Author: Antonian Lara

Glendale, CA 91202
Tel: 818.241.8900
Fax: 818.241.6900
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
30 JULY 2005
UAF’s 134th Airlift Delivers
$2.3 Million of Aid to Armenia
Glendale, CA – The United Armenian Fund’s 134th airlift arrived in
Yerevan on July 30, delivering $2.3 million of humanitarian assistance.
The UAF itself collected $1 million of medicines and medical supplies
for this flight, most of which were donated by the Catholic Medical
Mission Board ($383,000); AmeriCares ($244,000), Eli Lilly ($243,000)
and MAP International ($217,000) .
Other organizations which contributed goods for this airlift were:
Fund for Armenian Relief ($395,000); The Armenian Eyecare Project
($153,000); Tigran Sarkisyan of California ($100,000); Michael
DerBedrossian of Massachusetts ($87,000); Dr. Stephen Kashian of
Illinois ($74,000); Harut Chantikian of New Jersey ($62,000); American
University of Armenia ($54,000) and Armenian General Benevolent Union
($34,000).
Also contributing to this airlift were: Armenian American Cultural
Association ($27,000); Armenian Students Association ($25,000); Dr.
Andranik Ovassapian of Illinois ($25,000) and Accuware Consultants
($20,000).
Since its inception in 1989, the UAF has sent $412 million of
humanitarian assistance to Armenia on board 134 airlifts and 1,216
sea containers.
The UAF is the collective effort of the Armenian Assembly of America,
the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Armenian Missionary
Association of America, the Armenian Relief Society, the Diocese of
the Armenian Church of America, the Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic
Church of America and the Lincy Foundation.
For more information, contact the UAF office at 1101 North Pacific
Avenue, Suite 301, Glendale, CA 91202 or call (818) 241-8900.
###

wArticle&code=%20SC20050730&articleId=762
Center for Research on Globalization, Canada
July 30 2005
Al Qaeda, U.S. Oil Companies, and Central Asia
Excerpt of a forthcoming book entitled The Road to 9/11
by Peter Dale Scott

