Author: Khoyetsian Rose

REGIONAL OIL SUMMIT OPENS IN SERBIA’S NOVI SAD

Radio B92 text website, Belgrade
4 May 06

Novi Sad, 4 May: A two-day summit of international oil companies has
begun in Vojvodina. The fuel companies make up the Scout Group for
East and Central Europe. According to a statement from the Serbian
Oil Industry (NIS), companies from 21 countries will be participating
in the summit, including Shell, [Hungary’s] MOL, [Austria’s] OMV
and others.

NIS has announced that some of the most important projects which are
currently being realized by the companies would be presented at the
summit, adding that these meetings would enable Serbia to establish
greater business contacts and more direct forms of cooperation with
these companies.

The Scout Group for East and Central Europe encourages cooperation
and the voluntary exchange of correct and timely information regarding
the research and production of oil in regional countries, and offers
business-related cooperation between members of the group.

The group was founded in 1993 and includes oil companies from Albania,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland,
Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and
Serbia-Montenegro.

KIN ON HAND TO ID RUSSIAN CRASH VICTIMS
By Mike Eckel

phillyBurbs.com, PA
May 4 2006

SOCHI, Russia – Searchers combed the waters off a Russian resort city
Thursday, looking for bodies and a flight recorder from an Armenian
passenger jet that slammed into the Black Sea in bad weather and
disintegrated, killing all 113 people on board.

Anguished relatives and friends gathered at a central hotel and a
city morgue, where many stared ashen-faced at grotesquely disfigured
faces and bodies appearing in coroners’ photographs.

The photos were posted on a nearly 6-foot-high wooden board in the
courtyard. Forensic authorities emerged from the building periodically
asking if anyone had recognized a person in the photographs.

Fifty-three bodies had been recovered so far, of which just 28 were
identified, Transport Minister Igor Levitin said. The plane was
traveling to Sochi from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and most of
the passengers were Armenian.

President Vladimir Putin told chief prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov in
televised comments to work fast to determine the cause of the crash,
but acknowledged it would be difficult without flight recorders.

Levitin told reporters that searchers had located a large part of
the plane’s fuselage that was emitting a radio signal believed to
be from a flight recorder, and Russian news agencies later quoted
an emergency official as saying signals from a second “black box”
were detected nearby.

But Levitin said the debris lay in some 2,230 feet of water, and that
Russian authorities did not have the equipment to raise the wreckage.

“We will turn to other countries that have the experience in raising
objects from the depths,” he said.

The Airbus A-320 plunged into the sea in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday
in heavy rain and poor visibility as it approached the airport in
Adler, about 12 miles south of Sochi, a city wedged between the sea
and soaring, snowcapped mountains. Searchers found wreckage spread
over a wide area about 3 1/2 miles offshore.

Federal prosecutors dismissed the possibility of terrorism, and
other officials pointed to the rough weather or pilot error as the
likely cause.

The head of the Georgian air control agency, which covered 90 percent
of the Armavia jet’s final flight, said the crew had begun to return
to Yerevan because of weather conditions around Sochi. But when it
was over the western Georgian city of Kutaisi, Russian air controllers
announced that the weather at the Adler airport had improved.

“And since they had enough fuel, the pilot decided to fly back
to Adler,” Georgian agency chief Georgy Karbelashvili told The
Associated Press.

The Interfax news agency, citing an unidentified official in
the Russian commission investigating the disaster, said there was
information indicating the crew was informed just three to four miles
from the runway, when the plane was at an altitude of about 1,000 feet,
that landing was “not recommended.” The official said the plane was
turning back when it hit the water.

The president of the Armenian Aviation Association, former pilot Dmitry
Adbashian, said in Yerevan that Sochi’s airport is difficult because
of limited approaches and fickle weather, and that rules established
in the Soviet era prohibited inexperienced pilots from landing there.

He told the AP it is impossible for a plane that is less than 2
1/2 miles out and lower than 650 feet to pull back and start a new
approach.

