SERZH SARGSYAN SPOKE UP FOR PROPOSALS MADE BY OSCE MG ON KARABAKH
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
July 21, 2006
“I support the principles proposed. I have repeatedly stated it in
written form”, stated RA DM Serzh Sargsyan, while commenting on the
principles of the Karabakh conflict settlement made public by the
OSCE Minsk group.
In an interview with Freedom Radio Station Serzh Sargsyan stated
he did not apprehend for his political career, in case the Armenian
public clings to another position. “If the public takes another view,
it will vote for a political force that adheres to another position
in the Karabakh issue, and there will be nothing horrible in it. How
can I oppose something close to our nation?” RA DM noted.

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs to assemble in Paris in Aug
TREND, Azerbaijan
July 21, 2006
Source: Trend
Author: E.Husyenov
21.07.2006
The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on the resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh intend to carry out next round of consultations in
Paris early August, Russian Ambassador Yuriy Merzlyakov, the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chair told Trend in an exclusive interview.
The objective of the meeting is to hold consultations on the results
of a tour of the region of the U.S. Ambassador Matthew Bryza the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chair. Merzlyakov said for the time being it is unknown
what resolution can be taken and whether there will be discussed on the
organization of the next round of meetings between the conflict sides.
“We will resolve this issue as soon as we meet. I don’t know the
estimation that the U.S. Ambassador is going to make. By that time
he will have last contacts, he will talks to the Presidents and will
more probably make estimation,” the Russian diplomat underlined.
Armenian news agency ARKA has recently reported that Bryza will pay
a two-day visit to Khankandi on 29 July. Then he is to leave for Baku
for talks from 31 July to 1 August.

Caucasus Reporting Service
Armenian Pupils March to New Step
Pilot scheme criticised for turning schoolchildren into future soldiers.
By Gegham Vardanian in Yerevan (CRS No. 349, 20-July-06)
;s=f&amp ;o=322400&apc_state=henh
Children at School No. 99 in Yerevan undergoing military drill as
part of their education. Photographs by Gegham Vardanian.
“Right turn! Left shoulder forward! Quick march!” shouts military
training instructor Karo Ambardzumian, although his subordinates
are not soldiers but 11- and 12-year-old children at a school in the
Armenian capital Yerevan.
Although military training is compulsory for pupils aged 16 to
18 in Armenia, only School No. 99 has introduced it for younger
children. Groups involved in children’s rights are worried about the
effect an early dose of militarism will have on young minds, not least
because the 11 other schools where the government now plans to roll out
a similar pilot scheme cater for children from vulnerable backgrounds.
Headmistress Ludmila Margarian originally introduced the weekly
military classes as a way of bringing a group of unruly boys to heel.
“There were many boys in this class. We thought they lacked discipline
and decided to make it a class with a military bias,” she said. “When
they’re in uniform, they are more organised and have a greater sense
of responsibility.”
The 18 boys and eight girls in the class have learnt how to march,
stand in formation and dismantle Kalashnikov assault rifles, and are
now learning combat skills.
“We are studying military science,” said Sarkis, 11. “We learn how
to crawl round enemies and kill them.”
Sarkis’s grandmother Susanna Martirossian said parents had heartily
welcomed the scheme. “My grandson is delighted,” she said. “He knows
that he’s going to be a general, that he’s a military man. We are
happy too, because he’s learning what a soldier’s responsibilities are,
he feels like a soldier and wants to pursue an army career.”
Hranush, wearing her uniform and with her hair tucked under a
camouflage cap, said, “The boys come to school in uniform, and so do
we. It isn’t bad.
We are learning how to help our homeland when the need arises.”
Another girl, Aelita, added, “We’ve learnt how to handle a machine-gun,
and studied some aspects of military strategy, tactics, and ways of
surrounding and defeating an enemy.
“I’d say the girls are treated more leniently than the boys, and they
get good marks more easily.”
The school’s military instructor Karo Ambardzumian, a former
paratrooper and Soviet frontier guard, says it is best to start as
young as possible, “It’s difficult to train grown-ups. A child is like
unbaked dough, and you should teach them things from a very early age.”
