Author: Karakhanian Suren

NKR CENTRAL ELECTION COMMITTEE MEETING
Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
04 Feb 05
On January 29 the meeting of the NKR Central Election Committee took
place which discussed the question of dissolution of the committee. By
the decision of the meeting, according to the Point 1 of the Article
137 of the NKR Election Code the committee was dissolved. By the same
decision the chairman of the NKR CEC Sergey Davtian, deputy chairman
Sergey Shahverdian and secretary Seyran Hayrapetian were relieved of
their positions. During the meeting NKR prime minister Anoushavan
Danielian commended the five years of work of the committee in the
name of the NKR government emphasizing that all the four previous
elections were held according to the election law, at a high level,
providing legality, objectivity, transparency, which favoured the
principles of democracy in the republic. The unbiased work of the
central and the other election committees were highly evaluated by
international and local observers as well. On the same day the first
meeting of the newly elected Central Election Committee took place
conducted by the former chairman of the committee Sergey Davtian. By
open vote Sergey Nasibian was elected chairman of the committee,
Seyran Hayrapetian was elected deputy chairman and Raya Nazarian was
elected secretary of the committee.
AA.
04-02-2005

Useless-Knowledge.com
Feb 4 2005
Knowledge Is The Key To Macedonia
By Alexander Antonarakis
Feb. 4, 2005
Dear Audience and Thomas Keyes, the Macedonian Question is one of
time, Geographical Positioning, and historical slander. I will make
this quite short.
The creation of the state of Skopia. This area of the Balkans was and
is always considered as the birthplace of the modern Bulgarian
nation, as Kosovo is to the Serbs. Ohrid was the capital of the
Bulgarian Tsardom in the 10th century. Throughout the Ottoman Empire
this area was called the Milliet of Rum, and had nothing to do with
Macedonia. I have spoken with a Bulgarian and an educated Skopian,
and they both agreed that they spoke the same language and were of
the same truko-slavic race as the Bulgarians are. The idea of these
Slavic brothers being called Macedonians came as a figment of Tito’s
imagination. In fact, Yugoslavia was the only country to need a visa
for Greece. Also, what hardship did they suffer from the Greeks that
we didn’t suffer from the Bulgarian fascists of the world war? We did
not allow Slavs into Greece because they were COMMUNISTS!!! NOT
BECAUSE OF ETHICITY! We had just suffered a civil war and defeated
communism when Tito named the republics.
The Geographic location of Macedonia. Well, this should be
surprising…! Throughout most of Byzantium, the Theme of Macedonia
was NOT centred on the modern area. The Capital was Adrianople, and
stretched from Serrai to the Walls of Constantinople. The Theme in
present day Macedonia was called that of Thessaloniki. Also the
Macedonian Dynasty of Byzantium came from near Adrianople, and were
half Armenian originally. No one can argue that ancient Macedonia was
largely on the Modern Greek Macedonia, and the north was periphery!
History. Here are a few questions. Why would Phillip try and educate
his son with Greek Philosophers? Why did Alexander create a Hellenic
empire that involved a Hellenic league. He could have easily made the
empire in his dialect. DIALECT is exactly what it is. It has been
written that during the campaign, the Macedonians would resort to
their dialect among friends. Nowadays if Cypriots don’t want to be
fully understood by Greeks, they can put on a pretty heavy accept,
but they are in effect Greek! Was Alexander Greek? He did indeed feel
like one. The Slavs? Indeed they did show in the 6th Century or so,
from the north. They had, and have nothing to do with Macedonia. By
the time they came, the ancient Macedonians had been eradicated by
the Romans centuries before, and they had become fully Greek.
As Thomas Keyes said, we should strive for unity, and the naming of
Skopia as Macedonia is a blatant assault on our and Bulgarian soil.
Also, let the ancients rest in peace. I would propose the name
Slavomacedons if they wish, or Ohridians, or Western Bulgaria. I
plead to all….please get educated the history. As Socrates
said…”knowledge is the only good, and ignorance the only evil”.
————
About the author Alexander Antonarakis: a PhD candidate in Cambridge
University, UK.

BBC News
Jan 3 2005
Burning body suspect due in court

One man has already been charged with murdering Mr Amirian
A man is due to appear before magistrates charged with the murder of
a man whose burning body was found on the Cambs/Northants border.
Armenian Havhannes Amirian’s remains were found at Upton in December
2002. Misha Chatsjatrjan, from Oldenzaal in the Netherlands, was
arrested by Dutch police on 12 January.
He is due before Peterborough Magistrates’ Court. Police worked on
the case for more than a year before identifying the dead man as Mr
Amirian.
‘Unknown male’
At one stage it was feared the body, which was found in a wood, might
never be identified.
It led to Peterborough coroner Gordon Ryall taking the unusual step
of allowing the man to be buried in a grave marked “Unknown Male”.
However after the police made a breakthrough in the case the inquest
was briefly resumed for Mr Amirian’s identity to be announced, more
than a year after his death.
The inquest heard that Mr Amirian was born in Armenia and had family
connections in the Ukraine. However, most recently he had lived in
Belgium and England.
For photo:

International mediators to pressure Armenia over Karabakh – paper
Haykakan Zhamanak, Yerevan
2 Feb 05

Text of unattributed report by Armenian newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak on
2 February headlined “Cat’s game is death for mice”
While the OSCE’s mission is continuing to monitor the
liberated-occupied territories, political analysts are trying to guess
what consequences this may have for Armenia, Karabakh and for the
further settlement of the Karabakh issue on the whole.
There is a wrong approach against this background, according to which
the monitoring mission is conceived as an event. It would be more
correct to say that this is the beginning of a new process in the
Karabakh settlement which may take a long time and whose main purpose
is to gain a new lever to put pressure on the authorities of
Armenia. The fact that the OSCE monitoring mission has refused to
visit Shaumyan and Getashen districts shows that the authorities of
Armenia will be the main target of this pressure. Thus, the mission’s
report on the result of the monitoring will greatly depend on whether
the Armenian authorities will be able to assure the world community
that they are ready to settle the problem.
It is also important that assurances of the Armenian authorities are
not fragmentary and turn into a businesslike process. This logic
prompts that at the first stage the monitoring mission will
demonstrate that it acts solely within its mandate, i.e. it is only
trying to clarify to what extent Armenia has settled the
liberated-occupied territories, but their report could go beyond this
framework.
But due to the political necessity, members of the monitoring mission
will make revelations in their interviews and commentaries on the
topic “What I have seen in the occupied territories”. This will happen
if the OSCE is convinced that Armenia is not in a hurry to make
compromises. But in case Armenia continues to follow its “victorious”
policy, the members of the monitoring mission will make harsher
revelations. This will be followed by the second and third visits of
the mission to the region.
Incidentally, this is not a political complication, as the world
community has already fixed in several documents that the
liberated-occupied territories are an integral part of Azerbaijan.
That is, to return to these areas they only need new monitoring
themes suggested by Azerbaijan. In this case international documents
will contain provisions that will aim not to encourage the Armenian
authorities to be constructive but have quite a different purpose.

The Herald, UK
Jan 31 2004
Would we have behaved better?

