Author: Talalian Arpi

ORUJOV: AZERBAIJAN DECISIVELY CONDEMNS ALL TYPES OF FASCISM

Today, Azerbaijan
April 26 2006

Representatives of all nations, residing in the territory of Azerbaijan
equally suffered from the Armenian fascism.

Even too earlier from Holocaust, the Armenian chauvinists killed in
1918 over 3,000 Jews in Guba District, north Azerbaijan, where Jews
lived for centuries, Hidayat Orujov, the state adviser on Azerbaijan’s
national policy, stated in an event to commemoration of the innocent
victims of Holocaust.

“Fascism is evil in all its manifestations. The horrors that Jews
endured in Europe in 1939-1945, are very intimate and clear to the
people of Azerbaijan, who also experienced the Armenian fascism,”
the state adviser underlined.

He reminded that Azerbaijan has recently hosted a conference of the
representatives of the country’s Jewish community. The event mulled
the details of the tragic event of 1918, when the Armenians staged
massacre in the north of the country. “Today the comprehensive
researches into the said facts are underway,” Orujov assured.

Baku decisively condemns any type of extremism, national hostility,
religious intolerance, violence, terror and genocide. “We are open for
cooperation with all countries, which support peace and stability,”
the state adviser underlined.

“Azerbaijan is near the Jewish people not only in the bitter minutes,
but also merry days,” Orujov added. The 58th anniversary of Israel
will be broadly marked in Azerbaijan on 3 May 2006.

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AZERI LEADER DRAWS LINE ON HELPING U.S. VS. IRAN
By Barry Schweid

Chicago Tribune
April 27 2006

WASHINGTON — President Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan opened a three-day
visit to the United States on Wednesday by saying he would not
allow his country to be used by the U.S. for any operations against
neighboring Iran.

Aliev, scheduled to meet with President Bush on Friday, cited a
“very clear” agreement with Iran that the two countries would not
permit their territory to be used for operations against the other.

His visit comes at a time of rising U.S. tensions with Iran over its
nuclear program, and Aliev said he would remain at arms’ length from
that conflict.

“Azerbaijan will not be engaged in any kind of potential operation
against Iran,” he said in remarks at the private Council on Foreign
Relations.

The Caspian nation, which shares a border with Iran and Russia, is
strategically important to the U.S. because of its location and its
role in supplying oil to the West.

Azerbaijan wants to remain an “island of stability” in the region,
Aliev said. At the same time, he said Azerbaijan had sent troops to
Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo and would “do its best to stand shoulder
to shoulder” with the United States on security.

The president, who took office in October 2003, has the potential to
be an intermediary between the Bush administration and Iran. Iranian
Defense Minister Mustafa Mohammad Najjar, on a visit to Baku last
week, said Aliev could use his talks in Washington to “explain”
Iran’s views to the United States.

Aliev said he did not think Iran would be a “major aspect” of his
talks in Washington, which are due to include a meeting with Vice
President Dick Cheney. But he said that “if the question of regional
security arises we will discuss it.”

Azerbaijan is committed to peace in the region, he said. “We need to
try to provide peace and stability.”

“At this time,” he said, “it is best to concentrate on a peaceful
resolution” of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programs, which the
United States and European allies say seek development of a nuclear
bomb.

On another issue, Aliev conceded there was need for political reform
in his country, a former Soviet republic that became independent 16
years ago. Referring to Azerbaijan’s energy boom, Aliev said “economic
reform without political reform will lead to severe problems.” He
said his country was moving forward on both fronts.

Rights groups have criticized the nation for restricting political
and human rights and questioned whether U.S. criticism would be muted
due to Azerbaijan’s role in supplying oil.

The international pro-democracy group Freedom House on Tuesday said
Azerbaijan restricts political and human rights and is among the
lowest-ranked countries in the private rights group’s annual surveys.

“President Bush has made democracy promotion a priority of his
presidency,” Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor said.

“His upcoming meeting with President Aliev presents an important
opportunity for him to discuss Azerbaijan’s democracy deficit.”

In response to questions Wednesday, Aliev rejected the description
of his government as a “regime” and said, “We have all the major
freedoms.”

In his remarks, Aliev spoke most about a dispute with Armenia over the
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave of Azerbaijan. Ethnic Armenian forces are in
the region in what Aliev called an occupation. He said Azerbaijan’s
recovery of the territory is not subject to negotiations.

4TH ADDITION OF LETTER-AGREEMENT ON ARMENIAN-AMERICAN COOPERATION IN SPHERE OF DRUGS CONTROL AND LEGALITY SIGNED

Noyan Tapan
Apr 25 2006

YEREVAN, APRIL 25, NOYAN TAPAN. RA Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepian
and U.S. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary John Evans
signed on April 21 the 4th addition of the letter-agreement on
cooperation between the RA and U.S. Governments in the sphere of
Drugs Control and Legality. According to it, the U.S. Government will
allocate Armenia additional assistance of 2 166 039 U.S. dollars
for 5 programs. Those programs are creation of the RA Police state
computer network, the program of a constant legal advisor, assistance
in the struggle against the people trade, the program of creating
the criminal-experimental institute as well as continuation of the
“Project Harmony” program of legal sociology. By the agreement signed
on July 1, 2001, the sides envisage to found and implement a program
the goal of which is to make the RA legal sphere more productive,
to stimulate legality, with the means of consulting assistance,
technologies and mutual cooperation. Since having signed the initial
agreement on June 11, 2001, the U.S. Government has allocated Armenia
more than 7 mln U.S. dollars to assist the legal cooperation. The
program consists of sub-programs among which allocation of educational
and technical consultations is particularly envisaged by the legality
development program, which is called to strengthen productivity and
possibilities of activity of the police infrastructures. The program
of securing transparency of the judicial system has a goal to assist
widening of technical possibilities of the prosecutor’s office and
the judicial system and teaching the staff. The security development
programs envisage implementation of security means of the RA National
Assembly building and corresponding teaching. A.Hovsepian mentioned
with satisfaction that an independent experimental center attached to
the RA National Academy of Sciences was founded and functions within
the framework of the program. According to his estimation, the
center is already completed and implements experiments of 8 different
spheres. Computer rooms have been created in different legal bodies,
newest technologies have been used in bordering points, a great
assistance was shown for settlement of issues on struggle against
trafficking. The RA Prosecutor General informed that as a result of
Armenian and U.S. legal bodies’ cooperation, 5 people committed serious
crime and being reconnoitred by the U.S. legal bodies were arrested in
Armenia. J.Evans emphasized in his turn that owing to the agreement,
the legal bodies of Armenia have had “significant achievement” during
5 years. According to the Ambassador, by singing the 4th addition “we
start the new head in our succeeded joint work. It was a successful
program and deserves to be continued and widened even more.”

A SOLEMN ANNIVERSARY
By Jessica Scarpati / Daily News Correspondent

Daily News Tribune, MA
April 24, 2006

BOSTON- Shoushan Kalaydjian is left speechless by people who say
Turkish attacks against World War I-era Armenians do not constitute
genocide.

“My father’s side lost all six members of his family, including
his parents,” said Kalaydjian, 70, of Waltham. “There is no single
Armenian family you can talk to that hasn’t lost someone.”

After rumor spread that Germans would poison the soup in the Turkish
orphanage where her father lived, Kalaydjian said he fled to Iraq.

“He was 7 years old,” she said after a State House remembrance service
on Friday. “He slept on a carpet in a mosque in the middle of Baghdad
and one of the imams took care of him.”

Kalaydjian and her husband Ara, 68, attend the Beacon Hill ceremony
each year.

“What happened to the Armenian people and our ancestors shouldn’t
happen again,” said Kalaydjian, an Israeli native. “We don’t pray
for ourselves only. We pray for all.”

Over 300 Bay State Armenians, politicians and survivors gathered in
the House chamber to honor the 1.5 million lost 91 years ago and to
condemn attempts to deny the genocide took place.

“The denial of genocide . has allowed genocide actions to be
perpetrated decade after decade,” said Rep. Peter Koutoujian,
D-Waltham. “Keeping the memory alive is a method for protecting our
and others’ futures.”

Koutoujian said he would file a bill today (Monday) to forbid the
state from investing in countries where genocide occurs, such as Sudan.

“Even if this itself does not stop genocide, it is a way of making
our voice heard,” he said.

The state Board of Education, defended by attorney general and
gubernatorial candidate Tom Reilly, is locked in a federal lawsuit
against Turkish interest groups and a Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High
School student and teacher.

The coalition has accused Massachusetts schools of censoring statewide
history curriculum by only using “genocide” to define the Armenian
experience in the Ottoman Empire.

Lincoln-Sudbury High School senior Ted Griswold and history teacher
Bill Schechter joined plaintiffs this October in alleging that the
removal of dissenting views over the massacres from curricula violated
free speech.

The Legislature passed a law in 1998 requiring high schools to teach
genocide and human rights topics, specifically naming the Armenian
genocide.

“The case should be dismissed because the state has a right to
teach its students what it wants to, especially when that is the
truth,” Arnold Rosenfeld, a lawyer on the case, told a rally after
the ceremony.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler used
public ignorance of the Armenians’ strife to justify killing six
million Jews during World War II.

“There are those who will deny the Armenian genocide just as there
are those who will deny the Nazi Holocaust,” Markey said.

Gesturing to a group of three elderly women from Belmont and Andover
who huddled silently next to the podium during the two-hour service,
state Rep. Rachel Kaprielian, D-Watertown, struggled to keep her
voice steady.

The genocide survivors-Naomi Armen, Eva Loosigian and Alice
Shnorhokian-had fled to the Syrian desert as children under Turkish
persecution.

“Mrs. Loosigian apologized to me for not being able to focus because
she had lye poured into her eye by a Turkish soldier,” Kaprielian said,
her voice cracking.

The women, along with Areka DerKazarian of Watertown, who was not
present, were recognized by Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.

“You stand as living proof of a dark chapter world history and you
cannot be denied,” Healey said, proclaiming April 24 as Armenian
Martyrs Day in Massachusetts.

Following the ceremony, coalition group “kNOw Genocide” announced
its mission to fight denial Armenian and other genocides.

“Whenever we read or hear that people deny our genocide, it is as
if we are being killed again, slowly,” said Jean Nganji, a Rwandan
refugee who lost his entire family to genocide in 1994.

State police moved three protestors who shouted, “Don’t forget the
Palestinians!” over televised speeches.

With his face obscured by sunglasses, a Red Sox baseball hat and a
bandana around his nose and mouth, one protestor waved a sign that
read, “Defend Sudan from Zionist UN.”

Interrupted by the heckling, Brookline rabbi Moshe Waldoks said the
world should “create a culture of life.”

“And precisely, there are people here who support the culture of
death,” said Waldoks, an author and board member of Jewish Community
Relations Council, as police moved protestors from the State House
steps.

“We’re not here to teach that we’re victims. We’re here to teach that
there should be no more victims,” Waldoks said.

OSCE MG’S PROPOSAL PROVIDES FOR ARMENIANS TO HAND OVER 5/7 REGIONS AROUND NK

Baku Today, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006

“Armenia really occupied Azerbaijani territories,” European Union (EU)
representative Mary Ann Izler Begin stated today at a press-conference
of the commission about inter-parliamentary cooperation between
Armenia and the European Union.

Today the most important thing is the plan submitted by the OSCE
Minsk group on handing over of five regions around Nagorno Karabakh
to Azerbaijan. After that Nagorno Karabakh can participate in talks.

“We anticipate that Armenia and Azerbaijan’s presidents will sign
the relevant agreement,” she said.

This statement was made by the EU representative in response to
indignation expressed by Armenia, which tried to condemn Azerbaijan
for its unwillingness to have talks with them.

“525-CI GAZET”: INITIATIVE GROUP TO RETURN WESTERN AZERBAIJANIS TO THEIR NATIVE LANDS AND TO CREATE AUTONOMY IN ARMENIA

19.04.2006

Political movement “Way of Azerbaijan” created initiative group
aiming at return of western Azerbaijanis, outcasts from Armenia,
to their native lands and create autominy for them in space-saving
dense territory. In connection with creation of initiative group and
future tasks the above movement held press-conference on April 18.

Leader of the movement, Ilgar Gasimov, imformed that in 1948-53 and
in 1988 more than million Azerbaijanis were removed by force from
historical places of residence. “To return them in their native land
we intent to hold mass actions all over the world from 24 of April
to 8 of May”. These events will be supported by Turkish and European
organizations of the world. Preliminary agreement has already been
reached”, he stressed.

I. Gasimov informed that in connection with this issue a campaign on
signature collection would be held then documents would be drawn up
and submitted to representatives of Azerbaijan to PACE.

Deputy, Fazil Gazanfaroglu, and others who took floor at the event,
evaluated the return of Azerbaijanis removed from Armenia as demand
of time. F. Gazanfaroglu informed that this issue would be put on
the agenda of Milli Mejlis.

It should be pointed out that appeal prepared by “Way of Azerbaijan”
on return of western Azerbaijanis to their native land, deported by
force from Armenia and on creation of autonomy for them is submitted
to the head of state, speaker and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

POTSDAM: Engere Kontakte mit Armenien – Markische Allgemeine – Zeitung fur
das Land BrandenburgMarkische Allgemeine > Potsdam

18.04.2006
Engere Kontakte mit Armenien

Forderverein Lepsius-Haus plant Kooperation mit Akademie

ILDIKO ROD

Die Kontakte zwischen dem Forderverein Lepsius-Haus und der armenischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften soll sich kunftig eng gestalten.

“Wir wollen eine Kooperationsvereinbarung mit der Akademie hinsichtlich der
wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten im Lepsius-Haus treffen”, sagte
Generalsuperintendent Hans-Ulrich Schulz zur MAZ. Heute reist er als
Mitglied einer dreikopfigen Delegation des Lepsius-Haus-Vorstands zu einem
zehntagigen Besuch nach Armenien, gemeinsam mit Hermann Goltz, Professor am
Lehrstuhl fur orthodoxe Kirchen an der Martin-Luther-Universitat
Halle-Wittenberg, und Peter Leinemann, Geschaftsfuhrer des Evangelisch
Kirchlichen Hilfsvereins. Die Potsdamer sind Teilnehmer einer Studienfahrt,
die von der Evangelischen Akademie Sachsen-Anhalt mit ihren traditionell
guten Beziehungen zum Kaukasusland organisiert worden ist.

Wichtige Station der Reise ist Edschmiadzin. Im 50 Kilometer von der
Hauptstadt Jerewan entfernten religiosen Zentrum Armeniens befindet sich die
Residenz des Oberhaupts der armenisch-apostolischen Kirche, Katholikos
Karekin II., mit dem es moglicherweise ein Treffen geben wird. Den 24. April
– es ist dies der weltweite Gedenktag an den armenischen Volkermord durch
die Turken im Jahre 1915 – wird man in der Genozid-Gedenkstatte in Jerewan
begehen. “Es ist eine Kooperation zwischen unserem Verein und der
Gedenkstatte geplant”, kundigte Generalsuperintendent Schulz vor seiner
Abreise an. An Johannes Lepsius wird in der Gedenkstatte als einen
“Gerechten der Volker” erinnert. Als Begrunder des Armenierhilfswerks, das
nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg seinen Sitz in Potsdam hatte, genießt Lepsius noch
heute unter Armeniern fast den Status eines Nationalheiligen. In Lepsius’
einstigem Wohnhaus am Fuße des Pfingstberges soll kunftig eine Begegnungs-
und Dokumentationsstatte entstehen, mit dem derzeit in Halle untergebrachten
Lepsius-Archiv als wissenschaftlichem Herzstuck. Nachdem die Hullensanierung
2005 abgeschlossen wurde, bemuht sich der Verein nun um Gelder fur die
Innensanierung.

© Markische Verlags- und Druck-Gesellschaft mbH Potsdam
Realisiert von icomedias mit ico”cms

–Boundary_(ID_G1RDdAr2jSl9hZPIpdnWdQ)–

ARMENIAN MINISTER, RUSSIAN DEPUTY MINISTER DISCUSS TIES

Arminfo, Yerevan
18 Apr 06

Yerevan, 18 April: Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan and
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigoriy Karasin, who has arrived in
Yerevan within the framework of his regional visit, discussed ways
to settle conflicts in the South Caucasus.

They exchanged views on dynamically developing bilateral relations,
as well as a number of urgent and promising international and
regional issues of mutual interest. They also discussed in detail
the situation in the South Caucasus, ways to settle conflicts, as
well as possibilities of restoring transport communications.

In this context, the ministers pointed out the importance of peaceful
solutions through talks. They also discussed the situation around
Iran and relations between Armenia and Turkey.

HISTORY: DOOMED TO REPEAT IT, AND REPEAT IT
by AL MARTINEZ

Los Angeles Times
April 17, 2006 Monday
Home Edition

On the same night that I watched a television program about the
English massacre of Pequot Indians in 1637, I had been reading about
the Sunni slaughter of 78 Shiite Muslims, and I realized how little
we have learned from history.

If you look on today’s world as a village and its segmented groups
of human inhabitants as tribes, you come to understand that we’re
still killing each other for the same stupid reasons, whether it’s
for territory, religion or cultural differences.

Given the hatred and the opportunity, and fed by hysteria, tribal
confrontations escalate too often into genocide, which is the
deliberate mass murder of an entire race of people. All it takes is
a perceived insult, an assassination or a raving maniac to lead to
the murder of hundreds or thousands or millions.

Only over a passage of centuries when memory becomes history do we
regard with horror the madness that once spurred us to butchery.

The TV show, one of a series called “10 Days That Unexpectedly
Changed America,” was a History Channel dramatization of an attack
by English settlers on a Pequot Indian fort that killed 500 men,
women and children, and all but eliminated the Pequots as a tribe.

It was the first of many wars between the whites and the people we now
call Native Americans in linguistic atonement for stealing their land,
their culture and their heritage. It’s our way of dismissing decades
of brutality with an airy, “Sorry about that.”

True to the obsessive nature of power, five centuries later, armed
with considerably more sophisticated weaponry, we have taken a newer
brand of Pax Americana into Iraq, theoretically to topple a dictator
and to bring peace as we know it to the troubled land.

The result of our incursion has been not only the deaths of about
2,300 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, but has also
stirred up civil war between the two Muslim sects. God is fighting God
on the sands of the Middle East, and all the villages on the globe
are beginning to take sides again. One can only guess where it all
might lead.

You don’t have to be a historian to realize what has been taking
place in the world since the Pequot massacre. Within the framework of
modern memory are genocidal episodes so wildly surreal that, reduced
to the white pages of history, it seems that they never could have
happened — until the 11 o’clock news reminds us that the kinds of
hatreds that fuel racial, religious and ethnic wars are still going on.

In the 20th century alone, Turks have slaughtered Armenians; Nazis
have murdered Jews; Hutus have butchered Tutsis; the Khmer Rouge has
slaughtered Cambodians; and Serbs have murdered Muslims. Have I missed
any? Probably.

If we dug into the frozen soil of Russia, we would find the graves of
peasants murdered by Stalin in the name of power. If we dug into the
red clay soil of Dixie, we would find the graves of blacks murdered
in the name of racial domination.

Today, as we view our planet from space, we are coming to realize that
we are only one among perhaps billions of tight little balls drifting
through eternity toward an uncertain end. We are still seeing the
same tribal wars that were probably taking place in the time before
human history, through the Stone Age to the Iron Age and into the
Nuclear Age. Wooden spears have evolved to atomic fusion.

The tiniest elements of human knowledge have potentially become the
deadliest manufacturers of human carnage.

I’m not really sure how a television show translated into a feeling
that mankind is staring down into the abyss of our future. It just
seems that we’ve always been at the mercy of leaders too limited in
vision or wisdom to understand who we are and the consequences of
what we do.

In 1637, it was John Endicott, governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, who organized an army to slaughter the Pequots. Today, it’s
George W. Bush, president of the United States, who gathered an army
to invade a sovereign nation in the name of a nonexistent threat; it’s
an effort that brings new pain to a world already screaming in agony.

And the new historians prepare to write it all down for people who
don’t read, don’t understand what they do read or don’t much care
about it anyhow. One is compelled to echo the cry of the young radio
reporter 69 years ago when he watched the Hindenburg go down in
flames. It still applies:

“Oh, the humanity!”

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached
at [email protected].

HITTING A NERVE (PBS Documentary “The Armenian Genocide”)
Matt Zoller Seitz

The Star Ledger, NJ
April 17 2006

“The Armenian Genocide” arrives on PBS tonight (10 p.m., Channel 13)
preceded by a wave of controversy. The public broadcaster is accused
of nothing less than a form of holocaust denial.

Some back story first. This documentary recounts the extermination
of 1 million Armenians in eastern Turkey by the Ottoman Empire. The
systemic nature of the extermination, which has been confirmed by
the International Association of Genocide Scholars, is taken as a
given by this documentary. The program also points out that the Turks
killed another 200,000 people in historic Armenia and Constantinople
(now Istanbul).

PBS ran afoul of Armenian-Americans by adding a post-screening
panel discussion that included two scholars who said that not all
of the victims died as a direct result of Turkish violence — that a
percentage of them were lost to disease, starvation and other causes
that affected all of Turkish society, not just Armenians.

This genocidal caveat was considered a slap in the face to
Armenian-American groups, who argued that most legitimate scholars
agree that the mass deaths qualified as genocide, and that PBS would
follow a documentary about the World War II genocide against the Jews
with a panel that tried to qualify or explain away the horror.

PBS responded that the panel wasn’t meant to cast doubt on the
“genocide” label — that it was just an attempt to explore a
contentious issue and be as inclusive as possible — but this has
only inflamed Armenian outrage. (There’s even a petition circulating
online that condemns the panel discussion.)

It’s unfortunate that PBS blundered into this morass in the first
place, because the documentary is a serious, literate and ultimately
heartbreaking work — a historical primer on an event few Americans
even know about. (For a dramatic take on the same subject, rent
“Ararat,” by Atom Egoyan, a Canadian director of Armenian heritage.)

Moving through the end of the 19th century, the documentary explains
how things just kept getting worse for the Armenians, a people who
existed peacefully within the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire despite
having adopted Christianity as the state religion back during Roman
times.

As historians point out, the Sultan of the Ottoman empire designated
individual non-Muslim peoples — Greeks, Armenians, Jews — as
“infidels.” But for practical reasons, he still tried to stay out of
their business as much as possible. The empire’s subjects were given
the limited ability to rule themselves as long as they paid their
taxes, obeyed the Sultan’s rules and didn’t try to rebel.

‘Discriminatory, unequal, hierarchical,” the University of Chicago
professor Ron Suny tells the filmmakers. “But if you obeyed, you could
get along, and Armenians did rather well for centuries, actually.”

Then Armenians began agitating not necessarily for equal rights, but
simply to have their unequal treatment explained and justified. This
led to increasingly brutal government crackdowns, and eventually to
a Turk-centric re-education campaign, carried out by a radical new
Otttoman government run by religious and political extremists.

Genocide soon followed.

Armenians contend that the Turks tried to exterminate them to suppress
an Armenian uprising and destroy any chance that the Armenians might
give aid to an invading Russian army. The Turkish government continues
to deny that Armenian deaths were anything other than an unfortunate
byproduct of national misery.

Most legitimate historians favor the former interpretation, and the
documentary says so. Given the intelligence and precision of this
documentary — whose main fault is brevity — it’s depressing that
PBS managed to turn it into a rallying cry for the oppressed, more
perhaps through ignorance than malice. And the network’s attempts to
fix the situation only made it worse.

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