July 30, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca
What is slowly emerging from Al Qaeda activities in Central Asia in
the 1990s is the extent to which they involved both American oil
companies and the U.S. government.[1] By now we know that the
U.S.-protected movements of al Qaeda terrorists into regions like
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Kosovo have served the interests of U.S.
oil companies. In many cases they have also provided pretexts or
opportunities for a U.S. military commitment and even troops to
follow.
This has been most obvious in the years since the Afghan War with the
Soviet Union ended in 1989. Deprived of Soviet troops to support it,
the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime in Kabul finally fell in April
1992. What should have been a glorious victory for the mujahedin
proved instead to be a time of troubles for them, as Tajiks behind
Massoud and Pashtuns behind Hekmatyar began instead to fight each
other.
The situation was particularly difficult for the Arab Afghans, who
now found themselves no longer welcome. Under pressure from America,
Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the new interim president of Afghanistan,
Mojaddedi, announced that the Arab Afghans should leave. In January
1993 Pakistan followed suit, closed the offices of all mujahedin in
its country, and ordered the deportation of all Arab Afghans.[2]
Shortly afterwards Pakistan extradited a number of Egyptian jihadis
to Egypt, some of whom had already been tried and convicted in
absentia.[3]
Fleeing the hostilities in Afghanistan, some Uzbek and Tajik
mujahedin and refugees started fleeing or returning north across the
Amu Darya.[4] In this confusion, with or without continued U.S.
backing, cross-border raids, of the kind originally encouraged by CIA
Director Casey back in the mid-1980s, continued.[5] Both Hekmatyar
and Massoud actively supported the Tajik rebels, including in the
years up to 1992 when both continued to receive aid and assistance
from the United States.[6] The Pakistani observer Ahmed Rashid
documents further support for the Tajik rebels from both Saudi Arabia
and the Pakistani intelligence directorate ISI.[7]
These raids into Tajikistan and later Uzbekistan contributed
materially to the destabilization of the Muslim Republics in the
Soviet Union (and after 1992 of its successor, the Conference of
Independent States). This destabilization was an explicit goal of
U.S. policy in the Reagan era, and did not change with the end of the
Afghan War. On the contrary, the United States was concerned to
hasten the break-up of the Soviet Union, and increasingly to gain
access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that
time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of
unexploited fuel in the planet.”[8]
The collapse of the Soviet Union had a disastrous impact on the
economies of its Islamic Republics. Already in 1991 the leaders of
Central Asia “began to hold talks with Western oil companies, on the
back of ongoing negotiations between Kazakhstan and the US company
Chevron.”[9] The first Bush Administration actively supported the
plans of U.S. oil companies to contract for exploiting the resources
of the Caspian region, and also for a pipeline not controlled by
Moscow that could bring the oil and gas production out to the west.
The same goals were enunciated even more clearly as matters of
national security by Clinton and his administration.[10]
Eventually the threat presented by Islamist rebels persuaded the
governments of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan to allow U.S.
as well as Russian bases on their soil. The result is to preserve
artificially a situation throughout the region where small elites
grow increasingly wealthy and corrupt, while most citizens suffer
from a sharp drop in living standards.[11]
The tension between the Bush Administration’s professed ideals and
its real objectives is well illustrated by its ambivalent position
towards the regime of Karimov in Uzbekistan. America quickly sent
Donald Rumsfeld to deal with the new regime in Kyrgyzstan installed
in March 2005 after the popular “Tulip Revolution” and overthrow
there of Askar Akayev.[12] But Islam Karimov’s violent repression of
a similar uprising in Uzbekistan saw no wavering of U.S. support for
a dictator who has allowed U.S. troops to be based in his oil- and
gas-rich country.[13]
U.S. Operatives, Oil Companies and Al Qaeda in Azerbaijan
In one former Soviet Republic, Azerbaijan, Arab Afghan jihadis
clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the
region. In 1991, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn,
three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos, and later of Oliver
North’s operations with the Contras, turned up in Baku under the
cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil.[14] This was at a time when the
first Bush administration had expressed its support for an oil
pipeline stretching from Azerbaijan across the Caucasus to
Turkey.[15] MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to
the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian
influence.
Secord, Aderholt, and Dearborn were all career U.S. Air Force
officers, not CIA. However Secord explains in his memoir how Aderholt
and himself were occasionally seconded to the CIA as CIA detailees.
Secord describes his own service as a CIA detailee with Air America
in first Vietnam and then Laos, in cooperation with the CIA Station
Chief Theodore Shackley.[16] Secord later worked with Oliver North to
supply arms and materiel to the Contras in Honduras, and also
developed a small air force for them, using many former Air America
pilots.[17] Because of this experience in air operations, CIA
Director Casey and Oliver North had selected Secord to trouble-shoot
the deliveries of weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra operation.[18]
(Aderholt and Dearborn also served in the Laotian CIA operation, and
later in supporting the Contras.)
As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and
their men engaged in military training, passed “brown bags filled
with cash” to members of the government, and above all set up an
airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up
hundreds of mujahedin mercenaries in Afghanistan.[19] (Secord and
Aderholt claim to have left Azerbaijan before the mujahedin arrived.)
Meanwhile, Hekmatyar, who at the time was still allied with bin
Laden, was “observed recruiting Afghan mercenaries [i.e. Arab
Afghans] to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia and its Russian
allies.”[20] At this time, heroin flooded from Afghanistan through
Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and even North America.[21] It is
difficult to believe that MEGA’s airline (so much like Air America)
did not become involved.[22]
The operation was not a small one. “Over the course of the next two
years, [MEGA Oil] procured thousands of dollars worth of weapons and
recruited at least two thousand Afghan mercenaries for Azerbaijan –
the first mujahedin to fight on the territory of the former Communist
Bloc.”[23]
In 1993 the mujahedin also contributed to the ouster of Azerbaijan’s
elected president, Abulfaz Elchibey, and his replacement by an
ex-Communist Brezhnev-era leader, Heidar Aliyev.
At stake was an $8 billion oil contract with a consortium of western
oil companies headed by BP. Part of the contract would be a pipeline
which would, for the first time, not pass through Russian-controlled
territory when exporting oil from the Caspian basin to Turkey. Thus
the contract was bitterly opposed by Russia, and required an Azeri
leader willing to stand up to the former Soviet Union.
The Arab Afghans helped supply that muscle. Their own eyes were set
on fighting Russia in the disputed Armenian-Azeri region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, and in liberating neighboring Muslim areas of
Russia: Chechnya and Dagestan.[24] To this end, as the 9/11 Report
notes (58), the bin Laden organization established an NGO in Baku,
which became a base for terrorism elsewhere.[25] It also became a
transshipment point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia, whose
branches “extended not only to the London arms market, but also
throughout continental Europe and North America.”[26]
The Arab Afghans’ Azeri operations were financed in part with Afghan
heroin.
According to police sources in the Russian capital, 184 heroin
processing labs were discovered in Moscow alone last year. ”Every
one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for
Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno- Karabakh,” [Russian
economist Alexandre] Datskevitch said.[27]
This foreign Islamist presence in Baku was also supported by bin
Laden’s financial network.[28] With bin Laden’s guidance and Saudi
support, Baku soon became a base for jihadi operations against
Dagestan and Chechnya in Russia.[29]And an informed article argued in
1999 that Pakistan’s ISI, facing its own disposal problem with the
militant Arab-Afghan veterans, trained and armed them in Afghanistan
to fight in Chechnya. ISI also encouraged the flow of Afghan drugs
westward to support the Chechen militants, thus diminishing the flow
into Pakistan itself.[30]
As Michael Griffin has observed, the regional conflicts in
Nagorno-Karabakh and other disputed areas, Abkhazia, Turkish
Kurdistan and Chechnya each represented a distinct, tactical move,
crucial at the time, in discerning which power would ultimately
become master of the pipelines which, some time in this century, will
transport the oil and gas from the Caspian basin to an energy-avid
world.[31]
The wealthy Saudi families of al-Alamoudi (as Delta Oil) and bin
Mahfouz (as Nimir Oil) participated in the western oil consortium as
partners with the American firm Unocal. In October 2001, the U. S.
Treasury Department named among charities allegedly providing funds
to al Qaeda the Saudi charity Muwafaq (Blessed Relief), to which the
al-Alamoudis and bin Mahfouz families were named as major
contributors.[32] One cannot discern whether religion or oil was
their primary charitable motive.
It is unclear whether MEGA Oil was a front for the U.S. Government or
for U.S. oil companies and their Saudi allies. U.S. oil companies
have been accused of spending millions of dollars in Azerbaijan, not
just to bribe the government but also to install it. According to a
Turkish intelligence source who was an alleged eyewitness, major oil
companies, including Exxon and Mobil, were “behind the coup d’itat”
which in 1993 replaced the elected President, Abulfaz Elchibey, with
his successor, Heydar Aliyev. The source claimed to have been at
meetings in Baku with “senior members of BP, Exxon, Amoco, Mobil and
the Turkish Petroleum Company. The topic was always oil rights and,
on the insistence of the Azeris, supply and arms to Azerbaijan.”
Turkish secret service documents allege middlemen paid off key
officials of the democratically elected government of the oil-rich
nation just before its president was overthrown.[33]
The true facts and backers of the Aliyev coup may never be fully
disclosed. But unquestionably, before the coup, the efforts of
Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Ed Dearborn and Hekmatyar’s
mujahedin helped contest Russian influence and prepare for Baku’s
shift away to the west.[34] Three years later, in August 1996,
Amoco’s president met with Clinton and arranged for Aliyev to be
invited to Washington.[35] In 1997 Clinton said that
In a world of growing energy demand.our nation cannot afford to rely
on a single region for our energy supplies. By working closely with
Azerbaijan to tap the Caspian’s resources, we not only help
Azerbaijan to prosper, we also help diversify our energy supply and
strengthen our energy’s security.[36]
Unocal, the Taliban, and bin Laden in Afghanistan
The accusations against Amoco, Exxon, and Mobil in Azerbaijan
parallel those from European sources against Unocal in Afghanistan,
which has been accused of helping, along with Delta Oil, to finance
the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in 1996. (This was at a time when the
Taliban was also receiving funds from Saudi Arabia and Osama bin
Laden.)
The respected French observer Olivier Roy has charged that “When the
Taleban took power in Afghanistan (1996), it was largely orchestrated
by the Pakistani secret service [ISI] and the oil company Unocal,
with its Saudi ally Delta.”[37] Unocal executive John Maresca then
testified in 1998 to the House Committee on International Relations
on the benefits of a proposed oil pipeline through Afghanistan to the
coat of Pakistan.[38] A second natural gas pipeline (Centgas) was
also contemplated by Unocal.
For Unocal to advance its own funds for the Taliban conquest would
have been in violation of U.S. law, which is why such companies
customarily resort to middlemen. No such restraints would have
inhibited Unocal’s Saudi partner in its Centgas consortium, Delta
Oil. Delta Oil certainly had the assets; it was “owned by a
Jeddah-based group of 50 prominent investors close to the [Saudi]
royal family.”[39] Delta was already an investor with Unocal in the
oilfields of Azerbaijan, and may have been a factor in the October
1995 decision of Turkmenistan to sign a new pipeline contract with
Unocal.[40]
As I wrote a decade ago, citing the case of a U.S. oil company in
Tunisia, “it is normal, not unusual, for the entry of major U.S.
firms into Third World countries to be facilitated and sustained,
indeed made possible, by corruption.”[41] This has long been the
case, but in the Reagan 1980s it was escalated by a new generation of
aggressively risk-taking, law-bending, “cowboy” entrepreneurs. The
pace was set by new corporations like Enron, a high-debt merger that
was in part guided by the junk-bond impresario Michael Milken.
Some have speculated that Enron also had a potential interest in the
Unocal gas pipeline project through Afghanistan. By 1997 Enron was
negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with Neftegas of Uzbekistan,
to develop Uzbekistan’s natural gas. This was a huge project backed
by a $400 million commitment from the U.S. Government through OPIC.
Uzbekistan also signed a Memo of Agreement to participate in the
Centgas gas pipeline. But the Enron Uzbek negotiations collapsed in
1998.[42]
Enron’s short-term plans had been to export Uzbek gas west to
Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Europe. However it has been claimed that
Enron hoped eventually to supply, via the Centgas pipeline, its
failing energy plant in Dabhol, India. (Without a cheap gas supply,
the cost of electricity from Dabhol was so great that Indians refused
to buy it.)[43]
In my book Drugs, Oil, and War, I quote again from Olivier Roy: “It
is the Americans who have made inroads in Central Asia, primarily
because of the oil and gas interests. Chevron and Unocal are
political actors who talk as equals with the States (that is, with
the presidents).”[44]
It is clear they talk as equals in the current Bush Administration.
Both the President and Vice-President are former oilmen, as were some
of their oldest friends and political backers, like Kenneth Lay of
Enron.[45] Twice in his early years George W. Bush’s oil investment
Arbusto (later merged into Harkin Energy) was advanced by Saudi
investors (Salim bin Laden, Osama’s father, and Khalid bin Mahfouz of
Delta-Nimir), some of whom have been allied with the U.S. oil giants
in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.[46]
Al Qaeda, the KLA in Kosovo, and the Trans-Balkan Pipeline
The U.S., Al Qaeda and oil company interests converged again in
Kosovo. Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local
enmities, oil became a prominent aspect of the outcome. There the al
Qaeda-backed UCK or “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA) was directly
supported and politically empowered by NATO, beginning in 1998.[47]
But according to a source of Tim Judah, KLA representatives had
already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies
in 1996, and possibly “several years earlier.”[48] This would
presumably have been back when Arab Afghan members of the KLA, like
Abdul-Wahid al-Qahtani, were fighting in Bosnia.[49]
Mainstream accounts of the Kosovo War are silent about the role of al
Qaeda in training and financing the UCK/KLA, yet this fact has been
recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them.
For example, James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia,
said “Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for
training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.. Milosevic is right.
There is no question of their [al Qaeda’s] participation in conflicts
in the Balkans. It is very well documented.”[50] In March 2002,
Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned
of “importing the Afghan danger to Europe” because several cells
trained and financed by al-Qaeda remained in the region.[51]
As late as 1997 the UCK/KLA had been recognized by the U.S. as a
terrorist group supported in part by the heroin traffic.[52] The
Washington Times reported in 1999 that
The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton administration has
embraced and some members of Congress want to arm as part of the NATO
bombing campaign, is a terrorist organization that has financed much
of its war effort with profits from the sale of heroin.[53]
Yet once again, as in Azerbaijan, these drug-financed Islamist
jihadis received American assistance, this time from the U.S.
Government.[54] At the time critics charged that US oil interests
were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army
protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were
eventually proven correct.[55] BBC News announced in December 2004
that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new U.S. army base in
Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments of Albania,
Bulgaria, and Macedonia.[56] Meanwhile by 2000, according to DEA
statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the
heroin seized in the United States — nearly double the percentage
taken four years earlier. Much of it is now distributed by Kosovar
Albanians.[57]
The closeness of the UCK/KLA to al-Qaeda was acknowledged again in
the western press, after Afghan-connected KLA guerrillas proceeded in
2001 to conduct guerrilla warfare in Macedonia. Press accounts
included an Interpol report containing the allegation that one of bin
Laden4s senior lieutenants was the commander of an elite UCK/KLA unit
operating in Kosovo in 1999.[58] This was probably Mohammed
al-Zawahiri. The American right wing, which opposed Clinton’s actions
in Kosovo, has transmitted reports “that the KLA’s head of elite
forces, Muhammed al-Zawahiri, was the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the military commander for bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.”[59] Meanwhile
Marcia Kurop in the Wall Street Journal has written that “The
Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has
operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction
factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout
Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia.”[60]
According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congressional Task
Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare,
Bin Laden’s Arab `Afghans’ also have assumed a dominant role in
training the Kosovo Liberation Army.[by mid-March 1999 the UCK
included] many elements controlled and/or sponsored by the U.S.,
German, British, and Croatian intelligence services.[61]
The most flagrant and revealing evidence that as late as 2004 some
U.S. bureaucratic sectors were still working with veterans of al
Qaeda networks came in respect to Haiti:
In 2004 a USAID Report confirmed that “Training and management
specialists of the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian response unit
consisting primarily of former Kosovo Liberation Army members, have
been brought to Haiti”[62]
Why would AID bring veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army, “a major
force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of
narcotics,”[63] to train and manage the Haitian Army, an organization
traditionally “corrupted by Colombian cocaine kingpins”?[64] Whatever
the answer, it is hard to imagine that AID did not have drugs somehow
in mind.
Al Qaeda and the Petroleum-Military Complex
It is important to understand that the conspicuous influence of
petroleum money in the administration of two Bush presidents was also
prominent under Clinton. A former CIA officer complained about the
oil lobby’s influence with Sheila Heslin of Clinton’s National
Security Council staff:
Heslin’s sole job, it seemed, was to carry water for an exclusive
club known as the Foreign Oil Companies Group, a cover for a cartel
of major petroleum companies doing business in the Caspian. . . .
Another thing I learned was that Heslin wasn’t soloing. Her boss,
Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, headed the
inter-agency committee on Caspian oil policy, which made him in
effect the government’s ambassador to the cartel, and Berger wasn’t a
disinterested player. He held $90,000 worth of stock in Amoco,
probably the most influential member of the cartel. . . . The deeper
I got, the more Caspian oil money I found sloshing around
Washington.[65]
The oil companies’ meeting with Sheila Heslin in the summer of 1995
was followed shortly by the creation of an interagency governmental
committee to formulate U.S. policy toward the Caspian.
The Clinton Administration listened to the oil companies, and in 1998
began committing U.S. troops to joint training exercises in
Uzbekistan.[66] This made neighboring countries like Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan, wary of Russia, more eager to grant exploration and
pipeline rights to American companies.[67]
But Clinton did not yield to Unocal’s strenuous lobbying in 1996 for
U.S. recognition of the Taliban, as a condition for building the
pipeline from Turkmenistan. Clinton declined in the end to do so,
responding instead to the strongly voiced political opposition,
especially from women’s groups over the Taliban’s treatment of
women.[68]
The three way symbiosis of Al Qaeda, oil companies, and the Pentagon
is still visible in the case of Azerbaijan, for example. Now the
Pentagon is protecting the Aliyev regime (where a younger Aliyev, in
a dubious election, succeeded his father).
The Department of Defense at first proposed that Azerbaijan also
receive an IMET [International Military Education and Training] grant
of $750,000 and an FMF [Foreign Military Financing] grant of $3
million in 2003 as part of the war on terrorism but later admitted
that the funds were actually intended to protect U.S. access to oil
in and around the Caspian Sea.[69]
We have seen that, thanks to al Qaeda, U.S. bases have sprung up
close to oilfields and pipelines in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia,
and Kosovo. And as Michael Klare has noted,
Already [U.S.] troops from the Southern Command (Southcom) are
helping to defend Colombia’s Cano Limsn pipeline..Likewise, soldiers
from the European Command (Eurcom) are training local forces to
protect the newly constructed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in
Georgia..Finally, the ships and planes of the U.S. Pacific Command
(Pacom) are patrolling vital tanker routes in the Indian Ocean, South
China Sea, and the western Pacific..Slowly but surely, the U.S.
military is being converted into a global oil-protection service.[70]
A survey of U.S. history since World War Two suggests that the United
States power state has consistently used the resources of the global
drug traffic to further its own ends, particularly with respect to
oil, at the expense of the public order and well-being of the
American public state.[71] For at least two decades, from
Brzezinski’s backing of Hekmatyar in 1979 to Bush’s backing of the
Afghan Northern Alliance in 2001, the United States has continued to
draw on the resources of drug-trafficking Islamic jihadists who are
or were associated at some point with Al Qaeda.
In the next chapter I shall argue that this alliance with al Qaeda
terrorists against the United States public order underlies the
conspiracy that made 9/11 possible. But we must also look at how the
military-petroleum complex came to project long-term military
budgets, in the order of a trillion dollars, that its advocates
acknowledged that the American public state could not be persuaded
easily to support…
In the absence, that is, of “some catastrophic and catalyzing event –
like a new Pearl Harbor.”[72]
——————————————————————————–

