Author: Kalashian Nyrie

EU CONCERNED OVER AZERBAIJAN’S BELLICOSE STATEMENTS
Arka News Agency, Armenia
June 26 2006
YEREVAN, July 25. /ARKA/. The European Union is concerned over
Azerbaijan’s bellicose statements, EU Special Representative for
the South Caucasus Peter Semneby stated at his meeting with Armenian
Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan.
He pointed out that Azerbaijan’s bellicose statements will not
entail any sanctions – the conflicting parties must be persuaded into
restraining from statements of this kind.
Statements like these are against the countries’ interests, because
bellicose statements affect the countries reputation and increase
the risk for investors when the countries are open to contacts and
investments.
Peter Semneby is to leave Armenia today. P.T. -0–

MICHEL PLATINI TO PAY SHORT VISIT TO ARMENIA
Armenpress
YEREVAN, JULY 26, ARMENPRESS: A famous French football player, Michel
Platini, will pay a short visit to Armenia on August 2. He is coming
at the invitation of Ruben Hayrapetian, the president of the Armenian
Football Federation (AFF).
Michel Platini is now vice president of the French Football Federation
and a member of FIFA and UEFA executive committees. In Armenia Platini
will attend the inauguration of a football field with artificial cover
in a Yerevan Avan district and will meet also some top government
officials.
Michel Platini was voted European footballer of the year (Ballon
d’Or) an unprecedented three times in succession, in 1983, 1984 and
1985. Platini was also voted World Soccer Player of the Year in 1984
and 1985.
On July 24 Platini announced his candidacy to become the UEFA
chairman. In the election he will face the current UEFA chairman,
the Swede Lennart Johansson.

INVESTIGATION OF CRASH OF A320 IS OVER
Lragir.am
26 July 06
On July 26 the General Department of Civil Aviation under the Armenian
government received the official release of the Interstate Aviation
Committee on the findings of the investigation into the crash of A320.
The records of the black boxes and ground services were deciphered
and studied. The simulation model of the flight dynamics of A320 was
worked out to find out the conditions and circumstances of the flight.
As it had been reported, 6 km from the coast the plane plunged into
the Black Sea and sunk. Everyone on board died, including 8 members
of the crew and 105 passengers.
During the investigation it became known that the dispatcher instructed
the pilot to stop the landing because of the impermissibly low line
of clouds and at a height of 340 m the crew stopped the landing and
turned the plane right gaining height.
The captain of the crew switched off the automatic pilot and after a
short period of gaining height he started landing. With inadequate
actions of the captain of the crew the second pilot could not keep
the landing parameters under control. The further actions of the
crew were not coordinated and were insufficient to prevent the plane
from falling.
The engine and systems of the plane did not fail, the plane responded
to the instructions of both the autopilot and the crew. The fuel of
the plane was sufficient to end the flight.

President Robert Kocharyan received EU Special Envoy Peter Semneby
ArmRadio.am
24.07.2006 13:32
President Robert Kocharyan received today EU Special Representative
for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby. The parties discussed Armenia-EU
relations, particularly issues related to the adoption of the Actions
Plan with Armenia in the framework of the European New Neighbors
Program. Reference was made also to the Karabakh issue and the
regional developments.

In Istanbul, a Writer Awaits Her Day in Court
Buzzle, CA
July 25, 2006
Bestselling novelist Elif Shafak is the latest writer to face trial
for “insulting Turkishness”. She tells Richard Lea about her work,
the charges that have been brought against her, and how the Turkish
language has become a battleground. “Nobody was expecting this,” says
bestselling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak. A decision in Istanbul’s
seventh high criminal court earlier this month reopened her prosecution
on charges of “insulting Turkishness”. She faces a maximum jail term
of three years if convicted.
Shafak joins a roster of more than 60 writers and journalists to
be charged under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code since
its introduction last year. University professors, journalists and
novelists such as Perihan Magden, Orhan Pamuk and now Shafak have
been charged under legislation drawn so broadly as to criminalise a
wide range of critical opinions. Writers not only face the prospect
of a three-year jail term, but the prosecutions also lay them open to
a campaign of intimidation and harassment waged by rightwing agitators.
“The protests are maybe even more unnerving than the actual trial,”
Shafak told the Guardian today from her home in Istanbul. “Although
their number is very limited they are very aggressive, very
provocative.” She describes crowds of protesters slapping and jostling
defendants both inside and outside the courtroom, shouting and throwing
coins and pens.
The charges against Shafak open up new ground. She is not accused of
“insulting Turkishness” because of her campaigning journalism or her
academic work, but for remarks made by a fictional character in her
latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.
The novel, which was originally written in English, was published in
a Turkish translation in March 2006 and quickly became a bestseller.
The novel follows four generations of women, moving between Turkey and
the US to tell the story of an Armenian family and the descendants
of a son left behind during the deportations, who converts to Islam
and lives as a Turk. It is perhaps the first Turkish novel to deal
directly with the massacres, atrocities and deportations that decimated
the country’s Armenian population in the last years of Ottoman rule.
Initial reactions to the book were mostly positive, and it went on
to sell over 50,000 copies in less than four months. “I gave numerous
readings, talks and book signings all over Turkey,” explains Shafak.
“Although the novel was difficult to digest for some people, in
general the reception has been very positive.”
But in June a nationalist lawyer called Kemal Kerincsiz filed a
complaint in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district court against Shafak, her
publisher, Semi Sokmen, and her translator, Asli Bican. Shafak and
her publisher argued during interrogation that the book was a work
of literature and that comments made by fictional characters could
not be used to press charges against an author.
“The interrogation went on for some time and eventually the prosecutor
decided there was no element of insult and he dropped the case,”
says Shafak. But her relief was short-lived. Earlier this month the
same lawyer took the case to a higher court, and ultimately managed
to have the decision overturned. She is now confronted with a long
and daunting legal process. A trial, with all the unwelcome attention
from rightwing groups which that entails, is now inevitable.
It could not have come at a worse moment – she is six months
pregnant. “From now on it is a long legal battle,” she says. “The
later stages of the pregnancy will probably coincide with the first
stages of the trial.”
Peter Ayrton, founder of Serpent’s Tail, a publisher deeply committed
to literature in translation, was unsurprised by the news of Shafak’s
prosecution. “Most writers that are any good would get into trouble
with the Turkish authorities,” he explains. “She’s a very acerbic
voice. Her novels are lively, episodic and innovative. She’s obviously
a feminist, and her work is obviously rooted in contemporary social
conditions in Turkey.”
Perhaps the time she spent abroad has given her a different perspective
on Turkish life. She was born in Strasbourg, France in 1971 and spent
her teenage years in Spain, before returning to Turkey to study social
sciences. Four years ago she moved to the US, spending a year at the
University of Michigan before her appointment as assistant professor
at the University of Arizona. She now divides her time between the
US and Turkey, where she has been touring the country to promote her
new novel.
Shafak herself believes the charges were brought for two reasons:
“The overt reason is my latest novel and the critical tone of the
book. The latent reason is deeper and more complex. I have been active
and outspoken on various ‘taboo’ issues, critical of ultranationalism
and all sorts of rigid ideologies, including those coming from the
Kemalist elite, and I have maintained a public presence on minority
rights, especially on the Armenian question. It is a whole package.”
Indeed, her fiction has always focused on social issues which Turks
prefer to keep hidden, explains sociologist Muge Gocek, who translated
the first of Shafak’s novels to appear in the UK, The Flea Palace. “But
she does so with humour, with grace, and without ever letting her
characters lose their nobility of spirit,” she adds.
The way Shafak deals with Turkey’s past is also unique, continues
Gocek, “both in terms of her knowledge of religious heterodoxy as well
as her use of Ottoman words – these elements add layers of depth to
her novels.”
