Author: Dabaghian Diana

DOCTORS VISITED KARIN TAK
Laura Grigorian
Azat Artsakh, Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
10 May 2006
Recently a group of doctors was sent to the village of Karin Tak,
Shushi.
The group included a general doctor, a neurologist, an ENT doctor,
an ophthalmologist, a gynecologist and a surgeon, as well as the
executive director and two pediatricians of the regional hospital of
Shushi. The executive director had also brought charity medicine. A
senior official of the Ministry of Health Karineh Alexanyan said the
visit of doctors was on the occasion of the May holidays. Despite
the bad weather, a lot of people saw the doctors. Within a day the
doctors examined 120 people (the population of the village is 600). 29
were examined by the ophthalmologist, 23 by the ENT doctor, 20 by
the neurologist, 17 by the surgeon, 20 by the general doctor and 11
by the gynecologist. The majority of patients had hypertension. The
reason is, according to Karineh Alexanian, humidity. Some patients
were sent to the hospital of Shushi for inpatient treatment, yet
others were sent to the republic hospital. There were patients who
needed special examination. Karineh Alexanian said later they will
be sent abroad for treatment on a governmental allowance.

LES INTERETS FRANCAIS MENACES EN TURQUIE
Jeanne Lhoste
Le Figaro
10 mai 2006
LES INTERÊTS economiques francais se retrouvent otages d’un bras de fer
diplomatique engage par la Turquie contre Paris. Deux propositions de
loi qui visent a penaliser la negation du genocide armenien, examinees
a l’Assemblee nationale le 18 mai, ont en effet declenche la colère
d’Ankara. La Turquie multiplie les pressions pour tenter d’empecher ce
vote et contre-attaque sur tous les fronts : l’ambassadeur turc a Paris
a ete rappele en debut de semaine pour “consultations” et les menaces
de represailles contre les entreprises francaises en cas d’adoption
de ce texte sont clairement evoquees par les responsables politiques.
Hier après-midi, le premier ministre, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a convoque
les representants de grandes entreprises francaises installees
dans le pays pour evoquer le problème. Le week-end dernier, Mehmet
Dulger, le president de la commission des affaires etrangères au
Parlement turc, a annonce qu’un boycott des produits francais etait
envisageable, de meme que la mise a l’ecart de la France dans les
procedures d’appels d’offres. Un appel au boycott des marchandises
francaises circule deja sur Internet et dans les ministères : Axa,
Danone, L’Oreal, Renault, Lafarge et toutes les marques presentes
en Turquie apparaissent sur cette liste rouge. Par ailleurs, les
medias turcs passent d’ores et deja en revue les appels d’offres les
plus sensibles dont les Francais pourraient etre evinces. Areva qui
convoite la construction de la première centrale nucleaire turque est
menace au premier chef . Un groupe canadien a deja ete exclu de la
liste des candidats, Ankara n’ayant pas apprecie les declarations du
premier ministre sur le genocide armenien. Ankara veut frapper fort
Face a la determination turque, le president de la chambre de commerce
franco-turque ne cache pas son inquietude pour les 250 entreprises
francaises deja implantees la-bas et pour les exportations vers la
Turquie. Elles ont atteint 4,7 milliards d’euros l’an dernier. “Les
echanges entre les deux pays subiraient des dommages irreparables”,
estime Raphaël Esposito. Lundi, la chambre de commerce a meme adresse
une lettre ouverte a Jacques Chirac pour lui faire part du “prejudice
irremediable” que provoquerait la loi. Meme constat de la part du
directeur de Carrefour, Luc de Noirmont : “Les deputes francais ne
soupconnent pas a quel point le sujet est sensible en Turquie. Ils
sous-estiment totalement les repercussions de cette loi, irresponsable
sur le plan economique.” En 2001, la loi votee par la France et qui
reconnaissait le genocide armenien avait deja penalise les entreprises
nationales : des contrats avec Thomson et Alcatel avaient ete annules
; les PME avaient subi de multiples tracasseries administratives,
de meme que Peugeot ou Danone. Et des entreprises turques avaient
stoppe leurs importations de France…
Mais la crise economique avait finalement fait passer ces mesures de
retorsion au second plan. Le contexte diffère totalement en 2006.
Enhardie par sa forte croissance, la Turquie est bien decidee a
frapper fort. n Lire aussi page 10.
–Boundary_(ID_6+S402B5w0dqOKEX9/4szw)–

REED AMENDMENT REAFFIRMS PARITY IN DEFENSE DEPARTMENT ASSISTANCE TO
ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN

WASHINGTON, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. In a legislative
reaffirmation of the 2001 agreement between the Congress and the White
House to maintain military aid parity to Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) secured the adoption of an amendment adding
Armenia to the list of nation’s receiving Department of Defense
counter-drug assistance, reported the Armenian National Committee of
America (ANCA). Commenting to the ANCA following the adoption of his
amendment, Senator Reed said, “I am pleased that the Senate Armed
Services Committee recognized the importance of providing military aid
to Armenia for training and equipment in light of its decision to
provide funding to Azerbaijan. It is essential that we maintain parity
between the two nations, and I am happy that my amendment was
accepted.” The amendment was offered by the Senator, a senior members
of the Armed Services Committee, to the National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (S.2507). The measure added Armenia to the
list of eligible nations for a Defense Department counter-drug
assistance program. Azerbaijan was among the nation’s listed in the
original version of the Authorization bill authored by Committee
Chairman John Warner (R-VA). Significantly, the Armed Services
Committee report advises the Defense Department that the panel
“expects that the authority granted in this section will be
administered in the spirit of maintaining current military parity
between Azerbaijan and Armenia.” The Committee report language refers
to the agreement between Congress and the White House in 2001 to
maintain military aid parity between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 2001,
Congress granted the President limited waiver authority over Section
907 of the Freedom Support Act, which restricts U.S. assistance to
Azerbaijan as long as it continues to blockade Armenia and Nagorno
Karabagh, with the understanding that the Administration will not
provide more military assistance to Azerbaijan than to Armenia. “We
join with the Armenian American community of Rhode Island in thanking
Senator Reed for helping to ensure parity in the provision of
U.S. defense assistance to Armenia and Azerbaijan,” said ANCA
Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “We will, in the coming weeks,
continue to share with legislators in both houses of Congress the
negative implications for peace and regional stability of the
Administration’s ill-advised proposal to break the military aid parity
agreement that has been in force for the past five years.” The House
Armed Services Committee has also finalized its version of the
National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007 (H.R.5122),
which does include Azerbaijan, but not Armenia as an eligible
country. The two versions of the bill will eventually be reconciled
upon passage in both chambers. The ANCA will urge the conference
committee to accede to the amended Senate version of this provision,
and, more broadly, to work toward overall military aid parity to
Armenia and Azerbaijan.

ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 8 2006
Search for flight recorders from crashed Airbus-320 continues

SOCHI, May 8 (Itar-Tass) — The search for the flight recorders from
the crashed Armenian Airbus-320 in the Black Sea off Sochi has not
stopped despite rough seas.
`Specialists will be examining the bottom at the place where the
plane crashed with the help of sonar till night. French specialists
will sail off into the sea tomorrow morning, at 7 a.m. Moscow time.
They have already arrived in Sochi with equipment for a more precise
search,’ an official at the search operation headquarters told
Itar-Tass on Monday.
The specialists plan to examine the seabed at a death of 450-800
metres where a large number of the plane’s fragments and the `black
boxes’ are lying.
The area where the debris are scattered is quite big and the French
equipment will help to distinguish between the plane’s fragments and
personal belongings of the passengers.
Earlier, a deep-water apparatus, Kalmar, traced four unidentified
objects at the crash scene at the depth of 450 meters.
`Four objects have been traced at the depth of 450 meters. They are
being identified. The objects were found by a hydro-radar system of
the Kalmar apparatus operated from the Zaliv towboat,’ Sergei
Biryukov, Executive Director of the company Tetis Pro that designed
the apparatus, told Itar-Tass.
Flight recorders used on aircraft of the Airbus-320 type withstand
the depth of up to 6,000 meters for 30 days, experts from the French
air crash investigation bureau said on Sunday.
They said that flight recorders’ radio beacons keep working during
the 30-day period.
One of the flight recorders registers flight parameters, including
the speed, height and direction of the flight and the autopilot
operation, each second. The other gadget records conversations in the
cockpit.
Each flight recorder weighs 10 kilograms, including a seven-kilogram
armoured casing for the gadget. The casing can withstand water
pressure at a depth of 6,000 meters, the temperature of 1,100 degrees
Celsius, and the compression of 2.2 tonnes.
The French experts think that flight recorders from the Armenian
Airbus-320 are lying at a depth of 680 meters.
The bureau retrieved flight recorders from the depth of over 1,000
meters in the Red Sea in January 2004, when an Egyptian plane crashed
near the Sharm-el-Sheikh resort. The rescuers were using a Scorpio
deep-water apparatus.
A technical commission investigating the Sochi air crash, which is
led by the CIS Interstate Aviation Committee, has asked French
experts to help find A-320 flight recorders.
Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said, `The Frenchmen have
appropriate equipment and they are ready to quickly bring it to the
crash scene.’
Of 113 people who were abroad the plane, 51 bodies have been found so
far. On the fifth day after the crash, specialists say chances that
the others will be found are quite small.
The Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia plunged into the
Black Sea as it was making a landing manoeuvre in the early hours of
May 3. The accident claimed the lives of 113 people.

The Gazette (Montreal)
May 7, 2006 Sunday
Final Edition
Cast Your Vote
Do you think Stephen Harper was right to acknowledge the 1915
Armenian genocide?
You can cast your vote in our daily poll all day long by logging onto
canada.com/montreal. Your answers will appear in tomorrow’s Gazette
and on Global TV’s evening newscast.
Yesterday’s question was: Are you in favour of the agreement giving
Quebec its own representative to UNESCO? Yes: 48% of votes No: 52%

SECOND MOURNING DAY IN ARMENIA FOR VICTIMS OF ARMAVIA AIRCRAFT CRASH
IN BLACK SEA
Yerevan, May 6. ArmInfo. Armenian mourns for the killed in air crash
for the second day today.
State flags are lowered throughout the country. Service for the dead
is expected at St. Grigor Lushavorich Church in Yerevan by Catholicos
of All Armenians Karekin II. Fund collection for the families of the
killed is in process.
President of Armenia donated his monthly wages to the fund (about
$700). To recap, Airbus A320 crashed in the Black Sea on May 3 night
killing all 113 on board.

18 MEN FROM KAPAN CALLED UP FOR MILITARY SERVICE LEAVES FOR ARMY
Noyan Tapan
May 05 2006
KAPAN, MAY 5, NOYAN TAPAN. 18 men called up for military service
left for the Army on May 3 from the Kapan memorial complex after
Garegin Nzhdeh.
According to Kapan Millitary Commissar Leonid Grigorian, first
gatherings of spring and autumn levies have already for few years been
organized at the memorial complex. According to the Military Commissar,
“it is done for men newly called up for military service realize the
importance of defending the Fatherland.”
L.Grigorian mentioned in the interview to the Noyan Tapan
correspondent, that there were almost no problems in the affair of
preparing for the spring levy. “But the physical readiness of men
called up for military service is gradulaly decreased, what I connect
with non-proper level of teaching the physical education in schools,”
the Kapan Military Commissar mentioned.

NEXT TRIAL ON CLAIM RAISED BY JAILERS AGAINST RAMIL SAFAROV SCHEDULED FOR SEPTEMBER 1 AND 5
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
May 4 2006
Yesterday trial on the claim raised by jailers against Azerbaijani
Army Officer Ramil Safarov accused of murder of Armenian officer
Gurgen Margaryan will took place in Pesht Court, Hungary.
Azerbaijani embassy in Hungary told APA that two jailer witnesses
gave testimony on in the trial presided by Judge Tot Dyendver and
the next trial was scheduled for September 1 and 5. the trial was
attended by Azerbaijani embassy representatives and students.
Hungarian lawyer Klara Fiser defended rights of Safarov.
Jailers demanded Ramil Safarov to give the phone card on June 19,
2004. Safarov don’t know Hungarian language and he therefore didn’t
understand the jailers and this misunderstanding caused incident
among them. 8 police tied Safarov’s arms and exercised force.
Safarov’s lawyers appealed to the court but the court didn’t meet the
appeal through lack of evidences. Then the jailers raised counterclaim
against Safarov that he put up resistance to jailers.

AIR CRASH RESCUE EFFORTS FOCUS ON FINDING FLIGHT RECORDERS
RIA Novosti, Russia
May 4 2006
SOCHI (Southern Russia), May 4 (RIA Novosti) – Rescue teams continued
throughout Thursday to search for the flight recorders of an Armenian
airliner that crashed early Wednesday into the Black Sea, killing
all 113 people on board.
French experts who had arrived in the Russian resort of Sochi to help
with the rescue efforts said they had picked up a radio signal that
could be coming from the black boxes of the crashed Airbus plane.
“The signal was found almost immediately after the search started,
but is very weak,” an emergencies ministry official said.
European aircraft producer Airbus said the radio signals had been
included in the design of the plane to make it easier to identify
the location of the flight recorders after a possible crash.
Early on Wednesday, an Airbus A-320 belonging to Armenia’s Armavia
Airlines flying from the country’s capital, Yerevan, crashed about six
kilometers (3.7 miles) off the Russian coast en route to an airport
in Adler, which services Sochi.
Hopes of finding the flight recorders rose after a rescuer said that
large pieces of the passenger jet had been found on the seabed with
the help of radars.
“It is possible that the discovered parts will contain the black
boxes,” the rescuer said.
“In the next few hours, we will identify the location (of the plane
parts) and summon all the deep-sea special equipment to the site,”
he said.
Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said that the fragments of the
plane were lying at a depth of 680 meters (2,230 feet), and that
southern Russia did not have the necessary equipment to recover them.
“There is an experimental model in the north of the country, and we
will try to deliver it to the operation site,” he said. “It can work
at a depth of 500 meters [1,640 feet].”
Levitin also said Russia would ask other countries with experience
in deep-sea recovery operations for help in retrieving the fragments.
Sergei Kudinov, the head of the southern regional center of the
Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, echoed Levitin in saying that
international technologies would be used to lift the black boxes.
“We will employ international technologies, in particular, from France,
the U.S. or Norway,” he said.
In the morning, the Emergency Situations Ministry said that the main
part of the aircraft’s fuselage and the tail had been recovered.
Meanwhile, officials from Georgia neighboring Russia and Armenia
said the airliner was nearing the Russian border when it was warned
of bad weather conditions at Adler airport, and the pilot decided to
return to Yerevan. Later, however, he received a communication from
air traffic control saying that conditions had improved and decided
to resume his course. Ten minutes later the plane crashed.
So far, rescuers have recovered 48 bodies, of which 20 have been
identified.
Officials also continued to study the recorded conversations between
air traffic controllers and the crew before the crash.
Levitin said the extensive recovery operation, which had continued
through the night, involved 500 rescue workers, about 40 boats,
deep-sea vehicles, and a B-200 amphibious aircraft searching the
coastal line. He added that recovery teams had reached Loo, a town
15 kilometers (9 miles) from Sochi and would now move back to Adler.