[1] Western governments and media apply the term “al Qaeda” to the
whole “network of co-opted groups” who have at some point accepted
leadership, training and financing from bin Laden (Jason Burke,
Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam [London: I.B. Tauris,
2004], 7-8). From a Muslim perceptive, the term “Al Qaeda” is clumsy,
and has led to the targeting of a number of Islamist groups opposed
to bin Laden’s tactics. See Montasser al-Zayyat, The Road to
Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden’s Right-Hand Man [London: Pluto
Press, 2004], 100, etc.).
[2] Guardian, 1/7/93; Evan F. Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe:
The Afghan-Bosnian Network (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers,
2004), 16. Despite this public stance, ISI elements “privately”
continued to support Arab Afghans who were willing to join Pakistan’s
new covert operations in Kashmir.
[3] Montasser al-Zayyat, The Road to Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin
Laden’s Right-Hand Man (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 55.
[4] Barnett Rubin, New York Times, 12/28/92.
[5] Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil (New York: Crown, 2003),
143-44. Former CIA officer Robert Baer, who in 1993 was posted to
Tajikistan, describes a raid at that time in which “a Tajik Islamic
rebel group.from Afghanistan.managed to overrun a Russian border post
and cut off all the guards’ heads.” According to Baer, the local
Russian intelligence chief was convinced that “the rebels were under
the command of Rasool Sayyaf’s Ittehad-e-Islami, bin Laden’s Afghani
protector,” who in turn was backed by Saudi Arabia and the IIRO. More
commonly it is claimed that Hekmatyar’s terrorist drug network was
supporting the Tajik resistance (Independent, 2/17/93, San Francisco
Chronicle, 10/4/01). For Casey’s encouragement of these ISI-backed
raids in 1985, see Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the
CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to
September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 104.
[6] Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in
Afghanistan (London: Pluto Press, 2001), 150 (Tajik rebels); Coll,
Ghost Wars, 225 (U.S. aid).
[7] Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia
(New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 140-44.
[8] Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind, 115. Exploration in the 1990s has
considerably downgraded these estimates.
[9] Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001), 145.
[10] Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2003), 30-31.
[11] Martha Brill Olcott, “The Caspian’s False Promise,” Foreign
Policy, Summer 1998, 96; quoted in Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil:
The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on
Imported Petroleum (New York: Metropolitan/ Henry Holt, 2004), 129.
Cf. Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 8, 64-66.
[12] Reuters, 4/24/05.
[13] Martha Brill Olcott, Washington Post, 5/22/05
[14] Thomas Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in
an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic (Armonk, NY: M. E.
Sharpe, 1999), 272-75. Cf. Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and Cali
Ruchala, “God Save the Shah,” Sobaka Magazine, 5/22/03,
. A fourth operative
in MEGA Oil, Gary Best, was also a veteran of North’s Contra support
effort. For more on General Secord’s and Major Aderholt’s role as
part of Ted Shackley’s team of off-loaded CIA assets and
capabilities, see Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane
Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert
Operations in the Reagan Era (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 26-30,
36-42, 197-98.
[15] It was also a time when Congress, under pressure from Armenian
voters, had banned all military aid to Azerbaijan (under Section 907
of the Freedom Support Act). This ban, reminiscent of the
Congressional ban on aid to the Contras in the 1980s, ended after
9/11. “In the interest of national security, and to help in
`enhancing global energy security’ during this War on Terror,
Congress granted President Bush the right to waive Section 907 in the
aftermath of September 11th. It was necessary, Secretary of State
Colin Powell told Congress, to `enable Azerbaijan to counter
terrorist organizations'” (Irkali, Kodrarian and Ruchala, “God Save
the Shah,” Sobaka Magazine, 5/22/03).
[16] Richard Secord, with Jay Wurts, Honored and Betrayed: Irangate,
Covert Affairs, and the Secret War in Laos (New York: John Wiley,
1992), 53-57.
[17] Secord, Honored and Betrayed, 211-16.
[18] Secord, Honored and Betrayed, 233-35.
[19] Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary, 272-75; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil,
and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 7. As part of the
airline operation, Azeri pilots were trained in Texas. Dearborn had
previously helped Secord advise and train the fledgling Contra air
force (Marshall, Scott, and Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, 197).
These important developments were barely noticed in the U.S. press,
but a Washington Post article did belatedly note that a group of
American men who wore “big cowboy hats and big cowboy boots” had
arrived in Azerbaijan as military trainers for its army, followed in
1993 by “more than 1,000 guerrilla fighters from Afghanistan’s
radical prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.” (Washington Post,
4/21/94) Richard Secord was allegedly attempting also to sell Israeli
arms, with the assistance of Israeli agent David Kimche, another
associate of Oliver North. See Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 7, 8, 20.
Whether the Americans were aware of it or not, the al Qaeda presence
in Baku soon expanded to include assistance for moving jihadis
onwards into Dagestan and Chechnya.
[20] Cooley, Unholy Wars, 180; Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 7.
[21] Cooley, Unholy Wars, 176.
[22] As the 9/11Commission Report notes (58), the bin Laden
organization established an NGO in Baku, which became a base for
terrorism elsewhere. It also became a transshipment point for Afghan
heroin to the Chechen mafia, whose branches “extended not only to the
London arms market, but also throughout continental Europe and North
America (Cooley, Unholy Wars, 176).
[23] Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and Cali Ruchala , “God Save the
Shah: American Guns, Spies and Oil in Azerbaijan,” 5/22/03,
As we have just
seen, they were not the first.
[24] One of Bin Laden’s associates claimed that Bin Laden himself led
the Arab Afghans in at least two battles in Nagorno Karabakh.
(Associated Press 11/14/99).
[25] Ibrahim Eidarous, later arrested in Europe by the FBI for his
role in the 1998 embassy bombings, headed the Baku base of Al Qaeda
between 1995 and 1997 (Strategic Policy 10/99). An Islamist in Baku
claimed that they did not attack the U.S. Embassy there so as “not to
spoil their good relations in Azerbaijan” (Bill of Indictment in
U.S.A. vs. Bin Laden et. al. 4/01; Washington Post 5/3/01).
[26] Cooley, Unholy Wars, 176.
[27] Frank Viviano, San Francisco Chronicle, 12/18/92.
[28] 9/11 Report, 58.
[29] USA vs. Osama bin Laden, Transcript, Testimony of Jamal Ahmed
al-Fadl, February 6, 2001,
, 300-03.
[30] Levon Sevunts, Montreal Gazette, 10/26/99; cf. Michel
Chossudovsky, “Who Is Osama bin Laden?” Centre for Research on
Globalisation, 9/12/01,
Those trained by
ISI included the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab.
Cf. Rajeev Sharma, Pak Proxy War: A Story of ISI, bin Laden and
Kargil (New Delhi: Kaveri Books, 2002), 84, 86, 89, 91.
[31] Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind, 115.
[32] Boston Herald , 12/11/01; New York Times, 10/13/01;
.
[33] London Sunday Times, 3/26/00. The U.S. private research firm
Stratfor agrees that “Western energy companies splashed cash about in
an attempt to squeeze the country for its oil and natural gas”
(Stratfor, 10/16/03).
[34] European sources have also alleged that CIA meetings with the
Algerian fundamentalist leader Anwar Haddam in the period 1993-95
were responsible for the surprising lack of Islamist attacks on U.S.
oil and agribusiness installations in Algeria. See Richard Labivihre,
Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam (New York: Algora
Publishing, 2000), 182-89. For partial corroboration, cf. Cooley,
Unholy Wars, 207; Bradford Dillon, Middle East Policy Council
Journal, September 2001,
[35] Washington Post, 10/4/98: “Before the meeting ended, Amoco – the
largest U.S. investor in Azerbaijan’s oil boom – had what it wanted:
a promise from Clinton to invite the Azerbaijani president to
Washington. Six months later the company, which traditionally donated
heavily to the Republicans, contributed $50,000 to the Democratic
Party. In August 1997, Clinton received President Heydar Aliyev with
full honors, witnessed the signing of a new Amoco oil exploration
deal and promised to lobby Congress to lift U.S. economic sanctions
on Azerbaijan.”
[36] White House Press Statement, 8/1/97; quoted in Michael Klare,
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York:
Metropolitan/ Henry Holt, 2001), 4; Scott, Drugs. Oil. and War, 30.
[37] Olivier Roy, quoted in Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror:
The United States and Islam (New York: Algora, 2000), 280.
[38] Senator Hank Brownwas a supporter of the Unocal project, and
welcomed the fall of Kabul as a chance for stable government (Rashid,
Taliban, 166).
[39] Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind, 124.
[40] Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in
Afghanistan (London: Pluto, 2001), 124.
[41] Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), 203.
[42] Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections, 10/12/98,
[43] Enron’s losses on its Dabhol project approached $900 million,
and were a major factor in Enron’s bankruptcy. “Cheney, Secretary of
State Colin Powell and a series of other top Bush administration
officials and diplomats reportedly lobbied Indian leaders to save
Dabhol. OPIC documents released in January 2002 revealed that the
National Security Council had intervened on behalf of Enron on the
Dabhol issue” (M. Asif Ismail, “A Most Favored Corporation,” Center
for Public Integrity, 7/29/05,
;sid0.)
[44] Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 55n.
[45] According to David Corn, Bush “claimed he had not gotten to know
disgraced Enron chief Ken Lay until after the 1994 Texas
gubernatorial election. But Lay had been one of Bush’s larger
contributors during that election and had–according to Lay
himself–been friends with Bush for years before it” ( “The Other
Lies of George Bush,” Nation Online, 9/25/03).
[46] Khalid bin Mahfouz was indicted by the U.S. in connection with
the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
[47] KLA representatives had met with American, British, and Swiss
intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly several years earlier
(Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge [New Haven: Yale UP, 2002], 120).
[48] Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002),
120.
[49] Evan F. Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian
Network (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2004), 79. Al-Qahtani,
who was killed by U.S. ordinance in Afghanistan in 2001, had
previously fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Israel, Chechnya, and
Kosovo.
[50] and an expert on the Balkans. `Milosevic is right. There is no
question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is
very well documented,” (National Post, 3/15/02). Contrast e.g.
Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War : Kosovo and Beyond (New York:
Metropolitan/ Henry Holt, 2000), 13: “the KLA, at first a small band
of poorly trained and amateurish gunmen.” For the al Qaeda background
to the UCK and its involvement in heroin-trafficking, see also Marcia
Christoff Kurop, “Al Qaeda4s Balkan Links,” Wall Street Journal
Europe, 11/1/01; Montreal Gazette, 12/15/99.
[51] National Post, 3/15/02
[52] Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 29. “According to Michel Koutouzis,
the DEA’s website once contained a section detailing Kosovar
trafficking, but a week before the U.S.-led bombings began, the
section disappeared” (Peter Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones,
January/February 2000,
).
Speaking in Kosovo in February 1998, Robert Gelbard, the U.S. special
envoy to the region, said publicly that the KLA “is, without any
questions, a terrorist group” (Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 138).
[53] Washington Times, 5/3/99. Cf. San Francisco Chronicle, 5/5/99:
“Officers of the Kosovo Liberation Army and their backers, according
to law enforcement authorities in Western Europe and the United
States, are a major force in international organized crime, moving
staggering amounts of narcotics through an underworld network that
reaches into the heart of Europe.”
[54] See Lewis Mackenzie (former UN commander in Bosnia), “We Bombed
the Wrong Side?” National Post, 4/6/04: “Those of us who warned that
the West was being sucked in on the side of an extremist, militant,
Kosovo-Albanian independence movement were dismissed as appeasers.
The fact that the lead organization spearheading the fight for
independence, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was universally
designated a terrorist organization and known to be receiving support
from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda was conveniently ignored..The Kosovar
Albanians played us like a Stradivarius violin. We have subsidized
and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically
pure Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of
the violence in the early 1990s, and we continue to portray them as
the designated victim today, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars
combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the
message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported
independence movements around the world.” Cf. John Pilger, New
Statesman, 12/13/04.
[55] George Monbiot, Guardian, 2/15/01.
[56] BBC News, 12/28/04. Those who charged that such a pipeline was
projected were initially mocked but gradually vindicated (Guardian,
1/15/01; Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 34). See also Marjorie Cohn,
“Nato Bombing of Kosovo: Humanitarian Intervention or Crime against
Humanity?” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, March
2002, 79-106.
[57] Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000.
[58] Halifax Herald, 10/29/01, < >. Cf.
Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
[Roseville: Prima, 2001], 298: “In late 1998, despite the growing
pressure from U.S. intelligence and its local allies.a new network
made up of bin Laden’s supporters was being established in Albania
under the cover of various Muslim charity organizations..Bin Laden’s
Arab `Afghans’ also have assumed a dominant role in training the
Kosovo Liberation Army.” Bodansky adds that by mid-March 1999 the UCK
included “many elements controlled and/or sponsored by the U.S.,
German, British, and Croatian intelligence services.. In early April
[1999] the UCK began actively cooperating with the NATO
bombing–selecting and designating targets for NATO aircraft as well
as escorting U.S. and British special forces detachments into
Yugoslavia” (397-98). Cf. also Scott Taylor, “Bin Laden’s Balkan
Connections,”
; San
Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01.
[59] Cliff Kincaid, “Remember Kosovo?” Accuracy in Media, Media
Monitor, 12/28/04, .|
[60] Wall Street Journal Europe, 11/1/01.
[61] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
[Roseville: Prima, 2001], 298, 397-98ZZck.
[62] Anthony Fenton, “Kosovo Liberation Army helps establish
`Protectorate’ in Haiti,” citing Flashpoints interview, 11/19/04,
). Cf. Anthony Fenton, “Canada in Haiti:
Humanitarian Extermination,” CMAQ.net, 12/8/04;
.
[63] San Francisco Chronicle, 5/5/99.
[64] New York Times, 6/2/04.
[65] Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in
the CIA’s War on Terrorism (New York: Crown, 2002), 243-44. Cf.
Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 31.
[66] Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia
(New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 83.
[67] Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 65; Johnson, Sorrows of Empire,
172-73.
[68] Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001), 173-75, 182.
[69] Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 137. Cf. 169: “During the 1990s and
especially after Bush’s declaration of a `war on terrorism,’ the oil
companies again needed some muscle and the Pentagon was happy to
oblige.”
[70] Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of
America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (New York:
Metropolitan/ Henry Holt, 2004). 6-7.
[71] Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 1-105, 185-207.
[72] Project for the New American Century, “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century,”
September 2000, p. 51 (63),
.
See Chapter 10.
————- du/~pdscott/q.html

