Author: Chmshkian Vicken

ARKA News Agency
July 13 2005
OVER 20 APPLICATIONS AND COMPLAINTS IN A WRITTEN FORM SENT TO THE NKR
CENTRAL ELECTION COMMITTEE
STEPANAKERT, July 13. /ARKA/. Over 20 applications and complaints in
a written form were sent to the NKR Central Election Committee (CEC)
during the recent parliamentary elections, the Secretary of the CEC
Raya Nazaryan stated. According to her, all of them were considered,
and four applications that required additional verification, were
sent to the law-enforcement bodies of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
Decisions on three cases made by the Office of Public Prosecutor and
Court were received.
“On the whole, the general opinion of CEC and law -enforcement bodies
is that insignificant shortcomings, if any, haven’t influenced on the
results of voting”, she said. A.H. -0–

Azeri ruling party members, foreign minister discuss polls with Albright
Azad Azarbaycan TV, Baku
13 Jul 05
[Presenter in studio] The former US secretary of state and chairwoman
of the Board of Directors of the National Democratic Institute [NDI],
Madeleine Albright, met representatives of the [ruling] New Azerbaijan
Party [NAP] and Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov today.
The key topic was the upcoming parliamentary election. However, the
Nagornyy Karabakh problem was also discussed during the talks with the
foreign minister.
[Correspondent over a meeting with the NAP] The meeting with Madeleine
Albright will help form an impartial impression of Azerbaijan in the
international community, Ali Ahmadov, executive secretary of the
ruling NAP, said after the meeting with Madeleine Albright, the former
US secretary of state and chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the
National Democratic Institute. The public-political situation and the
current election situation were discussed in detail, he added.
Ali Ahmadov informed Albright of equal opportunities created for all
political forces, which will make it possible to hold free and
transparent elections.
[Ali Ahmadov] I consider that our information and exchange of opinions
will create a clear view of the realities of the election situation in
Azerbaijan. In any case, the aim of our meeting was to help Albright
get an impression of Azerbaijan based on coherent information from
different sides.
[Correspondent] Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov also
received Albright today. The meeting discussed Azerbaijani-US
relations, relations between the countries and mainly the
public-political situation ahead of the elections. However, the sides
also touched on the resolution of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. The
minister also commented on reports alleging that a referendum will be
held on the status of Nagornyy Karabakh.
[Mammadyarov] I noticed in today’s press that there are rumours and
insinuations. I want to reiterate and make sure that the talks are
being conducted on the basis of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and
that everything is in line with the Azerbaijani constitution.
[Correspondent] The minister said that he is ready for talks with his
Armenian counterpart, Vardan Oskanyan, anywhere and at any time. He
said that the opposite side’s consent is needed for such a meeting to
take place.

AZG Armenian Daily #129, 14/07/2005

Cinema
ATOM EGOYAN WANTS TO SEE INTERESTED SPECTATORS IN ARMENIA
Golden Apricot International Film Festival launched at “Nairi” movie
theatre on July 12. After the opening ceremony of the festival the
organizers began the sacred ceremony of blessing apricots at
St. Zoravor church. Atom Egoyan, film director, stated during the
press conference that the festival is an unprecedented phenomenon for
our culture and added he was proud for that. He said that it is very
important that the films of foreign directors as well are included in
the film festival, as it became an international one this year. Atom
Egoyan also emphasized the importance of representing the films of our
old masters to the young Armenian spectators. He said he will be glad
if the spectators will have the opportunity to begin a dialogue with
the cinematographers. Atom Egoyan has just returned from the film
festival in Karlovi Vari and he said the young Armenian spectators
were very interested and encouraged here too.
Mr. Egoyan is glad that the festival helps the directors to
communicate with each other. “Yesterday I had a nice evening with
Kiarostami. I have met him during a number of film festivals and I am
glad to see him here,” Mr. Egoyan said.
Atom Egoyan said that it will be difficult to chose among the films,
as there are many films that won first prizes at international film
festivals. “Atomic Truth,” the last film of the director will not be
shown at the festival, as Egoyan wanted to be included in the
activities of the jury solely. But he said that soon the film will be
shown both in Russia and in Armenia. “It was shot to be shown in the
Cannes, but I am still working on that,” he said.
Ruben Gevorgiants, head of the jury for documentary films, said that
the festival is developing. He compared the festival with a child that
learns to walk and soon will tell the world about our country.
Atom Egoyan said that in the beginning he didn’t get the meaning of
this year’s symbol of the festival, but when he understood that, he
got hungry.
By Tamar Minasia