“I always dreamed of creating such a class,” said Ambardzumian. “As
the saying goes, if you want peace, prepare for war. I try to explain
to them who will defend our motherland from, and how. Children learn
all these things when they dismantle or assemble a gun.”
School No. 99 is located in a poor area on the outskirts of Yerevan,
serving a community in which many pupils come from one-parent families.
Mikael Danielian, who chairs the Helsinki Association human rights
group, is disappointed if not surprised by the trend, given that
Armenia sees itself as being on a war footing since the dispute with
Azerbaijan over Nagorny Karabakh remains unresolved.
“If children and their parents see no reason to complain and they’re
prepared to accept the rules of the game, then there’s no big violation
of rights,” he said. “But it’s bad that the country is being built
by soldiers.
This is a country where young people are soldiers; such a thing was
only possible in the Soviet Union or in an Islamic country.”
The education ministry seems pleased with the programme at School
No. 99, and plans to expand the scheme by making military training
a core curriculum item in 11 schools across Armenia.
The ministry has selected “special schools” – whose pupils mostly
come from difficult backgrounds – to take part in the project.
“Our basic aim is to gather children from the streets who for one
reason or another don’t attend school regularly, and who want to
enter military college but have never had the chance, and enable
them to study military matters in depth,” said Vachagan Aslanian, a
specialist on military training at the National Institute of Education.
“In future, all classes [at the 11 schools] will take intensive
military training courses,” said Aslanian. “Each school will cater
for one district.
Pupils from elsewhere who want to get intensive military training
will be allowed to transfer to these schools.”
Aslanian said parental permission would always be sought before
putting children into military training.
Critics of the military classes remain unhappy about the scheme
despite such assurances.
“I can see what’s going on,” said Danielian. “These are difficult
children who spend a lot of time on the street, and they are being
turned into military types. This is an old Soviet-era method.”
Emil Saakian, public relations coordinator for UNICEF in Armenia, went
further, pointing out, “Article Four of the Armenian children’s rights
law is being violated, which says children have equal rights. Children
who for some reason end up at special schools are being pressured to
follow a military path. A child’s right to choose his own future is
being abused.”
Saakian went on, “Children’s. future is being determined by someone
else.. I understand the country needs good soldiers, but it also
needs good scientists, doctors and other specialists. Who says that
soldiers alone are needed to keep the country safe, and that other
professionals don’t contribute to defending the country?”
Meanwhile, the schoolchildren have found an immediate and practical
application for their new battlefield skills.
“The military training lessons help us when we have fights with other
classes,” explained schoolboy Varazdat. “We even have scraps with
older pupils, and we can help out our own guys.”
Gegham Vardanian is a journalist with Internews in Yerevan, Armenia.

Armenians try to block nominee
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
July 21, 2006
Ambassador-pick Hoagland must admit genocide, critics demand
BY LISA FRIEDMAN, Washington Bureau
Armenian-Americans in Southern California and elsewhere are leaning
on the U.S. Senate to block President George W. Bush’s ambassadorial
nominee to Armenia until he utters the word “genocide.”
So far, no lawmaker has placed a hold on Ambassador-designate Richard
Hoagland. But Sen. Barbara Boxer and several others say they are
frustrated by the refusal of Hoagland and the U.S. State Department
to recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during the Ottoman
Empire as a genocide.
The controversial issue cut short the tenure of John Evans, the
previous U.S. ambassador to Armenia, after he openly declared that
the slaughter of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 should indeed be
called genocide.
“My concerns are about the absurdity of a policy that does not allow
an ambassador to recognize the genocide of a people in the country
in which he is serving,” Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Thursday.
Coleman likened the situation to hypothetically having a
U.S. ambassador to Israel who was unable to call the massacre of 6
million Jews during World War II the Holocaust.
Elizabeth Chouldjian, spokeswoman for the Armenian National Committee
of America – which this week formally requested that the Senate delay
Hoagland’s confirmation – said the organization believes he cannot
represent U.S. interests in Armenia.
“Sending a genocide denier to Armenia is a disservice to the American
people,” Chouldjian said. “How effective can a U.S. ambassador to
Armenia be if they, in confirmation hearings, deny the genocide?”
Hoagland, in written responses to Senate lawmakers, denied being
instructed not to us the word genocide.
At the same time, he repeatedly sidestepped questions about precisely
why the administration feels the mass deportations and killings should
not qualify as genocide.
“This tragedy is of such enormous human significance that its
historical assessment should be determined not on the basis of
politics, but through heartfelt introspection among civic leaders,
scholars, and the societies at large,” Hoagland wrote to Boxer.
The U.S. government, sensitive to offending Turkey – a traditionally
close and strategic NATO ally – has steadfastly refused to refer
explicitly to the issue as a genocide.
Turkey, for its part, acknowledges that atrocities were committed
against Armenians, but maintains there was no intention to eradicate
a people – and therefore no genocide.
Turkish officials point out that Armenian militias teamed up with
advancing Russian armies, killing thousands of Turks in the chaotic
aftermath of World War I. They contend about 300,000 Armenians
were killed.
Omer Taspinar, director of the Turkey program at the Brookings
Institution in Washington, D.C., said the Hoagland controversy comes
at a difficult time in U.S.-Turkish relations.
Resentments, he noted, still linger in the U.S. over Turkey’s refusal
to allow America a northern front in the Iraq war and the Turkish
government’s recent decision to host Hamas leader Khalid Mishal.
Meanwhile, Turkey has signaled it will send an army into northern
Iraq to confront Kurdish terrorists, despite U.S. warnings that the
country should not take unilateral action there.
“It is no longer so easy to talk about a strategic partnership between
Turkey and the United States,” Taspinar said.
The problems, he added, have significantly eroded the rationale that
the U.S. should not alienate Turkey with genocide resolutions because
of its role as a key ally in the region.
“For the lawmakers, there is no reason why they should defend
Turkey. Ankara has proven to be an unreliable partner in Iraq. There’s
quite an anger,” he said.
Meanwhile, Boxer and other lawmakers say Hoagland’s nomination will
be delayed.
“A lot of people have concerns, so nothing’s happening on it,”
Boxer said.
Added Chouldjian, “At the very least, the State Department has an
obligation to explain clearly what its policies are with respect to
this issue.”
Regardless of when Hoagland gets to his post, Taspinar said the
genocide dispute underlying the nomination could further erode an
already rocky U.S.-Turkey friendship.
“Any kind of recognition of the genocide issue will poison
Turkish-American relations, which have already gone to hell because
of Iraq. The White House does not want that,” he said.

MetroWest Daily News, MA
July 21, 2006
Greenberg: Evil threatens survival of western world
By Dan Greenberg/ Local Columnist
Friday, July 21, 2006 – Updated: 01:03 AM EST
Let’s not mince words.
What is going on in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza is not a “dispute”
or “conflict.” It is a battle for survival, another in a string of
battles of survival, in a prolonged war Israel has been fighting
against enemies that wish to annihilate it.
I am tired of hearing people talk about the “political blustering”
of radical Islamic leaders — referring to their fiery speeches and
deeds as threats made to gain some diplomatic leverage. If the past
100 years have taught us anything at all, it is this: political leaders
who advocate the destruction and slaughter of their opponents mean it,
and do it if they have the opportunity.
We learned this with Turkish leaders in the early 20th century who
slaughtered over a million Armenians.
We learned this with Communist dictators who, in the name of the
so-called “class struggle,” murdered their own people by the millions
— some forty million killed by Stalin in the Soviet Union, even more
by Mao in China. (Their use of the euphemism “struggle” for murder
is another example of sanitized language.)
We learned this with Hitler, who killed six million “Jewish vermin”
and over six million “inferior Russian Slavs” before being defeated.
We learned this with the Japanese armies in occupied China during the
“rape of Nanking.”
We learned this in Ruanda, in Bosnia, in Burundi, in the Congo, in
Iraq, where such terms as “ethnic cleansing” were used to represent
the killing.
We should have learned this on 9/11, where the “infidel” people of
“the great Satan” were slaughtered in the twin towers and the Pentagon.
Jonathan Goldhagen, in his trail blazing book “Hitler’s Willing
Executioners,” introduced the apt phrase “eliminationist politics”
to designate the discourse of destruction. This phrase recognizes
the call to annihilate a people, or a religious group, or a political
entity, for what it is — namely, a direct, unambiguous declaration
of intent to utterly destroy the alleged enemy.
