Author: Ekmekjian Janet

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
March 29 2005
Documents on Ottoman Empire developments to be sent to UN
Baku, March 28, AssA-Irada
Historical documents on the developments in the Ottoman Empire in
1915-1919 will be presented to the United Nations shortly to condemn
Armenians’ claims on the fake `genocide’ through historical evidence,
says chairman of the Turkish History Committee Yusif Hallac.
Hallac said that the number of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire
and exiled during World War I, as well as that of Armenians and Turks
killed in armed clashes, are based on the documents of the Empire and
the Armenian Church.
`The official documents prove again that the claims on the false
`Armenian genocide’ are not based on any historic facts and are much
ado about nothing,’ said Hallac.
On Monday, Turkey uncovered about one million unknown archive
documents of the Ottoman Empire, which are currently kept at the
Turkish Senior Department on State Archives.
The archive materials include official documents of the `Yildiz
Sarayi’ (the chancellery of Ottoman sultans), as well as those of
State Council, Interior and Foreign Ministries. Archive materials of
the Ottoman Empire, England, Germany, France and USA are among the
disclosed documents that will be available for employees of history
institutes, analytical centers and scientists.
According to historic facts, about 100,000 Armenians were killed in
armed clashes and died of various diseases in the Ottoman Empire in
1915.
519,000 Turks were killed by Armenian armed groups in the territory
of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 till 1919.
644,900 Armenians, who were exiled during World War I, returned to
Turkey in 1921, while most of them went to Syria, France, USA,
Greece, Russia and Iran.*

MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMY OF ARMENIA HAS 50 VACANCIES
THAT HAVE NOT BEEN FILLED FOR A 1.5-YEAR
YEREVAN, MARCH 25. ARMINFO. The Ministry of Finance and Economy of
Armenia has 50 vacancies that have not been filled for a 1.5-year.
Minister of Finance Vardan Khachatryan says during a regular
examination for one of the vacancies.
He says that the ministry needs chief specialists and even heads
of the department at a salary of 40-90,000 AMD. The minister says
that this salary is not high, but it is higher than pensions and
allowances in the republic. He says that examinations to the post of a
civil servant at the ministry are no so difficult, besides there are
promotion funds at the ministry, which double the salary. At present
some 750 people work at the ministry and the minister complains of
lack of qualified specialists.
Today, 10 applicants passed examination for the vacant post of
the first class specialist of the department of methodology of the
department of development of financial market and currency settlement
(34,000 AMD salary). It is only the first step to climb up the
ladder. The examinations are held in Armenia in connection with the
Law on civil servant that came into effect two years ago. The present
contest was the 2,000th in succession. On the whole, there are 7,200
civil servants and 250 vacancies in Armenia. Specialists say that the
posts connected with control, licensing and certification are highly
in demand unlike the others.

Easter a time of rebirth, renewal
Foster’s Daily Democrat, NH
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Don’t let the miles or grudges keep you separated from friends,
loved ones
>>From turmoil comes an appreciation for life’s bounty. So too is it
that the harsh and barren winter gives way to spring as nature renews
the cycle of life.
Flowers start to bloom and farmers begin to till the soil that will
nourish life with fruits and grains.
As part of this renewal, Christians today celebrate Easter and the
resurrection of Christ. They mark the conclusion of his journey
from darkness into light and the Christian tenant that mankind has
been redeemed.
But, while Easter Mass and the Resurrection serve as the cornerstones
of today’s celebration, cultures around the globe magnify the day’s
significance in many special ways.
In Greece, Easter eggs are dyed red to symbolize and honor the blood
of Christ. In Germany and Austria, green eggs commemorate Christ’s
last supper. An Armenian tradition involves decorating hollowed out
eggshells with religious images significant to the holiday.
In the United States, the traditions also vary while still recognizing
the egg as the symbol of germinating life and the coming of spring.
Pennsylvania Dutch children are taught that if they are good, the
Oschter Haws will lay a nest of brightly colored eggs.
On Monday, children will descend on the White House to roll Easter
eggs down the South Lawn continuing a tradition that Congress outlawed
in 1877 because it was tearing up the grounds of the Capitol.
But, in 1878 President Rutherford B. Hayes issued an official order
that “should any children arrive to egg roll on Easter Monday, they
were to be allowed to do so.” Now, over 125 years later children still
flock to the White House dressed in Easter finery to hurriedly move
brightly colored eggs across the South Lawn.