According to Shafak, language has been at the heart of the process of
creating a new nation state, with words of Persian, Arabic or Sufi
origin being purged from the language in an attempt to break away
from the Ottoman past. “In the name of modernisation our language
shrunk tremendously,” she says.
“As a writer who happens to be a woman and attached to Islamic, as well
as Jewish and Christian heterodox mysticism, I reject the rationalised,
disenchanted, centralised, Turkified modern language put in front
of me,” she declares. “Today in Turkey, language is polarised and
politicised. Depending on the ideological camp you are attached to,
for example Kemalists versus Islamists, you can use either an ‘old’
or a ‘new’ set of words.”
It is a choice she refuses to make, filling her writing with both “old”
and “new” words. She says her fiction is like “walking on a pile of
rubble left behind after a catastrophe. I walk slowly so that I can
hear if there is still someone or something breathing underneath. I
listen attentively to the sounds coming from below to see if anyone,
any story or cultural legacy from the past, is still alive under the
rubble. If and when I come across signs of life, I dig deep and pull
it up, above the ground, shake its dust, and put it in my novels so
that it can survive.”
Catheryn Kilgarriff, co-director of her British publisher Marion
Boyars, was also drawn to her use of old Turkish language, as well
as her use of allegory and fable. “She’s an extraordinary writer,”
she says, and an extremely exciting prospect for the future. “She’s
only 35 now and she’s already mastered one or two different voices
in her fiction. There’s more to come.”
It’s a body of work which is building her a formidable reputation
overseas. “She’s doing astoundingly well,” adds Kilgarriff, pointing
out that Shafak’s books have been taken up by the large chains and
offered in three for two promotions – unusual treatment indeed for
literature in translation.
Shafak has been published in Turkey, the US and Britain, though only
two of her six novels are available in the UK at the moment. Since
writing The Flea Palace, which was shortlisted for the Independent
Foreign Fiction prize in 2005, she has begun writing in English –
an act which has been seen by Turkish nationalists as a “cultural
betrayal”.
It was a choice motivated more by her passion for language, by the
search for new modes of expression. “There are certain things I’d
rather write in English, certain others I’d rather write in Turkish,”
she explains. “English, to me, is a more mathematical language, it
is the language of precision. It embodies an amazing vocabulary and
if you are looking for the ‘precise word’, it is right out there.
Turkish, to me, is more sentimental, more emotional.” English seems
more suited for philosophy, analytical writing or humour, “but if I
am writing on sorrow I’d rather use Turkish.”
This is something that nationalists fail to understand, she says. “It
is always us versus them, this or that. Nationalists cannot understand
that one can be multilingual, multicultural, cosmopolitan … without
feeling obliged to make a choice between them once and for all.”
It is perhaps this instinct which lies at the heart of the wider
conflicts taking place in contemporary Turkish society. An increasingly
urban Turkey has seen a broad cultural renaissance over the last three
decades, which has been consistently under-reported in the west. Voices
in literature, academia and the arts have begun to examine subjects
which have long been taboo, to raise questions about uncomfortable
issues such as the role of women or the history of Turkey’s Armenian
minority.
But as this cultural resurgence has gained strength it has been met
by a nationalist reaction.
“On the one hand there are the ones who want Turkey to join the EU,
democratise further and become an open society,” says Shafak, but
on the other “are the ones who want to keep Turkey as an insular,
xenophobic, nationalistic, enclosed society. And precisely because
things are changing in the opposite direction, the panic and backlash
produced by the latter group is becoming more visible and audible.”
There are those who think that the prosecutions of leading writers
under Article 301 are a sign that nothing is changing in Turkey, but
Shafak thinks it is just the opposite: “Article 301 is being used
more and more against critical minds precisely because things have
been changing very rapidly in Turkey. The bigger and deeper the social
transformation, the more visible the discomfort of those who want to
preserve the status quo and the louder the backlash coming from them.”
It’s a reaction which has already cast doubt on to Turkey’s accession
into the EU. Earlier this month the European commissioner in charge
of negotiations with Turkey urged the Turkish authorities to amend
Article 301, reminding them that freedom of expression “constitutes
the core of democracy” and is a “key principle” in determining a
state’s eligibility to join the EU.
It is too early to say what effect the trial will have on Shafak. She
is determined that it will not influence her writing. “Next time I
start a novel, I do not want to have qualms, fearing this or that
topic might cause me yet another trouble,” she says, adding that
she is “much more daring” in her fiction than in her daily life:
“While I am writing the urge to go on with the story outweighs any
other concern that might cross my mind.”
A date for her trial has not yet been fixed. For the moment all she
can do is wait.
The Bastard of Istanbul will be published in the US by Viking/Penguin
in 2007
Elif Shafak’s The Gaze was published in the UK earlier this month by
Marion Boyars at £9.99
–Boundary_(ID_NHUsYT3zbQsQt7EsgMDFPw) —

ARMENIAN PRIME MINISTER CONDEMNS VIOLENCE AGAINST JOURNALISTS
Armenpress
YEREVAN, JULY 24, ARMENPRESS: Armenian prime minister Andranik
Margarian condemned last Saturday violence against journalists
describing it as ‘one of the shadow sides of Armenia’s democratic
advance.”
Speaking to reporters after the extraordinary conference of his
Republican Party Margarian said a recent arson attack on the editorial
office of the weekly Chorrord Iskhanutyun must be condemned and
repetitions of such incidents must be ruled out.
Margarian also called on journalists not to politicize the case of
Arman Babajanian, the chief editor of the Yerevan Zhamanak daily
who is facing trial on charges of forging papers to dodge obligatory
military service.
Asked whether his party is going to cooperate with the Prosperous
Armenia party of Gagik Tsarukian the prime minister said it was early
to speak about it as the Prosperous Armenia was not yet an established
party. He said his party will work to maintain and increase the
number of seats it has in the parliament and also its leverages in
the government.

MEDIATORS BOW OUT OF THE KARABAKH GAME;
Russia, Europe, and the United States ought to declare that war is unacceptable
Agency WPS
What the Papers Say Part A (Russia)
July 21, 2006 Friday
By Nicholas Whyte, Europe Program Director, Sabine Freizer, Caucasus
Project Director, International Crisis Group
An update on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; International mediators
have spent 12 years trying in vain to find a way of resolving
the bloody conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over control of
Nagorno-Karabakh. American, French, and Russian mediators have now had
to withdraw, and the opposing sides are preparing to resume their war.
Contrary to expectations, the G8 summit in St. Petersburg did not
include talks between President Robert Kocharian of Armenia and
President Ilkham Aliyev of Azerbaijan. International mediators
have spent 12 years trying in vain to find a way of resolving
the bloody conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over control of
Nagorno-Karabakh. American, French, and Russian mediators have now had
to withdraw, and the opposing sides are preparing to resume their war.
After the USSR collapsed, several armed conflicts broke out in the
Trans-Caucasus – but the largest and most vicious was the conflict
in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan with a predominantly
Armenian population. By the time a truce was signed in 1995, around
30,000 people had been killed and over a million people from both
sides had been subjected to forced resettlement. The armed forces
of Nagorno-Karabakh, supported by Armenia, are still holding on to
seven districts of Azerbaijan.
Over the past decade, the opposing sides haven’t managed to sign a
single agreement that might bring political regulation closer. The
high points of many years of effort by Minsk Group mediators were two
meetings between Robert Kocharian and Ilkham Aliyev, held in the first
half of 2006. But even these meetings didn’t produce any concrete steps
toward achieving a stable peace. In an unusually tough statement issued
in late June, the international mediators indicated that they don’t see
any point in continuing intensive shuttle diplomacy or organizing more
meetings at the presidential level. In a statement dated July 3, the
mediators confirmed that they are prepared to facilitate regulation,
while emphasizing that in practice, neither Baku nor Yerevan are
showing any political will to reach agreement.
The basic components of potential regulation are well-known. The
International Crisis Group identified them clearly in two reports
released in 2005. The statement issued by the mediators confirmed these
provisions: all sides must reject the use of force; Armenian troops
should leave the territory of Azerbaijan adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh;
both sides should undertake to hold a referendum on the ultimate
status of Nagorno-Karabakh, without any “forcible measures” being used;
Nagorno-Karabakh should have a temporary status during this period, and
the international community should provide substantial aid, including
a peacekeeping contingent – especially given that this is Europe’s only
“frozen conflict” where no international observers are present.
The stumbling blocks in the negotiations have been the future status
of two corridors linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, the conditions
for the proposed referendum, and the requirement to ensure the return
of refugees before the referendum is held. The mediators proposed
reaching agreement on other points first, unblocking the process
itself, and postponing discussion of the most difficult problems –
but this proposal was not accepted.
Armenia’s victory in the military action of 1992-94, when extensive
territories were occupied and their Azeri residents expelled, has
proved to be a Pyrrhic victory. Armenia was left isolated when Turkey
closed its borders. But the political arithmetic accepted in Yerevan
precludes the possibility of conclusive regulation: supporters of
President Kocharian, the former leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, would
never forgive him for making concessions to Azerbaijan.
Baku, kept afloat by its oil export earnings (set to triple
Azerbaijan’s revenues by 2009), seems to be harboring its own plans
for resolving the conflict. Azerbaijan’s defense spending for 2007
will be larger than Armenia’s entire state budget. In the last war,
Azerbaijan was defeated. Clearly, some people in Baku are in a
revanchist mood: Azeri officials, starting with President Aliyev,
are praising their country’s military might.
Although the mediators’ efforts haven’t produced results, the
international community cannot allow events to get out of control;
there is too much at stake. The time has come to revise relations
with both countries.
Armenia is receiving substantial aid from the outside world, some
of which was delivered recently from the United States as part of
the Millenium Challenges program. Azerbaijan is at the center of a
network of energy and security interests – including the gas and oil
pipelines connecting Caspian Sea fields with Turkey and the West.
Some representatives of Azerbaijan are hoping that geopolitical
interests will make the international community turn a blind eye if
Azerbaijan launches a military campaign to regain the territory it
lost in 1994. Russia, Europe, and the United States need to make their
stance on this issue absolutely clear, if that has not already been
done by the mediators’ latest statement. They should indicate that
any renewed use of armed force would negate all commitments regarding
economic and political assistance. If the international community
can’t manage to restore peace to the Trans-Caucasus, it should at least
make it unambiguously clear that resuming the war is unacceptable.
Source: Vremya Novostei, July 20, 2006, p. 5
Translated by Elena Leonova

OSCE Mission confident the Karabakh people have not inflamed their own forests
ArmRadio.am
21.07.2006 13:18
On July 20, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic
Masis Mayilian received Field Assistant of Personal Representative
of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office (PRC-i-O) Gunter Folk.
During the meeting Mr. Folk delivered NKR Deputy Foreign Minister
a report of the Office of the OSCE PRC-i-O on inflammations at the
contact-line of Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh armed forces.
As it was informed before on June 15, 2006, the NKR Ministry of
Foreign Affairs addressed the Office of the Personal Representative
of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office with a request to conduct a monitoring
at the border with Azerbaijan for estimating the situation and making
certain of the strained accusations of Baku on the alleged burnings
of the adjoining settlements on the territories controlled by the
Nagorno Karabakh Republic. On July 3-5 the OSCE Mission conducted a
series of observations at the boundary zone. A corresponding report
was prepared in the result of the monitoring.
At present the document is being studied at the NKR Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and one can already assert that the OSCE mission did not reveal
any facts of damage caused by fire to the settlements, situated in
the NKR security zone, as the Azerbaijani side tried to present.

Presidents of Georgia, Ukraine stay away from ex-Soviet gathering in Moscow
By MIKE ECKEL
AP Worldstream
Jul 21, 2006
The Western-leaning presidents of Georgia and Ukraine on Friday
decided not to attend an informal summit of leaders from a loose
grouping of 12 ex-Soviet nations in Moscow, highlighting divisions
within the Russian-dominated body.
Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili had wanted to meet with
President Vladimir Putin for a private meeting on the sidelines of
the Commonwealth of Independent States gathering to discuss rising
tensions in two breakaway regions and Russia’s support for separatists.
But Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said the president
would not go because the busy summit schedule would not allow for a
substantive meeting with Putin. The Kremlin had never confirmed that
Putin would hold separate talks with the Georgian president.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who like Saakashvili has
sought to lessen Russian influence and turn his country Westward,
also decided not to attend the two-day meeting. Spokeswoman Iryna
Gerashchenko said he would not attend because of Ukraine’s continuing
political turmoil, four months after parliamentary elections.
Georgia’s parliament this week called for the withdrawal of Russian
peacekeepers whose presence in the two breakaway regions _ South
Ossetia and Abkhazia _ is one of a host of irritants between Tbilisi
and its former imperial master.
The parliament resolution was widely seen as a bid to strengthen
Saakashvili’s position in talks with Putin.
Russian authorities, who accuse Georgia of planning provocations as a
pretext for a forceful takeover of South Ossetia, warned this week that
Moscow would use all means to protect its peacekeepers and citizens
in the two regions _ where most residents have Russian passports.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been embroiled in political crisis since
Yushchenko’s Russian-backed presidential rival came out ahead in March
parliamentary elections. Yushchenko has been deliberating about how to
respond to a new pro-Russian coalition’s bid to make Viktor Yanukovych
prime minister.
Created amid the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the CIS has
been criticized by its own members as ineffective and the rise of
pro-Western leaders in Georgia and Ukraine and Moldova’s reorientation
toward the West has put further pressure on it.
Russia, meanwhile, has shored up ties with authoritarian Central
Asian nations.
Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, was quoted
by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying that informal discussions on
reforming the CIS were among the items on the leaders’ agenda.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian, a close ally of Russia, will
also not attend the meeting because he has a cold, spokesman Viktor
Sogomonian said.
Turkmenistan’s President Saparmurat Niyazov was also staying away
from the summit, as he has repeatedly in the past. Tajik President
Emomali Rakhmonov’s plans were uncertain.
The informal summit was expected to include dinner Friday evening
at a waterside restaurant in an upscale Moscow suburb and a visit to
the track for a horse race dubbed the Russian President’s Cup.
___
Associated Press Writer Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili contributed to this
report from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Sargsyan Heads Council of Republican Party of Armenia
PanARMENIAN.Net
22.07.2006 14:54 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ At today’s extraordinary 10th session of the
Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) changes were made in the statute
and regulations of the Party. The post of Chair of the Party Council,
which is the First Deputy Chairman and is commissioned to make official
statements, is restored. RPA Deputy Chairmen are also commissioned
to make statements.
Defense Minister Serge Sargsyan, who lately became RPA member, has
headed the Council of Republican Party of Armenia. The Council is
composed of 70 people, who will convene once a month according to
the new regulations.