SOCHI’S ARMENIAN DIASPORA WEEPS
By Carl Schreck
Staff Writer

The Moscow Times, Russia
May 4 2006

Pavel Yeremyan, left, Vram Cholokyan, center, and an unidentified
man lamenting the crash Thursday near Sochi.

SOCHI — Pavel Yeremyan had been drinking and smoking cheap Yava
cigarettes for hours.

“This is a terrible tragedy for us,” Yeremyan, a subsistence farmer,
said Thursday of the Armenian airliner that went down a day earlier
off the coast of this Black Sea town.

The crash killed all 113 people on board and has left the local
Armenian community stunned. With 125,000 ethnic Armenians in Sochi,
out of a total of 400,000 people, the community is one of the largest
in the country.

In Yeremyan’s village of Baranovka, like many of the 20 mostly
Armenian villages in the hills above Sochi, you don’t have to look
far to find people who knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone,
on the late-night flight from Yerevan.

“The young woman who lived in that house was on the plane,” said
Yeremyan’s friend, 69-year-old Vram Cholokyan, who wheezed as he
pointed to a two-story, white concrete house. “She was about 22 and
had a young child. I saw them walking around here just before Easter.”

Both Yeremyan and Cholokyan have lived in the village their entire
lives. Their families came here in the early part of the last century
to flee the Turks. Today, they live off the fruits and vegetables
they grow on small plots of land. Whatever they don’t eat is sold at
market, Cholokyan explained in a raspy, almost inaudible voice.

Grach Makeyan, deputy head of the Sochi branch of the Union of
Armenians in Russia, said only 26 of those who died in the plane
crash were permanent Sochi Armenians. Most of the victims, he said,
were among the seasonal workers who come to Sochi from Armenia for
the vacation season, which lasts until November.

“But we’re all Armenians, even if we’re not relatives,” Makeyan said
in his office at the Kamelia Hotel. “There aren’t that many of us, so
almost everybody knows somebody who died, even if indirectly through
friends or neighbors. We are all in mourning. This will be a very,
very difficult time.”

A priest from Sochi’s Holy Cross Armenian Church, known to all
simply as Father Komitas, said all the Armenians in the community
felt personally affected by the crash.

“Around 70 of the victims were citizens of Armenia and didn’t have
relatives here,” Father Komitas, 38, said Thursday in his cramped
office decorated with his own sculptures and drawings. “But this
terrible tragedy is all of ours.”

Makeyan noted that a close friend of his had invited several of the
people on Wednesday’s flight for a birthday celebration.

“Genocide, the war in Karabakh, the earthquake, and now this,”
Makeyan said. “Every time we get our heads just above the water,
something like this happens. But we will stick together. Armenians
are the people most capable of enduring tragedy after tragedy.”

Because of their heavy smoking and poor diet, Armenian men tend to
age rapidly. Many in their thirties look twenty years older.

Lev Dashchyan, 28, a cab driver from Sochi’s Adler district, home to
about 80,000 ethnic Armenians, said war, natural disaster — and now
the plane crash — had exacerbated local Armenians’ plight.

“My father-in-law’s friend lost his wife and children in the
earthquake,” Dashchyan said, referring to the 1998 Spitak disaster.

“They never even found the bodies. Then he remarried, and his new wife
and child died in the plane crash. He has suffered a lot. He’s 55,
but looks like he’s 70.”

Dashchyan belongs to the Hamshen Armenian community. His ancestors,
Makeyan said, fled across the Black Sea from Turkey to settle in
the Krasnodar region and Abkhazia in the early 19th century. Hamshen
Armenians comprise most of Sochi’s Armenian population; while they
speak an old dialect featuring many Turkish words, they are close to
other Armenians.

Komitas looking at a photo album.

“Sometimes we have a difficult time understanding each other because of
our different dialects,” Karina Mardvitskaya, 37, a Hamshen Armenian
and a florist, said of her friend, non-Hamshen Armenian Violeta
Muratyan, who tends the bar at an outdoor cafe on Kurortny Prospekt,
Sochi’s main drag.

Mardvitskaya, a Sochi native, and Muratyan, who came to Sochi from
Stavropol three years ago to find work, said Wednesday evening that
they had been frantically calling friends to find out if anyone they
knew had been killed in the plane crash.

