Author: Emil Lazarian

Georgia Leader Cancels Moscow Trip Amid Troop Dispute (Update2)

Bloomberg
July 21 2006

July 21 (Bloomberg) — Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
canceled a trip to today’s Moscow summit of former Soviet states
as increasing tension over the presence of Russian peacekeepers in
his country threatens to derail Russia’s attempts to join the World
Trade Organization.

"He’s not coming," because he and Russian President Vladimir Putin were
unable to find time to meet privately at the summit, Georgian Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman Nino Kajaia said in a phone interview. Saakashvili
was busy planning changes to his Cabinet’s lineup, after dismissing
his ministers today to allow new appointments to take place on July
24, Kajaia said. Both governments said talks may be rescheduled.

Russian-Georgian relations, tense since Saakashvili came to power after
the 2003 "Rose Revolution" vowing to join the European Union and NATO,
worsened this year as Russia banned Georgian wine and mineral water
imports, citing health grounds. Georgia said July 14 it may review
a trade accord with Russia, a step that could wreck Russia’s push to
join the WTO.

Putin’s government estimates WTO admission, on which talks have lasted
for more than a decade, would add $10 billion a year to its economy
by aiding exporters. The country’s decade-long bid to join the WTO
stalled last week over its barriers to U.S. meat exports. The U.S. is
the only one of the WTO’s 149 members yet to approve an accord that
would let Russia join the group.

Russia must sign individual treaties with every WTO member before
being admitted to the organization.

Ukraine President Cancels

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, a Saakashvili ally, also
decided not to attend the two-day summit of leaders from the 12-member
Commonwealth of Independent States, citing the "political situation"
in his own country, according to Yushchenko’s Web site.

A political standoff has left Ukraine without a government since
parliamentary elections in March.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian also canceled his trip to the
summit because he has a bronchial infection, Interfax said, citing
his press office. Armenia’s Foreign Ministry had no comment on the
report when contacted by phone.

Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper today said Turkmenistan’s President
Saparmurat Niyazov, who has missed some previous CIS summits, will
skip the meeting. The CIS includes all of the former Soviet states,
except for the three Baltic republics.

Turkmenistan is in a dispute with Russia over natural gas prices.

Georgian Demands

In a July 18 resolution, Georgian lawmakers called for an international
force to replace Russian troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The
regions, with pro-Russian leaderships, broke away from Georgia when
the country became independent after the Soviet Union was dissolved in
1991 and have been outside Georgian control since a civil war. Russia’s
government this week said the vote was a Georgian attempt to provoke
conflict.

Georgia will reopen bilateral trade talks with Russia and demands
Putin’s government deal with its concerns about Russia’s policies,
Interfax reported, citing Georgian Deputy Economy Minister Tamara
Kovziridze in Tbilisi. Russia must close allegedly illegal checkpoints
in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, ship taxable goods only through the
legal Kazbegi-Verkhny Lars checkpoint and protect Georgian goods and
intellectual property, Interfax cited Kovziridze as saying.

Saakashvili has the support of the U.S., which has been critical of
Russia’s record on democracy and human rights. Russian energy supplies
to Georgia were cut this year in incidents that Putin’s government
said were accidents or terrorist acts. Saakashvili accused Russia
of sabotage.

`Full Timetable’

The informal summit at the Presidents’ Cup horserace at the Moscow
Hippodrome has a full timetable that "does not allow the possibility
of separate, detailed bilateral conversations," Russia’s Foreign
Ministry said in a statement. Saakashvili and Putin last met in the
Russian president’s hometown of St. Petersburg on July 13.

The EU said in a statement today that it’s "deeply concerned" about
continuing tension between Georgia and Russia.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a Putin supporter, visited Abkhazia
yesterday, with the Georgian Foreign Ministry describing his trip as
"a provocation and yet another demonstration of disrespect for the
universally recognized norms and principles of international law." It
said the trip showed Russian policy is aimed at "actual annexation
of Georgian territory."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Safar Abiyev: Armenia should pull back its forces from occupied Azerbaijani lands

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
July 21, 2006

[ 21 Jul. 2006 18:36 ]

Azerbaijan’s Defense Minister Safar Abiyev today received the
European Union Special Representative for the South Caucasus Peter
Semneby. The Ministry press service told the APA Minister Abiyev
touched on Azerbaijan’s integration into Europe.

