Author: Nahapetian Zhanna

AZG Armenian Daily #096, 27/05/2005

Culture

STATE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA TO ORGANIZE NEW CONCERTS

State Philharmonic Orchestra of Armenia is seeking to restore cultural ties
with neighboring countries. The concert of Georgian “Metekhi” Theatre at
“Gabriel Sundukian” State Academic Theatre yesterday was one step to
restoration. It has been the second performance of the Georgian theatre in
Armenia since its creation in 1970. The first concert took place 20 years
ago with the participation of the first generation of the theatre. “We unite
Georgian folk and classic music. This is a new trend in choreography which
is rather interesting, I think”, art director of the theatre Haroldi
Qotzkhishvili said.

Laert Movsisian, head of the State Philharmonic Orchestra, said at a press
conference yesterday that this was not the only project of the Orchestra.
Armenian professional dance groups together with individual dancers will
perform “Eternal Flight” concert at “Hakob Paronian” Musical Comedy Theatre
on May 29. Spectators are expected to enjoy tap-dance, modern, jazz, Latin
American, classic and national dances. “The concert will show that we don’t
fall abreast of other countries”, Laert Movsisian says.

The second arrangement of the Philharmonic Orchestra is the concert of Andre
on the last days of May. Mr. Movsisian assures that all tickets for the
concert were sold out before they took up advertising.

The singer said that he does not fear live performance and said that he
dreams of a law prohibiting phonogram. “That will put an end to cultural
killings”, he said.

By Tamar Minasian

Armenpress

THREE RESIDENTS OF SHIRAK WARDED FOR HELPING TO DETAIN BORDER TRESSPASSER

GYUMRI, MAY 26, ARMENPRESS: Three residents of a village in the
north-western province of Shirak were rewarded by the command of the Russian
border guards who patrol Armenian border with Turkey for tracking down and
helping border guards to detain a man who crossed the border from Turkey on
May 2.
The residents of Meghrashen village will be also awarded medals at a
ceremony later this year marking the day of border guards. The command of
the Russian unit has pledged tangible rewards for local residents for their
tips and information about past and planned border crossing violations. The
decision was prompted by frequent cases of cattle stealing in Armenia and
their sale across the border.

A1plus

| 17:34:08 | 25-05-2005 | Politics |

THE OIL WILL FLOW

Today the Baku part of the oil-pipeline Baku-Tbilisi-Jeyhan was officially
opened. In 2002 the construction of the pipeline costing 3.6 billion dollars
started. The pipeline length is 1767 km. Is goes through Iran, Azerbaijan
and Georgia leaving out Armenia. The countries using the pipeline want to
give out 300 million barrels of oil annually reaching up to 350 million in
10-15 years.

A profit of 250 billion dollars is anticipated a year. The profit of
Azerbaijan will be 65-70 billion excluding the oil supply of Azerbaijan. The
Kazakh President Nazarbayev announced on May 24 that they will join
Baku-Jeyhan and mentioned that he will give up to 7.5 million tons of oil to
the program.

The experts anticipate that the annual capital of the consortium will be
about 1 trillion dollars.

FOR LACK OF IT-MARKET IN ARMENIA, TECHNOLOGICAL POSSIBILITIES AND
SOLUTIONS ARE PRACTICALLY NOT APPLIED

YEREVAN, MAY 25. ARMINFO. For lack of IT-market in Armenia,
technological possibilities and solutions are practically not applied,
Director of the union of IT Enterprises Karen Vardanyan says in his
interview to ARMINFO.

He says that although the production volume of IT-sphere occupies
enough place in the structure of Armenia’s economy, it does not
satisfy the demand of the union as the basic engineering solutions in
Armenia are sold abroad. Vardanyan says that he government and the
public must e aware that without development of the internal
IT-market, the future is doubtful. He thinks that the sphere will
development 15-20% annually, but it is little enough. Introduction of
IT products in the state structures will allow the government to
stimulate not only the IT-sphere, but also other branches of economy,
as well as to increase the transparency of management, financial
flows, human resources management, which, in its turn, will reduce
corruption risks on the whole, Vardanyan thinks.

