Author: Hunanian Jack

A1plus
| 12:55:23 | 27-04-2005 | Official |
KOCHARYAN MEETS THE REGIONAL GOVERNOR
Today Robert Kocharyan has had a working meeting with Souren Khachatryan,
governor of the Syuniq region. Issues about the course of the realization of
the of the 1.5 billion dram program envisaged in the region have been
discussed.
A reference has also been made to the issues about rural schools and
teachers, and irrigation and drinking water supplying. They have also spoken
about the construction of the new highway Meghri-Kapan.
The President has ordered to quicken the course of the works being done and
to improve their quality.

Zaman, Turkey
April 27 2005
Armenia Consents to Negotiate Without ‘Pre-Condition’
By Suleyman Kurt
Published: Wednesday 27, 2005
zaman.com
Armenian President Robert Kocharian responded with “let us meet
without any pre-conditions” to the suggestion of “establishing a
joint commission of historians and other experts” made by Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the so-called Armenian
allegations.
Kocharian made it clear in his remarks “We cannot debate without
taking the past, today, and tomorrow into account” and that he wants
to build a relationship with Turkey. The letter, which revealed the
comments suggesting that it would open to a new period in the
relations of the countries, reached Ankara from Tbilisi. Kocharian
did not use the word “genocide” in the letter and brought alternative
suggestion that the issues should be debated on an inter-governmental
platform contrary to Turkey’s suggestion.
As Ankara positively accepts the written response from Armenian to
Erdogan’s letter dated April 13, it is avoiding making any early
declarations regarding the letter. Foreign Minister Gul confirming
the letter said: “We will investigate, and respond.” The Armenian
administration had previously not even been willing to agree on
discussions about the so-called genocide allegations with Turkey.
Yerevan reflected that it now wants to conduct diplomatic relations
with Ankara. Kocharian said, “We cannot debate the issue without
taking the past, today and tomorrow into account.” The expression
“negotiation without pre-condition” has not been met positively in
the initial assessments. Ankara wants concrete steps to be taken in
order to conduct official contacts. Therefore, some expressions in
the Armenian Constitution and the Declaration of Independence need to
be extracted. Erdogan’s letter to Kocharian, which reminded that
their people have been living together for a long time, read: “We
invite historians from both our countries’ to investigate the events
in 1915 by researching into all the archives of the related
third-party countries and reveal them to the public.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish Press
April 27 2005
Kocharian Responds To Letter Of Erdogan

YEREVAN – Armenian President Robert Kocharian responded to the letter
of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who proposed to set up a joint
commission of historians to investigate the facts of 1915.
Mediamax agency based in Yerevan said on Tuesday that Kocharian
mainly told in the letter that ”an inter-governmental commission can
be created to discuss any single question between our two countries
or all questions with the goal of solving them and achieving joint
understanding.”
Kocharian said that Armenia wanted to have diplomatic relations with
Turkey, to open the borders and to start the dialogue between the two
peoples. ”We have proposed and continue to propose establishing,
without any preconditions, normal relations between our countries,”
Kocharian wrote in his reply.
Commenting that it was mainly the responsibility of governments to
improve bilateral relations, not that of historians, Kocharian said
in the letter that ”your proposal to address the past cannot be
effective if it doesn’t relate to the present and future.”
Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia sent the letter to Ankara.

Today, Azerbaijan
April 27 2005
Azeri politicians do not expect break in a meeting of Armenian and
Azeri foreign ministers

Elmar Namazov, the co-founder of the ‘New Policy’ bloc, a political
scientist, considers the forthcoming meeting of the Armenian and
Azerbaijani FMs, Vardan Oskanian and Elmar Mammadyarov, to be held in
Frankfurt on Wednesday as senseless.

