Author: Vanyan Gary

Azerbaijan News Service
June 20 2005

DEPUTY FA MINISTER COMMENTS MEETING BETWEEN FA MINISTERS OF
AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA
2005-06-20 20:27

FA ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia had exchange of views on
release of occupied Azerbaijani lands, and ensuring security and
normal living conditions of both Azerbaijanis and Armenians in the
region after the release of lands. Azerbaijan and Armenia can reach
an agreement on restoration of motor transport, said Araz Azimov,
deputy FA minister of Azerbaijan on press conference on June 20.
Restoration of the highway has an important role in defining status
of Daqliq Qarabaq, stated Mr. Azimov. According to him, official Baku
proposed to Yerevan a variant considering restoration of highway
between Azerbaijani cities Aghdam and Shahbuz, passing through Daqliq
Qarabaq, occupied by Armenians Azerbaijani region Lachin and
territory of Armenia. The Armenian side is considering this variant
of restoration of highway. Azerbaijan looks forward to positive
settlement of the question that will allow us to settle a number of
other issues concerning both two sides, noted Araz Azimov. Azerbaijan
considers restoration of transport communications with Armenia as an
important mean of regulation of Armenia-Azerbaijan Daqliq Qarabaq
conflict. Aghdam-Shahbuz highway has both practical and political
importance, added Mr. Azimov. He said restoration of the highway
would contribute to settlement of problem `Lachin Corridor’, joining
Daqliq Qarabaq with Armenia. Besides, access of the highway to Turkey
increases its political importance. The best guarantee of the highway
is its mutual use by Azerbaijan and Armenia, said Araz Azimov. He
mentioned that in general there developed more constructive relations
between Azerbaijan and Armenia recently and chances of the sides to
the conflict to reach an agreement increased. Deputy minister
informed that president Ilham Aliyev presented conception of
regulation of Daqliq Qarabaq conflict in recent meeting of presidents
of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Warsaw that caused positive reaction of
Russia, the USA and France, cochairmen of OSCE and FA ministers of
these countries that took part at the meeting. The deputy minister
also said FA ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia are expected to meet
for several times till the meeting of presidents of these countries
that is planned on August 26 in Kazan. Co-chairmen of OSCE Minsk
group are expected to visit the region beginning from Baku.

Journal of Turkish Weekly
June 21 2005

Turkish Immigrants in Germany Protest Armenian Resolution

Thousands of Turks marched in Berlin, Germany to protest the Armenian
draft approved by the German Federal assembly in Bundestag last week.

More than 10,000 people participated in the march organized by the
Turkish Foundations Initiative despite the hot weather.

Literature was distributed and the marchers carried banners written
in German that read, “Turkey is not the scapegoat of German policies”
and “German policy distorts history”.

About 3 million Turkish people live in Germany, many of them are
German citizen.

An announcement released indicated:

“We demand the deputies elected by the Turkish participants to
consider the sensitivities and interests of the 2.8 million Turkish
people. We want the deputies to fulfill their duty to prevent
provocation in order to live together in peace.”

The CDU and some other German parties support pro-Armenian stance
about the 1915 events. More than 520,000 Turkish people were
massacred by the armed Armenian groups during the 1915 events. The
Istanbul Government decided to resettle the Armenians in the Eastern
porvinces when they attacked the Ottoman Army.

HOME FOR FAMILIES OF KILLED SOLDIERS

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
17 June 05

The city of Stepanakert has never been this beautiful, even in the
best years of Soviet totalitarianism. And only a decade has passed
after the times of bombing and air raids of Azeris when one would come
across ruins at every step in the city. Today no traces of these times
have been left. What is more, all the new buildings in the city are
distinguished by high quality and design. Among these are the elite
blocks of flats No 16 and 18 on Azatamartikneri Street, operated
recently and put out for sale. At the NKR Ministry of Territorial
Management and Development of Infrastructures we were informed that
all the 28 apartments and 20 plots of land had been sold out. The
total sum from the sale of flats is 442 million 247 thousand drams
which was returned to the NKR State Budget from which the construction
had been funded. (This year the sum provided from the state budget for
construction is 3900 million drams against 2385 million in 2004.
Besides the mentioned sum, in the current year, another 877 million
drams has been provided for construction in the framework of the
programme of re-settlement and about 250 million for the same aim was
provided to the Ministry of Social Security.) By the instruction of
the NKR president the sum from the sale of these flats and plots is
spent on the construction of another block of 45 flats in Tumanian
Street which is already being built. All the flats will be provided
free of charge to families of killed azatamartiks.