In this direction, the Union works with Prime Minister-head IT
Council, the Government and the Ministry of Trade and Economic
Development. It closely cooperate with the Enterprises Incubator
Foundation to develop business and legislation.

The Union of IT Enterprises was founded in 2000 by a number of private
companies. At present it unites such large companies and Lycos,
Synopses Armenia, Unicomp, Compass, Arminco and HBL. The major task of
the union is protection of the interests of its members from
premeditated interference by the state, struggle against unfair
competition, development of the sphere in Armenia.

Pan Armenian News

GERMANY ALWAYS ENCOURAGED YEREVAN AND ANKARA TO ENTER INTO DIRECT DIALOGUE

25.05.2005 05:19

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ We have always used our good relations with both countries
to encourage them to enter into a direct dialogue, German Ambassador to
Armenia Dr. Heike Renate Peitsch stated in an interview with PanARMENIAN.Net
when commenting on the possible tension in the German-Turkish relations in
case the Bundestag recognizes the Armenian Genocide. In her words, Federal
Foreign Minister Fischer underlined this policy during his visit to Yerevan
in April 2004. When responding to the question whether it is possible that
under Turkey’s pressure the discussions on the draft resolution will be
suspended or cancelled the Ambassador said, `How to deal with the draft
resolution remains the responsibility of the German Bundestag.’

A1plus

GIVE OUR MONEY BACK

Today the residents of the Northern Avenue gathered at the building of
the National Assembly to demand the compensation. In the words of
resident of Lalayan Street Gohar Asatryan, the money allocated to them
as a compensation is not enough for buying a flat.

«They did not counted the square meters, did not take into account the
height of the ceiling and thickness of the walls», she complained.

To note, the demonstration took place when an hour of statements was
held in the NA

French Open Results

AP Worldstream
May 24, 2005

Results Tuesday from the A‚¬13.5 million (US$17 million) French Open, played on clay at Stade Roland Garros (seedings in parentheses):

Singles

Men

First Round

Kristof Vliegen, Belgium, def. Antony Dupuis, France, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2.

Dick Norman, Belgium, def. Jean-Rene Lisnard, France, 6-1, 6-1, 6-4.

Juan Carlos Ferrero (32), Spain, def. Karol Beck, Slovakia, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

Nikolay Davydenko (12), Russia, def. Sasa Tuksar, Croatia, 6-2, 6-4, 6-3.

Lukas Dlouhy, Czech Republic, def. Thomas Enqvist, Sweden, 6-2, 7-6 (3), 6-1.

Mikhail Youzhny (29), Russia, def. Gilles Muller, Luxembourg, 6-4, 6-1, 6-0.

Jan Hernych, Czech Republic, def. Fabrice Santoro, France, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-1, 4-6, 6-4.

Jurgen Melzer, Austria, def. Wayne Arthurs, Australia, 6-4, 6-2, 7-6 (4).

Olivier Rochus, Belgium, def. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, Spain, 7-6 (4), 7-5, 4-6, 6-3.

Igor Andreev, Russia, def. Jonas Bjorkman, Sweden, 2-6, 6-2, 6-2, 7-5.

Marat Safin (3), Russia, def. Raemon Sluiter, Netherlands, 6-1, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.

Lee Hyung-taik, South Korea, def. Alex Calatrava, Spain, 6-4, 2-6, 5-7, 7-6 (4), 6-4.

Jarkko Nieminen, Finland, def. Andre Agassi (6), United States, 7-5, 4-6, 6-7 (6), 6-1, 6-0.

Paul-Henri Mathieu, France, def. Feliciano Lopez (24), Spain, 6-2, 6-0, 6-7 (5), 6-4.

Mariano Puerta, Argentina, def. Ivan Ljubicic (13), Croatia, 7-5, 7-5, 6-2.