“Taking into consideration that the sides could not reach agreement
on principle issues, as well as the situation on the eve of the
parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, one can state with confidence
that convenient time for compromises was lost,” Namazov told Trend.
The favorable time for compromises will come after the elections. “It
would be so naive to expect a breakthrough until the parliamentary
elections, so it would be talks for the sake of talks,” the political
scientist underlined.
He marked that on the eve of the elections the Karabakh card becomes
more applicable in the domestic struggle. “The opportunities for
compromises in Azerbaijan will appear after the elections. It cannot
be said about Armenia with strong domestic resistance,” he
underlined.
Namazov underlined that real breaks in talks will be possible as soon
as free and transparent elections are held in Armenia and Azerbaijan
and legitimate government is established.
Mubariz Ahmadoglu, the head of the Political Technologies and
Innovations Center, also too far from the optimism in the forthcoming
meeting of the Armenia and Azerbaijani FMs. Today the OSCE Minsk
Group like Armenia is in confusion. Armenia offers to liquidate a
notion of ‘Prague process’, as Armenians associate Prague as place of
domination of Azerbaijan. So the last talks were held in London, and
the next are to be held in Frankfurt. “They try to satisfy the
ambitions of Armenian. So, I don’t believe the talks to be
effective,” Ahmadoglu underlined.
He noted that the initiative in the talks on Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict resolution is in Azerbaijan at present. Azerbaijan always
preferred the political resolution to the conflict and after the
establishment of the economic cooperation. Azerbaijan offers joint
use of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijan and Armenia in parallel to
the talks on political settlement of the conflict. “This is a
concrete proposal awaiting a concrete reply, the Armenian side is not
to answer it and delays the negotiation processes
In his turn Musabayov said that nothing essential should be expected
from the forthcoming meeting of the ministers. “the only result of
the talks might be a meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian
Presidents, to be held in Moscow as part of celebrations of the 60th
anniversary of the victory fascism,” he underlined.
As to Armenian Minister’s avoidance from the direct talks with his
Azerbaijani counterpart, Musabayov clarifies that Oskanian had
nothing to say because he did not have authority to t o take any
resolution.

URL:

Zero-Sum Game on the Caspian
Moscow Times
Thursday, April 28, 2005. Issue 3156. Page 8.
By Taleh Ziyadov
A possible deployment of American troops to Azerbaijan has been a
topic of contention for years, not only between Baku and Moscow, but
also between Russia and the United States. Journalists took up the
subject again after an unexpected visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld to Baku on April 12. Although the parties have not
revealed the content of their discussion, the Azeri and Russian media
have claimed that the United States is getting ready to send American
troops to Azerbaijan.
The potential deployment of American troops to Azerbaijan is not a new
idea. Since September 11, 2001, as a part of the war against
terrorism, the US has increased its attention to the region and
indicated that it would strengthen its presence in the Caspian
Basin. In particular, the South Caucasus became a geopolitical
battlefield for the United States and other regional powers that seek
to expand their influence. This resulted in the formation of
quasi-alliances between states, such as Armenia-Iran-Russia and
Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey. Moreover, the close proximity of
Azerbaijan and Georgia to Iran and other parts of the Middle East, as
well as ongoing major energy projects in the region, contributed to
the increased strategic importance of the South Caucasus to U.S.
national security.

When it came to stationing American troops in the region, Azerbaijan
has acted cautiously to avoid offending its northern and southern
neighbors. It tried to downplay reports about U.S. long-term
objectives in Azerbaijan and has committed itself to a balanced
foreign policy.
Over the past few years, however, analysts, military experts and
ordinary citizens have voiced different opinions on the issue of
American troops on Azerbaijani soil. Some have been critical of the
idea, saying it will jeopardize Azerbaijan’s relations with Russia and
Iran, while others, mostly in Azerbaijan, have supported it, arguing
that this will secure Azerbaijan’s strategic and military position in
the region and help to strengthen its independent development.
Those who have argued against it — even against the idea of temporary
rapid deployment forces — have claimed that an American presence in
the South Caucasus will undermine Russia’s strategic role in the
region and will make its “southern tier” more vulnerable to external
threats. According to this argument, the main “external threat” in
this case is the United States itself. Indeed, the root of this
argument lies in the all-or-nothing approach that some in Russia still
hold with respect to the region, which they often call Russia’s “near
abroad.” It also raises questions about Russia’s current strategic
role in the South Caucasus. How much influence does Russia have in the
region, and how long it is likely to last? Is there any way Russia
could preserve its strategic interests in the region with an American
military presence? Or is it simply not an option for Russia’s
advocates of an all-or-nothing view of the situation?
The more hard-line Russia’s position becomes, the more difficult it is
for Moscow to accept subsequent setbacks. For example, despite
Russia’s strong opposition to NATO’s expansion in the 1990s, NATO
completed several successful rounds of enlargement, the last of which
included the three former Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia. While there is no question that NATO’s expansion has affected
Russia’s position in Central and Eastern Europe, it is actually the EU
enlargement that has dealt a greater blow to Russia’s economic
interests in Europe. However, the real question is what would have
been different had NATO not expanded? Would Moscow’s role and its
influence in Central and Eastern Europe be stronger than it is today?
Perhaps, but with or without NATO, Russia could not have altered the
continuing global trends that even today work against its geopolitical
position in the South Caucasus.
The emotional and sometimes unreasonable arguments made by Russia’s
hardliners undermine the country’s real strategic interests in the
CIS, especially in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Azerbaijan and Russia have
shared a common history for more than 200 years and managed to coexist
peacefully since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite periodic
tensions during the Yeltsin era, the two states have normalized and
improved their relations since President Vladimir Putin came to office
in 2000. Moscow’s fear that Azerbaijan would turn its back on Russia,
as the Baltic States did in the early 1990s, has proven to be
unjustified. There are nearly 2 million ethnic Azeris living in
Russia, and Russian is one of the most widely spoken languages in
Azerbaijan. In short, Azerbaijan and Russia are neighbors and will
have to live side by side no matter what.
American and Russian military bases are already operating in
Kyrgyzstan, and American military instructors are present in Georgia
and Uzbekistan. The deployment of U.S. rapid forces to Azerbaijan or
even the eventual accession of Azerbaijan into NATO should not be
viewed as an end to the Azerbaijan-Russian partnership. Baku and
Moscow share social, political and economic interests that will
continue to develop as long as their national interests are mutually
respected. However, it is important to note that Azerbaijan’s balanced
and pro-Western orientation is not likely to change.
Thus, Russia would gain more if it re-evaluates its position in the
CIS and overcomes its decade old phobia of encirclement. With this
mentality, more setbacks and disappointments are unavoidable.
Instead of continuing to play a zero-sum game, it would be better for
Russian policy makers to develop a clear-cut strategy in which there
is common ground for cooperation, not conflict. Today, Moscow and
Washington are far from effective collaboration and if current trends
continue, their interests will not coincide anytime in the near
future.
Taleh Ziyadov is a graduate fellow at the Center for Eurasian, Russian
and East European Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh
School of Foreign Service. He contributed this comment to The Moscow
Times.

Pan Armenian News
OSCE MONITORING HELD AT AZERI-ARMENIAN CONTACT LINE
27.04.2005 06:43
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Yesterday a recurrent OSCE monitoring was held at the
contact line of the Azeri and Armenian armed forces in the sector Tavush
region (Armenia) and Ghazakh region (Azerbaijan), Press Secretary of the
Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Shahsuvarian reported. On the same day a
briefing with the participation of field assistants of the OSCE
Chairman-in-Office’s Special Envoy Imre Palatinus (Hungary), Alexander
Samarski (Ukraine) and Peter Key (UK) as well as head of regional commission
Gularyan was held. Gularyan informed the OSCE representatives that firing of
the Ijevan-Noemberyan road on that sector become systematic. After the
briefing they made for the sector scheduled for monitoring where the
commanders of both sides provided security guarantees
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1plus
| 17:43:15 | 27-04-2005 | Social |
THE AMERICAN HAD COME TO LISTEN AND NOT TO SPEAK
On the initiative of the company «PA Consulting» today in Hotel Yerevan the
journalists met Peter Bradford, who has long worked in New York as head of
the Committee regulating public services. Before coming to Armenia he has
been to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia for consultation purposes.
In Ukraine he worked before the revolution and he does not know what changes
there have been in connection with transparency and liberalism.
As for Georgia, Peter Bradford has been there a year after the revolution,
when the situation was very much tense. And here too he was unlucky, as he
does not know what changes there have occurred during this year.
Today he wanted to learn from the journalists of they have met obstacles
while trying to get information from the Armenian Committee. The expert did
not hear complaint from the journalists but he himself complained that
during the two months that he has been here he has demanded information
which wasn’t given to him.
The guest of `PA Consulting’ tried to console the journalists saying that
the USA has 50 states and not all of them follow all the principles of
democracy and transparency. He also said that while being head of the
Committee in New York he was much helped by the aggressive questions and
announcements of the journalists.