THE CRUELEST MONTH
by Nickolai Butkevich
Transitions Online, Czech Republic
May 4 2006
April saw a rash of particularly ugly attacks against minorities,
as fascism finds fertile soil in Russia.
On 20 April, neo-Nazis around the world celebrated the 117th
anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth. Nowhere was the date marked
with more violence than in Russia, a country that, paradoxically,
lost tens of millions of its citizens in the struggle against Nazism
six decades ago.
When it comes to racist violence, April 2006 will go on record as
the bloodiest month in recent Russian history, with at least seven
murders and more than a dozen assaults blamed on neo-Nazi groups.
Since the late 1990s, Russia’s homegrown fascists have spent the
days surrounding 20 April stepping up their year-round campaign of
violence against dark-skinned ethnic minorities, foreign students
(predominantly from developing countries), and Jews. This disgusting
annual spectacle is presumably deeply embarrassing to President
Vladimir Putin, who has publicly condemned racism and anti-Semitism.
Yet despite the mobilization of thousands of extra police officers
in Moscow and other cities every April, Russian authorities seem
helpless to stem the tide of violence.
Nowhere is the situation worse than in Russia’s beautiful “northern
capital,” St. Petersburg. On 7 April, skinheads in that city shot dead
an African student. Lamzar Samba, a 28-year-old Senegalese national,
became the ninth African killed there over the past year, according to
a local African student group. Police discovered a swastika engraved
on a shotgun near the scene and briefly arrested a suspect before
releasing him.
Several racist assaults also occurred in St. Petersburg last month
– a Chinese student was attacked outside her apartment, a Ghanaian
man was savagely beaten in the city’s suburbs, a mob of soccer fans
assaulted two Mongolian students on a metro train, and an Indian
medical student was stabbed.
Local neo-Nazi web sites brazenly called for more violence against
non-Russians to mark Hitler’s birthday and even posted a how-to manual
with advice on how to evade arrest afterward.
Unfortunately, St. Petersburg is not the only Russian city where
violent racists are running amok. On 8 April, a Moscow paper reported
that skinheads beat two Tajik men on a suburban Moscow train before
throwing them off, killing one of their victims. No arrests were
reported in connection with that murder. Even ethnic Russian youths
are not safe in Moscow if they belong to an anti-fascist youth group.
On 16 April, skinheads stabbed to death an anti-fascist punk rock
fan in what his friends termed a coordinated attack. One suspect has
been detained.
On 13 April, a group of young men armed with iron bars and wooden
clubs attacked a Romani camp in Volzhsky, killing two and seriously
injuring an 80-year-old woman and a 14-year-old girl. Police detained
nine teenage suspects, some of whom admitted that their attack was
motivated by ethnic hatred. Other racist murders committed during
the month include the killing of a 50-year-old Vietnamese man in
Ostrogozhsk, in the Voronezh region; the stabbing death of a Tajik
man in Moscow (his friend was seriously injured); and the murder of
an Armenian student by skinheads on the Moscow metro.
Other non-fatal attacks were reported last month in Ryazan (where
four youths were charged with a hate crime after beating up an Indian
student); Chita (where a dozen youths shouting racist slogans attacked
a group of Chinese construction workers, leading to six arrests on
charges of “minor hooliganism”); Nizhny Novgorod (where a Malaysian
student was hospitalized after an assailant hit him on the head and
fled and two Syrian students were beaten up in a nightclub); and Surgut
(where, in separate incidents, a group of skinheads attacked an ethnic
Kazakh youth and an ethnic Lezgin, leading to hate-crimes charges).
The leader of the Jewish community of Izhevsk narrowly avoided a
similar fate on the second evening of Passover, when he and another
member of the community ducked into a hotel lobby to avoid a mob
of youths parading down the street shouting “Sieg Heil!” and other
anti-Semitic slurs. A similar incident took place in Rybinsk, in
Yaroslavl region.
HALF MEASURES
While racist violence has become a daily feature of Russian life,
it should be noted that there have been some improvements in the
way the government deals with hate crimes. Starting in 2002, the
number of arrests of skinheads increased. To their credit, police
this year prevented similar crimes by quickly rounding up skinheads
in Bryansk and Novosibirsk before they could strike. Unfortunately,
police chiefs in St. Petersburg and Voronezh – the cities with the
worst reputation for racist violence in the country – minimized the
extent of the problem by blaming a supposed media conspiracy against
local officials. The Voronezh chief of police even went so far as to
state that the number of murders in his region (four in recent years)
was “not that many.”
Given the multiethnic nature of the country, xenophobic violence has
clear implications for future political and economic stability if it is
allowed to spin out of control. In combination with a greater emphasis
on promoting tolerance among the nation’s youth, federal and regional
authorities must systematically crack down on skinhead gangs, and the
media need to have regular access to hate-crimes trials in order to
discourage judges from giving neo-Nazi thugs lighter sentences than
ordinary criminals.
Most importantly, Kremlin political advisers should never again
create and support openly racist parties like Motherland, which was
put together before the last parliamentary elections in order to
drain votes away from the nationalist opposition. Only then will it
be possible to imagine a time when 20 April returns to being just
another ordinary spring day in Russia.
Nickolai Butkevich is research and advocacy director for the Union
of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.