Moscow officials pursue Caucasian residents
By Vahe Avanesian and Lala Nuri in Moscow and Sopho Bukia in Tbilisi
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Oct 19 2006
Georgians in Russia fear for their future as Moscow-Tbilisi dispute
escalates
For a week now, Gia Paichadze has not left his apartment on Bagritsky
Street in Moscow, which he’s been renting for two years, except for
a quick dash to a nearby kiosk to buy food or a newspaper.
A week ago, Paichadze was still working as the manager of a chain of
grocery shops outside Moscow. The shops, which all belonged to ethnic
Georgians, have now all been shut down, and signs on the doors say
they are “closed for technical reasons”.
Paichadeze said they had taken the decision to shut the shops
themselves, after the daily visits by tax officials, health inspectors
and others had become unbearable.
“The point is that we are Georgians, and that explains everything,”
he told IWPR by telephone. “My documents are in perfect order, but
showing my face on the street is still a risk. I stay at home and
watch the news. I’ll wait for a couple of months, and if things don’t
calm down, I’ll leave.”
Moscow has kept up the heat on Tbilisi following the latter’s arrest of
four Russian officers on espionage charges on September 27, even though
the four were later released and handed over to the Russian side.
Moscow cut off all air, land, sea and postal links with its southern
neighbour. It has also imposed restrictions on bank transfers, directly
hurting the hundreds of thousands of Georgians working in Russia.
Over the last few days, Moscow courts have handed down deportation
sentences on 130 illegal migrants from Georgia and around 700 Georgian
citizens have left the Russian capital.
On October 17, Georgian citizen Tengiz Togonidze, 58, died in Moscow’s
Domodedovo Airport a few hours before he was about to be deported,
raising a storm of protest in Georgia.
Georgia’s foreign ministry accused the Russian authorities of violating
the rights of Georgian citizens. The ministry said Togonidze, who
was asthmatic, did not receive proper medical aid – an allegation
the Russians have denied.
Russia’s federal migration service says that deportation flights of
Georgians continue. People are being detained on the street and taken
to one of eight special stations set up in Moscow. A court ruling
is needed for the deportation to go ahead, but this is basically
a formality.
Mikhail Tyurkin, deputy director of the federal migration service,
said, “An analysis of requests from regions and subjects of Russia
has led us to conclude that we don’t need Georgian citizens at
the moment. They will be given neither quotas for living, nor for
temporary work.”
Georgian-owned businesses are also being targeted. The well-known
Crystal and Golden Palace casinos in Moscow have been closed down.
The official charge sheet says the casinos failed to produce licenses
for some of their slot machines and, among other violations, paid
employees’ salaries in envelopes. But it also noted that the owners
are “natives of Georgia”.
The Russian police have even traced illegal migrants from Georgia
through their children. They asked a number of schools in the capital
to provide them with a list of pupils with Georgian surnames and then
questioned the children about where their parents lived, whether they
had visas and were registered.
Nato Merabishvili, who has lived in Moscow for 15 years, said her son
Kakha had been interrogated. “It’s simply a disgrace, and it was done
in such a humiliating manner!” she fumed.
Russian citizen Sveta Smirnova has a Georgian husband and their
children go to a school in the centre of Moscow. “Every morning my
parents take the kids to school and wait for them there till the end of
the studies,” she told IWPR. “My children have a Georgian surname, and
they won’t be safe so long as this anti-Georgian hysteria continues.”
The Russian-Georgian conflict has also affected migrants from other
parts of the South Caucasus.
Teimuraz Huseinli, chairman of the Azerbaijani Society Yeni Sabakh
(New Day) in Moscow, said police raids on food markets, where many
Azerbaijanis work, had intensified lately. “Even after the terrorist
acts in Moscow, the checking campaigns were not as pervasive as
this one,” he told IWPR. “They’ve begun checking documents even in
people’s apartments. Of course, you can always buy them off, but
the prices have risen sharply. They used to take 100 to 200 rubles
(four to seven US dollars) for an expired migration card, now the
cost is at least 50 dollars.”
However, Georgians, who do not have the right documents, now prefer
to pass themselves off as Armenians. Georgian citizens Kristina
Sanikidze graduated from Moscow State University. Because she had
problems getting a job, she applied for a Russian passport with her
surname changed to Akopova. “After all these events, I’ve stopped
hoping that anything good will come out of it,” she said. “My Georgian
passport has expired, and I can’t even go back to Tbilisi to get a
new one… I’m a captive in Moscow, I’m even afraid of going outside.”
A young Georgian named Anzori has been working on Moscow building
sites for more than a year and his temporary registration, permission
to work and visa have all expired. However, he has managed to get
himself a paper saying that his documents are being processed –
and that he has an Armenian surname.
“That means they treat me fairly OK,” Anzori told IWPR. “For instance,
my friends and I – none of us has normal documents – were coming
back from work, when policemen stopped us. What else could we
do? As one of the policemen was reading my papers, we said we were
against [Georgian president Mikheil] Saakashvili and swore at the
president. They took pity on us and let us continue on our way. They
even refused to take money.”
IWPR witnessed how Georgians are now being treated. A policeman stopped
an Armenian passer-by, and asked him to present his documents. At
that moment, a colleague approached him, escorting a young man. “Look,
I’ve got a Georgian,” he said, whereupon the first policemen returned
the documents to the Armenian, saying he was “free”, and they led
the Georgian off together.
“I don’t know when all this is going to end,” said Malkhaz Janashia,
a Georgian, who has lived in Moscow for 22 years. “Georgians can no
longer walk Moscow streets free of charge, even if their documents
are faultless. You have to pay bribes everywhere. Spending one week
in the country, of which I am a citizen, has cost me 3,000 rubles
(110 dollars).”
An informal poll among Muscovites shows that most support the official
line. “I am fully supportive of our authorities’ actions, Georgians
should know where their place is,” said Valentina Nikolayevna. “If
they don’t agree with their president, they should speak out.”
“This is the right thing to do to all of them, especially to the
Georgians, because they’ve proved to be the most ungrateful of all,”
said businessman Mikhail Vorobyov.
Only two of more than ten people questioned were critical about the
crackdown. “Georgians are toiling for the good of our country, and
this is how we respond,” said one of them, Anna Ageyeva.
Russia shows no signs of wishing to lift its sanctions against
Georgia in the near future. “The release of our [officers] does not
mean a reversal of Georgia’s deliberate anti-Russian policy,” Russian
foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told foreign journalists. “And there
is not yet a good reason for us to reconsider our actions.”
Vahe Avanesian is director of the Moscow office of the Armenian
TV-channel Shant. Lala Nuri works for the newspaper Azerros in
Moscow. Sopho Bukia is IWPR’s Georgia Editor in Tbilisi.

My Notebook: Turkey’s still hanging on in the departure lounge
Hardev Kaur
20 Oct 2006
New Straits Times, Malaysia
Oct 19 2006
WHILE the Western world rightly recognised the works of Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk and awarded him this year’s Nobel Prize in
Literature, it does not appear as willing to accept his country as
a member of the European Union.
Just as Pamuk was named the winner of the award, another hurdle was
placed in the path of Ankara’s EU membership, raising suspicions that
it is no longer wanted as a member of the European “club”.
The French Parliament voted last Thursday, by a wide margin, to make
it a criminal act to deny an Armenian genocide at the hands of Ottoman
Turks, enraging Turkey and further deepening its suspicion of the EU.
Meanwhile, Turkish lawmakers proposed a counter-bill that would
recognise an “Algerian genocide” carried out by colonial French forces
in 1945.
A British Member of Parliament, Denis Macshane, points out that
“it was the decaying elements of the Ottoman Empire that killed the
Armenians, not the modern Turkish republic. If the EU is to demand
apologies for historic misdeeds from its existing members, let alone
potential members, then it may as well dissolve itself”.
Today, Turkey is a full and important member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation (Nato) and has deployed its troops in a number
of areas, the latest being in Lebanon.
“We want your troops. You can die for our cause. But we do not want
you at the table as an EU member.” That seems to be the message for
Turkey which has met the Copenhagen Criteria in 2002 for entry.
Even so, it is still in the “departure lounge” and every month a new
hurdle is put in its way, delaying its departure for the EU. There is
increasing belief that Turkey’s entry is not only a technical process
but also a political one in which other “non-Copenhagen Criteria”
play a role.
“Turkey is …too poor … too Muslim, too harsh, too culturally
different, to everything,” Samuel Huntington wrote in The Clash of
Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order.
Even the pope seems to be weighing against Turkey’s membership. Jim
Bencivenga writing in the Christian Science Monitor in April last year
quotes Pope Benedict XVI as saying: “The roots that have formed Europe
are those of Christianity. Turkey has always represented a different
continent, in permanent contrast to Europe… It would be an error
to equate the two continents… Turkey is founded on Islam… Thus
the entry of Turkey into the EU would be anti-historical.”
But a walk through the streets of Istanbul reveals the dynamism of
“Islam and Christendom, East and West, Asia and Europe”. These may be
cliches but they come alive in this ancient city with a modern outlook.
Ali Babajan, Minister of State and EU chief negotiator, told a group
of Eisenhower Fellows in Istanbul recently that “Islam and secularism
operate in Turkey better and better”.
He said Ankara’s reforms, undertaken in conformity with the Copenhagen
Criteria, were important not only for Turkey and Europe but also for
the region.
But the debate that it is different, with its large Muslim population,
continues to take centre stage. Turkey is different. “It is one of
the few countries that can do business with Israel and the Arab world
with the same level of acceptance,” Babajan explains.
Even so, the doubts about Turkey persist. And if Europe pushes Ankara
away, the world would have lost an opportunity to prove that there
can be co-operation and collaboration between the Muslim and Western
worlds. There are common values in both regions that can and should
be exploited to bring the two worlds closer together especially in
the current environment and the need to fight the common enemy.
Unfortunately, “Europe is doing its level best to tell Turkey it is no
longer wanted as part of the European Union”, Macshane, the Labour MP
for Rotherman who was Britain’s Europe Minister between 2002 and 2005,
wrote in the Financial Times.
It also sends a very strong albeit wrong message to the Muslim world,
under siege from numerous quarters, that it is not welcome to sit
at the same table as other Europeans not because it does not qualify
but merely because of the faith of its citizens.
Former Turkish president Turgut Ozal put it more bluntly when he said
that Turkey would not become a member of the European Community,
and the real reason “is that we are Muslim and they are Christian
and they don’t say that”.
Pamuk told the Washington Post that “Turkey’s future lies in the
European Union”, and that its inclusion would be “a wonderful thing
for Turkey, for Europe and for the world”. Will the Western world
listen to the Nobel Laureate and accept his country as a member of
the EU just as they have accepted and honoured him?

The novel of ambiguity
Are the transformations effected in Orhan Pamuk’s novels an extension
of their author’s own positioning, asks Elias Khoury*
Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
Oct 19-25 2006
Last year, at the Goteborg Book Fair, where dozens of writers from
the four corners of the globe meet at the Swedish dining table that
offers a main course called the Nobel Prize, I sat down to breakfast
at my hotel with Orhan Pamuk. The Turkish novelist looked distracted,
worn down with waiting. The newspapers were full of the news of the
legal charges brought against him on account of his statements about
the genocide of Armenians and rumours were rife among journalists and
other gossips that he was a likely candidate for the Nobel. I jokingly
said that anxiety did no good and that waiting for the award may mean
that it will never come. I went over the well-known story concerning
the prominent Turkish novelist Yashar Kemal who was led to believe that
renting a house in Stockholm would place him on the scene and the award
jury would, as a consequence, find him hard to overlook. The result was
that the prize eluded him; he became a prime example of miscalculation.