All this has special relevance today.
In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two
entities, one predominantly Jewish, the other predominantly Arab. (The
term — indeed, the concept — “Palestinians” was not in use then;
for the Arab population, since Palestine had been a province of Syria
from time immemorial.)
>From the moment the vote was taken, the Islamic nations of the region
vowed to destroy the Jewish enclave. The local population, joined by
all the neighboring states — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan (as
it was then called), Lebanon and Syria — and by the distant state
of Iraq, declared a war of annihilation against the fledgling state
of Israel, and vowed to drive the Jews into the sea.
In the intervening decades, only Egypt and Jordan have decided
to end their war and sign a peace treaty with Israel. Even within
those countries, radical Islamic groups (that threaten to overthrow
their governments and replace them with radical Islamic regimes)
have denounced the peace treaties as invalid.
For the others, the war never ended. It has been renewed periodically,
always with the same goal. The current call by Iran’s leader to
“finish the work Hitler had begun” and kill the Jews remaining alive
in Israel, is just a continuation of a by-now familiar routine of
renewed efforts to attain an old goal.
Israel’s attempts to deflect the hostility have been greeted with
derision. Leaving the part of Lebanon Israel had occupied — in an
attempt to end earlier hostilities across that border — did nothing
to change the goals of those living to the north of Israel.
Leaving Gaza, occupied after another earlier war of survival, did
nothing to change the goals of those living to the southwest or east
of Israel. Surrounded today as it has always been by nations that
support fanatics determined to wipe Israel off the map, the country
lives day by day in the shadow of its own destruction.
There is a reason we here have a hard time understanding all this. We
Americans are a fortunate, indeed unique, people. We have left our
eliminationist past behind, when we all but completed the task of
killing off this continent’s natives and decided to allow the remnant
that survived to live in their reservations. It is an ugly past,
one for which we have still not expiated, but from which we have
distanced ourselves.
With that behind us, we no longer have a direct connection to
eliminationist thinking. In so doing, we have come to believe that
other nations and peoples have distanced themselves as well from
their eliminationist pasts. Over and over again we mistake the
rhetoric of intent and action for boastful talk, for “racism,” for
“discrimination,” for a lack of tolerance that can be overcome by
patience, by negotiation, by civilized intercourse.
Even when faced with the brutal facts of the past century, and by
the terrible consequences of ignoring the clear harbingers of those
facts, we want oh so terribly badly to believe that this time, at
last, the talk and the action is just bluff, just a political ploy,
and that “negotiation,” “cease-fires,” and gestures of welcome into
the political mainstream, will deflect the intentions of the radicals.
We are deluding ourselves if we think this way.
The slaughter perpetrated by the murdering leaders of the past century
ended only with their death or utter defeat. The slaughter being
prepared by radical Islam for Israel, and for Western societies,
will only be barred by the same preventive — the death or utter
defeat of those who plot and execute their evil designs.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Capitalism, Socialism, and Race
By Bill Dillard
Published 7/21/2006 12:06:39 AM
American Spectator
July 21, 2006
Europeans have long talked down to Americans on a variety of subjects;
our cowboy capitalism, our income inequality, our failure to embrace
their vision of a cradle to grave welfare state. This history of
condescension made all the more interesting the comments of Abdelkarim
Carrasco, a leader of Spain’s estimated one million-member Muslim
community, on the causes of last spring’s riots in France.
“Either Europe develops and supports the idea of a mixed culture,
or Europe has no future,” he said. “Europe has to learn from what the
United States has done: It is a country that has taken in people from
all over the world.”
The ironies are rich, aren’t they? Europeans, of all people, are
being lectured by a Muslim leader who, of all nations, points to the
United States as the world’s exemplar of assimilation and economic
opportunity.
We are the capitalists. They are the socialists. We are the
racists. They are the equal opportunity egalitarians. Here at home,
liberals have, for decades, cast themselves as the defenders of
oppressed minorities. Their enemies in this war, we are told,
are greedy conservatives, white businessmen (i.e., capitalists),
and their political henchmen, the Republicans. Conservatism is the
redoubt of racist oppressors, socialism the liberator of oppressed
minorities. Perhaps the greatest article of liberal faith is that
American racism is the most virulent strain to ever afflict the
world. Racism, we are constantly scolded, is “everywhere” in America.
But are these presumptions warranted by logic, reason, or human
experience? How is it that France has race riots in 2006, while the
U.S. is the volitional home to more ethnicities and cultures than can
be found in any other consensual political union on the planet? How is
it that Azerbaijanis and Armenians, Hutus and Tutsis, Serbs and Croats,
Hindus and Sikhs, and all manner of other people who used to butcher
each back home, can all come to America and live in relative peace?
Perhaps it is a propitious moment to revisit some long cherished
notions about capitalism and socialism, conservatism and liberalism,
and their respective impacts on racial assimilation. Herewith a
dissenting opinion to the orthodox view.
SOCIALISM ACTUALLY EMPOWERS the racist, because the absence of
market forces affords him the luxury of making decisions in economic
transactions on criteria other than efficiency and merit; criteria
such as ethnicity, and cronyism. Market capitalism strips the racist
of that luxury, and imposes a cost that must be absorbed and passed
downstream whenever he chooses the least efficient economic option,
preferring instead to base his decision on race. Because French
industry is so heavily regulated, and outcomes are largely determined
by bureaucratic fiat and not merit, outsiders who look different, talk
different, and have fewer skills to start with tend to be more easily
be marginalized and kept that way without penalty to the marginalizers.
Market capitalism, properly regulated by antitrust and
anti-discrimination laws, permits every person to realize his
inherent economic worth, and through experience and education, add
to that worth.
Thus, an Indian family that has been in the U.S. for less than a
decade, with virtually no cultural assimilation to begin with, can
find a flophouse motel, buy it, fix it up, show a profit, borrow for
major improvements, turn the place into a really nice motor court,
and send their children to a nice private school, all within a
generation. That same family in France has no such opportunity, not
because the French are more inclined to prefer their ethnicity than
any other group of people, but rather because their economy altogether
removes the incentive to deal on the merits with other ethnicities,
and also removes the penalties when the French choose less efficient,
but more familiar, French options.
Seen this way socialism enables race discrimination, and market
capitalism inhibits it. This seems so counterintuitive to most
Americans because, to the left’s credit, it led the political fight to
end legally sanctioned and institutionalized racism in America; while
the American right, in what was undoubtedly its greatest moral and
strategic failing, obstructed those efforts or refused to take part.
Understandably, the question of whether the economics of the left
or the right most effectively assimilates different ethnicities is
easily confused with the question of which side deserves the credit
for waging the political fight to end racism in America. But they
are two entirely separate questions.
We saw the marginalizing effects of socialism with the favoritism shown
to Great Russians in the Soviet Union. We see it again today in France,
Europe’s grandest exponent of continental socialism, its cities in
flames because of the lack of economic opportunity exacerbated by race
discrimination that is in turn enabled by its stratified and heavily
regulated economy. Ireland, Europe’s most market oriented economy,
has no such issues. And indeed, there is a rough correlation in time to
the widespread institution of market reforms in Ireland and the rise of
an accretive peace between Catholics and Protestants. George Mitchell
helped, but so did market opportunity. Here at home, if only we had
looked, we would have seen the empowering effects of the market when
prior to the Civil Rights era, with virtually no social safety net, and
rampant discrimination, blacks in America compiled enough wealth that,
on a stand alone basis, they comprised the 10th wealthiest nation in
the World. In his “promised land” speech, on the last night of his
life, Martin Luther King, Jr. actually quoted that statistic when
urging boycotts against businesses that discriminated against blacks.
Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together,
collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the
exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the
United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and
I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most
nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty
billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the
United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you
know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.
To black Americans living in a time of institutionalized, even
legally sanctioned racism, the market wasn’t their oppressor. The
market was their only shelter from the storm — the only place where
white Americans who would never have blacks to dinner or allow them
to join their country clubs would, albeit incompletely, put their
prejudices aside and afford blacks a place at the table.