He also said some aims artificially caused the Armenia-Azerbaijan
conflict.

"Armenia has occupied Azerbaijani lands and on the other hand,
it intends to build mutual confidence with Azerbaijan. However,
we have no trust in Armenia. Since Armenia wants to build mutual
confidence, it should pull back its forces from the occupied
Azerbaijani territories, provide refugees and IDPs returning to
their native lands, and infrastructure should be restored in these
territories. This conflict should be resolved in the frames of the
territorial integrity of Azerbaijan," Mr.Abiyev said.

Mr.Semneby wished that conflict be resolved peacefully underlining
the European Union will make all efforts for the settlement of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict./APA/

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
July 21, 2006

Armenian detained in Azerbaijani village

[ 21 Jul. 2006 16:51 ]

An Armenian has been detained in Boyuk Bahmanli village of the
Azerbaijani region of Fuzuli today.

APA’s Garabagh bureau reports the Armenian at the age of about 40
was detained by local residents. The Armenian wearing civil uniform
hided in a garret in the village. Azerbaijani villagers handed over
him to the law enforcement bodies. Azerbaijan’s National Security,
Defense and Interior Ministries were not informed about that./APA/

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MetroWest Daily News, MA
July 21, 2006

Greenberg: Evil threatens survival of western world
By Dan Greenberg/ Local Columnist
Friday, July 21, 2006 – Updated: 01:03 AM EST

Let’s not mince words.

What is going on in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza is not a "dispute"
or "conflict." It is a battle for survival, another in a string of
battles of survival, in a prolonged war Israel has been fighting
against enemies that wish to annihilate it.

I am tired of hearing people talk about the "political blustering"
of radical Islamic leaders — referring to their fiery speeches and
deeds as threats made to gain some diplomatic leverage. If the past
100 years have taught us anything at all, it is this: political leaders
who advocate the destruction and slaughter of their opponents mean it,
and do it if they have the opportunity.

We learned this with Turkish leaders in the early 20th century who
slaughtered over a million Armenians.

We learned this with Communist dictators who, in the name of the
so-called "class struggle," murdered their own people by the millions
— some forty million killed by Stalin in the Soviet Union, even more
by Mao in China. (Their use of the euphemism "struggle" for murder
is another example of sanitized language.)

We learned this with Hitler, who killed six million "Jewish vermin"
and over six million "inferior Russian Slavs" before being defeated.

We learned this with the Japanese armies in occupied China during the
"rape of Nanking."

We learned this in Ruanda, in Bosnia, in Burundi, in the Congo, in
Iraq, where such terms as "ethnic cleansing" were used to represent
the killing.

We should have learned this on 9/11, where the "infidel" people of
"the great Satan" were slaughtered in the twin towers and the Pentagon.

Jonathan Goldhagen, in his trail blazing book "Hitler’s Willing
Executioners," introduced the apt phrase "eliminationist politics"
to designate the discourse of destruction. This phrase recognizes
the call to annihilate a people, or a religious group, or a political
entity, for what it is — namely, a direct, unambiguous declaration
of intent to utterly destroy the alleged enemy.

All this has special relevance today.

In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two
entities, one predominantly Jewish, the other predominantly Arab. (The
term — indeed, the concept — "Palestinians" was not in use then;
for the Arab population, since Palestine had been a province of Syria
from time immemorial.)

>From the moment the vote was taken, the Islamic nations of the region
vowed to destroy the Jewish enclave. The local population, joined by
all the neighboring states — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan (as
it was then called), Lebanon and Syria — and by the distant state
of Iraq, declared a war of annihilation against the fledgling state
of Israel, and vowed to drive the Jews into the sea.

In the intervening decades, only Egypt and Jordan have decided
to end their war and sign a peace treaty with Israel. Even within
those countries, radical Islamic groups (that threaten to overthrow
their governments and replace them with radical Islamic regimes)
have denounced the peace treaties as invalid.

For the others, the war never ended. It has been renewed periodically,
always with the same goal. The current call by Iran’s leader to
"finish the work Hitler had begun" and kill the Jews remaining alive
in Israel, is just a continuation of a by-now familiar routine of
renewed efforts to attain an old goal.

Israel’s attempts to deflect the hostility have been greeted with
derision. Leaving the part of Lebanon Israel had occupied — in an
attempt to end earlier hostilities across that border — did nothing
to change the goals of those living to the north of Israel.

Leaving Gaza, occupied after another earlier war of survival, did
nothing to change the goals of those living to the southwest or east
of Israel. Surrounded today as it has always been by nations that
support fanatics determined to wipe Israel off the map, the country
lives day by day in the shadow of its own destruction.

There is a reason we here have a hard time understanding all this. We
Americans are a fortunate, indeed unique, people. We have left our
eliminationist past behind, when we all but completed the task of
killing off this continent’s natives and decided to allow the remnant
that survived to live in their reservations. It is an ugly past,
one for which we have still not expiated, but from which we have
distanced ourselves.

With that behind us, we no longer have a direct connection to
eliminationist thinking. In so doing, we have come to believe that
other nations and peoples have distanced themselves as well from
their eliminationist pasts. Over and over again we mistake the
rhetoric of intent and action for boastful talk, for "racism," for
"discrimination," for a lack of tolerance that can be overcome by
patience, by negotiation, by civilized intercourse.

Even when faced with the brutal facts of the past century, and by
the terrible consequences of ignoring the clear harbingers of those
facts, we want oh so terribly badly to believe that this time, at
last, the talk and the action is just bluff, just a political ploy,
and that "negotiation," "cease-fires," and gestures of welcome into
the political mainstream, will deflect the intentions of the radicals.

We are deluding ourselves if we think this way.

The slaughter perpetrated by the murdering leaders of the past century
ended only with their death or utter defeat. The slaughter being
prepared by radical Islam for Israel, and for Western societies,
will only be barred by the same preventive — the death or utter
defeat of those who plot and execute their evil designs.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Capitalism, Socialism, and Race
By Bill Dillard
Published 7/21/2006 12:06:39 AM

American Spectator
July 21, 2006

Europeans have long talked down to Americans on a variety of subjects;
our cowboy capitalism, our income inequality, our failure to embrace
their vision of a cradle to grave welfare state. This history of
condescension made all the more interesting the comments of Abdelkarim
Carrasco, a leader of Spain’s estimated one million-member Muslim
community, on the causes of last spring’s riots in France.

"Either Europe develops and supports the idea of a mixed culture,
or Europe has no future," he said. "Europe has to learn from what the
United States has done: It is a country that has taken in people from
all over the world."

The ironies are rich, aren’t they? Europeans, of all people, are
being lectured by a Muslim leader who, of all nations, points to the
United States as the world’s exemplar of assimilation and economic
opportunity.

We are the capitalists. They are the socialists. We are the
racists. They are the equal opportunity egalitarians. Here at home,
liberals have, for decades, cast themselves as the defenders of
oppressed minorities. Their enemies in this war, we are told,
are greedy conservatives, white businessmen (i.e., capitalists),
and their political henchmen, the Republicans. Conservatism is the
redoubt of racist oppressors, socialism the liberator of oppressed
minorities. Perhaps the greatest article of liberal faith is that
American racism is the most virulent strain to ever afflict the
world. Racism, we are constantly scolded, is "everywhere" in America.

But are these presumptions warranted by logic, reason, or human
experience? How is it that France has race riots in 2006, while the
U.S. is the volitional home to more ethnicities and cultures than can
be found in any other consensual political union on the planet? How is
it that Azerbaijanis and Armenians, Hutus and Tutsis, Serbs and Croats,
Hindus and Sikhs, and all manner of other people who used to butcher
each back home, can all come to America and live in relative peace?

Perhaps it is a propitious moment to revisit some long cherished
notions about capitalism and socialism, conservatism and liberalism,
and their respective impacts on racial assimilation. Herewith a
dissenting opinion to the orthodox view.