Pamuk made no comment and contented himself with a smile. It was the
first time his name had been mentioned among possible nominees. I
suggested that nomination by the newspapers was not a good sign and
that the prize usually goes to a name not bandied about in the media.
He asked me about Adonis and I said that in the Arab world we
considered that he had long ago won the award and was no longer in
any need of it.
I was wrong and Pamuk was right. His anxiety was well-placed: the
prize that passed him over last year has now been awarded him, thus
consecrating Turkish literature in its modernist and postmodernist
modes. Yashar Kemal had written stunning pastoral novels relying
on popular heritage and folk tales. Pamuk, on the other hand, has
produced modernist novels that border on the Borgesian text, playing
with fantasy and rereading the past in the language of the present.
The crux of the Pamukian novel is ambiguity: of identity, of
styles, of positionality. He is a European writer because, since
the Ataturk revolution, Turkey has been stricken by a frenzy of
Europeanisation, casting off the Ottoman tarbouche and rushing to
embrace secularisation, forgetting that the tarbouche is not indigenous
but had come from Austria and that secularisation, albeit one of the
hallmarks of the French Revolution, remains riddled with ambiguity
in many European countries.
Last Thursday, as I watched an Armenian demonstration in the Place
des Martyres in Beirut against Turkey’s participation in UNIFEL,
soon after the announcement that Pamuk had won the Nobel, I could
not help but think of his novel The White Castle. The story, which
centres on the ambiguity of identity, is about a trader from Venice
who falls captive to the Turks and becomes the slave of a Turkish
scholar who fervently wishes to learn astronomy, manufacture gunpowder
and construct a giant cannon. The story is not about the way the Turk
employs his European slave in his primitive scientific research but
about the resemblance between the two men, a resemblance so close that
they look like twins. The novel becomes a space in which memories are
exchanged, ending up as the site for the exchange of the present. The
Turk becomes a Venetian and the Venetian a Turk.
The game of the novel is pivoted on the personality of its author.
The reader wonders which one wrote the book, the Turk or the Italian?
It recalls similar ambiguities in the main character in Tayib Saleh’s
novel Season of Migration to the North. Who is Mustafa Saeed? Did he
really exist or is he the exotic facet of the narrator’s personality?
While The White Castle can be read as variation on Saleh’s novel
and a rewriting of it, it goes further in sounding out a latent
Borgesian inspiration that surfaces in all of Pamuk’s novels then
disappears behind a truncated detective game in The Black Book,
behind questions about the relationship between heritage and imported
European Renaissance art in My Name is Red, behind a fierce realism
and overwhelming imaginative flow in Snow or behind the labyrinth
of a passion occasioned by a book as in The New Life. But what is
the relationship between the Armenian demonstration in Beirut and
Pamuk’s literary texts?
No Armenian writer has won the Nobel Prize, nor has the Armenian
genocide entered Turkish literature. Pamuk, whose criticism of
the Turkish position that does not admit its responsibility for the
Armenian genocide raised hell in his homeland has not written a novel
about the Armenians, satisfying himself instead with the position
publicised in the media. It was a comment by Nedim Gèrsel about the
Nobel Prize being awarded to his colleague that turned the Armenian
demonstration in my eyes into an event related to the prize.
Did Pamuk receive the award in his capacity as an alternative to an
Armenian writer? Has the game of doppelgangers and the interlocking
of identities now overtaken the novelist himself, turning him into
the hero of a novel he did not write? The game of the writer’s
transformation into the hero of a novel he has not penned fascinates
me because it is one of the signs of the text’s revenge on the writer
who considers that his intelligence allows him to pass over the very
chalice he has given to the heroes of his novels to drink. Was this
not the fate of Salman Rushdie, Kafka and Emile Habiby, among others?
