Category: News

ArmenPress
June 23 2004
ARMENIAN PRIME MINISTER ARRIVED IN BERLIN
BERLIN, JUNE 23, ARMENPRESS: Armenian prime minister Andranik
Margarian arrived June 22 in Berlin, the capital of the Federal
Republic of Germany on a three-day working visit. The prime minister
will participate in the Armenian-German Economic Cooperation
Conference that opened today at the Center of German Industrialists.
He will also hold a range of bilateral meetings with a number of
highly- ranked officials on the sidelines of the visit.
Yesterday the prime minister met with Germany’s minister for
economic cooperation and development Mrs. Vichorek-Zoil and Berlin
mayor Klaus Wowereith. During the meeting with Mrs. Vichorek-Zoil ,
Andranik Margarian underscored the importance of several
inter-regional projects implemented by the ministry within the
frameworks of the Caucasian Initiative and highlighted Turkey’s and
Azerbaijan’s non-constructive approaches, which tend to shift
economic relations into political level by putting forward political
preconditions. He also reflected on discussions with Georgian
authorities and bilateral interest in developing mutually beneficial
projects. Attaching importance to regional cooperation projects,
Germany’s minister emphasized that they should be sought for by all
the regional states. She said economic cooperation is a good
precondition for improving political relations.
At the request of the minister, Armenian prime minister presented
also the pace of Nagorno Karabagh conflict resolution , economic
indicators of Armenia and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, which
Vichorek-Zoil described as “impressive”. The prime then referred to
Armenia’s fulfillments of its commitments on the path to closer
European integration. Importance was also attached to boosting
cooperation in nature protection, energy, infrastructures
development, small and medium- sized businesses and banking.
Andranik Margarian and Vichorek-Zoil noted with satisfaction the
effectiveness of the projects implemented in Armenia with the support
of the German government. Mrs. Vichorek-Zoil informed that her
country is going to provide additional 8 mln Euros for improvement of
water supplies in remote regions of Armenia. She also expressed
readiness to support implementation of new proposals on alternative
energy sources, noting that she had an opportunity to talk about it
with the Armenian energy minister during a conference on energy
issues in Germany.
At the end of the meeting, prime minister Andranik Margarian
thanked Mrs. Vichorek -Zoil for cooperation and understanding. The
minister has personally visited Armenia and know its problems well.
The two expressed hope that cooperation between the two countries
will continue encompassing new fields and will be as effective as
before.
After the meeting with the minister of economic cooperation and
development Armenian prime minister and the delegation accompanying
him visited the Armenian Church in Berlin after which they held
meeting with Klaus Wowereith , the Berlin mayor. During the meeting
with the mayor the sides discussed issues on prospective cooperation
between the two capitals, stating that the economic and political
relations between the two states are a good precondition for
developing ties among regional and local self-management bodies. The
two attached importance to holding cultural days in both countries
and exchange of expertise. The Berlin mayor expressed interest in
economic priorities of Armenia, business partners and prospects of
relations with Turkey. On the request of Klaus Wowereith Andranik
Margarian presented the economic conditions of our country and
strategic plans seeking the support of friendly countries, including
Germany in solving current problems. Armenia prime minister made a
note in the book of honorable guests at the Berlin municipality.
Yesterday evening Andranik Margarian held meetings with Rudolf
Koberlei, who is the deputy prime minister of Baden-Wurtemberg land
and a minister. The sides attached importance to developing ties
between the regions of the two countries. Andranik Margarian urged
Baden Wurtemberg government to invest in Armenia. He invited a
delegation composed of regional leaders and business community to
visit Armenia in order to discuss possible economic projects on the
spot.
Andranik Margarian and Rudolf Koberlei discussed also cooperation
between Gyumri and German regional capital Stuttgart and establishing
sister city relations between the two. The deputy prime minister said
it’s a high honor for Armenian prime minister to meet with Baden
Wurtemberg authorities, the third biggest among 16 lands of Germany.
He wished success to Armenian German economic cooperation conference,
which he said is an important event in developing economic
cooperation between the two states. Andranik Margarian said that it
is very important for Armenia to learn about decentralization
practice, traditions and expertise in Germany. The sides noted that
the friendship between the two countries should develop and encompass
also separate cities and regions. German deputy prime minister,
minister Rudolf Koberlei expressed also interest in economic
situation of Armenia and considered impressive the presented economic
indicators.
In the honor of Armenian prime minister and the delegation
accompanying him yesterday late evening an official reception was
organized in German Baden Wurtemberg Berlin representation.
Today Armenian prime minister Andranik Margarian attended the
opening of Armenian German economic cooperation forum. Slates is his
meeting with education and science minister of Baden Wurtemberg.

ArmenPress
June 23 2004
REASONS OF EMERGENCY LANDING TO BE ANNOUNCED IN TEN DAYS
YEREVAN, JUNE 23, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian Civil Aviation
Department said today a special commission set up to investigate why
a Russia-made TU-154 aircraft had to make an emergency landing 17
minutes after it took OFF from THE Yerevan Zvartnots airport on June
21, will issue its conclusion within the next ten days.
Serzh Manukian, a spokesman for the Department, told Armenpress
that the captain of the Russian plane, owned by Aeroflot, decided to
make the landing because of security reasons after detecting the
failure of one of the components of the second engine.

ArmenPress
June 23 2004
MOST NEED REFUGEES TO RECEIVE HOUSING
YEREVAN, JUNE 23, ARMENPRESS: An inter-agency commission, set up
to handle a government-approved plan of actions aiming to resolve the
housing problems of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan who arrived
here between 1988-1992 held a meeting today, attended also by
representatives of international donor organizations, contributing to
the program.
According to the head of migration and refugees department of the
Armenian government Gagik Yeganian, housing will be provided to the
most needy 3740 refugee families. The project cost 16.2 mln dollar, 5
mln of which will be released by Armenian government on medium term
expenditure program and the other part is expected to be invested by
the donor organizations.
According to Yeganian, a study of refugee families and an
assessment of primary needs was conducted while developing the
project. Refugees living on rent or with their relatives are not
eligible . Some 3,470 refugee families will be provided with
permanent housing by the project costing 16.2 mln dollars. The
project is implemented in two main parts – housing certificates will
be provided to 3,218 families and houses will be built mainly in
rural areas for 252 families with a slot of land.
It is planned to establish a project implementation office. The
committee will mainly aim to attain funds for the project and
supervision. Donor organization are suggested to notify about their
participation in 20 days time.
About 360,000 ethnic Armenians arrived in Armenia between 1988-92
as a result of the conflict in Karabagh. Some 60,000 have acquired
Armenian citizenship since 2000 while their number totaled only 5000
before 2000.

PRESS OFFICE
Armenian Holy Apostolic Church Canadian Diocese
Contact; Deacon Hagop Arslanian, Assistant to the Primate
615 Stuart Avenue, Outremont Quebec H2V 3H2
Tel; 514-276-9479, Fax; 514-276-9960
Email; [email protected] Website;
AN UNPRECEDENTED FUNDRASING DINNER HELD IN VANCOUVER
On June 17, 2004 His Eminence Bishop Bagrat Galstanian flew to
Vancouver city to preside over the meetings of St Vartan Parish
Council as well as Auxiliary bodies in the mid of efforts to
reorganize the Vancouver Armenian Community.
Dedicated to rejuvenating and reenergizing Vancouver’s Armenian
community, Bishop Bagrat Galastanyan attended an unprecedented
fundraising dinner at St. Vartan Armenian Church on June 19. This
event was Phase II of his plan to retire the long term debt of
St. Vartan Armenian Church.
Attendees were entertained by pianist Takuhi Sedefci and her flute
partner Heidi Kurtz as they performed pieces by Babajanian,
Haroutounian and Ganajian. Mariam Matossian sang Armenian favorites
from her recently released CD “Far from Home”. Master of Ceremonies,
ArtoTavukciyan kept the crowd entertained throughout the night as he
gave away gifts and updated the 8-ft fundraising thermometer as the
pledges grew. The evening produced pledges of over $40,000.
Coupled with last month’s event at CinCin Restaurant which raised
$52,000, the congregation is well on its way to retiring its debt of
$150,000.
DIVAN OF THE DIOCESE

The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec)
June 23, 2004 Wednesday Final Edition
>From Bangladesh to Tory candidate: ‘They’re very pleased that one of
their Muslim brothers is running to be an MP’
by JEFF HEINRICH
Mustaque Sarker ran as an independent in the last federal election,
and lost.
Now he’s running for the Conservatives and thinks he can win.
One reason: the ethnic vote, and specifically, the Muslim vote.
“They’re very pleased that one of their Muslim brothers is running to
be an MP,” said Sarker, an accountant from Bangladesh.
“I have had lots of calls supporting me,” he said as he set up his
Papineau riding headquarters this month.
But he’s only willing to play the Muslim card so far.
“I am a Muslim, yes, but I am first a loving, caring human being. And
in this riding, I must represent all ethnic communities.”
The ecumenical approach is the standard line among the federal
political parties these days.
“We don’t ghettoize anybody – every vote counts,” said Marie-Claude
Lavigne, spokesperson for the federal Liberals in Quebec, who have
traditionally counted on immigrants’ votes.
But the Liberals are in a tight race, and immigrant votes are not
necessarily a sure thing.
The Bloc Quebecois, for example, is trying to eat away at Liberal
support by going after mostly north African, francophone Arab voters
who are sympathetic to Quebec nationalism, oppose the war on Iraq and
complain of discriminatory hiring practices, said Francois Rebello,
33, a Bloc candidate in Outremont.
His generation has been more exposed to Muslims and Arabs than other
Quebecers and can better understand their differences, said Rebello,
whose father is a Christian from India and whose mother is
Quebecoise.
“It’s easier to break through into their milieus and segment them out
– Moroccans, Algerian Arabs, Algerian Berbers,” he said.
Sarker’s north-end riding, Papineau, is home to more than a dozen
ethnic communities. It also has the seventh-highest concentration of
Muslims in Canada – 9,630, or 9.3 per cent of the riding’s total
population.
The riding is now held by federal health minister Pierre Pettigrew, a
Liberal who got an “F” on a pre-election “report card” issued in
April by the Canadian Islamic Congress.
Sarker came to Canada 22 years ago. He lives in Cote St. Luc and runs
his business in Park Extension. On one typical campaign day this
month, he stumped to fellow Muslims at the Islamic Turkish Community
Centre on Villeray St. in the afternoon, then moved on to a Hindu
centre in Mile End for an evening speech.
Local Turks back him because of what he isn’t: an MP who voted for a
resolution in April in the House of Commons that denounced the
Ottoman Empire for committing genocide against Armenians in 1915.
That resolution – backed by Liberal backbenchers, some Tories, and
the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois – angered many in Canada’s Turkish
communities who deny the genocide.
In Montreal, local Turkish leader Yilmaz Ekinci said in this election
his community has been told to vote Conservative. It helps that
Sarker is already a known quantity, too – he’s Ekinci’s accountant.
“I don’t care what he is, Muslim or not Muslim,” said Ekinci, who
runs a wholesale meat business.
“He just has to be a good guy. We like people to be honest.”

Aberdeen Press and Journal
June 22, 2004
Wolves set to pounce on opera-loving prey
A Colourful combination of opera, schoolgirls, wolves and a snake
launched Aberdeen International Youth Festival yesterday. Lisa Beare,
16, Anna Maxwell, 17, and Kay Ritchie, 17, launched the festival with
a burst of song from The Magic Flute as they showed off some of the
opera costumes.