Published April 18, 2005
Crafting a killer plot
Actors gather at Glendale home to rehearse a film that is an
alternative rendering of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
By Rima Shah, News-Press and Leader
It’s never a pretty scene when the hit man hired to kill your wife
fumbles the job, and the wife finds out.
That’s what happened Sunday afternoon in a spacious Glendale home. The
curses flying around the dining table were, therefore, no surprise.
But, thankfully, no real murder contract actually existed. The fiery
accusations and unmentionable curses were read from a script, as a
group of young filmmakers got together to rehearse for an independent
movie set to film in July.
The film, “The Machiavelli Hangman,” an alternative rendering of John
F. Kennedy’s assassination, is the brainchild of Shervin Youssefian, a
local filmmaker and the writer and director of the movie.
“The movie recreates the Kennedy assassination and connects it to one
of our characters, who is an assassin,” Youssefian said.
Youssefian wrote and made films as a child, and then moved on to
directing commercials and such short films as “Color Blind” and “Past
Present.”
“I started out getting awards as a kid for drawing and painting,” he
said.
He went on to start entertaining his teachers and classmates with his
movies and graduated from the University of Northridge’s film school.
The movie will leave the audience surprised, he said.
“We always show the story from the perspective of so many characters,”
he said. “People sit on the roller coaster; they know where it is
going, but the actual experience cannot be recreated. It is absolutely
different from what people think is going on in the world.”
The 20- to 30-member cast, which does not include the lead actors and
the crew, will start filming in June or July at local locations in the
area, said Harutiun Gendovian, the film’s producer.
Locations include the house they were rehearsing at, a mortuary, an
alley and an abandoned cabin, he said.
“It’s a combination of many films, yet it is not a repetition of these
films,” he said. “It’s very captivating. Every small character has so
much character in it.”
In the house, actors walked around holding bound copies of the script
and posed for individual and group still shots.
One of them was Bruce Nachsin, who plays George, one of the lead
characters.
“George is one of the main luckless figures in the movie,” Nachsin
said. “I have the least amount of luck in all the characters. He
starts off as relatively powerless in a situation he can’t control,
and he goes through events well beyond anything he could have hoped to
encounter.”
There is more to the film than observing how its characters
develop. It is also an attempt to bring together the Armenian
community.
Youssefian and the rest of the film’s crew launched a website,
www.armenian fimmaker.com, to ask the community to donate a dollar
each for the funding of the film.
The film is more of an attempt to generate support in the community
than a purely financial effort, he said.
“We want to see how supportive the community is of the effort,”
Youssefian said.
The website attracted Joseph Simaie, a Glendale-resident and dentist.
Simaie was so impressed with their effort that he offered his house,
where the crew rehearsed Sunday, as a location and became a
collaborator in the project.
“I think that the Armenian community has to get together from the
ground level,” Simaie said. “I’ve seen a lot of efforts, but theirs
was genuine. Art and movies are a way through which people can get
together, enjoy and have a conversation with your family.”

EXPOSITION “MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2005” TO BE HELD IN
YEREVAN OCTOBER 5-7
YEREVAN, JULY 26. ARMINFO. The fifth annual specialized exposition
“medicine and Public health 2005” dedicated to the 75th anniversary
of Yerevan State Medical University after M.Heratsi will take place
in Yerevan October 5-7.
Talking to ARMINFO, Executive Director of the CJSC Expo-Service
Georgiy Kakoyan says that the exposition occupying 350 sq/m area will
be held at the Government House. He says some 50-60 organizations can
place their exhibits in the given premises. He says that 27 local
organizations have already applied for participation in the event.
The cost of 1 sq/m area will not exceed 60 reference units.
Meanwhile, Kakoyan says that the area of last year’s specialized
exposition reached 270 sq/m with the participants numbering 48. He
says that like all the specialized exhibitions, this one aims
informing the public of the new achievements of the exposition
participant-companies. Any exhibition having macroeconomic importance
gives more opportunities of economic development to its country, he
thinks. He explains this fact with the great number of contracts
concluded within the framework of expositions.
“Medicine and Public Health 2005 ” will consist of the following
divisions: medical and rehabilitation centers, activity of
international and charitable organizations, medical equipment and
tools for equipment of clinics, rooms and pharmacies. Besides, dental
materials, orthopedic and rehabilitation equipment sight improvement
materials will be presented. The exposition will also include
divisions on treatment at resorts and sanatoriums and others.

All change in Armenia
Thursday, 21 July 2005
By Khachik Chakhoyan
FC Lernayin Artsakh have been excluded from the
Premier League by the Football Federation of Armenia.
The decision comes weeks after the club released a
statement saying they did not want to play in the top
flight any more. Lernayin Artsakh were also fined
1,000.
Reduced numbers
As a result, the Premier League now comprises just
eight teams, who will be given automatic 3-0 wins over
Lernayin Artsakh for the remainder of the season.
However, the Yerevan side’s first eleven results
stand.
Relegation play-off
In a change of format, the top six clubs at the end of
the campaign will play a second tournament for the
league title. The bottom two face a relegation
play-off, with the loser going down automatically,
while the winner will still have to beat the First
Division runners-up to stay up.
Homegrown Banants
FC Banants’s policy of replacing foreign imports with
local talent continues with the departures of Vesik
Chikhladze and Artyom Yevlanov, who become the third
and fourth non-Armenians to leave the club this term.
The strategy has so far failed to deliver success,
with Banants going down 3-2 at home to FC Lokomotiv
Tbilisi in their UEFA Cup first qualifying round first
leg.
Ararat strife
FC Ararat Yerevan’s parlous financial state continues
to worsen, and they have lost four foreign players –
Basden Uzuher, Musa Irumekhaj, Pol Okechukwu and
Vakhtang Hakobyan – whose wages were not paid. To
compound Ararat’s misery, they suffered heavy defeats
in each of their last three matches.
Pyunik lead the way
Despite early exits from Europe, FC Pyunik and FC MIKA
remain in contention for domestic silverware. Unbeaten
Pyunik lead the table, while Banants, FC Kilikia and
FC Kotayk look set to battle for third. The sixth and
final ‘play-off’ place might well be between FC
Dinamo-Zenit Yerevan and FC Shirak.

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
July 25 2005
THE CANADIAN YOUTH PARTICIPATE IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH OF
ST. BLESSED VIRGIN IN ARMENIA
YEREVAN, July 25. /ARKA/. Representatives of the Canadian youth
participate in the reconstruction of the church of St. Blessed Virgin
in Artimet village, Etchmiadzin region of Armenia. According to the
Press Chancellery of Holy See of Etchmiadzin, the process of
reconstruction is directed by the Head of the Canadian eparchy of the
Armenia Apostolic Church, bishop Bagrat Galstyan.
Already the 12th year youth groups from Canada regularly visit
Armenia to participate in the reconstruction of education centers and
churches. The campaign is held in the framework of the program of the
Armenian eparchy of Canada “Mission of the Canadian Youth in
Armenia”. A.H.-0–

Yerevan Press Club of Armenia presents `MediaDialogue” Web Site as a
Regional Information Hub project.
As a part of the project web site is maintained,
featuring the most interesting publications from the press of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey on issues of mutual concern. The latest
updates on the site are weekly delivered to the subscribers.
***************************************************************************
==========================================================================
CONFLICTS
==========================================================================
ARKADY GHUKASIAN: MOUNTAINOUS KARABAGH WILL STRUGGLE FOR ITS INDEPENDENCE
——————————————- ———————————
Source: “Golos Armenii” newspaper (Armenia) [July 21, 2005]
Author: “De Facto” news agency

`The principles proclaimed by Mountainous Karabagh in 1991have not
changed. We exclude Karabagh subordination to Azerbaijan. We will
struggle for our independence, as stated by President of Mountainous
Karabagh Republic Arkady Ghukasian in the interview to Armenian Public
Television.
In his opinion, MKR authorities understand that it is a long and
complex process. However, if today the international community is not
ready to recognize independence of Mountainous Karabagh, this
possibility should not be excluded altogether, he stated. If
previously we considered MK status respecting territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan, today all the options are on the agenda. It is clear for
both international community and Azerbaijan that MK will not agree to
be a part of Azerbaijan, as emphasized by Arkady Ghukasian.
“We repeatedly stated about our principles: Mountainous Karabagh
should be independent, Mountainous Karabagh cannot be a part of
Azerbaijan, Mountainous Karabagh should have security guarantees,
whereas the security frames of MK are also determined at
negotiations. We certainly have benchmarks for compromise that we
cannot trespass’, MKR President stated.
Answering the question about the impact of various factors on the
negotiation process: attitude of the international community, Baku
oil, democratic elections, Arkady Ghukasian noted that any of these
factors is considered in the negotiation process. However, he thinks
the principle of democracy is of primary importance today
“International community closely follows the development of the
processes both in Mountainous Karabagh and Azerbaijan. It is not by
accident that the parliamentary elections in Karabagh got so much
attention’, MKR President stated. In his opinion, today the decisive
role will be with such points as the willingness of MK people to build
a sovereign state, develop democratic relations, market economy,
ability to implement the goals and objectives set. `I am confident
this circumstance might not be a priority for today. In this respect,
I think we have a serious advantage’, Arkady Ghukasian
stated. Commenting on the statements that the process of Karabagh
settlement undergoes a new stage of activation, MKR President noted
that this conclusion may be made considering that today Azerbaijani
position is more constructive compared to previous years. `They are
not so aggressive and expressed willingness to discuss those issues
that have always been a priority for Mountainous Karabagh. If
previously Azerbaijan refused to discuss the status of MK, today this
issue is on the agenda of the negotiation. It means Azerbaijan
gradually enters the constructive field’, Arkady Ghukasian said.
As an answer to the request for explanation of this phenomenon,
President of MKR did not exclude the fact that one of the reasons is
the fact that in November Azerbaijan will have parliamentary
elections, on which a lot will depend. On the other hand, he noted
that international community has long worked with the Azerbaijani
authorities convincing them that a rigid position will not settle the
problem. `It is a mistake to ignore the Karabagh factor and discuss
issues only with Armenia. I am convinced that this view is also shared
by OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmen and it is also the result of the
mediators’ activity with Azerbaijani authorities’, Arkady Ghukasian
stated. On the other hand, he continued that there are developments
that are not hinging either on Azerbaijan, Karabagh or Armenia, and
the Azerbaijani authorities should take it into account. `Today, the
international community is interested in settling the conflict through
peaceful means, and in my opinion Azerbaijan cannot ignore this
circumstance”. The request to characterize the fact that the
negotiations are mainly conducted between Armenian and Azerbaijan on
the level of Foreign Ministers and Presidents and the mediators
periodically visit Stepanakert informing MKR authorities about the
progress of negotiations, was answered by Arkady Ghukasian as follows,
“The fact that MK does not actively participate in these processes not
counting the visits of the mediators, sets the impression that
Stepanakert is outside the negotiation process. When we speak of a
real format of negotiations – Karabagh-Azerbaijan-Armenia, there is an
impression that we need it. Meanwhile, I am convinced that it is
essential for the process. We have much stronger attributes of
statehood than negotiations with Azerbaijan”.
MKR President is confident that without Karabagh participation the
problem cannot be solved. `The fact that today Azerbaijan refuses to
hold negotiations with Karabagh is another matter. I may draw one
conclusion – Azerbaijan is not yet ready for settlement, since any
contacts with Armenia without MK is propaganda based on the approach
that hinges on the principle `Armenia – aggressor, Armenia occupied
the territories of Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan naturally conducts
negotiations with Armenia on these and other issues’, Arkady Ghukasian
stated. `I am confident that Mountainous Karabagh is not outside
negotiations. Half in jest, I emphasized several times that if we are
all interested in the result, it is not important whether MK
participates in the negotiations: let the negotiations be conducted by
Portugal and Spain. If as a result of these negotiations MK
independence is recognized and we get what we aspired to, I see no
problems’, MK President noted.
In his opinion, MK participation in the negotiations is not an end in
itself. `However, I am confident that there are issues impossible to
be solved without MK participation. All the mediators understand it. I
am confident that today both the Co-chairmen and the authorities of
Azerbaijan understand that we are approaching a stage when MK
participation becomes necessary. It is essential for Armenia
too. Herein, we have no problem of mistrust, the issue is not that we
do not trust the Armenian authorities or doubt their negotiating
skills. The point is that MK participation will make the negotiation
process more efficient, since there are issues that cannot be solved
without MK participation. Armenia cannot answer these questions
instead of Karabagh’, Arkady Ghukasian stated. He noted in particular
that without MK participation it is impossible to work on the details
of peaceful agreement. The Karabagh side is aware of the working
process. “In any case, these principles are agreed with MK. If
currently Armenia defends some principles, these are primarily MK
principles. The fact that today we have no agreement between Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Karabagh and the mediators on these principles is another
matter’, Arkady Ghukasian stated.
“Again, I want to emphasize that participation in the negotiations is
not an ending goal for us. In propaganda aspect, our failure to
participate sets the impression that Mountainous Karabagh is not a
subject but object of negotiations. This circumstance is really in
place and we should take it into account’, MKR President noted.
Answering the question whether he believes that Azerbaijan really
aspires to peaceful settlement, Arkady Ghukasian stated, `I think
peaceful settlement is a risk primarily for political leadership. I am
not sure the Azerbaijani authorities are willing to take this risk, to
show political will. Still I am confident of their intention to do
so. It is hard to imagine a political figure, who would be unwilling
to solve a problem that is a priority for his country. However, desire
is not enough. Political will is what we need. It was not by accident
that I said it is a risk. The Azerbaijani authorities clearly perceive
that it is impossible to implement all the ideas they voiced
throughout these years. They cannot get everything without making
concessions. Considering the fact that they gave great promises to
their people from which they need to gradually withdraw for they are
unreal, I think the problem is whether they will take the risk or
not. Recently, I notice that the Azerbaijani press became less
aggressive. It means certain activity was started with the people
through artificially imbuing hatred and hostility towards Armenian
people. Something we did not do these years in our country. We were
much more reserved’. There was a concern that Azerbaijani authorities,
who repeatedly organizing information leakage and then instigating
public opinion against the information disseminated by them similarly
to the proposal about `a common state’ and later around Prague
principles of settlement, will likewise fail the frequently discussed
idea of conducting a referendum and a temporary status of MK. Arkady
Ghukasian stated that such a conclusion can me made.
`If the authorities of Azerbaijan are interested in the conflict to be
settled as soon as possible, there should be no leakage, since this
process is confidential. There is a principle – if all the issues are
not agreed upon, we cannot consider the issue is solved. It is a
process and the leakages put it at risk. The principle of
confidentiality should be respected by all the sides. It is impossible
for one country to respect confidentiality and the other one give
leakages. Taking this into account, it can be assumed that Azerbaijan
attempts to avoid the process’, he stated.
Alongside this, MKR President did not exclude the attempts for
probing by the Azerbaijani authorities. `Azerbaijani authorities
voiced loud statements of spread-eagle type like, `Karabagh is our
inalienable part! We will never put up with the occupation of our
territories!’ etc and today they became hostages of their own
statements. I think we need time for the Azerbaijani authorities to
pass into a constructive field’, Arkady Ghukasian stated. }
===========================================================================
REGION
==========================================================================
THE EQUIPMENT OF THE RUSSIAN BASE IN SOUTH GEORGIA CANNOT BE WITHDRAWN
GIVEN THE POOR CONDITION OF THE BRIDGES
—————————————————————————-
Source: “Zerkalo” newspaper (Azerbaijan) [July 26, 2005]
Author:

The equipment of Russian military base 62 (Akhalkalaki) cannot be
withdrawn from Georgia under own power or by trailers, as Deputy
Commander of the Group of Russian Forces in the Transcaucasus (GRFT),
Colonel Vladimir Kuparadze stated.
“Five bridges on the route from Akhalkalaki to the railway station in
Akhaltsikh are not fit for equipment passage, so its further
transportation by the railway to Batumi is impossible. We informed the
Georgian side about it’, Kuparadze stated.
He noted that the headquarters of the Russian forces called the
attention of the Georgian side to the necessity of taking adequate
measures for transportation of the equipment.
As a reminder, Foreign Ministers of Russia and Georgia, based on the
results of the negotiations in Moscow May 30, signed a joint statement
stipulating that the withdrawal of the Russian military bases from
Georgian territory should be over in the course of 2008. After the
negotiations, Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov
stated to the journalists that `the withdrawal will be stage-by-stage:
starting from heavy equipment, personal stuff and later handing over
the Russian military objects to Georgia”.
However, afterwards member of the Security Committee of State Duma,
Gennady Gudkov stated after his trip around the Russian military bases
in Georgia that Russia is unable to fully withdraw the troops and
equipment from Georgia by 2008. `Russia will meet the deadline if part
of the property and equipment is left behind and the people are taken
to open field’, Gudkov stated. He proved his point by the results of
the analysis of technical and technological possibilities of troops
withdrawal, which was conducted by himself and member of the Defense
Committee of State Duma, Nikolay Bezborodov – also on a visit to
Russian military bases in Georgia. According to Gudkov, just
withdrawal of the heavy equipment – by large landing ships through sea
– will take 3,5 or 4 years. `If it is easier to do from Batumi, how
can we withdraw equipment from Akhalkalaki? This issue has not been
considered at all’, Gudkov said. In his opinion, heavy equipment from
Akhalkalaki will not get to the sea under own power: only 5-6 out of
16 bridges might not keep the weight of the tanks.
As a reminder, the withdrawal of the military equipment from the
Russian base in Batumi was started on June 1. The train with 15 cars
left Batumi and arrived in Tbilisi by midnight and later to
Armenia. Based on the data of GRFT, the transportation of the
equipment and munitions was carried out in compliance with the plan of
withdrawing surplus of munitions and equipment from Batumi base out of
Georgia, developed a few moths ago before the Georgian-Russian
negotiations on the terms of withdrawing Russian military bases from
Batumi and Akhalkalaki were over. }
ARMENIA CONCERNED OVER THE RAILWAY
—————————————————————————-
Source: “Milliyet” newspaper (Turkey) [July 23, 2005]
Author: Semih Idiz

