’s claim that Tsarukian
is campaigning elsewhere in Armenia.

Tsarukian kicked off the BHK campaign with a series of rallies held
Yerevan and nearby towns on April 10-11. He left for Moscow for talks
with Russian government officials and lawmakers on April 12 just
hours after mysterious explosions outside two BHK offices in Yerevan.

He visited those offices on his return from Moscow two days later
and has not been seen in public since then.

The blasts were strongly condemned by President Robert Kocharian and
virtually all major Armenian parties. Kocharian, who is believed to
sponsor the party, ordered law-enforcement authorities to quickly
identify and prosecute the attackers. Nobody has been arrested so far.

The BHK campaign in Ararat and other regional towns failed to generate
the kind of enthusiasm among voters that characterized Tsarukian’s
public appearances last week. Its meetings there were held indoors
and were mainly attended by party members.

In his speeches, Bostanjian touted the BHK as "the most accepted
party" in the country and denied any connection between Tsarukian’s
controversial "benevolent actions" and the upcoming elections. "Mr.

Tsarukian has strictly instructed us not to give people material
incentives to vote for us," he said.

Bostanjian, who is a senior professor of economics at Yerevan State
University, also urged local residents not to sell their votes to
other parties. Speaking to RFE/RL separately, he said the BHK’s
main difference from those parties is that "we are not thieves or
mobsters." The jibe appeared to be primarily directed at the governing
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).

Ernest Soghomonian, another top BHK candidate whose son Victor is
Kocharian’s press secretary, apparently had the HHK in mind when he
told supporters in the town of Vedi, "Once a political force becomes
too big and powerful it gets in trouble." "The BHK has awakened other
parties," added Soghomonian. "They are now far more attentive to the
people. We have created an environment of political competition."

Many of the people who attended the meeting in Ararat work at the
town’s big cement plant owned by Tsarukian. Some praised the tycoon
for breathing a new life into the Soviet-era enterprise which struggled
to remain afloat before being controversially privatized by his Multi
Group five years ago.

"He gives us work, and we can support our families," said Gevorg
Balian, who works there as a senior engineer. "He cares not only
about the plant but local people. How can you not respect him?"

The plant’s director general, Levon Hambartsumian, joined the BHK
visitors in urging local people to vote for the party. "No normal
person can fail to join the party after reading its program,"
he declared. "Armenia will flourish thanks to Gagik Tsarukian and
his party."

Not everyone in the audience was convinced, though. A young woman who
claimed to have been forced to quit the company last year said she
will vote for the party only if Hambartsumian and other top executives
promise to "listen to your workers once in a while and talk to them
in an understandable language."

"People believe in our party," insisted Mkhitar Manukian, who heads
the BHK chapter in the nearby village of Norakert. He claimed that
at least 50 percent of the villagers will vote for Tsarukian’s party.

But there was little anecdotal evidence of massive popular support
for the party which claims to be by the largest in Armenia. "I’m
still undecided," said one man in Vedi.

"I don’t know who Tsarukian is," grumbled another, older local
resident. "So many politicians have come here and given false
promises. Everything is false."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

GUNFIGHT ERUPTS IN YEREVAN
By Karine Kalantarian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 19 2007

A gunfight broke out in Yerevan in broad daylight on Thursday, in what
police believe was an attempt on the life of a reputed crime figure.

Witnesses said unknown gunmen opened fired and threw a hand grenade
at businessman Aram Vartanian, better known as Vstrechi Aper, as he
stood outside a cafe in the city’s southern Erebuni district with
several friends. They were said to have shot back at the attackers
and escaped unscathed.

Law-enforcement officers at the scene said the shooting left a teenage
boy injured by shattered glass.

The Armenian police immediately began a nationwide manhunt for the
gunmen, with uniformed and plainclothes officers armed with assault
rifles randomly stopping cars leaving and entering the city. No
arrests were announced as of late evening.

The chief of Yerevan’s police department, Nerses Nazarian, told
RFE/RL that he believes the attack was aimed at killing Vartanian,
who was questioned by investigators immediately after the incident.

Nazarian could not say whether the shooting might have been connected
with the ongoing campaigning for next month’s parliamentary elections.

Some Erebuni residents said Vartanian, who allegedly has underworld
connections, has a tense relationship with Mher Sedrakian,
the district’s controversial mayor who himself had survived an
assassination bid in July 2003. A senior member of the governing
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), Sedrakian was reportedly involved
in last month’s violent dispute between local leaders of the HHK and
another establishment party, Prosperous Armenia.

The Erebuni gunfight came just two weeks after gunmen wounded the mayor
of the country’s second largest city of Gyumri, also affiliated with
the HHK, and killed three of his bodyguards in a drive-by shooting
30 kilometers west of the Armenian capital. Nobody has been arrested
in connection with that attack.

ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN HOLD ANOTHER ROUND OF TALKS
By Harry Tamrazian in Prague

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 19 2007

Armenia and Azerbaijan said on Thursday that they have been presented
with new proposals aimed at addressing their remaining differences
on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace accord put forward by international
mediators.

The foreign ministers of the two countries met in the presence of the
American, French and Russian co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for
nearly five hours in Serbia’s capital Belgrade late Wednesday. The
talks took place on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the
Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization.

"We basically focused on the remaining differences in the co-chairs’
document on the basic principles [of a Karabakh settlement,]"
Armenia’s Vartan Oskanian told RFE/RL the next day. "The co-chairs
had some prepared views as to how those differences can be addressed.

We’ve listened and taken note of the co-chairs’ views and we will
bring those views to the attention of our presidents."

Oskanian declined to go into details. The Azerbaijani side also
declined to disclose those proposals, with a spokesman for the Foreign
Ministry in Baku telling the Turan news agency that they concerned
two of the eight key elements of the proposed peace deal.

The official, Khazar Ibrahim, said the mediators are trying to "to
bring the sides’ positions closer."

Both Oskanian and Ibrahim said the troika will likely visit Baku,
Yerevan and Stepanakert after Armenia’s May 12 parliamentary
elections. "The co-chairs most probably will visit the region and
meet directly with our presidents to get their reactions to these
particular views," said the Armenian minister. "And on the basis of
the results of that visit they will decide when and where to organize
the presidents’ next meeting."

The mediators hope that Presidents Ilham Aliev and Robert Kocharian
will cut a framework peace deal before the start of campaigning for
presidential elections due in both Armenia and Azerbaijan next year.

The conflicting parties are discussing a gradual settlement of
the Karabakh dispute that would culminate in a referendum of
self-determination in Karabakh. The remaining sticking points
reportedly include practical modalities of that referendum.

Addressing the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna earlier this week,
Oskanian said the parties are as close to resolving the Karabakh
conflict as ever.

Oskanian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov appeared to
have failed to make further progress during their previous face-to-face
meeting held in Geneva on March 14

"I can simply say that compared to the Geneva meeting the atmosphere
of the [Belgrade] meeting was much more relaxed," said Oskanian. "It
was well-intended and businesslike. Overall, it was a normal meeting."

JAILED OPPOSITIONIST REMAINS DEFIANT
By Irina Hovannisian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 19 2007

One of the two nationalist opposition activists arrested last December
for allegedly plotting to overthrow Armenia’s government on Thursday
again rejected the accusations as unfounded and politically motivated.

Speaking to RFE/RL in a maximum-security basement jail in Yerevan,
Vartan Malkhasian claimed that the Armenian authorities arrested him
and Zhirayr Sefilian to stop them fighting against the falsification
of the upcoming parliamentary elections. He also claimed that they
are using the case to drag out internationally sponsored peace talks
with Azerbaijan.

Sefilian and Malkhasian were arrested and charged with calling for a
"violent overthrow" of the government in early December just days
after setting up a new organization opposed to Armenian withdrawal
from Azerbaijani districts surrounding Karabakh. Armenia’s National
Security Service (NSS) claims that the group, called the Alliance of
Armenian Volunteers (HKH), planned to use the elections to mount an
armed uprising against the government.

Malkhasian, who is a leading member of a small opposition party called
Fatherland and Honor, admitted that he considers violence a legitimate
means of struggle against the return of the "liberated territories,"
but insisted that he the HKH did not plot a violent regime change.

"Different people can interpret my thoughts in different ways,"
he said in a first media interview given after his arrest. "W have
neither weapons nor armed groups. How can we seize power with a
thousand men? That I don’t understand."

Malkhasian charged that the case was "fabricated" because President
Robert Kocharian and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian wanted to "make
sure we don’t take control of several polling stations and prevent
fraud." "That’s why we ended up here," he said. "They were particularly
scared of Zhirayr because Zhirayr can rally people even from jail."

Malkhasian suggested that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun), of which he was a member until 2000, may also
have had a hand in his arrest. He quit the governing party in protest
against its close ties with Kocharian and the alleged corruption of its
leaders. The oppositionist singled out on Thursday Hrayr Karapetian,
the leader of the Dashnaktsutyun faction in the outgoing Armenian
parliament and a former governor of the Aragatsotn region.

Malkhasian is a resident of the regional capital Ashtarak. He
was recently registered as a candidate in a local single-mandate
constituency. His main rival is an incumbent parliamentarian who has
close ties with Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress