Author: Emil Lazarian

Regnum, Russia
28 Sep 06
SECURITY TIGHTENED IN ARMENIA AHEAD OF FRENCH LEADER’S VISIT
29 September: Officers of the Armenian police and National Security
Service are taking security measures in Yerevan because of French
President Jacques Chirac’s official visit to Armenia.
In particular, control has been tightened on roads, patrol police
officers have been put on alert, and water, sewage and cable manholes
are being welded, our Regnum correspondent reports.
[Passage omitted: reported agenda of the visit]
[Chirac is expected to arrive in Yerevan on 29 September]

Armenian Genocide’ Draft on French Agenda
By Ali Ihsan Aydin, Paris
Friday, September 29, 2006
zaman.com
A proposed law that stipulates punishment for denying the alleged
Armenian genocide is back on France’s agenda.
To ensure consideration by the parliament, the main opposition
Socialist Party (SP), which prepared the draft law, used the right to
`determine a special agenda.’ The proposal, which designates
punishment for denying the Armenian genocide with a fine of 45,000
euros and up to five years imprisonment, will be discussed in the
plenary session of the French parliament on Oct. 12.
Observers are optimistic that the proposal will be adopted because of
the upcoming elections and the Armenian Diaspora’s intensifying
efforts.
The draft was not voted in a parliament session in May since Jean
Louis Debre, the chairman of the French parliament, who opposed the
proposal, recessed that session twice.
Subsequently, the proposal was dropped from the parliament’s agenda.
The French government, reiterating that the endeavor would seriously
harm bilateral relations between France and Turkey, also opposed the
draft.
The session was attended by a fairly small number of deputies.
This time the draft came to the forefront amid preparations for the
spring presidential and general elections.
It has been reported that the French politicians would not be able to
stand against the draft, even if they were hesitant about it, because
of the Armenian Diaspora’s influential lobby.
The draft aims at empowering the existing law promulgated in 2001 that
openly recognizes the Armenian genocide by adding a sanction clause to
it.
In order for the draft to be implemented it must be adopted by the
National Assembly on Oct. 12 and then ratified by the French Senate
without any amendments and revisions.
If even a single amendment proposal regarding the text is adopted at
the Senate, the draft will be returned to the Assembly for further
review.
Following Senate approval, the draft also requires the president’s
ratification.
The recently improved bilateral relations between Turkey and France
will be reportedly affected negatively, even in the case of the
adoption of the draft by the Assembly on Oct. 12.
The French companies that seek to win Turkey’s chopper and nuclear
power plant construction bids will be most affected by the
parliament’s decision.
Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac will head to Armenia
because of France’s `Year of Armenia.’ During his stay, Chirac will
visit the Armenian genocide monument.
amp;alt=&trh060929&hn=36904
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Financial Times (London, England)
September 27, 2006 Wednesday
London Edition 1
Door swings shut behind new boys as EU’s welcome is exhausted ‘Old
Europe’ will need to recover from enlargement fatigue before more
countries join the club of 27, writes George Parker
By GEORGE PARKER
Bulgaria and Romania may be coming in to the European Union but the
door is starting to swing shut behind them.
The accession of the two Black Sea states completes the “big bang”
expansion of the EU, which began in 2004 with eight former communist
countries in central and eastern Europe.
The healing of Europe’s cold war divisions was a relatively easy
political message for western leaders to sell but each new round of
enlargement takes the EU into ever more difficultterrain.
“You could sell the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland joining,” says
a senior EU official involved in the enlargement process. “People
knew about the Prague Spring or Budapest 1956 or Solidarity.
“With Bulgaria and Romania it is more difficult to make the case on
an emotional level, and it’s going to keep getting harder.”
According to a Euro-barometer opinion poll this year, some 53 per
cent of EU citizens viewed enlargement with “indifference, fear,
annoyance or frustration”, even if a narrow majority – 55 per cent –
still felt positive about the process.
The symptoms of enlargement fatigue became glaringly obvious last
year when French and Dutch voters rejected the EU constitution, with
No voters citing the club’s eastward expansion as a prime reason for
their dissatisfaction.
For France, the expansion diluted the original essence of a western
club of relatively wealthy countries largely operating under the
political direction of Paris. Other founder members fear that the EU
has grown too big, too fast.
For the Dutch, migration was a big factor, as it now is in Britain
(which was traditionally one of the biggest supporters of
enlargement). The arrival of up to 600,000 east European workers in
the UK between May 2004 and June this year outweighed anything the
British government or European Commission had predicted.
Although new EU members in central and eastern Europe have taken
enormous strides since the fall of communism, recent political
developments have reinforced the fears of sceptics in “old Europe”.
Poland’s ruling party has been accused of populist nationalism,
Slovakia’s new coalition has been criticised for fanning xenophobia
and Hungary’s prime minister provoked demonstrations when he admitted
he had lied to win a general election.
Bulgaria and Romania’s failure to tackle organised crime and
corruption fully or to prepare their admin-istrative systems to
handle billions of euros of EU aid has done little to build
confidence.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, insists
enlargement benefits both old and new member states. “An enlarged
Europe counts for more when we speak with China or Russia than
before,” he said.
But he concedes Europe needs a pause before adding to a club of 27,
whose population will approach 490m people. In particular, he says it
would be “unwise” to expand the Union further before it upgraded its
creaking institutions, through the ratification of parts of the EU
constitution.
The accession of Bulgaria and Romania is a natural break point. Only
Croatia and Turkey have already started membership talks: the former
is unlikely to be ready to join before 2011 at the earliest, the
latter’s progress towards the EU will be tortuous and may not achieve
its goal.
>From now on, the going gets tough. Bulgaria and Romania may have been
poor (both had GDPs of 31 per cent the EU average in 2004) but other
potential newcomers in the western Balkans – Serbia, Montenegro,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia – will be even
harder and more costly to absorb. And, like Turkey, they carry heavy
political baggage. While all of those countries have at least had
their “membership perspective” recognised by the EU, others on the
fringes face a long spell in the cold. Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and
Armenia may have to wait many years before the symptoms of
“enlargement fatigue” in the EU start to subside.

ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
September 27, 2006 Wednesday
Lost n-weapons – potential source of terrorism – official
by Vladimir Zainetdinov, Tigran Liloyan
Nuclear weapons that were lost for this or that reason and may come
to international terrorists’ hands pose a potential threat to
security of the world community, the head of the CIS anti-terror
center, Boris Mylnikov, told a meeting of the CIS anti-terror
departments’ officials on Wednesday.
The meeting is held within the framework of the Atom-Anti-Terror-2006
exercise.
“Getting a nuclear device in their hands, terrorists will be able
even without standard triggering systems to create a primitive
makeshift nuclear explosive,” he said.
“The threat of such actions is quite real and we should take this
into account while planning joint counteraction measures,” Mylnikov
said.
The possibility of diversions at military and civil nuclear
facilitates remains real, he said.
According to expert estimates, there had been 150 incidents since the
middle of the 1960-s that increased the level of nuclear threat to
this or that degree, Mylnikov said.
During the ongoing exercise servicemen will drill how to attack
terrorists at nuclear power plants.
“Such exercises at nuclear power facilities will be held in the CIS
for the first time,” Mylnikov said.
The military units of the Armenian Armed Force from the CSTO’s
collective rapid deployment forces will master their skills in such
an exercise for the first time.
Special services of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan will not
take part.
Armenia invited observers from special services of the G8, the
anti-terror department of the OSCE secretariat, UN Security Council
counter-terrorism committee, the UN office on Drugs and Crime and
regional anti-terror structure of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization.
The United States, Greece, France, China and the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe have confirmed their
participation.
The anti-terror exercise in the CIS has been held for the sixth time.
Last time Kazakhstan’s Aktau on the Caspian Sea hosted the exercise.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

City News Service
September 27, 2006 Wednesday 3:03 PM PST
Man Sentenced to 26-Year-to-Life Prison Term in Filmmaker’s Slaying
VAN NUYS
The first man to be handed over to U.S. authorities by Armenia to
face criminal charges was sentenced today to 26 years to life in
state prison for the road-rage murder of a documentary filmmaker.
Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Kathryne Stoltz rejected the defense’s
request for a new trial for Shahen Eghia Keshishian and refused to
reduce his first-degree murder conviction to second-degree murder.
Keshishian, 34, was also found guilty Aug. 25 of vehicular
manslaughter with gross negligence and leaving the scene of an
accident.
Jurors also found true the allegation that Keshishian used his GMC
Suburban as a dangerous and deadly weapon when he ran down Michael
Craven on April 29, 2000, as he stood on the shoulder of the
Hollywood (101) Freeway, south of Barham Boulevard.
The 44-year-old Canoga Park resident had been driving southbound when
someone in the SUV that Keshishian was driving began lobbing eggs at
his Jeep, authorities said.
Both motorists pulled over and Keshishian ran down Craven as he stood
on the shoulder, then sped away. The filmmaker died at a hospital.
Keshishian was charged with Craven’s slaying on June 23, 2000, and
charged separately by federal authorities that November with unlawful
flight to avoid prosecution.
He was placed on the Los Angeles Police Department’s most wanted list
and named as a fugitive on the FBI’s Web site.
In October 2004, with the help of various agencies in the United
States and in Yerevan, the LAPD’s homicide unit located Keshishian in
Armenia, where he had ties, according to Glendale police.
He was arrested a month later by the Armenian government for
overstaying his visa and subsequently extradited to the United
States.
Glendale police said then that it was the first time someone located
in Armenia was handed to U.S. authorities to be returned to face
criminal charges.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Associated Press Worldstream
September 27, 2006 Wednesday 10:44 AM GMT
Dutch political parties scrap candidates who deny WWI massacre of
Armenians was genocide
AMSTERDAM Netherlands
The two largest Dutch political parties have scrapped ethnic Turkish
parliamentary candidates who refuse to acknowledge the mass killings
of Armenians during World War I amounted to genocide.
The candidates include Ayhan Tonca of the governing Christian
Democrat Party. Tonca is one of the country’s most prominent Muslim
politicians and is chairman of an umbrella organization of Islamic
groups known as CMO.
The Christian Democrats also retracted the candidacy of Osman Elmaci,
and the opposition Labor Party ended the candidacy of Erdinc Sacan.
In their platforms ahead of next month’s election, both parties have
staked out positions on Turkey’s possible entry into the European
Union, a divisive issue around the continent.
The Labor Party has adopted a view shared by others in Europe that
Turkey should be required to recognize the killings as genocide
before it can be allowed to join the EU.
Whether the mass killings of a million or more Armenians in the last
years of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago constituted a
genocide has been the subject of academic and political debate.
The Netherlands and most European governments consider it a genocide.
Turkey and many Turkish scholars, and others, vehemently deny the
deaths resulted from systematic slaughter, saying the death toll of
1.5 million is wildly inflated and that both Armenians and Turks were
killed in fighting during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The U.S. government has shied away from using the word “genocide” to
define the killings.
Earlier this month the European Parliament voted for the inclusion of
a clause requiring Turkey “to recognize the Armenian genocide as a
condition for its EU accession.”
Though their parliamentary runs were ended, the three politicians
were not expelled from their parties. None could immediately be
reached for comment Wednesday.
Tonca and Elmaci had initially said they would assent to the
Christian Democrat Party’s official position acknowledging the
killings as genocide, but both later denied they shared that view in
an interview with a Turkish newspaper.
“As a result of an interview in the Turkish paper Sabah, a discussion
took place between the party and Mr. Elmaci and Mr. Tonca,” the CDA
said in a statement. “In this discussion it was determined that there
is a structural difference of opinion over recognition of the
Armenian Genocide.”
It said the men would not be candidates and thanked them for their
services.
Labor’s Sacan had never accepted his party’s position accepting the
genocide as a fact.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
September 28, 2006 Thursday
FRANCE IS READY TO HELP ARMENIA TO MODERNIZE ITS POLITICAL AND
ECONOMIC LIFE
France is ready to help Armenia to modernize its political and
economic life, French President Jacques Chirac says in an interview
to Hayastani Hanrapetoutyun daily (Armenia) on the eve of his visit
to Yerevan.
He says that France is ready ot help Armenia to build modern legal
state – a state guaranteeing human freedoms. France is also ready to
help Armenia to diversify its economy and to build better future for
its people. Such an old nation as Armenians must not be afraid of the
future. Chirac says that the Armenian youths must be happy that being
part of an ancient nation they have a chance to build an absolutely
new country. Armenia is worthy of loyalty and the biggest happiness
for any person is to faithfully serve his country, says Chirac.

RIA Novosti, Russia
September 28, 2006
No plans to expand Russian base in Armenia – general staff
YEREVAN, September 28 (RIA Novosti) – There are no plans to increase
the number of personnel and military equipment at a Russian base in
Armenia, the country’s chief of the general staff said Thursday.
The Russian 102nd military base in Gyumri, about 120 kilometers (75
miles) from the Armenian capital Yerevan, is part of a joint air
defense system of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which was
deployed in Armenia in 1995.
“We are not planning the expansion of the Russian base in Armenia,”
Mikael Arutyunyan said, adding that the base will be equipped with
modern weaponry instead, and the level of combat training improved to
ensure the base fulfills its mission.
The base operates under the authority of the Russian group of forces
in the South Caucasus, and is equipped with S-300 (SA-10 Grumble) air
defense systems, MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters and 5,000 personnel.
Part of the military equipment from Russian bases in Georgia will be
transferred to the base in Gyumri by the end of 2008.

ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
September 28, 2006 Thursday
Russia’s reply to Georgian demarche must be well-considered-Gustov
by Lyudmila Yeremakova
Russia must take harsh, well considered measures in response to the
detention of Russian military in Georgia, the chairman of the
Federation Council’s CIS affairs committee, Vadim Gustov, said on
Thursday.
He described Georgia’s latest demarche as another link in the chain
of events that may eventually lead to Georgia’s admission to NATO.
Georgia hopes that its unceremonious policy would earn it more
authority with NATO, Gustov said, adding he would not rule out that
Georgia might be number one target of US policies of making CIS
members break off with Russia.
As for the peacekeepers, Gustov recalled that “there are
well-established procedures of their presence in the region, there is
the CIS mandate and recognition by the OSCE.”
Should Russian troops be pulled out, “a long and sanguinary war will
flare up in the Caucasus that may cause destruction not in Georgia’s
territory only.”
The FC’s CIS affairs committee chief would like the other CIS
countries, including Armenia, to take the correct position on the
issue.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Xinhua News Agency
September 28, 2006 Thursday 11:00 AM EST
Turkey expresses concerns over Netherlands’ approach on Armenian
genocide
A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman on Thursday expressed concerns
over Netherlands’ approach on a “so-called Armenian genocide” in
early 20th century, Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency
reported.
“We are deeply worried about the one-sided approach of our ally
Netherlands’ political parties on so-called Armenian genocide as this
puts a limit on the freedom of expression,” Namik Tan was quoted as
saying.
Tan’s comment came after three Turkish-origin candidates were removed
from their party lists in the Netherlands for the Nov. 22 early
parliamentary elections because they refused to acknowledge the
Armenian genocide.
Ruling out the possibility that his country would accept allegations
on Armenian genocide as historical reality, Tan stressed that Turkey
had opened all its archives, including military ones, so that the
incidents of 1915 can be studied from a scientific perspective.
Tan also recalled that the Turkish government had proposed the
Armenian side to establish a joint history commission over the issue.
Turkey, a country seeking European Union (EU) membership, has always
refused to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia on the basis
that Armenia claims up to 1.5 million Armenians died as a result of
systematic genocide during the Turkish Ottoman period between 1915
and 1923.
Some European Parliament (EP) members characterized the removal of
the three Turkish candidates as a violation of the freedom of
expression, Turkish Zaman daily newspaper reported.
On Wednesday, the EP approved a report on Turkey’s progress towards
accession to the EU, in which the lawmakers dropped their demand that
Turkey must acknowledge the Armenian genocide before it can join the
bloc and called on Turkey to speed up its reform process.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress