Author: Kajoyan Gevork

DEPUTY PM: UPPER KARABAKH IS A MUSLIM TURKISH AZERBAIJANI LAND

Anadolu Agency
March 13 2012
Turkey

BAKU (A.A) – Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag has said that
Upper Karabakh was a Muslim Turkish Azerbaijani land.

Bozdag, who is currently holding talks in Azerbaijan, told reporters
that he would discuss Turkey-Azerbaijan relations during his meetings.

Commenting on Armenian president’s remarks as “Upper Karabakh will
never be given to Azerbaijan”, Bozdag said that Turkey was closely
following the Upper Kakabakh issue, adding that this was a matter of
Turkey too.

Upper Karabakh is a Muslim Turkish Azerbaijani land, and it is under
an unlawful and unjust occupation, said Bozdag.

Turkey wishes this occupation to end and problems to be solved,
said Bozdag, adding that Turkey would continue to extend every type
of support.

Bozdag noted that normalization of Turkey-Armenia relations as well
as Azerbaijan-Armenia relations depended on ending the occupation.

Turkey-Armenia relations will not be normalized as long as Armenia
does not withdraw from Upper Karabakh, he added.

CSTO TO EXERCISE IN ARMENIA; SCO IN TAJIKISTAN (AND UZBEKISTAN TO STAY HOME)
by Joshua Kucera

EurasiaNet.org
March 15 2012
NY

The two big post-Soviet military blocs, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, have
announced their respective plans for large-scale exercises this year.

The CSTO’s will take place in September in Armenia, while the SCO’s
will happen in Tajikistan in June.

Last September’s CSTO exercises were a pretty big deal, involving
24,000 troops and taking place amid a concerted Kremlin effort to
gin up the threat from Afghanistan, prompting a lot of observers
to speculate that Moscow was trying to use the CSTO as a means of
exerting a heavier hand in Central Asia. This year’s exercises were
still months away, and there are few details available about them,
so it’s hard to compare yet. But the choice of location in Armenia
is curious, given that last year so much of the rhetoric justifying
the organization’s existence related to Afghanistan. So now is the
shift toward the Caucasus, or is it just Armenia’s turn?

Meanwhile, the choice of Tajikistan for the SCO exercise, Peace
Mission 2012, has prompted one dropout already: Uzbekistan won’t be
taking part in the exercise, Regnum reports (in Russian):

“During the exercises, a special anti-terror operation in a mountainous
area will be worked on. New methods will be used to detect, block and
destroy mock outlawed armed formations that have captured a mountain
village, according to the legend,” the [Tajikistan Ministry of Defense]
press centre said.

One Tajikistan member of parliament interviewed by Regnum had harsh
words for Uzbekistan’s decision:

“Many countries’ experience shows that it is impossible to fight
alone against terror. Even the USA and the entire Western coalition
in Afghanistan are not so successful in fighting against terrorism.

Uzbekistan itself has repeatedly encountered terror challenges,
especially in the Fergana valley, where the forthcoming exercises
are to be held. Therefore we regret that country does not want to
participate in the joint anti-terror exercises. Although the situation
in the world and the region is not so rosy. There are forces which
are prepared to seriously destabilise the situation at an opportune
time,” the MP noted in a conversation with a correspondent of REGNUM.

The CSTO and SCO each include Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; the SCO adds China and the CSTO Armenia and
Belarus. But Uzbekistan has been an increasingly reluctant member of
both (it’s unclear whether or not they’ll participate in this year’s
CSTO exercise, but they didn’t in last year’s). This shift has been
abetted by Tashkent’s improved relationship with the U.S. and NATO;
it’ll be interesting to see how their attitude towards the SCO and
CSTO change once the U.S. starts withdrawing from the region in 2014.

IRAN’S LAST CHANCE
by Vladimir Soloviov

Kommersant
March 14 2012
Russia

[translated from Russian]

UNLESS ITS DEMANDS ARE MET, THE UNITED STATES IS PREPARED TO GO TO WAR;
The Iranian situation is deteriorating. A war seems imminent.

What information this newspaper has compiled indicates that U.S. State
Secretary Hillary Clinton asked Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to
inform Tehran that its negotiations with the international community
scheduled for April were its last chance to avoid a war. Lavrov and
Clinton met in New York right after the UN Security Council meeting
this Monday.

Speaking of the future American and Israeli strikes at Iranian sites,
diplomats use “when” instead of the conditional “if” now. “Iran will
be invaded before the end of the year,” said a senior functionary of
the Russian Foreign Ministry on the eve of the UN Security Council
meeting. “By and large, the Israelis blackmail Obama. He is either
to go to war or be stripped of support from the powerful Jewish lobby.”

The source became even more precise after the UN Security Council
meeting. He said that the talks between the Iranians and the Six Group
(Russia, Great Britain, Germany, China, France, and the United States)
would take place in April. Another attempt would be made to solve the
Iranian nuclear problem. According to the diplomat, the Americans
said that this was Tehran’s last chance. Clinton all but confirmed
it in a conversation with Lavrov as well and asked him to convey it
to the Iranian authorities.