Tommy Robredo (15), Spain, def. Peter Luczak, Australia, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.

Nicolas Kiefer (28), Germany, def. Ivo Karlovic, Croatia, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4.

Tommy Haas (21), Germany, def. Florian Mayer, Germany, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.

Stanislas Wawrinka, Switzerland, def. Nicolas Massu (22), Chile, 6-7 (4), 6-2, 6-2, 6-4.

James Blake, United States, def. Tomas Tenconi, Italy, 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (8).

Arnaud Clement, France, def. Alexander Popp, Germany, 6-2, 6-4, 6-7 (1), 6-2.

Jose Acasuso, Argentina, def. Max Mirnyi, Belarus, 6-4, 7-6 (9), 6-2.

Chris Guccione, Australia, def. Santiago Ventura, Spain, 6-3, 2-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-2.

Guillermo Canas (9), Argentina, def. Gael Monfils, France, 6-3, 6-1, 6-0.

Flavio Saretta, Brazil, def. Greg Rusedski, Britain, 6-2, 7-6 (7), 6-3.

Guillermo Coria (8), Argentina, def. Kenneth Carlsen, Denmark, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4.

Thomas Johansson (19), Sweden, def. Scott Draper, Australia, 6-7 (5), 6-1, 3-6, 6-0, 6-1.

Albert Montanes, Spain, def. Sargis Sargsian, Armenia, 6-1, 6-4, 6-0.

Filippo Volandri (27), Italy, def. Cyril Saulnier, France, 6-0, 6-2, 6-1.

David Sanchez, Spain, def. Gustavo Kuerten, Brazil, 6-3, 6-0, 4-6, 6-1.

Andy Roddick (2), United States, def. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, France, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.

Vince Spadea, United States, def. Albert Costa, Spain, 6-4, 7-6 (6), 6-2.

Novak Djokovic, Serbia-Montenegro, def. Robby Ginepri, United States, 6-0, 6-0, 6-3.

___

Women

First Round

Severine Beltrame, France, def. Abigail Spears, United States, 6-3, 6-1.

Klara Koukalova, Czech Republic, def. Mervana Jugic-Salkic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

Nuria Llagostera Vives, Spain, def. Ai Sugiyama (23), Japan, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.

Anna Chakvetadze, Russia, def. Paola Suarez (26), Argentina, 7-5, 1-6, 6-0.

Sofia Arvidsson, Sweden, def. Eleni Daniilidou, Greece, 6-1, 7-6 (1).

Svetlana Kuznetsova (6), Russia, def. Mathilde Johansson, France, 6-1, 6-1.

Magdalena Maleeva (24), Bulgaria, def. Rika Fujiwara, Japan, 6-4, 6-2.

Gisela Dulko (30), Argentina, def. Sania Mirza, India, 6-3, 6-3.

Samantha Stosur, Australia, def. Silvija Talaja, Croatia, 6-1, 6-2.

Justine Henin-Hardenne (10), Belgium, def. Conchita Martinez, Spain, 6-0, 4-6, 6-4.

Elena Bovina (12), Russia, def. Maria Vento-Kabchi, Venezuela, 6-0, 6-3.

Maria Sharapova (2), Russia, def. Evgenia Linetskaya, Russia, 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-4.

Marissa Irvin, United States, def. Nicole Pratt, Australia, 5-7, 6-4, 8-6.

Tathiana Garbin, Italy, def. Martina Sucha, Slovakia, 6-7 (8), 6-1, 6-2.

Nadia Petrova (7), Russia, def. Mashona Washington, United States, 6-4, 6-2.

Kristina Brandi, Puerto Rico, def. Youlia Fedossova, France, 1-6, 6-3, 6-2.

Aravane Rezai, France, def. Camille Pin, France, 2-6, 6-2, 6-2.

Iveta Benesova, Czech Republic, def. Pauline Parmentier, France, 7-5, 6-4.

