Author: Kalashian Nyrie

MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS POSITIVELY ESTIMATE WARSAW NEGOTIATIONS
A1plus
| 15:02:24 | 19-05-2005 | Politics |
The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs give a positive estimate to the
recurrent round of the immediate negotiations between the Armenian
and Azerbaijani Presidents that took place in Warsaw May 15, Day.az
reports.
“In our opinion the meeting transmitted a political impulse to the
further talks. It is very important. We will follow the direction the
Presidents outlined and there is a strong hope that we will succeed”,
MG Russian Co-Chair Yuri Merzlyakov stated.
When commenting on Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharian’s refusal to make
a statement upon completion of the meeting Yuri Merzlyakov said, “It
is their right”. “It does not mean that they have nothing to sat. On
the contrary, they have but decided to not to say anything”, he added.
When touching upon the recent statement by Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar
Mamedyarov about Armenia’s readiness to abandon 7 Azeri territories the
Co-Chair said, “Judging from the facts available and the Minister’s
words it was a journalist interpretation. What does it mean that
Armenia is ready? The withdrawal of troops is being considered and
this principle is not questioned by the Armenian party. However there
is no final agreement”.
According to the diplomat the withdrawal of troops is not the “issue
of tomorrow or the day after tomorrow”.

Armenian official surprised at Azeri press reports on leaders’ “secret” meeting
Arminfo
18 May 05
Yerevan, 18 May: “I think the two [Armenian and Azerbaijani] presidents
have discussed different issues in their talks [in Warsaw on 15 May],
but as far as I know, they are kept secret. I am very surprised that
this level of detail has emerged in the Azerbaijani press,” Armenian
Deputy Foreign Minister Arman Kirakosyan has said commenting on
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s statement that the
two countries had allegedly reached an agreement on the handover of
seven districts to Azerbaijan in exchange for unblocking the railway
communication.
Arman Kirakosyan stressed that the region’s problem, as well as
Armenia’s relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, continue to be in
Yerevan’s focus and that the Armenian administration is cooperating
with the US government in developing political dialogue.

OPEN-DOORS DAY IN CE YEREVAN OFFICE
Pan Armenian News
16.05.2005 05:46
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On the occasion of the Third Council of Europe
Summit held in Warsaw May 16-17 the Council of Europe Information
Office in Armenia organizes open-doors day for the public at large
and for students and representatives of mass media in particular. As
PanARMENIAN.Net reporter came to know from the CE Yerevan Office,
this initiative will give the visitors the possibility to follow
online the full live webcast of the Summit; to receive a comprehensive
information pack of materials in English and Armenian covering the aims
and expectations of the Third Summit, as well as general information on
the Council of Europe; to watch video materials on the establishment
and development of the Council of Europe; the two previous summits of
the organization as well as watch interviews with Council of Europe
leaders pertaining to the Warsaw Summit.

Jerusalem Post
May 11 2005
Other people’s genocide
By LARRY DERFNER

Beatrice Kaplanian in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. No hard feelings.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
Photo: A 100-year-old survivor of the Armenian expulsion from Turkey
recalls the horrors she survived
Among Beatrice Kaplanian’s sharpest memories from the death march of
1915 is thirst. “We would cry for water,” she says. She remembers
seeing her father die. “He was so weak. We covered him and they took
him to the valley. They didn’t bury him, they just left him there
with the others.” She saw a lot of Armenians on the march die from
thirst and fatigue. “Somebody would faint, and he wouldn’t get up.”
Sitting outside in her gray-brick, 17th-century rooftop apartment in
Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter, Kaplanian, whose memories of the
killings put her age at roughly 100, is Israel’s last living survivor
of the Armenian genocide. Between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenian
civilians were killed in 1915-16 by the troops and mobs of the
Turkish Ottoman Empire, mainly on forced marches from Turkey to
Syria. Another 500,000 to one million Armenians survived and became
permanent refugees.
The journey featured widespread rape, as well as mass murders by
burning, drowning, axing and beating with blunt instruments – this
last “to save shell and powder,” in the words of then-US ambassador
to Turkey Henry Morgenthau. In this way, live ammunition was saved
for the Ottoman armies fighting World War I.