The date and the location of the future talks are still discussed. It
is their agenda that leaves no questions or doubts. The talks
will be focused on the Iranian nuclear program and its use for
military purposes, as well as on IAEA observers barred from Parchin
installation.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov admitted that the Iranian
crisis was rapidly deteriorating. “Escalation is undeniable… Those
who itch to go to war ought to pull themselves up and concentrate on
a diplomatic solution. Instead of solving a problem, war will breed
a host of new problems. More to the point, it will affect lots of
countries,” said Ryabkov.

Calling for peace, Russia makes preparations for a war as well. “Yes,
we’ve updated contingency plans for a war in Iran,” said a Defense
Ministry functionary. The source said that Azerbaijan, a country not
yet fully recovered from the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, was bound to
be flooded with refugees fleeing Iran under attack. “Even worse, the
hostilities in Iran will complicate the situation in the Caucasus –
which is already complicated.”

A senior diplomat confirmed existence of contingency plans.

Lavrov’s trip to New York clarified to some extent the Syrian situation
– at least for the nearest future. The UN Security Council meeting
chaired by Great Britain and focused on the Middle East crisis made
it plain that Damascus might put aside fears of an intervention from
abroad for the time being.

Foreign ministers who attended the meeting condemned the actions of
the Syrian authorities and President Bashar al-Assad personally but
voted to wait to hear from Kofi Annan first. Annan visited Syria not
long ago. He met with the Syrian opposition and with al-Bassad. The
latter was acquainted with the latest peace initiatives formulated
by the international community. The initiatives in question included
what had been suggested by Lavrov and the Arab League on March 10 –
immediate suspension of violence by all involved parties, relief aid to
the Syrians, cease-fire regime monitoring… Al-Assad promised Annan
to consider the initiatives and give an answer “within days”. He even
implied that the answer would be “constructive”.

Moscow has its own theory explaining the fact that heat is taken off
Syria for the time being. A Russian diplomat said, “The Americans
cannot help but back off and they want to do so without a loss of
face… They know that Israel will strike at Iran. Two simultaneous
wars in the region are one too many.”

MUSICAL PASSIONS: MUSICOLOGY STUDENT O’TOOLE CONDUCTS CHORAL GROUP IN BOSTON
By Celine Hacobian

The Justice – Brandeis University

March 12 2012

When Julia O’Toole MA ’12 was 16 years old, she begged her piano
teacher to give her just one voice lesson before her audition for
her high school musical. As soon as she finished her first song, her
teacher said, “Yeah, we’re not doing piano anymore. You’re a singer,”
recounted O’Toole, in her second and final year in the Master’s program
for Musicology, in an interview with the Justice. From that point on,
she continued taking voice lessons before she started teaching singing
and conducting choirs.

O’Toole conducts the Boston-based choral group Calliope, which was
founded in the summer of 2006. “Quite honestly, I wanted to get some
podium time, and it’s very hard to get an opportunity to conduct
people,”O’Toole said. As a voice teacher, she had access to many
singers who were available during the summer, as most organizations
do not have rehearsals from June to August, according to O’Toole.

“So we had a chorus, and just a couple of instruments, but …

musicians who were doing it were really psyched to be doing something
in the off-season, so [I thought,] ‘what could we add that would be
different?'” With this in mind, O’Toole created a board of directors
and established an organization different than all the other choruses
in the Boston area.

“That’s when we decided that we want to give an experience that most
musicians [and instrumentalists] … don’t have: the opportunity
to rehearse with the other,” said O’Toole. “This was an opportunity
for musicians from both fields to rehearse together for the entire
season, and so we decided that this would be the number one piece of
our mission, that it would be very collaborative.”

Another major factor that sets Calliope apart from other groups is
that its members give back to the community through benefit concerts.

They choose lesser-known organizations to support and do not pick the
same group more than once. O’Toole then coordinates the program based
on the organization they are supporting. “The music that we select
for the concert, we try to have reflect the mission of whatever the
organization is,” she said.

On Feb. 4, Calliope chose to give a benefit concert for the Armenian
Heritage Park that commemorates the Armenian Genocide, still under
construction and expected to be revealed in Boston’s North End in
a few months. O’Toole learned of the memorial through an Armenian
member of Calliope’s board. “We usually plan the benefit a couple of
years in advance … because we like to work with the organization
before we actually present their performance,” O’Toole said.

O’Toole stressed that this most recent February concert consisted of
a complex program that required singing in several other languages
because the song choices represented so many different groups. The
choir is accustomed to performing in multiple languages, but they
still bring in people who fluently speak the language in which they
are performing in order to help the singers with pronunciation, tone
and phrasing. “Singers in general at this level, which is serious
amateurs to professionals, most of them have done Latin, most of them
have done German, French, Italian, as well, so it is a little bit of a
struggle, so it just kind of depends on who you have in front of you,”
O’Toole said.

And while this program wasn’t solely Armenian music, it was the
majority of the program. “One of our members is Armenian and so he made
suggestions, and actually the board member made suggestions and when we
met with the [Armenian Heritage Foundation], the chair of their board
[also] made suggestions … In general, the way that Calliope comes
up with music is all the members are asked for, ‘is there anything
you would like to do that you think suggests … what we are looking
at as a program structure-in this case, it was music about immigrants.”

O’Toole believes Calliope really focuses on young musicians, especially
high school students “who need more of a challenge than their school
music program, and a lot of those have even been eliminated, can
offer,” she said.

O’Toole chose the name “Calliope” for the group, because she is the
eldest of the nine Greek muses, goddesses that represent the arts,
and the one that is associated with epic poetry and combines text
with music.

The group performs twice a year “because we really want all of
our members to belong to other organizations because it makes them
better collaborators, so we deliberately meet sort of off-season from
everybody else,” she said. Their season begins in June, with auditions
held in March and April. Rehearsals start in the beginning of June
and continue throughout the summer, concluding with a concert on the
second weekend in September. The whole process is 14 weeks, longer than
the common 12-week rehearsal period for choirs, according to O’Toole.

The audition process for O’Toole’s group is elaborate. Musicians
can be invited to join for one to three seasons, determined by how
much potential they have and what they need to work on before they
re-audition. O’Toole says that most people do both annual concerts.

The board looks first for musicianship in potential members. Members
“have to be at a certain level in order to learn music on their own,
to know how to take care of their instrument well, whether it’s a
voice or whether it’s a trumpet,” O’Toole said.

Almost as important is “the ability to collaborate: the ability to
communicate about what [members] are doing, about what they hear from
other people and to do it in a constructive way. We had people who
have auditioned who I have not accepted because even in the audition,
it felt like they were kind of combative, that they wouldn’t be a
positive team player,” she said.

“They may have been a fabulous singer, or whatever, but … when you
go into a situation with 75 musicians and anyone can say anything
about you, and you can say anything about anyone, you know, it has
to be a safe environment,” O’Toole said.

Calliope currently has about 90 active members. Only 75 perform
at any given concert because some performers are not available for
both seasons.

O’Toole says her experience at the University has enhanced her musical
involvement, especially her involvement with the Brandeis Osher
Lifelong Living Institute, which “offers a broad range of noncredit
educational activities for retired, semi-retired and other adult
participants … [and] emphasizes peer leadership, individual and
group participation and research, and an atmosphere of sociability and
mutual encouragement,” according to its website. “It is basically for
people … adults, older people … who want to keep learning and they
offer all kinds of programs there, everything from arts to history
to religion and all kinds of things; but they’re college courses,”
O’Toole explains. She had the chance to teach a class for one day
as a graduate student. The class she taught was “Why Sing Plays? –
A Second Collection” in collaboration with Arthur M. Finstein. She
loved that she could “interact with people from a variety of different
backgrounds, people who are retired lawyers, doctors, musicologists,
administrators, all kinds of things, … and their perspective on
things is so varied.”

While O’Toole hopes to continue in school and earn her Ph.D. in
Musicology, Calliope is not something that she will soon leave behind.

“Long term, we’d like to continue to grow, to a certain level. We don’t
want to become so big that the collaborative process is hampered by the
number of people. We want to continue to raise the bar on our music,
which we have successfully done since the beginning,” she said.

Each year, O’Toole increases the musical difficulty. For the first
concert of the season in September, the goal is to maintain the level
of music, while the second concert in February also entails paying
more attention to detail and being more expressive.

O’Toole recognizes what each member has to offer. “Everybody has a
voice in what we do, you know, people are asked because everybody has
just such a huge variety of experiences, that they all have something
to offer, whether it’s a professional, because we have professionals,
we have serious amateurs and we have music students and we have
scholarship students, so everybody [has] a very different perspective.”

TURKEY RELEASES 4 JAILED JOURNALISTS PENDING TRIAL’S END

CNN

March 13 2012

Istanbul (CNN) — Four journalists accused of being involved in an
alleged plot to overthrow the Turkish government were released on
Monday pending the outcome of their trial in a case that is seen as
a test of press freedom in Turkey.

Among the defendants released were Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener,
two investigative journalists who have been in custody for 375
days for their alleged involvement in the media wing of Ergenekon,
an ultranationalist shadow government aimed at overthrowing the
Islam-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party. Coskun Musluk
and Sait Cakir also were released. All defendants in the case deny
the allegations.

The court in Istanbul released the jailed journalists, citing the
“likelihood of reclassifying the crime” as well as “time spent under
custody,” according to semi-state-run Anatolia News Agency.

“It is pleasing,” said Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc of their
release in a televised speech welcoming the developments. “Long
periods under custody should not turn into punishment,” he said.

Six other defendants remain in custody, including the editors of Oda
TV, a hard-line secularist online publication that is critical of
the AK Party.

“This is not just about press freedom, this is about freedom of
expression,” said Sik upon his release from a prison in the outskirts
of Istanbul. “There are 100 journalists in jail but freedom of
expression is not just a problem for journalists,” he said, pointing
out that 60 students and thousands of Turkish citizens are in jail
because of Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws that curtail freedom of
expression.

A crowd gathered outside the prison to celebrate the release of the
journalists, waving Turkish flags and chanting, “Free press cannot
be silenced.”

The AK Party has come under sharp criticism from the United States
and the European Union for prosecuting journalists. Various press
freedom organizations have been very vocal in their criticism of the
Turkish government.