The Cults Academy pupils will join a cast from Canada, France,
Belgium, Iceland and Germany, and work with Armenia’s foremost youth
orchestra, a conductor from Calgary, director from Paris and
choreographer from London. With the help of Moira Hunter, their
school’s head of music, the teenagers are learning the roles, which
require them to sing in German, in advance of rehearsals beginning on
July 12.
Festival chief executive Stephen Stenning said the cast and musicians
would have only a few weeks to overcome language barriers and learn
their roles before The Magic Flute is staged on August 9.
Last year’s youth festival opera, Carmen, a pay-what-you-can show,
was a sell-out. Tickets are now on sale at Aberdeen Box Office for
this year’s opera and other festival events.
It was revealed that Big Brother winner Cameron Stout is to host the
festival’s World Music Gala on August 7. It is a celebration of
traditional Scottish and world music and is to be a key part of the
city’s Tartan Day celebrations.

RIA Novosti
June 23, 2004
ESTABLISHMENT JOINTLY WITH RUSSIA OF ANTI-TERRORIST CENTRE IN
SOUTHERN CAUCASUS PROPOSED IN GEORGIA
TBILISI, June 23 (RIA Novosti) – A regular round of the
Georgian-Russian consultations on military questions will be held in
Moscow on June 23-24.
As Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported, the Georgian side
is ready to propose new initiatives, which can speed up the process
of the withdrawal of the Russian military bases from Georgia, to the
Russian counterparts.
Listed among them is establishment of a joint Anti-Terrorist Centre
(ATC) in the Southern Caucasus.
The Georgian delegation will be headed by Deputy Minister of Foreign
Affairs Merab Antadze.
The agreement on withdrawal of four Russian military bases from
Georgia was signed at the summit of the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Istanbul in 1999. In keeping with the
accords reached, the Russian side has already dismantled two of its
bases – in Vaziani and Gudauta (Abkhazia).
As for the remaining two Russian bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki on
the border with Armenia, the Istanbul agreement provides for holding
additional talks between the Georgian and Russian sides to set the
deadline for their withdrawal.
In the Russian side’s opinion, it will take about 11 years to pull
the above-said bases out, whereas the Georgian side believes that
three years are enough for it.

Agency WPS
What the Papers Say. Part A (Russia)
June 23, 2004, Wednesday
NEO-NAZI GROUPS SUSPECTED OF MURDERING ETHNIC RELATIONS EXPERT
SOURCE: Izvestia, June 23, 2004, p. 5
by Sergei Nekhamkin, Elena Rotkevich
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office considers that Professor
Nikolai Girenko’s professional activities are likely to have been the
motive for his murder. Girenko frequently appeared as an expert
witness in trials involving charges of inciting ethnic or racial
hatred.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko was killed on the morning of Saturday,
June 19 in his own apartment by a bullet fired through his door from
a sawn-off shotgun. His murder is being investigated by the St.
Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office major crimes directorate. St.
Petersburg Deputy Prosecutor Alexander Zhukov told the media on June
21 that one of the theories for the murder motive involves Girenko’s
professional activities. However, according to Zhukov, investigators
do not rule out the possibility of a random killing either.
Valentina Uzunova, a close colleague of Nikolai Girenko, does not
believe it could have been a random killing. According to Uzunova,
scholars in the group headed by Girenko, working on expert analyses
of nationalist extremist publications, constantly received threats.
One current trial in which Professor Girenko was involved as an
expert witness concerns the toughest nationalist group in St.
Petersburg: Schulz-88. The Schulz case began in spring 2003. While
investigating an assault on an Armenian citizen, detectives
identified a skinhead gang with about 30 members. After Girenko
presented his expert conclusions, it became clear that the gang was
more than a bunch of city hooligans: these were hard-line racists and
neo-nazis. Group leader Dmitri Bobrov (alias “Schulz,” with the “88”
in the gang’s name symbolizing the eighth letter in the alphabet and
standing for “Heil Hitler”) maintained strict discipline in his
organization; physical and “theoretical” exercises were carried out,
with youths being trained to “beat up blacks” and practising
large-scale pogroms. The group published a magazine called “Wrath of
Perun” with instructions for young skinheads.
The group of experts headed by Girenko did an evaluation of the
“Wrath of Perun” magazine. Bobrov and his colleague Alexei
Vostroknutov found themselves in pre-trial detention (four other
Schulz-88 members had to sign an undertaking not to leave the area).
The Schulz-88 investigation continued in May. Group members are
charged with inciting ethnic and racial hatred, and issuing public
calls for the overthrow of the constitutional order. The
investigation into the case is still under way.
Shortly before his death, Girenko started preparing to act as an
expert witness in another trial, involving the Russian National Unity
movement.
Translated by Gregory Malyutin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 23, 2004 Wednesday Home Edition
A QUESTION OF GENOCIDE: Sudan’s killing grounds;
Slaughter of villagers sparks concern, debate
by MARK BIXLER
As one of the world’s longest and most devastating wars nears an end,
Atlanta-based CARE and the Carter Center are preparing to expand
their work in southern Sudan even as other humanitarian organizations
warn of possible genocide in another part of the country.
In the Darfur region of western Sudan, reports of atrocities
reminiscent of mass killings in Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda have
created a troubling dilemma for U.S. officials, who have avoided
characterizing the killings as genocide because doing so would
obligate them to act under terms of a treaty drafted in response to
the Holocaust.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, adopted in 1948 and ratified by the United States in 1986,
defines genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or part, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Signatories agree to
“prevent and punish” genocide, though the treaty does not define
prevention and punishment.
“No president wants to say there is a genocide and ‘Oh, by the way,
I’m not going to do anything about it,’ ” said Jerry Fowler, director
of the committee of conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, which has issued a “genocide warning” for Darfur.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said this month the Bush
administration is trying to determine whether events in Darfur fit
the legal definition of genocide. Other U.S. officials have described
the killings as “ethnic cleansing,” a euphemism conceived in the
early 1990s by the Serbs to refer to their practice of targeting
non-Serbs for killing or forced removal.
In Darfur, aid workers and officials say, Arab militias, often
working with the Sudanese military, have killed 10,000 to 30,000
black Africans and forced 1 million others from their homes to remote
areas where food is scarce. The U.S. Agency for International
Development warns that at least 350,000 could die within months.
The United Nations’ under- secretary-general for humanitarian
affairs, Jan Egeland, has called Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis
in the world.
Past reports of mass killings, however, have prompted a muted
response from the United States.
In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem From Hell,” Samantha
Power, who teaches human rights and U.S. foreign policy at Harvard
University, documents a U.S. tendency to avoid decisive action when
confronted with evidence of atrocities.
>From the slaughter of Armenian Christians in modern Turkey in 1915 to
the execution of Bosnian Muslims in the mid-1990s, Power writes,
“decent men and women chose to look away.”
In Rwanda in 1994, the international community did little as members
of the Hutu ethnic majority hacked, shot and burned to death 800,000
members of the minority Tutsis. President Bill Clinton said in Rwanda
in 1998 the United States should have done more to stop the killing.
That experience has informed the U.S. response to the “crimes against
humanity” in Darfur, said Jemera Rone, a Sudan expert at Human Rights
Watch/Africa in Washington.
“I think the U.S. and the U.N. learned a lesson from Rwanda,” she
said. “They’re trying to do the maximum they can without calling it
genocide.”
The United States helped arrange a briefing on Darfur at the U.N.
Security Council. It also made clear it will not improve relations
with Sudan unless conditions change. The Security Council called for
a halt to fighting, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he plans to
visit Sudan.
‘Janjaweed rule’
Still, the United States could do more, said John Prendergast,
director of African Affairs at the National Security Council during
Clinton’s second term. He left Washington a few days ago for Chad,
where he plans to meet victims of the Arab militias in Darfur, known
as the janjaweed. He said the United States and United Nations should
threaten war crimes trials for janjaweed commanders and Sudanese
leaders involved in abuses.
“There is a developing consensus that what the militias are carrying
out on the ground is genocide,” he said before leaving for Africa.
Problems in Darfur began last April.
Just as a north-south war that has raged for all but 11 years since
1955 appeared headed for negotiated settlement, a new war erupted in
western Sudan. Two rebel groups in Darfur that had not previously
been involved in the fighting attacked a Sudanese military base in
April.
In response, the Sudanese government turned to Arab militias with a
history of animosity toward black Africans in Darfur, Rone said. The
government armed and trained them, she said, even giving satellite
phones to some janjaweed commanders.
Last August or September, the militias and armed forces began
attacking hundreds of villages in Darfur. Aid workers say attackers
raped many women and branded some afterward to add to the stigma.
They say attackers hurled dead bodies into wells to poison water
supplies.
“They’re going after civilians,” Rone said.
The Sudanese government says the violence is the result of tribal
conflicts over resources. On Sunday, President Omar el-Bashir said
his military will disarm warring parties in Darfur, including the
janjaweed.
The militias and their victims both are Muslims, but the janjaweed
are Arabs while most people in Darfur are black Africans.
Prendergast said he believes the Bush administration was slow to
pressure the Sudanese government on Darfur for fear that it would
scare Sudan away from the negotiating table with southern rebels.
North vs. south
The Sudanese civil war pits a northern government of Arab Muslims
against black Africans in the south who follow Christianity and
animist religions. The conflict is mainly over power and resources.
Fighting and war-related famine and disease have killed at least 2
million people since 1983. The war also has displaced more than 5
million people. Most casualties are from southern Sudan.
The northern government and the main southern rebel group, the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army, have signed accords that call for a
referendum after six years on whether southern Sudan will secede and
form an independent nation. When talks resume Friday, only procedural
obstacles remain before a final peace agreement is reached.
In anticipation of peace, the United Nations and nongovernmental
organizations are building roads to facilitate the delivery of relief
supplies and encourage trade, said Gary McGurk, CARE’s assistant
country director for southern Sudan.
“In order to get peace in southern Sudan, you’ve got to have
infrastructure and development,” McGurk said during a visit to
Atlanta last week.
He said CARE is building or rebuilding 300 schools in southern Sudan.
The Carter Center, meanwhile, has prepositioned filters and medical
kits and hopes to increase distribution in a peaceful southern Sudan
as part of its effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease, said Craig
Withers, who coordinates the center’s health programs in Sudan.
Southern Sudan is home to 63 percent of the world’s cases of Guinea
worm, an affliction in which larvae from contaminated water grow to
worms inside a human body and break through the skin in painful
blisters.
“We’ve been planning this for a while,” Withers said. “We’re ready to
go.”
GRAPHIC: Graphic: WHAT IS GENOCIDE?
The Genocide Convention adopted by the United Nations in 1948 says
genocide includes the following crimes committed with the intent to
destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:
1. Killing members of the group
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
3. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
4. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction
5. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
1915 to 1923: 1.5 million people of Armenian descent are killed
during a campaign by the Ottoman Empire to expel them from eastern
Turkey. The Turkish government denies it engaged in genocide.
World War II: The systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored
persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi
regime and its collaborators. Nazis also target other groups because
of their perceived “racial inferiority”: Roma (Gypsies), the
disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and
others). Other groups are persecuted on political and behavioral
grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and
homosexuals. The killings are carried out throughout Europe. The most
infamous death camps include Auschwitz, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen.
1975-1978: An estimated 2 million Cambodians, mainly from the
intelligentsia, die at the hands of the Pol Pot regime in what
becomes known as the “killing fields.”
1982: Syrian Baathists under the direction of President Hafiz
al-Assad destroy the city center in the Sunni Muslim city of Hamah
and murder thousands. Estimates of those killed range from 5,000 to
10,000.
1988: Poison gas attack kills between 3,500 and 5,000 Kurds in
Halabja, Iraq, under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
1994: Ethnic Hutu militants in Rwanda slaughter an estimated 800,000
ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus as the world turns away.
1995: Massacre by Bosnian Serb forces of roughly 8,000 Bosnian Muslim
men and boys in the city of Srebrenica. It is ruled as genocide in
April 2004 by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia.
1995: A national inquiry concludes that the Australian government had
knowingly pursued a policy of genocide in regard to the Aboriginal
peoples between 1870 and 1970.
1998: Yugoslav forces under the leadership of President Slobodan
Milosevic execute scores of ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo and
are believed to have detained as many as several thousand men whose
fate is unknown; they also engineer the greatest refugee crisis in
Europe since World War II, emptying villages and cities in forced
expulsions that send more than 500,000 ethnic Albanians into exile.
Darfur conflict
The largely Arabic Janjaweed militia, backed by the government in
Khartoum, rampages through the villages of mainly African farmers in
Darfur. Activists say the attacks amount to genocide.
Reason for conflict
Grazing rights; soil in Darfur region is fertile. And for
generations, nomads have fought farmers for soil and cattle rights.
Sources: Armenian National Institute, United Nations, Web Genocide
Documentation Centre, Genocide Research Project, Knight Ridder
Tribune, Photos by Associated Press
Research by ALICE WERTHEIM / Staff
/ MICHAEL DABROWA / Staff; Photo: Arab and African horsemen parade
before Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir last month as a show of
solidarity in Nyala, capital of Darfur. / BERT WESTON / Courtesy of
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Photo: Mukama Tharcisse, 74, one
of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, is one of the
guardians of the memorial of the genocide in Nyamata. The memorial
houses remains of 20,000 victims. / Associated Press; Photo: Slobodan
Milosevic / Associated Press; Photo: Armenian deportees in a camp of
makeshift tents inhabited mostly by women and children in the barren
Syrian desert. / Associated Press; Photo: The remains of huts burnt
by militia in Sudan’s North Darfur village of Bandago on April 29.
UNICEF has said the fighting in Darfur has forced 1 million people
out of their homes and into camps in Sudan, while 200,000 people have
taken shelter in cities and towns in the region. About 110,000 people
have taken refuge in neighboring Chad. / Associated Press; Map: Map
pinpoints the location of Darfur in Sudan.

Associated Press Worldstream
June 22, 2004 Tuesday
Protesters break in to a NATO forum attended by Armenian defense
officials
BAKU, Azerbaijan
Several protesters broke into a NATO forum on Tuesday attended by
Armenian defense officials, and called on Azerbaijan to stop
negotiations with Armenia, highlighting tensions over
Nagorno-Karabakh – a territory disputed by both countries.
Several activists of the Organization of Karabakh’s Freedom pushed
through police cordons, broke glass doors and stormed into a
conference hall in Baku’s Europe hotel which hosted the forum. The
conference of 21 NATO member states and partners was being held ahead
of NATO’s “Cooperative Best Effort-2004” to be held in Azerbaijan.
Two Armenian officers were among those attending the conference.
Outside the hotel, about 30 protesters held banners “NATO without
Armenians” and “Shame on those who negotiate with Armenians!” More
protesters were cordoned off by police.
Protesters and hotel security guards suffered minor injuries in the
incident in the hotel and the meeting resumed in several minutes.
Eight people were detained by police.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are at odds over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave,
which Armenian forces seized from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. A
1994 cease-fire has largely held, but no final settlement has been
reached. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan are NATO members, but both
former Soviet republics participate in NATO’s Partnership for Peace
program.