In New Hampshire and southern Maine, communities have come together
to renew their celebration of life and family.
Bolduc Park in Laconia was the site of an Easter egg hunt.
The Center Harbor fire station played host to an Easter party
In Portsmouth, children enjoyed an indoor beach party at the Edgewood
Center.
Rochester came together for a potluck supper at the Roberge Center.
In Kittery, Maine, children and adults decorated Easter eggs at the
Community Center and Traip Academy high schoolers sponsored an Easter
egg hunt for their younger counterparts.
Such traditions celebrate Easter and the meaning of the Resurrection
by fostering a sense of community and of family, the foundation on
which civilizations are built.
Of course, there will be families which will not be able to come
together for an Easter celebration. Many are separated by war and
illness. Children are away at college, others have chosen jobs in
warmer climates.
But physical separation is no excuse. Through His resurrection and
ascension, Christ taught us that it is our spirit which is important.
The miles need not separate families and friends if they are united
in spirit.
Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Repair a damaged relationship. Renew
your life and the life of someone you care about.
That is the message of Easter.

VIKTOR DALLAKIAN: ARMENIA’S RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA BECAME VASSAL
YEREVAN, MARCH 25, NOYAN TAPAN. The relations with Russia are important
but as a result of the policy carried on by the Armenian government
they have turned into “vassal relations.” Viktor Dallakian, Secretary
of NA Ardarutiun (Justice) faction, expressed such an opinion at
the March 25 parliamentary briefing. The MP mentioned that first
of all he means the “Property for Debt” transaction, according to
which the Russian side was obliged to make investments amounting to
more than $107m, which wasn’t done and the enterprises transferred
to the Russian side aren’t working. According to Dallakian, Russia
also plays a negative part in connection with the Iran-Armenia gas
pipeline. According to him, if Armenia was given a possibility of
becoming a transit territory the sums received from this could exceed
the country’s budget twice. But Armenia doesn’t manage this because
of the Russian pressure, which also binds to use the Iranian gas in
Armenia exceptionally for the purpose of producing electricity. The
projects of Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran railway, as well as the project
of foundation of a common electric system with these countries show
that Armenia is again left out of the regional development programs,
Dallakian mentioned. The speaker also expressed anxiety about the
circumstance that the delegations representing Russia in different
international organizations don’t support the Armenian delegations in
connection with the Nagorno Karabakh issue. Viktor Dallakian assured
that the events dedicated to the Year of Russia in Armenia are called
up to keep the balance as events dedicated to the Year of Azerbaijan
are simultaneously being held in Russia.

PRESIDENT PUTIN TO ASSIST IN SOLUTION OF KARABAKH ISSUE
RIA Novosti
2005-03-25 17:33
YEREVAN, March 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin
hopes that Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents will hold a regular
bilateral meeting.
In the course of the press-conference in Yerevan the Russian President
said that he and the Armenian President discussed the settlement of
the Nagorny Karabakh issue, situation in the Transcaucasia and the
issues concerning the development of the transportation infrastructure.
Speaking about the perspectives for the settlement of the conflict in
Nagorny Karabakh (Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, which proclaimed
its independence from Baku) Putin assured that “Russia will render
all the necessary assistance to settle the conflict.”
The Russian President noted that at the talks they both seriously
considered the regional problems.
“Our countries are interested in the stabilization of the situation
in the Transcaucasia, formation of the trustworthy atmosphere and the
formation of relations, which will contribute to the development of
the social and economic spheres,” Putin said.
Moreover, the Presidents closely considered the issue concerning the
development of the transportation infrastructure. Putin reminded that
the first ferry from the Russian port Kavkaz (situated on the left bank
of the Kerch strait, which divides Ukrainian Crimea and the Russian
Taman peninsula) came to Poti port with cargo for Georgia. “I hope that
in the future this ferry route will be used for deliveries of cargo for
Armenia and other countries in the region,” the Russian President said.
“These steps will open broad opportunities for business, serve for the
creation of new jobs, intensify the economic life of the region and
provide for the enhancement of the integration processes,” President
Putin said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Kyrgyz opposition figure claims control a day after president ousted in massive protests
By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA
AP Worldstream
Mar 25, 2005
Kyrgyzstan’s interim prime minister, acting to fill a power vacuum
after the ouster of the president, named four acting key ministers
and a chief prosecutor Friday, the speaker of parliament’s upper
house said.