IAN BELL January 31 2005

The TV Week
It was not a big job for methodical British bobbies. Just 16 names to
be registered; 16 faces to be photographed; 16 cards to be filed.
Even in the sleepy Channel Islands, where the police had few enough
resources, the task was not difficult. It was easier still to mark
the registration cards with the letter J, in bold red ink. When the
time came to tell three women refugees that they must report for
deportation, even a mere desk sergeant could convey the instruction
that luggage must be no heavier than the victims could carry.
Despite Nazi occupation, Guernsey coppers had no idea, in the spring
of 1942, that they were sending people to be exterminated. As one old
woman recalled during Auschwitz: the Nazis and the “Final Solution”
(BBC2, Tuesday): “Things like that didn’t happen in England”. But the
authorities on the islands, like their counterparts in France,
Holland and elsewhere, knew perfectly well that their conquerors were
afflicted by an irrational hatred of die Juden, the Jews. No-one
guessed death camps, but they must have suspected something terrible.
Given the incomprehensible scale of the Holocaust, the culpability of
the Channel Islands counts as peripheral. Occupied France, for one,
with no shortage of anti-Semites of its own, had a far greater weight
on its conscience. The patriotic bureaucrat who offered to round up
foreign Jews if French Jews might be reprieved was a prime example of
a widespread delusion: even as the cattle cars pulled away, he
thought it possible to negotiate with a bacillus.
Yet as Holocaust Memorial Day came and went last week, and with it
the 60th anniversary of what we describe, inanely, as the
“liberation” of Auschwitz, those events in Guernsey were prompting a
thought: would Britain, invaded, really have behaved better than
France or Hungary or Romania or Belgium in defence of Jews, or Roma,
prisoners of war, homosexuals, or the mentally infirm? Watching the
documentaries describing how the contagion spread, you can only doubt
it.
The thought leads, in any case, to a question: how do you commemorate
what the Jews call Shoah, the burning to ashes, the habit of
genocide? By having the Queen and Tony Blair turn up at Westminster
Hall (Holocaust Memorial Day, BBC2, Thursday) amid the largest
gathering ever seen of British survivors? By attempting to tell one
story, as in Grandchild of the Holocaust (BBC1, Wednesday), in the
hope that one might stand for many? Or do you remind yourself that
the species had acquired a taste for slaughtering its own long before
the Nazis arrived – Hitler took the killing of 1.5 million Armenians
by the Turks in 1915 almost as an inspiration – and has yet to lose
the appetite?
Some still call on God to show His face. Others might light a candle.
Amid all this, watching television documentaries seems, somehow, like
a wasted effort. But then you recall that, if opinion polls are
believable, generations are growing up who have no idea what
Auschwitz was, is, or might mean. Do you allow them history’s
amnesia, the sleep against which the Armenian Diaspora and the
Rwandan survivors struggle? Or do you try again to educate, to
remember?
Here, I suspect, is the heart of this darkness. In Grandchild of the
Holocaust 13-year-old Adrian, a bright and articulate boy, travelled
to Poland with his grandmother, Rene. For 50 years she had kept her
silence over Auschwitz and Belsen, the circles of hell she had
survived. Now she was ready to speak, to remember the girl she had
been, and the young woman who had married one of the Jewish soldiers
of the British Army, a liberator, after he had seen the camps. Rene
did not lack eloquence; she was not short of courage. Yet all these
years later it suddenly mattered profoundly to her that her grandson
should understand what his people had experienced.
You felt for this talkative, intelligent boy who loved his
grandmother. He wanted desperately to penetrate the mystery, to
comprehend his own history and identity. But Adrian’s problem was our
problem, was Rene’s problem, was the problem faced by Michel Muller,
now an old man but once a little boy torn from his doomed mother by
ordinary French policemen. As Michel said in Auschwitz: the Nazis and
the “Final Solution”: “That French people should do that is still
beyond me.” So how could young Adrian hope to understand something
that even his grandmother could not really explain? Incomprehension
is, I suspect, at the heart of the reverence expressed for the
Holocaust and its victims. Even those who helped to perpetrate the
crimes cannot explain them, or explain how or why the disease of
genocide arose.
It renders commemoration both puzzling and necessary. Auschwitz: the
Nazis and the “Final Solution” contained an interview with one Oskar
Groning, once a mere SS private who had asked for a transfer to the
front-lines rather than continue to work in the camp. His request was
refused and the bespectacled soldier had been obliged to assist in
the “processing” of more than 4000 French children, parted from their
parents.
Herr Groning offered the usual excuses. We believed, he said, that
there was “a great conspiracy of the Jews against us”. But children?
an incredulous, unseen interviewer asked, auf Deutsch. What possible
threat could they have posed?
Said Groning of die kinder, years after the destruction of his
country and his creed, speaking in the remembered present tense:
“They’re not the enemy at the moment. The enemy is the blood inside
them.” Not for the first time, one of those courtly, grey-haired old
men with a memory full of holes put a voice in your head. It said:
what does that mean?
One strand to emerge from all the recent documentaries struggling to
find meaning involves a simple, indisputable truth: even when they
were masters of Europe, revelling in their hatred, the Nazis went to
extraordinary lengths to conceal their activities. It was as though
they knew that one day they would be called to account. Everything to
do with the death camps was a secret. Why so furtive when you
proclaim your cause to be noble? Yet though a photographic record
exists of Heinrich Himmler touring Auschwitz – and promoting the
kommandant as a reward for his efforts – no pictures of Hitler’s man
witnessing the gas chambers at work were allowed.
It amounted to more than perversity. It was hatred that had become
existential. Prisoner of Paradise (BBC4, Monday) was an astonishing
record of the way in which the Nazis forced Kurt Gerron, the
acclaimed Weimar director and actor, to use his film-making skills to
create elaborate propaganda.
Gerron’s talent made the hell-hole of the Theresienstadt camp seem
like a cultural oasis, full of choirs and happy craftsmen with
cheerful, well-dressed children, in a bizarre movie that was never
put into circulation. For thanks, he was placed on one of the last
trains to Auschwitz as the war drew to a close.
Why the obsession with deceit? Perhaps for the same reason the Nazis
began to use gas: even the psychopaths of the SS could not stomach
the consequences of their own creed, the killing, face to face, of
six million. The lie was too much even for them to bear.

