Author: Jalatian Sonya

PRIME MINISTER MEETS WITH HIS JORDANIAN COUNTERPART

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Nov 8 2006

After Azerbaijan’s Prime Minister Artur Rasizade and visiting Prime
Minister and Defense Minister of Jordan Marouf al-Bakhit met behind
closed doors, the meeting continued in the presence of the two
countries’ delegations.

Mr. Rasizade said he welcomes the level of political cooperation
between the two countries.

He expressed gratitude to Jordan’s Government for supporting Azerbaijan
within various international organizations.

The Premier also spoke of Azerbaijan’s economic progress, adding his
country is the initiator of the global energy and transport projects
in the region.

Artur Rasizade also spoke of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s efforts towards finding a peaceful
solution to the dispute.

Jordanian Premier Marouf al-Bakhit stressed the importance of enhancing
the bilateral economic ties, adding establishment of inter-departmental
commissions will contribute to this.

The meeting ended with the signing of a number of interparliamentary
agreements, including ones on economy and tourism.

GEORGIA, AZERBAIJAN DEBATE CONTROL OF ANCIENT MONASTERY’S TERRITORY
By Diana Petriashvili and Rovshan Ismayilov 11/03/06

Friday, November 3, 2006

EURASIA INSIGHT EurasiaNet, NY

An unresolved border between Georgia and Azerbaijan has put under
question one of the South Caucasus’s most significant cultural and
religious landmarks, the medieval David-Gareja monastery complex,
located in Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Set in semi-desert some 70 kilometers southeast from Tbilisi along
the Georgian border with Azerbaijan and within Azerbaijan proper,
the complex, which contains a rich collection of cave frescoes, has
been a site for conflict as well as for contemplation, ever since
construction began in the 6th century.

The best-known part of the complex, the Udabno cave monastery,
which contain frescoes dating approximately from the 8th to the 13th
centuries, as well as the monastery headquarters at Lavra, are located
within Georgia. Additional monasteries, some nearly inaccessible and
largely ruined, are also on Georgian territory. Azerbaijan contains
the monastery of Bertubani, which features frescoes of the legendary
12th-13th century Georgian Queen Tamara and her son, Giorgi IV.

But who should control the David-Gareja monastery? When the Soviet
Union defined the borders between the then Soviet republics of
Azerbaijan and Georgia, the monastery complex was split in two. The
border between the two now independent countries has remained
unchanged since 1991. Part of the border passes through the top of
the 813-meter-high Udabno ridge (known in Azerbaijan as Keshishdag),
which harbors cave monasteries on its top and also on the northern
(Georgian-controlled) and southern (Azerbaijani-controlled) slopes.

The monastery complex, which has withstood attacks by Tamerlane and
Shah Abbas alike, holds strategic significance for both Azerbaijan
and Georgia. From the Udabno ridge, both Azerbaijani and Georgian
territory can be easily monitored. "From the military point of view,
this position has importance for both countries," said Uzeir Jafarov,
an independent Azerbaijani military expert in Baku and a retired
colonel. "Theoretically, in the case of military conflict, the side
which enjoys control over these heights will get a big advantage."

Border talks, ongoing since 1991, recently reentered the news when
Zviad Dzidziguri, a Georgian member of parliament for the opposition
Conservative Party, and chairman of the Democratic Front faction,
claimed that Azerbaijan had moved its border with Georgia so that one
of the complex’s monasteries, Chichkhituri, was now within Azerbaijani
territory, putting at risk the remaining monasteries under Georgian
control.

The Georgian foreign ministry has denied the report. In an interview
with EurasiaNet, a high-level Azerbaijani State Border Control Service
official, who asked to remain anonymous, also stated that Azerbaijan
had never moved its border. Yet, still, the debate continues.

To hold on to the churches on Georgian territory, Tbilisi has proposed
giving Azerbaijan an as yet publicly unspecified section of Georgian
land near the Azerbaijani border. "All we need to do is to find a
common language with our Azerbaijani colleagues," Georgian Deputy
Foreign Minister Giorgi Manigaladze, who oversees the State Commission
on Border Delimitation and Demarcation, told reporters in Tbilisi on
October 30.

Azerbaijani officials, however, say that they are unwilling to consider
the exchange.