Kurmanbek Bakiyev chose mostly prominent opposition figures for the
posts of foreign, defense and finance ministers and chief prosecutor.
For the job of acting interior minister he picked a former chief
prosecutor who had been fired by deposed President Askar Akayev on
Wednesday, speaker shenbai Kadyrbekov.
By appointing them as acting ministers Bakiyev avoids the need to
have them approved by parliament’s upper house.
The opposition worked quickly in an effort to restore order a day
after protesters drove Akayev’s government from power, unleashing
widespread looting.
The new leadership faced an immediate challenge in halting vandalism
and looting that left major stores in the capital, Bishkek, gutted
and many others damaged by rowdy youths who roamed the city overnight,
with few police to be seen.
The drama of the events, propelled by widespread anger over disputed
elections, were heightened by Akayev’s sudden flight. It was not yet
clear where Akayev was.
Bakiyev emerged from the Parliament building Friday and said he had
been named Kyrgyzstan’s acting leader.
“Freedom has finally come to us,” Bakiyev told a crowd in the central
square of the capital, Bishkek.
Bakiyev’s appointment as acting president was endorsed by a
newly restored parliament of lawmakers who held seats before the
elections, which fueled protests against longtime leader Akayev and
his government.
The move set Bakiyev squarely at the helm of the leadership emerging
from the fragmented former opposition.
Kyrgyzstan became the third former Soviet republic over the past 18
months _ after Georgia and Ukraine _ to see popular protests bring
down long-entrenched leaders widely accused of corruption.
Another opposition figure, Felix Kulov, who was released from prison
during Thursday’s turmoil and appointed head of law enforcement,
said Akayev had fled to a foreign country after being turned away by
Russia. The Russian news agency Interfax said Akayev and his family
were in neighboring Kazakhstan.
“He had a chance to resign, but he fled,” Kulov said in televised
comments. “He wanted to go Russia, but the Russians didn’t accept him.”
Bakiyev told the crowd on the square that Akayev was “not on the
territory of the republic. I don’t know where he is.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said, however, that the Kremlin
wouldn’t object if Akayev wants to go to Russia. Russia’s Foreign
Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Friday that Moscow doesn’t
know where Akayev is.
Putin, speaking during a visit to Armenia on Friday, lamented the
violence and looting in Kyrgyzstan, saying that “it’s unfortunate that
yet again in the post-Soviet space, political problems in a country are
resolved illegally and are accompanied by pogroms and human victims.”
He urged the Kyrgyz opposition to quickly restore order, and praised
the Kyrgyz opposition leaders for helping develop bilateral ties
during their earlier work in the government.
Kyrgyz lawmakers met early Friday to consider the country’s new
leadership but were interrupted by youths throwing stones at the
Parliament building. Bakiyev then emerged and told about 1,000
demonstrators in the central square that he had been appointed “acting
prime minister and acting president” and would seek to form a Cabinet.
The crowd shouted his name in support.
Bakiyev urged opposition supporters not to allow looting, and
stressed that the popular opposition figure Kulov would coordinate
law enforcement. Bakiyev proposed that former Foreign Minister
Roza Otunbayeva be named the country’s top diplomat, and said,
“All intergovernmental agreements will remain in full force and are
in full effect.”
Bakiyev said he would fight corruption _ a major complaint against
Akayev’s regime _ and the clan mentality that roughly splits the
country between north and south.
“I will not allow the division of the people into north and south,”
he said. “We are a united nation.”
The square was the scene of swift political change Thursday, when
opposition protesters seized control of the presidential and government
headquarters. The takeover followed weeks of protests over disputed
parliamentary elections the opposition said were aimed at keeping
Akayev in power.
The Red Cross reported dozens injured in the turmoil Thursday, while
lawmaker Temir Sariyev said three people had been killed and about
100 injured overnight.
On Friday, a shopping center on the main avenue stood mostly destroyed
by fire and strewn with wreckage that spread into the street, as smoke
hung in the air. At another shop gutted by fire, a few elderly people
and children picked through what was left after looting overnight. Cars
were picked clean, their windows and tires gone.
The 60-year-old Akayev had led Kyrgyzstan since 1990, before it gained
independence in the Soviet collapse.
The takeover of government buildings in Bishkek followed similar
seizures by opposition activists in the country’s impoverished south.
The protests began even before the first round of parliamentary
elections Feb. 27 and swelled after March 13 run-offs that the
opposition said were seriously flawed.
The fractious opposition unified around calls for more democracy,
an end to poverty and corruption, and a desire to oust Akayev. There
was no sign the new leadership would change policy toward the West
or Russia. Unlike the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, foreign
policy has not been an issue.
Both the United States and Russia have military bases near Bishkek.
Kyrgyzstan has been a conduit for drugs and a potential hotbed
of Islamic extremism. There was no indication, however, that the
opposition would be more amenable to Islamic fundamentalist influence
than Akayev’s government has been.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Railroad ferry link between Russia, Georgia opens Wednesday
Prime-Tass English-language Business Newswire
March 23, 2005
MOSCOW, Mar 23 (Prime-Tass) — The opening of the railroad ferry
link between Russia’s Kavkaz seaport in the Krasnodar Region and
Georgia’s Poti seaport opened Wednesday, the press service of Russian
Transportation Ministry said.
Two trial voyages were expected to be made, the press service said.
The press service said that on Wednesday the first ferry carrying 18
railway cars loaded with grain to Armenia is expected to sail from
Kavkaz to Poti. The ferry is expected to return in five days with
railway cars loaded with manganese ore.
The second ferry passage, which will also carry railway cars loaded
with grain, is scheduled for the beginning of next week.
The agreement on opening the railroad ferry link was signed on
January 10.
The land-based railroad link between Russia and Georgia was cut in
August 1992 after the breakout of an armed conflict in Georgia’s
breakaway republic of Abkhazia. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Central Asian
states may also use the Poti-Kavkaz route. End

‘Vodka Lemon’ Life’s astringent taste can go down smooth
By Elvis Mitchell New York Times
Times Argus
March 22, 2005
“Vodka Lemon” just might be the world’s iciest postcard film: You
will never be so happy to sit inside a cozy, theater as when you
watch the actors exhaling clouds of warm breath over the blindingly
white expanse.
But the thicket of relationships that the director, Hiner Saleem,
has created and weaves his cast and camera through is so invitingly
hotblooded and crowded with hilariously melodramatic incident
that the snowbanks are not nearly as forbidding as they initially
seem. Eventually the chilly air becomes a character; it has the
astringent sharpness of the title drink that everyone in the movie
downs, and complains about.
The picture starts with an old man being pulled across the snowy
wastes on his bed, an image right out of a dream. But Saleem’s gifts
come from giving these outlandish visual statements a grounding in
the everyday reality that the characters experience. He is headed to
a funeral, and “Vodka Lemon” charts the intermingling – marriages,
death and sexual complications – in an Armenian village. Like most of
the other New Directors/New Films offerings “Vodka Lemon” is set in
a place that almost makes us want to applaud for the sheer industry
required to get a camera crew there.
Chief among the citizens is the wily Hamo, played by Romik
Avinian. With a grizzled jaw line one could scratch to start a
fire, Avinian dominates the picture as if he has finally grown
into his surly, direct charisma. This fine, guarded actor anchors
the goings-on. After attending so many funerals, Hamo has begun a
flirtation with a much younger woman, the 50-ish widow Nina (Lala
Sarkissian). She feels a void in her life, and he simply recognizes
now as the time for both of them to move into a new adventure.
The ravaged and impoverished village also must cope with its own
deficits. The support system in place during Soviet rule is long gone,
with several residents fondly griping about the comforts, such as
they were, that the Soviets provided. There hasn’t been much change;
life in this flash-frozen community has gone from minimal to Spartan,
but nostalgie de la boue is still nostalgia.
“We have nothing left but our freedom,” one villager grouses. Saleem
understands that need is the central motivating force in the villagers’
lives: for heat, food, emotional humidity and clarity.
Saleem’s layering does compensate for the lack of formal structure,
though the picture is provisionally set around the shock waves caused
by the imminent wedding of Nina’s granddaughter. But the picture
does not need an elaborately contrived plot. What it has instead
is a neighborly, fresh-air quality; all the doors in the miniature
snow-globe of a town are open, as is the chatter and curiosity about
everyone’s familial intrigues.
The movement from one conversation to another gives a likable freedom
to “Vodka Lemon,” and allows Saleem to set up a few running jokes
that combine quotidian absurdity with thoughtful melodrama, like the
opening shot of the old man, and a few other freakish outbursts that
have to be witnessed to be believed, and savored.
It is an intelligent gamble on Saleem’s part; he knows that if he’s
not going to satisfy audiences with convention, he should at least
supply a few entrances as detonation devices.
“Vodka Lemon” could be an Ice Capades version of a Beckett play,
with a group of seasoned though modest hammy actors in complete
control. Their affectlessness gives the movie an atmosphere of
hypothermia-laced surrealism, with shots of drama serving the same
purpose as the vodka; both keep the blood flowing. This movie has
an antic, mordant visual poetry that matches up with the rancor and
feeling in its population’s souls.

The Scotsman, UK
March 20 2005
Less talk, more action
BEN KIERNAN
IN TWO years of mass killings and forced population displacements,
Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias have caused the deaths of more
than 200,000 Africans in the country’s Darfur provinces. Though
existing international law already provides both a relevant statutory
definition of genocide and a court to judge these crimes, needless
semantic disputes are hampering effective punishment and deterrence.
Failure to promptly bring those responsible before the International
Criminal Court (ICC) could render the international community
helpless onlookers – and would further encourage such crimes.
Despite persistent reports of attacks on Africans in Darfur, military
intervention has been slow. The African Union peacekeeping force is
small. Guarding their own sovereignty, few African or Arab
governments will intervene in a regional Islamic state, or prosecute
its crimes. US intervention, with American forces extended in Iraq
and elsewhere, seems unlikely. Washington favours a genocide
tribunal, in a special court restricted to hearing the Darfur case.
It opposes the new permanent ICC, which one day might try US war
crimes.
Differing definitions of genocide plague the legal response. A United
Nations commission, urging referral of the case to ICC prosecutors,
recently found that crimes against humanity and war crimes are
occurring in Darfur. The commission avoided charging Sudanese
government officials with genocide stating that “only a competent
court” can determine if they have committed “acts with genocidal
intent”. Meanwhile, the US government, the German government and the
parliament of the European Union all accuse Khartoum of “genocide”.
Why this debate over the definition of genocide? Although the concept
preceded the invention of the term, the jurist Raphael Lemkin coined
the word in his 1944 classic Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Warning of
what we now call the Holocaust, he cited previous cases, particularly
the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Young Turk
regime. Lemkin thought the term should denote the attempted
destruction not only of ethnic and religious groups but also of
political ones, and that it encompassed systematic cultural
destruction as well.
The 1941-45 Nazi genocide of Jews and Gypsies constitutes not only
the most extreme case of genocide, it differs from previous cases –
the conquistadors’ brutality in the New World or Ottoman massacres –
in an important respect: the Holocaust was one of the first examples
of attempted physical racial extermination. On a smaller scale, this
fate had already befallen a number of indigenous peoples in the
Americas, Africa and Australia – and, later, the Vietnamese minority
in Cambodia and Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. By then, planned
near-complete annihilation of a people had become the colloquial
meaning of “genocide”.
Yet the postwar UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
Genocide adopted Lemkin’s broader concept, which encompasses the
crimes in Darfur. Ratified by most UN member states, the 1948
convention defines genocide as acts committed “with the intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or
religious group, as such”.
It includes even non-violent destruction of such a group. While
excluding cultural destruction and political extermination, the
convention specifically covers removal of children, imposing living
conditions that make it difficult to sustain a group’s existence, or
inflicting physical or mental harm, with the intent to destroy a
group “as such”. Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission found in 1997 that the UN definition of genocide applied
to the removals of Aboriginal children from their parents to “breed
out the colour” – as one Australian official put it in 1933. The law
thus expands the popular understanding of genocide. As in the case of
Darfur, genocide may fall well short of total physical extermination.
The legal recourse now available to victims under international law
is a good reason to accept the 1948 UN definition. In 2003, Sudan
acceded to the Genocide Convention. It is statutory international
law, binding on 136 states. In the past decade, UN tribunals for
Bosnia and Rwanda have convicted genocide perpetrators from both
countries. The convention’s definition is enshrined in the statute of
the ICC, created in 2002 and ratified by 94 states.