“I was on the phone all day,” Muratyan said. “Everyone was calling
trying to figure out who had heard what. Luckily, no one close to me
was on the plane.”

But Muratyan said a young Armenian woman who frequented the cafe had
apparently died in the crash.

“Some customers came in today and told me she was on the plane,”
Muratyan said. “I remember her face clearly. She must have been
around 21.”

Other Armenians spent the better part of Thursday finding out that
people who had been a part of their lives for years were now gone.

Flipping through a photo album, Father Komitas turned to a group
picture of several of his congregants, pointing to a middle-aged
blonde woman.

“She came to church regularly,” he said of the woman, who had been
on the flight. “It’s important now that we find the bodies so they
can be put to rest, hopefully in Armenia, in their homeland.”

ARMENIAN CIVIL AVIATION AGENCY GIVES DETAILS OF A-320 AIRBUS CRASH NEAR SOCHI

Regnum, Russia
May 3 2006

105 passengers and 8 crew members, including 77 Armenian citizens and
28 Russian citizens, were aboard the A-320 plane belonging to Armavia
that crashed in the Black Sea, Head of the Armenian Civil Aviation
Department Artyom Movsisyan has announce while speaking on May 3 after
an extraordinary session with the Armenian president on the crash.

Movsisyan is quoted as saying by a REGNUM correspondent that the airbus
departed from Yerevan at 01:47 a.m. local time. Because of bad weather
conditions the captain decided to fly back to Zvartnots Airport
in Yerevan, however air traffic control of Adler Airport through
Georgian colleagues conveyed information that weather conditions
permitted landing. The airbus tried to land again, but because of low
visibility the captain decided to start a missed approach procedure. At
03:35 a.m. Yerevan time the aircraft disappeared from radar screens,
some time later alarm was announced.

Russian navy and coastal guard found out that the crash occurred in
a 5 km distance from Sochi coast, the information was submitted to
the Armenian authorities.

As Movsisyan said, the airbus (hull No 32009, 1995) was subjected
to renewal and examination. The plane was insured. Right before
departure from Yerevan experts from Sabina Technics Company gave a
positive conclusion about technical conditions of the airbus.

According to Movsisyan, the plane was filled up with 10 tons of fuel,
and for a flight to Sochi only 3.5 tons were enough. At present
moment, the Armenian Civil Aviation Department and Armavia have
established operative headquarters to investigate details of the
crash. As Movsisyan noted, the investigation will be carried out by
Russian agencies in charge.

113 KILLED IN BLACK SEA PLANE CRASH

Guardian Unlimited
Press Association
Wednesday May 3, 2006 6:28 AM

An Armenian passenger jet crashed in bad weather off the Black Sea
coast while trying to make an emergency landing in Russia, killing
all 113 people aboard.

The Airbus A-320, which belonged to the Armenian airline Armavia,
disappeared from radar screens late on Tuesday night, about 3.7 miles
from the shore, and crashed after making a turn and heading toward
Adler airport, near the city of Sochi, Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman
for Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry, said.

The ministry’s southern regional branch said all 113 people aboard
the plane, including five children, were killed.

Wreckage from the plane was found not far from the shoreline,
Beltsov said. Search and rescue teams have pulled 11 bodies from
the water. Boats and divers were involved in the search, which was
hampered by rough seas and driving rain.

The plane disappeared from radar screens during a flight from
Yerevan to Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea in southern Russia,
Beltsov said.

He said the plane went down while trying to make a repeat attempt at
an emergency landing.

The Armavia representative said the crew had communicated with Sochi
ground controllers while the plane was flying over the Georgian
capital, Tbilisi.

The controllers said there were poor weather conditions but the plane
could still land, according to the representative.

But just before the landing, they told the crew to make another circle
in the air before approaching the airport. Then the plane crashed.

He said weather conditions were “certainly” the cause.