"There is no room for territorial exchange [with Georgia]. There
are no negotiations over this issue," Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf
Khalafov, co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission on border
delimitation with Georgia, said at a press briefing in Baku on
November 2. Azerbaijani officials say that in the past three years
Georgia has twice offered sections of Georgian territory in exchange
for recognition of the current border division of the David-Gareja
monastery, but that Baku has rejected the offers both times.

"This territory [Azerbaijan’s part of the monastery] has strategic
importance for Azerbaijan. And we have no intention of giving it
to anybody," Garib Mammadov, chairman of the Azerbaijani State Land
and Cartography Committee, said in an April 2004 interview with the
Azerbaijani daily newspaper Echo. "This is a strategic overlook. The
whole South Caucasus might be monitored from this overlook very
well. Why should we give it away?"

While officials and experts in Baku maintain that their position will
not change, an official within the Azerbaijani foreign ministry,
who asked to remain anonymous, told EurasiaNet that Azerbaijan "is
open to the implementation of joint projects [with Georgia] for the
restoration of the complex."

At a joint press conference with Georgian Foreign Minister Gela
Bezhuashvili on October 31 in Baku, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister
Elmar Mamedyarov said that a fresh round of border talks would be
held in Baku in November. Two meetings have been held on the topic
since March 2006, Georgian officials say.

"During the commission’s meeting in November, the demarcation
will concern several areas of a 170-kilometer-long segment of the
border," the Azerbaijani State Land and Cartography Committee’s
Garib Mammadov, a member of the intergovernmental commission, told
journalists on November 1. "The areas have already been investigated
thoroughly." Mammadov did not specify which parts of the border
segment will be discussed.

Monks at the monastery say that they see the dispute as the result
of Soviet scheming to undermine relations between Christian Georgians
and Muslim Azerbaijanis.

"As the Soviet border is set on the territory of an important
cultural and religious monument, it is possible that the atheistic
Soviet leadership tried to cause misunderstanding between Georgia
and Azerbaijan someday in the future," said Father Superior Ilarion.
"Right now, we have the result of this [plan]."

"I hope that Azerbaijan takes in consideration that David-Gareja
monastery is an important spiritual and cultural unit for Georgia,"
he continued. "We hope that Azerbaijan will not claim the territory."

Monks at David-Gareja claim that they are unable to visit the church
of Bertubani, located two kilometers inside the Azerbaijani border in
the region of Agstafa, and are concerned about its maintenance. "We
are not let in by the border guards," one of the monks said, adding
that the monastery’s leadership fears that the church’s interior has
been damaged. "All we know about Bertubani is that it is not used as
a church. There are unique frescos [there] that need special care,"
he said.

The Azerbaijani Border Service official states that a simplified
border control regime allows monks, Georgian pilgrims and tourists to
travel to the part of the complex located on Azerbaijani territory
without trouble. One Azerbaijani journalist who visited the area in
the summer of 2006, however, reported that "bureaucratic procedures"
for access could prove troublesome.

Questions, however, remain about the condition of the David-Gareja
monastery complex within Azerbaijan. One Azerbaijani scholar concedes
that the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism does not pay
sufficient attention to the question. "Neither restoration work
nor serious historical research has been held at the Azerbaijani
part of the monastery so far," said Mekhti Mansurov, a historian at
the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences. Azerbaijan added the
monastery’s churches to its list of national historical monuments in
2003, "only after Georgia did so," he added, in comments published
by the Baku-based newspaper Kaspiy on November 1.

Some Georgian observers note that the thought of the monastery and
its condition brings particular poignancy to the delay in concluding
the border discussions with Azerbaijan. The topic is "painful" for
ordinary Georgians, said Caucasian affairs expert Mamuka Areshidze,

"The problem has been discussed by people for a long time, but the
authorities have been inactive" until opposition MP Dzidziguri’s
statement about Azerbaijan moving its border, Areshidze said. "There
are problems with other borders as well — for example, with Russia —
but that issue is not currently on the agenda."

Some Azerbaijani historians are strongly against the transfer of any
part of the David Gareja monastery complex to Georgia, arguing that
the monastery is not Georgian, but Caucasian Albanian, a reference
to an ancient people, believed to be Christian, who are thought to
have once inhabited northern Azerbaijan.

