Month: April 2007

DEFENCE MINISTRY: AZERBAIJAN MAY HOLD MILITARY MANEUVERS IN ITS OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Arminfo
2007-04-18 19:07:00

Azerbaijani Defence Ministry said that "holding of the military
maneuvers by the National Army of Azerbaijan in its occupied
territories is its own business", press-service of Defence Ministry
informed on Wednesday.

Press-service of Azerbaijani Defense Ministry also expressed its
position regarding the military exercises of the Armenian armed
forces. "Military maneuvers held by the Armenian armed forces at the
territories of Azerbaijan, that were occupied breaking international
law norms, should be condemned by the international structures. Due
to the fact that there is no control over these territories, law
violations taking place there are of intensive nature", – the authors
of the statement said.

THE LEADER OF NATIONAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF ARMENIA IS DISGUSTED THAT NOBODY SPEAKS ABOUT ATOMISM OF THE POWER CAMP

Arminfo
2007-04-18 18:58:00

"Nobody speaks about atomism of the power camp but only about separate
participation of the oppositional parties in the election," the leader
of the oppositional National-Democratic party of Armenia Shavarsh
Kocharyan said in Zerkalo club today.

He also added that actually present political field of the country
is unfavourable, but this circumstance must not be used for permanent
touching on the problem of atomism of the local opposition.

Replying to the statements of the leader of the National Accord
party Aram Arutyunyan about idleness of the opposition in the
present parliament, Kocharyan said: "Only because of the position
of the parliamentary majority we could not fulfill such important
legislative initiatives as setting of direct link between salary
of functionaries with the minimal salary size, and many others. At
the same time, positive movement in reforming the Constitution was
conditioned by the fact that many points were copied from the draft
suggested by the National-Democratic party."

NKR PEOPLE GAVE NO MANDATE EITHER TO ALIYEV OR KOCHARYAN FOR KARABAKH PROBLEM SETTLEMENT: ARMENIAN POLITICAL EXPERT

Arminfo
2007-04-18 18:57:00

The NKR people gave no mandate either to Aliyev or Kocharyan for the
Karabakh problem settlement, a political expert Alexander Manasyan
said at today’s press-conference, having complained that Armenia
has not yet submitted any packages to the UN or OSCE on the Karabakh
conflict settlement. He said Armenia made a great mistake when in 1992,
after Azerbaijan had joined the UN, Yerevan did not express protest
in view of fact that Nakhijevan was also included in the territory
of Azerbaijan. "According to the present agreements, Azerbaijan had
no right to include Nakhijevan in its territory since this is the
occupied territory", A. Manasyan said.

The member of the Board of the Armenian National Movement party,
Hovhannes Igityan said, in his turn, that as a result of foreign
policy conducted by Armenia, the Karabakh conflict settlement reached
deadlock. According to H.

Igityan, NKR should participate in negotiations again. "We have to
make efforts for the world community to change its opinion concerning
occupation of Nagorno Karabakh by Armenia", H. Igityan said.

TILL THE END OF THIS YEAR ARMENTEL IS READY TO RENOUNCE ALL OF ITS MONOPOLIES

Arminfo
2007-04-18 19:01:00

Till the end of this year ArmenTel is ready to renounce all of its
monopolies, including the one over the fixed telephony, the director
general of ArmenTel, Oleg Bliznuk, said during a press-conference
today.

Presently, ArmenTel and the Commission on the Regulation of Public
Services are considering the terms of the renouncement. Bliznuk says
that the renouncement of monopolies will have no negative impact on
the company’s performance.

"By that time we will be ready for healthy competition," Bliznuk
said. Full liberalization of Armenia’s telecoms market was one of the
preconditions of the Armenian Government when it was selling its 10%
stake to VimpelCom.

Bliznuk noted that the fixed phone network is profitable, but gave up
to say how much profit it brought last year. He assured that ArmenTel
will fulfill all of its obligations for digitizing and modernizing
Armenia’s fixed phone network before its sale to another company.

To remind, on Nov 16 2006 OTE (Greece) sold 90% of ArmenTel’s shares
to VimpelCom (Russia) for 342mln EUR. ArmenTel still has a monopoly
over fixed telephony. The relevant license expires in 2009.

ARMENIAN MINISTER: IRAN ENTITLED TO PRODUCE NUCLEAR ENERGY

IRNA
April 18 2007

Armenian Minister of Energy Armen Movssisyan in a meeting with the head
of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Ezatollah Zarghami in
Yerevan on Wednesday, said that access to nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes is the inalienable right of Iran.

According to a report released by IRIB Public Relations Department,
Zarghami is currently visiting Yerevan.

At the meeting, the Armenian minister said that expansion of
multifaceted relations with Iran is of high importance to his country.

For his part, Zarghami pointed to Iran’s numerous capacities to bolster
its cooperation with Armenia, adding that introduction of the products
of private sector through documentary television programs will greatly
contribute to development of mutual ties.

Turning to cultural and historical commonalties of the two countries
as a proper ground for broadening of cooperation, he said that media
play a decisive role in strengthening friendly relations among nations.

In another meeting with Armenian Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosian,
the IRIB chief said that based on their history, the two nations are
interested in bolstering bilateral ties.

Zarghami pointed to Iran’s potential in cultural and art fields and
declared Iran’s readiness for cooperation with Armenia in the domain
of culture, adding that the Armenian citizens of Iran have an effective
role in this regard.

Poghosian said that the Armenian nation highly respects Iranian
culture, urging the need for further attempts for production of
cultural products.

NATIONALISM SUSPECTED IN 3 DEATHS IN TURKEY
By Sabrina Tavernise

International Herald Tribune, France
April 18 2007

ISTANBUL: Three people were found with their throats slit in a
publishing house in eastern Turkey that had printed Bibles and other
Christian literature, the authorities said Wednesday. One of the
victims was a German citizen.

The authorities detained five men for questioning, three 19-year-olds
and two 20-year-olds, but did not publicly identify them. However,
the publishing house in Malatya, a town with a nationalist reputation,
has had trouble in the past over a shipment of printed Bibles, and
it seemed likely that the attackers had a nationalist agenda.

Change is opening up Turkish society, and a nationalist fringe –
xenophobes for whom the ethnic and religious purity of the Turkish
state is worth killing for – have been using violence against its
proponents more often in recent months.

Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent killed this
winter was one of the victims. A Roman Catholic priest killed last
year was another.

The trend is worrying for the government, whose prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been pushing hard for Turkey to gain entry
to the European Union.

Some European politicians have opposed Turkey’s membership arguing
that Turkey does not fit culturally or religiously, and the killings
of Christians, though rare, do not help Turkey’s case.

The victims were found seated in chairs, their hands and feet bound,
said Halil Ibrahim Dasoz, a government official in Malatya in comments
on Turkish NTV television. One died later from his wounds.

He had also been stabbed in the back and stomach.

The state-run Anatolian agency identified the victims as Tilman
Ekkehart Geske, 46; Necati Aydin, 35; and Ugur Yuksel, whose age was
not given. The German ambassador, Eckart Cuntz, confirmed through a
spokesman that one of the victims was a German citizen. He declined
to give further details.

Reuters quoted Carlos Madrigal, an evangelical pastor in Istanbul,
saying that he knew the victims and that they were evangelical
Protestants.

The killings took place in the building where the publishing house
was based, the Turkish interior minister, Abdulkadir Aksu, said at
a news conference on national television.

The five suspects were apprehended quickly, because a police station
was located close by, Aksu said. Several of the young men were carrying
weapons. Another, who had broken his leg in a jump from a window,
was also detained. NTV television broadcast footage of authorities
rushing four young men down the stairwell of a building.

The recent nationalist attacks are ghosts from Turkey’s past. Malatya
once had a heavy Armenian population, but lost it in the bloody
founding of the Turkish state, which was trying to scrub the nation
free of minority identity to build a new Turkey.

It encouraged nationalists to resettle in the area in an effort to
preserve Turkish identity there.

"Nationalism is on the rise in Turkey," said Ali Bulac, a Turkish
newspaper columnist in Istanbul. "It stands against the U.S. and
the EU."

The Anatolian news agency reported that the young men had been
staying at a youth hostel in town, preparing for university entrance
exams. One had been thrown out for getting into a fight. It also
reported that they had checked out of the hostel recently and that
a note incriminating them in the killing was found on one of them.

The publishing house had changed its name after having trouble with
nationalist groups that had forcefully blocked a shipment of bibles,
Meftun Kilinc, a reporter for ERTV, a television station in Malatya,
said in a telephone interview. She said the new name was Zirve
Publishing.

Turkish nationalists tout their Muslim identity, but often have more
in common with hard-line secularists of the state elite than with
Islamists. The distinction is important because of the broad debate
now roiling Turkish society over the role of religion and its proper
relation to the state. That disagreement has come sharply into focus
in recent weeks as the country faces an election to its presidency,
the post safeguarding secularism.