SOCIALISM ACTUALLY EMPOWERS the racist, because the absence of
market forces affords him the luxury of making decisions in economic
transactions on criteria other than efficiency and merit; criteria
such as ethnicity, and cronyism. Market capitalism strips the racist
of that luxury, and imposes a cost that must be absorbed and passed
downstream whenever he chooses the least efficient economic option,
preferring instead to base his decision on race. Because French
industry is so heavily regulated, and outcomes are largely determined
by bureaucratic fiat and not merit, outsiders who look different, talk
different, and have fewer skills to start with tend to be more easily
be marginalized and kept that way without penalty to the marginalizers.

Market capitalism, properly regulated by antitrust and
anti-discrimination laws, permits every person to realize his
inherent economic worth, and through experience and education, add
to that worth.

Thus, an Indian family that has been in the U.S. for less than a
decade, with virtually no cultural assimilation to begin with, can
find a flophouse motel, buy it, fix it up, show a profit, borrow for
major improvements, turn the place into a really nice motor court,
and send their children to a nice private school, all within a
generation. That same family in France has no such opportunity, not
because the French are more inclined to prefer their ethnicity than
any other group of people, but rather because their economy altogether
removes the incentive to deal on the merits with other ethnicities,
and also removes the penalties when the French choose less efficient,
but more familiar, French options.

Seen this way socialism enables race discrimination, and market
capitalism inhibits it. This seems so counterintuitive to most
Americans because, to the left’s credit, it led the political fight to
end legally sanctioned and institutionalized racism in America; while
the American right, in what was undoubtedly its greatest moral and
strategic failing, obstructed those efforts or refused to take part.

Understandably, the question of whether the economics of the left
or the right most effectively assimilates different ethnicities is
easily confused with the question of which side deserves the credit
for waging the political fight to end racism in America. But they
are two entirely separate questions.

We saw the marginalizing effects of socialism with the favoritism shown
to Great Russians in the Soviet Union. We see it again today in France,
Europe’s grandest exponent of continental socialism, its cities in
flames because of the lack of economic opportunity exacerbated by race
discrimination that is in turn enabled by its stratified and heavily
regulated economy. Ireland, Europe’s most market oriented economy,
has no such issues. And indeed, there is a rough correlation in time to
the widespread institution of market reforms in Ireland and the rise of
an accretive peace between Catholics and Protestants. George Mitchell
helped, but so did market opportunity. Here at home, if only we had
looked, we would have seen the empowering effects of the market when
prior to the Civil Rights era, with virtually no social safety net, and
rampant discrimination, blacks in America compiled enough wealth that,
on a stand alone basis, they comprised the 10th wealthiest nation in
the World. In his "promised land" speech, on the last night of his
life, Martin Luther King, Jr. actually quoted that statistic when
urging boycotts against businesses that discriminated against blacks.

Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together,
collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the
exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the
United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and
I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most
nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty
billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the
United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you
know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.

To black Americans living in a time of institutionalized, even
legally sanctioned racism, the market wasn’t their oppressor. The
market was their only shelter from the storm — the only place where
white Americans who would never have blacks to dinner or allow them
to join their country clubs would, albeit incompletely, put their
prejudices aside and afford blacks a place at the table.

Of course, blacks were treated unfairly in the pre-civil rights era
market, because capitalism does not prohibit racism. But the capitalism
of that day was the one true ameliorator of the barriers of race; the
one place where in the hard unemotional currency of economic exchange,
the worth of ethnically disfavored people was given value. Thus, in
our society, and indeed in any society with a race problem (that is
to say, any political compact whose members consist of more than one
race), capitalism and markets are not the problem. They are part of
the solution. Markets create reasons for people to focus their hearts
and minds beyond their own cultures and ethnicities. They meld. They
do not divide.

As proof of this assertion consider a question with a self-evident
answer. Would African-Americans be more broadly assimilated
into mainstream American life if the political movement to end
discrimination against them hadn’t been dominated by people who held
such enmity for the market, and who instilled that same enmity in a
broad cross-section of the beneficiaries of their efforts? But then,
that isn’t the fault of the left, is it? That’s the fault of the right.