In the end, the key may be to proceed with moderation, cautions
one Georgian analyst. "There is nothing special in having undefined
borders," said Paata Zakareishvili, an independent political analyst
in Tbilisi. "If the issue is studied professionally by both sides’
experts, no political tensions should be expected."

Editor’s Note: Diana Petriashvili is a freelance reporter based
in Tbilisi. Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance reporter in Baku.
Alexander Klimchuk is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.

HENCEFORTH BYURAKAN OBSERVATORY WILL FOLLOW GALAXIES THROUGH THE PRISM OF PHOTOELECTRIC RECEIVER

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 2 2006

In spring 2007, the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory of the
Armenian National Academy of Sciences, jointly with the Special
Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Scientists, will
start implementing a joint program of exploiting a meter Schmidt
telescope, one of the largest in the world, Deputy Director of the
Byurakan Observatory Norayr Melikyan told an ArmInfo correspondent.

According to him, the Russian side gave $250 thousand for installing
the photoelectric receiver. The observatory followed photographic
methods which have become obsolete. In fact, with the new receiver
the Byurakan Observatory will be able to receive 4 times as much
information of 4 thousand pixels on a 4 cm snapshot. He noted that
due to the lack of up-to-date receivers in the observatory, out
of 5 telescopes only one is used at the moment. At the same time,
the observatory gets a lot of offers to cooperate with a number of
countries. Particularly, cooperation agreements are signed with Italy,
France and the observatory in the city of Santiago de Compostella,
Spain. It also has many offers to research problems of stellar
astronomy, galaxies’ structure, non-stationary stars and nebulae,
stellar cosmology, as well as to do radio-astronomical observations.

To note, the Byurakan Observatory established in 1946 on Aragats,
the highest mountain in Armenia, discovered and studied flashing
stars, particularly, in the Seven Sisters, and discovered galaxies
with superfluous ultraviolet radiation. The prosperity period of the
Armenian astronomy is connected with the name of Victor Hambardzumyan,
a famous Armenian scientist. The results of scientific researches
by Byurakan have obtained international recognition and formed a
basis for new directions in astrophysics. However, during the last
15 years, the number of observatory’s employees has decreased 4
times. The young employees receive a salary at the minimum rate –
15 thousand AMD (about $39).

FORMER CULTURE MINISTER AND CURRENT PARLIAMENT MEMBER QUESTION TURKS TALENT TO PRODUCE WORTHY LITERATURE

Armenpress
Nov 01 2006

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS: A former Armenian culture minister
Hakob Movses questioned today the national identity of a Turkish
writer Orhan Pamuk who was awarded Nobel Literature Prize this year
saying the Turkish nation was incapable of producing a work of art
or literature of world significance and value.

"I am not a racist but I can say with certainty that this is simply
impossible,’ the former culture minister argued. "Man must have
genetics in order to have spirit and genius, genius that derives from
the Latin ‘genus," Movses who is the author of several collections
of poetry and prose claimed.

Movses claimed that many people in Germany where Pamuk’s books were
issued in millions of copies suspect him of being a pureblooded
Turk. "Nevertheless I am happy that a Turkish writer was awarded
this prize, because if ideas and culture enter a barbaric tribe it
means it has not yet lost all chances to become a civilized nation,"
he said. He also praised Pamuk for referring to the Armenian genocide.

Pamuk, whose novels include "Snow" and "My Name is Red," was charged
last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey
was unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent
Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which
Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla
fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.

"Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in
these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it," he told the
newspaper. A parliament member Alvard Petrosian from the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF) also welcomed the decision to award
the most prestigious prize to the Turkish writer, saying, however,
it was a political decision rather.

Ms. Petrosian, also author of several books of prose, echoed the
former culture minister questioning the ability of the Turkish nation
to produce a worthy literature.

"I have read only several poems of Turkish poets, but I cannot believe
that Turks can have good literature. Even if Pamuk is a pureblooded
Turk, which I strongly doubt, it is not enough to say that Turkish
literature is good. There may be a couple of good Turkish writers but
their literature is not good," she claimed, describing literature as
‘something like milk that feeds a nation, but Turkey definitely lacks
that sort of milk.