Countless other Armenians died of epidemics in the gigantic
concentration camps set up along the route.
Kaplanian is small and somewhat bent over and her hands tremble, but
she’s remarkably mobile and alert and still has a headful of thick,
straight, blondish-white hair. She moves plastic chairs and a
clothesline out of the way for the interview, and poses according to
the photographer’s requests.
Translating my questions into her native Turkish is George Hintlian,
Israel’s leading Armenian historian, a lifelong resident of the
Armenian Quarter who “discovered” Kaplanian only a few years ago.
Born Filomena before being renamed Beatrice by her British adoptive
parents, she is one of some 800 survivors he says he has interviewed.
The living memory of the genocide is “like a sinking ship, and you
have to salvage whatever you can,” says Hintlian, 58.
As a little girl in her mountain village, Filomena and her sister
Christina used to play with the Turkish neighbors’ girls. Then one
day the town crier went from house to house among the Armenians
telling them that they would all have to leave the next day. Neither
the two girls, their older brother or their parents understood what
was going on, the old woman says.
They took cheese and bread, threw a mattress and saddle over their
donkey – a relative luxury on the march, only for the well-to-do –
and the two sisters sat in the saddle while the rest of the family
walked. They weren’t told their destination, but they were being led
to Aleppo, Syria, some 700 km. away.
One night one of the “escorts” on the march – who were often violent
criminals released by the Ottomans especially for this murderous duty
– snatched one of the pretty Armenian girls in an instant. “We heard
her shriek,” recalls Kaplanian, and the girl was not seen again.
Twice the old woman cried in the interview. The first time was while
recalling how she and her sister refused their mother’s request to
sit in the saddle for a few hours to rest her feet, telling her that
their feet hurt too. The second time was when Kaplanian remembered
how a Turkish official took her back to Turkey to be his and his
wife’s daughter; she never saw or heard from her family after that.
The postwar British occupation of Turkey removed Filomena from the
Turkish couple’s home, bringing her to a British orphanage in Beirut,
where she was adopted and later brought to Jerusalem. There she
married a shoemaker from her family’s village named Kaplanian who
died some 20 years ago, and they had a son who is now in late-middle
age.
A devout Christian whose only book at home is the Bible, she says she
has “no hard feelings” toward the Turks – or the Kurds, Circassians
or Chechens, who also took part in the slaughter – over what happened
90 years ago. “They are human beings too,” she says. “My heart is at
peace.” Based on what he knows of other survivors, Hintlian says
Kaplanian’s longevity is tied to her extraordinarily forgiving
attitude. “The survivors who were filled with hatred usually didn’t
live long lives,” he says.
We met at Jaffa Gate as it was filled with Jews coming for the Pessah
birkat hakohanim, or “priestly blessing.” In the adjacent Armenian
Quarter walls were pasted with posters for the 90th anniversary of
the Armenian genocide.
As with millions of Armenians above a certain age, Hintlian grew up
on family memories of the genocide. His father was on the death
march, and he would tell stories about how his father was axed to
death, and how his baby brother died from acute diarrhea a few days
after their despairing mother, unable to still the boy’s endless
cries for water that they didn’t have, gave him muddy water from the
ground to drink.
By contrast, the stories Hintlian heard from his mother taught him
“that there were good Turks, too,” he says. The mayor of his mother’s
village in Turkey, a man named Jellal, who had already been removed
by the Ottomans from his post as governor of Aleppo for refusing to
cooperate in the genocide, refused again as mayor of the village,
costing him that position, too. Jellal won the village’s Armenians
crucial months to prepare for their eventual expulsion, says
Hintlian.
“None of my mother’s family died on the march,” he says. “They were
wealthy, they traveled in a carriage, and they bribed escorts and
officials along the way.” Many of the Armenian survivors owed their
lives to such bribery, he notes, while others were aided by
sympathetic Turks and Kurds, and still others, like his father,
survived by resourcefulness and simple “Darwinian” stamina.
His father eventually came to Jerusalem to work as an assistant to
the Armenian Patriarch, and George later followed him in the post,
which he held for 25 years. During that time he became a historian,
publishing eight books on 19th-century Jerusalem and the 1,500-year
history of the city’s Armenians.
He decided to research the Armenian genocide at age 19 after hearing
a lecture by the pioneer historian of that cataclysm, Vahakn Dadrian,
an Armenian-American.
Yet despite having interviewed hundreds of survivors, both local
residents and foreigners coming on pilgrimage, and even though he has
pored over accounts of the genocide left by American, German,
Austrian and Scandinavian officials in Turkey at the time, Hintlian
says he has not written a book on the subject and has no plans to do
so.
“When Dadrian used to come to the library in the Patriarchate to do
research, we had to remind him to eat lunch, he just became so
overwhelmed by the cruelty of the stories,” says Hintlian, sitting in
an Armenian cafe for tourists at Jaffa Gate.
“Sometimes I go to Yad Vashem and I see scholars coming out looking
depressed. I don’t think I have the nerves and willpower to live in
that world. It’s a hell,” he says. “I can read only one week at a
time (about the Armenian genocide), then I want to stop. I’m not
suited for this work.” Still, he is drawn to the old people he
interviews. “I start off asking them about their blood pressure,
their simple human needs. Once they feel you care, they’ll tell you
anything,” he says with a gentle smile.
“But sometimes I’m very worried about interviewing them,” he
continues. Hintlian fears that he may have actually brought on the
deaths of three aged interviewees by leading them to recount their
childhood memories from the death march. “Three people died very soon
after I interviewed them. One died four hours after, another two days
after,” he says.
He is in touch with Israeli writers who’ve taken a deep interest in
the Armenian genocide, above all Yehuda Bauer, the dean of Holocaust
historians in this country. Others include novelists Amos Oz and Haim
Guri, politicians Yossi Sarid and Yossi Beilin, broadcast journalist
Ya’acov Ahimeir and historians Amos Elon, Tom Segev and Yair Oron.
Another reason Hintlian doesn’t want to write a book about the
Armenian genocide is because of the gaps in its history left by
Turkey’s refusal to open its archives from that period. “German
archives from the Holocaust have been opened to Jewish researchers,
but the Turkish archives from the genocide are either closed or
they’ve been purged,” he says. “So we are in the dark about so many
details – who [among Ottoman officials] made a particular decision,
and when. We have to grope our way and try to make sense of it.”
Ultimately, though, Hintlian says he cannot make sense of the
Armenian genocide, and this is yet another reason why he feels unable
to write a book about it. He is baffled as to how people could carry
out an atrocity of such magnitude. “It’s an endless mystery,” he
says.
It’s also a mystery to Beatrice Kaplanian, but she doesn’t dwell on
it. Putting her balcony chairs away, she is asked how the God she
worships could allow such evil. “It is a sin to interfere in the ways
of God,” she replies. “Whatever God wills to happen, happens.”
;cid=1006953079845

Kocharian-Erdogan meeting not planned, says Armenian FM
12.05.2005 18:21
YEREVAN (YERKIR) – As of now, there is no agreement to hold a meeting
between President Robert Kocharian and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan,
the Armenian foreign minister told journalists Thursday.
Vardan Oskanian noted that no official request has been made from
either side, adding the reports that a meeting has been scheduled are
merely press speculations.
When asked what could the parties expect from such a meeting if it was
to take place, Oskanian indicated that the positions of the both
countries arequite explicit. “If Turkey discusses the opening of the
borders and the normalization of the relations without putting forward
pre-conditions, I believe we could expect serious progress.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Could genocide ever take place in the United States?
TRUTH OF YOUTH
May 9, 2005
“Genocide: The systematic and planned extermination of a national,
racial, political or ethnic group. Today, I don’t think genocide
should be possible here in the United States.
… Well, ideally, that is. … The United States has already
committed genocide in the past. Remember the Native Americans? They
haven’t always run our casinos, they used to own this entire country.
The question should not be ‘Could genocide ever occur in the United
States.’ It should be ‘Could genocide ever occur again in the United
States.’ Think about how quickly people jumped on the bandwagon to go
to war in Iraq, even with such flimsy reasons that were later proved
to be false.
Yet, even with that reality thrown in our faces, we continue to fight
and continue to support ‘our country.’ Why? It’s all nationalism, the
belief that your country is always right, and the willingness to do
anything for it. Yes, it’s possible, and we need to wake up a bit as
a county to ensure that it never happens here again.”
Trish Marx, sophomore, Oakland High School.
“Contrary to common belief, man is not basically good, but is
deceitful and wicked. This sinful nature has sometimes led him to
commit gruesome acts of violence. Man’s past is filled with many
abominable acts, one being genocide.
One of the motivating factors in the genocidal occurrences in Rwanda
and Germany was an extreme level of human selfishness. When a people
think more highly of themselves than others, terrible consequences are
certain to follow. America’s selfish ideology, suggesting
consequence-free sexual relations, has already taken the lives of
millions of babies in what is deemed as a constitutional right.
By definition, genocide is the extermination of a culture or racial
group. Is abortion much different than genocide? Do the millions of
unborn children constitute a culture in their own right? If America
continues on her present course, genocide will most assuredly lie in
her future.”
Austin Clark, senior, Umpqua Valley Christian.
“When genocide has occurred in the past, it has been because a
government makes its people believe that an entire group of people is
inferior or corrupt. Governments have a way of making their nation
believe what they tell them, regardless of what it is, so I think that
this could easily happen again.
I could easily see our government telling its people that an entire
race, nation, or religion are terrorists, for instance. From this, the
government could make us believe that every single member of this
group is corrupt, and so we would not object to their
extermination. In many of the genocides in the past, such as the
Holocaust, most people did not really know the extent of the
problem. Germans knew that Jews were being gathered, but they thought
it was for work camps, not genocide. Governments have always been very
deceiving; this is still true today, and will most likely always be
the case.”
Lacey Bitter, senior, Roseburg High School.
Truth of Youth, which appears in Monday’s News-Review, is an
opportunity for teens to express their opinions. If you would like to
submit a question, write to Erin Snelgrove at P.O. Box 1248, Roseburg,
OR 97470 or e-mail her at [email protected]_
(mailto:[email protected]) .

The Messenger, Georgia
May 9 2005
What Saakashvili can ask from Bush
By Zeyno Baran*
George W. Bush will be the first ever US president to visit Georgia
this week. The inclusion of Tbilisi in President George W. Bush’s
itinerary built around the 60th anniversary of the end of World War
II celebrations in Moscow is the clearest statement of support to
Georgia’s reformist government. It is also a firm message to Russia
that this freedom-loving county’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity needs to be respected and supported.
Following the November 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia made enormous
progress in its pro-EU and pro-NATO direction. Considered to be a
“failing state” just prior to the revolution, the young and dynamic
team of the 36-year old President Mikheil Saakashvili managed to
completely turn around the country’s image.
President Bush’s key message to the Georgian people, to be delivered
in the Freedom Square on May 10, will be America’s commitment to
“advance freedom, prosperity and tolerance in Europe and beyond” and
reaffirming Georgia’s place as a critical part in this vision.
Freedom Square, the site of the peaceful Rose Revolution, is expected
to have nearly 100,000 people to listen to Bush; being welcomed with
the traditional Georgian hospitality and admiration for his freedom
and democracy agenda will be a nice change for the U.S. president
whose freedom agenda is denounced in some other parts of the world.
In Tbilisi, Bush will once again see that Saakashvili and his team
share the same values and vision of promoting democracy. Similar to
Bush, Saakashvili believes in his mission to expand the community of
democracies-he helped his friend Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine ahead
of the Orange Revolution, supported the pro-EU direction of his
Moldovan counterpart, sent encouragement to the Kyrgyz opposition and
has joined the U.S. and the EU in supporting the opposition in
Belarus.
The historic visit by Bush should nonetheless be considered by the
Saakashvili government as the celebration of the end of the
post-revolutionary period in the country and the beginning of the
next, more mature phase of governance. Overall, the Saakashvili
government has been greatly successful, but has also made mistakes
resulting from lack of experience and the near impossibility of
dealing with the magnitude of the problems inherited by the previous
government. That said, it is clear that the government has the
political will and the intention to resolve the remaining major
problems of the country-with the continuing help of the United
States.
The peaceful resolution of the Abkhaz and South Ossetian conflicts is
a priority for the Saakashvili government; its importance will be
underlined by Bush as well. As long as there are frozen conflicts in
its territory, Georgia will not be taken seriously by the EU as a
candidate. Occasional provocative remarks by the Georgian government
cause concern in the U.S. and the EU, and are also used by the
separatists and some in Russia to claim that the Georgian government
is not serious in its commitment to resolving these conflicts
peacefully.
It would therefore be critically important for Saakashvili to both
reassure Bush of his commitment to a peaceful way forward, and also
ask his help convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin that it is
in Russia’s interest to cooperate with Georgia in helping it restore
its territorial integrity.
By going to Tbilisi after Moscow, Bush would have seriously upset
Putin as the Russian President will be concerned of being perceived
as weak by his domestic audience. Yet, Putin must realize, especially
after his colossal misjudgment during the Ukrainian elections, that
ongoing close partnership with the U.S. requires a serious policy
change in Russian policy vis-à-vis the former Soviet republics. He
can start by cooperating with the U.S. in helping ensure Georgia’s
security and stability. It is hard not to notice the strangeness of
Russia’s backing the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in
Georgia, when it has huge concerns over Chechen separatism in its own
country.
A second area Saakashvili can ask Bush’s support is in encouraging
the Kremlin to agree to a withdrawal of its military bases in
Georgia. Despite weeks of negotiations, lack of meaningful progress
on this issue made it impossible for Saakashvili to attend the May 9
events in Moscow. Georgia rightly wants to be free from a non-NATO
base presence to underscore its own sovereignty.
It is interesting, to say the least, that as the Georgian-Russian
negotiations are getting serious, there have been protests against
the base withdrawal in the predominantly Armenian region of
Samtskhe-Javakheti. The local ethnic Armenian population near the
Russian military base is concerned that they will lose their main and
only source of employment if the base is closed. Those who do not
want the base to be closed play not only on these fears, but also
exacerbate the situation by suggesting that Russian base would be
replaced by a Turkish base, which is an anathema for the Armenians.
Fully aware of the potential instability the region could face by
provocations of ethnic nature, Saakashvili has promised to invest in
road rehabilitation that will connect the Samtskhe-Javakheti region
to Tbilisi, and in turn bring economic improvement to this
desperately poor area. This is another area the U.S. can help by
providing financial assistance.
A third and critically important area Saakashvili should ask for
Bush’s assistance is in support for energy security. At the end of
this month, the first leg of the so-called East-West energy corridor
to transport Caspian Sea oil and gas to Western markets will launch
with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline ceremony in Baku. Georgia
will thanks to this major oil pipeline become a pivotal energy
transit country. Next year, a parallel gas pipeline will start
operating as well. Until then, Georgia will remain almost fully
dependent on Russian gas for its energy needs; given that at
politically tense times Georgia has repeatedly experienced gas
cutoff, this dependence is clearly worrisome.
Due to the mistakes and corruption of the previous government,
Georgia is in an extremely vulnerable position today-if the
Saakashvili government cannot keep the lights on, it can hardly
sustain the legitimacy required to implement tough reforms. If the
threat of gas and electricity cut offs remain, Georgian decision
makers will have a much weaker hand in negotiations with the Russians
over the frozen conflicts and the base withdrawal-especially during
the cold winter period.
Saakashvili should therefore ask Bush for much-needed financial
assistance to improve the existing energy infrastructure. It should
also procure more gas from a non-Russian source.
There are clearly other important issues the Saakashvili government
needs to tackle and would require ongoing U.S. support. Still, if
these three key issues are resolved successfully, Georgia’s chance of
remaining a beacon of inspiration for many other freedom fighters
across the world will be much higher.
