Author: Badalian Vardan

Azerbaijan’s Leaders Yield After a Rare Public Protest

The New Yrok Times
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
March 1, 2012

MOSCOW – In a rare outbreak of civil unrest in Azerbaijan a crowd of
angry protesters massed outside the home of a provincial governor on
Thursday, demanding his ouster as the house was consumed in flames,
apparently the result of an arson attack. The national government
responded by dismissing the governor.
,

Azerbaijanis took to Quba’s streets on Thursday. By day’s end, the governor
had been dismissed.

Street protests are closely watched in Azerbaijan, as in other former
Soviet republics, out of concern that the unrest that swept through
countries in the Middle East could spread.

The trouble started when the governor, Rauf Gabibov, said in a televised
interview that residents of the Quba district in northern Azerbaijan were
`sell-outs,’ in reference to sales of houses in a mountain resort area.
Local media reports said the insult touched off the protest.

Observers of Azerbaijani politics said, though, that the insult was little
more than a pretext for residents to vent the anger they already felt over
corruption and their resentment of some personalities in the local
leadership, who are appointed, not elected.

Street protests are closely watched in Azerbaijan, as in other former
Soviet republics, out of concern that the unrest that swept through
authoritarian countries in the Middle East could spread. Azerbaijan is one
of the six former Soviet states with a predominantly Muslim population.

The country has been led since 1993 by Heydar Aliyev, a former Soviet
Politburo member, and later by his son Ilham Aliyev. It is a major oil
producer on the Caspian Sea and has good relations with the United States,
acting as a way station for military supplies bound for Afghanistan.

Rasim Musabayov, an independent member of the Azerbaijan Parliament, said
in a telephone interview from Baku, the capital, that the unrest on
Thursday was local in nature and unlikely to spread. Protesters demanded
only that Mr. Gabibov be dismissed, he said; they did not criticize Mr.
Aliyev.

Mr. Musabayov said that resentment had been building against Mr. Gabibov,
and that the insulting remark was merely a spark. In Azerbaijan, he said,
`not every careless word leads to a riot.’

The country is worried about any unrest taking hold. The police routinely
disperse even small street demonstrations, and the last major public show
of dissent was seen in 2003, when the younger Mr. Aliyev succeeded his
father, and in a subsequent parliamentary election.

Moving quickly to head off trouble this time, the central government
announced the dismissal of Mr. Gabibov on Thursday evening, and several
demonstrators detained earlier in the day were quickly released.

Videos posted online appear to show about a thousand men milling outside
the burning governor’s mansion in Quba, which borders the Dagestan district
of Russia. Dagestan has been beset with a low-level Islamic insurgency and
ethnic conflict for some time.

The government sent armored vehicles to the area of the mansion on
Thursday, according to news reports, and by late in the day the crowd was
said to have mostly dispersed.

In December, protests and strikes in Zhanaozen, an oil town in western
Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan, ended with at least 17
deaths and scores of injuries after the police opened fire on a crowd.
Protesters there burned down the City Hall and the headquarters of a
subsidiary of the Kazakh national oil company.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 2, 2012, on
page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Azerbaijan’s
Leaders Yield After a Rare Public Protest.

Georgian president to visit Baku

15:25 – 03.03.12

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashili is visitng Baku in Sunday, March 4.

According to the Azerbaijani news agency APA, he is scheduled to meet
with the country’s president, Iham Aliyev and other officials.

Tert.am

Baku Demands Russia to Pay $300 Mln for Radar Lease

11:36 – 29.02.12

Azerbaijan has demanded Russia pay $300 million instead of the
previously agreed $7 million for the lease of a Soviet-era
anti-missile radar in the Azeri town of Gabala, the Russian news
agency RIA Novosti said, citing reports.

Russia has been in talks with Azerbaijan to extend its lease of the
radar, which it has operated in line with a 2002 deal, until 2025. The
current agreement is due to expire on December 24.

Russia had expected to finalize talks by June this year, because a new
agreement has to be signed at least six month before the existing one
expires, the newspaper said. But the talks have been strained since
the Azeri authorities asked Moscow to pay almost 43 times more for the
lease than it used to, the report said.

`This sum of money is unreasonably large,’ the paper quoted a Defense
Ministry source as saying. `We will push for it to be significantly
lowered. We still hope to reach an agreement.’

Another high-ranking source told the paper that Russia may stop
operating the radar `if Baku does not limit its financial appetite.’

According to the report, Foreign Ministry officials have described the
Azeri demands as `agenda-driven.’

On Monday, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev called for a Russian
air base in the country to be closed, accusing Moscow of failing to
pay the $15 million debt for its lease and saying neither Russia nor
Kyrgyzstan needed the base.

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov promised later in the day
to repay the debt by the end of February.

Tert.am

Iran asks Azerbaijan to explain Israeli arms deal

By JPOST.COM STAFF
02/28/2012 23:27

Following news of an arms deal between Azerbaijan and Israel, Iran
demanded an official explanation from Azerbaijani ambassador to Tehran
Javanshi Akhundov, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported Tuesday.

Israeli officials confirmed on Sunday a deal to sell defense equipment
to Azerbaijan to the tune of $1.6 billion.

According to the officials, Israeli Aerospace Industries will supply
the formerly soviet country with unmanned aerial vehicles and missile
defense systems.

The ambassador said that the equipment purchased from Israel was to be
used only “to free occupied territory of the Azerbaijan Republic,”
according to IRNA. He stressed that the government would not use these
arms against another country, particularly not Iran, and emphasized
his country’s will to develop relations between the two countries,
according to the report.

Johan Backtane contributed to this report

L’Humanité, France
Jeudi 1 Mars 2012

Le génocide arménien et la France

Avant-hier, le Conseil constitutionnel de la République française a
annulé la mesure législative qui avait criminalisé la négation du
génocide arménien. En tout cas, nous respectons la loi de la France et
la volonté de son peuple.

Ce qui est arrivé à la nation arménienne en 1915 a été plus qu’un
génocide, plus qu’un holocauste. Il ne s’agissait pas seulement de la
prise préméditée de vies humaines, mais de l’effacement d’une nation,
d’une culture, d’une civilisation, et, d’une certaine façon, de toute
vie dans cette région.

Les écoles, églises, hôpitaux, académies, institutions, des propriétés
publiques et privées, ayant appartenu aux Arméniens depuis des
millénaires, ont été rayés de la carte, détruits, détournés, ou
réappropriés par d’autres. Le génocide arménien fut la dépossession
complète et violente, sans précédent dans son mal et son effet, de la
nation arménienne par le jeune régime turc.

Il s’est agi du meurtre d’une patrie.

La réconciliation entre les nations États turque et arménienne est en
marche. Mais elle ne peut avoir lieu que sur la base du triomphe de la
vérité, aussi terrible soit-elle à assumer, et sur l’assurance de la
justice ancrée dans un repentir sincère, une restitution significative
et une reconnexion garantie entre le peuple arménien et son
patrimoine.

À cette fin, nous nous souvenons de nos martyrs, nous saluons tous
ceux qui luttent contre les crimes contre l’humanité ou les punissent,
et nous attendons la véritable rédemption de la Turquie.

Par Raffi Hovannisian, ancien Ministre des Affaires Étrangères de l’Arménie.

lll Comment résister aux pressions turques?

AberdeenNews.com, South Dakota
March 4 2012

Soprano puts her heritage proudly on display in wide-ranging song recital

by John von Rhein, Classical music critic
7:45 a.m. CST, March 4, 2012

Isabel Bayrakdarian has been a much-admired fixture of the Lyric Opera
roster over the last decade, having sung roles ranging from Mozart’s
Susanna and Zerlina, to Catherine in William Bolcom’s “A View from the
Bridge,” to Blanche de la Force in Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the
Carmelites,” her most recent assumption here, in 2007.

Oddly enough, no local concert impresario during that time saw fit to
present the Canadian-based soprano in recital, despite the warm
reception she has won elsewhere in the song medium. The University of
Chicago Presents series made amends Friday night in Mandel Hall, where
Bayrakdarian, along with her husband and pianist, Serouj Kradjian,
presented a song recital that well displayed the breadth of her vocal
and interpretive accomplishment.