FRANCE TO OPEN NEW "ENVOY BUREAU" IN NORTHERN IRAQ

Hurriyet, Turkey
Nov 1 2006

Following shortly on the heels of its parliamentary approval of a
bill aimed at penalizing those who publicly deny Armenian genocide
claims, France is preparing another move which seems destined to annoy
Ankara. France has announced it will be opening up an "Envoy Bureau"
in Northern Iraq, in order to better keep tabs on the situation in
the Kurdish region there.

According to a statement from French Foreign Ministry spokesman
Jean-Baptiste Mattei, France will open its new bureau in the Northern
Iraqi city of Erbil in January, 2007. The new "Envoy Bureau" will be
run by a diplomat with ties to the French Embassy in Baghdad.

Spokeman Mattei, in a statement to Hurriyet yesterday, analyzed the
new developments as such:

"Like Turkey, we also follow a policy of defending the unity of Iraqi
soil. Within this framework, we maintain an embassy in Baghdad. But
it is true that we are planning on opening an "Envoy Bureau" in Erbil,
one which will be linked to the embassy in Baghdad."

Iraqi President Jelal Talabani is expected in coming days in Paris,
to meet with French President Jacques Chirac, as well as other top
French diplomats.

UNEVEN RACE FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL STILL HEATED AS BROWN, POOCHIGIAN HOLD DUELING NEWS CONFERENCES
By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer

Los Angeles Times
Nov 1 2006

The rivals for attorney general trade barbs in L.A. The ex-governor
has a strong lead.

SACRAMENTO – One is the son of a Fresno County farmer, the other the
progeny of a dynastic political family.

Dissimilarities etch the lives and policy positions of Republican
state Sen. Chuck Poochigian and his Democratic opponent in the campaign
for state attorney general, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, the mercurial
former California governor and frequent presidential aspirant.

ADVERTISEMENTThe pair have waged this election season’s most clamorous
battle. They’ve accused each other of flip-flops befitting a big-time
wrestling match. Crime-fighting chops and character questions have
become central themes in the contest to command the 1,100 attorneys
in the state’s Department of Justice.

In the homestretch, the 68-year-old Brown has ridden his status as
a venerable political celebrity to a healthy lead – 15 points among
likely voters in the most recent public polls.

But in Poochigian the GOP has a campaigner who vows to stay on
the attack until election day Tuesday, despite dwindling funds for
advertising and a reputation as a nice guy reluctant to throw mud.

"I remain convinced I’m going to win," the Fresno Republican says.

Brown has spent his two mayoral terms attempting to recast his image
as a crime fighter more interested in fixing public infrastructure
than tilting at political windmills. Now he vows to be a "practical"
and "common sense" attorney general.

"I love the law," he said. "And I think the law is being undermined.

We need to strengthen our Western legal tradition, emphasize the
norms that give our society identity, structure."

On Tuesday, Brown and Poochigian brought their campaigns to Los Angeles
for dueling news conferences almost within earshot of each other.

Brown appeared with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief
William J. Bratton, adding the two high-profile leaders to his list of
endorsements. His experience as a former governor and Oakland mayor,
Villaraigosa said, makes Brown "somebody who knows the needs of city
police departments."

Minutes later, Poochigian held an impromptu news conference on a
nearby street corner, repeating his criticism of Brown’s credentials
for attorney general amid a sharp rise in Oakland’s murder rate.

Poochigian highlighted his own endorsements from the California Peace
Officers Assn. and the California State Sheriff’s Assn., among others.

Trading accusations

For months, Poochigian has hit Brown with accusations new and three
decades old. He portrays Brown as a flaky extremist, a man long
opposed to the death penalty who has watched over a stratospheric
murder spike this year in Oakland.

In turn, Brown has characterized Poochigian as a hard-right fanatic
who opposed a ban on high-powered sniper rifles and fought the state’s
successful 2004 ballot measure to publicly fund stem cell research,
frequently sides against environmental interests and opposes abortion
rights.

But around the Capitol, Poochigian is better known for collegiality
than ideology. Friends say he’s as consistent as his favorite breakfast
cereal: oatmeal.