“The government must go beyond this mere gesture and release all
journalists incarcerated under Turkey’s vague penal and anti-terror
laws. Fundamental reform of the country’s legislation to align it
with international standards is also essential,” said the Committee to
Protect Journalists in a press statement after the release on Monday.

Turkey has one of the highest numbers of journalists in jail in the
world, with roughly 100 members of the press either convicted or on
trial, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most are
of Kurdish origin.

The government says the journalists are not being tried for their
work. But critics believe the prosecutions are politically motivated
and meant to silence opposition voices.

Previous to his arrest, Sik wrote a book focusing on the infiltration
of the Turkish police force by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish
Muslim preacher who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.

Copies of the draft book were confiscated by the police after
Sik’s arrest. “Justice will be served when those who made up these
allegations against us are put in prison,” Sik said after his release.

Sener, a reporter for the daily Milliyet, wrote extensively on the
2007 assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink before his
arrest. Sener accused the state apparatus of purposely overlooking
mounting signals indicating a plot on Dink’s life. In the parking lot
of the prison where he was released, Sener said he would continue
his work to shed light on the Dink murder. “The truth cannot be
imprisoned,” he said.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for June 18.

PROMINENT TURKISH JOURNALISTS FREED, BUT THEIR TRIAL CONTINUES

Times of Malta

March 13 2012

An Istanbul court yesterday ordered two prominent journalists to be
freed, a year after their arrest for allegedly plotting against the
Islamist-rooted Turkish government, TV reports said.

Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik as well as a dozen other suspects have been
charged with abetting a purported secularist network, named Ergenekon,
that allegedly plotted assassinations and bombings to destabilise
the governnment and prompt a military coup.

Mr Sener received the International Press Institute’s World Press
Freedom Hero award in 2010 for a book that blamed the security forces
for the 2007 murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Two other detainees were also released, NTV and CNN-Turk television
networks said.

They will now be able to follow upcoming hearings of their trial as
free men. The journalists face prison terms of up to 15 years if found
guilty. Critics charge that the investigation, launched in 2007, has
degenerated into a campaign to bully critical media and the opposition.

A government spokesman hailed the court decision. “We cannot but
rejoice at their release,” said Bulent Arinc, quoted by the Anatolia
news agency.

“The fact that our friends, who are also journalists, spent 375 days,
or more than a year, in preventive detetion is reason for sadness.”

DIFFERENT SONG AND DANCE
by Frank Kane

The National

March 13 2012
UAE

Normally at this time of year, I’m anticipating the finale of the
European football season, the racing at the Dubai World Cup and
at Cheltenham in England, as well as the other delights of spring
in Dubai.

The Eurovision Song Contest has been the furthest thing from my mind.

All that boombangabang nonsense, pink tutus (for the men) and
heavy-metal Gothic (for the women) has traditionally left me cold.

I usually arrange a night going through the balance sheets of the
GCC’s insurance companies when the Eurovision final is broadcast.

This year, it’s all different. May 26, the date of the final, has been
pencilled in with red felt-tip on my calendar, and the countdown in
the Kane household has excitedly begun.

The reason is that the “contest” is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan,
my wife’s hometown, and for Azeris it has assumed the proportion of
Olympics, World Cup and Nobel Prize rolled into one.

Azerbaijan’s successes on the international stage are, ahem,
infrequent. There have been medals in Olympic wrestling, and excellence
at chess, in both pre and post-Soviet days.

But the truer measure of the country’s renown in international sport
and entertainment is the fact that its best known “sportsman” of
recent years is Tofik Bahramov.

He was the linesman who in 1966 helped England win the Fifa World
Cup by allowing a controversial goal in the final against West Germany.

Stadiums are named after him, statues erected in his honour, postage
stamps bear his image.

When that is your yardstick, you can see why Eurovision is so important
to Azeris.

I was in Baku a couple of years ago when they came third in the
competition, and it was bedlam on the boulevard by the Caspian; at
home in Dubai last year, when Ell and Nikki won it for the Azeris,
the scenes of sobbing delirium among Azeri friends had to be seen to
be believed.

Much like the way a young child looks forward to Christmas, staging
it this year is a big thing for them, a big opportunity to showcase
Azerbaijan on the world stage, and demonstrate the progress and
modernity its oil wealth has brought. So you can equally expect
somebody to come along, Grinch-like, and try to spoil it.

“It’s the Armenians, they are jealous,” is my wife’s intuitive
reaction to the news that some Eurovision countries are considering
a Baku boycott over concerns about human right abuses in the country.

There were rumblings of discontent by organisations such as Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty International over allegations the Baku
authorities were pulling down people’s houses to make way for the
“Crystal Hall” where the final will be held, and further criticism
over Baku’s practice of locking up journalists for the slightest
criticism of the government of Ilham Aliyev, the president.

But it has reached a crescendo since Armenia decided not to participate
in the event at all, on the grounds of security.

Here is not the place for a detailed narrative of the poisoned
relationship between the two Caucasus neighbours.

“Intractable” is far too mild a word to describe the visceral fear
and loathing each bears for the other.

Armenia’s decision to pull out resulted from the fear that their
singers and supporters wouldn’t be safe on the streets of Baku.

I reckon they made a fair call.

But the protest has since swelled calls by some for a Eurovision-wide
boycott.

Campaigners in Iceland, France, Holland and Ireland are calling for
Baku to be blacklisted.

Despite my family connections, I am not especially defending Azerbaijan
here.

It has all the problems of the post-Soviet world, stretching from
Uzbekistan to Poland, of corruption, bureaucracy, lack of freedom of
expression and absence of basic democracy.

But take a look at the countries that have hosted Eurovision over the
years, and you will see such beacons of liberty as Russia, Ukraine
and Serbia.

Israel hosted it twice.

The geopolitical tensions over Eurovision have made it compulsive
viewing this year, and I’ll be glued to the box that night … unless
I get to the Crystal Hall for the real thing.

IRAN TV TALK SHOW BLAMES AZERBAIJAN FOR PURCHASING ISRAELI WEAPONS

Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Sahar 1 TV (in Azeri), Tehran, Iran
March 2 2012

Iran’s state-run international service Sahar TV has blamed Azerbaijan
for the alleged weapons acquisition contract signed with Israel.

Speaking in the studio, the presenter of “Kompas” talk show alleged
that Israel guaranteed Armenia that weapons to be sold to Azerbaijan
would not be used in Karabakh, hinting that UAVs might be used by
Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The following is an excerpt
from report by state-run Iranian international service Sahar 1 TV on
2 March: subheadings have been inserted editorially:

[Correspondent] An agreement on procurement of weapons signed recently
between the Zionist Israeli regime and Azerbaijan was not welcomed in
a usual manner. It mainly faced objections from Iran. The Azerbaijani
ambassador to Iran was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and presented
an official note of protest over the issue. It is natural that the
signing of this kind of agreement should be assessed by Iran as a
biased move in the context of Israeli threat against Iran and it did
so. In response to this, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman
Abdullayev said that those weapons will be used for the liberation
of the occupied [Azerbaijani] lands, namely for the liberation of
Karabakh, and they will not be directed against any country. Question
arises whether or not the Zionist Israeli regime will consent to the
use of these weapons and military hardware against Armenia? According
to allegations, the Zionists have agreed this issue with Armenia
ahead of the sale of military hardware [to Azerbaijan].

Even in November last year an Armenian high-ranking military delegation
secretly visited Tel Aviv to discuss some issues behind the closed
doors, including the agreement on the weapons procurement, to be signed
between Israel and Azerbaijan. So Armenia was guaranteed that none of
those weapons would be used against Armenians in Karabakh and Armenia.

So, if this move of Azerbaijan leads it to the misunderstanding with
its neighbours, why then is Azerbaijan doing this? At the same time,
a question arises can Azerbaijan replace Turkey for the Israeli
regime now?

Israel on Iran’s borders

As the military cooperation between Israel and Turkey has been frozen,
the emergence of another base would be useful for the Zionists,
because the signing of this kind of agreement is a chance for Israel
against the backdrop of losing Turkey. Specially, if the Zionists
succeed in gaining an opportunity for strengthening their positions
on the border with the leading country of the Islamic world, i.e. the
Islamic Republic of Iran, this is important chance for them.

This was also praised by an official at the Defence Ministry of the
Zionist Israeli regime. He said that if Israel succeeds in signing any
military agreement with [a country] located in the neighbourhood of
Iran, this meets Israel’s interests and it is an important chance for
Israel. Now we are presenting to your attention a video clip about why
Azerbaijan has fallen itself into the trap of the Zionists. Following
the video, we will look for some answers to different questions in
dialogue with an expert invited to the studio.

[Passage omitted: video report on Azerbaijan-Israeli cooperation]

Why Israel, not Iran or Pakistan?

[Correspondent] We have invited political expert Rahmatullah Fallah
to the studio to discuss the essence of the weapons agreement signed
between Azerbaijan and Israel as was exposed by foreign sources.

Welcome.

[Rahmatullah Fallah, political expert] Thank you. I am greeting all
viewers, especially our brothers in Azerbaijan.

[Correspondent] Mr Fallah, as you know, Iran offered some assistance
to Azerbaijan when the Ministry of Defence Industry was formed there.

Then it was decided that Azerbaijan should maintain its domestic
requirements through this ministry. However, it is natural that a
country involved in a war can also purchase ammunition and military
hardware from foreign countries. This can be considered as a normal
case. But why precisely from Israel? For example, Turkey, the
Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan also possess great potential
in the sphere of producing air defence systems, missiles, tanks and
military jets.

[Fallah] First, I want to speak about Israel’s present regional
position. Following the Islamic awakening, the Zionists’ security
guarantee in the region, which was established under the Camp David
treaty [signed between Israel and Egypt in 1978], has been losing its
validity. The anti-Zionist mood continues to strengthen in the Arab
world. The USA considers the Zionists’ intention to strengthening
their policy in the region as a threat to its security interests
and so it tries to control Israel. On the one hand, the Zionists’
expansionist policy was not backed by the USA that much, on the other
hand, the USA is concerned about tension in the Middle East. So they
prefer to make a deal beyond the region, for example, in the Caucasus
and the Central Asia. In that case, they paid more attention to the
Azerbaijani Republic. As Azerbaijan is a Shi’i Muslim country and
has the common borders and history with Iran, they intend to provoke
disagreement between Iran and Azerbaijan and prevent them from becoming
strategic partners.