PRESS RELEASE
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Information Services
Address: Vagharshapat, Republic of Armenia
Contact: Rev. Fr. Ktrij Devejian
Tel: (374 1) 517 163
Fax: (374 1) 517 301
E-Mail: [email protected]
April 27, 2005
His Holiness Karekin II Receives Newly Appointed Syrian Charge d’Affaires
On April 27, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of
All Armenians, received Dr. Mulkhis Faraoun, newly appointed Charge d’
Affaires of the Syrian Arab Republic to the Republic of Armenia.
His Holiness welcomed Dr. Faraoun to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and
wished him success and productive service in his new position. The
Catholicos of All Armenians recalled his visit to Syria, notably Aleppo and
Der-Zor in April of 2001, and spoke of the fond memories of his pilgrimage
to the Armenian Genocide memorial in the Syrian desert, the warmth and love
of the Armenians of Syria, and the hospitality of the pious and God-fearing
Arab people.
The Charge d’Affaires thanked His Holiness for the audience and noted that
he was looking forward to serving in a country that has fraternal ties to
his own, with such a long history and rich culture. Dr. Faraoun also spoke
of the Armenian community in Syria, one of the oldest Armenian settlements
dating back to Apostolic times.
At the end of the meeting, His Holiness offered his prayers for the
establishment of peace and stability in the region, benefiting not only the
national life of the citizens of those countries, but also the inter-faith
relations between the Christian and Muslim peoples of the world.

AZG Armenian Daily #075, 27/04/2005
Armenian Genocide
GENOCIDE COMMEMORATED IN MOSCOW
The anniversary of the Armenian Genocide has never been commemorated like
this time in the Russian capital. Mass media of the country devoted much
attention to the event and meanwhile publications and TV reportages were
mostly of condemning character. The Armenian community of Russia was
actively involved in arranging diverse programs. Not only the 9 decades of
Turkey’s denial played a considerable role in active involvement of Moscow
Armenians but also the awakened national self-consciousness of local
Armenians that should be ascribed to the efforts of those immigrated from
Armenia.
The Genocide issue is evolving into a political demand, which is able to
comprise considerable part of Russia’s public opinion. Political, public and
cultural figures of the country took part in the arrangements. It was
praiseworthy to see how 3 national institutions — embassy, Armenian diocese
and the Armenian community — cooperated. If one could predict that the
ancient Surp Harutyun church will prove small for the huge crowd, then no
one could expect that the traffic on the wide streets nearby new Armenian
church will get blocked.
Writers, political scientists, deputies and historians exchanged views at a
round table at the House of Journalists. The protest rally in front of
Turkish embassy in Moscow could easily end up by a disaster because of some
ethnic groups’ actions as well as steps of any unconscious Armenophil. But
the police was on its guard.
A commemorative evening on April 24 was held at the newly built hall of
International House of Music. Armenian ambassador to Moscow Armen Smbatian,
head of Armenian diocese, His Holiness Father Yezras as well as spearhead of
Russia’s Armenians Ara Abrahamian made their speeches. As always, Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, head of Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, was brusque and
offensive in his anti-Turkish statements. Zhirinovsky ended his pathetic
speech with a question: Why are Jews getting milliards from Germany as
reparation for the Holocaust but Armenians get nothing from Turkey?
By Ruben Hayrapetian in Moscow
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZG Armenian Daily #074, 26/04/2005
Economy
EXPORTERS INCUR LOSSES BUT ARE RELUCTANT TO GIVE FURTHER EXPLANATION
Is the fluctuation of exchange rate of foreign currency in Armenia the
result of economic factors or is made artificially? This is one of the most
central questions of the last few months. The president of the Central Bank
and other officials provide some explanation about inner and outer results
of this phenomenon, regardless how satisfactory they are for the society.
But those holding forth with the hypothesis of artificial fluctuation do not
provide a reliable ground.
It is over doubt that the devaluation of US dollar and evaluation of AMD has
its influence on our economy and businessmen. What is its influence? We
addressed this question to the top brass of Armenian business. Most of the
respondents, both home traders and exporters, said that they incur losses.
But strangely enough, many of them refused to express their views or
promised to do so but “forgot” (the Yerevan Cognac Factory, for one).
Exporters explain the loses resulted from dollar’s devaluation by the fact
that they make expenses in AMD and the profit comes in US dollar. But
everyone was reluctant to give any detailed explanation.
The shaking at the financial market impacts all exporters and discords
arouse between partner companies. But discords do not break partnerships but
instead result in new agreements. So, the head of a company representing
information technologies informed that they came to an agreement with other
companies operating in Armenia to make mutual payments based on dollar-AMD
exchange rate. The exporters may as well agree with each other on making
mutual payments but this by no means mean that the state may feel free of
supporting the exporters. The Armenian economy is certainly bound to have
powerful exporting potential if we want to mark development.
By Ara Martirosian