With the negotiations on Turkey’s EU membership on October 3
approaching, Yerevan again showed concern. Armenia, whose economic
isolation still more increased after launching of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline, directed its energy to obstruction of Kars-Akhalkalaki
railway project with the support of the Diaspora. If the project of
Kars-Akhalkalaki railway, that was again raised at the opening
ceremony of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in May with the participation
of the Presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, is implemented,
these three countries will be connected to Europe, avoiding Armenia.
Armenian Minister of Transportation Andranik Margarian (apparently
Andranik Manukian is meant – Ed.) in his interview published recently
in the Armenian press, stated that in case the project is implemented,
Armenian blockade will be in full. Margairian noted that they do their
best to prevent the project.
Attack For Prevention
Armenia is also inspired by the fact that the costs of the project are
high – 600 million USD. As anticipated by Yerevan and Diaspora, the
implementation of the project requires foreign investment. In fact, it
is also confirmed by the Turkish officials.
It is for this reason that during the meetings with the colleagues
from EU, Margairian constantly puts this issue on the agenda, trying
to convince the European community that the project is directed
against his country. The main argument of Armenia is the fact that the
railway connecting Kars with Armenian city of Gyumri already
exists. Armenia states that the railway Kars-Gyumri is blocked for 15
years `because of the Turkish hostility’, presenting this fact to the
EU officials as a violation, so it attempts to show it as a violation
of `good neighborly relations’ to the EU countries. The Armenian side
is also encouraged by the fact that TRASECA European project, that
foresees joining of Caucasus and Europe by a railway, does not mention
Kars-Akhalkalaki project and refers only to Kars-Gyumri railway.
EU Encourages
The coincidence of the Armenian attack and the attempts of certain EU
members, who are against Turkey’s membership, to introduce in the
framing document on Turkey-EU negotiations the conditions on opening
the Armenian border is not accidental. It is also no accident that
right now the famous figures of the Armenian lobby in US Congress Joe
Nollenberg, Frank Pallone and George Radanovich submitted to the House
of Representatives the draft law on this issue. Based on the
supposition that the interested parties will try to get financial
support of Washington for construction of Kars-Akhalkalaki railway,
the representatives of the Armenian lobby are trying to pass a draft
law preventing implementation of this route in circumvention of
Armenia. Their main argument is inexpediency of constructing a new
railway while there is inactive Kars-Gyumri railway.
Time will show whether USA and EU will support these initiatives of
the Armenian side. We repeatedly witnessed how USA and EU openly
support Genocide allegations, in the past moving this issue to the
background, defending their own economic interests. Thus, all the
attempts of Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora to prevent launching
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline failed. The same may happen now. Small
interests are always sacrificed to bigger ones, whereas Armenia
constantly ignores this factor and thus it suffers. }
WHY DIDN’T THE GRENADE EXPLODE?
—————————————————————————-
Source: `Koveldgiuri Gazeti’ newspaper (Georgia) [July 22, 2005]
Author: Leonid Gordeli

The photos, made from the space by one of American satellites of the
Earth, led the investigation about the grenade cast at US President on
the track of an unemployed resident of Tbilisi, Vladimir Harutiunian
(27). More exactly, the main contribution was with broadcasts by the
local channels and the assistance of unknown persons, responding to
the promise of 150 thousand lari (about 80 thousand USD) by Georgian
Ministry of Interior for providing information by the `hot
line’. There were several `feelers’ according to the Minister of
Interior Vano Merabishvili, and the sum will be divided among
them. Meanwhile, currently the law and order bodies are much more
concerned by other problems.
Who is he, Vova Harutiunian – an individual with anti-global
orientation, who was on his own or a humble tool in the hands of
foreign special services? The Georgian authorities are now in
anticipation of a very important answer to this question. Harutiunian
faced charges of a terrorist act by several articles: terrorism,
premeditated murder of a policeman, illegal storage of arms and
explosives. He already confessed to throwing the grenade by himself
and even provided some details describing the movement of his arm: a
throw over the head (something like a basketball technique called a
`hook’) to reach the tribune, barred from the 120 thousand crowd with
a construction of bulletproof glass. He made his confession at a
hospital ward. Harutiunian was taken to the clinic after he was
wounded in shootings during a special operation on his
detention. Trying to escape, with a burst of machine gun the suspect
killed the Head of Primary Investigation Department of the Ministry of
Interior Anti-terrorism Center, Zurab Kvlividze (35), who wounded him
from his gun (the operation was conducted in the yard of Valdimir
Harutiunian’s house). Thus, in setting a penalty for three-months
imprisonment, the incrimination was both illegal storage of arms and
premeditated murder of a policeman.
In the shed built by Harutiunian at his small garden, the
investigators found several grenades, some explosives, and
detonators. The shed is wrapped in wires inside and outside,
resembling a movie `Timur and His Team’. As his acquaintances say,
Vova was a good expert in electrical devices. He installed an alarm
system warning of strangers approaching and to provide a connection
with the apartment where he permanently resided. The criminal experts
found several books. One of them is `Jackal’s Day’ about a failed
attempt at General Charles de Gaulle. Another – a manual on primary
military training. The neighbors testify that Vova had a reputation of
a guy reading a lot and enjoying it. Still, they say he was reserved
and actually had no friends. Knowing a family he came from, they were
sincerely astonished over the incident stating that they would never
think Vova might be involved in any street fight to say nothing of
such a serious crime as an act of terrorism or an attempt to commit
it. It is not surprising that he had never had any criminal record or
other contacts with law and order bodies. His hatred to George Bush,
as US President, was expressed by Vladimir Harutiunian in the form of
a bad language and a characteristic gesture of raising a middle finger
immediately after detention.
Harutiunian was unemployed although several years ago he could work as
a motor mechanic. He left the technical support station without any
reason, preferring breeding and sale of hamsters. His mother, Anjela
Harutiunian – a teacher of French, is also unemployed and earned her
living by the sale of disposable napkins. The neighbors testify that
despite their destitution, they never applied for help to anyone. For
instance, unable to pay for the elevator, they did not use it though
the neighbors kindly asked them to. Such was the living of this family
whose main provider, Harutiunian’s father, passed away over 20 years
ago.
What is it – `Herostratus Complex’, impact of the books on a `definite
topic’ or a burst of personal indignation accumulated for the past
years? Is there any connection with other people or organizations
inside or outside the country? There are still quite few suppositions
voiced. The version about enraged `lonely wolf’ is not very
popular. In particular, Chairman of Parliamentary Committee on Defense
and Security Givi Targmadze thinks, `the track might lead to Russia or
any other state. A similar opinion, promoted by the inertia of
thinking, was expressed by a couple of experts. However, if
Harutiunian had qualified instructors, the grenade should have
exploded but it failed to. As Minister of Interior Vano Merabishvili
stated, one of the main reasons is that the hand grenade of Degtyarev
`was wrapped in a handkerchief’. Another reason, according to the
preliminary conclusion of military technical experts, might be the low
quality of the grenade, which appeared to be `made in Armenia’, as
they asserted. Armenian Defense Minister gave a quick response,
explaining that the military industrial complex of the country does
not produce grenades of this type. Apparently, this statement will be
repeated by Armenian Prime Minister, Andranik Margarian, planning an
unofficial visit to Georgia this weekend. According to some data, he
intends to raise the issue of `Armenian terrorist’ at the meetings
with a Georgian colleague Zurab Nogaideli and President Mikhail
Sahakashvili…
Just to remind, prior to Vladimir Harutiunian’s birth, many future
celebrities lived among Tbilisi Armenians: composer Aram Khachatrian,
astrophysicist Victor Hambartsumian, chansonnier Charles Aznavour,
world chess champion Tigran Petrossian, movie director Sergey
Parajanov and other famous people. Nevertheless, the fact remains that
Vova Harutiunian committed a crime impossible to be forgiven.
}
NB: Dear readers, the next MediaDialogue update will be made in early
September.
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Lraper Church Bulletin 26/07/2005
Contact: Deacon Vagharshag Seropyan
Armenian Patriarchate
TR-34130 Kumkapi, Istanbul
T: +90 (212) 517-0970, 517-0971
F: +90 (212) 516-4833, 458-1365
[email protected]
<; ORDINATION TO THE HOLY ORDER OF PRIESTHOOD The Chancellery of the Armenian Patriarchate has officially announced that the Holy Mystery of Ordination to the Order of Priesthood will be celebrated on Thursday 28 July 2005, on the Feast of Saints Giragos and Hughida in the Armenian Church of the Holy Mother of God in Besiktas, Istanbul. On Wednesday 27 July 2005, the Reverend Deacons Sahag Bicakciyan, Sevan Civanyan, Harutyun Mkhitaryan and Hayk Koparyan will kneel at the main door of the Holy Mother of God Patriarchal Church in Kumkapi and will be officially called to the Holy Order of Priesthood by His Beatitude Mesrob II, Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul & All Turkey, who will also question the ordinands publicly regarding doctrinal matters. On Thursday morning, the Holy Mystery of Ordination will be celebrated in the Besiktas Armenian Church during the Holy Eucharist offered by His Beatitude the Patriarch. According to the Holy Canons of the Armenian Church, just before the Readings of the day, the Patriarch will first lay hands on the heads of the deacons, conferring on them the Holy Order of Priesthood. The second part of the Mystery of Ordination will take place just before the passing of the Kiss of Peace, when the Patriarch will anoint the foreheads and both hands of the newly ordained priests with Holy Myron. In keeping with the Holy Tradition of the Armenian Church, the new priests will then enter a period of complete seclusion, of fasting and meditation, before officiating at their first Divine Liturgy. Saint Hughida (Julitta, also known as Juliot), a Christian widow, fled from Iconium (modern Konya) with her three-year-old child Giragos (Cyriacus) in order to avoid persecution during Emperor Diocletian's reign. The saintly Christian lady was captured and sentenced to death at Tarsus in 305. Giragos made a childish attack on the sentencing magistrate, and announced that he was a Christian like his mother. The angry magistrate threw the child to the ground, smashing his skull and killing him instantly. Following this, the child's mother Saint Hughida was also horribly tortured and died a martyr's death. Legend says that from the site of their burial there erupted a miraculous spring of water that cured the sick and improved the health of those who were immersed in it. The Armenian Church of Saint Giragos in Diyarbakir is erected to the glory of God and in memory of the martyred mother and child. The roof of the church building has lately collapsed and the Patriarchal See is awaiting permission from the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Turkey for the formation of a new parish council in order for the restoration project to be implemented.

