RA FM: MEETING WITH AR FM MAY NOT BE HELD
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Aug 5 2006
The Armenian party has not confirmed its participation at the RA and
AR FMs’ meeting on the Nagorno Karabakh talks.
RA FM Vardan Oskanyan stated there were the talks on the meeting,
however, the meeting may not be held, REGNUM Information Agency
reports. Answering a question if the Armenian party may refuse the
talks RA FM said the decision had not been made. While answering a
question “if the meeting is held what subject will be discussed by the
Ministers”, Vardan Oskanyan said: “There have been no new proposals,
a document suggested by the OSCE Minsk group Co-Chairs, including
the proposals voiced in Vienna June 22, is on the bargaining table”.
To note, AR FM stated the meeting might be held in London or Paris.

MUFTI HASSOUN DISCUSSES WITH ARMENIAN OFFICIALS BILATERAL TIES
A.Zeitoun / Zahra
SANA – Syrian Arab News Agency, Syria
Aug 5 2006
YEREVAN, (SANA) – Grand Mufti of the Republic in Syria Dr. Ahmed
Badr al-Din Hassoun and the accompanying delegation discussed with
President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Tigran
Torosyan the bilateral relations between the two countries and ways
of developing them.
Mr. Torosyan underlined the spiritual importance of Hassoun’s visit
to Armenia, asking him to convey great respect and sincere feelings
to President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian people.
The Armenian Apostolic Catholicos Karekin II who attended the overnight
meeting thanked Dr. Hassoun for their visit, describing the visit to
the Armenian National Assembly as a great honor.
His Holiness handed Mufti Hassoun a letter from the Armenian friendly
people to President al-Assad and the Syrian people.
Dr. Hassoun, in turn, stressed Syria’s relentless seek to enhance
dialogue among religions.

ROMANIAN NATIONAL DEFENSE MINISTER VISIT TO ARMENIA POSTPONED
Author: À.Mammadov
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Aug 5 2006
September 6 Romanian National Defense Minister Teodor Atanasiuwill
arrive in Armenia on a 3-day visit, RA Defense Minister’s Spokesman,
Col. Seyran Shahsuvaryan told PanARMENIAN.Net. As reported before,
Teodor Atanasiu’s visit was scheduled September 6-8.
During the visit the Romanian MOD head was to meet with RA President
Robert Kocharian, Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan, Minister of
Defense Serge Sargsyan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian.
–Boundary_(ID_X8egtkmJJYtMHcdeCV+L/w)- –

ARMENIA INTENDS TO OPEN CONSULATE IN BATUMI
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Aug 5 2006
YEREVAN, September 5. /ARKA/. During a meeting with Prime Minister of
Ajaria Autonomous Republic Levan Varshalomidze, Armenian Ambassador to
Georgia Hrach Silvanyan said that Armenia intended to open a consulate
in Batumi.
“This issue is being considered in the RA Foreign Ministry at present
and soon will get its positive solution”, he said, according to the
RA Foreign Ministry Press and Information Department.
According to the press release, Varshalomidze informed that this year
35,000 Armenian tourists had visited Ajaria, at that it is expected
that by the end of September this number would reach 45,000 people.
He noted that in conditions of such flow of Armenia tourists the
issue of opening an Armenia consulate in Ajaria became a necessity.
Varshalamidze also mentioned the importance of attracting Armenian
entrepreneurs to the internal market of the country, taking into
consideration rich experience of Armenian business in the sphere of
production and processing of agricultural products.
During the meeting the sides spoke for the necessity of enlargement
and development of bilateral cooperation between the two countries, as
well as elaboration of new variants of mutually beneficial contacts. In
this connection Varshalomidze said that Armenia and Ajaria already
had active cooperation in the sphere of tourism.
He also said that the Mayor of Batumi would be given corresponding
instructions for organization of the work on surrounding an Armenian
church in Batumi by a fence and improving the territory around it.

CE WON’T PROBE INTO ARMENIAN ARSONS IN AZERI LANDS
Today, Azerbaijan
Aug 5 2006
The Council of Europe is not credible to investigate the arsons
Armenians committed in the occupied lands of Azerbaijan.
As APA reports, the CE is unlikely to probe into the fact due to
complexity of the process, lack of specialists on this sphere and
some technical problems.
“It is a fact that the CE has no concrete official stance on the issue
as it has no technical and material potential to find and analyze
these facts. The CE stated its stand on the basis of the judgment of
the reliable organizations as the OSCE.
The OSCE mission visited the arsons-scene in summer. But, the mission
concluded that the happenings are not arsons but natural fires.
Unfortunately, the CE can neither confirm nor reject the facts.
Simply, the CE relies on the facts found by the OSCE. The OSCE has
more potential to investigate the issue.”
URL:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

YEREVAN SLAVIC UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR DECLARES WAR TO TURKISH, GEORGIAN, TURKMEN, UKRAINIAN AND AZERBAIJANI HISTORIANS
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Aug 5 2006
Artyom Khachaturyan, professor of the Yerevan Slavic University called
Turkmenistan’s President Saparmurat Niyazov “successor of barbarians”,
APA reports.
Armenian professor states in his article published in Russian
“Politicheskiy klass” journal Saparmurat Niyazov did not stand against
one’s interest by calling Seljuk Turkish Empire Turkmen state.
“No state protests against Niyazov’s position. Because, no one wants
to be the successor of the “barbaric” Empire,” Khachaturyan underlined.
The Armenian researcher attempted to distort the histories of turkey,
Georgia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan as well. Accusing
Ukrainian historians of appropriating Russian history, Khachaturyan
said the claims that Ukraine is the first Slavic state and the Kyiv
Russian State belonged to Ukrainians are groundless.
He also introduced poet Azerbaijani poet Nizami as Persian. He said
Nizami never wrote in Azerbaijani but in Persian.
The Armenian professor also raised claims against Turkey related to
its denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide”.
Ukrainian and Turkmen historians have not yet reacted to Khachaturyan’s
article written by the order of Russian and Armenian political circles.
Artem Khachataryan is holding an active campaign in the forum section
of the countries.ru website for introducing Azerbaijani poets Nizami
Ganjavi and Khagani Shirvani as Persian. He also called it nonsense
that Armenians killed many Jews in Guba, Azerbaijan saying that the
world community is fed up with Jews trying to create an image of
suffering nation.

HALO TRUST CONTINUES MINE CLEARANCE IN OCCUPIED AZERBAIJANI LANDS DESPITE OFFICIAL BAKU’S PROTEST
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Aug 5 2006
The Halo Trust Mine Clearance Organisation registered in Britain is
still functioning in Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani lands despite the
Azerbaijani government’s protest.
Nazim Ismayilov, director of the Azerbaijan National Agency of Mine
Action (ANAMA) told the APA exclusively.
“The Halo Trust continues illegal de-mining in the occupied Azerbaijani
lands. We protested against it to international organizations, donors
and the British government. I made remarks to the organization’s
president in an event in Switzerland not long ago.
They called their mine clearance humanitarian actions,” the ANAMA
director underlined.
Mr.Ismayilov also said the Halo Trust presents Azerbaijani province
of Nagorno Garabagh as an independent state. Great majority of its
de-mining teams working in Nagorno Garabagh are former militants
and reconnoiters.
“The Netherlands supports this organization’s illegal actions most
of all. They are involved in other illegal activities under the name
of humanitarian mission,” Ismayilov underlined.
The ANAMA director stressed there is a mine-risk in the 60mn sq.
meters of area administered by the Azerbaijani government.
“We are planning to clear these areas by the end of 2008. The results
of the monitoring of international organizations, Halo Trust show
that there is mine problem in 4 percent or some 500mn sq. meters of
area in the occupied territories,” he said.
According to the ANAMA’s prediction there exist 50-100 thousand
mines in the occupied Azerbaijani lands which can take 12 years
to clear.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

BILL TO HELP ARMENIAN HEIRS REGAIN BANK ASSETS
By E.J. Schultz — Bee Capitol Bureau
Sacramento Bee, USA
Aug 5 2006
Governor to decide on longer filing time for genocide lawsuits.
Lawyers seeking to recover millions of dollars in bank deposits
for Armenian genocide victims got some help last week from state
legislators.
A class-action lawsuit filed against two German banks seeks the
return of cash, bonds, gold jewelry and other assets that lawyers
believe are owed to an estimated 2,000 heirs of genocide victims,
including some possibly living in the San Joaquin Valley, home of
thousands of Armenian Americans.
Senate Bill 1524 by Sen. Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno, and Sen. Jackie
Speier, D-Hillsborough — both of Armenian descent — would extend
the statute of limitations for such claims until 2016.
The bill passed the Legislature last week and is on its way to
the governor’s desk. Gov. Schwarzenegger supports it, according to
his office.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this year on behalf of several Armenians
living in Southern California. Lawyers have argued that the plaintiffs
are free to sue under current law, but attorneys for the defendants
have replied that the statute of limitations prohibits the action,
said Vartkes Yeghiayan, a Los Angeles-area attorney representing
the Armenians.
If the bill were to become law, it “would certainly fortify our
position,” Yeghiayan said.
Representatives of Deutsche Bank A.G. and Dresdner Bank A.G., the
two banks sued, could not be reached for comment.
The bill has already cleared the Legislature once this year. But it
was tied to another bill that would have allowed Mexican American
victims of a 1930s deportation campaign to seek damages for being
forcibly sent back to Mexico. The repatriation was sometimes violent,
as immigrants were taken across the border on trucks, buses and trains,
according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
which backed the bill.
Schwarzenegger recently vetoed the Mexican deportation bill, arguing
that it would have allowed “private litigation of potentially thousands
of claims against the state, local governments and private citizens.”
The governor did not act on the Armenian bill, allowing lawmakers to
pull it back and remove the hook to the Mexican bill. Sen. Joe Dunn,
D-Santa Ana, who led the effort to link the two bills, criticized
Republicans for supporting the Armenian bill but rejecting the
Mexican legislation.
“I have been consistently concerned about the hypocrisy that has shown
up on the Senate floor from my Republican colleagues on these two
bills,” said Dunn, who supports the Armenian bill. “The unfortunate
continuing injustice here is that the handful of surviving victims of
the illegal deportation of the 1930s still do not have an opportunity
for their day in court.”
Poochigian said the bills never should have been linked because
“they are completely different issues.” The Armenian bill, he said,
deals with breaches of contract by private entities, rather than
claims against the state of California.
The Armenian genocide refers to the period between 1915 and 1923, when
Armenians were driven from their homeland in the Ottoman Empire by
means of torture, starvation and murder. The Armenian community says
that 1.5 million people died. Turkey, to this day, doesn’t recognize
the killings as genocide.
The effort to recover bank deposits comes on the heels of a successful
drive to secure millions of dollars in unpaid insurance claims owed to
genocide victims. New York Life Insurance Co. and heirs of about 2,400
policyholders agreed on a $20 million settlement in 2004, followed
by a $17 million settlement between French life insurance company AXA
and about 5,000 people and charities, according to published reports.
The deals were made possible as a result of Poochigian-authored
legislation that extended the statute of limitations for insurance
claims until 2010. The current bill allows genocide victims or heirs
living in the state to go beyond insurance policies and seek bank
deposit claims until 2016.
“It rights a terrible wrong dating back to the beginning of the last
century,” Speier said.
There are no firm estimates on how much money and assets could be
recovered, but “all indications are it’s enormous,” said lead attorney
Mark Geragos.
Geragos — an Armenian American whose family name is Geragosian —
has emotional ties to the case. His grandparents fled the genocide and
settled in Fresno, where they ran a grocery store on Belmont Street,
he said.
The Los Angeles attorney has handled a number of high-profile cases
and his client list has included the likes of Michael Jackson, Scott
Petersen and, most recently, Barry Bonds’ trainer.
But the Armenian case, Geragos said, has the “greatest personal
significance of any of the cases I’ve ever been associated with.”
At a glance ~U A class-action lawsuit filed against two German banks
seeks the return of assets that lawyers believe are owed to heirs of
Armenian genocide victims.
~U Senate Bill 1524 would extend the statute of limitations for such
claims until 2016.
~U The bill passed the Legislature last week and is on its way to
the governor’s desk.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MILITARY BUILDUP WORRIES EUROPE, AND RIGHTLY SO
The Messenger, Georgia
Aug 5 2006
Georgia still has the flag of Europe flying from every public building,
but in reality the country’s relations with the EU have reached
something of a stumbling block. On August 28 EU External Relations
Commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who is in charge of the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), castigated Caucasian countries over huge
increases in military spending.
Speaking at a Ljubljana conference on the implementation of the ENP
action plans with South Caucasus, Ferrero-Waldner had nothing but
extremely stern words for Georgian. Pointing first to the lack of
progress in conflict resolution, which she said was a responsibility
of “all parties”, she went on to argue that the vast increase in the
military budgets of Georgia and Azerbaijan-which she described as going
“through the roof”-was not only unjustifiable given the deplorable
social conditions in those countries, but also hindered the peaceful
resolution of the conflicts.
Though in a subsequent interview with Radio Free Europe she admitted
that this criticism would not prevent the adoption of the ENP action
plans, she added the increase of “hate speech” she detected in all
three South Caucasus countries to her list of charges.
Ferrero-Waldner makes a good case: not only is it clear that in
a country as poor as Georgia, where most of the population live in
extreme poverty, unemployment is rife, access to healthcare is scarce
and teachers and doctors live on a pittance, spending the lions share
of the state budget new guns is unacceptable; an increase in military
spending coupled with an increase in military rhetoric makes peaceful
conflict resolution ever more difficult.
Georgia has repeatedly stated its commitment to solving its separatist
conflicts only by peaceful means, and has submitted peace plans to
that effect to both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. These plans have
one international approval, and call first of all for confidence
building measures to be implemented between the conflicting sides. It
is difficult to see how these plans can proceed past stage one then,
when both sides are rattling their sabres ever louder “lowering the
threshold for war”, and Georgia saw the biggest increase in military
spending of any country in the world this year. “Harsh rhetoric does
not create an atmosphere conducive to restoring mutual trust and
resolving these conflicts” she warns.
In Georgia’s defence, this military build up does start from an
incredibly low base, it was only 1998 when the whole of Senaki
military base (now rebuilt to those ‘European Standards’ we hear so
much about) mutinied over conditions and pay, and Georgia clearly
needs a strong military to stop it sliding back towards being a
failed state. Also, military build up is by and large supported
by the Georgian population, though increased employment and better
social conditions would be supported still more. However, it is also
true is that Georgia needs the EU, membership may be a dim prospect,
but if the peacekeeping forces and settlement mechanisms are to be
internationalised in the conflict zones, the EU will prove far more
acceptable to Russia than NATO; it is with this in mind that Georgia
should take Ferrero-Waldner’s words to heart.
Azerbaijan, fat on oil and gas revenues, without Russian military
might to worry about in its confrontation with Nagorno-Karabakh and
with an authoritarian regime which tightly controls the media, can
ignore the EU’s advice, but any escalation in that conflict would
only add to the suffering of its already impoverished population.
The EU is right to be worried, the last thing Europe needs is
instability on its crucial south-eastern flank, another Balkans would
be a disaster in terms of human trafficking, drugs and terrorism.
Anything they can say to try and push back the Caucasus from the
verge of armed hostilities is to be welcomes, and we can only hope
that regional leaders take Ferrero-Waldner’s advice: “Leaders have
a responsibility to prepare their populations for peace, not war.”
From: Baghdasarian