AA.
17-06-2005

Pan Armenian News

NATO-ARMENIA COOPERATION DEVELOPMENT HARDLY TO PROMOTE GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
BY ANKARA

18.06.2005 07:23

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ `I do not agree about categorizing Armenian-Russian
relations being in a state of “divorce”. Armenia’s strategic partnership
with Russia and cooperation with NATO are aimed at securing Armenia’s
national security’, Kiro Manoyan, Director of Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (ARF) Bureau’s Hay Dat and Political Affairs Office stated during
online interview initiated by OpenArmenia.com and PanARMENIAN.Net. `Although
Genocide recognition by Turkey is a national security issue for Armenia, I
don’t think getting closer with NATO will necessarily help gain recognition
of the genocide by Turkey’, he added.

Azerbaijan denounces poll in separatist Karabakh as “sham”

ANS TV, Baku
18 Jun 05

[Presenter] On the one hand, Armenia is holding talks with the
Azerbaijani foreign minister and the Karabakh mediators of the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs in Paris and on the other hand, it is going to
conduct a sham [parliamentary] election in Nagornyy Karabakh tomorrow
[19 June]. The Azerbaijani Central Electoral Commission has already
issued a statement on the 19 June elections to be conducted by the
self-declared Nagornyy Karabakh regime.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry also protested against the elections.
Turkey regards the separatist regime’s plan to hold parliamentary
polls in Karabakh on 19 June as an attempt to undermine the process
of settling the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

[Passage omitted: correspondent says the Paris meeting between the
Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers yielded no results].

Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said that separate and joint
meetings between the ministers and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs
are a follow-up to the Prague meeting.

[Azimov over telephone from Paris] It is yet too early to speak about
progress. The process is under way. Nevertheless, the pace of meetings
and the essence of the discussions, in my opinion, are promising.

[Correspondent] Nevertheless, the separatist Nagornyy Karabakh regime
thinks differently. So, Arman Melikyan, the self-styled foreign
minister of the Armenian community of the Nagornyy Karabakh, said that
they were expecting nothing extraordinary from the meeting between
the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers. Melikyan said that
the Armenians would never give up Karabakh’s independence.

[Aleksey Manvelyan from Yerevan] They are sticking to what they
have been saying for ages. Another generation has been brought up
believing in the right of their state to exist. I am constantly
looking for someone who would say that he is ready for coexistence.
There are no such people. They listen to radio and TV reports which
frighten them. They have no confidence. When you interview Armenians
in Armenia, they prove to be more moderate than the ones in Karabakh.

[Correspondent] Such views and the conduct of the illegal parliamentary
election will have a negative impact on the talks. Therefore, the
[Paris] meeting condemned the Armenian step.

[Azimov] The co-chairs issued a statement which recognizes Nagornyy
Karabakh as an integral part of Azerbaijan. The statement does not
recognize the separatist regime and the legitimacy of the event to
be held under this regime.

[Correspondent] The Azerbaijani Central Electoral Commission has
issued a statement regarding the conduct of the elections in Karabakh
by the Armenians as an attempt to mislead the international community
and to undermine the peace talks.

[Chairman of the CEC Mazahir Panahov] Irrespective of the geography,
it is illegal to conduct elections on occupied lands. The elections
will be of no significance. They are designed to irritate Azerbaijan.

[Correspondent] The statement added that the sham elections on the
occupied Azerbaijani territory run fully against international legal
norms and the constitution of Azerbaijan. Elections and referendums
on the occupied lands can be conducted only on the basis of the
Azerbaijan’s constitution after the liberation of the lands and
the restoration of Azerbaijan’s integrity. The CEC also urged
international organizations to refrain from monitoring the bogus
elections in Karabakh, end of quote.

Azerbaijan: Safe-play areas project on track

ICRC (press release), Switzerland
June 14 2005

Last week the ICRC and Azerbaijan’s National Agency for Mine Action
held a four-day workshop near Baku to raise awareness of the risk
posed by mines. The event was part of an ICRC project to create safe
play areas in villages near former conflict zones in Azerbaijan.

Fifteen members of the Red Crescent Society of Azerbaijan took part.

“Ten years after the ceasefire in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict,
mines are still an extremely serious problem in Azerbaijan,” said
Musa Jalalov, head of mine-risk education at the National Agency for
Mine Action. “Our studies have led us to designate 11 areas as
high-risk, 101 as medium-risk and 970 as suspicious.” The workshop
represented a first step in what was to be three-way cooperation
between the ICRC, the National Agency and the Azerbaijani Red
Crescent. This cooperation will enhance the Agency’s existing
mine-awareness work and help reduce the number of mine victims,
especially children. Mine-risk education in high-risk areas is one of
the Agency’s main activities.

Fifteen safe play areas would be created this year, said Herbi
Elmazi, ICRC coordinator for the project. “We’re helping to gradually
build up the mine-education capacity of the Azerbaijani Red
Crescent,” he added. The project will involve working together with
local communities, helping them to identify the specific mine
problems they face and to protect themselves. The Red Crescent will
play a key role in the work with those communities.

For further information, please contact:
Gulnaz Guliyeva, ICRC Baku, tel. +99 412 465 63 34 or +99 412 440 62
22
Annick Bouvier, ICRC Geneva, tel. +41 22 730 24 58

Chinese, Armenian foreign ministers discuss ties

Mediamax news agency
13 Jun 05

Yerevan, 13 June: Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan met
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing
in Beijing today.

The two foreign ministers expressed satisfaction with a growth in trade
between Armenia and China by 73 per cent during the first quarter of
this year, the Foreign Ministry’s press office told Mediamax today. The
sides stressed the importance of cooperation in the spheres of science,
technology and education.

Oskanyan and Zhaoxing discussed cooperation in international
organizations, particularly in the UN. They also exchanged ideas on
the problems of Nagornyy Karabakh and Taiwan.

The Boston Globe
June 9, 2005, Thursday THIRD EDITION

BERGE AVADANIAN; HERO KEPT FELLOW SOLDIERS IN HIS HEART

By Tom Long, Globe Staff

Berge Avadanian was a World War II hero who threw out the opening
ball for the Red Sox fifth-game victory over the Yankees in last
year’s American League Championship Series. He was 86.

Mr. Avadanian, who was born on Flag Day 1918, the year of the Red Sox
World Series victory, died in his Watertown home on June 6, the 61st
anniversary of the day he parachuted into France during the D-day
invasion of France.

“I wonder if he was just waiting for the anniversary of D-day. It
was a wonderful thing in some ways,” Mr. Avadanian’s daughter, Sandra
A. Starck of Watertown, said yesterday.

Although he worked for the Coast Guard and later dealt in antiques,
Mr. Avadanian never forgot his fellow soldiers. Each year in the days
before Memorial Day he would visit cemeteries in Belmont, Newton,
Watertown, and Waltham and place a flag and a personal letter on the
graves of about 150 veterans.

“Dear old friend Tom,” read one of the notes, according to
American Veteran magazine. “I will always remember you. Your
great-grandchildren visited me last week. They are beautiful.”

A native of Lynn, who grew up on a farm in Bellingham, Mr.
Avadanian joined the Army shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor. As a sergeant in the 82d Airborne Division, he participated
in seven major campaigns, including the invasion of Italy, the Battle
of the Bulge, and the D-day invasion of France.

Mr. Avadanian remembered D-day in a story published in the spring
2003 issue of American Veteran: “Enemy antiaircraft fire was
intense,” he said of his jump into France with 150 pounds of
equipment strapped to his body. “And I could see cows but at first,
no people and no Germans. That changed in a hurry. I can recall a
fine young lieutenant who had gotten a haircut from our company
barber a couple of days prior to D-day, just as I had done. The next
time I saw him he was still in his parachute hanging from a tree near
the churchyard at St. Mere Eglise with his throat cut. The Germans
who had bivouacked in and around the town were merciless.”

During the 34 days of intense combat that followed, the 82d Airborne
suffered heavy casualties. “Wherever we fought, those once-quiet
little Norman towns became intense rubble within days, sometime
hours,” Mr. Avadanian recalled. “The airborne division spearheaded
inland of those beaches with almost 13,000 men and returned to
England with only 5,800 all the rest were missing, wounded, or dead.”

Mr. Avadanian was wounded twice. He was awarded a number of
decorations, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Croix de
Guerre.

After the war he was a procurement officer for the Veterans
Administration in Boston for several years and principal contracting
officer of the US Coast Guard’s North Atlantic Region for decades.

Mr. Avadanian held a number of posts in AMVETS and was the national
commander of the service organization in 1973 and 1974.

He never regretted his military service and said he would be happy to
do it all over again.

“If God would allow me to be born again, I would pray to God to put
me on that same road to Normandy,” Mr. Avadanian said in a story
published in the Boston Herald in 2004. “It was the most gratifying
thing I have ever done. I was so proud to be fighting for my
country.”

Mr. Avadanian was also a lifelong Red Sox fan.