His grandparents fled the Armenian genocide and the family eventually
settled amid the grape fields of Fresno County. Poochigian, 57, grew
up in Lone Star, a speck of a farm community along the railroad tracks
southeast of Fresno.

After attending Cal State Fresno and law school, Poochigian became
a business lawyer. He broke into politics in 1978, volunteering for
George Deukmejian’s successful attorney general campaign, then became
a gubernatorial aide to the conservative Deukmejian and later to Gov.
Pete Wilson.

In private life, Poochigian has survived a few rough patches.

Around the time he first ventured into politics, he lost more than
$100,000 in a failed business deal in Gusher Oil Co., a firm that
drilled mostly in Texas. He and his partners were sued for nonpayment
of a loan. It was "a bad investment," he says today, that cost him more
than his share to settle debts owed by a few investors who walked away.

Among his partners in Gusher Oil was attorney Richard Wyrick.

EUROPEAN UNION TO CONTINUE ASSISTING ARMENIA WITH ENERGY PROGRAMS

Noyan Tapan
Nov 01 2006

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, NOYAN TAPAN. The European Union did not give up
its condition that it will invest 100 million euros for increasing
Armenia’s energy capacities before the closure of the Armenian
nuclear power plant until donors are found to make investments for
this purpose. Karen Chshmaritian, RA Minister of Trade and Economic
Development, Co-chairman of the EU-Armenia Cooperation Council,
stated this during the October 31 press conference. Responding to NT
correspondent’s question, he said that the EU is consistent in the
issue of convening a conference of donors for this aim. According
to K. Chshmaritian, the RA Ministry of Energy is also consistent
in the implementation of this plan. "I think we’ll soon hear about
it," he noted. In his words, the Ministry of Energy has developed
some programs on enhancing the country’s energy capacities before
the closure of the Armenian nuclear power plant (ANPP). He assured
that the EU will continue providing funds for increasing the safety
of the nuclear power plant. These funds are included in the ANPP’s
budget. The minister said that the EU will continue assisting Armenia
with its programs on use of alternative energy sources. In particular,
the opportunities of using the geothermal energy in the south of
Armenia are now being explored. At the October 25 meeting of the
EU-Armenia Cooperation Council in Brussels, an agreement was reached
to continue the cooperation for securiing the safety of the Armenian
nuclear power plant and using alternative energy sources in Armenia.

ARMENIAN LAW DESIGNED TO KEEP TURKEY OUT OF THE EU
Gwynne Dyer, Arab News

Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Oct 31 2006

Words matter. The holocaust of the European Jews during World War II
was a genocide. The mass deportation of Chechens from their Caucasian
homeland during the same war was a crime but not a genocide, even
though half of them died, because Moscow’s aim was to keep them from
collaborating with German troops who were nearing Chechnya, not to
exterminate them. Which brings us to the far more controversial case
of the Armenians and the Turks.

On Oct. 12, the French Parliament passed a law declaring that anyone
who denies that the mass murder of Armenians in eastern Turkey in
1915-17 was a genocide will face a year in prison. But the French
Foreign Ministry called the law "unnecessary and untimely," and
President Jacques Chirac telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyib Erdogan to apologize.

"Chirac called me and told me he was sorry. He said that he is
listening to our statements and he thinks we are right and he will do
what he can in the upcoming process (of ratifying the legislation),"
said Erdogan later. Since Chirac can veto the law, that should be
the end of that, but the point of passing the law was never really to
get it on the books. It was to alienate Turkish public opinion and to
curry favor with the half-million French citizens of Armenian descent.

Why would the conservative majority in the French Parliament
deliberately set out to annoy the Turks, knowing that the law would
eventually be vetoed by the president? Because they hope to provoke a
nationalist backlash in Turkey that would further damage that country’s
already difficult relationship with the European Union.

French public opinion is already in a xenophobic mood over the last
expansion of the EU, with folk-tales of "Polish plumbers" working for
peanuts and stealing the jobs of honest French workers causing outrage,
especially among right-wing voters who never much liked foreigners
anyway. The prospect of eighty million Turks – Muslim Turks – joining
the European Union, even if it is at least ten years away, is enough
to make their blood boil. So a big row with Turkey should attract
lots of votes to the right’s presidential candidate in next May’s
election, who is likely to be none other than current Prime Minister
Nicolas Sarkozy – who announced last month that Turkey should never
be allowed to join the EU: "We have to say who is European and who
isn’t. It’s no longer possible to leave this question open." The new
law is not really about Armenians or Turks.