MEPS BACK ARMENIA GENOCIDE CLAUSE IN TURKEY REPORT
By Lucia Kubosova
EUobserver.com, Belgium
Sept 5 2006
EUOBSERVER / STRASBOURG – Turkey should recognize the Armenian
genocide as a condition for its EU accession, MEPs argue in a highly
critical report adopted by a broad majority in Strasbourg on Monday
(4 September).
The parliamentarians in the foreign affairs committee strongly
criticised Turkey’s slow pace on reforms and urged clear progress in
solving the Cyprus issue.
They stressed that the next step in the country’s membership talks
“will have to depend” on its pre-accession talks committments
“including a comprehensive settlement of border disputes and a
comprehensive settlement regarding Cyprus.”
The report by Dutch centre-right MEP Camiel Eurlings sparked a huge
discussion in the prominent committee with over 300 amendments filed,
but deputies from the biggest groups reached a compromise with a
slightly less strict wording on several issues ahead of yesterday’s
vote.
The re-drafted document – to be voted on in plenary three weeks from
now – highlighted some positive aspects of Turkey’s performance en
route to the EU – such as opening the first chapter of EU legislation,
introducing new laws to fight corruption and broadcasting in Kurdish.
However, it insisted on “persistent shortcomings” in sensitive areas
such as freedom of expression, religious, minority and women’s rights
as well as civil-military relations.
“We could see a clear delay of reforms in Turkey which was reflected
in the report – I hope the Turkish authorities will now take our
message on board,” Mr Eurlings told EUobserver after the vote.
“We wouldn’t help the country by hiding the truth,” he added.
Some deputies expressed their concerns over the impact of the strong
language in the parliament’s annual evaluation – ahead of the European
Commission’s report on Ankara due on 24 October.
“Being a hero in Strasbourg is easy but will this report as it is
written actually help Turkey’s real reformers? No, it will make their
life and work harder,” argued German Green deputy Cem Ozdemir.
Armenia divisive Dutch Socialist member Jan Marinus Wiersma commented
that a compromise text backed by the committee “is more positive than
the original proposal, but I’m afraid that the call for recognition
of genocide of Armenians will attract the most attention in Turkey.”
“This issue has so far not been specified as one of the formal criteria
so to suggest that it is a ‘prerequisite’ for Turkey’s accession is
bound to spark controversy,” he added.
British liberal deputy Andrew Duff also criticised the suggestion –
filed by the Belgian socialist MEP Veronique de Keyser – as “very bad,
uniting the far right and far left forces in the parliament.”
He also pointed out that the parliament’s foreign affairs committee
should have expressed “greater appreciation of Turkey’s contribution
to the foreign policy and security initiatives that the EU is also
involved in.”
Turkey’s parliament is set to vote on Tuesday on the government’s
proposal to send troops to Lebanon as part of the UN peace-keeping
force, with prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging deputies to
join European countries in the mission.