Daily Bruin
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Nations must take action to end cycle of genocide
By Raffi Kassabian
At the Jan. 27 ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz, the prevalent reaction was “never again.” And yet we still
continue to see genocide occurring today, most notably in Darfur, Sudan.
The systematic annihilation and displacement of millions of Sudanese in
Darfur is nothing less than a part of the repetitious cycle of
systematic genocide that continues to haunt the world community to this
day.
How can today’s governments stand by while groups of people in the world
are subject to targeted extinction policies? How can the United States
send its sons and daughters into battle exclaiming that democracy and
freedom in Iraq are worth their lives, yet ignore those very same
principles in another situation?
Darfur demands a similar sacrifice, but the determination of engagement
is conspicuously absent when addressing this crisis.
Over 1.5 million Armenians were systematically executed, raped and
deported by the Ottoman Empire in what is acknowledged as one of the
first genocides of the 20th century. Volumes of academic research on the
subject are accompanied by acknowledgments by genocide scholar societies
as well as proclamations by numerous countries and state governments.
But the United States, a country that continually unfurls the banner of
ethical and moral values to justify the pursuit of domestic as well as
foreign policy agendas, has yet to come to terms with the Armenian
Genocide and join the world in admitting, let alone seeking justice for,
this crime against humanity.
Instead, in deference to the Republic of Turkey, an alleged “strategic
partner and NATO ally,” according to the U.S. Agency for International
Development, the United States has avoided facing the Armenian Genocide.
The threats of limited access to NATO bases and the loss of military or
other business contracts is apparently enough for the United States to
drop the ethical banner in this particular case and pick up the pennant
of obscure “national interests” excuses.
Until there is an equitable pursuit of justice, we are left to fight not
one battle, but two. Not only must we fight to prevent crimes against
humanity, but we must also fight the denial of such crimes. In doing so
we can ensure that we are combating the recurring cycle of genocides.
The citizens in Darfur cry for their justice. Their government has
failed to protect their lives, families and homes, but instead has
instigated or even organized those responsible for murdering and
dislocating them.
For nearly 90 years, successive Turkish governments have actively denied
the Armenian Genocide. It is their hope to absolve themselves of any
punitive measures that are a natural part of the process of justice for
this crime.
Because the Turkish government has not been held accountable for its
crimes against humanity in the past, the government has been able to
continue human rights abuses into the present day. It stifles the lives
and tramples on the rights of its minorities.
Turkey is noted for having some of the highest numbers of imprisoned
journalists, and it continually strikes down – via legal or brute
tactics – those who question the fallibility of the state. The Turkish
government wants to intimidate its own citizens into silence or
self-censorship on issues like the Armenian Genocide.
The world continues to turn a blind eye out of convenience and enables
this behavior of the Turkish government, facilitating what I call the
“Campaign of Silence.”
When the United States and governments worldwide behave in such a
manner, is it any wonder why “never again” sounds so hollow? Is it any
wonder that after 1915, there was a 1938? Is it any wonder that the
Armenians were followed by Cambodians, Rwandans and now the citizens of
Darfur?
The silence continues today because we as human beings have not come to
terms with our past. We have turned the other cheek because it is easier
than seeking justice.
Adolf Hitler proclaimed to the Nazi Army before invading Poland, “Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Will we
finally learn to consistently apply American values to our national
interests – recognizing everyone’s rights to a pursuit of happiness,
freedom and self-determination?
Or will the next genocidal government say, “Who, after all, speaks today
of the annihilation of the people of Darfur?”
————————————————————————
Kassabian is a fourth-year political science and communication studies
student.

