Author: Jalatian Sonya

Favorable conditions developed for settling Karabakh conflict – Minsk group
15.07.2004 12:20:00 GMT
Yerevan. (Interfax) – Favorable circumstances have been developed to
settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said OSCE Minsk group
co-chairman Yury Merzlyakov.
“The co-chairmen think that we should take advantage of the favorable
situation that has currently developed, and if the Karabakh issue is
to be resolved, it should be done now,” Merzlyakov told a press
conference in Yerevan on Wednesday.
He said the fact that presidential elections in Azerbaijan and Armenia
have concluded creates a favorable situation for settling the
conflict. “The new aspect of the situation is that, after a 1.5 year
recess, the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have
restarted,” Merzlyakov said.
The French co-chairman of the Minsk Group, Henry Jacquelyn, said that
it would take time to achieve a long-term peace and settle the
conflict.
U.S. Minsk group co-chairman Stephen Mann said the main responsibility
for settling the conflict lies with the conflicting sides and the
Minsk group is ready to aid their efforts. For example, the question
of inviting Nagorno-Karabakh to negotiations is to be decided by the
conflicting sides themselves, he said.
Merzlyakov noted that “the Karabakh side signed the cease fire
agreement that has remained in effect from 1994 until today.”
Azerbaijan lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas in
bitter fighting with Armenia in the 1990s. The UN Security Council has
denounced the occupation of Azerbaijani lands and demanded the
withdrawal of Armenian troops from the area. Co-chairmen of the OSCE
Minsk group representing the United States, Russia and France are
attempting to help resolve the conflict.
The Minsk group’s co-chairmen also reported that the next meeting of
the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers will take place in
August, and the next negotiations between the two countries’
presidents will take place during the September summit of CIS
presidents in Astana.
The Minsk group co-chairmen will leave Yerevan for Baku on Thursday to
meet with Azerbaijani authorities.
The international mediators visited Stepanakert on July 13-14, where
they met with the authorities of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-
Karabakh.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen arrive in Armenia
Mediamax news agency
12 Jul 04
YEREVAN
The co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group, Yuriy Merzlyakov Russia,
Henry Jacolin France and Steven Mann USA , have arrived in Yerevan.
As Mediamax news agency has reported, the co-chairmen will meet
Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and Foreign Minister Vardan
Oskanyan. The co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group will leave Yerevan
for the capital of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic on 13 July.
The co-chairmen will leave Yerevan for Baku on the morning of 15 July.

Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, FL
July 7 2004
Ararat wins at Armenian film fest
Atom Egoyan’s 2002 movie, Ararat, won the top prize at the Golden
Apricot Film Festival of works by ethnic Armenian directors,
officials said Monday.
The festival included 57 movies by directors from 20 countries.
Egoyan is a Canadian of Armenian heritage.
Ararat depicts the plight of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Armenians
say that a 1915-1923 campaign to force Armenians out of eastern
Turkey left 1.5 million people dead and amounted to genocide. The
title refers to the mountain that Armenians regard as their national
symbol but which now is in Turkey.

The Halifax Daily News (Nova Scotia)
July 4, 2004 Sunday
Ancient lessons for our politicians;
The Greeks and Romans can teach us all a thing or two
by Robson, John
When the Athenian statesman Phocion gave a speech that the public
applauded, Plutarch claims, he turned to some friends and asked,
“Have I inadvertently said something foolish?” How many politicians
would ever have such a reaction today? Yet how many should? I sure
missed Plutarch during this election.
For one thing, I treasure his anecdote about Cato the Elder who, told
it was odd that there was no monument to him in Rome, said he would
far rather have people ask why he didn’t have a statue than why he
did. What a useful standard by which to judge the personal qualities
of politicians. When Bill Clinton claims in his memoirs that “in
politics, if you don’t toot your own horn, it usually stays untooted”
you might reasonably conclude that, in Cato’s situation, he would
have put one up himself.
Some readers may be puzzled by my tendency to enthuse about some
author who wrote long before Jennifer Lopez’s first marriage; if so,
I reply that it is not a boast to find nothing interesting in books.
(Or quote American commentator Florence King that in high school “the
girls who recited Mickey Rooney’s wives in the cafeteria made fun of
me for reciting Henry VIII’s wives in history class …”)
All argument is in some sense argument by analogy: This thing is like
that thing, it is not like that other thing. But if we do not carry
around with us a supply of material suitable for the drawing of
analogies, what sort of reasoning is likely to result? That’s why
Plutarch wrote The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.
Knowledge of the past
A person without knowledge of the past is liable to react to a
promise of free money the same way Homer Simpson reacts to the word
“doughnut.” Would it not be better instead to flinch as George
Washington would have at any political program reminiscent of Rome’s
“bread and circuses” for the urban mob? Or recall another Plutarch
story about Cato the Elder: “Being once desirous to dissuade the
common people of Rome from their unseasonable and impetuous clamour
for largesse and distributions of corn, he began thus to harangue
them: ‘It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the
belly, which has no ears.”‘
Paul Martin would have been well-advised a year ago to ponder
Plutarch’s report that Pompey the Great once had the chance “to lead
Tigranes, King of Armenia, in triumph,” but “chose rather to make him
a confederate of the Romans, saying that a single day was worth less
than all future time.”
My admiration for Plutarch is not uncritical. He likes the Spartans
too much, and unfairly casts Marc Antony as too besotted with
Cleopatra to attend to affairs of the state. But it’s interesting to
see him praise Cleopatra’s personality and intellect over her raw
physical beauty, and slam Julius Caesar, who “looking upon all
changes and commotions in the state as materials useful for his own
purposes, desired rather to increase than extinguish them …”
Perhaps his correspondingly high opinion of Caesar’s assassin Brutus
is overdone. But it would be nice to have some sort of opinion on
Brutus that doesn’t also involve Popeye the sailor man. Lest you
smell dust here, I promise that Plutarch is also full of intrigue,
illicit sex and gruesome violence. For instance, the orator Cicero,
who backed Brutus, was assassinated and, on the orders of Marc
Antony, his head and hands were severed, brought to Rome, and
“fastened up over the rostra, where the orators spoke; a sight which
the Roman people shuddered to behold, and they believed they saw
there, not the face of Cicero, but the image of Antony’s own soul.” A
useful anecdote to have whenever someone triumphantly waves an
enemy’s head in public.
Flatterer or friend?
Plutarch also records that Phocion once “answered King Antipater, who
sought his approbation of some unworthy action, ‘I cannot be your
flatterer, and your friend.'” And he advises the politically
ambitious likewise to “answer the people, ‘I cannot govern and obey
you.”‘ Of course anyone who did so might not win, but hey, most
candidates lose anyway. (Besides, Cato the Younger once lost an
election for consul, declined to run again because the people
obviously didn’t want him, and happily went on with his life.) And it
would surely raise the level of debate to go about dismissing people
as “another Lepidus” or hailing them as “a second Brutus” instead of
wracking our brains trying to remember who was in Joe Clark’s
cabinet. Speaking of people who should certainly have spent more time
asking friends if they’d inadvertently said something foolish.

Armenian opposition leader partially approves president’s Strasbourg speech
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
3 Jul 04
[Presenter] The Armenian president’s [Robert Kocharyan’s] assessments
of Nagornyy Karabakh’s relations with Turkey and of regional
cooperation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
[PACE] were correct enough, Shavarsh Kocharyan, from the opposition
Justice bloc and the leader of the National Democratic Party, said
after the event.
[Shavarsh Kocharyan, captioned] The positions on the Karabakh issue,
which were expressed for the first time at PACE, should have been
voiced earlier. He should, first, have talked about Nagornyy
Karabakh’s structure since it has not been a part of independent
Azerbaijan. This regards not only the period after the collapse of the
Soviet Union till now, but also regards the period of the first
republic [1918]. He did not speak about this, which was the most
important.
Second, here the problem is not a problem of territorial integrity
between two countries [Armenia and Azerbaijan], but a problem of
self-determination. Consequently Karabakh must be a party in the
negotiations [to settle the conflict].
[Presenter] Then it turned out that Shavarsh Kocharyan’s absence from
the session hall during Robert Kocharyan’s speech at PACE was the
result of the opposition activist’s honour. The member of the Justice
bloc said that he was obliged to be out of the hall, otherwise he
would have also had to applaud the president, which parliamentary
etiquette demands.
[Shavarsh Kocharyan] I could not have applauded and this would have
been incorrect.

Red Cross reps visit Azeri POW in Karabakh
Space TV, Baku
3 Jul 04

According to a report we have received from the Azerbaijani Defence
Ministry, work is under way to release Aydin Salman oglu Huseynov, a
soldier of the Azerbaijani army, who was taken prisoner three days
ago. Negotiations are under way through the International Committee of
the Red Cross [ICRC].
ICRC representatives have been allowed to visit Aydin Huseynov.
According to the report, representatives of the ICRC office in
Xankandi [Stepanakert] have already met Huseynov. The OSCE has been
informed of this. The circumstances and reasons that caused the
Azerbaijani soldier to cross the [Armenian-Azerbaijani] front line are
being investigated.

RIA Novosti
July 2, 2004
RUSSIAN, ARMENIAN LAW ENFORCERS STEP UP COOPERATION
YEREVAN, July 2 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Interior Ministry and
Armenia’s Police Department will hold a meeting in Yerevan on Friday.
Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and Armenian police
executive Aik Arutyunyan and other senior officials of the above
agencies are expected to take part in the meeting.
The conferees will discuss issues of cooperation against organised
crime and efforts to decriminalise their economies.
The law enforcement agencies’ joint activities fall within the
jurisdiction of a series of bilateral and multilateral inter-government
agreements, 16 inter-department agreements dealing with various areas
of police activity, which were signed at the meetings of the Council of
Interior Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Besides, the conferees will discuss efforts against the organised
international criminal groups and the search for their leaders. Drug
and human trafficking will also be central at the meeting.
Mr Nurgaliyev and Mr Arutyunyan have noted the importance of more
intensive information exchanges between their agencies.
The two countries’ law enforcement agencies regularly conduct search
and preventive operations. Moscow police, for example, have uncovered a
criminal group that comprised Russian and Armenian nationals who
produced counterfeit cognac Ararat, reports the Russian Interior
Ministry. Besides, Russian police exposed a group of Armenians who
counterfeited Russian roubles.
254 members and 45 leaders of organised criminal groups largely
composed of Armenian nationals have been brought to trial and 165
relevant criminal cases have been opened, according to the ministry.
Moscow police have also detained Martirosyan, an Armenian national
wanted in his republic for large-scale embezzlement and fraud.
Martirosyan has already been extradited to Armenia.