The legal definition is broad in another sense. In criminal law, the
term “intent” does not equal “motive”. One of Hitler’s motives for
the construction of Auschwitz was to destroy the Jews directly, but
other genocide perpetrators have pursued different goals – conquest
(Indonesia in East Timor), “ethnic cleansing” (in Bosnia and Darfur)
– which resulted in more indirect cases. If those perpetrators did
not set out to commit genocide, it was a predictable result of their
actions.
The regimes pursued their objectives, knowing that at least partial
genocide would result from their violence: driving Africans from
Darfur, crushing all national resistance in East Timor, imposing
totalitarian racism in Cambodia. When such policies knowingly bring
genocidal results, their perpetrators may be legally judged to have
possessed the “intent” to destroy a group, whatever their motive.
Such crimes are not the same as the Holocaust, but international law
has made them another form of genocide.
The 1948 Convention also outlaws complicity, incitement, conspiracy
and attempt to commit genocide. A government could commit those
crimes by facilitating an ongoing genocide against indigenous people.
Darfur may include such cases of official complicity with the
Janjaweed militia attacks. In colonial Australia, British authorities
did not set out to exterminate Aborigines but some police and
settlers did. Nor did US federal officials adopt such a goal in
California and the West, though some state governments and
bounty-hunting posses did. Yet courts in both countries prohibited
testimony by native people. Such official policies and their
deliberate, sustained enforcement facilitated or resulted in the
predictable genocide of a number of Aboriginal and Native American
peoples.
Complicity, discrimination and refusal of legal responsibility to
protect threatened groups continued in the 20th century. Even after
World War II, the UN Security Council failed to enforce the 1948
Genocide Convention until the crime recurred in Europe. By then
genocide had proliferated elsewhere. A few independent scholars,
inspired by Lemkin, had long been working to broaden understanding of
the phenomenon beyond the Holocaust. Most scholars now include the
Armenian, Bangladeshi, Cambodian, East Timorese, Guatemalan,
Sudanese, and other cases, along with those of Bosnia and Rwanda.
Attention has also turned to indigenous peoples. A German official
recently apologised to the Herero people of Namibia for Berlin’s
genocidal conquest of South-West Africa in 1904-05. The US and
Australia have yet to acknowledge genocides against their indigenous
inhabitants but now the Muslim Africans of Darfur have a legal
remedy.
After a century of genocide, resistance and research on the
phenomenon, the world community has a legal definition, an
international statute outlawing the crime and a court asserting
jurisdiction over it. The task now requires less definitional
disputation, more investigation, rigorous enforcement and
compensation for the victims. Unless either the Sudanese government
invites the ICC, or the UN decides to send the case before the ICC,
the Darfur crimes may go unpunished. Lest international efforts to
prevent genocide disintegrate into empty talk, the ICC should be
allowed to take up the case of Darfur.
Ben Kiernan is the A.Whitney Griswold Professor of History and
director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
March 18, 2005
Australian detained in Moscow airport may be fined or jailed
MOSCOW
Legal proceedings have been instituted against an Australian for
Thursday’s incident on the Tokyo-Moscow flight. The proceedings are
instituted under the article on “giving information known to be false
about an act of terror,” the Sheremetyevo airport police department
told Itar-Tass.
The detained passenger is identified. He is Simon Talityan, a
29-year-old Australian citizen of Armenian origin, who flew via
Moscow to Yerevan to his brother.
The crew commander reported to an air traffic controller not long
before the landing at Moscow that one of the passengers attempted to
break through to the cockpit, threatening to blow up the airliner.
When the plane landed, Sheremetyevo airport security service officers
and police detained the offender right aboard the plane.
Talityan was heavily drunk. He is detained and held in the airport
detention ward.
The false terrorist, who made the passengers and crew experience
unpleasant moments, may be fined a considerable sum or sentenced up
to three years.
The Australian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that the
passenger was an Australian citizen.
The Australian Embassy in Moscow said it would render consular
assistance to the citizen.
Australian diplomats said it was really an Australian citizen, a
resident of Sydney. He attempted to get into the cockpit, threatening
to blow up the plane.
To render consular assistance to the Australian citizen, the embassy
maintains constant contact with appropriate structures investigating
the incident.
The embassy has given no comments so far on causes and motives of the
passenger’s actions.