Erdogan, whose political background is Islamic, may try to compete
for it, a possibility that has hard-line secularists worried.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

3 SLAIN AT BIBLE DISTRIBUTOR IN TURKEY
By Benjamin Harvey

Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, IL
April 18 2007

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Assailants tied up three people at a publishing
house that distributes Bibles in Turkey and then slit their throats
Wednesday, adding to a string of attacks apparently targeting the
country’s tiny Christian minority.

The killings occurred in Malatya, a city in central Turkey known as a
hotbed of Turkish nationalism and is the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca,
the gunman who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Malatya Gov. Ibrahim Dasoz said two of the victims at the Zirve
publishing house were found already dead and the third died after
being taken to the hospital. All had their throats cut and their
hands and legs were bound, he said.

Dasoz said police detained four suspects and were investigating
whether another man who suffered head injuries when he jumped from
the window of the publisher’s office may have been involved in the
attack. He was reported undergoing surgery for his injury.

The German Embassy said one victim was German. "I am shocked that a
German citizen is among the victims. Even if the exact circumstances
of the crime are not yet known, I most strongly condemn this brutal
crime," German Ambassador Eckart Cuntz said in a statement.

Another victim was Turkish, Dasoz said, but he could not confirm the
nationality of the third person killed.

Zirve’s general manager told CNN-Turk television that his employees had
recently been threatened. "We know that they have been receiving some
threats," Hamza Ozant said, but could not say who made the threats.

The publishing house had been targeted previously in protests by
nationalists who accused it of proselytizing in this overwhelmingly
Muslim but officially secular country, Dogan news agency reported.

Making up less than 1 percent of Turkey’s 70 million people, Christians
have increasingly become targets amid what some fear is a rising tide
of hostility toward non-Muslims.

In February 2006, a teenager fatally shot a Catholic priest as he
prayed in his church, and two more Catholic priests were attacked
later in the year. A November visit by Pope Benedict XVI was greeted
by nonviolent protests, and early this year a gunman killed Armenian
Christian editor Hrant Dink.

Associated Press writer Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara contributed to
this report.

GABE PRESSMAN’S VIEW: THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE

WNBC, NY
April 18 2007

When Adolf Hitler was trying to persuade his aides that a Jewish
holocaust would be tolerated by the west, he said, "Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

In 1915, the Turks began a systematic slaughter of the Armenian
people — an estimated 1.5 million were killed. The Turkish government
still denies it ever happened, despite convincing evidence, including
photographs and the testimony of respected scholars.

Systematically, the Turks rounded up Armenian men, women and
children. Some were executed outright. Many were tortured first, with
implements modeled after the fiendish devices used in the Spanish
Inquisition. There were death marches in which tens of thousands of
Armenians were forced to walk hundreds of miles into the deserts of
Syria. Many perished on the way.

There were massacres delivered, historians say, with great cruelty.

One bizarre feature of this period was that, while torturing was
taking place at night, people would gather outside, beating drums
and blowing whistles, trying to drown out the screams of the tortured.

Henry Morgenthau Sr., the grandfather of Manhattan’s district attorney,
was American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and did much to inform
the world of the genocide taking place.

This is the month in which the world remembers the Holocaust, in
which 6 million Jewish people perished. April 24 has been set aside
for remembering the Armenian genocide. In many ways, the Armenian
genocide was a precursor of what would happen to 6 million European
Jews three decades later.

You can’t blame the Armenian people, those who’ve settled in the
states and those in Europe, for feeling neglected. The world seems
to have virtually forgotten their ordeal. But it is still remembered
with great pain by the descendants of those who suffered or died.

An editorial in the New York Times points out that the Armenian killing
was the 20th century’s first genocide, setting an example that later
emboldened Hitler, the Hutu leaders of Rwanda and the Sudanese in
the present day. The New York Times deplores as a "cover-up" the
fact that the United Nations has blocked a scheduled exhibit at
United Nations headquarters commemorating the 13th anniversary of
the Rwandan genocide.

The reason: because this exhibit mentions the mass murder of Armenians
and Turkey objected.

We need to remember this shameful episode in world history. If the
United Nations and the Turks turn their backs on the Armenians,
they demean us all. The Armenians should not be ignored or forgotten.

Their ordeal should be honored — at the United Nations. There should
be a ceremony and the hard-nosed Turkish diplomats should lay a wreath.

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CHANCE TO PROTEST GENOCIDE
By Reza Jalali

Assyrian International News Agency
April 18 2007

April, as T.S. Eliot’s "cruelest" month, is a teaser. While
burdening us with high winds, cold rain, floods and snowfall, its
very presence on the calendar promises us the arrival of the warmer
days and greenery.

April is also when the world commemorates genocides of the past by
remembering the victims of the Armenian massacre, the Holocaust and
the mass killing of Cambodians and Rwandans, among others.

In 1944, the term "genocide" was coined by a jurist named Raphael
Lemkin by combining the Greek word "genos" (race) with the Latin word
"cide" (killing). The term is defined by the United Nations as ‘the
mass killing of a group of people committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

A Toll In The Millions

Since the massacre of the Armenians, followed by the slaughter of
innocent Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, millions of others,
including Cambodians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Kurds and Sudanese, have
lost their lives.

In other cases, entire communities of people have vanished, sometimes
in a matter of months. In all, the total number of those killed in
genocides in the 20th and early 21st centuries could be 260 million
people.

Generally, genocides begin by dehumanizing the soon-to-be victims.

The state-sponsored propaganda portrays "the other" as the enemy.

Once the larger population, who in ordinary times could never see
themselves or their societies as accomplices in a one-sided slaughter
of civilians, buys into the propaganda the atrocities would become
a reality.

In Germany, the campaign to eliminate the entire Jewish population
of Europe started with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in
the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge ("Red Khmers") killed approximately 1.7
million people — more than 20 percent of its own population —
in just four years.

In the case of the Kurds, the West’s silence in the face of Saddam
Hussein’s barbaric efforts to destroy Kurdish communities in northern
Iraq and the ongoing cultural genocide of Kurds in Turkey has been
deafening to Kurds and their friends everywhere.

In April 1994, Rwandans slaughtered between 800,000 to 1 million
people, mostly from the Tutsi tribe, and many thousands of moderate
Hutus.

Paul Rusesabagina, nicknamed the "ordinary hero" for his actions in
saving 1,200 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by giving them shelter inside
the hotel he managed in Kigali, writes;

"Eight hundred thousand lives snuffed out in 100 days. That’s 8,000
lives a day. More than five lives per minute. Each one of those lives
was like a little world in itself. Some person who laughed and cried
and ate and thought and felt and hurt just like any other person,
just like you and me. A mother’s child, everyone irreplaceable."

Sadly, genocide has occurred with such regularity in the recent past
that the often-chanted "Never Again" might as well be changed to
"Again and Again."

But to fight such darkness, one must remain not only vigilant but
hopeful. Rightly, it has been said it is better to light a candle
than to curse the darkness.

It’s A Local Issue

Here in Portland, now home to thousands of refugees and immigrants,
with some who are survivors of past and current genocides, the issue
remains real and part of our existence.

Some of us have managed to turn our fears into hope, by working hard
to raise the public awareness about this heartache of our times,
and create opportunities to raise our collective voices on behalf of
those who have been silenced.

One such opportunity will take place on April 22 at Monument Square.

We are inviting all those who are weary of the violence in our world
to gather to remember those whose voices have been broken.

We hope by attending the vigil and lighting a candle we could let
the world know the silenced victims are not forgotten.

We could also hope for a day when the word "genocide," added in
1944 to the English language, could be retired to the dusty pages of
obsolete dictionaries.

VENUE OF MATCHES WITH ARMENIA TO BE PROJECTED IN EARLY JUNE

Today, Azerbaijan
April 18 2007

AFFA president returns Baku from Cardiff.

AFFA president Ramiz Mirzoyev’s visit to Cardiff, Wales, is finished.

He left for Cardiff after the meeting with UEFA president Michel
Platini, Armenian Football Federation president Ruben Ayrapetian in
Nyon, Switzerland. The parties failed to reach agreement on the venue
of Azerbaijan-Armenia matches.

Mirzoyev participated in the meeting of UEFA Department for National
Squads in Wales and arrived in Baku yesterday in the evening. AFFA
leader didn’t discuss Azerbaijan-Armenia match venue with anyone
in Cardiff. He didn’t wait for results of UEFA Executive Committee
meeting today in Welsh capital. AFFA officials had stated before that
match venues will be projected today. It is not ruled out that UEFA
intends to keep the decision on the issue in secret for a while. By
the UEFA rules, such disputable issue is to be announced by 60 days
before the encounter.

AFFA president Ramiz Mirzoyev told APA-Sport that the final decision
will be made in early June.

"No discussions were carried out on the venue of Azerbaijan – Armenia
encounters in Cardiff. I just participated in the meeting of UEFA
Department for National Squads. UEFA Executive Committee will pass
final decision on the venue in early June. Zurich will host UEFA
congress in late May. The place and date of UEFA Executive Committee
meeting will be fixed at the congres," he said.

Azerbaijan-Armenia matches have been scheduled for September 8 in
Baku and four days later in Yerevan.

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