The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec)
June 26, 2004 Saturday Final Edition
Lessons in history: Controversial Turkish Historian argues that
recognizing the Armenian Genocide is a political necessity for his
country
by LEVON SEVUNTS
It’s sometimes hard to explain to non-Armenian friends the need to
recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman
Turkish government.
“Why don’t you let it go?” I often hear. “Get on with your life. It
happened 90 years ago, for God’s sake.”
But for Turkish historian Taner Akcam, the need to recognize and
learn from the Armenian genocide is as acute now as it was when the
modern Turkish Republic was founded 80 years ago, particularly in
Turkey itself.
Akcam, a controversial historian at home whose views have made him
the target of death threats, argues that Turkey is approaching a
second crucial stage in its nation-building process and if it doesn’t
learn from past mistakes, it is bound to repeat them.
Akcam contends the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. invasion
of Iraq have reawakened the Eastern Question, the redrawing of the
political map of the Middle East at the expense of the Ottoman Empire
and now the Turkish Republic.
Equally dangerous, Akcam argues, is the reawakening of revanchist
ideas among Turkey’s military-bureaucratic elites. Coupled together,
these tendencies could lead to another calamity, he warns.
>From Empire to Republic is certain to create controversy, especially
in Turkey, where discussions of the Armenian genocide are still
taboo. But what makes Akcam’s book stand out among other works on the
subject – apart from the fact that the author is a Turk – is that it
is the first serious scholarly attempt to understand the genocide
from the perspective of the perpetrator, rather than the victim.
Akcam uses a curious mix of historical research, sociology and
psychoanalysis to examine the cultural, ideological and political
climate that led to the genocide and argues it was a carefully
planned extermination, not an unfortunate byproduct of the First
World War, as is the official Turkish position.
His analysis of Turkish national identity and its past and present
propensity for political violence is shocking even for a reader who
does not see the country through the rosy glasses of Turkey’s tourism
ads.
But Akcam is not a “self-loathing Turk.” On the contrary, he comes
across as somebody who cares deeply about his native country. In
fact, one could argue that for Akcam, the issue of recognition of the
Armenian genocide by Turkey is not just a question of a moral
imperative, but of a political necessity for Turkey’s transformation
into a truly democratic country and its integration into the European
Union.
“It is a quest for Turkish national identity,” Akcam writes. “The
emergence of this Turkish national identity was one of the important
reasons for the occurrence of the genocide and today is one of the
important obstacles on the way to integration with Europe. The
existence of the same mindset that caused the Armenian genocide seems
today a major hindrance to solving the Kurdish question, and,
therefore, to membership in the European Union.”
>From Empire to Republic is also a passionate plea for a dialogue and
reconciliation between Armenians and Turks.
Akcam’s book is available online at
Levon Sevunts is a Montreal writer.
[email protected]
——-
>From Empire to Republic:
Turkish Nationalism & the Armenian Genocide
By Taner Akcam Zed Books, 273 pages, $32
GRAPHIC: Photo: RICHARD ARLESS JR. THE GAZETTE; Robert Kouyoumdjian,
a member of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, near the
Armenian National Monument in Montreal after the federal government
agreed in April to recognize the Armenian genocide during the First
World War.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Baku Today
June 25 2004
KLO Activists Get Two Months in Jail for Their Anti-Armenian Action
Baku’s Nasimi District court on Thursday sentenced five jailed
activists of the Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) to two months
in jail for their unauthorized protest action against Armenian
participation of a Baku-hosted NATO conference.
The KLO chairman Akif Naghi, along with four other activists of his
organization, Mursal Hasanov, Ilkin Qurbanov, Rovshan Fatiyev and
Manaf Kerimov, were found culpable of resisting police, violating
public order and hooliganism.
The KLO members on Tuesday protested Armenian participants of the
planning conference for NATO’s `Cooperative Best Effort-2004′
exercises, Col. Murad Isakhanyan and Sen. Lt. Aram Hovhanesyan, by
breaking into a conference hall of Baku’s Grand Hotel Europe, where
the event was taking place.
As a result, the conference was stopped for several minutes.
Several windows of the conference hall of the hotel were broken by
the protestors and there was no report of serious injuries on police
or KLO activists during the incident.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Georgian Messenger
Wednesday, June 23, 2004, #115 (0639)
Connecting Georgia with Turkey
By M. Alkhazashvili
The possible construction of a railway connecting Georgia and Turkey
creates new prospects for the two countries as well as for the transit
function of the South Caucasus as a whole. If the project goals of an
inexpensive, efficient, international transit route are achieved, the
turnover of goods on Georgia’s railways will sharply increase. But
before any of this can happen, Georgia needs to mobilize a vast sum of
money.
President Mikheil Saakashvili discussed the issue of constructing a
Georgia-Turkey railway during his May visit to Turkey. When he
traveled to Tbilisi on June 14-15, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev
also expressed his support for the project.
Two possible routes for the Georgia-Turkey railway are under
discussion: Kars-Akhalkalaki, which has been on the drawing board
since the Shevardnadze administration, and Rize-Batumi, which
Saakashvili was able to propose following the fall of Aslan
Abashidze’s regime in Adjara. Although the Kars-Akhalkalaki plan is
more familiar and well studied, its construction faces numerous
challenges due to the jagged mountainous terrain of the region. This
project requires not only the construction of a 35km stretch from
Akhalkalaki to Kurtkale on the Georgian-Turkish border and a further
92km line from there to Kars, but also the upgrade of the existing 160
km single line branch from Akhalkalaki to Tbilisi. The Rize-Batumi
option may thus prove the more viable.
If a railway connecting Georgia and Turkey is created, the South
Caucasus’ role as a transit corridor between Europe and Asia will
greatly increase and bring tremendous profits. But given the $700-800
million cost of the project, finding the financing necessary for this
project will be a stiff challenge for the government, even if
Azerbaijan and Turkey allot significant sums towards the project.
The idea of constructing a Georgia-Turkey railway has caused great
concern in Armenia, which feels itself even further isolated from
regional transit projects. It should be pointed out that in the Soviet
period, there existed a railway connecting Turkey with the South
Caucasus – the Kars Gyumri line – but owing to the Karabakh conflict
and the less than cordial relations between Armenia and Turkey, it has
been out of operation for more than a decade. A few days ago reports
surfaced that Turkey may open its border with Armenia and restore
Kars-Gyumri. Clearly, if this is true, the issue of constructing a
Georgia-Turkey line will all but be removed from the agenda. But it
remains to be seen whether there is any real prospect for the
restoration of Kars-Gyumri or whether this report was merely a
reaction to the Georgia-Turkey railway idea.