Author: Emil Lazarian

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
March 10 2006
Co-chairs have to refrain from statements – Araz Azimov

Source: `Trend’
Author: R.Abdullayev

10.03.2006

The results of the negotiations of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Rambue,
France, forced the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs to reconsider the
positions of the conflicting sides. It is clear that the situation is
in very difficult stage and the co-chairs must refrain from any
statements, Trend reports quoting Araz Azimov, the Azerbaijani Deputy
Foreign Minister, as stating Lider TV channel.
`The co-chairs have to refrain from statements, as they don’t want to
risk. Spreading of information in any form can aggravate the
situation or change the course of the events,’ Azimov stressed. He
added that the current position of the co-chairs is true.
`The co-chairs will probable want to hold meetings with the
representatives of Azerbaijan and Armenia after the consultations in
Washington from 7 to 8 March,’ the Azimov underlined.

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
March 10 2006
ARMENIA, GEORGIA TO SIGN INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT ON AIR
COMMUNICATIONS
YEREVAN, March 10. /ARKA/. Armenian Government approved
intergovernmental agreement signing with Georgia on air
communications, Armenian Government press service told ARKA News
Agency. M.V. -0—

UPCOMING ELECTIONS WOULD BE CRUCIAL TO ARMENIA’S FUTURE, INTERNATIONAL
WORKING GROUP ON ELECTIONS CONVINCED

YEREVAN, MARCH 10, NOYAN TAPAN. The international working group on
elections was established in 2002 to provide a forum for the exchange
of information and experience among representatives of international
organizations and Embassies in Armenia that have been involved in
election assistance. The group meets regularly and is chaired by the
OSCE Office in Yerevan.
Ambassadors and the heads of intergovernmental organisations involved
in the working group met on March 9 and exchanged information about
Armenia’s progress in preparing for Parliamentary and Presidential
elections that will be held in 2007 and 2008.
According to the statement adopted by the working group, provided to
Noyan Tapan by OSCE Yerevan Office Press and Public Relations
Department, the participants took note of the steps that have already
been initiated by the Armenian authorities, including efforts to
update the voters list, the beginning of training for members of
electoral commissions, and preliminary steps to review the existing
electoral code.
The participants noted that the elections scheduled to take place next
year and the year after would take place in new circumstances
following the Constitutional referendum which modified the system of
governance in the country. The participants welcomed these changes as
constituting, on the whole, progress for Armenia and correcting a
number of shortcomings in the constitution as it existed.
At the same time, the shortcomings of previous elections were recalled
and the participants noted that those international observers who were
invited to witness the voting related to the Constitutional referendum
in November concluded that the process was marked by serious abuses. A
number of Armenia’s leaders have acknowledged that numerous
shortcomings were evident and that for this reason a shadow had been
cast on the voting process itself.
With these circumstances in mind, the participants agreed that the
upcoming elections would be crucial to Armenia’s future. They are of
the view that a government that is, and is perceived by its population
to be, fairly chosen by the people, is not only essential to a just
society, but is also a significant factor in political stability,
national security, and economic development. A fair and open electoral
process is also one of Armenia’s international commitments. The
participants welcomed statements by a number of Armenian officials
that the Government of Armenia was taking steps to ensure that the
shortcomings of the past would not be repeated.
Several participants of the meeting have indicated their willingness
to provide appropriate assistance. They noted, in particular, the
importance of assisting with the training of election commission
members, the provision of expertise in connection with possible
revisions of the electoral code, improvements in the voters list, and
the promotion of popular awareness of the procedures that must be
followed in order to produce a free and fair election. The meeting
stressed the importance of the earliest possible engagement of foreign
governments and international organisations in providing requested
assistance, having in mind the complexity of electoral processes and
the time often required to develop and mobilise assistance programs.
The participants expressed the hope that the Government of Armenia
would engage civil society in ensuring that the forthcoming elections
constitute a unifying process between the people and those who govern
them.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MARLEN HAAS CONDEMNS DETERMINATION OF AZERI WOMEN TO AWARD MURDERER
RAMIL SAFAROV WITH HERO’S STATUS
YEREVAN, MARCH 10. ARMINFO. Marlen Haas, Secretary General of
Socialist International Women organization, condemned the Azeri women
who make a national hero out of Ramil Safarov, murderer of Gourgen
Margarian, Armenian officer, at today’s press conference in Yerevan.
As for the women’s participation in the public life, she said that the
situation in Armenia is much better than in neighbouring
countries. She said that the situation of the women’s rights in
Armenia has been considerably improved for the last few
years.Nevertheless, she stated that the violence over women is still
one of the urgent problems in Armenia. Haas also expressed concern
about the large number of unemployed women, the decrease of birth rate
in Armenia.
In her turn, Maria Titizian, representative of ARF “Dashnaktsiutiun”
in Socintern, said that the membership of her party to this
organization helps put forward urgent problems of Armenia at the
international level. She emphasized that they discussed the issue of
annihilated Armenian Middle Age Cross Stones in Nakhijevan at the
latest sitting of the organization.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PanARMENIAN.Net
Karabakh and Azeri Armed Forces Contact Line