It’s about the French election.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, anti-EU nationalists have their own game
underway. While Turkey was busy amending its penal code to make
it conform to EU standards over the past few years, hard-line
lawyers and bureaucrats smuggled in a new law, Article 301, that
provides severe penalties for "insulting Turkishness." In practice,
that mainly means trying to ban public discussion of the Armenian
massacres, and some seventy prosecutions have already been brought
by the ultra-right-wing Union of Lawyers against Turkish authors,
journalists and other public figures.

For several generations the Turkish government flatly denied any guilt
for the Armenian massacres, insisting that they didn’t happen and
if they did, it was the Armenians’ own fault for rebelling against
the Turkish state in wartime. Latterly, a new generation of Turkish
intellectuals has been saying that a million or more Armenians did
die in the mass deportations from eastern Anatolia, and that Turkey
needs to admit its guilt and apologize – though most still refuse to
call it a genocide.

Most Armenians, of course, desperately want the label "genocide"
to be applied to their ancestors’ suffering, since they feel that
any other term demotes it to a lower rank of tragedy. But there is
room for dialogue and even reconciliation here, if people can get
past the issue of nomenclature.

The prosecutions for "insulting Turkishness" – even against Turkey’s
greatest living novelist, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk – are not
just an attempt to stifle this dialogue among Turks, or between
Turks and Armenians. The ultra-nationalists also want to derail the
negotiations for EU membership by painting Turkey as an authoritarian
and intolerant state that does not belong in Europe. They are, in
effect, Sarkozy’s objective allies.

But Prime Minister Erdogan will probably repeal Article 301 once next
year’s elections are past. France’s law, which requires people to
discuss the Armenian massacres in precisely the terms that 301 bans,
will probably be vetoed by Chirac. And Turkey’s best-known Armenian
journalist, Hrant Dink, who has already been prosecuted several times
under 301, has just announced that he will go to France "to protest
against this madness and violate the (new) law…And I will commit the
crime to be prosecuted there, so that these two irrational mentalities
can race to put me into jail."

;s ection=0&article=87543&d=31&m=10&y =2006

OSKANIAN TO TAKE PART IN BSECO FMS MEETING

PanARMENIAN.Net
30.10.2006 13:29 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today Armenian FM Vartan Oskanian is leaving for
Moscow to take part in the 15th meeting of the FMs of the Black Sea
Economic Cooperation Organization (BSECO), to be held October 31 –
November 1, reports the Press Office of the Armenian MFA.

During the meeting the Armenian FM will make a statement.

Regnum, Russia
Oct 27 2006

Armenian defense minister: Azerbaijan cannot solve the Karabakh
problem by war

In case of a new war in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, Armenia
will again have an advantage over Azerbaijan. However, the war will
be a big blow for both sides, Armenian Defense Minister Serzh
Sargsyan says in an interview to Jane’s military and political
research center.

Radio Liberty reports Sargsyan to say, referring to independent
experts, that Azerbaijan is not yet able to solve the
Nagorno-Karabakh problem by war. He notes that in the early 90s
Azerbaijan also had a numerical and technical military superiority it
had got from the Soviet Union. `But despite all of its forecast oil
revenues – neither today nor in many years ahead – will Azerbaijan be
able to gain the preponderance it had 14-15 years ago. The Azeri
military scenario failed then and will fail again,’ says Sargsyan. He
notes that he is an advocate of peaceful resolution but `Azerbaijan’s
militarist policy does not contribute to it.’

Concerning Armenia-NATO relations, Sargsyan says that for quite a
long time Turkey’s policy has been undermining NATO’s authority in
Armenia. The Russian military base in Armenia was formed in the face
of an external threat to become a force restraining it.
Unfortunately, this threat is still existent as there is still no
substantial progress in Armenia’s relations with Turkey. `Turkey
continues the blockade of Armenia, which is, in fact, a hostile
action. Turkey supports Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh process
and our rapprochement depends on Azerbaijan’s whims,’ says Sargsyan.