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
July 12 2005
Intermediaries to seek rapprochement in conflicting sides’ positions

Baku, July 11, AssA-Irada
The intermediaries on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Upper
Garabagh visiting the region met with Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov in Baku on Monday.
The visit targets holding broad discussions to bring closer the
positions of the conflicting sides on the eve of the August meeting
of the two countries’ Presidents in Kazan, Russia, said the OSCE
Minsk Group (MG) co-chairs Bernard Fassier of France, Steven Mann of
the United States and Yuri Merzlyakov of Russia.
Minister Mammadyarov and the co-chairs exchanged views on a full
range of issues pertaining the `Prague talks’. The parties also
agreed to meet the next day to continue the discussions, the Foreign
Ministry said.*

SOCIETY DEMANDS RIGHT OF REFERENDUM
A1+
11-07-2005
During the process of constitutional reforms the issue of the right
way of changing the constitution becomes extremely important. This was
the poll question of the internet site `A1+’ last week. 227
citizenstook part in the poll. The votes were distributes as follows:
Via referendum – 85%
President + 2/3 of the NA – 9.3%
By decision of 3/4 of the NA – 5.3%
Undecided – 0.4%
This week we offer the question `Who should appoint the Mayor of
Yerevan?’ to your consideration. As always, you can familiarize with
the materials about the theme in the section of articles.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Zaman, Turkey
July 11 2005
‘People Focus on Armenian Issue, Ignore Srebrenica Massacre’
By Foreign News Desk
Published: Monday July 11, 2005
zaman.com
The commemoration ceremonies for the 10th anniversary of the
Srebrenica massacre open the wounds of people who witnessed the
bloodbath. In the Srebrenica carnage, 8,000 Muslim Bosnians were
massacred towards the end of Bosnian War in Srebrenica, under the
United Nations (UN) protection.
A cover page article titled “Witnesses Tell about Srebrenica Genocide
on Its 10th Anniversary” published in the Aksiyon weekly news
magazine relates accounts by those who witnessed the butchery. The
massacre, which took place before the eyes of Dutch soldiers who were
commissioned in the UN Peace Force, is told related by eyewitnesses
as follows:
Bosnia Herzegovina Losses Commission President Amur Marsovic: 27.734
citizens were lost during the war. Ninety-two percent of them were
Bosnians, 6 percent Bosnian Serbs and 1.7 percent Bosnian Croatians.
A Macedonian Turkish citizen, Saban Huseyinov was also among the
victims. Thirteen percent of the fatalities are women. Ninety percent
of the victims were civilians. The data shows that it was a planned
annihilation. We discovered 366 mass graves.
‘Bones belonging to one person can be found in three different mass
graves’
All the graves are in the Serbian region. We have found the corpses
of 20 thousand citizens so far by deduction. I say ‘by deduction’,
because a corpse belonging to a single person was pieced together
from three different graves in a 30-kilometer radius of each other.
In addition, we encountered corpses, which had changed places few
times. We found bones cut to pieces by heavy construction equipment.
Even the Nazis were not so brutal. The Western world wants to ignore
the massacre and not accept responsibility for it. This is what hurts
us most. If we must live together again, they should accept this.
They pressure Turkey to accept the Armenian genocide but the
parliamentarians themselves to not discuss this. Political decisions
are taken, but Srebrenica massacre occurred ten years ago and all of
its witnesses are here. They want to burry Srebrenica into history
and cover it up.
Srebrenica Massacre architect remains in office
Hasan Nuhanovich translates for the Dutch soldiers, “The Serbs
occupied the villages near the city and bombarded them. Despite the
occurrence of these incidents, United Nations (UN) commanders said,
“Do not worry, you are under our protection until a political
solution is found. If the Serbs attack, we will bomb them by planes.”
The Serbs attacked the city from four different directions on July 6.
The Dutch troops did not shoot even a single bullet. They collected
the Bosnians together who wanted to defense themselves and seized
their weapons already less in number. The biggest massacre occurred
from 11-12 July 1995. Serb soldiers occupying the city separated the
men from the women. They killed some of the men at point blank and
took others to the forest. The Dutch soldiers watched the incidents
and some of them even helped the Serbs. They took about 5,000
Bosnians including my brother out of the concentration camp on July
13 and killed men in full view of the others. I lost both my father
and mother at the same time. The biggest injustice the Dutch soldiers
did to the Bosnians was keeping the developments secret. The world
did not learn about what was going on here for a long time. Mane
Curic, the Srebrenica police chief chose people to be killed in front
of the UN troops. He is still the security chief in Srebrenica.
Neither the European Union (EU) nor the US has done anything on the
issue. Despite knowing Mladic’s whereabouts, US soldiers have not
apprehended him.
Nura Alispahic: When I turned on the television to watch the news
last month, I saw my little son for whom I have cried for during the
past 10 years. These were the first images of the Srebrenica massacre
broadcast by The Hague. My son had lost a lot of weight. The Serbs
took them out of a car. Then, they executed four of them by shooting
them. I saw my son later. When they killed the person next to him, my
son returned to view. He looked as if he was asking for help. I
rushed to the television from where I sat and fainted at the second
step. They shot my son. I saw him for the last time when the Serbs
entered the city. Thousands of Bosnians like us had taken shelter in
a factory where the Dutch soldiers had camped. The soldiers handed us
over to the Serbs. My son was looking for an escape exit from the
forest to flee the impending execution. I cannot forget the moment I
embraced him for the last time.
Nura Alispahic’s daughter Makbule: The Serbs planned everything in
advance. The UN soldiers silences us. While we were awaiting death,
they were amusing each other. Even the drivers of the buses bringing
us to Tuzla were Serbs. When the Chetniks stopped the buses on the
road, the drivers opened the doors and said to them, “Take whichever
one you like!”
Vice President of Srebrenica Mothers Foundation Kada Hotic: “I lost
my husband, children and many of my relatives on July 11. The bones
of my husband and his relatives were found in a mass grave recently;
but still there is no news of my children. I do not think that there
will be fair trials at the War Crimes Trial in Lahey. Will the
Western World, which condoned the war crimes during the war, find the
criminals and judge them? No! Everything we experienced is so
transparent; but we cannot find any addressee to apply. No Western
foundation wants to accept the events we experienced, as genocide.
1042 children are still lost. 570 girls were violated and killed.
They executed men by shooting them in front of my eyes. They killed a
little child, who was crying out of fear of being executed by
snatching him from his mother’s arms. There are thousands of
eyewitnesses to these events; but no one listens to them.
Elvisa Lokman: When the war started, my childhood ended.
My father was never with me when I needed him most. I will never
forget how the Serbs decapitated Akif and played football with his
head. I thought my childhood would be returned to me after Srebrenica
was made secure. I will never forgive myself for not embracing and
kissing my father. I did not want to believe that it would be the
last time I saw him. But, I never saw him again. Today, I am still
afraid of the dark. I jump out of bed screaming at the slightest
sound in the house.
Our Serbian neighbor was shouting: Kill for me too
>From the Srebrenica memoir of Sevliya Feyzic: Early in the morning,
we all went to the factory where the UN troops were camped. We were
15,000 people in and around the factory. The UN soldiers did nothing.
The Serbs raped young girls. Some men were shot before the factory.
On July 12, in the morning, trucks and buses arrived. Among the Serb
soldiers, I saw two of my neighbors, Zlatan and Cvetin. They were
shouting as they kicked us. The bus driven by the Serbs headed
towards Bratunats. On the road, there were Chetniks who stopped the
buses, chose some men and shot them. Our neighbor Milan Micic driving
the car opened the door and shouted, “Kill for me too”. The Serbs got
down and raped young girls among who was my aunt’s daughter.
The Bosnian Major of Srebrenica: Before the war, the population of
Srebrenica was 36,000, of which 20,000 was Bosnian, 8,000 Serb, and
the remaining part consisted of Croats and other ethnic groups. Only
3,000 Bosnians could return to the city. There are currently 10,000
people living in the city 6,000 of whom are Serb.