[Passage omitted: Fallah saying the West will never allow Azerbaijan
to use these weapons against Armenia]

UAVs against Iran’s nuclear programme?

[Correspondent] Mr Fallah, the second part of the issue is about the
Islamic Republic of Iran. The talk is about the purchase of 60 pieces
of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Iran recently made a statement
that agents of the Zionist Mossad special services, who played a role
in the killings of some Iranian nuclear scientists, had travelled to
Israel via Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani security services presumably
had information about this. In that case, the most important issue
for the Zionists is to freeze Iran’s nuclear activities and delay
its development. The Zionists will presumably try to damage Iran’s
nuclear programme by using these unmanned aerial vehicles. In that
case, will Azerbaijan not put itself in a difficult situation?

[Fallah] Azerbaijan should have been benefited from Iran’s potential.

The Zionists and Iran are in the state of cold war which may also turn
into serious war in the future. In that case, Azerbaijan sacrifices
itself. Today Azerbaijan does not need unmanned aerial vehicles. The
Zionists have given unmanned vehicles to Azerbaijan to use it for
their benefit and strengthen their spying activities [against Iran].

They even will not give the codes of the unmanned vehicles to
Azerbaijan because they themselves will use it for their benefit. The
Zionist experts’ arrival in Azerbaijan also proves this.

[translated from Azeri]

PRESIDENT PUTIN’S COLD WAR THINKING WITH AZERBAIJAN

Huffington Post

March 14 2012

Azeem Ibrahim.Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School’s International
Security Program

A triumphant Vladimir Putin, Russian president from 2000 to 2008
before becoming prime minister due to term limits, has just won a
third six-year term with nearly 64 percent of the vote.

Opposition claims that his presidential election victory was unfair
and fraudulent are ignored by Putin. Instead, he criticized the
opposition for failing to offer a constructive program and failing
to become a real political force at the ballot box — difficult to
do in a country with controlled elections.

Putin’s tough remarks indicate he is not going to be influenced by the
massive protests that have revealed public anger over his continuing
12-year rule. He will no doubt appoint Medvedev to be Prime Minister
again in the interests of stability, though his next term of office
may not be as stable as he hopes. Political instability in Russia
has been growing over the years and anti-Kremlin movements have grown
in confidence since the December 2011 parliamentary elections, when
Putin’s United Russia Party lost its super-majority in the Duma.

A new growing middle class has emerged from years of relative calm and
anti-Kremlin sentiment has led to a perception of a weaker Putin. At
the same time, the European financial crisis affected Russia’s economy
because an estimated 75 percent of foreign investment in Russia comes
from European Union countries. Trade has rebounded lately as demand
for Russia’s oil and gas continues and prices for both are at record
highs. Economic uncertainties however, feed into domestic political
problems and Putin will have to find a new balance to weather the
volatility ahead.

Any sign of weakness in the Kremlin is likely to be welcomed by
the United States and Central European countries, particularly when
negotiating the missile defense issue. The emerging states of the
former Soviet Union in particular are always looking for opportunities
to assert their independence from Russia. But the smaller breakaway
territories of the region such as the former Georgian territory of
Abkhazia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan are in a more
ambivalent position as they lack resources to exist as independent
nation-states and must rely on Russian patronage. Russia has a
strong military presence in each of the breakaway areas except for
Nagorno-Karabakh which is provided with financial and military aid
through neighboring Armenia.

Russia has shown that it will use its dominant position in the
breakaway areas to control the “parent” states and punish them if
they do something Russia does not like. For example Russia invaded
Georgia in 2008 when Georgia attempted to join NATO. The breakaway
states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were recognized by Russia who
keeps troops stationed there as a constant threat to Georgia.

Recent elections in South Ossetia and Transdniestria, a separatist
region of Moldava, saw Russia’s preferred candidates both losing,
suggesting that Russian influence may be waning. But the need for
Russian funding still guarantees the allegiance of smaller separatist
regions, and while Russia remains a relatively powerful country it
will continue under Putin to assertively oversee the nations in the
former Soviet sphere.

That is why the issue of the Gabala Radar Station in Azerbaijan is
becoming a symbolic yet pivotal actor in the missile defense question
that has preoccupied U.S. and Russian policymakers for some years. The
Gabala Radar Station was built by the Soviet Union in Azerbaijan in
1985 and is now leased and operated by the Russian Aerospace Defense
Forces. It has a range of 6,000 kilometers, covering Iran, Turkey,
India, Iraq and the entire Middle East, and can detect and track the
launch of missiles to enable a defense system to intercept offensive
strikes.

The current lease expires in December 2012, and Moscow wants to extend
the lease for another 25 years. Azerbaijan’s response has been to raise
the rent, first from the existing $7 million a year to $15 million,
then to $150 million and again to $300 million.

The standoff is interesting because the Gabala station needs
modernization and the Russians are building a new and more powerful
station in Armavir, in neighboring Armenia which can replace the
Gabala station when its second phase comes online. By increasing the
rent so dramatically, Azerbaijan is asserting its independence from
Russia and its ability to offer the station instead to NATO.