Pamuk’s game is played between the poles of popular commercial
and high literature. Despite being an experimental writer, his
experimentation does not include the breaking of new ground. He has
contented himself with a measuring of the pulse of experimentation,
constructing modernist narratives that go beyond realism to the
fantastic, build literary texts on literature, are enthralled by the
book, return to long-forgotten centuries without abandoning their
contemporaneity and are pivoted on Istanbul as a point of intersection
between memory and imagination. He is a writer whose ability to treat
current issues in his country and in the world singles him out for
popularity. He measures the pulse of the media then turns it into
literature, without lapsing into cliche or triteness.
Within the text it is intelligence that takes precedence over all other
aspects. The narrative is vivid, brilliant, and the writer resides in
flagrant ambiguity. As Pamuk never tires of saying, he is European by
inclination — Turkey joined Europe when the Italian merchant became
a Turkish scientist — a writer who rebelled against the realism of
his literary forefathers and who is a modernist in all things. He
does not live outside Istanbul because he has become its author.
* The writer is Editor-in-Chief of the weekly literary supplement of
the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar , and distinguished professor of Middle
Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He has published
11 novels, of which five have been translated into English : Little
Mountain ( 1989 ), Gates of the City ( 1993 ), The Journey of Little
Gandhi ( 1994 ), The Kingdom of Strangers ( 1996 ) and Gate of the Sun
( 2006 ).
–Boundary_(ID_ef7LgGXTMR2yq3KZUslZgA)–

France votes on ‘Armenian genocide’
Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
Oct 19-25 2006
Last week’s vote aiming to make it an offence in France to question
the Armenian genocide has met with some formidable opposition,
reports David Tresilian in Paris
French MPs last week passed a bill aiming to make it an offence in
France “to question the Armenian genocide”, being the massacres carried
out against the Armenian population of Anatolia in the dying days of
the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in which hundreds of
thousands of Armenians are believed to have died.
The bill, introduced into the lower house of the French parliament by
the socialists with the support of members of France’s ruling centre-
right parties but not of the government itself, was passed by 106
votes for and 19 against, with only 125 of the parliament’s 577 MPs
turning out to vote.
The bill, which will not become law until it is passed by the
parliament’s upper house and signed by the president, would make it a
criminal offence in France to question the “existence of the Armenian
genocide”, those doing so risking up to five years in prison and a
45,000 Euro fine.
France has already legislated on other historical issues, the so-called
“Gayssot law” of July 1990 making it an offence in France to deny the
extermination carried out by the Hitler regime against Europe’s Jews,
and another law of January 2001 “publicly recognising the Armenian
genocide” but not making it an offence in France to deny it.
Response to the vote was immediate both in France and in Turkey, with
French commentators expressing reservations at the apparent use of
legislation to decide historical questions and thereby threatening
important freedoms, and the Turkish government protesting against
what it said was French interference in Turkey’s domestic affairs.
According to an editorial in the left-of-centre newspaper Liberation,
the proposed law was “ill- considered” since it would prevent freedom
of historical research, and the vote was an “abuse of intellectual
authority” on the part of the French parliament. According to an
editorial in the establishment newspaper Le Monde, “history is an
affair for historians” not for the French state, and politicians should
not try to set up a “ministry of truth” to decide historical questions.
The Liberty for History group, which brings together famous names
from the French historical profession including Marc Ferro, Jacques
Julliard, Pierre Nora and Mona Ozouf, also declared its opposition
to the proposed law. While expressing its “profound sentiment of
solidarity” for the “victims of history”, the group deplored the
movement in France to “establish an official version of the past”,
which “threatened freedom of thought and expression.”
However, comment in the French press has focused at least as much on
the electoral advantages of the proposed law and its meaning in the
context of French politics as it has on the question of historical
truth.
France has a sizeable Armenian minority, and with only months to go
before the French presidential elections in April 2007, candidates
from both the socialist and centre-right parties have been looking
for support, with the centre-right frontrunner, Nicolas Sarkozy, and
the socialist favourite, Segolène Royale, both reportedly in favour
of the proposed law.
The vote is also being seen as part of a campaign in France to
frustrate Turkish accession to the European Union, not only by
insisting that the Armenian massacres constitute genocide, but also
by making recognition of Armenian genocide a precondition for Turkish
membership of the EU, the Turkish Republic being the successor state
to the Ottoman Empire.
