Category: News

Armenia not planning to join NATO – foreign minister
Mediamax news agency
16 Apr 04
YEREVAN
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan said in Yerevan today that
“as long as we have not raised the issue of our membership of NATO,
our cooperation with the alliance does not run counter to Armenia’s
strategic relations with Russia and our membership of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization”.
“Contradictions may appear only if Armenia raises the issue of its
membership of NATO, however, we have no plans on that score today. We
are ready to expand relations with NATO, but this does not mean that
Armenia plans to start talks on joining the alliance,” Oskanyan said.
“If Georgia and Azerbaijan become members of NATO, and Armenia does
not, then this will obviously create new dividing lines in the
Caucasus,” Oskanyan said. According to him, “these issues concern not
only us, but also NATO, the USA and Russia, which is why they will be
very cautious and will try to avoid this scenario”.

Armenian opposition plans new rally
X-Sender: Asbed Bedrossian
X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 — ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
16.04.2004 08:52:00 GMT
Yerevan. (Interfax) – Opposition groups in Armenia plan to stage a new rally
in the center of the capital city, Yerevan, on Friday to press to have
the government replaced.
The rally will be held even if City Hall does not authorize it, Stepan
Demirchian, the leader of the opposition Justice bloc, has told
Interfax.
“The opposition has not been broken and intends to continue fighting
to have the government in Armenia replaced,” he said.
Confrontation between the opposition, which is demanding the
resignation of President Robert Kocharian, and the authorities has
come to a head over the past few days. The opposition is boycotting
parliament sessions and pressing for a referendum on confidence in the
authorities. It has staged several large rallies. The police dispersed
a rally outside the presidential residence early on April 13. The
authorities have banned all unauthorized mass rallies in Yerevan.

Azeri daily speculates on arms purchase from Israel, Turkey
Ekho, Baku
16 Apr 04 pp 1,3

Text of R. Orucov and T. Mammadov report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho
on 16 April entitled “Will Israel and Turkey supply weapons to
Azerbaijan?” and subheaded “The Israeli embassy does not confirm this
information”
“Israel and Turkey will sell arms to Azerbaijan,” said a report
circulated yesterday by Israeli ISRAland news agency. “Diplomatic
sources in Ankara say that Israel and Turkey are close to concluding a
major transaction on the sale of arms to Azerbaijan,” the report said.
It was reported that within the framework of the agreement, Israel
would supply technology, component parts, and weapons will be
assembled in Turkey and then supplied to Azerbaijan. Turkey hopes that
this contract will open up a way for new deals on the sale of
Israeli-Turkish weapons to Central Asian states. It is maintained
that during previous attempts to implement similar joint projects in
the sphere of arms sales, a potential client preferred to obtain arms
directly from Israel.
The report is very interesting bearing in mind that nothing of this
kind has been reported before.
To verify this report, our correspondent turned to the Azerbaijani
Defence Ministry spokesman, Ramiz Malikov. His answer was brief: “It
is the first time I hear about this.”
A correspondent of Ekho asked the first secretary of the Azerbaijani
embassy in Turkey, Etibar Mammadov, the same question. “No comments,”
the diplomat said.
In turn, the press attache of the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan,
Elkhan Polukhov, said that the circulated by his country’s press
“information does not correspond to the facts, it is nonsense. Such
cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan in the military sphere
through Turkey does not exist.”
However, a source in the military circles, who wished to remain
anonymous, has told Ekho that such a multistage system of supplies of
Israeli arms to Azerbaijan is absolutely possible and some facts point
to the actual existence of such a plan. “Simply, the purchase of arms
from abroad or their sale is traditionally referred to as a delicate
issue practically in every country. This is also true for Azerbaijan,
Turkey and Israel.”
For many post-Soviet states, the issue of upgrading the existing
military and technical stocks they inherited from the USSR is very
pressing. “Naturally, Azerbaijan is not an exception and the fact that
this is persistently denied by diplomats is also fully understandable.
But in fact, our country is conducting negotiations on the issue and
the state leadership has issued definite instructions to carry out
active work in this area. This means that all state-of-the-art weapons
that appear in the armament of friendly countries should be tested as
to whether they could be applied in our army,” the source said.
“It is no secret that Azerbaijan and Turkey are in close contacts on
the issue and this has already yielded a positive outcome. Over the
recent years high-level military officials from Turkey and Azerbaijan
have paid reciprocal visits. No country would like undesirable sides
to find out about its plans. Bearing in mind that we are at war with
Armenia, our country does not intend to advertise such issues either.
“Moreover, some Muslim countries react to the word of ‘Israel’ very
alarmingly, especially in the sphere of military cooperation. Our
country’s interest in Israeli weapons is natural as this country
possesses up-to-date types of weapons, military hardware and special
equipment. As for this report, it contains facts showing that definite
work is being conducted. I am sure that there will be important
progress,” the source said.