KVBC TV, NV
Jan 28 2005
Sisters Could be Separated From Family in America

Maria Silva Reporting
They’re not a threat to national security, but federal immigration
authorities have two teenage sisters in custody and want to send them
back to their home country of Armenia . But their family is here, and
now thanks to the media and Senator Harry Reid, their struggle is
attracting national attention.
The Sarkisian sisters are used to helping around their father’s pizza
shop, but for the past couple weeks work has been especially
difficult. “My dad, he’s just going crazy. He doesn’t eat, sleep. He
can’t do anything anymore.” For the past 12-days, the girl’s two
older sisters, Emma and Miriam have been in custody — locked up,
waiting possible deportation to their home country of Armenia .
“I love my sisters. And I really miss them. And I want them to come
back.”
The younger girls were born here in the U.S. , but Emma and Miriam
were not. Their father has become a legal resident, but while trying
to comply with American laws, he says the teenagers were arrested by
federal authorities. The youngest sister, Patricia doesn’t quite
understand the details, but knows her family is at risk of being torn
apart.
“Cause how would the immigration people feel if they took their kids
— and put them in the holding cell.”
While we were conducting our interview, Emma called from her jail
cell. It was a brief conversation that consisted of mostly tears.
“Okay. Bye I love you.”
Now, the girl’s only hope may lie with high power politicians. Like
Nevada senator, Harry Reid who is pleading with the Department of
Homeland Security.
“I think secretary Ridge will find a way to keep these two young
women in Nevada .” Meantime, the family is doing what they can to
stay busy, praying the ordeal will end soon. So the family can be a
family, once again.
I did get to speak to Emma — the oldest sister on the phone. She was
calling from her jail cell. She was crying and scared. She says the
hardest part is not knowing when they’ll be able to come home — if
at all. Right now they are waiting for a decision from a federal
magistrate.

SOME POLITICAL EXPERTS DID NOT UNDERSTAND AMBASSADOR EVANS’ SPEECH
Azg/arm
26 Jan 05
Though, John Evans, US ambassador to Armenia, repeated for five times
in the course of the interview given to Armenia TV that the Assistant
of the US State Secretary didn’t call the NKR authorities “criminal
elements” and the American lady has personally called Vartan Oskanian,
RA foreign minister, and assured that she didn’t mean Nagorno Karabakh
and its authorities by saying”criminal separatists,” the Armenian
press and the TV continued the “anti-Johns” hysteria on Saturday and
Sunday.
It turns out that the denials given by ambassadors Evans and Johns are
of no great importance for some Armenian political experts and
journalists. The point is that they are speaking of the words the
American lady didnâ=80=99t even say. Our local newspapers published
the analytical articles of the political experts instead of publishing
the interview give by Evans.
Aram Sargsian was the most serious among them. According to Haykakan
Zhamanak, Sargsian stated that if the Armenian authorities make no
conclusions of the statement made by Johns, there can be very
complicated consequences. He predicted that one day RA authorities
might flee from Armenia, one day theymay wake up and see that they are
not in Armenia any longer, they have escaped from fear.
Stepan Gevorgian, political expert, pointed out in Aravot, that the
statement made by the American lady should be observed “in the context
of the consequences occurred as a result of the wrong foreign policy
conducted by RA authorities.” Hrant Khachatrian, leader of Union of
National Self-Determination, that used to be fed by the sources
received from Karabakh, said: “The very regime of Armenia was
described as that of the separatists and the criminals,” as “everybody
knows that we can’t lie that NKR is out of Armeniaâ=80=99s control in
some aspect.”
The Second Glance program over Shant TV was the most exciting one. It
was broadcasted on Sunday evening, i.e. 2 days later the denial of
Evans and Johns. Some of the guests of the program pretended that
they don’t understand anything. For instance, Sergey Shaqariants,
political expert, expressed theopinion that Johns is carrying out the
policy of the US State Department, while Aghasi Yenoqian called the
NKR authorities criminal and corrupted, because the opposition won the
latest elections for the local administration bodies.
Suren Zolian also showed his unawareness, saying that, in fact, the US
State Department recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity by
spreading the January 18 statement. Afterwards, when a student asked
how could Mrs. Johnssay such a thing on days of sending forces to
Iraq, Shaqariants, political expert, responded: “Perhaps, that was the
way the US thanked us. Yenoqian observed the statement made by the
American lady (in fact, the things she didn’tsay) in the context of
the coming meeting between Bush and Putin.
While, some of the newspapers couldn’t help admiration and joy in the
articles they issued. Even the Azeri press was not that delighted for
the “criminal elements” word combination. One of the newspapers was no
excited by these words that they even remembered the prediction of
Vano Siradeghian, saying that Robert Kocharian should be passed to the
International Court in Hague.
The press of the AAM (All Armenian Movement) and of the former
authorities were also delighted. The position of the authorities was
queer, as the local administration bodies, doctors, intelligentsia
gathered against the American by their assistance. The Public TV
worked well on those days, highlighting the arrangements reminding of
the Communist times.
The Azeri press didn’t touch upon the American lady’s statements that
much. The game between Nevtchi-Pyunik and the victory of the Baku
team were in the center of the attention on those days. The official
Baku echoed the events on January 22, after the denial of ambassadors
Evans and Johns. Araz Azimov, Azeri deputy foreign minister, said in
the interview to ANS TV: “I think that Mrs. Johns’ statement was
objective and corresponded to the reality.” Asfor the statement of
Oskanian, saying that Johns personally called him and explained the
situation, Azimov said that it is a mere PR step and advised the
journalists not to pay attention to the statements made by RA foreign
minister and treat then less seriously.
By Tatoul Hakobian

Canada NewsWire (press release), Canada
Jan 24 2005
Fairouz in Concert
MONTREAL, Jan. 24 /CNW Telbec/ – Fairouz, the Lebanese Diva of Arabic
music will be in Montreal on February 12 and 13, 2005 to present two
exceptional concerts at Place des Arts, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.

On her third visit to Montreal, 50 musicians of international fame,
conducted by Maestro Karen Durgaryan will accompany Fairouz. Mr.
Durgaryan has directed the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra and the
Symphonic Orchestra of Yerevan, to high levels of success and
perfection, and has equally worked with Fairouz in her concerts in the
Middle East, adding to her wide and varied repertoire even more
refinement. Fairouz’s repertoire is constantly evolving, whether it’s
ballads and classic songs composed by the Rahbani Brothers, or
oriental jazz flavours of her son, the great composer, Ziad Rahbani.
Karen Durgaryan has recently accompanied Fairouz in her concerts,
where he was capable of bringing Western harmony to the varied music
styles and melodies performed by Fairouz. The program for the Montreal
concerts marries a marvelous mix of classic and modern songs with a
mélange of western and eastern orchestrations that stay away from the
oft-used concept of fusion. What the audience will experience with
Fairouz is a musical extravaganza of the best kind.
Fairouz in concert is not just music and performance, but the
heavenly and unique voice of the mythical Diva. It’s the Rahbani
Brothers entire wealth and power of music and the improvisational
talents of Ziad Rahbani. It’s the orchestra, the chorale, the quality
of the sound and the lighting systems. It’s a winning rendez vous
with happiness and a moment of absolute musical ecstasy to be
cherished forever.
For further information: Media Relations: John Asfour,
[email protected]; Source: Media Centre – Founoun, (514) 334-0909,

US official apologizes for Karabakh remarks – Armenian minister
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
21 Jan 05