Nathalie Dechy (13), France, def. Michaela Pastikova, Czech Republic, 6-1, 6-4.

Anabel Medina Garrigues, Spain, def. Petra Mandula, Hungary, 6-0, 6-1.

Ana Ivanovic (29), Serbia-Montenegro, def. Stephanie Foretz, France, 6-3, 6-3.

Amelie Mauresmo (3), France, def. Evie Dominikovic, Australia, 6-2, 6-1.

Francesca Schiavone (22), Italy, def. Zheng Jie, China, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.

Anna Smashnova, Israel, def. Jelena Jankovic (15), Serbia-Montenegro, 6-0, 6-3.

Virginia Ruano Pascual, Spain, def. Anastasiya Yakimova, Belarus, 6-4, 7-6 (7).

Kveta Peschke, Czech Republic, def. Dally Randriantefy, Madagascar, 6-1, 6-0.

Nicole Vaidisova, Czech Republic, def. Lucie Safarova, Czech Republic, 4-6, 6-0, 6-4.

Antonella Serra Zanetti, Italy, def. Marlene Weingartner, Germany, 6-2, 6-4.

Alize Cornet, France, def. Alina Jidkova, Russia, 7-6 (4), 6-3.

Anna-Lena Groenefeld, Germany, def. Roberta Vinci, Italy, 7-5, 1-6, 6-4.

Shahar Peer, Israel, def. Marion Bartoli (28), France, 6-4, 6-3.

Tatiana Golovin (17), France, def. Lilia Osterloh, United States, 6-0, 6-2.

CRUDE AWAKENING / THE CASPIAN
Tuesday, May 24, 2005

The great Caspian Sea adventure
One of the biggest pipelines ever is set to turn on the taps in Azerbaijan,
says MARK MacKINNON. After years of hype, the question is: How much oil is
there, really?
By MARK MACKINNON

BAKU — Tomorrow morning, amid expected fanfare at BP PLC’s gleaming
Sangachal terminal on Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea coast, crude oil will finally
start to flow into one of the most significant and expensive pipelines ever
built. It’s a day that, once upon a time, was supposed to forever alter
global oil markets, making prices fall at the gas station near you and
finally lessening the West’s reliance on the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries.
But after 10 years of hype, the Caspian oil balloon has burst. When the
first crude begins its winding 1,760-kilometre path through mountain passes
and around conflict zones on its way to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of
Ceyhan, few will be expecting it to have much of an impact on oil prices.
Instead, the question that will be asked is: How much more oil is there,
really? And how did so many get so badly snookered?
The $3.6-billion (U.S.) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, or BTC, pipeline, was born of
the excited chatter that surrounded the Caspian in the early 1990s, when
there was a mad stampede to the region, which had previously been sealed
behind the walls of the Soviet Union.
Big oil firms spoke fantastically of a “new Middle East” without the
tormented politics of that region. Tiny Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic
in a very strategic position, was to become the next Kuwait.

Diversifying has become the buzzword of a Western world hooked on Middle
Eastern oil after Sept. 11, 2001, when the perils of counting on the
volatile Persian Gulf for supply were made all too clear. Since then, oil
companies have scoured every corner of the planet, looking for the big find
that could cut down reliance on OPEC.
Back in the 1990s, the U.S. State Department was the lead cheerleader behind
the boom, telling analysts and oilmen that there were up to 200 billion
barrels of crude under the choppy black waters of the Caspian Sea, a figure
comparable only to the 262 billion barrels believed to sit beneath the sands
of Saudi Arabia. No less a figure than Dick Cheney, then the plugged-in
chief executive officer of oil services giant Halliburton Co., got caught up
in the excitement. “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region
emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian,”
he said in 1998.
At Washington’s urging, the BTC was born along its incredibly complex route
through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to make sure the oil got to Western
markets without dallying in Iran or Russia (the route via Iran would have
been far shorter and cheaper). The end terminal, at Ceyhan, sits not
coincidentally near the U.S. air force base at Incirlik.
Before the rush, Azerbaijan, home to a mainly Muslim population of 7.6
million at the southeastern end of the Caucasus mountain range, was a
forgotten and crumbling backwater at war with its neighbour, Armenia, over
the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh. Today, an uneasy peace holds on
that border, and the money that followed the oil to Azerbaijan is visible on
the skyline of its capital city, Baku, where Western-style apartment
buildings and glitzy hotels have sprung up to surround its stone-walled old
city centre.
But just as the crude is finally starting to creep westward, it’s becoming
clear that there’s much, much less oil in the region than had been
originally trumpeted. Instead of the 200 billion barrels predicted in 1995,
most estimates now put the figure at somewhere between 17 and 32 billion,
most of it on the other side of the Caspian from Azerbaijan, in the waters
off Kazakhstan.
BTC will still bring a desperately awaited one million barrels a day to
market once it hits full capacity in an estimated four years’ time, but —
in providing perhaps 3 per cent of global supply — it’s going to do nothing
to change the West’s reliance on the House of Saud.
“I think that there were some people that did exaggerate the amount of oil
reserves in the Caspian. That is without doubt,” said Michael Townsend,
executive director of BTC Co., the BP-run company managing the pipeline.
“It’s not another Middle East. It’s more similar to another North Sea, or
Algeria, or Norway.”
Sitting in BP’s head office in central Baku, a former Communist Party office
known locally as the “Villa Petrolea,” Mr. Townsend labels the initial
filling of the BTC a major accomplishment for his company, coming after
years of delays caused by environmental concerns, cost overruns and
political wrangling.
There were always dissenters about how much crude lay in the Caspian basin.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies issued a
report in 1998 that said the State Department estimate was “an order of
magnitude away from reality” and that there was likely somewhere between 25
billion and 35 billion barrels, including discoveries not yet made. The
respected Oil and Gas Journal gave an even more low-ball figure — saying
proved reserves totalled only eight billion barrels.
But the State Department figure, developed with the U.S. Department of
Energy and published in a report to Congress in 1995, was the one many here
say drove the rush to Baku. Three years later, a State Department official
admitted the number was “speculative.”

“The 200 billion figure was never really realistic, but people believed it
because it was official,” said Robert Cutler, a Montreal-based researcher
specializing in the Caspian region. He said it was intensely promoted by the
Clinton administration because it suited American geopolitical aims to draw
Western investment to countries such as Azerbaijan and Georgia so as to pull
them out of Russia’s orbit.
In September, 1994, at the height of the hype, Azerbaijan signed a
$7.4-billion production sharing pact with 11 foreign oil majors to develop
the initial Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly in a country ranked 140th out of 146 countries
on Transparency International’s annual corruption index, the oil isn’t where
Azeri geological maps said it would be. Only one significant discovery has
been made since the fall. While Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli has played out largely
according to expectations so far, producing 130,000 barrels a day, other
majors that signed in its wake have hit dry well after dry well. Of 15
production-sharing agreements signed in the Azeri sector of the Caspian
since then, only two have proven commercially viable.
For those companies who did flock to the region in those years, the problem
has flipped from how to build enough pipelines to get all that oil to
market, to how to find enough oil to keep the pipelines filled and
economically viable.
The first oil from the BTC is expected to be boarded onto ships at Ceyhan
and heading to market by year’s end. Mr. Townsend admits the pipeline will
not be full the whole time, but says it still makes economic sense even if
it is used only to pump out Azerbaijan’s recoverable reserves over the next
20 years.
He dismisses two studies by independent American think tanks, the Cato
Institute and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, that suggested
BTC will require hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to break even.
But in the next breath he adds that he’s working hard to persuade Kazakh
officials to ship their oil via BTC, rather than the current route through
Russia to the port of Novorossiisk.
BP, however, has done better than most through Azerbaijan’s boom-gone-bust.
Other oil majors who rushed to Baku have come away bruised. In March, Exxon
Mobil Corp. announced it would quit exploring two fields it owns off the
coast of Azerbaijan after spending $150-million at one of them only to find
nothing. It is so sure that there is nothing commercially viable at the
second field that it has offered to pay the government $27-million to escape
its exploration contract.
While swearing that it has not given up entirely on Azerbaijan, Exxon
decided to slash its staff at its Baku office. Late last year, the Russian
oil major OAO Lukoil also cut back its involvement after an expensive series
of dry wells. There’s little hope left that the excitement of the 1990s will
ever be justified.
“Azerbaijan is one of the most drilled countries on the face of the earth,”
said Raymond Conway, an Albertan who works as senior banker in the Baku
office of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a major
backer of the BTC project. “There could still be some major finds, but I
don’t think anyone here expects that to occur.”
‘There were some people that did exaggerate the amount of oil reserves’
MICHAEL TOWNEND, CASPIAN PIPELINE MANAGER, BTC CO.
‘It’s hot the substitute for Persian Golf oil that we’ve been looking for’
ROBERT EBEL, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
‘Any incremental oil is significant. It doesn’t fix the problem, but it
does help.’ DAVID KNAPP, ENERGY INTELLIGENCE GROUP OF NEW YORK
>From sea to sea
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is a $3.6 billion (U.S.) project to
deliver crude oil from the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan, through Georgia to
Turkey, for delivery to world markets. The BTC pipeline is expected to be
able to transport up to one million barrels of crude a day from discoveries
in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field of the Caspian Sea.
Baku basics
Partners: The pipeline is being developed by a consortium of 11 partners:
SOCAR (the state oil company of Azerbaijan); BP (Britain); TPAO (Turkey);
Statoil (Norway); Unocas (U.S.); Itochu (Japan); Amerada Hess (U.S.); Eni
(Italy); Total (France); INPEX (Japan); and ConocoPhillips (U.S.). BP is the
largest stakeholder and is leading the design and construction phases.
Length: 1,760 kilometres (445 km in Azerbaijan, 245 km in Georgia and 1,070
km in Turkey)
Design life: 40 years
Maximum altitude reached: More than 2,800 metres.
Road and rail crossings: More than 350 in Azerbaijan, 70 in Georgia and 300
in Turkey.
Watercourse crossings: More than 700 in Azerbaijan, 200 in Georgia and 600
in Turkey.
Reserves: The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the
Caspian region contains 17 to 33 million barrels of oil “comparable to Qatar
on the low end and the United States on the high end”
SOURCE:

Was there genocide in early 20th century Armenia?

The Boston Phoenix
20-May-2005

Dear Cecil:

I keep hearing about the Armenian genocide that happened early in the
20th century. The Turkish have done a good job of denial, and there
doesn’t seem to be that much public recognition of the deed. So,
what’s the real scoop–genocide or not? –monkeykarma, via e-mail

Cecil replies:

It tells you something about human nature and the century just
past that the typical response to this question is: What Armenian
genocide? Hardly anyone remembers this appalling crime, even though
at a million-plus deaths it was the first modern holocaust, ranking
eighth on the list of high-volume butcherings 1900-’87 compiled by
genocide historian R. J. Rummel. Few can even tell you where Armenia
is. (The traditional Armenian homeland covers the modern republic
of Armenia plus some of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, but the killings
were confined to Turkey and other parts of the old Ottoman empire.)
It’s not like the murders were conducted in secret or were over before
anybody noticed–on the contrary, they spanned 30 years and received
sustained worldwide publicity. So why the amnesia? Turkey’s adamant
refusal to acknowledge the massacres is part of it, but equally
important is the West’s agreement to forget.

The story of the Armenian extermination has filled books and resists
easy summary. Suffice it to say that successive Ottoman and Turkish
governments using the machinery of state organized a campaign of
ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands of Armenian men,
women, and children were shot, beheaded, burned alive, or otherwise
done away with. Thousands more succumbed to starvation or disease,
and still more were driven into exile.

