Month: April 2007

AMERICAN DIPLOMAT SAYS U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTIVITY OF AMERICAN PRIVATE COMPANIES OPERATING IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
April 10 2007

Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend , corr. A. Ismayilova/ Jonathan Hanick,
the Head of the Public Relations department of the U. S. Embassy to
Azerbaijan, has stated today that the U. S. Government has nothing
to do with the individual and private activity of its citizens and
private companies. The American diplomat made this comment after the
recent information concerning an American private company allegedly
preparing a general plan of the Ancient Azerbaijani Town of Shusha
occupied by Armenians on May 8, 1992.

Mr. Hanick noted that the American position in the Nagorno-Karabakh
issue has remained unchanged. Being one of the Chair states of the
OSCE Minsk Group, USA adheres to the peaceful negotiation of this
conflict and ready to eliminate all obstacles and barriers that are
in the way. At the same time, the American diplomat noted that the U.

S. State Department had informed all its citizens that a part of
the Azerbaijani territory had been occupied. The American Government
therefore does not bear the responsibility for the possible activity
of some companies," admitted Mr. Hanick. He noted that the information
concerning the activity of an American private company on Armenia’s
occupied territory of Azerbaijan, which was recently broadcast
by Armenian media sources, was clarified. According to the Press
Service of the Azerbaijani Foreign Office, due to this fact, the
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has given a commission to our Diplomatic
Representative Office to U.S.A. to investigate matters.

Notably, according to the information by Armenian Agency,
"PanArmenian", the video projection of a new general plan, as well
as its presentation is expected to be held on the Fortress wall of
the Town of Shusha on 8 May, 2007. The new plan of the Town has been
projected by specialists of SEMA Associates of U. S. A. Other video
material of the Fund is also expected to be projected on the Shusha
Fortress wall.

ARMENIAN CB SUSPENDED THE "GRAND" COMPANY’S LICENSE FOR NON-LIFE INSURANCE

Mediamax Agency, Armenia
April 10 2007

Yerevan, April 10 /Mediamax/. In accordance with the decision of
the Chairman of the Armenian Central Bank, starting from April 3,
the non-life insurance license of "Grand" Company has been suspended.

As Mediamax was told in the CB press service today, "the license is
suspended until the reason for the license violation is eliminated".

Mediamax reminds that in December 2006, the Central Bank of Armenia
declared invalid the life insurance license of "Grand" Company.

RWANDA GENOCIDE EXHIBIT DELAYED
By Evelyn Leopold

Independent Online, South Africa
April 10 2007

Geneva – A United Nations exhibit on the 13th anniversary of the Rwanda
genocide has been delayed after Turkish objections to a mention of
the killing of Armenians in Turkey during World War 1, organisers
said on Monday.

The photo and text exhibit, organised in part by the British-based
Aegis Trust, was scheduled to be opened on Monday by UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But Turkey objected to a sentence in the text, which showed how the
Armenian killings contributed to the creation of the term genocide,
according to James Smith, chief executive of Aegis, whose mission is
to prevent genocide.

‘We are committed to it. It is a very important issue’ It said:
"Following World War 1, during which one million Armenians were
murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of
Nations to recognise crimes of barbarity as international crimes,"
Smith said.

Organisers said they were informed of the delay by the UN Department
of Public Information, which had initially approved the exhibit in
the visitors’ lobby. The secretary-general’s office then consented
to the postponement.

UN officials confirmed that objections by Turkey and others, which
they did not mention, were responsible for the delay. One staff member
said an official in the Department of Public Information had not sent
the text to other divisions for fact-checking.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," UN associate spokesperson Farhan Haq said.

David Browan, communications director for Aegis, told Reuters that
Armenian diplomats had agreed to the removal of the words "in Turkey,"
which was acceptable to his group. But he said, "We understand that
was not acceptable to the UN"

About 1.5 million Armenians perished at the hands of Ottoman Turks,
according to historians. Turkey denies any systematic genocide,
saying large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks
died in a partisan conflict raging at that time.

Aegis, however, is resisting removing references to the Armenian
killings in connection with the exhibit on Rwanda, where at least 800
000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutus. The murders
began on April 6, 1994.

The exhibit also mentions the Nazi extermination of Jews in World War
2 and has passing references to Cambodia’s killing fields and crimes
in Bosnia, East Timor and Sudan.