Bayrakdarian and Kradjian both are of Armenian descent, and the main
item on the second half of her interestingly offbeat program found
them honoring their heritage with four Armenian folk song arrangements
by the composer revered in his homeland as, simply, Gomidas.

A priest, conductor, singer and ethnomusicologist, Gomidas (or Komitas
Vardepet, as the New Grove Dictionary spells his name) collected and
arranged countless Armenian folk songs around the turn of the 20th
century, before his career and sanity were shattered by the massacre
of Armenians in Turkey in 1915. Although he managed to escape the
genocide, he spent the final 20 years of his life in a mental hospital
outside Paris.

Bayrakdarian’s Gomidas sampler varied from patriotic songs to love
songs, all touched with lingering melancholy, even the dulcet lullaby,
“Oror,” which the soprano said she often sings to the couple’s young
son, Ari. Her close identification with the emotions behind the simple
modal melodies brought her warmest singing of the evening. The softly
sustained final notes of “Apricot Tree” made a particularly haunting
effect.

Alluring in a ruffled black taffeta gown (the first of two designer
dresses she wore for this recital), the singer began with Liszt’s “The
Three Gypsies” and two Petrarch sonnets. These were the least
successful entries of the evening, not because Bayrakdarian is a poor
storyteller but because she seemed to misjudge the carrying power of
her voice. Her bright sound took on a hard, penetrating edge that
faded once the voice had warmed and the singer had grown accustomed to
the acoustics.

Bayrakdarian closed the first portion of her program with three
selections inspired by Shakespeare’s Ophelia. She brought a luminous,
floating vocal quality to Chausson’s “Chanson perpetuelle” that suited
the wistful setting of a Charles Cros poem about a betrayed woman who
contemplates an Ophelia-like suicide by drowning. Delicate melancholy
also characterizes Berlioz’s “La mort d’Ophelie,” for which the
singer’s rapt, dreamy treatment felt just right.

Jake Heggie’s lyrical and accessible “Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia”
(1999), based on poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, benefited from
Bayrakdarian’s wide range of expressive shadings and the crystalline
clarity of her English diction. Indeed, her enunciation throughout the
program, whether the language was French, German, Italian or Spanish,
was exemplary.

Singer and pianist got to figuratively kick up their heels – not to
mention click imaginary castanets – in the concluding Spanish group.
There were four songs by Fernando Obradors, including the well-known
“El Vito,” delivered with abundant charm and an earthier tonal palette
than Bayrakdarian allowed herself earlier in the program.

Kradjian attacked with gusto the driving rhythms of Osvaldo Golijov’s
“Levante” before joining his wife for a spicy assortment of
tango-songs by Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla. The former
composer’s “El Dia que me quieras” Bayrakdarian brought to life with
plenty of temperament as she alternately sang and spoke the verses.
Piazzolla’s cabaret song “Che tango che,” its down-and-dirty
word-play, punctuated by percussive effects from the pianist, made for
a fun finish.

Bayrakdarian kept things in the Latin vein for the first of two
encores, Ernesto Lecuona’s “Malaguena,” before signing off with a bit
of connubial one-upmanship in an amusing rendition of Rossini’s “Cat
Duet,” complete with muted “meows” from her spouse.

,0,6420157.column

Interfax, Russia
March 3 2012

Azeri president vows to provide all conditions for ethnic Armenians to
live in Nagorno-Karabakh

BAKU. March 3

Azerbaijan will provide all the necessary conditions for Armenians to
live in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said.

“Azerbaijan, as a multiethnic state, will surely provide conditions
for and will help Armenians living there, and they will enjoy all
rights as citizens of the Azerbaijani state in the future,” Aliyev
said in an interview with Turkish television channel TRT, whose
transcript was published in the official Azeri press on Saturday.

The ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh “will continue living
there as before,” Aliyev said. “We have no objections to this,” he
said.