THIRD ROUND OF EU-ARMENIA NEGOTIATIONS TO START MAY 3 IN YEREVAN

ArmRadio.am
02.05.2006 16:06

May 3 the third round of negotiations on elaboration of the EU-Armenia
Actions Plan in the framework of the European Neighborhood Policy
will be held in Yerevan.

Representatives of interested agencies of the Republic of Armenia
and the European Commission will participate in the negotiations. RA
delegation is headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Armen Bayburdyan, the
European delegation is leaded by European Commission Director on Issues
of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia Hugues Mingarelly.

The points not agreed upon during the previous round are going to
be discussed.

Schweizerische Depeschenagentur AG (SDA)
SDA – Service de base francais
29 avril 2006

Genocide armenien: affaire Dogu Perincek Le juge vaudois Jacques
Antenen renvoie le Turc devant la justice

Lausanne f

Lausanne (ats) Le juge d’instruction vaudois Jacques Antenen a
renvoye le Turc Dogu Perincek devant le Tribunal de police de
Lausanne pour discrimination raciale. Le chef du Parti des
Travailleurs, qui qualifie le genocide armenien de mensonge, risque
jusqu’a six mois de prison.

L’ordonnance a ete rendue par defaut, a indique samedi a l’ATS
Jacques Antenen confirmant ainsi des informations parues dans les
quotidiens vaudois “24 Heures” et zurichois “Tages Anzeiger”. Cette
procedure s’explique par le fait que le leader turc n’a plus donne de
ses nouvelles et s’est separe de ses avocats dans le canton de Vaud
et a Zurich.

“Mensonge international”

Nationaliste de gauche, Dogu Perincek est venu fin juillet 2005 en
Suisse a l’occasion du 82e anniversaire du Traite de Lausanne. A
Lausanne et a Glattbrugg (ZH), il a notamment declare que le genocide
armenien de 1915 etait un “mensonge international”.

A la suite de ces propos le juge Antenen l’a entendu en septembre. Le
magistrat avait dit renoncer “pour l’instant” a toute inculpation
pour violation de l’art. 261bis du Code penal qui reprime notamment
les propos negationnistes.

La question armenienne provoque des tensions recurrentes et fortes
entre Berne et la Turquie. Si Ankara reconnaît la realite des
massacres perpetres par l’Empire ottoman contre la minorite
armenienne, elle recuse le terme de “genocide” et conteste le nombre
de morts, le chiffre d’un million etant generalement avance.

Visites remises en cause

En août 2005, Ankara a reporte sine die la visite du conseiller
federal Joseph Deiss en Turquie. La decision survenait un mois après
les declarations fracassantes emanant notamment de Dogu Perincek et
l’ouverture de procedures penales.

En Suisse, le Conseil national a reconnu officiellement le genocide
armenien et le Grand Conseil vaudois a fait le pas en 2003. A la
suite de cet evenement, la conseillère federale Micheline Calmy-Rey
n’avait pas pu visiter la Turquie comme prevu et avait dû attendre
mars dernier pour s’y rendre.

L’entreprise Pilatus ecartee

La dernière repercussion de ces tensions entre la Turquie et la
Suisse a touche Pilatus. La fabrique d’avions n’a pas ete autorisee a
soumettre une offre pour le renouvellement d’une partie de flotte
militaire turque.

–Boundary_(ID_EIQfgbpkFqKptpcS2V8wmg)–

Op-Ed: Blowback in Africa
By RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN

New York Times
April 28, 2006

EVER since Chad gained independence 46 years ago, it has been a
world-class model of political dysfunction. In the 1970’s, Chad’s
president, François Tombalbaye, compelled civil servants to
renounce Western customs, undergo a tribal initiation rite known as
yondo and profess belief in a nationalist creed he called
Chaditude. He was executed in 1975. In the 1980’s, a rebel leader
named Hissène Habré led an army to the presidential palace and
seized power. He became known as the “African Pinochet” and
murderously pursued opponents for nearly a decade.

In 1990, Mr. Habré was chased out by an armed faction led by Chad’s
current president, Idriss Déby. Now Mr. Déby is facing his own
rebellion.

Americans might dismiss this numbing cycle of coups as esoteric
history belonging to a troubled and distant country. They
shouldn’t. The C.I.A. armed Mr. Habré for years, and since 2003,
the United States military has been training and equipping
Mr. Déby’s army, making his fight to stay in office our fight, too.

Last year, Chad took part in a vast, international military exercise
organized by the United States – the largest exercise of its kind in
Africa since World War II, according to the Defense Department. This
summer, American forces will continue to advise Chadian soldiers, and
Congress is expected to allocate $500 million for a five-year program
to train and equip several Saharan armies – including Mr. Déby’s.

The military hopes these initiatives will help contain the threat of
terrorism by bringing order to the Great Desert and its
borderlands. For centuries, the Sahara has been a lawless realm, and
with millions of Muslims living across the region in isolated
communities, counterterrorism officials fear that Islamic militants
may seek sanctuary there.

But dispensing military aid to Chad now – with Mr. Déby fighting
hundreds of rebels backed by Sudan – seems reckless. It puts American
military equipment and expertise in the hands of a desperate
dictator. Worse still, it risks pouring additional fuel into the human
furnace of Darfur, and it may well come to impede the careful
diplomatic work required to solve that crisis.

So far, American officials have made much of Sudanese assistance to
the rebels, framing the recent conflict in Chad as an outgrowth of the
tragedy in Darfur. There is some truth to this. But the violence in
Chad also has its own political narrative. During his 16 years in
power, Mr. Déby has ruled Chad brutally. His security forces have
committed torture, rapes, summary executions and mass killings.

Mr. Déby is a member of the Zaghawa – a northern tribe making up
roughly 5 percent of Chad’s population – and last year the State
Department described his regime as a Zaghawa oligarchy shielded by a
security and intelligence apparatus that violates human rights with
impunity. In 2004, Mr. Déby altered Chad’s Constitution to grant
himself another term in office. Elections are scheduled for next
Wednesday. There is little likelihood they will be fair.

Only one compelling argument exists for giving Chad military aid, and
it follows from the logic of lesser evils. Many of the refugees
fleeing Darfur are Zaghawa, and Mr. Déby has taken them in. If his
regime collapses, tens of thousands of people will once again be at
the mercy of Sudan’s janjaweed marauders, and the genocide may spread.

This argument, though, is complicated by another unsettling
development. In recent months, scores of Chadian soldiers have
defected to the rebel militias. If the defections continue, they raise
the horrific possibility that American military equipment and
expertise could end up going to men aligned with the janjaweed. In
that case, our military assistance to Chad, far from containing
political anarchy, would only add to it.

Raffi Khatchadourian traveled to Chad in 2005 for the International
Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced
International Studies.

n/28khatchadourian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Azeri, US presidents note importance of expanding partnership

Turan news agency, Baku
28 Apr 06

Washington, 28 April: Energy and regional security, the
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and problems of democratization were in
the centre of attention at today’s meeting between the US and
Azerbaijani presidents in Washington, the two heads of state said at a
news conference in the courtyard of the White House after the
negotiations.

[Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev said that he and George Bush
discussed “all important issues”, a special correspondent of Turan
reports. The sides expressed a mutual opinion about the need to expand
and strengthen strategic partnership between the two countries, he
pointed out.

For his part, George Bush confirmed that they also touched on the
Iranian issue, but he did not disclose details. He stressed that the
two heads of state think it important to expand and strengthen
democracy in the region.

The Armenian Genocide”
April 28, 2006

Ken A. Bode

“The Armenian Genocide,” which aired on most PBS stations on April 17
is a powerful indictment of the Ottoman Empire for its forced
relocation and systemic effort to eliminate its Armenian population.
Produced for Oregon Public Television by Andrew Goldberg of Two Cats
Productions, the hour-long documentary is an impressive gathering of
historical material interpreted by knowledgeable and respected
scholars, leading to the inescapable conclusion that in 1915, with
the outbreak of World War I, there was a brutal and methodical
campaign to slaughter and destroy Armenians, directed by the Turkish
authorities of the time.

That the present government of Turkey does not subscribe to these
conclusions is well known. The official Turkish position is that
local Armenians supported the invading Russian army and also engaged
in sporadic uprisings against Ottoman authorities. Indeed, many
Armenian Christians were killed, but so were many Muslims, in what
Turkey insists was a civil war. There were deportations, Turkey
admits, but no centrally directed genocide. Genocide denial is the
official position of the Turkish government today, backed by that
country’s criminal code.

In the documentary, the Turkish view of history is represented by the
head of the Turkish Historical Society, with testimony by Gunduz
Aktan, the former Turkish ambassador and by Prof. Justin McCarthy of
the University of Louisville, whose long-standing view is that there
was no centrally directed genocide. In a pre-broadcast letter to CPB,
David Saltzman, counsel to the Assembly of Turkish American
Associations, raised a number of questions about PBS motives and
responsibilities in promoting “a single version of the truth.”
Despite the presence of voices that support his country’s position,
the present Turkish ambassador, Nabi Sensoy, issued a post-broadcast
complaint saying that the show was “blatantly one-sided” and
reflected “a self-serving political agenda by Armenian American
activists.”

On the central question of whether there was a genocide, the
documentary agrees with the view represented by the International
Association of Genocide Scholars that, yes, there was. Samantha Power
addresses this issue in her 2002 Pulitzer prize winning book, “A
Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” Power devotes
the opening chapter to a review of the treatment of the Armenians in
1915, citing reports from the American Ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire Henry Morganthau who cabled Washington on July 10:

“Persecutions of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions.
Reports from widely scattered districts indicate systematic attempt
to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and through arbitrary
arrests, terrible tortures, whole-sale expulsions and deportations
from one end of the Empire to the other accompanied by frequent
instances of rape, pillage, and murder, turning into massacre, to
bring destruction on them. These measures are not in response to
popular or fanatical demand but are purely arbitrary and directed
from Constantinople in the name of military necessity, often in
districts where no military operations are likely to take place.”
Morganthau warned Washington, “there seems to be a systematic plan to
crush the Armenian race.” In 1915, the New York Times devoted 145
stories to the Turkish horrors, and former President Theodore
Roosevelt joined in the unsuccessful effort to persuade the American
government to denounce the Ottoman Empire for the atrocities. Nothing
happened and eventually Amb. Morganthau resigned in despair.

In 1915, genocide was a crime without a name. Over the next three
decades, a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin conducted a one-man
campaign to create a universal jurisdiction whereby instigators or
perpetrators of attempts to wipe out national, ethnic or religious
groups would become an international crime that could be punished
anywhere, like slavery or piracy. Exhibit A in Lemkin’s campaign was
the Armenian episode. Lemkin appears in the documentary talking about
the genocide against Armenians.

A Number of Questions
Andrew Goldberg’s documentary pulls no punches on the question of
whether there was a genocide in 1915, and Coby Atlas, PBS senior vice
president, told the Washington Post that PBS considers the genocide
to be “settled history.” However, the PBS ombudsman, Michael Getler,
wrote a thoughtful analysis ending as a skeptic on that point.
Perhaps, mused Getler, over time there will be “greater agreement and
acknowledgment about what happened in the years around 1915 than
there has been until now.” He adds that there is simply not the same
kind of evidence for genocide in Turkey as historians have assembled
to document the Holocaust during W.W.II. Getler concludes:

“Furthermore, the action is strongly denied and refuted by the
country involved, Turkey, and there are historians, as has been
shown, who question not whether terrible things happened but whether
there is enough evidence to use that powerful descriptor, Genocide.”
This evident disagreement between a top programming executive and the
network’s ombudsman affords greater relevance to the series of
pre-broadcast questions submitted by David Saltzman on behalf of the
Assembly of Turkish American Associations. Saltzman inquired how PBS
and CPB achieved the right to proclaim definite positions on historic
controversies. By what standards, he asks, are these judgments made?
What exactly is the PBS position on the Armenian genocide, and by
what process was this position adopted? Given Mr. Getler’s doubts
about whether genocide occurred, these are good questions.