Azerbaijani officials to discuss disputed enclave with international
negotiators
AP Worldstream; Jul 11, 2005

Azerbaijani officials were slated to meet with international
negotiators Monday for talks on the disputed enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a foreign ministry official said.
Representatives from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe are trying to resolve the long-running conflict over the
mountainous enclave, which was seized by ethnic Armenian forces in a
war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said Russian, French and
U.S. diplomats would be meeting with President Ilham Aliev and other
Azerbaijani officials.
A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave’s final political
status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently
between the two sides, which face off across a demilitarized buffer
zone.
Aliev last month said there signs of progress in efforts to resolve
the dispute.
The delegation later was to travel to Armenia.

Azerbaijan News Service
July 8 2005
OSCE MINSK GROUP IS TO INTRODUCE NEW PROPOSALS ON DAGLIQ QARABAQ
SETTLEMENT
2005-07-08 10:52
`OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs during the meeting of Azerbaijani and
Armenian presidents on 26 August, in Kazan, Russia will introduce for
discussion a new document on Daqliq Qarabaq Conflict Settlement,
prepared within the framework of `Prague Process”, told Assa Irada
Agency Minsk Group’s Russian co-chair Yuriy Merzlyakov. But Yuriy
Merzlyakov didn’t go into details of the document. The meeting
between Azeri and Armenian Presidents will be held within the
unofficial summit of Union of Commonwealth States presidents. Ahead
of the meeting Armenian president Robert Kocharyan said he expected
no positive results from that talks. Ha said: `The sides position is
considerably different. We consider the retrieval of of Dagliq
Qarabaq’s ex-status cannot be talked upon’. Ceyhun Aliyev, ANS.

Armenian president, Iranian governor discuss bilateral relations
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
6 Jul 05
Armenian President Robert Kocharyan received a delegation led by the
governor of Iran’s Hormozgan Province, Ebrahim Derazgisu, today.
The Armenian president welcomed an initiative on establishing
cooperation between Ararat Region [of Armenia] and Iran’s Hormozgan
Province noting that cooperation between regions is a time-tested and
efficient method of expanding the mutual relations. Speaking on
[recent] presidential elections in Iran, Kocharyan said that the
existing relations between Armenia and Iran will continue and reached
agreements will be observed under the newly-elected Iranian president.
Derazgisu told the Armenian president greetings from the former
Iranian president, [Mohammad] Khatami. Derazgisu noted that the
newly-elected president, Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, intended to continue the
policy of his predecessor especially with regard to the mutual
relations between the neighbouring states.
Touching on expanding the economic relations, Kocharyan noted that
despite the implementation of a number of projects between Armenia and
Iran, the dynamically developing Armenian economy opened new
opportunities for cooperation. In this context, the Armenian president
stressed the importance of the construction of a new Iran-Armenia road
saying that this will increase the value of the transport turnover
between the two countries.
Derazgisu noted that Hormozgan Province, which have two free and three
special economic zones as well as three international airports and one
seaport, is a favourable region for the development of the ties
between Armenia and Iran. Derazgisu said he was ready to do his best
to help Armenian businessmen.
[Video showed the meeting]

A1plus
| 19:48:38 | 05-07-2005 | Politics |
STATE OFFICIALS INCLUDING DAVID HARUTYUNYAN VIOLATE CONSTITUTION
It’s the 10-th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution today and
people try to reveal the shortcomings of the organic law of the country. In
our republic, the Constitution does not operate in corpore.
RA Justice Minister David Harutyunyan shares the opinion. `I agree that the
Constitution does not function fully. Nevertheless the Constitution has
saved the country from many crises. Moreover, our success is thanks to the
Constitution for most part’, he said.
David Harutyunyan does not consider the government’s decision on the
construction of the North and Main Avenues to be an anti-constitutional
decision. `The denude of property is a common institute. The other question
is how the amount of compensation is calculated. Sure, there can be
discrepancies and the only way to settle them is to appeal to the court.
When asked whether he can recall a case when the Constitution was violated
by a state official David Harutyunyan said, `Certainly. There are plenty of
such cases. Very often officials do deeds they are not empowered to do.
Contrary to ordinary citizens the state officials are obliged to do the duty
imposed on them by the law.
-Have you ever violated the Constitution or your duties?
– I think I am not sinless.
-Does an official violate the law deliberately or unknowingly?
– I suppose both reasons are present.
-What about you?
– I perceive making a violation.