Bill Dillard is a businessman and freelance writer living in Savannah,
Georgia.

rticle.asp?art_id=10120

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

CHURCH IS BUILT IN STEPANAKERT, CATHOLICOS OF ALL ARMENIANS ARRIVED

Lragir.am
22 July 06

On July 22 the first stone will be laid in the fundament of the first
church in Stepanakert. The Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin B
arrived in Stepanakert to participate in this ceremony.

Several buildings will be pulled down in the neighborhood of the
polyclinic of Stepanakert. In accordance with the plan, an immense
compound will be built to become the seat of the Artsakh Diocese.

Compensation for expropriation will mount so high that it is not
clear how much only the preparation for building will cost.

Over the past 10 years the only church in Stepanakert was in the hall
of the Home of Culture. Although there is an ancient church in the
downtown, which somehow appeared in the territory of a restaurant.

They say the church, which is called Vararakn, was built by the
Armenian King Vachagan.

In November an American started building a church in Stepanakert
on Hekimyan Street in memory of his son Hakob. The building will be
over soon.

There are churches in almost every village in Karabakh. Although
fanatic believers are hardly found in Karabakh, the way to the church
has always been open.

PRODUCTION OF PRECIOUS STONES DECLINED

Lragir.am
22 July 06

Production of precious stones in Armenia is declining, announced
the president of DCL Gagik Abrahamyan July 21, the news agency ARKA
reports. According to him, it is caused by the international crisis,
and does not depend on the Armenian producers. Abrahamyan also said
that the crisis is temporary.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

219 LEBANON ARMENIANS WERE EVACUATED TO YEREVAN

Lragir.am
22 July 06

On July 21 219 Lebanon Armenians were evacuated from Aleppo to Yerevan
by two special flights. 60 citizens of Lebanon with Armenian origin
are registered with the Armenian Embassy to Lebanon, who want to come
to Armenia. Citizens of Lebanon, Armenian citizens of other countries
who are in Lebanon, as well as relatives of citizens of Armenia are
granted a three-month visa free of charge. Already about 380 Armenians
have been evacuated to Armenia.

On July 23 128 Armenians, including 53 children, will fly from Tel
Aviv to Yerevan. The representative of the Armenian foreign ministry
will fly to Tel Aviv to facilitate problems with documents on the spot.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

GAGIK TSARUKYAN DECLINED REPUBLICAN’S INVITATION

Lragir.am
22 July 06

The extraordinary assembly of the Republican Party on July 22 did not
have many guests. Few parties, even too few parties had been invited.

It became clear that the reason is the peculiarity of the assembly
rather than that of the Republican Party or other political parties.

"Considering the peculiarity of this assembly, it is not an ordinary
assembly, no programs will be presented, therefore we considered it
necessary to invite our colleagues in the parliament.

People’s Deputy and Businessmen groups were also invited," says
Tigran Torosyan.

>From among colleague parties only Dashnaktsutiun was represented
by leaders, namely Armen Rustamyan, member of the ARF Supreme Body,
and Spartak Seyranyan. From party chiefs the minister of communication
and transport Andranik Manukyan was invited, whose party is known with
the name "Solidarity". Whereas Gagik Tsarukyan of Bargavach Hayastan
Party (Prosperous Armenia) did not show up at the assembly as a guest,
although the Republicans say he had been invited.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OSCE MG to Discuss Outcomes Bryza Regional Visit in Paris

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.07.2006 17:17 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Co-Chairs of the OSCE MG for settlement of the
Nagorno Karabakh conflict intend to hold next consultations in Paris
in early August, said Yuri Merzlyakov, Russian co-chair of OSCE
Minsk Group.

The main goal of the meeting is consultation on the outcomes of
regional visit of US Co-Chair of the OSCE MG Matthew Bryza. In
Merzlyakov’s words, it is not known now which decisions may be adopted
at the meeting and whether the issue of organization of the next round
of meetings between the parties will be discussed. "We will decide,
when we will meet. I do not know the evaluations that the US co-chair
will make," the Russian diplomat underscored, reports Trend.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress