Author: Vanyan Gary

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.

Time to look to future, not past
Bahrain Tribune, Bahrain
June 16 2005
All wars eventually come to an end. What remains are the painful
atrocity, the shocking massacres and the terrible sacrifices. And also
the attempts to exploit the memory of the war to impose a specific
view and to perpetuate an interpretation of facts.
There is no doubt that dozens of thousands of Armenians were killed
in 1915 and that atrocious massacres had taken place. The question
that has been lingering is whether to call it a genocide or part of
a terrible war.
Either way, it happened 90 years ago and as such it should be dealt
with as if it is something that has just taken place because opening
the wounds of the past will amount to reshaping the world as we
know, geographically, socially and politically. Which could amount
to total chaos.
Can we imagine for fleeting seconds what the world could possibly
look like if we apply the war reparation and compensation to all the
countries that had the misfortune of being occupied? All Third World
countries have suffered from savage colonisation. Examples of abuses
abound in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Arab world.
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia should press for compensations from
France; the Libyans should ask the Italians to pay for war damages
and the Egyptians should ask both the French and the British to
compensate them.
The logic can be extended further and we can see France annexing
Belgium because it was twice attacked by the Germans from the buffer
state. This would be exactly the logic employed by Israel which has
been seeking buffer areas to avoid direct borders with its neighbours.
While it is always difficult to imagine the scale of atrocities that
people suffer during wars, fostering reconciliation has little chance
when all kinds of pressure are exerted on a country.
The Turkey-Armenia issue has plagued relations between the two
countries and has threatened lately to escalate into international
diplomatic and economic confrontations as the Armenian lobbies are
working overtime to ensure that the world sides with them. Some
governments yielded to the pressure, mainly for domestic reasons,
and endorsed the Armenian viewpoint, further compounding the miasma.
Today, some German lawmakers, eager to embarrass the Shroeder
government and to keep Turkey outside Europe at any cost, are
seeking to show that the Armenians were right and that Ottoman
Empire did commit a genocide. Naturally, the lawmakers will have
a very selective memory, will blame it all on the Ottomans, will
overlook the Kurds~R role in the killing of the Armenians and will
use pompously loaded expressions such as ~Sforgiveness for historical
guilt~T and ~San honest historical review is needed and represents
the most important basis for reconciliation~T. Exactly like some
other European governments had said.
It is a shame that instead of working together for a common good,
some governments and deputies have chosen to take up one side and
impose on the world because it suits their objectives.
Whether the framework will lead to disastrous consequences because it
is sowing seeds of discord and mistrust between Muslims and Christians,
whether it is fuelling feelings of hatred between civilisations,
whether it is insulting all the other countries that at one time or
another suffered the humiliations of occupation is not important. It
becomes important only when things get out of hand, but then it is
too late.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

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.

Radio Free Europe, Czech Rep.
June 8 2005
EBRD Allocates Fresh Loan to Support Small Businesses
08/06/2005 08:19
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has
allocated $1 million to an Armenian commercial bank to support local
small businesses.
Under an agreement signed between the EBRD and Armenia’s INECO Bank
on 7 June, the allocated funds will be issued to small businesses in
Armenia in the form of micro (up to $10,000) and small (up to
$60,000) loans for a period from two to three years.
INECO Bank Executive Director Yervand Barseghian said at a press
conference following the signing of the agreement that the interest
rates for the loans will be close to the rates on the market.
“We have no intention to issue loans at dumping rates,” he said.
Loans available on the market today are issued at interest rates
ranging from 15 percent to 20 percent, differing from bank to bank.
EBRD Director for the South Caucasus, Belarus and Moldova Mike Davey
said the EBRD sees the main direction of its work in Armenia in
financing small and medium-sized business projects.
“The EBRD’s strategy is to work in a range of different sectors here
in Armenia,” he added.
The EBRD implements similar credit projects with four private banks
in Armenia and also has a 25 percent stake in Hayeconombank’s
capital.
According to Davey, the EBRD is conducting negotiations with another
Armenian bank, ACBA, to acquire a certain share in the latter’s
capital.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

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.

RA MINISTER OF DEFENSE SERGE SARGSYAN TO LEAVE FOR BRUSSELS
YEREVAN, June 8. /ARKA/. RA Minister of Defense Serge Sargsyan will
leave for Brussels tomorrow to participate in the session of Ministers
of Defense of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. According to the
RA Minister of Defense Press Secretary, Colonel Seiran Shakhsuvaryan,
June 10 Sargsyan will meet the NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer, whom he will hand on behalf of the RA President Robert
Kocharyan the Presentation document on an individual NATO-Armenia
activities partnership plan. The Armenian delegation will return to
Yerevan on June 11. A.H.-0–

A1plus
| 14:36:45 | 07-06-2005 | Politics |
NEW CHURCH TO BE BUILT IN US
During his visit to the US Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II
consecrated the foundation of the Armenian Church of the US Western Diocese.
The Church will be constructed thanks to the funds donated by 20 Armenians,
citizens of the US.
After the ceremony pigeons were let out to the sky as a token of peace and
then priest Hovan requested the Catholicos to bless the congregation.
Garegin II noted that the Church will become the spiritual and prayerful
center, which will unite the flock.