Author: Emil Lazarian

Turkish businessman favours economic ties with Armenia
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
14 Feb 05
[Presenter] The co-chairman of the Turkish-Armenian Business
Development Council, Kaan Soyak, is against the proposal that the
settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict should be a precondition
for the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border. Turkey’s position is
that the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict is Azerbaijan’s problem. The
Armenian genocide is also on the agenda of the opening of the
border. Touching upon the Armenian genocide, Soyak said that Turks
have begun speaking of it in the last two or three years. The main
aim of Kaan Soyak’s visit to Yerevan is to discuss a joint programme
on the development of economic relations, which will be implemented
with the assistance of the Eurasia Foundation.
[Correspondent over video of meeting] The Azerbaijani embassy in
Ankara does not like the co-chairman of the Turkish-Armenian Business
Development Council, Kaan Soyak. The reason is that this organization
has been taking a liberal position on Armenia and Turkish-Armenian
relations. As Soyak noted, both sides [Azerbaijan and Turkey] are
against the reopening of the Armenian-Turkish border and want Turkey’s
foreign policy to depend on Azerbaijan. There are failures in the
political field, but the economic sphere is yielding positive results.
[Kaan Soyak speaking in Turkish with Armenian voice-over] The commodity
turnover between Armenia and Turkey is approaching 110-120bn dollars
today. Before the establishment of the Council [in 1997], the commodity
turnover was less than 60m dollars. You have a great diaspora and I
hope that we can cooperate with Armenia and the Armenian diaspora. In
connection with my work, I have participated in Turkish-American,
Turkish-Russian and Turkish-British business meetings, but I must
say that Turkish-Armenian business relations are the best example
of cooperation.
[Correspondent] The Turkish businessman noted that their organization
has prepared a programme on protecting Armenian monuments in Turkey.
Soyak also stated that he is in favour of opening the border as soon
as possible and invited the members of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation – Dashnaktsutyun [ARFD] to Turkey in order to open up
a dialogue on urgent issues. The ARFD is a serious and experienced
party and if they agree, I am ready to make every effort to start
the dialogue, Soyak said.
The Turkish businessman also has a special position on the issue
of genocide.
[Kaan Soyak] Our organization is not dealing with the issue of
genocide, but I believe that the Turkish people has the right to know
the historical truth. Our organization will do its best to make the
historical truth known to the Turkish people.
[Correspondent] Kaan Soyak is making constructive proposals against
the background of Turkey’s policy of denying the genocide.
Ayk-Aram Nahapetyan and Armen Andreasyan, “Aylur”.

Pan Armenian Network
OIL PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION FROM BAKU TO CEYHAN VIA YEREVAN WOULD COST 30%
LESS THAN BAKU-TBILISI-CEYHAN PROJECT
14.02.2005 15:11
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway project is political but
not economic as the distance Kars-Tbilisi-Baku and Kars-Yerevan-baku
is almost the same”, Co-Chairman of the Council of Armenian-Turkish
Relations Development Council Kaan Soyak stated in Yerevan. In his
words, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline is not an economic
project either, since the construction of a similar Baku-Yerevan-Ceyhan
pipeline would cost 20-30% less. “However every state is pursuing
its own objectives; and the construction of the BTC was started on
the assumption of such aims.” Soyak said he is sure that taking into
account today’s Armenian-Turkish relations the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku
railway project will be approved and implemented. The Turkish
businessman also stated that both parties still have the time for
trying to correct bilateral relations. At the same time Soyak did
not agree with the opinion that the building of the railway can be
viewed as pressure exerted by Turkey upon Armenia, as, in his words,
both Armenia and Turkey are under pressure of different states and
organizations.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ILHAM ALIYEV: AZERBAIJAN FOR PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF KARABAKH CONFLICT
PanArmenian News
Feb 14 2005
14.02.2005 12:26
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Azerbaijani leadership is for the peaceful
settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, President Aliyev stated
in his interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta Russian newspaper. “We
adhere to the peaceful settlement and try to resolve the problem
peacefully”, he said. “We still hope that the negotiations will be
successful. However we will not hold negotiations for the sake of
negotiations only and will not take part in an imitation of talks”,
the Azeri President noted.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE ONLY REAL REVOLUTIONARY PARTY IN ARMENIA IS CPA, THINKS LEADER
OF ARMENIAN COMMUNISTS
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 12. ARMINFO. The only ideology the people believes
and has believed is the socialistic ideology, and the only real
revolutionary party is the Communist party of Armenia. First Secretary
of the Central Committee of CPA Ruben Tovmasian stated during the news
conference at the discussion club Azdak, commenting on the statement
of leader of the party “New Times” Aram Karapetian, according to which
the party New Times begins the process of national revolution in the
country in April 2005.