But a UN official insisted the exhibit would take place. "We are
committed to it. It is a very important issue," said Manoel de Almeida
e Silva, an official in the strategic communications division.

JONATHAN HENICK: WE ARE TRYING TO GATHER INFORMATION ON US COMPANY THAT WORKS OUT SHUSHA’S GENERAL PLAN

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 10 2007

"The United States has not changed its position on the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict. We support Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and as the
co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, we continue to make efforts for
a peaceful settlement of the conflict," US Embassy public affairs
officer Jonathan Henick told the APA.

Commenting on the involvement of US Sutter Emergency Medical Associates
(SEMA) with the designing of a general plan of Azerbaijani region of
Shusha occupied by Armenian forces, Mr. Henick said the US embassy
is gathering information on this company now.

PIPELINE TALKS HALT NOT END OF PROCESS-TURK OFFICIAL (10/04/2007)

Energy.gr, Greece
April 10 2007

Turkey has suspended talks with Gaz de France (GDF) over the proposed
acquisition by the French group of a stake in a major gas pipeline
project, but the decision is not final, a Foreign Ministry official
said Friday.

A press report claimed Thursday the talks had been suspended because
of a political row sparked by French pressure to label Turkish action
against Armenians during World War I as genocide.

"This is not a final decision. We understand that the negotiating
process has not yet come to an end," the diplomat told AFP on the
condition of anonymity.

"This is a commercial issue between companies and they will make the
final decision on the basis of financial considerations," he added.

The five-company Nabucco consortium, involving Turkey’s BOTAS, plans
to build a 3,300-kilometer (2,000-mile) pipeline that will carry
natural gas from the Middle East and Central Asia to the European
Union via Turkey and the Balkans, bypassing Russia.

"Negotiations have been complicated and slowed down by the genocide
issue," confirmed another source close to the case.

The other partners in Nabucco are Austria’s oil and gas group OMV,
Hungary’s MOL, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz and Romania’s Transgaz.

The consortium is seeking a sixth partner in the 6-billion-dollar
(4.5-billion-euro) project, expected to become operational in 2012.

The other partners reportedly approved GDF’s participation, but BOTAS
has opposed it because of a French draft law on the Armenian massacres.

A bill was adopted by the National Assembly in Paris in October
calling for jail sentences for those who deny that Ottoman Turks
committed genocide against Armenians during World War I.

It must still go before the Senate, then back to the lower house
before becoming law.

Turkey had at the time threatened unspecified measures against the
bill, which followed a 2001 resolution by the French parliament
recognizing the killings as genocide.

In November, the Turkish army froze bilateral military ties with
France over the bill.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin perished in orchestrated
killings between 1915 and 1917 under the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label and says thousands of
Turks and Armenians were killed in civil strife when Armenians took
up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian
troops invading the crumbling empire.

UN RWANDA GENOCIDE EXHIBIT DELAYED

Al-Arab online, UK
April 10 2007

A U.N. exhibit on the 13th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide has
been delayed after Turkish objections to a mention of the killing of
Armenians in Turkey during World War One, organizers said on Monday.

James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust which
works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition,
said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents
and it was put up on Thursday.

The photo and text exhibit, organized in part by the
British-based Aegis Trust, was scheduled to be opened on Monday by
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But Turkey objected to a sentence in the text, which showed how the
Armenian killings contributed to the creation of the term genocide,
according to James Smith, chief executive of Aegis, whose mission is
to prevent genocide.

It said: "Following World War One, during which 1 million Armenians
were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League
of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes,"
Smith said.

Organizers said they were informed of the delay by the U.N. Department
of Public Information, which had initially approved the exhibit in
the visitors’ lobby.

The secretary-general’s office then consented to the postponement.

U.N. officials confirmed that objections by Turkey and others, which
they did not mention, were responsible for the delay.

One staff member said an official in the Department of Public
Information had not sent the text to other divisions for fact-checking.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said.

David Browan, communications director for Aegis, told Reuters that
Armenian diplomats had agreed to the removal of the words "in Turkey,"
which was acceptable to his group. But he said, "We understand that
was not acceptable to the U.N."

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Turkey says large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks died in a partisan conflict raging at that time.

Aegis, however, is resisting removing references to the Armenian
killings in connection with the exhibit on Rwanda, where at least
800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutus.

The murders began on April 6, 1994.

The exhibit also mentions the Nazi extermination of Jews in World
War Two and has passing references to Cambodia’s killing fields and
crimes in Bosnia, East Timor and Sudan.

But a U.N. official insisted the exhibit would take place.

"We are committed to it. It is a very important issue," said Manoel de
Almeida e Silva, an official in the strategic communications division.

Rwanda’s genocide began hours after a plane carrying President
Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it approached the capital,
Kigali, on April 6, 1994.

The 100-day slaughter, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis
were killed by Hutus, ended after rebels ousted the extremist Hutu
government that orchestrated the killings.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done
without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a
matter of principle you can’t just go around striking things out. It
is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide
issues, we couldn’t do that on any genocide, and we can’t do this,"
he said.

"If we can’t get this right, it undermines all the values of the U.N.

It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms of
preventing (genocide)," Smith said.

"You can’t learn the lessons from history if you’re going to sweep
all of that history under the carpet. And what about accountability?

What about ending impunity if you’re going to hide part of the truth?

It makes a mockery of all of this."

"EU SHOULD NOT FEAR US," SAYS TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER

EUX.TV, Netherlands
April 10 2007

BRUSSELS (EUX.TV) — Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has urged
politicians in the European Union not to further encourage fears for
Turkey, saying he fails to understand why people would have second
thoughts about Turkey’s EU membership.

In an interview with the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, Gul
also said Turkey was disappointed to find out that it was not invited
to the EU’s 50th anniversary celebration in Berlin last month.

The minister said he feels it’s too early to make firm statements
about EU membership of his country because it still has to make
improvements in its democracy and economy.

"The EU should not fear us. EU membership for Turkey is not an
automatic process. At the end of the negotiations, Turkey will have a
higher level of democracy and a better economy, and then Europe will
decide about membership of Turkey."

"Why are so many people and so many politicians already so critical
of Turkey? I do not understand this," he said in the interview.

Gul also said that Turkey in some areas already is ahead of several EU
member states. "We for example already meet the Maastricht criteria,"
he said, referring to the criteria countries must meet before they
can adopt the euro as their currency.

He acknowledged that enthusiasm for the EU in Turkey has diminished
after the negotiations were partially frozen at the end of last year,
saying that Turkey has experienced this as an insult.

Reform "is important for us"

Gul pointed out however that this development has not endangered the
reform process in Turkey. "We’re not changing our laws to satisfy
the EU, but because it’s important for us. That’s why we do it."

Asked about the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
earlier this year, Gul said that Europe should not worry about a new
wave of nationalism in Turkey, pointing to "an incredible wave of
protest" after the murder.

Gul told the German newspaper that the Ankara government is considering
changing Article 301 from the Turkish penal code, which forbids
insults to Turkishness. He said that no one has been arrested on the
basis of this article so far.

CONCERT NOT CANCELED DUE TO THREATS, ASA PRESIDENT SAYS
Debbie Lehmann

The Brown Daily Herald, RI
April 10 2007

The Turkish-Armenian concert planned for Friday that was canceled
last week was not called off because the president of the Armenian
Students Association received threats, ASA President Ruben Izmailyan
’09 wrote Monday in an e-mail to The Herald. Izmailyan wrote that he
was not in any way "threatened, intimidated or even asked to pull out."

The Herald reported Monday that the concert was canceled due to
threats, citing an e-mail from a Turkish Cultural Society member.

That e-mail, which included a message sent from the TCS president to
the group’s members, read that the ASA president and musicians received
"warning messages" from members of the Armenian community and that as
"the situation got serious, warnings turned into threats."

Izmailyan, who declined to explain the cancellation for Monday’s
article, told The Herald the cancellation was a joint decision between
the two groups after the Armenian musicians decided not to participate.

"I have received nothing but encouragement in my handling of the
innate complexities involved in such an event," Izmailyan wrote
Monday, "including from individuals who believed that this event was
inappropriate at this time and with the given circumstances."

Izmailyan wrote that the musicians pulled out of the concert because
many members of the Armenian community expressed concern about the
"potential misuse of the event." The musicians "did not wish to
participate in an event that the Armenian community was not united
behind," he wrote.

Izmailyan added that he was the only person who spoke to the musicians
about their decision to withdraw from the concert.

APRIL 24 – 92nd ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE. MANY COMMEMORATION EVENTS PLANNED
– genocideevents/com

The Westender, Australia
April 10 2007

Armenians worldwide will be commemorating the First Genocide of the
20th Century with solemn religious and civil ceremonies.

April 24, 2007 marks the 92nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Armenians worldwide will be commemorating the First Genocide of the
20th Century with solemn religious and civil ceremonies. Along with
the Armenian people, prominent celebrities and statesmen will be
participating in this day of remembrance.

Since April of 2003, GenocideEvents.com has undertaken the task of
informing the general public, as a community service, of the events
commemorating the Armenian Genocide. The public is encouraged to attend
the functions in their area of residence, watch Armenian Genocide
video clips/flash presentation and reflect upon the horrors which
fell upon the Armenian Nation and Armenian people in the beginning
of the last century.

During WWI, The Young Turk, political faction of the Ottoman Empire,
sought the creation of a new Turkish state extending into Central
Asia. Those promoting the ideology called "Pan Turkism" (creating a
homogenous Turkish state) now saw its Armenian minority population
as an obstacle to the realization of that goal.

On April 24, 1915, several hundred Armenian community leaders and
intellectuals in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) were arrested,
sent east, and put to death. In May, after mass deportations had
already begun, Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha ordered their
deportation into the Syrian Desert.

The adult and teenage males were separated from the deportation
caravans and killed under the direction of Young Turk functionaries.

Women and children were driven for months over mountains and desert,
often raped, tortured, and mutilated. Deprived of food and water and
often stripped of clothing, they fell by the hundreds & thousands
along the routes to the desert. Ultimately, more than half the
Armenian population, 1,500,000 people were annihilated. In this
manner the Armenian people were eliminated from their homeland of
several millennia.

On April 29, 1915, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. United States Ambassador
to the Ottoman Empire had stated that "I am confident that the whole
history of human race contains no such terrible episode as this. The
great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant
when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted,
the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community
as a crime against humanity.

For more information, visit or e-mail
[email protected]

ender.com.au/stories.php?s_id=497

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIANS STRONGLY FIRE ON AZERBAIJANI VILLAGES

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 10 2007

Report of APA’s Karabakh bureau from the front line

Armenian Armed Forces have been firing on Azerbaijani villages of Tap
and Tap Garagoyunlu of Goranboy region situated on the border with
the villages of Agdere for 10 days, Over 30 houses were damaged as a
result of the skirmish. APA’s Karabakh bureau correspondent prepared
a report from the village Tap. When you approach the village you have
the impression that life is normal here. It seems that the village does
not differ from other villages, engaged in farming. Your impression
changes when you see the doors of the first house. Roofs, windows,
walls have been damaged.

The residents of the village say that they spend most of their time in
cells. When Armenians see two-three men in the village they start fire.

APA correspondent visited school in the village Tap and saw a strange
"subbotnik". The pupils were gathering shrapnel. Teachers said that
the pupils gather shrapnel every day before the classes.

"It is impossible to start a lesson. The village is fired every day,"
they said.

School director Rovshan Garayev noted that when Armenians violated
the ceasefire for the last time they targeted the school.

"Fortunately, this happened in the evening. The lessons were over
at school otherwise it would be very difficult to manage with this
situation," he said.

The principal also added that Armenians used to fire at Azerbaijani
positions in sub areas of the village, but within the last ten days
they fired directly at the village. There is no undamaged house
or enterprise left. The village residents noted that no-one of the
statesmen or officials visit the village.

"Regular violation of the ceasefire prevents us from sowing,"
they said.

It is impossible to do something in the village. Armenians are able
to control the village from their positions. It is for many ages
that the village has not been cleaned. As soon as we start sowing
Armenians begin to fire. At the same time the number of snakes has
increased too," the residents said.

The residents have gathered stones in front of their windows in order
to be protected from the Armenians’ fires. But Armenians began to
fire from sub-machines so that is difficult for the residents to
be protected.

Ceasefire violations have killed 16 civilians in Tap village, seven
of which were children. Three of them were killed by Armenians,
other four died in the blast. 19 became martyrs before the ceasefire
.Nine of them died during the war and three were wounded during the
ceasefire period.