Speculation about the reasons behind Azerbaijan’s new assertiveness
range from the absence of progress in talks concerning the status
of Nargorno-Karabakh and the delay in finalizing the Trans-Caspian
pipeline.

If Russia refuses to pay up, then it will lose the Gabala Radar
Station. AZ News online reports that, “Moscow then will not only
lose one of its trump cards in negotiation with Washington on missile
defense, but it will also give the Americans a station that will help
them conduct operations against Iran.”

However, the Gabala station may not be such a trump card after all. In
2007, Putin offered the station to the United States if they would
abandon their proposed deployments of missile defense systems in
Poland and Czech Republic. The United States refused and Russia then
had to appease Iran who thought that the Russians were trying to gain
favor with the US at Iran’s expense. The Russians explained it away
by saying that the Gabala station was simply a passive surveillance
system, a listening post, and had no anti-missile component. Moscow
continues to this day to insist that Iran is not capable of launching
ballistic missiles and that the United States has an ulterior motive
of wanting to establish a European defense system to protect them
against a possibly belligerent Russia.

The fate of the Gabala station then is highly symbolic of Russia’s new
President’s attitude toward the former Soviet satellites. Putin’s new
Presidency could well be one of heightened tensions as he seeks to
suppress internal dissent by creating external enemies. Georgia and
Chechnya were hostage to his inordinate ambitions, and the tragic
loss of life and the human rights abuses have gained Putin little
but international disrepute. If Azerbaijan is pressured to lower
the rent by an autocratic Russia, then the Gabala station would be a
constant reminder that Azerbaijan is still a client state, and that
the Russians have a right to maintain their last military outpost in
an independent country.

If the United States were to support Azerbaijan, and perhaps reopen
discussions with the Russians about Gabala and remind them of their
earlier offer, perhaps this relic of the Cold War could be taken
over by NATO or even demolished, decommissioned or turned into a
tourist hotel as some in Azerbaijan have suggested. After all, it
is in a particularly beautiful part of the country and photos of the
site show it to be an especially ugly piece of brutal concrete Soviet
architecture. Let us hope a pragmatic President Putin will see it as
technologically outdated and too expensive to continue to maintain.

Like the statues of Stalin, Gabala radar station should go — along
with Cold War symbols and Cold War thinking.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Professor at the US Army War College,
Lecturer at the University of Chicago, Fellow and Member of the Board
of Directors at the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding
and a former Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard and World Fellow at Yale. He obtained his PhD from Cambridge
University.

IGNORING THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION IN THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Jurist (University of Pittsburgh School of Law)

March 14 2012

JURIST Guest Columnist Stan Goldman of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles,
says federal law already authorizes states to criminally prosecute
perpetrators of genocidal crimes, and that Turkish annoyance is
not a legitimate basis to invalidate a civil remedy against those
responsible for the Armenian genocide…

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc,
in the case of Movsesian v. Victoria Versicherung AG seems not
to have considered the significance of the UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide when it recently
declared unconstitutional a California statute that had authorized
the filing of state lawsuits over unpaid insurance claims brought by
the descendants of victims of the 1915-1921 massacres of Armenians
by the Ottoman Empire. The law had specifically designated that the
claims could be brought for policies that had been issued to “Armenian
genocide victims,” so long as the defendant insurer also happens to
be doing business in California. The law also eliminated any statute
of limitation barriers to such claims. The en banc court held that
this California statute intruded on territory reserved to the federal
government’s exclusive power to conduct and regulate foreign affairs.

The court concluded that by labeling the massacres as having been
“genocide” and providing a legal remedy for it, the State of California
had entered a politically charged area that amounted to establishing
a particular foreign policy for the state. In authorizing California
state courts as a forum for such lawsuits, a political message was
being sent that could have a direct impact upon foreign relations
and might adversely affect the power of the federal government to
deal with these problems. The court’s opinion acknowledged that the
concerns of the Turkish government played a part in the decision.

Was the court correct; or did the Ninth Circuit fail to consider the
consequence of the US being a signatory to the Genocide Convention?

The US having signed the convention presents significant issues with
respect to genocide in general and the genocide of the Armenians
in particular.

First, with respect to the general concept of genocide it must be
remembered that the international convention the US has joined not
only obligates all signatories to intervene when acts of genocide are
taking place, it also gives them the right of prosecution regardless of
where the acts had occurred. By federal law this right of prosecution
may be pursued in the US by either a federal or state court. Thus,
so long as the state has jurisdiction over the individual defendants,
federal law has ceded to the states a right and power to bring criminal
proceedings against any perpetrator of genocide committed anywhere
and at any time in the past.

If the early twentieth century massacre of the Armenians by the Turks
falls within the international convention’s legal definition of having
been “genocide,” then if any Turkish perpetrators were still alive
today, California would have the federally granted legal authority to
prosecute them irrespective of the Turkish government’s objections. In
other words, assuming we are in fact dealing with genocide, the Ninth
Circuit decision has created the anomaly that the State of California
may criminally prosecute those guilty of past genocides but may not
permit civil remedies against them. How could a lawsuit against an
insurance carrier (that may not be a Turkish company) doing business
in California, be said to have more of a direct impact upon foreign
relations so as to potentially adversely affect the power of the
federal government than would a criminal prosecution of a Turkish
soldier in a California state court for genocidal crimes?

We are led to the preliminary question of whether there was in fact
“genocide” perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire (the predecessor state to
present day Turkey) against the Armenians. To understand how obvious
and clear it is that the massacre of the Armenians falls within the
international definition of genocide, all we need do is to look at
the history of the Genocide Convention itself.

That history actually began in 1944 when Raphael Lemkin, a Polish
Jewish Holocaust survivor and professor of law, sought to connect
what he likely believed to be the greatest crimes of the twentieth
century: the destruction of European Jewry and the 1915-1921 Turkish
massacre of Armenia. He created the word “genocide” to describe and
connect these two all-but-unfathomable tragedies in his seminal work,
Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It combined the Greek word “genos”
for family or tribe and the Latin word “cide” for killing. His
writings soon became a resource for the prosecutions at the Nuremberg
Trials. In 1948, thanks to his relentless efforts, the UN General
Assembly approved the first step required in order to add genocide
to the list of international crimes. Lemkin then spent the next three
years traveling from country to country lobbying for ratification of
the Genocide Convention, which first took effect in 1951.

Today, attorneys involved in the prosecution and defense of those
charged with genocidal crimes comb the papers of Raphael Lemkin in
search of legislative intent in hope of supporting whatever legal
position they may be taking. So complete was his authorship of this
rule that to this day commentators as diverse as Samantha Powers,
senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security
Council in the Obama administration, and international correspondent
Christiane Amanpour refer to the genocide treaty simply as “Lemkin’s
Law.” When the US adopted the convention as the law of the land,
it also adopted a legislative history that includes the definition
and origin of “genocide.”

Though it is remotely possible to engage in a futile intellectual
exercise as to whether certain other attempts at man-made extinction
(such as the mass murders in Bosnia, Rwanda or Darfur) legally qualify
as genocides, there can be no such debate under international treaty
for the massacres of the Armenians or with respect to the Holocaust
of the Jews. To claim that neither are legally genocide would be like
arguing that slavery is not governed by the Thirteenth Amendment. You
cannot eliminate from the definition of a term the very thing the
word was created to describe.

Thus, the actual genocide treaty to which the US is a party was
authored by the man who created the word “genocide” specifically to
refer to the massacre of the Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman
Empire and the slaughter of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis and
their allies. If a perpetrator of those massacres were still alive
and present in California they could be criminally prosecuted in
California state courts. What then of potential civil consequences
arising out of such legally acknowledged genocide?

Consider civil actions involving Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Let
us assume that the Art Loss Registry discovers that a large and
influential Austrian Corporation has in one of its American offices a
valuable painting looted by the Nazis from the home of Sigmund Freud
as the elderly Jewish psychiatrist fled his Vienna in 1938. Freud’s
American-born legal heirs file a civil claim in a US state court in
an effort to retrieve ownership of the stolen art work. The Austrian
government, however, maintains that it would be an embarrassment
to one of its country’s major companies and thus could affect that
foreign nation’s relations with the US if the lawsuit were allowed
to proceed. Are we now to simply conclude that Austria’s objection
to a suit against one of its nation’s private corporations thereby
disables US courts from attempting to retrieve property in spite of
all American laws to the contrary?

Though it must be admitted that more recent administrations have been
hesitant to support symbolic reiterations designating the atrocities
against the Armenians as genocide, this does not change the fact that
the recognition of genocide of the Armenians is as an intrinsic part
of our having agreed to the Genocide Convention as is the recognition
of the German Holocaust of the Jews. Federal law already authorizes
the prosecution of perpetrators, including foreign nationals, of
genocidal crimes. This would be true even if they were Ottoman soldiers
or officials still alive today and captured within the territory of
California. How then can Turkish annoyance and objection be grounds
to invalidate a civil remedy against private companies in order to
obtain some minimal form of restitution for as yet uncompensated losses
arising out of this genocide? Yet, according to the Ninth Circuit,
no civil remedy can exist.

Much has changed in the near century since the massacres of the
Armenians. As it is now Istanbul and not Constantinople, so too the
Ottoman Empire morphed an age ago into the modern Republic of Turkey.

History, however, is immutable. Though the actual perpetrators of those
early twentieth century crimes against humanity may no longer be within
any signatory to the Genocide Conventions’ criminal jurisdiction, civil
claims still remain unsettled. Is it the role of US federal courts to
add unnecessary road blocks in the path of the victim’s efforts to
achieve a small modicum of long overdue restitution? This could not
have been the intent of the US when it signed the Genocide Convention.

Stan Goldman is a Professor of Law at Loyola Law School, Los
Angeles, where he is Director of the Center for the Study of Law &
Genocide. He filed an amicus brief in the Movsesian case on behalf of
the plaintiffs, and he appeared as second chair at an Ninth Circuit
panel that reviewed the case.

Suggested citation: Stan Goldman, Ignoring the Genocide
Convention in the Ninth Circuit, JURIST – Forum, Mar. 14, 2012,