In the opinion of Andrew Goldberg, the documentary producer,
unwillingness by the PBS ombudsman to apply the word genocide means,
in effect, that Getler chose the Turkish side. “If you don’t use that
word, you are enabling denial,” says Goldberg.

This brings us to the PBS decision to add a post-program roundtable,
“Armenian Genocide: Exploring the Issues.” The discussion was taped
at National Geographic studios in Washington, D.C., and moderated by
NPR’s Scott Simon. Consistent with the PBS position on “settled
history,” the objective of the panel was to “explore more deeply the
question of why the Turkish government and its supporters continue to
reject the genocide label.”

The very existence of this after-show generated considerable
controversy, including hundreds of e-mails on both sides and an
on-line petition against the discussion that drew thousands of
signatures. Predictably, Armenians opposed the panel discussion on
grounds that it would dilute the firm conclusions of the documentary.
Turks supported it as another opportunity to cast the events of 1915
as something short of genocide.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the agitation was that several
members of Congress got involved in urging PBS not to air the panel
discussion. As one party to the documentary put it, “They control the
appropriations. There is an implicit threat in their intervention.”

The panelists chosen to explore the issues in the after-show included
two scholars representing the Armenian side, Peter Balakian, author
of “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s
Response,” and Taner Akcam, a professor from the University of
Minnesota. Both were featured as witnesses in the documentary,
Balakian with credits as an editorial consultant and writer.
Representing the Turkish view were Professor Justin McCarthy from the
University of Louisville and Turkish professor Omer Turan.

Organized as it was, the panel amounted to a quasi-academic version
of “Crossfire,” with Balakian aggressively accusing McCarthy of being
a paid agent of the Turkish government. Omer Turan’s facility with
English was so limited that the moderator, Scott Simon, admitted at
one point that he was lost. All in all, very little was accomplished
by this panel. That opinion was echoed by programmers in many PBS
venues who decided not to broadcast the panel or to do so at 3:00 or
5:00 a.m.

This is not to say that the idea of an after-show panel was a bad
one. This one did not work, but it may serve as a valuable lesson for
the future. The group should not have included members who already
had their say in the preceding documentary, and care should have been
taken to be sure that all participants had an adequate facility with
English.

With issues as deeply controversial as those treated in “The Armenian
Genocide,” it should be regular policy for PBS to sponsor and pay for
a panel of reputable, independent scholars able to step back and
offer intelligent perspective and commentary on what the viewers have
just watched. If the experts are chosen wisely, it can only add to
PBS adhering to the requirements of fairness and balance. Then, when
PBS arranges for an after-show, it should assure the quality of the
product and stand behind it with strong encouragement that affiliate
stations run the panel discussion immediately following the
documentary.

Finally, there is the matter of funding. At the beginning and end of
the documentary lengthy credits reveal that nearly all the support
for this project came from foundations, families or individuals with
Armenian surnames. PBS has assured its viewers that all donors were
properly vetted, though who knows what that actually means? Full
transparency is important, and the list does convey the unfortunate
impression that the documentary, “The Armenian Genocide,” was paid
for by one side of the argument.

Public skepticism about our business is so great that PBS should be
cognizant of impressions. For example, when KCET in Los Angeles–home
to one of the largest Armenian populations in America — decided not
to air the Goldberg documentary, it prompted this response from KCET
viewer Ruth Blandon:

“The word on the street is that you’ve been paid off by people
interested and invested in maintaining silence about the genocide.
Turkish money, perhaps? Republican money? Someone else’s money? The
word is out.

“There have already been many murmurs about corruption at PBS within
a different context. I don’t understand your programming choices
which only serve to add fuel to the fire. And I hope you reconsider
your poor choice not to air the Goldberg documentary as well as who
your audience is.

“Shame on you.”

My conclusion is that this was an excellent documentary, well
supported with historical fact and expert witnesses. It raised vital
issues that the nation of Turkey remains unwilling to deal with,
because, as Samantha Power suggests in the program, to acknowledge
genocide would put that nation in the sorry company of Adolph Hitler
and Nazi Germany. The contrary opinion of the ombudsman Mr. Getler
leaves PBS in a fog of ambivalence.