Opinion polls in France have consistently indicated that a majority
of French citizens oppose Turkish membership of the EU, and since it
is believed that the Turkish government will not be able to agree to
recognition of the Armenian genocide, insisting on such a condition
would help to scupper Turkish membership.
For foreign observers, the French vote has come as an example of the
country’s susceptibility to grandstanding legislation on issues that
are usually considered to be matters for historical research, deciding
by legal means questions that elsewhere are seen as matters for debate.
Under the 1948 UN Convention that defines the crime of genocide in
international law, the term refers to “acts committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such”, and it is not clear that there was such
an intention on the part of those carrying out the Armenian massacres.
According to a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels,
should the proposed French legislation come into effect, it would
“prevent the dialogue and debate necessary for reconciliation” and
would have a “disastrous effect” on freedom of expression in Turkey,
where “it would only oppose one official version of the truth to
another.”
For its part, the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul commented that
“the French, who have already placed various obstacles in the way of
Turkey’s joining the European Union, have now struck a serious blow to
the already limited dialogue between Turkey and Armenia… one that
will only play into the hands of extreme nationalists and racists in
both Turkish and Armenian societies.”
–Boundary_(ID_hx1iz6AZAzAaTqjhr jgbjA)–

Is it Victor Hugo’s turn?
Sabah, Turkey
Oct 19-25 2006
RTUK (Radio and Television Supreme Council) has issued a statement:
“do not watch French movies or series; and do not listen to French
music,” as a response to the Armenian bill approved by the French
parliament.
RTUK (Radio and Television Supreme Council) member ªaban Sevinc
stated: “The market share of French products in the media is 10%.
Most of these are movie, series, music and cartoons. Our radio
stations and television channels should not broadcast products
originating in France.”
Ban on Victor Hugo and Jacques Brel with the recommendation of RTUK
The RTUK (Radio and Television Supreme Council) has advised against
broadcasting any French media products, including French music.
The RTUK (Radio and Television Supreme Council) has advised a ban on
French media products. The RTUK (Radio and Television Supreme
Council) recommended radios and televisions not broadcast any French
media products including French music. So, the works of Victor Hugo,
“Les Miserables” which is among the world’s classics and the song,
“Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel will not be broadcasted.
–Boundary_(ID_ygtr6fhf6ThTo7LcNzcgj g)–

International Korfball Federation, Belgium
Oct 19-25 2006
The day of Yerevan
Thursday, 19 October 2006
October 14 holds a special place in the hearts of all Armenian
people. It is the day that signifies the foundation of the capital
of Armenia, Yerevan. This year the Armenian capital will celebrate
its 2788th birthday.
Korfball played its part in the celebrations with the City Hall of
Yerevan organising a demonstration game in the park near City Hall.
The demonstration game was contested by Armenia’s emerging korfball
talent (10-12 years). With korfball holding centre stage many people of
all ages were given the opportunity to view the game in action for the
first time. The fact that the game was contested by Armenia’s youth
further captivated those spectators fortunate enough to watch the
game. This is the third such occasion that City Hall has organised
a demonstration of the sport of korfball during the celebration of
Yerevan Day, providing Armenian Korfball with invaluable exposure to
develop the sport in the country.
The following day the Hall of Engineering University played host to
contenders vying for the Super Cup of Yerevan. The result could not
have been more appropriate with club Yerevan adding the Super Cup to
its trophy cabinet for the first time.
In 2008 Yerevan will celebrate its 2790th birthday and the KFA hopes
that with help of City Hall an open international tournament can be
held to mark yet another milestone for the capital city.
Source: Korfball Federation of Armenia (KFA)

ARMENIA-EU COOPERATION COMMITTEE TO CONVENE ITS REGULAR SESSION ON
OCTOBER 25 IN BRUSSELS
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Oct 19 2006
YEREVAN, October 19. /ARKA/.Armenia-EU Cooperation Committee is to
convene its regular session on October 25 in Brussels, Armenian Trade
and Economic Development Minister Karen Chshmarityan said on Thursday.