According to Tovmasian, the revolution is a hard process, and it is
necessary to get prepared for it thoroughly, and not declare about
it during the press conferences. Speaking about the current internal
situation in the country the leader of Armenian communists stated that
the social-economic situation in the country remains grave, the plunder
of the country is being continued, rates of unemployment and emigration
from the country increase. Socialism gave all and to everybody –
free apartments, job, medical service and education. Just that’s why
the people will follow only the Communist Party of Armenia, and nobody
else, the first secretary of CPA CC is sure. He also mentioned that
the Communist Party does not intend to join to anybody and become an
ally of a political bloc or federation – other political forces of
the republic must think to consolidate with the CPA”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Foreign Minister leaves for Turkey
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Feb 11 2005
Baku, February 10, AssA-Irada — Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov
left for Ankara, Turkey on Thursday.
During the visit, Mammadyarov met with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah
Gul and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to discuss the status of bilateral
relations, the situation in the region and the Upper Garabagh conflict.
The visit by the Turkish Prime Minister to Azerbaijan scheduled for
March will also be discussed during the visit.*

Baku hails Georgian President’s separatism combat plan
AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Feb 10 2005
Baku considers the initiatives of Tbilisi in settling relations with
South Ossetia in terms of resolving the separatism problem in South
Caucasus as an important step forward.
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister, Araz Azimov, told journalists
that the Georgian President, Saakashvili’s peace plan and the recent
PACE resolution on Upper Garabagh are two remarkable factors for
resolution of regional conflicts.
Speaking at PACE in Strasbourg on January 26, Saakashvili laid out
new initiatives for settling the conflict over South Ossetia aimed
at granting the region a broad autonomy.
Azimov said that a noticeable intolerance of separatism and the
tendency towards resolving this conflict, based on the observance
of the territorial integrity of countries in such troubled zones,
are currently observed in the CE and Europe.

Condi’s Mideast roadmap is being influenced by whom!?
By Caroline B. Glick
Jewish World Review
February 9, 2005
As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarked on
her maiden voyage, it was reported that she departed
from America armed with a new policy paper on how to
implement the Quartet’s road map produced by the James
Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
According to Edward Djerejian, the former US
ambassador to Syria who directs the Baker Center, the
paper, with its detailed recommendations, is a “street
map to the road map.”
One of the things that make the paper significant is
that it bears former US secretary of state James
Baker’s name. Not only did Baker serve under the
president’s father, he now plays a formal role in
mobilizing international support for Iraqi
reconstruction efforts.
As well, the team that composed the report included
senior policy makers from the US, the Palestinian
Authority, Egypt, Canada and the World Bank. The US
was represented by current Assistant Secretary of
State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns as well
as by Norman Olsen, the political counselor at the US
embassy in Israel. The PA was represented by security
strongman Jibril Rajoub and by senior aides to Mahmoud
Abbas, Yasser Arafat and Ahmed Qurei. Egypt was
represented by Dictator Hosni Mubarak’s senior adviser
Osama El Baz and by General Hossam Khair Allah.
Israel had no official representation. Rather, the
Jewish state was represented by none other than Yossi
Beilin’s Geneva Accord crowd. Amnon Lipkin Shahak and
Shlomo Brom, signatories to that subversive agreement
where private citizens tried to abscond with the
government’s sovereign power to determine foreign
policy by negotiating the scandalously anti-Israel
“accord,” participated. They were joined by members of
Beilin’s EU-financed think tank, the Economic
Cooperation Foundation.
Not surprisingly, the product this team produced and
delivered to Rice is soft on Palestinian terrorism,
soft on Palestinian democratization, and relentlessly
harsh toward Israel — its sovereignty, its right to
defend itself, and its ability to claim any right to
retain any of the Israeli communities in Judea and
Samaria.
The document makes no clear statement on the need for
the Palestinians to dismantle terrorist organizations.
Indeed, the term “terror organizations” is absent from
the report. Instead, the Palestinian requirement to
combat terrorism is reduced to demands on Israel to
facilitate the training, arming and operation of the
“reformed” Palestinian security services while not
interfering with them in any way.
While the report pays lip service to the need for the
PA to reform its governing institutions, its only
clear statement on the end-product of reform is
unabashedly authoritarian. The aim of all the reforms
must be the “consolidat[ion of] Fatah as the main
political player in Palestinian society.”
While the report makes no call for the destruction of
Palestinian terror organizations and bucks up the
authoritarian, corrupt PA, it calls for Israel to be
treated with hostility and suspicion.
The paper calls for the establishment of a
multinational force that will implement the
agreements. Implicit in this statement is the
assumption that Israel will be prevented by the
presence of this force from taking any measures to
defend itself against attacks.
International border crossings in Gaza and Judea and
Samaria, including the weapons smuggling hub at the
Philadephi Corridor which separates Gaza from Egypt,
are to be controlled by the Palestinians. The report
gives Egyptian forces a more prominent role in
implementing the agreements than the IDF.
WHERE THE report’s anti-Israel bias is most blatant is
in its discussion of the Israeli communities in Judea
and Samaria. The authors refer to their desire to see
“The Palestinian people establish a viable state in
the West Bank and Gaza” and make it clear that a
precondition for the state’s viability is that it be
racially pure — entirely cleansed of Jewish
communities. At the same time, they express their
desire to “assure that Israel will continue to exist
as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people and
its other citizens.” So in the authors’ view, Israel
is to be a state of all of its citizens while
“Palestine” is to be Judenrein.
The report calls for the institution of a draconian
regime in the Defense Ministry and the Justice
Ministry to effectively prevent any building
activities whatsoever from being conducted in the
Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. This regime,
“The Special Office on Settlement Activities,” will be
obliged not simply to act as the enforcer of the
attrition of these communities. The report determines
that this body will be subordinate to the US embassy
in Israel — effectively ceding Israeli sovereignty to
the US.
The study even dares to dictate what propaganda moves
must be made by the Israeli government to force the
Israeli public to accept this policy. A close reading
makes it clear that the result of this policy will be
the expulsion of more than 400,000 Israeli Jews from
their homes. This is so because the destruction of
Israeli neighborhoods in Jerusalem is implicit in the
section’s opening paragraph, which mendaciously
claims: “The US government policy has been based on
the principle that there can be no acquisition of
territory by war.”
Not only does this sweeping and totally false
statement necessarily include Jerusalem; it can easily
be interpreted as saying that the only borders Israel
can legitimately claim are the UN partition borders
from 1947 since much of the land that makes up the
1949 armistice lines was acquired in war.
Perhaps it is reasonable that officials pushing a plan
that would cause Israel to effectively become the ward
of the international community should not feel limited
by the positions of the Israeli government as it makes
its plans — sufficing instead to have Israel
“represented” by radical free agents with Israeli
citizenship.
But two questions still arise: Why is the US
government sending its officials to participate in a
“working group” which works to undermine the
sovereignty of a US ally; and why is the Israeli
government not taking legal action against private
citizens who travel the world “negotiating” away the
sovereign rights of the state while undermining the
prerogatives of the Israeli government?
Jewish World Review contributor Caroline B. Glick is
the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for
Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy
managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.
–Boundary_(ID_U+8v2OK9IL7QKtjDWHHR1Q)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NEWSMAKER-UN envoy in Iraq scandal larger-than-life figure
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Veteran U.N. official Benon Sevan,
embroiled in the Iraq oil-for-food-scandal, is a larger-than-life
figure who calls himself the most “politically incorrect person in
the U.N.”
Sevan, a Cypriot of Armenian descent, was chosen to direct the $67
billion program after a distinguished 40-year career with the world
body in which he was involved in some of the most intractable, and
often dangerous, world crises.
Sevan, 67, a big man with white hair and dark eyebrows, is admired by
colleagues for an ability to solve problems fast, his blunt retorts
and a store of anecdotes for all occasions, told in rapid-fire heavily
accented English.
“He has a heart as big as a cathedral” said one veteran U.N. official,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
All that made the sharp criticism against him this month by a
U.N.-appointed independent committee all the more painful for the
U.N. employees who knew him in the many jobs he held.
Sevan is accused by an investigation headed by Paul Volcker, the
former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, of steering an oil contract
to a small Panama-registered trading firm in what the report called
“a grave and continuing conflict of interest.”
The inquiry, still investigating how Saddam Hussein subverted the U.N.
program, is also probing whether Sevan benefited personally from the
trade, which netted the firm involved $1.5 million.
Sevan, who had retired but is on a $1 year contract while the inquiry
continues, denies the allegations, saying he never “took a penny” and
was made a scapegoat in the anti-U.N. political climate in Washington.
“I think I’m not the only who was shocked by what we read in the
report,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. “He has been here
working with many of us for quite a time and we had not expected
anything of the sort.”
Raised by an aunt in Cyprus, Sevan, who is married and has one
daughter, studied ancient Greek philosophy at New York’s Columbia
University before joining the United Nations in 1965.
In his long U.N. career he served in Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi,
Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia and Lebanon and in myriad jobs at U.N.
headquarters in New York, including security coordinator and Security
Council administrator.
SURVIVED BOMBING
In Iraq, he narrowly survived the bombing of U.N. headquarters in
August 2003, leaving the office of Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello,
the mission chief, to smoke a cigar minutes before the blast, which
killed 22 people.
It was left to Sevan to recite Vieira de Mello’s dying words — “Don’t
pull the mission out” — as his body was carried aboard a Brazilian
presidential plane at Baghdad airport for his last journey home.
Sevan’s 1988-92 term in Afghanistan included the pullout of Russian
troops in 1989. He persuaded Najibullah, president of the Soviet-backed
government, to step down in exchange for safe exit out of the country.
But Sevan was turned back by soldiers when he tried to take the
former president to the airport. Najibullah sought refuge in the
U.N. compound for four years until the Taliban broke in and hanged
him from a lamppost.
Sevan was named by Annan in October 1997 to run the oil-for-food
program under which Iraq, squeezed by international sanctions imposed
for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was allowed to sell oil to buy goods
for its people.
“He was considered tough and unsentimental and knew the political
game,” said one envoy. Key Security Council members, like the United
States, went along with the appointment.
“People took it as a given he would do his duty,” said Samir Sanbar, a
retired U.N. assistant secretary-general. But Sanbar said the scandal
was a great disappointment for those who had devoted their lives to
the world body. “The only thing the U.N. has is its credibility. What
else do we have?”
02/11/05 11:49 ET

TURKISH LOBBY IN US KEEPS SETTING CONGRESSMEN AGAINST ARMENIANS
PanArmenian News
Feb 12 2005
12.02.2005 13:14
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In the words of Congressmen supporting Turkey, who
wished to remain unknown, the Armenian lobby shows initiative for the
US Congress to pass a respective decision on the 90-th anniversary of
the Armenian Genocide, “however the White house will again come against
such a decision.” “We make every effort to convince our colleagues to
come against the Armenian initiative, as well as to note the importance
of the relations with Turkey for the US,” the Congressmen stated.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Watts resigns to rejoin Peace Corps
By: Staff Report February 11, 2005
Douglas County News-Press, CO
Feb 12 2005
Castle Rock Public Works Director Bob Watts announced Thursday he is
resigning so that he and his wife, Peggy, can return to the Peace
Corps.
Before Watts signed on with Castle Rock in January 2002 the couple
served with the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. In their second tour
of duty, the couple will work for two years in Armenia.
“It’s never a good time to leave,” Watts said in a prepared
statement. “This job has been an engineer’s dream.”
During his tenure, Watts oversaw some of the town’s largest
undertakings, including the construction of the Front Street flyover
two months ahead of schedule. Watts also helped bring Front Range
Express service to Castle Rock and negotiated an agreement with RTD
to fund CATCO, the town’s free shuttle bus service.
Assistant Public Works Director Bob Goebel has been named interim
director. Watts said because of the quality of Goebel and the public
works staff, Castle Rock residents “won’t miss a beat.”
Watts brings more than 30 years of engineering experience to his
service in Armenia. His last day with the town will be April 15.
Read more about Watts and his service in the Peace Corps in the Feb.
17 issue of the News-Press.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress