OSCE AMBASSADORS ARRIVE IN AZERBAIJAN
Author: R.Abdullayev
TREND, Azerbaijan
May 31 2006
Ambassadors of European countries entering the OSCE arrived in
Azerbaijan with a working visit, the OSCE Office in Baku told Trend.
The Ambassadors of Spain, Germany, Norway and Lichtenstein arrived
in Baku as part of the regional tour. First they visited Armenia and
on 28 May left for Georgia.
On 30 May Tbilisi hosted a meeting of Ambassadors with the Georgian
Prime Minister Zurab Nogaiedli and after they left for Baku.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE SPLENDID FAILURE OF OCCUPATION: HOW THE U.S. ENGINEERED THE IRAQI HOLOCAUST
By B. J. Sabri
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Online Journal, FL
May 31 2006
le_856.shtml
“Our dark days — already pitch-black with murder and lies and hatred
and fear — are about to grow even darker”-Chris Floyd, columnist,
Moscow Times [from Blood fruit: the blowback harvest begins]
Did the United States, under the pretext of “liberating” Kuwait from
the Iraqi occupation, engineer and execute an Iraqi holocaust to
implement, consolidate, and entrench American imperialism in Iraq,
and the Middle East?
By judging from the scale of destruction and death the United States
inflicted on Iraq, and by considering the international and regional
objectives of war, history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
since the 1930s, control of oil, Israel, U.S.-Israel relations,
the answer is yes.
Even so, to back up the charge that the United States committed
a holocaust in Iraq, an investigation on the meaning of the term:
holocaust is indispensable.
As a first step, to qualify the human destruction in Iraq consequent
to the Gulf War as a holocaust, we have to dispense at once with
all preposterous differentiations that American imperialism assigns
to the use of the term or to any other taxonomic categories of mass
violence. Second, to debunk completely the imperialist practice that
restricts the application of the holocaust concept to specific events
but not to others, a discussion on the use of language and derived
political vocabulary is in order.
In language, synonyms do not change the basic meaning of a
word. Take for example, the words, kill, slay, destroy, slaughter,
or exterminate. They all mean the same: take life. Yet, the one
subtlety that distinguishes each term is the imagery associated with
the given taxonomy.
What these terms would not tell is the magnitude of those who died.
Accepted contemporary definitions resolved this problem by adding
either the qualifier: mass (as in mass destruction) to indicate lethal
violence against large groups, peoples, or nations; by inventing
names based on Roman derivation such as genocide; or by reviving the
ancient Hellenic term: holocaust.
Before the first Iraqi holocaust (1991), there were many other
large-scale holocausts committed by marauding, colonialist, and
imperialist polities. Among these were Mongolian herds in Asia and
Eastern Europe; European and American colonialism in the Americas,
Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Africa; Ottomans against Armenians;
Germans against Jehovah witnesses, Jews, Romanies, communists, etc.;
Japanese against Chinese and Koreans; Israelis against Palestinians;
and the United States against Koreans, Vietnamese, and Panamanians.
A holocaust, as an expression of humanity gone dastardly and violently
bestial, should have neither trophy nor primacy over other despicable
events of mass violence. Still, the Iraqi holocaust is prominent among
all other holocausts for one distinguishing feature: the United States
planned for it with the acquiescence of other colonialist powers of
the U.N. Security Council, and with financing from Japan, Germany,
Saudi Arabia, and other American vassals.
In the end, and for the first time in history, there has been a
“legalized” consensus to perform a holocaust, a fundraising to finance
it, and a deadline to start it.
Since the end of WWII, the emergence of an anti-colonialist and
anti-imperialist culture in developing, oppressed, and colonized
countries (thanks to the great role played by the Soviet Union)
tuned to investigate historical truths, there were many attempts by
Western powers to limit the notion of holocausts to the suffering of
Europeans of Jewish faith at the hands of the Nazi regime.
Subsequently, U.S. imperialism and Israel transformed the word
holocaust to an exclusive monopoly belonging to Zionism, and
capitalized the first letter of the word to distinguish and elevate
it above all other holocausts.
Yet, although the mass destruction of a sizable portion of the
Iraqi people by the United States, Britain, and France, is a fact,
imperialist circles, the U.N., official media, and mainstream culture
kept it undisclosed, and rhetorical accounts on Iraq’s victims of war
are bypassed as trivial discussion. Also, imperialist circles often
refer to the Iraqis they killed in 1991 by the generic, numberless
phrase: Iraqi deaths in the Gulf War.
Emphatically though, and based on the planned and executed destruction
of Iraq’s infrastructure, water supply, agricultural-industrial
base, hospital systems, as well as the use of radioactive uranium
shells, it is elementary to state that the United States consciously
applied all three categories of extermination: genocide, holocaust,
and mass destruction. Why did I include three denominations denoting
extermination of life as if they were the same? And, what do words
such as holocaust, genocide, or mass destruction mean any way?
To find answers, let us discuss the cogent meaning of genocide,
holocaust, and mass destruction:
Genocide
Article 2 of The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term as:
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to
prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children
of the group to another group.
The Convention’s language is unequivocal. It states that, “any of
the following acts committed with intent . . . etc.” constitutes
genocide. By sheer force of logic, items, A, B, and C powerfully
qualify the premeditated American war on Iraq as a genocide that had
for finality the destruction of Iraq’s military population while,
in advance, it qualified potential civilian deaths as unavoidable
“collateral damage.”
Holocaust
Among the plethora of definitions given to holocaust, WordNet.com
(by Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University) offers the
most concise definition of the concept. It says, “holocaust: an act
of great destruction and loss of life.” [Italics added]
When the United States executed the burning of the cradle of
civilization, it, unequivocally committed “an act of great destruction
and loss of life.” By the simplicity of WordNet.com’s definition,
that was a holocaust.
Mass Destruction
Unlike genocide or holocausts, mass destruction is an ambiguous Western
(American) military concept that implies mass death caused by weapons
of mass destruction (WMD.) Are all weapons of mass destruction equal?
It is a known fact that the United States is the only terrorist state
who used true WMD: nuclear bombs. Technically, other weapons such as
chemical weapons that the U.S. categorized as WMD, cannot qualify to
be of equal value to the dreadful destruction that nuclear weapons
can do – read below. Aside from that, the United States used Agent
Orange (contains Dioxin, a lethal toxin) in Vietnam, it bombed Iraq
(1991), Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq (2003) with radioactive
uranium shells.
Simply, it is a propaganda ploy that the United States places nuclear,
bacteriological, and chemical weapons at equal footing, which is
false; and attributes equal mass destruction to their potential use,
which is false too. For instance, it is a known fact that both Iraq
and Iran used chemical weapons in their eight-year war. Yet, from my
research on that war, I could not find any documentation confirming
mass destruction by them. On the other hand, Iraqi and Iranian
conventional weapons killed hundreds of thousands on both sides.
To be sure, chemical weapons can kill a lot of people, but the number
of people who died by them cannot be treated as full-fledged mass
destruction as in the case of nuclear weapons. For example, in the
attack against the Iraqi city of Halabja attributed to the Iraqi
forces fighting separatist Kurds, American and Kurdish propaganda
kept inflating the figures from 1,500 in 1988 to over 50,000 before
and after the U.S. invasion in Iraq in 2003, while the true figures
could range from several hundreds up to 5,000. (Source)
Compare a chemical bomb with a 15,000-pound “daisy cutter bomb” that
the U.S. dropped on Afghanistan and on Iraq: “The bomb [daisy cutter]
sprays a mist of chemicals over a large target area, and then ignites
the mist for a huge explosion that incinerates everything within up
to 600 yards.”[Source] [Italics added]
Notice though, that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima turned over 140,000
people into ashes instantly. Now . . . That was a mass destruction!
What is the game behind Washington’s exaggerated use of the term:
weapons of mass destruction? Remember one thing: while nuclear weapons
are expensive and require advanced technological capability, chemical
and bacteriological weapons have existed in crude forms since time
immemorial, are cheap, and easy to produce. Then, who is raising the
uproar on chemical weapons as WMD?
Here is the catch: Israel. While some Arab countries developed chemical
weapons as a minimum “deterrence” against nuclear Israel, imperialist
states developed nuclear weapons as offensive-defensive weapons to
establish both deterrence and hegemony. American imperialism, however,
bundled non-conventional weapons in one category to deflect attention
from the real issue: Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. Attacking
Iraq or any other country that opposes Israeli imperialism under the
pretext of possessing weapons falsely deemed WMD had become a tenet
of U.S. military strategy in the region and around the world.
In the specific issue which weapon can cause more deaths, the Gulf
War proved that that the combination between massive bombardment with
super-conventional and non-conventional (radioactive uranium that U.S,
military calls, “depleted”) weapons can cause mass destruction equal
to that caused by full-fledged nuclear weapons.
Did the United States then commit mass destruction in Iraq?
A U.S. Department of Defense document: Instruction Number 5240.16.,
e1.1.4 defines WMD as follows: “Any weapon or device that is intended,
or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to
a significant number of people through the release, dissemination,
or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors;
a disease organism; or radiation or radioactivity.”
[Italics added]
The key phrase in this definition is “to cause death and serious bodily
injury to a significant number of people . . .” But the bombing of
Iraq in 1991 that left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead because,
as I just stated, of the combined use of destructive conventional
weapons as well as uranium and other non-conventional weapons proves
that the United States wantonly committed an act of mass destruction,
although it did not use atomic bombs.
Ashton B. Carter, former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton
administration, and Co-Director of the Preventive Defense Project at
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government pointed to this intentional
(although he never dubbed it as such) imperialist reductionism. In
his article, How to Counter WMD, Carter wrote the following:
The term WMD generally applies to nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons; ballistic missiles; and, more recently, ‘dirty bombs,’
ordinary explosives containing some radioactive material. But this
definition is too broad. Chemical weapons are not much more lethal
than conventional explosives and hardly deserve the WMD label.
Similarly, long-range ballistic missiles are especially destructive
only if they have a nuclear or biological warhead, and so should not be
considered a separate category. Dirty bombs cause local contamination
and costly cleanup but not true mass destruction; they too should be
given lower priority.
Having demonstrated that holocaust, genocide, and mass destruction
share similar meaning, it is inescapable that when we look back at
the aftermath of Iraq’s bombardment and ground “war” that killed tens
of thousands of Iraqi civilians and military in just 100 hours, we
cannot name that horrific carnage except by one term: holocaust. Of
course, other synonyms still apply depending on the context of the
intended use.
How did the Iraqi holocaust of 1991 influence the American people
at large?
Incessant anti-Iraqi propaganda combined with the adroit use of
fascist psychological tactics to mobilize the American people to
support the war were so powerful that an army of Iraqi and Arab haters,
ideological acolytes of U.S. wars, and bogus freedom lovers from all
creeds celebrated the Iraqi holocaust as a catharsis for the United
States (read example). Yet, decency, compassion, and principle still
prevailed among countless other Americans whom the system could not
buy, corrupt, or silence.
Writing for the World Association for Christian Communication,
Thomas J. Gumbleton, a bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of
Detroit, addressed the attitude of the American people toward the
Iraqi holocaust, but not in relation to the Gulf (War) Aggression,
rather to the price paid by the Iraqis for the genocidal sanctions
imposed on them after the cease-fire. Sadly, what Gumbleton powerfully
described has been, through to the present, the norm that still
governs most people’s attitudes toward the atrocities committed by
the United States in its 16-year continuing unilateral war with Iraq.
In his article: Choosing not to know: The spiritual crisis that
faces the nation, Gumbleton recalled what former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright told CBS program, 60 Minutes. On that occasion,
a Nazi-minded Albright stated that the death of over 500,000 Iraqi
children due to the sanctions was “worth the price.” Wrote Gumbleton:
I believe that the fact that there is not absolute moral outrage in
our nation when this sort of thing can be shown on ’60 Minutes’ to an
audience of millions of people, and everybody goes to work the next
day without even thinking twice about it, is itself a moral outrage.
To me, that’s a case of collateral damage and we justify it somehow.
It’s a ‘hard decision,’ yes, of course it’s a hard decision. I almost
want to get vulgar in what I want to say in response to that, but
I’ll try to be polite.
A question, “How did the U.S. engineer the Iraqi holocaust?” And
by that, I do not mean the details of the operation but rather the
guiding methodology for war and resulting holocaust.
As a starter, considering the colossal imbalance of power between a
developing country and a superpower, U.S. planners knew that a war
with Iraq would inevitably mean a potential Iraqi holocaust followed
by swift massive degradation of Iraq as a functional nation and
more deaths.
Gen. Michael J. Dugan, former Chief of Staff of the U. S. Air Force,
externalized the deliberations of the administration when he stated
(mid summer, 1991) that if war comes, “We will bomb Iraq back into
the Stone Age.” But Dugan went further. In an interview, he delineated
the role of Israel in the planning for war by stating that “a plan to
bomb Iraq existed and that Israel would help the Air Force to select
the targets” [1]. Interestingly, George H. W. Bush fired Dugan. But he
did not fire him because of objection to the essence of the statements,
rather because he revealed decisions already taken.
As you know, what Dugan postulated happened verbatim.
But to seal the matter, and tie in the Gulf (War) Aggression as a stage
in the conquest of Iraq, and to cast light on the determination of the
United States to go to war no matter what happened on the diplomatic
front, I shall provide more details to support my argument.
Military Establishment: War as an Ideological Necessity
Retired Col. Trevor N. Dupuy, U.S. Army provided a terse picture on the
relation between the ideology of imperialism, rigid indoctrination,
lust for war, disregard for international law, and by implication
contempt for human life.
In the book that he wrote in the summer of 1990 (before the U.S.
attacked Iraq) Dupuy envisioned many scenarios on how to annihilate
Iraq. Following in the American strategy to personalize aggressions
abroad by naming the contenders as U.S. power vs. a foreign leader,
Dupuy did not propose the annihilation of the Iraqi army but the
“army of Hussein,” as if the Iraqi national army was the personal
property of the Iraqi president. Dupuy, therefore, named his book:
How to defeat Saddam Hussein.
One such scenario envisioned an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait before
the expiration of deadline imposed by the U.S. (January 15, 1991).
Dupuy called it, the “January surprise” possibility. The importance
of this scenario is that, although it did not happen, it confirms
that U.S. power elites wanted a war with Iraq at any cost. Wrote Dupuy:
If such a situation [January surprise] transpires, it may be tempting
to “declare victory” and accept compromise. That, however, would
simply reward the aggression and would do nothing to implement UN
Security Council resolutions. Nor would it prevent a recurrence of
aggression in the future. It would, in fact, be likely to ensure
future Iraqi aggressions on a much larger scale.
The appropriate response to a “January surprise” would be to reject
outright any Iraqi compromise offer, insist on Iraqi acceptance of
all UN Security Council resolutions, and demand that the Iraqi Army
begin evacuating Kuwait immediately, perhaps a 48-hour extension of the
deadline might be offered. . . . This period would be designated as a
period of “pre-hostilities,” during which the allies would themselves
immediately initiate military activities preparatory to moving into
Kuwait and engaging any remaining Iraqi forces. [2] [Italics added]
First, Dupuy (a theoretician and author on U.S. militarism,)
explained his penchant for war based on presumable “future Iraqi
aggressions.” Two, he postulated, but without any foundation, that the
absence of war against Iraq would encourage larger scale aggression, as
if Iraq’s regional policy, including options for military intervention
in Iran and Kuwait, were purely the results of innate aggressive
impulses but not the outcome of political deliberations by a presiding
government. Third, he clamored for war despite a hypothetical Iraqi
withdrawal. Fourth, he deleted the role of the United Nations that
authorized the war and reassigned it exclusively to the United States.
All the preceding, and the fact that Dupuy cited repeatedly the
“danger” Iraq posed to Israel, proves that the project for a war with
Iraq (and by implication with the Arab world) had become an ingrained
ideological-military-imperialistic paradigm.
To summarize, Dupuy’s imperialistic attitudes for a war with Iraq
clarified one fundamental aspect that unifies U.S. imperialists:
while American propaganda machine depicted the United States as
searching for a political settlement, its leadership had already made
its choice: war.
For instance, in his meeting with Tariq Aziz in Geneva, Switzerland
(a few days before the war) James Baker essentially adapted Dupuy’s
position: a war must happen. Does that premeditated position constitute
engineering for holocaust? If a superior military power plans a war
against a weak country, then it, logically, is engineering a holocaust
among the attacked population.
The case of Tariq Aziz and James Baker
The meeting between former Secretary of State, James Baker and former
Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz proves beyond any doubt that the
United States of America is permanently a belligerent state, whereby,
given the option between war and peace, it will choose war. Moreover,
the predilection of war is decisively a manufactured impulse whose
function is to preempt negotiations. But if negotiation to avoid
war and save life can succeed, why abort it, unless the plan for
genocide to implement imperialism is the dynamo that moves American
decision-making?
James Baker: “I have met with Tariq Aziz not to negotiate, as we made
it clear we would not do – that is, negotiate backwards from United
Nations Security Council resolutions . . . Either comply with the
will of the international community [meaning the United States] and
withdraw peacefully from Kuwait or wait to be expelled by force” [3]
James Baker and the United States dubbed the meeting with Tariq Aziz
with the propagandistic stunt, “going the extra mile to avoid war.”
But in Geneva, there was no extra mile to go or attempts to
negotiate. To reinforce the determination for war, hence, for planned
genocide, Baker treated the deadline by the U.S.-controlled U.N.
Security Council as if it were an immutable physical law of nature.
But, the United States, who imposed on the “United Nations” the
verdict to destroy Iraq, could have changed the rules without calling
any U.N. ambassador.
Did Tariq Aziz come to negotiate?
Tariq Aziz: Pierre Salinger stated that the meeting between Baker
and Aziz failed because “Aziz did not come with any new proposal.”
Surprisingly, Salinger contradicted himself within the same
paragraph. He, himself, stated that Aziz did come with a proposal;
it might have not been new, but considering the nearing deadline and
the high-level encounter, it was a serious proposal that, however,
pivoted on a simple request to extend the expiration of the deadline.
Let me explain. Wrote Salinger, “He [Aziz] had come with only one
objective: to persuade the United States to withdraw the January 15
deadline adopted by the United Nations. Saddam Hussein was not a man
who adopted deadlines. And he sent Tariq Aziz to Geneva to make clear
that Iraq was ready to talk about a peaceful solution, but only after
January 15. This was something that Secretary of State Baker would
never accept.” [4]
The sentence that Iraq “was ready to talk about a peaceful solution,
etc.” was, indeed, a workable proposal since it clearly indicated
that Iraq was ready to give up Kuwait on a condition that the U.S.
not humiliate it by an artificial deadline.
Why did Baker and the United States not accept postponing a deadline
for holocaust?
You guessed it! The United States had other calculations. So what
were they?
Next: Part 46: Preliminary remarks on the second stage of conquest
Notes
[1] Pierre Salinger, Secrete Dossier, Penguin Books, 1991, p. 174
[2] Trevor N. Dupuy, How to Defeat Saddam Hussein, Warner Books, 1991,
[Dupuy published the book in 1990 under different title: If war comes,
how to defeat Saddam Hussein]
[3] Pierre Salinger, Secrete Dossier, Penguin Books, 1991, p. 209
[4] Ibid, p. 210
Recommend Reading
James Ridgeway, editor, The March to War, Four Walls Eight Windows,
1991
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War, Henry Holt and Company, 1992
Ramsey Clark and others, War Crimes, Maisonneuve Press, 1992
Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck, Beyond the Storm, Olive Branch
Press, 1991
Martin Yant, Desert Mirage, Frometheus Books, 1991
B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American antiwar activist. Email:
[email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY WELCOMES MONTENEGRIN DECISION TO ESTABLISH INDEPENDENT STATE
Regnum, Russia
May 31 2006
The Armenian Foreign Ministry welcomes decision of the Montenegrin
government and the people to establish independent state, congratulates
and wishes success to Montenegrin people in achieving independence,
acting Armenian Foreign Ministry’s Spokesman Vladimir Karapetyan
stated, commenting on Montenegrin referendum’s conducting, being
interviewed by a REGNUM correspondent.
According to him, a peaceful divorce of Montenegro and Serbia is
especially important for Armenia because the right of the Montenegrin
people for self-determination was expressed at the referendum, which,
in its turn, proves fact that referendum remains recognized and
civilized instrument in international relations to settle analogous
problems in the way of people’s will expression.
It is worth reminding that Montenegrin residents voted for its
independence from Serbia during the May 20 referendum. On May 21,
Montenegro’s Election Committees representatives announced the
referendum’s official outcomes, confirming in such way a definitive
break-up of the former Yugoslavia. 55.4% of Montenegrins voted for
independence from Serbia, 44.6% – against it. In such a way, a new
independent country appeared on the European map.

ARMENIA: HAVING THEIR CAKE AND EATING IT TOO
By William Dunbar
The Messenger, Georgia
May 31 2006
Outside every public building in Georgia the flag of Europe flutters
away next to the five crosses of Georgia – a testament to the nation’s
western ambitions. But Georgia is paying a price for its occidental
inclination; the drive west has incurred the wrath of the northern
neighbor, and with every step Georgia takes towards ‘Euro-Atlantic
structures’ a reprisal is issued from Moscow. Be it visa regimes,
embargoes on wine and mineral water, or increasingly vocal support for
the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia-like a jealous
lover-seems determined to punish Georgia for getting too friendly
with the west.
The Georgian authorities are at pains to point out just how far the
country has come on the road to western integration, and significant
progress has certainly been made. Inclusion in the new European
Neighborhood Policy (ENP), the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)
and the solidarity shown Georgia by Dick Cheney at the recent Vilnius
summit of Baltic-Black Sea nations-not to mention last year’s Bush
visit, and the praise he heaped on the ‘ beacon of democracy’-all of
these are achievements the Georgian government can be proud of.
However, each of these achievements has been accompanied by
deterioration in the relationship with Russia. Both the Russian and
Georgian authorities are trapped in a lose-lose situation. They each
see influence in Georgia as being like a cake: if the West gets more
cake then Russia gets less, there is only so much cake to go round,
after all. This ‘zero-sum’ thinking is leading both nations into a
spiral of increasing hostility, damaging them economically and/or
tarnishing their international image, and it seems it can only
get worse.
Yet there is a prime example to the south reminding us that influence
doesn’t have to be like a cake at all. Armenia is living proof that
you can have it both ways. Armenia-a small, impoverished and landlocked
country of some three million people-is home to the second largest US
embassy in the world (Iraq is number one). Little Armenia receives more
US government aid per capita than or almost anywhere else (including
Georgia), it is also signed up to the ENP and the MCA. And how are
Armenian/Russian relations? Well they’re just peachy. No visa regime,
no trade embargoes, no fiery rhetoric, and Armenian cognac is still
readily available in Moscow. The historical hatred they continue to
bear towards their Turkic neighbors notwithstanding, the Armenians
are quietly getting along with the real powers that be; they even
manage to have friendly relations with Iran and still get a huge
slice of military assistance from the US.
Armenia should be a lesson to both Russia and Georgia, politics doesn’t
have to be a zero sum game, and everyone can be a winner. You really
can have your cake and eat it too.

RUSSIAN MILITARY HARDWARE LEAVES TSALKA
The Messenger, Georgia
May 31 2006
The latest consignment armored military vehicles from the Russian
military base in Akhalkalaki left the railway station in Tsalka
(Southern Georgia) on May 30 at 09.00 the Georgian Ministry of
Defense announced
This consignment of 15 mobile artillery units will leave Georgia via
Azerbaijan, where they will go on to Russia.
The next consignment of armaments from the Akhalkalaki base will
be taken to Armenia on May 31. At the same time military vehicles
from the military base in Batumi are being withdrawn. A column with
armaments from the Batumi base will leave Georgian territory on June 1.
Armaments, heavy armored vehicles and soldiers are being withdrawn and
the military bases in Akhalkalaki and Batumi are being dismantled,
according to the Georgian-Russian Agreement which was singed by
representatives of Defense Ministries of Georgia and Russia on March
31, 2006 in Sochi.

THIRD ECHELON WITH MILITARY EQUIPMENT FROM GEORGIA ARRIVES IN AZERBAIJAN
Today, Azerbaijan
May 31 2006
Third echelon loaded with military equipment withdrawn from the
Russian 62nd military base in Akhalkalak, Georgia, set off in Salka
railway station today.
The troop train going to Russia through Azerbaijan has been loaded
with 15 self-propelled artillery facilities.
The next troop train loaded with weapons and military equipment will
set out to Armenia from Akhalkalak tomorrow. Withdrawal of weapons
and military equipment of Russian 12th base in Batumi, Georgia,
will be launched from 1 June.
Azerbaijan’s State Railway told APA that the echelon set out from
Akhalkalak arrived at the Boyuk Kasik station of Azerbaijan at 7p.m
today. The train will be delivered to Russia at Yalama station at
11.00 tomorrow.
The loaded echelon is protected by the railway military security
group and the commandant. The echelon will pass through Azerbaijan
without a stop, APA reports.
URL:

ARMENIAN OFFICIALS REFUSE TO ATTEND MEETING IN AZERBAIJAN
Today, Azerbaijan
May 31 2006
Armenian defense officials refused to attend a meeting of military
chiefs from ex-Soviet republics in neighboring Azerbaijan, saying
officials there could not guarantee their safety, an Armenian official
said Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, an Azerbaijani official said,
however, that Baku had demanded Armenia be excluded from the
Commonwealth of Independent States defense ministers’ meeting,
beginning today in Baku, because Armenia was occupying Azerbaijani
territory.
Tensions between the two ex-Soviet republics remain high over
Nagorno-Karabakh — an enclave within Azerbaijan that has been
controlled by ethnic Armenians since a war in the early 1990s that
killed 30,000 people and drove about 1 million people from their homes.
Sporadic border clashes regularly break out, and a lack of resolution
has hampered development throughout the strategic Caucasus region.
Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Seiran Shakhsuvarian said
a delegation would not attend the Baku meeting because Azerbaijani
officials could not guarantee the Armenians would be adequately
protected.
Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev said Armenia’s
complaints about a lack of security “do not correspond to reality.”
“We came out against the participation at the meeting of
occupier-countries – Armenia – which occupies 20 percent of territory
long held by Azerbaijan,” Verdiyev said.

JAMAICA DRAW WITH UAE AT CHESS OLYMPIAD
Jamaica Observer, Jamaica
May 31 2006
TURIN, Italy (CMC) – Trinidad & Tobago provided the Caribbean with
its only win as Barbados and Cuba suffered losses on Day 8 at the
37th World Chess Olympiad on Monday.
It was not a rewarding day either for Jamaica, Haiti, Surinam or the US
Virgin Islands, who were all held to draws by the United Arab Emirates,
Brunei Darussalam, Honduras and Rwanda, respectively.
T&T, who have played erratically like most of the Caribbean teams
participating in the tournament, beat Thailand 2-1 to move to 16
points and into 81st place in the standings.
Barbados experienced their most disappointing result to date, going
down 3-1 to the Italian C team, a squad comprising mainly juniors.
The Italians benefited from unbelievable one-move blunders from two
of Barbados’ most experienced players, FIDE Masters Delisle Warner
and Dr Philip Corbin.
Warner’s mistake caused him to checkmate in two moves while Corbin was
actually checkmated, something that occurs very rarely at this level.
International Master Kevin Denny and Terry Farley drew their matches
against some International Master Spartaco Sarno and FIDE Master
Pierluigi Piscopo to rescue pride for the Barbadians.
Cuba, meanwhile, went down 3-1 to the Armenians, Dominican Republic
won 3-0 against Malta while the British Virgin Islands beat Aruba, 2-1.
Armenia extended their lead by moving to 24 points, while Russia and
Ukraine share second position with 22 points.

FIERY PLAYER, SIMMERING CONSCIENCE ESKANDARIAN’S PASSION EXTENDS TO HIS HERITAGE
By Mike Wise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Washington Post, DC
May 31 2006
On the morning of April 24, Alecko Eskandarian finished practice
with D.C. United, jumped into his sport-utility vehicle and showered
quickly at his Georgetown apartment. He got back in his car and made
it just in time for an event that had nothing to do with a photo-op
or fan appreciation day.
Unbeknownst to many of his teammates, Eskandarian joined more
than 1,000 Armenian-Americans in front of the Turkish Embassy. The
demonstrators were trying to persuade the Turkish government, as
they do every April 24, to recognize what is known as a forgotten
genocide, carried out from 1915 to 1920. Later, the protesters marched
to the Capitol.
“I wouldn’t say I’m activist or anything like that, but it’s something
I believe in,” Eskandarian said. “I don’t think it’s political. I
just think it’s a matter of justice. It’s a matter of admitting a
fact. There’s a lot of people out there who have lost 1.5 million
family members and they have no closure to that.”
A 23-year-old professional athlete with a social conscience. What
gives?
“Someone mentioned my name on TV at some point,” said Eskandarian,
pausing over lunch last week. “I was like, ‘That’s kinda weird, man.’
I expected it to be on ESPN. But not C-SPAN, you know?”
Eskandarian is United’s second-leading scorer through nine games. He
is a compact, free-radical striker with four goals, two assists and
one compelling comeback tale.
He suffered a frightening concussion last June at RFK Stadium and
after missing 10 months and any shot at playing for the U.S. national
team in this summer’s World Cup, he scored a theatrical goal in
United’s season opener on April 2. The whole scenario was typical of
Eskandarian’s existence, which does not include much middle ground.
“The kid’s life is like ‘The Truman Show,’ ” United midfielder Josh
Gros said. “Everything he does is dramatic. And I don’t know what it
is, but he always seems to find the pot of gold.”
Like? “Like he kept talking about this band he loves, System of a
Down,” Gros said, referring to the alternative metal band whose four
members are of Armenian ancestry and whose music espouses social
and political views related to the genocide. “So he shows up at the
embassy that day and there they are. He ends up hanging with System
of a Down the whole day.”
Said Eskandarian, “Very cool.”
“He also meets Playboy models all the time,” Gros said. “I have no
idea where he meets them, but he does. He goes to a Wizards game once
and ended up getting auctioned off for a date on Singles Night. The
guy is unbelievable.”
“Oh, and remember the Red Bull thing?” Gros added.
Eskandarian was fined $250 for spitting out a swig of Red Bull after
scoring a goal against New York on April 23. Red Bull was invented by
the Austrian beverage company that purchased the New York/New Jersey
MetroStars and changed their name to Red Bulls. “So, a local company
takes up a collection and ends up giving him $275,” Gros said. “Then
one of our fan clubs donated another $250 toward a charity in his
name. Alecko makes money when he gets fined.”
Said Eskandarian, “Stuff happens to me that doesn’t happen to normal
people.”
Eskandarian is essentially 5 feet 9 inches and 168 pounds of
hyperactivity. His hunched-back shoulders give him the appearance of
a middle linebacker, but overall, he’s more boyish than brutish.
That includes his thick black hair, which is cropped close to his
head and protruding ears. It just sits there, still and meticulous.
Eskandarian’s olive complexion and roundish brown eyes give him that
23-going-on-16 appeal. Some friends say he looks like Jason Biggs, the
lead actor in “American Pie.” “I don’t know what they were thinking,”
Eskandarian said. “I’m nothing like that dude.”
Indeed, Eskandarian’s soft exterior belies his hard Armenian roots.
His father is Andranik Eskandarian, a hellion defender who played
in the 1978 World Cup for Iran and for the New York Cosmos from 1979
to 1984.
“Myself, always I play tough,” Andranik, 54, said by telephone from
Hackensack, N.J., where he has owned and operated two sporting goods
stores since the 1980s. “I was a small defender, but I also challenge
the bigger players. I only weigh 155 pounds then, but I would beat
200-pound people. Ninety-nine percent of time, I win.”
Early on, father taught son two lessons: 1) Be aggressive, not dirty,
and 2) punish the defenders who punish you.
“At a young age, he taught me I could stay on the field if I wasn’t
just playing offense,” Alecko said. “He was a defender, and he told
me defenders hate to get hit by forwards. He was right. Plus, I found
out: it’s fun to hit defenders.”
Alecko’s blood runs somewhere between hot and molten. He has
accumulated 15 yellow cards in three-plus years of professional
soccer. In 2004 he tied for the league lead in cautions with eight,
which is little freakish for a scoring forward.
“Sometimes you’re like, ‘Esky, chill out,’ ” Gros said. “But it works
for him. [A] lot of times he’s over the top in practice. He’ll punt
the ball, say some words. But everybody knows, ‘It’s Alecko.’ So we
just let him cool off and it’ll be all right.”
Said Eskandarian, “I make decisions with my heart and not my head
sometimes.”
Eskandarian’s lone ejection came his rookie year, when an assistant
coach who is no longer with the team pulled him aside before a match
went into overtime and said: “I don’t care if you break someone’s leg,
I don’t want any free service from their defenders to their forwards. I
don’t care if you get a red card.”
Said Eskandarian: “I was so livid, I felt like I was being used. So I
went in aggressively on a tackle the first chance I got and was kicked
out. He ran over and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said,
‘I’m doing exactly what you told me to do,’ and I walked off.”
In his own moral universe, Esky showed them.
He always sees more black and white than gray. For example, he can’t
understand why New England goalkeeper Matt Reis never personally
apologized for his role in the injury.
Eskandarian had been named most valuable player of the MLS Cup in
2004, and 2005 was expected to be his coming-out party. But in a
violent collision last June 18, Reis went right through him, leaving
Eskandarian out cold.
After more than seven months of waking up with intense migraine
headaches, after an early misdiagnosis and multiple neurology tests
— concerned that one doctor might tell him his career was over —
Eskandarian finally returned.
“To put your knee into someone’s skull at full speed and to just
walk away after you knock someone out, you got to be a cold soul,”
Eskandarian said. “I hate to say it, but he’s dead to me. ”
Reached through a team spokesman in the preseason, Reis said he did
not intend to injure Eskandarian on the play.
The Turkish government also is on Eskandarian’s list. Turkey
considers the Armenian deaths near the beginning of the last century a
consequence of World War I, with severe casualties on both sides, while
Armenians — and many historians — say the deaths constitute genocide.
Eskandarian says he understands why any nation would not want to
be compared with Nazi Germany. But he cannot grasp why Turkey won’t
admit the atrocities after almost a century, how the Ottoman Empire
deported, abducted, starved and massacred his people. “I have Turkish
friends that don’t even know about it,” he said.
Growing up in the Armenian Christian church, attending an Armenian
school from nursery school through eighth grade — “I had classes in a
trailer,” he said, “only eight kids were in my grade” — Eskandarian’s
Armenian identity was nurtured from birth. Nothing enraptured him more,
though, than his grandfather’s life story.
Galoost Eskandarian died last September at age 92. He never knew his
actual birthday because his parents were said to have been killed in
the genocide. He ended up in Tehran. Like many Armenians, his history
had been eradicated.
“My mom was orphaned at 5 years old,” said Andranik, who said he
wants to make a pilgrimage to Armenia with Alecko and his brother,
Ara, very soon. “It’s not a nice story I tell you, but I never
saw my grandparents from my father’s side. This is why we are so
close. They try to save their kids, they give everything. This is
what they respect to this day.”
“My grandfather was actually really protective of me,” Alecko said
of Galoost. “Every time something happened, he wouldn’t let my dad
get ahold of me. I’d go over to his house and we’d play backgammon
for hours. We developed a real bond. It wasn’t a shock when he died,
because he lived a great life. But it still hurt.”
The day of Galoost’s funeral, Alecko and his family gathered around
his grandfather’s table and shared memories of the man who lost his
parents and was forced to leave his homeland.
“It just kind of hit me that day,” Alecko said. “I was like, ‘This
is all I’ve got.’ Obviously, I’ve got friends and good people in my
life. But blood, that never goes away.”
In his own moral universe, Esky showed them.
He always sees more black and white than gray. For example, he can’t
understand why New England goalkeeper Matt Reis never personally
apologized for his role in the injury.
Eskandarian had been named most valuable player of the MLS Cup in
2004, and 2005 was expected to be his coming-out party. But in a
violent collision last June 18, Reis went right through him, leaving
Eskandarian out cold.
After more than seven months of waking up with intense migraine
headaches, after an early misdiagnosis and multiple neurology tests
— concerned that one doctor might tell him his career was over —
Eskandarian finally returned.
“To put your knee into someone’s skull at full speed and to just
walk away after you knock someone out, you got to be a cold soul,”
Eskandarian said. “I hate to say it, but he’s dead to me. ”
Reached through a team spokesman in the preseason, Reis said he did
not intend to injure Eskandarian on the play.
The Turkish government also is on Eskandarian’s list. Turkey
considers the Armenian deaths near the beginning of the last century a
consequence of World War I, with severe casualties on both sides, while
Armenians — and many historians — say the deaths constitute genocide.
Eskandarian says he understands why any nation would not want to
be compared with Nazi Germany. But he cannot grasp why Turkey won’t
admit the atrocities after almost a century, how the Ottoman Empire
deported, abducted, starved and massacred his people. “I have Turkish
friends that don’t even know about it,” he said.
Growing up in the Armenian Christian church, attending an Armenian
school from nursery school through eighth grade — “I had classes in a
trailer,” he said, “only eight kids were in my grade” — Eskandarian’s
Armenian identity was nurtured from birth. Nothing enraptured him more,
though, than his grandfather’s life story.
Galoost Eskandarian died last September at age 92. He never knew his
actual birthday because his parents were said to have been killed in
the genocide. He ended up in Tehran. Like many Armenians, his history
had been eradicated.
“My mom was orphaned at 5 years old,” said Andranik, who said he
wants to make a pilgrimage to Armenia with Alecko and his brother,
Ara, very soon. “It’s not a nice story I tell you, but I never
saw my grandparents from my father’s side. This is why we are so
close. They try to save their kids, they give everything. This is
what they respect to this day.”
“My grandfather was actually really protective of me,” Alecko said
of Galoost. “Every time something happened, he wouldn’t let my dad
get ahold of me. I’d go over to his house and we’d play backgammon
for hours. We developed a real bond. It wasn’t a shock when he died,
because he lived a great life. But it still hurt.”
The day of Galoost’s funeral, Alecko and his family gathered around
his grandfather’s table and shared memories of the man who lost his
parents and was forced to leave his homeland.
“It just kind of hit me that day,” Alecko said. “I was like, ‘This
is all I’ve got.’ Obviously, I’ve got friends and good people in my
life. But blood, that never goes away.”

BLACK SEA ASSOCIATIONS OF NATIONAL NEWS AGENCIES ESTABLISHED IN KIEV
Anatolian Times, Turkey
May 31 2006
KIEV – Black Sea Associations of National News Agencies (BSANNA)
was established by representatives of national news agencies in Black
Sea littoral countries in a meeting in Kiev, Ukraine on Tuesday.
Anadolu Agency (A.A) Director General Dr. Hilmi Bengi as well
as representatives from Athens News Agency (ANA), Armenian State
News Agency (ARMENPRESS), Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA), State
Information Agency of Azerbaijan Republic (AZERTAJ), Bulgarian
Telegraph Agency (BTA), Georgia News Agency (CAUCASUS-PRESS), Russian
News Agency (ITAR-TASS), Moldova State News Agency (MOLDPRESS),
Romanian News Agency (ROMPRESS) and Serbia-Montenegro`s News Agency
(TANJUG) attended the signing ceremony hosted by Ukrainian National
News Agency (UKRINFORM).
A declaration was issued after the ceremony which stated, “BSANNA aims
to contribute to cooperation and friendship among Black Sea littoral
countries through exchange of news reports.”