Monitoring Held without Incidents

10.03.2006 21:36 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ According to an agreement achieved
beforehand, the OSCE Mission held a regular monitoring
of the contact line of the Karabakh and Azeri armed
forces to the east of Talish settlement March 10. As
reported by the NKR MFA, from the Karabakh side the
monitoring was held by field assistants of the OSCE
CiO’s Personal Representative Imre Palatinus and Irzhi
Aberle. The monitoring was held according to the
schedule, no violations of ceasefire were fixed. The
mission was accompanied by representatives of the NKR
Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1+
ARARKTSYAN TO BOYCOTT
05:36 pm 10 March, 2006
`I don’t see the power in Armenia, who will struggle
for free and just elections in 2007′, Babken
Ararktsyan, the representative of `Armat’
non-governmental centre, the ex-speaker of NA
announced.
Mr. Ararktsyan doesn’t understand those who said that
the past elections have been falsified, and if the
coming elections are falsified too, they will not keep
silence. “It is the biggest hypocrisy’.
After the Constitutional Referendum Mr. Ararktsyan
began not understand the international diplomats in
Armenia, `As before, in 2007 they will announce say
that there were falsifications this time too, though
the general activity made one step forward to
democracy’.
As for the participation in the 2007 elections
ex-speaker of the NA said: `We have already
participated in it. Enough of it’.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FOREIGN DEBT UNDER MICROSCOPE
Yerkir/arm
March 10, 2006
The foreign dept of the Republic of Armenia will make $1.215 billion by
the end of the year. It will grow by $107.5 during the year. Though
the debt is growing the burden will be only 21 percent this year
against the last year’s 24 percent.
The foreign political context
Armenia has almost reached the countries with so-called low level of
foreign debt burden. Mostly it was due to the fact that 5 enterprises
were transferred to Russia against Armenia’s $93 million debt. Many
say the deal was more politics than business: the fact that these
companies do not work is the proof.
Russia is perfectly using the foreign financial leverage to gain
political dividends. For instance, Russia gave up the $3 billion debt
of the 14 poorest African countries in exchange for the G-7 countries
to accept it in their club and reached its goal making the G-7 a G-8.
In fact, the incredibly high prices of oil in the world market have
made Russia rich and generous for Africa. As for the partners in
the CIS, the relations here are developed under the traditional
scenario. But here, Russia is using gas instead of oil.
Nevertheless, the Armenian government has managed to ease the debt
burden thanks to successful agreements with the other CIS creditor
– Turkmenistan. In 1999-2003, Armenia signed several agreements to
refinance the debt under better conditions. As a result, the share
of low-interest and no-interest loans in the country’s foreign debt
is now 98 percent. For the coming three years Armenia is planning to
borrow at less than 1.5 percent.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WHY GIVE PLATFORM TO ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIERS?
Daily Journal , Venezuela
icle.asp?ArticleId=230059&CategoryId=13303
Mar ch 13 2006
I am a devoted viewer of PBS. From “Masterpiece Theater” to “Sesame
Street,” I have always considered it a bastion of creative and
intelligent TV.
But two weeks ago, PBS stabbed me and every other Armenian-American in
the back when it announced that its upcoming documentary, “The Armenian
Genocide,” would be followed on some stations by a panel discussion
featuring two so-called scholars who claim that the genocide is a myth.
Worse, according to genocide historian Peter Balakian, PBS threatened
to pull the documentary if he and another genocide scholar declined
to participate “on the other side” in the panel discussion, which
was taped in January.
Although the documentary is not slated to run until April, programmers
across the country are now deciding whether to air it at all, air it
alone or air it with the taped debate. “We believe (the genocide)
is settled history,” said Jacoba Atlas, senior vice president of
programming at PBS, but “it seemed like a good idea to have a panel
and let people have their say.” This is perverse. Either there was
a genocide or there wasn’t.
Would anyone tolerate David Irving, the notorious Holocaust
revisionist, hashing it out on a panel with Elie Wiesel after a
documentary on the Nazi concentration camps? Should we give janjaweed
reps air time the next time we run a documentary on the genocide
in Darfur?
Why has PBS resorted to doublespeak in regard to the Armenian genocide?
The answer is simple: PBS is capitulating to politics. For years
the Turks, America’s so-called allies, have issued threats against
any organization or country that challenges their quack reading of
history. When the French recognized the Armenian genocide, the Turks
recalled their ambassador to France, boycotted French products and
canceled military contracts. They have threatened to withdraw strategic
support from our country if we should dare make the same mistake.
Article 301 of the Turkish penal code makes it a crime to “denigrate”
Turkey by, for instance, mentioning the Armenian genocide in public.
In March, the famous Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk did just that and
faced charges. International outcry and a technicality got his case
dismissed, but others are still in peril.
One of PBS’s genocide deniers, University of Louisville history
professor Justin McCarthy, was invited by the Turkish Grand Assembly –
reeling from European Union pressure to come clean about its genocidal
past – for a pep talk this month.
“I know that the Turks will resist demands to confess to a crime they
did not commit,” McCarthy intoned,”no matter the price of honesty. I
have faith in the integrity of the Turks.”
These rousing words brought the lawmakers, many of whom had sanctioned
Article 301, to their feet. Does PBS really want to give such a
belligerent falsifier air time?
“It seemed like a good idea,” Atlas said. Raphael Lemkin wouldn’t
agree. He coined the word “genocide” in 1944, and viewed the Armenian
case as a seminal example of such an atrocity. Norman Mailer, Carol
Gilligan, John Updike and Cornel West wouldn’t think so either.
They signed a petition, along with 150 other scholars and writers,
reaffirming the genocide’s historical truth. Directors of Holocaust
research centers around the world – including Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer
in 2000 – also signed a statement declaring the Armenian genocide an
incontestable historical fact.
Even the Turks are on the record as acknowledging the truth. When
Turkey was defeated in World War I, the allied powers created a
tribunal that included members of the new Turkish government.
The butchers behind the genocide had fled by then, but they were
found guilty and sentenced to death in absentia. Certainly the few
remaining genocide survivors, now in their 90s, would not think it
“a good idea” to give the deniers a forum.
They were children when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were herded
like cattle through the scorching slaughterhouse of the Anatolian
desert toward one of 25 concentration camps.
They watched as their people were murdered, raped, tortured and left
to starve in those camps.
Armenian homes and shops were occupied and looted; ancient churches
were turned into mosques or barns, used for target practice by
the Turkish army or burned to the ground to eliminate any trace of
Armenians in those lands.
By the time the Turks were finished, an estimated 1.5 million people
had perished – more than half the Armenian population in Turkey.
Armenians called it Medz Yeghern: “The Great Cataclysm.”
The denial of genocide, as many have rightly observed, is the
continuation of genocide.
It should be clear to PBS, to Atlas and to programmers across the
nation that the American public broadcasting system should not be
complicit in a murderous lie.
Aris Janigian is the author of the novel ‘Bloodvine.’
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NEW CLUES ON ALLEGED MERCENARIES
Story By Nation Team
Daily Nation, Kenya
ntententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=68955
Marc h 13 2006
Two Mombasa businessmen might provide the key to unravel the mystery
behind the alleged mercenaries in the country.
Investigations point to possibilities that the two alleged mercenaries
pitched camp in Mombasa when they first came into the country.
Yesterday, our sister publication, the Sunday Nation, revealed that
the men Langata MP Raila Odinga claims are mercenaries working for
the Government are two Armenian “businessmen”.
Travel documents in our possession indicate the two men – aged 33 and
36 – arrived in the country early this year from Dubai, but have also
visited Kenya in the past on unknown missions.
The revelation comes amidst calls by a cross-section of leaders for
the Government to clarify whether there were foreign mercenaries in
the country, or not.
Yesterday, it emerged that when the alleged mercenaries arrived in
January to stay, they were granted a two-year category H permit,
which is for professionals or foreign investors.
They paid Sh60,000 each and posted a bond of a similar amount for
the permits.
Mr Odinga displayed faded photocopies of the passports of the two
foreigners on Friday, saying they were Armenians and not Russians as
earlier claimed.
The Nation sought to establish if the passport details could be
confirmed by the Interpol, but was informed that the global unit on
police operations didn’t have their particulars.
Local police have maintained they had not received such travel
documents and could not, therefore, establish the whereabouts of the
alleged mercenaries.
It is now emerging that on several occasions when they visited Kenya
in the past from their base in Dubai, they were indeed doing business
with the Mombasa businessmen.
They were initially involved in sugar importation, among other
ventures with one of the businessmen before they fell out for what
sources say were unclear circumstances.
It is while they were working with the businessmen that they were
introduced to powerful people in the country, who made it possible
for them to go about their businesses without any hindrance.
Such contacts would later become useful when they fell out with one
of the businessmen.
We have further established that the lower part of a gate to the
house where the alleged mercenaries were staying in Runda and which
provided space through which the Nation took pictures of the house
has been sealed completely.
Except for a gardener who rarely gets out of the compound, the place
is now completely deserted.
At the same time, Nairobi Catholic Archbishop Ndingi Mwana a’
Nzeki called for immediate investigations into claims that foreign
mercenaries were operating in the country.
He said the claims were serious and Kenyans were entitled to an
explanation.
“That is a very serious accusation. Let the Government come out clear
on this,” he said.
The Archbishop added that it was important for the Government to
tell the people how the alleged mercenaries came into the country,
as well as who brought them here.
Addressing journalists at the Holy Family Basilica where he led special
prayers for the country and its leadership, Archbishop Ndingi said
the Government owed Kenyans an explanation on whether the claims were
true or not true.
He further called on Mr Odinga to provide all the information he has
on the case to enable the police to conduct investigations.
As the archbishop spoke, Mr Odinga made fresh claims that the alleged
mercenaries had spent a night at a Nairobi residence of a prominent
personality, who has high connections in Government. They then moved
to a camp for one of the uniformed forces.
Without elaborating, Mr Odinga said the gang looked for the alternative
site after he disclosed their hideouts and revealed their identity
to the police.
“The mercenaries were moved to a house belonging to a prominent Narc
personality after I disclosed their hideout and gave their identity
to the police,” he said.
They were now being guarded by the dreaded General Service Unit,
making it difficult for them to be investigated.
He said the first assignment for the hit squad was to raid the
Standard and KTN offices and were now being prepared to eliminate
ODM luminaries.
However, Mr Odinga warned that such attempts were bound to fail
because Kenyans were watching keenly the events unfolding the country.
“I don’t fear these people because we know the Government is desperate
after failing to live up to the expectations its leaders promised
Kenyans in the last General Election,” he said.
And former Environment minister and one of the ODM’s leading lights,
Mr Kalonzo Musyoka said the security of Kenyans was paramount and asked
the Government to “thoroughly” investigate the claims by Mr Raila.
“We can’t take such allegations lightly. It is now the duty of the
Government to get on top of things and dispel public anxiety,” he said.
Mr Odinga warned President Kibaki that his days were numbered because
he was defending corrupt individuals in his Government.
He faulted the President for turning a deaf ear on the wishes of
Kenyans to sack corrupt ministers who had defied the law.
“It was wrong for President Kibaki to openly declare that Michuki
was there to stay even after he publicly defied the law and raided
private property,” he said.
Mr Odinga made the new claims at various stops on his way to the
burial of his cousin, Jennifer Akinyi Matara, at Ogango village in
Nyamira District.
At the funeral Mr Odinga accused the Government of practising
tribalism.
He cited the recent sacking of Dr Patrick Orege, Naftali Mogere,
Prof Ratemo Michieka, Jasper Oduor, James Ongwae and Zachary Ogongo,
among others, who were all from Nyanza.
Mr Mogere, who had been sacked as the managing trustee of the National
Social Security Fund, was last week appointed the managing director
of the National Cereals and Produce Board.
Mr Odinga said Kenyans were keenly monitoring how the Government
was selectively tackling corruption in the country, saying unless
it handled the matter as required, the voters would hit back at the
polls next year.

ARMENIA TO SWITCH TO SUMMER TIME ON 26 MARCH
Arminfo, Yerevan
13 Mar 06
13 March: Armenia is to switch to summer time at 0200 on the night of
25-26 March [2200 gmt, 25 March]. The clocks will go forward one hour.