“As co-chair of the committee, I intend to discuss first-priority
areas of cooperation, further work and schedule and presentation of
further programs”, he said.
Chshmarityan also said that Armenian President Robert Kocharyan gave
task to all ministers to submit own programs as part of EU’s New
Neighborhood policy. M.V.-0–

Armenian Patriarch Seeks Private Education Law Veto
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 19 2006
zaman.com
Turkey’s Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II is reported to have asked
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to veto the Private Education
Institutions Bill.
In his letter to Sezer, the patriarch expressed his concerns about the
bill within the context of reciprocity related to the minority schools
and asked the president to veto a clause in Article 5 of the bill.
Sezer, however, ignored the Patriarch’s demand.

Ex-Armenian premier: Aggravation of relations with Georgia may lead
to deportation of Javakh Armenians
Regnum, Russia
Oct 20 2006
“Requests of some Russian politicians, who persuade Armenia to
aggravate its relations with Georgia are inexpedient;” head of
National-Democratic Union, ex-Armenian premier Vazgen Manukyan is
quoted by a REGNUM correspondent as stating to a news conference on
October 19.
According to him, Armenia does not have access to sea; Azerbaijan and
Turkey have blocked its borders; its Iranian border is unstable, too,
because of complicated Iranian-US relations. In this connection,
Manukyan believes it to be inexpedient to request from Armenia
to aggravate its relations with Georgia. Moreover, aggravation
of relations with the country may lead to oppressions against or
deportation of Armenians of Javakh (Armenian-populated Georgian
region – REGNUM). Complications of Javakh Armenians’ situation are
already evident now, he mentioned. “Situation around knifing and
arrests, happened in Javakh is absolutely incomprehensible for me,”
he stated, adding that such question was to be discussed more detailed
by politicians on October 19.
Speaking about Russian-Georgian relations, the ex-Armenian premier
stressed that even during armed conflict Armenian-Azerbaijani relations
were not so tensed as current Russian-Georgian relations are now. Such
situation is consequence of unresolved Abkhazian and Ossetian issues,
Manukyan believes. “Armenian relation to the abovementioned issues
should be adequate one, i.e. if we say that the NKR has right on
self-determination, we may strip neither Abkhazia nor Ossetia of the
right,” he stated. At the same time, Vazgen Manukyan stressed that
every conflict is to be settled individually; if Abkhazia agrees to
join Georgia on principle of confederation or federation, Armenia
may only welcome it. “Pendency of the abovementioned conflicts is
unfavorable for Armenia, too, because it contributes to its blockade;
as for pressure towards ethnic minorities, carried out in Russia,
it concerns both Georgians and Armenians,” he concluded.

Armavia has no information on showdown on Airbus A320 board
Regnum, Russia
Oct 20 2006
Armavia Armenian Airlines has no information on a shootout allegedly
taken place on board of the Airbus A320 flying from Yerevan to Sochi
on May 3, 2006 and resulting in its crash near Sochi coast. The
announcement is made by spokeswoman for the airlines Jasmen Vilyan
while she was commenting on a statement by former pilot of the airlines
Vladimir Pogosyan, who claimed that the A320 crashed in a result of
a showdown onboard.
As Jasmen Vilyan said, “if they have such information, they should
go to the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the facts
provided.” If the statements do not correspond with the reality,
Armavia can claim for instituting a criminal procedure on the
statements.
In its turn, Armenia’s General Department of Civil Aviation does not
either confirm or deny statements of certain persons concerning the
Yerevan-Sochi flight crash. They in the department stress that the
opinion of the institution remains the same and was presented by its
head Artyom Movsisyan. “The cause of the crash of the Armenian Airbus
A320 flying from Yerevan to Sochi on 3 May was lack of coordination
between actions of the crew in the last 17 seconds of the flight,”
Movsisyan is quoted as saying at a news conference on July 28.