“I listened to them on one of those homemade radios on the farm
when I was a little boy,” he said in a story published in The New
York Times in 2004. “I was in Paris listening to them on a shortwave
radio when they played the World Series in 1946. And when I jumped
out of a plane in Normandy, one of the last things I said before I
went out the door was, ‘I wonder what the Red Sox are doing,’ and a
wise guy from New York said, ‘They probably lost as usual.’ ”

When Mr. Avadanian threw out the first ball for the fifth game of the
championship series last October at Fenway Park, it was like a dream
come true. “He had a wonderful time,” said his daughter. “They picked
him up in a limousine.”

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Avadanian leaves his wife, Rose
Marie (Bazarian); a son, Paul B. of Waltham; a sister, Mary
Kachichian of Stoneham; and two grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow in St. James
Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown. Burial will be in Mount
Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

A1plus

| 13:16:43 | 08-06-2005 | Politics |

IMPORTANT MEETING IN PARIS

The usual meeting of the Armenian and Azeri Foreign Ministers will take
place on June 17 in Paris. During the meeting 7-9 important issues will be
discussed. The Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov has made an
announcement about it.

`We think we can reach agreement about some issues, and others we know are
extremely complicated. We must discuss all the issues’, said the Azeri
Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov according to the Internet newspaper
Day.az.

According to the Minister, the sides must discuss the issue of opening the
roads from Armenia to NKR and from Azerbaijan to Nakhijevan. `I am speaking
about the highway and the railway. We think that the opening of the highway
is more profitable for us. The opening of the roads must be profitable for
both countries’, said the Azeri Foreign Minister. He has also mentioned that
the discussion of the above mentioned issues must take place phase by phase,
and the solution of a problem depends on the solution of the previous one,
`If we leave out one problem, the others lose all sense’.

By the way, according to the Azeri Foreign Minister, the visit of the OSCE
Minsk group to the region will depend on the Parisian negotiations.

The Messenger, Georgia
June 8 2005

Political Analysis: Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey military alliance:
another red herring in the Baku-Yerevan conflict?
By M. Alkhazashvili

Talk of a new military pact between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey
started flowing along with the first drops of oil along the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. However, Azeri government officials are
denying any plans for a military block to protect the pipeline and
some experts think the rumors are just another extension of the
on-going Baku-Yerevan power struggle.

According to a report in the Baku-based 525 newspaper, the Azerbaijan
ministry of defense has flatly denied the creation of any military
alliance between the three countries. The newspaper reports that
since an agreement has already been signed concerning pipeline
security, any addition measures would be redundant.

However, the Georgian paper Akhali Taoba cites local analysts as
saying that such an alliance is still possible if needed. But the
newspaper also reported most former government officials believe the
talk about new military alliances is just that – talk.

Vapa Gulazadem, a former Azeri government advisor on foreign policy,
thought it was just a case of unbiased rumors. “Such a military
alliance has no prospects,” Gulazadem told Akhali Taoba. “Perhaps
this is just an invented story.” Tapik Zulpugarov, the former
minister of foreign affairs of Azerbaijan, agreed with him. According
to Zulpugarov, it is not hard to find the source of the rumors:
Armenia.

The former foreign affairs minister is not the first to suspect
Yerevan of plotting against the pipeline. Last month the Baku-based
newspaper Zerkalo reported that all BTC working documents are in the
hands of Armenian special services. “At this stage, the BTC pipeline
is practically left defenseless to potential terrorists,” the head of
an Azeri think tank Roshvan Novruzoglu is quoted as saying in the
newspaper.

In fact, as early as 1993 the Azeri media was predicting the then
planned pipeline would fall victim to Georgian and Armenian
terrorists in a future ‘pipeline war.’ Although there were no threats
from Armenia, the Baku-based newspaper Ekho was convinced the country
had plans for terror. “Yerevan refrains from making any strict
statements or threats so far. But this does not mean that Yerevan
will not try to change the situation by using radical methods,” the
newspaper reported.

To date, the only official statement from Armenia concerning the
pipeline was more concerned with maintaining balance in the Caucasus
than starting a ‘pipeline war.’ According to the Prime Minister of
Armenia Andranik Markarian, the new pipeline will violate the power
balance in South Caucasus and Armenia will have to seek alternative
ways to restore it. In his statement, he announced that Yerevan was
investigating the possibility of an Iran-Armenian gas pipeline
through which Europe will receive gas via Georgia.

Regardless of what Yerevan feels about the new pipeline, it is one in
a continuing series of regional projects being initiated without
Armenia’s participation. In addition to the BTC oil pipeline, there
is also the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum gas pipeline, and the
Baku-Akhalkalaki-Karsi railway. Despite their relations with Russia
and Iran, Armenia is looking increasingly isolated in its own back
yard. Perhaps this will be enough to motivate more productive
relations with Azerbaijan – and a break through in the on-going in
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.