* Zeyno Baran is Director of International Security and Energy
Programs at The Nixon Center in Washington DC and contributed this
comment to The Messenger.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

US Team Inspects Armenian Military
Journal of Turkish Weekly
May 8 2005
A team of U.S. military officials met with Armenian Defense Minister
Serzh Sarkisian on Friday after completing an unprecedented inspection
of the Armenian Armed Forces that highlighted growing defense
cooperation between Yerevan and Washington, Armenian media reported.
Sarkisian’s press service said the U.S. delegation led by Colonel
Michael Andersen came away satisfied from their “defense evaluation”
of Armenian army units and thanked the Armenian military for its
“sincerity and transparency.”
Armenian forces attacked Azerbaijan almost a decade ago and with
the Russian military assistance occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijani
territories. Armenian military further attacked Naxchivan province,
but when Turkey warned Armenia not to do so, the forces were
withdrawn. However 20 percent of Azerbaijan has been under Armenian
occupation and the EU named Armenia ‘occupier’ and ‘aggressive’.
“Colonel Andersen noted that although the Armenian army is relatively
young, it already has many things to be proud of,” Armenian Defense
Ministry said in a statement. “The colonel was particularly impressed
with care shown toward soldiers and maintenance of the military
hardware.” However the Armenian Ministry did not expressed whether the
US team asked when Armenian forces will be withdrawn the neighboring
Azerbaijan. The US imposed embargo against Syria for occupying Lebanon,
but did nothing against Armenia.
The Armenian Defense Ministry has not explained the purpose of the
inspection of its forces. Armenia has a strong military relations
with Russian Federation. Yerevan is considered the only Caucasian
ally for Russia while Georgia and Azerbaijan develop good relations
with the EU, USA and Israel.
JTW with news agencies 8 May 2005

Gul: We Had Been In A Passive Position, Now We Are In An Active Position
Turkish Press
May 7 2005
BISHKEK (AA) – Turkish Foreign Minister & Deputy Prime Minister
Abdullah Gul said on Thursday that Turkey was late to take initiatives
against the allegations of the so-called Armenian genocide, and
stressed that organized efforts were needed to make the reality known
by everybody.
Replying to the questions of reporters, Gul said Turkey was late to
take initiatives against the allegations in question. Gul said that
the Armenian issue was even used as a means in domestic policy in
some countries to wear out the government.
Gul said his government would deploy efforts to prevent any process
against Turkey and to make the parliaments step back from making
wrong decisions.
Stating the decision made in Belgium as an example, Gul said, “can you
imagine? They can make such accusations by taking into consideration
just misinformation and lies. We should inform them correctly. We
should struggle against them.”
Gul said that academicians and NGOs also had a crucial role in
telling the truths to the world regarding Armenian claims, noting
that “only if we can start a civilized fight against these claims,
we can correct the mistakes.”
Upon a question, Gul said that all the archives in Turkey were opened
and the views of Turkey were supported in many platforms including
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Gul said “Turkey which had assumed a passive policy till today is
now in an active position.”
Gul said that Turkey evaluated the letter of Armenian President Robert
Kocharian in a comprehensive way and regarded it optimistically.

‘All Turkish and Muslim Monuments Destroyed in Yerevan’
Journal of Turkish weekly, Turkey
May 6 2005
Dr. Erol Kurkcuoglu from Erzurum Ataturk University said that the
Armenians had destroyed the Turkish and Muslim heritage in Armenia.
“Once Yerevan was a Turkish city” Kurkcuoglu added.
Kurkcuoglu said “the name of the city was Revan until the 19th
century. Gok, Kopru Kulagi, Tepebasi Mescits and Serdar Castle were
destroyed by the Armenians. They destroyed all Turkish and Muslim
traces in Armenia. 83 percent of Yerevan was Turkish during the 19th
century, however the share decreased to 4.3 after the First World War”.
There is almost no Muslim or Turkish population in Armenia right now.
More than 1 million Turkish people became refugee after the Karabakh
Occupation. 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories have been under
Armenian population for a decade.