PRESS RELEASE
Office of Sarkis Assadourian M.P.
120 Confederation
House of Commons, Ottawa, Canada
Contact: Daniel Kennedy
Tel: 613 995 4843
Motion 380 First debated in the House of Commons Febuary 25, 2004
calling on the House of Commons to recognize the Armenian Genocide is
sceduled for debate in the House of Commons Tuesday April 20 with a
possible vote on April 21.

PRESS RELEASE
Department of Armenian Studies, Haigazian University
Beirut, Lebanon
Contact: Ara Sanjian
Tel: 961-1-353011
Email: [email protected]
Web:
NORA ARISSIAN LECTURES AT HAIGAZIAN UNIVERSITY ON SYRIAN MEMOIRS ON THE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
BEIRUT, Wednesday, 14 April, 2004 (Haigazian University Department of
Armenian Studies Press Release) – On Friday, 19 March 2004, the
Department of Armenian Studies hosted Dr. Nora Arissian, who delivered a
public lecture entitled “The Armenian Genocide in the Memoirs of the
Syrians.”
Syrian-born Arissian is a graduate of Damascus University and received
her Ph.D. from the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Armenian
National Academy of Sciences in Yerevan. She currently works in the
Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in Damascus and is the author of “The
Armenian Calamities in the Syrian Mind: The Position of Syrian
Intellectuals toward the Armenian Genocide,” published in Arabic in
Beirut in 2002. This book presents and analyzes the views and attitudes
of 43 contemporary Syrian thinkers on the Armenian Genocide (historians,
writers, journalists, political figures, etc.), almost all of whom
condemn what befell the Armenians during the First World War.
Arissian emphasized the importance of Syrian primary documents and
periodicals in analyzing the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
during the First World War. These sources, however, have not to date
been accorded by Armenian Genocide scholars the importance, she thinks,
they deserve, especially in comparison to data emanating from European
and American governments, organizations and individuals.
Syria was not an independent, sovereign entity at the beginning of the
twentieth century, said Arissian. It did not, therefore, have diplomatic
or official documents, through which we can analyze today an official
Syrian standpoint toward the ongoing Armenian Genocide of 1915. That is
why the memoirs and oral testimonies of individual Syrians are even more
important than usual to understand the popular attitude toward these
massacres and deportations. These sources can also help us explain the
causes behind and the events of the Genocide from an Arab viewpoint.
Arissian said that Syrian Arabs today are largely sympathetic to the
Armenian plight during the Genocide. This attitude is partly conditioned
by the pan-Turkist ideology prevalent in the Ottoman Empire at the time,
which also aimed at the forced Turkification of other non-Turkish
elements in the empire, including Arabs. Arab intellectuals explain the
Genocide committed by the Young Turks as the “logical conclusion” of
earlier anti-Armenian massacres and other instances of violence in the
Ottoman Empire.
Arissian classified the various Syrian sources on the Armenian Genocide
currently available into four broad categories:
a) Newspapers published by Syrians both inside the country and in exile.
Arissian’s research has uncovered 500 articles making extensive
reference to Armenians and their suffering in 33 different political
periodicals published between 1877 and 1930. (She is now compiling these
articles into a book which will be published in Lebanon soon.)
b) The oral testimonies of actual witnesses of the Armenian Genocide.
Arissian has recorded the testimonies of 25 Arab witnesses, all born
between 1880 and 1919, including some who were the children of Armenian
women deportees. The information they provided was useful as regards the
various regions from which the Armenians had been deported as well as
the relationship of the Syrians with the Armenian deportees.
c) The oral testimonies of the children of Arab tribesmen who witnessed
the Genocide. Arissian described her interviews with the sons of the
governor in 1915 of the region of Sabkha (40 km south-west of Rakka),
the chief of the Arab al-Jarba tribe, the leader of the Kurdish al-Malla
tribal confederation, and with the writer, Abd al-Salam al-Ujayli, whose
father was a village headman and a director of deportations in the Rakka
region in 1915.
d) The published memoirs of political, cultural and other public
figures. The discussion of the latter formed the last and most extensive
part of Arissian’s lecture.
Arissian argued that the published memoirs of the writer and politician
Fakhri al-Barudi (1889-1066), the revolutionary activists Fawzi
al-Qawuqji and Ahmad Qadri (1893-1958), as well as the Ottoman diplomat
Amin Arslan (1893-1958) make only passing references to the Armenians
when discussing the characteristics of the Young Turk regime in the last
years of Ottoman rule. The lecturer dealt in more depth, however, with
the works of the politician Fares al-Khuri (1877-1962), the lawyer and
political activist Fayez al-Ghusayn (1883-1968) and the cultural and
public figure Muhammad Kurd Ali (1876-1953). Al-Khuri dwelt at length on
the murder of his fellow Ottoman parliamentarians of Armenian descent,
Krikor Zohrab and Vartkes, and its repercussions in the Ottoman
Parliament. Al-Ghusayn was briefly imprisoned as a political opponent by
the Young Turk regime during the war years and finally escaped to join
the rebel forces of Sharif Husayn in Arabia. Al-Ghusayn has a number of
writings that describe the Armenian deportations and massacres, the most
significant of which is a series of articles entitled ‘The Massacres in
Armenia,’ which was first published in the Egyptian periodical
al-Muqattam and was then reissued as a 62-page booklet. In various books
that he compiled, Kurd Ali in turn described the Armenian Genocide, the
forced migration of Armenians to Syria and tried to analyze the
possibility of the acculturation of these Armenian migrants into their
new milieu. Finally, Arissian also mentioned in this last part of her
lecture that another Syrian author, Yusif al-Hakim (1879-1979),
described in his memoirs, ‘Syria and the Ottoman Period,’ the massacres
against the Armenians in Cilicia and the neighboring northern districts
of modern Syria during the failed counter-revolution of 1909, which
aimed to return Sultan Abdulhamid II to power as an absolute monarch.
During the question-and-answer session that followed, Arissian admitted
that young Syrian Arabs are not generally aware of the sources she has
researched and the information that they contain, but she expressed
commitment and some optimism that Armenians must strive to spread the
appropriate knowledge and help form a favorable public opinion.
Haigazian University is a liberal arts institution of higher learning,
established in Beirut in 1955. For more information about its activities
you are welcome to visit its web-site at <;. For additional information on the activities of its Department of Armenian Studies, contact Ara Sanjian at .

April 14, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Cruel Choices
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

I can’t get the kaleidoscope of genocide out of my head since my trip
last month to the Sudan-Chad border: the fresh graves, especially the
extra-small mounds for children; the piles of branches on graves to
keep wild animals from digging up corpses; the tales of women being
first raped and then branded on the hand to stigmatize them forever;
the isolated peasants, unfamiliar with electricity, who suddenly
encounter the 21st century as helicopters machine-gun their children.
Then there were the choices faced by the Sudanese refugees I
interviewed. For example, who should fetch water from the wells?
The Arab Janjaweed militia, armed by Sudan’s government, shoots tribal
African men and teenage boys who show up at the wells, and rapes women
who go. So parents described an anguished choice: Should they risk
their 7- or 8-year-old children by sending them to wells a mile away,
knowing that the children have the best prospect of returning?
And what should parents do when the Janjaweed seize their children, or
gang-rape their daughters? Should they resist, knowing they will then
be shot at once in front of their children?
Or what about the parents described by Human Rights Watch who were
allowed by the militia to choose how their children would die: burned
alive or shot to death?
Some 1,000 people in Sudan’s Darfur region are still dying each
week. But at least the world has finally begun to pay attention – and
it’s striking how a hint of concern in the West has persuaded Sudan to
reach a cease-fire there.
President Bush finally found his voice last week, protesting the
“atrocities” in Darfur. More forcefully, Kofi Annan warned on the day
commemorating the Rwandan genocide that reports about brutalities in
Darfur “leave me with a deep sense of foreboding. . . . The
international community cannot stand idle.”
So far in Darfur, thousands have been killed, and about one million
black Africans have been driven from their homes by the
lighter-skinned Arabs in the Janjaweed. Vast sections of Darfur, a
region the size of France, have been burned and emptied. The Janjaweed
have also destroyed wells, or fouled them by dumping corpses into
them, to keep villagers from ever returning.
“You can drive for 100 kilometers and see nobody, no civilian,” said
Dr. Mercedes Tatay, a physician with Doctors Without Borders who has
just spent a month in Darfur. “You pass through large villages,
completely burned or still burning, and you see nobody.”
In the refugee camps in Darfur, malnutrition and measles are claiming
the survivors, especially young children. Roger Winter, assistant
administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development,
estimates that even if the fighting stops today, at least 100,000 are
still likely to die in coming months – of disease, malnutrition and
other ailments. Yet Sudan is still curbing access to Darfur by the
U.N. and aid groups.
I’m not suggesting an invasion of Sudan. But it’s a fallacy to think
that just because we can’t do everything to stop genocide, we
shouldn’t do anything. One of the lessons of the last week is how
little it took – from Washington, the U.N. and the African Union – to
nudge Sudan into accepting a cease-fire and pledging access for
humanitarian workers.
Now we need more arm-twisting to get Sudan to comply with the
cease-fire (it marked the first day, Monday, by bombing the town of
Anka). The Sudanese government is testing us, but so far the State
Department has shown a commendable willingness to stand up to it.
We can save many tens of thousands of lives in the coming weeks – but
only if Mr. Bush and Mr. Annan speak out more boldly, if the
U.N. Security Council insists on humanitarian access to Darfur and if
the aid community mounts a huge effort before the rainy season makes
roads impassible beginning in late May.
In the last 100 years, the United States has reacted to one genocide
after another – Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Bosnians – by making
excuses at the time, and then saying, too late, “Oh, if only we had
known!” Well, this time we know what is happening in Darfur: 110,000
refugees have escaped into Chad and testify to the atrocities.
How many more parents will be forced to choose whether their children
are shot or burned to death before we get serious?
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

The Moscow Times
Thursday, Apr. 15, 2004. Page 7
Armenia’s Opposition Has a Bloody Baptism
By Kim Iskyan
Until a few weeks ago, Armenia was a bedrock of stability compared to its
neighbors Georgia and Azerbaijan. But now Armenia is trying to join Georgia
in throwing off a corrupt and repressive regime.
A bit more than a year ago, Armenian President Robert Kocharyan followed up
a fraudulent presidential election victory with a correspondingly
counterfeit parliamentary poll a few weeks later. Subsequent opposition
protests sputtered, but a call by the country’s otherwise pro-presidential
Constitutional Court for a “referendum of confidence” within a year provided
a shred of hope.
Twelve months later, with no referendum in sight, and naively inspired by
last autumn’s “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the Armenian opposition dusted
off its placards and focused on forcing Kocharyan and Co. to move forward
with the referendum or else just quit.
But Armenia isn’t Georgia. Demonstrations in Yerevan were initially
postponed in part due to a chill in the air. Many of the 15,000 people
ostensibly attending an opposition rally last week were more intent on
chomping on sunflower seeds in the sunshine than on change. Subsequent
protests intimated a deep revolutionary spirit in a hardened core, but the
sentiment was not widespread.
Part of the problem is that Armenia’s opposition hasn’t convinced the
cynical electorate that it is more interested in bringing about real change
than in having a turn at the feeding trough. And for all his government’s
incompetence and corruption, Kocharyan has kept most Armenians supplied with
heat, electricity and water most of the time.
Kocharyan, though, took no chances. Vehicles trying to enter Yerevan over
the past few days have been forced to turn around for fear that their
occupants were potential protesters. In the brutally bloody climax to recent
protests, government troops blasted a few thousand demonstrators with water
cannons and stun grenades at 2 a.m. in front of the country’s parliamentary
building. The next day, opposition offices were seized by police, and
opposition leaders went into hiding to avoid arrest. Now that constitutional
and peaceful means of bringing about change have been met with barbed wire
and a kick in the head, watch for the opposition to explore other means.
Meanwhile, much of the head-in-the-sand Armenian diaspora theorizes aloud
that foreign governments must be behind the unrest, since things really
aren’t that bad in the homeland — the 50 percent poverty rate
notwithstanding. So don’t look to them to argue with Kocharyan’s message of
power through fear, as Armenia slides down the slippery former-Soviet slope
toward dictatorship, and not even a benign one at that.
Kim Iskyan, a freelance journalist and consultant in Yerevan, contributed
this comment to The Moscow Times.

The Moscow Times
Hot News
Armenian President blames extremists for disturbances in Yerevan
RosBusinessConsulting. Wednesday, Apr. 14, 2004, 7:28 PM Moscow Time
Forces that propagate political extremism should bear full responsibility
for the recent incidents in Yerevan, Armenian President Robert Kocharian
declared at a meeting with members of the Board of the United Communist
Party. During the meeting the President underlined the necessity of a
dialogue between the opposition and the ruling coalition. However, he
pointed out, “It is impossible to begin a dialogue when the opposition uses
the language of ultimatums,” the press service of the Armenian President
reported. As for the events that took place early in the morning on April
13, Kocharian remarked that the police had used exclusively legal methods
for restoring public order. He stated that the work of both the opposition
and the ruling party should be aimed at increasing the people’s well-being
and controlling some aspects of the government’s work. “At present, the
opposition has every chance to return to its normal activity, but if it
chooses a different policy, the government, using every legal method
available, will make efforts to prevent any illegal actions and to protect
the people,” Kocharian underscored, the ARMINFO news agency reported.

ARMENIAN OPPOSITION DECLARED HOLDING RECURRENT RALLY
14.04.2004 18:13
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The recurrent rally of the united Armenian opposition will
take place on April 16 at 6 p.m. local time, deputies representing
opposition Justice bloc in the Armenian National Assembly Shavarsh Kocharian
and Albert Bazeian told journalists today. In their words, the decision was
taken at today’s sitting of the political council of the bloc.

NATIONAL UNITY LEADER STATES OF OPPOSITION’S DETERMINATION TO PRESS FOR
CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP IN ARMENIA
14.04.2004 19:14
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The will of the opposition to change leadership in Armenia
was not subdued, moreover opposition intends to take more drastic measures
from now on, leader of National Unity opposition party Artashes Geghamian
stated today during the press conference in the parliament. In his words
“the struggle will not conflict with the Constitution and the tactics will
be worked out due to the development of the events”. At the same time
Geghamian did not specify what exactly opposition is going to undertake for
the achievement of the goal. According to him, the strategy of the further
struggle against the incumbent leadership will be defined during the
consultations between the representatives of the opposition. National Unity
leader stated that opposition is ready for the dialogue with the leadership
in the person of President Robert Kocharian and defense minister Serge
Sargsian, as, in his words, “the situation in Armenia depends on them but
not on the ruling political coalition”.