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan has said that US Assistant
State Secretary Elizabeth Jones has apologized for her recent remarks
describing breakaway Nagornyy Karabakh as a criminal separatist
regime. In his interview with Armenian television, Oskanyan said he
had a telephone conversation with Jones and she called her statement a
“misunderstanding”. Oskanyan also praised the Armenian public for
protesting against the statement and called on it to calm down and
consider the issue to be closed. The following is the text of report
by Armenian Public TV on 21 January. Subheadings have been inserted
editorially:
[Presenter] Mr Oskanyan, you signed a memorandum of understanding
between the secretariat of the Arab League [the League of Arab States]
and Armenia in Cairo. At the same time, US Assistant Secretary of
State Elizabeth Jones made her well-known statement. What is your
attitude to it?
“Apology”
[Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan] You know, I was watching
the developments from Cairo. But when I came back and read the press,
I saw that our people had expressed a strong protest at that
statement. I was positively surprised at all this and naturally, this
is the way it should be. Because it was an accusation that can never
be accepted. These protests had to be expressed and I consider them
normal.
The cause of the public outcry was the content of the article
presented to the people by the media. I consider the contents of the
information presented to be normal, too, because I can say, summing up
Jones’s statement, that based on that statement, the contents of the
articles presented to our people cannot have been different. Because
that statement was indeed ambiguous. Although the points in the
general accusation cannot apply to Karabakh, on the other hand, this
statement does not rule out Karabakh either. This is where the
ambiguity lies. The fact that the statement did not rule out Karabakh
and that the accusation was strong and used the term criminal
separatists gave us grounds to express a strong protest.
I had a telephone conversation with Elizabeth Jones about half an hour
ago. It was her initiative to call me. Now I can tell you what
exactly she said. I asked her if I could tell our public what you
said, she said yes. She said – I apologize for the misunderstanding on
my part. I assure you that I did not and could not mean Nagornyy
Karabakh by using the term criminal separatists. I apologize for that.
I think we have to calm down after this phone call and consider the
issue to be closed. If we give it a closer look, we can see that it
could not have been otherwise.
It is true that the statement was ambiguous and caused doubts as to
what really happened. But on the other hand, taking into consideration
that the USA is involved in the process [of settling the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict], has had a stable position for these years, issued
neutral statements to date and that the US Congress gives Nagornyy
Karabakh 15m dollars in aid every year, I was feeling that there was a
kind of misunderstanding involved. I welcome and appreciate the fact
that Jones had the courage to apologize for it.
Arab world “important”
As for the Arab League, I told your TV channel in Cairo that it is a
historic event. Although we only signed a memorandum of understanding,
it can be assessed as the start of the development of our relations in
the future. It is historic because this understanding reflects the
glorious history of the Armenian and Arab peoples and their
friendship. Today we already have a chance to build relations not only
with individual Arab states, but also with the entity that unites
them. In turn, this opens up long-term opportunities for deepening and
developing our relations with Arab states in the future.
The Arab world is important to us and we have Armenian communities
there. As you may know, we have been lately involved in the Iraq
issue, too, and we have our own position on the Palestinian issue as
we support its independence. The position of Arab states on the
Nagornyy Karabakh issue is also of importance to us. We also cooperate
with them within international organizations. So this memorandum opens
up opportunities for us to work efficiently with this centre [the Arab
League], to raise our problems there and help each other in an
atmosphere of cooperation.
Holocaust and Armenian genocide
[Presenter] Mr Oskanyan, you are expected to visit the USA on 24
January to take part in the special UN session dedicated to the 60th
anniversary of the liberation of prisoners of war in the Second World
War. What will be the topic of your speech there?
[Oskanyan] I should say that it is a historic event, too. It is the
60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It will be marked in
a special UN session. The fact that a representative of Armenia,
i.e. its foreign minister, will take part in it is already a political
position in itself. It is our moral duty to be there and have our
say. Auschwitz is the embodiment of the Holocaust, which is related to
Hitler. Hitler’s famous statement – who remembers the Armenian
genocide today – is related to the Holocaust.
Genocide is a topical issue in international politics. We can neither
mark the Holocaust justly, nor speak about preventing future cases of
genocide without going back to the recognition of the first genocide
of the 20th century and talking about it. The gist of my address will
be the following: genocide can be prevented through condemning and
recognizing it.
Good relations with Italy
I will travel to Rome after New York and will join our president
[Robert Kocharyan]. He will start his official visit to Italy on 27
January. It is also important, since it will be the president’s first
official visit to Italy in seven years. We have quite good relations
with Italy. I believe that this visit will strengthen our relations
with that country, especially in the sphere of the economy and small
and medium-sized businesses. The dialogue between Armenia and Italy is
developing within the framework of the EU, especially its New
Neighbourhood Programme.