Baku Today, Azerbaijan
July 25 2005
FM Dismisses Armenia’s Allegations on Breach of Confidentiality
Baku Today / Assa Irada 25/07/2005 18:15
Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has condemned Armenia for accusing
Azerbaijan of breaching the confidentiality of talks.
`The Armenian side’s accusing Azerbaijan of violating the
confidentiality of the negotiating process are inappropriate.’
Mammadyarov said he sees no grounds for such statements. Azerbaijan
has stated that the negotiations are underway in strict compliance
with the country’s laws and Constitution, he said.
Head of the self-proclaimed `Nagorno Karabakh Republic’ Arkadi
Gukasian told journalists after the recent visit by the co-chairs of
the mediating OSCE Minsk Group to the region that Azerbaijan had
allegedly breached the confidentiality of Azerbaijan-Armenia talks.
With regard to the Nagorno Karabakh status, the Minister said that
reports on the issue have not been made public yet.

Eurasia Daily Monitor
The Jamestown Foundation
July 25 2005
TBILISI ARRESTS SUSPECT IN BUSH GRENADE INCIDENT, BUT MANY QUESTIONS
REMAIN
By Zaal Anjaparidze
Bush grenade suspect, Vladimir Arutyunian, has ties to Armenia,
Russia After an intense search, on July 20 Georgian police arrested
an individual suspected of tossing a hand-grenade towards U.S.
President George W. Bush during his speech at Tbilisi’s Freedom
Square on May 10.
Vladimir Arutyunian, 27, is an ethnic Armenian resident of Tbilisi.
The police tracked Arutyunian down using an anonymous telephone tip
received after local authorities published a photo of the suspect on
July 18. Arutyunian vigorously resisted when three officers from the
Ministry of Interior attempted to enter his apartment in
Vashli-Jvari, a suburb of Tbilisi, to arrest him and was wounded in
the process.
Arutyunian shot to death Zurab Kvlividze, 37, head of the
Anti-Terrorist Department of the Interior Ministry, who had managed
to wound Arutyunian when he was trying to escape. Eyewitnesses said
that Kvlividze made a fatal error when he allowed the wounded
Arutyunian time to rise to his feet and shoot.
While the police called for an ambulance for their wounded colleague,
Arutyunian fled to a nearby park. Additional police converged on the
park and managed to take the suspect into custody after a two-hour
chase.
At a special press conference late on July 20, Georgian Interior
Minister Vano Merabishvili emphasized that the ministry’s
investigative group, in cooperation with U.S. specialists, have
conducted an enormous investigation over the last few months and
managed to identify Arutyunian. The police inquiry accelerated after
a photo of the suspect was published along with the announcement of a
reward of 150,000 Laris (about $82,000) for information leading to
the arrest of the suspect. In two days the ministry’s hotline
received more than 150 anonymous calls.
Merabishvili said it would take time to prove Arutyunian’s
involvement in the attempt on the U.S. President’s life. Arutyunian’s
mother, Angela, was also detained and interrogated by police. She
told journalists that she had not seen her son for three days before
July 20. “I cannot believe that my son committed this crime,” she
declared. Mrs. Arutyunian told journalists that they had shown her
four photographs and asked her whether the man in the photos was her
son. “I told them that the man on the photographs did not look like
my son,” she said.
Arutyunian’s neighbors say that the family lives in extreme poverty.
They say that the suspect grew up without a father and that he is a
loner. They characterize him as a close-mouthed person leading a
secluded life. A medical examination has yet to determine
Arutyunian’s state of mind.
At a July 21 news conference, Merabishvili revealed that the suspect
was arrested after police received valuable information from several
citizens, who had called the hotline after the Interior Ministry
issued photos of the suspect. Merabishvili said that the reward would
go to several persons whose information had helped law enforcement
capture the suspect. The identities of those persons will remain
confidential. According to Merabishvili, an investigation is underway
to determine if Arutyunian had any co-conspirators.
Additionally, video footage issued by the Ministry on July 21 and
broadcast by Georgian television showed Arutyunian’s apartment where
police found several hand-grenades, military uniforms, a night-vision
device, several gasmasks, and military guidelines. The origin of this
military ammunition has yet to be clarified.
Later on July 21, the Ministry released a short interview with the
suspect. The footage showed Arutyunian admitting that he had tossed a
hand grenade into the crowd during President Bush’s speech.
Arutyunian not only confessed to his crime, but he also said that he
would make another attempt if the opportunity presents itself,
according to Deputy Healthcare Minister Irakli Giorgobiani.
Giorgobiani, however, underlined that the suspect was suffering from
shock, “so his confession cannot be trusted one hundred percent.”
Hospital personnel also said that Arutyunian demonstrated some
command of the English language when he cursed the FBI investigators
who came to see him in the hospital. (FBI experts were also seen in
the suspect’s apartment shortly after the arrest.) According to
medical personnel, the suspect has three wounds that do not represent
any immediate danger to his life. Although the Interior Ministry
initially announced that Arutyunian’s whereabouts would not be
disclosed for security reasons, this information quickly became
public. Currently the suspect is under heavy guard at the Central
Republican Hospital.
The Russian hand grenade that triggered this case was manufactured in
Armenia. The Armenian origin of Arutyunian has already caused some
speculation. One rumor has him possibly connected with the Russian
military bases currently stationed in Georgia. On July 21, Vladimir
Kuparadze, Deputy Commander of the Group of Russian Troops in the
Trans-Caucasus (GRTT) said that Arutyunian “has no connections with
GRTT.”
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and U.S. officials highly
praised the work of the Georgian Interior Ministry. Nevertheless,
several questions remain unanswered, such as why Arutyunian, if
guilty, did not attempt to either hide or leave Georgia after the
incriminating photos were released.
The main question, however, is whether Arutyunian is the actual
person who tossed the grenade and, if so, whether he is an isolated
individual or a pawn guided by others. Some Georgian intelligence
experts doubt that Arutyunian had been recruited by any foreign
special service, judging by his odd behavior after the unsuccessful
attempt. However, Givi Targamadze, chair of the Georgian
parliamentary committee for defense and security, and his deputy,
Nika Rurua, argue that Arutyunian’s personality might make him easily
manipulated by foreign intelligence agents.
In his July 23 interview, Arutyunian confirmed that he had intended
to kill President Saakashvili and President Bush. He said that he had
tried to throw the grenade in such a manner that, if it exploded,
that fragments would spray beyond the bulletproof glass protecting
the two men.
Tbilisi City Court sentenced Arutyunian to three months in pre-trial
detention on July 23.
(TV-Rustavi-2, TV-Imedi, Interfax-AVN, Gazeta.ru, Regnum July 20-24).