What had the Armenians done to deserve all this? Not much–their
main offense was to be a Christian minority in a crumbling Islamic
empire. Like another much-persecuted Middle Eastern ethnic group whose
sufferings are better known, the Armenians had an ancient language
and culture plus a reputation for clannishness and a knack for
finance, and they became the target of a similar type of unreasoning
bigotry. After years of low-level harassment by the Ottoman regime,
the first large-scale killings took place from 1894 through 1896,
when by conservative estimate 200,000 Armenians died, half murdered
by Ottoman forces and the balance dying in the subsequent chaos. The
“starving Armenians” became a cause celebre among European and
U.S. humanitarians. (Sixty years later your columnist’s guilt-tripping
great aunts were still admonishing their young relations to eat
their veggies because the starving Armenians didn’t have any.) To
no avail–the British government found the Ottomans a useful ally
against the Russians and refused to impose sanctions.

When a 1908 revolt by the Young Turks, secular modernizers with a
support base in the Turkish army, forced the Ottoman sultan to cede
power to a constitutional government, the Armenians thought they might
get a break, but the new nationalist leaders proved no more tolerant
than the old religious ones. A massacre of 15,000 to 25,000 Armenians
in 1909 set the table for the main event during World War I. Blaming
the supposedly disloyal Christian minority for an early defeat by the
Russians, the Turkish government starting in 1915 rounded up Armenians
throughout the country, murdered vast numbers outright and deported the
rest, with many dying on forced marches or in refugee camps. The brutal
work was carried out by an elaborate bureaucracy that some historians
consider a model for the extermination program of the Nazis. Add in
a couple of additional massacres in the early 1920s and the Armenian
death toll for 1915-1922 totals a million to a million and a half.

For a time after the war it seemed that the surviving Armenians
would get a homeland protected by an American mandate, but resurgent
U.S. isolationism doomed the effort. (Russian Armenia wound up as
a Maryland-sized republic in the Soviet Union; it’s now the site of
present-day Armenia.) Attempts to try the Ottoman officials responsible
for atrocities came to little. In the 1923 Lausanne treaty, the Western
powers abandoned the Armenians in return for commercial guarantees
from Turkey, where the no-longer-so-young Turks under Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk had consolidated their power. Though Congress never ratified
the treaty, the U.S. made its peace with the Kemal government and
Turkey has been a reliable ally in a volatile part of the world
ever since. For that reason the U.S. has remained largely silent in
the face of Turkish insistence that the Armenian genocide is a myth,
was the Armenians’ fault, etc. (One difficulty in researching this
topic now is that much of what’s written about it is the work of
Armenian or Turkish partisans and so of uncertain reliability. For
this column I’ve relied on The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide
and America’s Response by Peter Balakian, a persuasive 2003 account
by an Armenian-American university professor.) One understands the
political realities; still, it’s creepy that a million deaths could
be expunged from human memory so thoroughly that 90 years later barely
anyone would know.

Taleh Ziyadov: Nagorno-Karabakh peace process: Will it succeed?

TDN
Saturday, May 21, 2005

OPINIONS

Taleh ZIYADOV*

The expectations are high since the presidents of Armenia and
Azerbaijan, Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliyev, respectively, met on
the sidelines of the Council of Europe summit in Warsaw on May 16.

Shortly after the meeting of the presidents, the foreign minister
of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov, announced that Armenia is ready to
return seven occupied areas surrounding the former Nagorno-Karabakh
(NK) autonomous region. Armenian troops currently occupy NK.

For almost a year, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan
have been engaged in a series of major talks in Strasburg and Prague,
trying to find a common solution to one of the longest-standing
conflicts in the former Soviet Union.

The talks between the foreign ministers were held in strict secrecy,
but the parties appeared to have come to some sort of initial
agreement, which led Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairs from France, Russia and the
United States to introduce their “new” peace proposal in London on
April 15.

Yuri Merzlyakov, Russian co-chair of the Minsk Group, announced that
“the parties seem to have reached a point where a meeting of the
presidents should give a new impetus to negotiations.”

Despite numerous attempts in the past by the Minsk Group and direct
talks between the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the parties
have not been able to soothe their differences. This time, however,
the Minsk Group co-chairs were convinced that the parties were at a
“sensitive juncture” and that is why the meeting between Aliyev and
Kocharian was so important.

Since the signing of a ceasefire agreement in 1994, Armenia and
Azerbaijan have crossed many “sensitive junctures” they thought would
lead them to a final agreement. And yet, they are still negotiating. Is
it because the proposals by the Minsk Group did not fully satisfy
one or the other party, or is it because they all are driving in the
wrong direction?

While analysts and diplomats have claimed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
is complex and difficult to resolve, the Minsk Group co-chairs have
consistently called on both parties to make “painful compromises,”
confusing the already puzzled populations of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The phrase “painful compromise” has a different resonance in the ears
of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. For Armenians it may imply going back
to the situation in the 1990s when the region had loose autonomy. For
Azerbaijanis it may entail ceding a part of their territory. For both,
the aforementioned compromises are nightmares.

The nightmare for the international community, however, stems from the
conceptual debate of the issue. It is a clash between the concepts of
self-determination and territorial integrity that makes international
organizations such as the United Nations, Council of Europe and OSCE
reluctant to act more effectively on adopted resolutions.

When the two concepts clash, international law gives preference to
territorial integrity. But lack of enforcement mechanisms on the
part of the international community and the vaguely defined and
controversial term of self-determination make a solution for the
conflict almost impossible.

For more than a decade, Armenia and Azerbaijan have viewed the NK
conflict from a perspective of where self-determination meant secession
— thus a breakup of the existing state. Indeed, secessionism has
been one of the major obstacles to peace in the region.

Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University
Mohammed Ayoob argues that the term “self-determination” should be
“de-linked from secession and should be defined in terms of empowering
those segments of the population that have been denied access to
political and economic power. In other words, self-determination
should be perceived as synonymous with democratization (and its
attendant power-sharing arrangements) rather than with the breakup
of existing states.”

Dr. Ayoob’s definition is even more relevant to the Caucasus region,
which is a melting pot of hundreds of multi-ethnic and multi-religious
societies. It is also true for Armenians and Azerbaijanis whose
integration into larger European and international organizations
is inevitable.

If only the international community would have stood firmly behind its
principles and the conflicting parties could have looked at the issues
from a problem-solving perspective rather than a maximalist bargaining
approach, the nightmares could have been avoided a long time ago.

Today, the two states realize that the longer the conflict continues to
sit unresolved, the more dangerous and problematic it may become. In
particular, it threatens regional and global security by sustaining
uncontrolled “grey zones.” It hinders both states’ regional integration
and keeps Armenia out of regional energy projects. More importantly,
the status quo does not preclude Azerbaijan from using force to
restore its territorial integrity.

Therefore, reaching an agreement to bring along the withdrawal
of Armenian troops from occupied Azerbaijani lands and opening
communication between the two states is vital to the entire NK
peace process. It will allow for the beginning of dialogue between
official Baku and the Armenian community of NK and the start of the
reintegration process of the exiled Azerbaijani community.

Furthermore, it will settle the issue of Internally Displaced Persons
(IDP) for Azerbaijan, while Armenians can receive guarantees of a
non-resumption of war.

Indeed, the resolution of the NK conflict is complicated as is the
resolution of all other ethnic and territorial conflicts around the
world, but it is not impossible. With a little more attention from
the international community and interested parties, the NK conflict
is solvable.

For Armenians and Azerbaijanis, the 21st century should not be a
century of occupation, ethnic hatred and isolation, but a century of
peace, reconciliation and integration.

* Taleh Ziyadov is a graduate fellow at the Center for Eurasian,
Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund
A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.