If Armenia considers the modern-day realities and Azerbaijan’s growing
political clout and economic might, takes the right steps, and leaves
the occupied territories, it will also help the ethnic Armenians
living in Nagorno-Karabakh, Aliyev said. “But if it does not realize
this and continues its predatory policy, then the consequences for
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh could be very bitter,” he said.

The Azeri armed forces can easily restore Azerbaijan’s sovereignty in
Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijan does not want blood to be shed and
war resumed again, Aliyev said.

va

ENVOY SAYS TURKEY TO DEVELOP “NEW ATTITUDE” TO FRANCE AFTER TALKS

Anadolu Agency
March 1 2012
Turkey

PARIS (A.A) – Turkish Ambassador in Paris Tahsin Burcuoglu has said
that the decision of the Constitutional Council of France had left no
any open door to preparation of a new bill criminalizing the rejection
of the Armenian allegations regarding the incidents of 1915.

Ambassador Burcuoglu held a press conference upon decision of the
Constitutional Council and said, “all the experts in constitutional
law we have interviewed say, ‘there is no way of reopening a gate to
this issue until lawmakers come from space and find a new formula.’
Also the historians and jurists are against this law.”

Burcuoglu said that judgment of Constitutional Council was important
in terms of avoiding such attempts from spreading to other countries.

“After the law was adopted by the parliament, diplomatic relations
have been dropped to minimum level. We will follow the election
process and its results and we will determine a new attitude upon
our meetings with French officials.”

EU URGES CHARTER COMPROMISE

Journal of Turkish Weekly
March 2 2012

The Turkish government and opposition should pursue constructive
relations that avoid disputes as a precondition for a reform process,
the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) has said
in a new report on the country.

The committee also called for a civil constitution in Turkey in its
draft report approved yesterday.

A draft report by the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey, Ria
Oomen-Ruijten, was approved with 54 votes to seven at AFET yesterday.

The report underlined the concern over an official notice sent to
the Justice Ministry by a prosecutor to initiate the process of
filing a case against Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal
Kılıcdaroglu. The draft report also warned Turkey on long detention
and trial periods. Meanwhile, the controversial case on the murder
of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was also mentioned in the
draft, with the EP calling on Turkey to investigate the matter in
its entirety while also bringing whoever is responsible to justice.

The draft report said all political parties and relevant parties should
assist the drafting of the new constitution and assume a constructive
attitude on the matter.

Meanwhile, some attempts by far-right and far-left deputies in the
European Parliament to add articles about Armenian genocide allegations
to the draft have failed.

The draft report also said that Turkey, as a regional actor, played a
key role in the Middle East, West Balkans, South Caucasus, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Central Asia and Horn of Africa.

“Turkey and the EU are interdependent. The EU profits from the booming
Turkish economy. But Turkey and the EU can both profit by enhancing
their cooperation in fields like foreign policy, energy security and
the fight against terrorism. Turkey has proved that it is able to
play a positive role in a turbulent region,” said Oomen-Ruijten.

COMMISSIONER: EU READY TO ASSIST IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT’S SETTLEMENT

Trend
March 1 2012
Azerbaijan

March 01–The EU is ready to assist in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
settlement, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European
Neighbourhood Policy Stefan Fule believes.

“The Eastern Partnership and strengthening of relationship between EU
and Azerbaijan opens new ways of the European Union supporting the
process to reach a comprehensive settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict. EU is ready to assist in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
settlement,” Fule said at a video-conference in Baku on Wednesday.

“The EU is ready to strengthen its support. We are ready to contribute
to concrete initiatives to support the Minsk Group. We have set a
number of confidence building projects,” he added.

“We are ready to strengthen it, but of course not against the Madrid
principles, not against the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group, but
in a fully compatible way to create conditions for reaching a final
solution,” he said.

“Once a comprehensive settlement is reached, once a solution is
found, then we do not want just to be observers. The EU has a number
of its own experiences putting away the walls, the experience of
reconciliation and conflict resolution. All of this would be at the
disposal of Azerbaijan and Armenia once the resolution is found,” —
Fule added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian
armed forces have occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan since 1992,
including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The
co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group — Russia, France and the U.S. —
are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council’s four
resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the
surrounding regions.