Of course, blacks were treated unfairly in the pre-civil rights era
market, because capitalism does not prohibit racism. But the capitalism
of that day was the one true ameliorator of the barriers of race; the
one place where in the hard unemotional currency of economic exchange,
the worth of ethnically disfavored people was given value. Thus, in
our society, and indeed in any society with a race problem (that is
to say, any political compact whose members consist of more than one
race), capitalism and markets are not the problem. They are part of
the solution. Markets create reasons for people to focus their hearts
and minds beyond their own cultures and ethnicities. They meld. They
do not divide.
As proof of this assertion consider a question with a self-evident
answer. Would African-Americans be more broadly assimilated
into mainstream American life if the political movement to end
discrimination against them hadn’t been dominated by people who held
such enmity for the market, and who instilled that same enmity in a
broad cross-section of the beneficiaries of their efforts? But then,
that isn’t the fault of the left, is it? That’s the fault of the right.
Bill Dillard is a businessman and freelance writer living in Savannah,
Georgia.
rticle.asp?art_id=10120
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS RELEASE
The Heritage Party
Yerevan 0033, Armenia
Tel.: (+374 – 10) 58.08.77, 52.22.38
Fax: (+374 – 10) 54.38.97
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Website:
July 21, 2006
Heritage Headquarters Under Lock Again
Yerevan — The Service for Mandatory Execution of Judicial Acts (SMEJA)
of the Ministry of Justice, which recently became the visible servant
of the business and political interests of the ruling clan in Armenia,
this time even surpassed itself.
Today, on July 21, approximately thirty marshals from SMEJA, led
by Major Vahram Yenokian, head of SMEJA’s Central and Nork-Marash
Division, again surrounded the Heritage Party’s main office which,
based on the Court’s ruling that went into effect on July 12, had
been reopened yesterday, on July 20. Initially, the SMEJA officials
prohibited the staff from entering their office and subsequently locked
and resealed the office doors. When Heritage Chairman Raffi Hovannisian
demanded that he show a Court order or other legal warrant to that
effect, Yenokian shamelessly responded that they were carrying this
out in line with Hovannisian’s own formal request for execution of
the Court’s June 26 verdict. This demonstrated that the high-ranking
SMEJA officer interpreted that ruling in a way that was convenient for
him and those he serves. Yenokian was under strict telephonic orders
and thus was simply uncompromising. He did not even reply to Zaruhi
Postanjian, Hovannisian’s attorney, who demanded that they wait until
Judge Edward Avetisian formally elucidated his verdict pursuant to
a request for clarification officially submitted to him today.
With respect to the unlawful actions–which obviously were “directives
from above”–of the state-owned Paronian theater’s management against
the party’s main office, Judge Avetisian of the Court of First Instance
of Yerevan’s Central and Nork-Marash communities had issued on April
14 an injunction prohibiting the defendant theater from taking any
restrictive action against the office in question and the usage of
the property located in it and forwarded its ruling to SMEJA. Then,
on June 26, the same Court ruled that the forcible closure of the
Heritage office was illegal, and thus the SMEJA seals placed on the
doors of the office had effectively expired. While the Court instructed
the plaintiff to pay certain installments on the contract, it held the
defendant and its negligent conduct to be solely responsible for this
situation, thus constructively validating the five-year real-estate
lease that had been signed between Hovannisian and the government’s
agent in September 2002.
In Yenokian’s words, they were sealing the doors today since they
would soon be removing the party’s belongings from the office and
taking them to SMEJA.
The lawless lackeys wearing official uniforms for the ruling clique
should come to understand that they will be held accountable for
their flagrantly illegal acts, the sole objective of which is to
obstruct and disrupt the normal, lawful activities of any and all
political opposition.
Founded in 2002, Heritage has regional divisions throughout the
land. Its central headquarters are located at 7 Vazgen Sargsian Street,
Yerevan 0010, Armenia, with telephone contact at (374-10) 580.877,
fax at (374-10) 543.897, email at [email protected], and website at

Reconciliation of Armenian and Azeri People
Inseparable from Reconciliation of Armenia and Turkey
PanARMENIAN.Net
21.07.2006 15:03 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Representatives of Azerbaijan were also present
at a six-sided meeting of citizens and NGOs of the South Caucasus,
held in Yerevan July 8-13.
Upon returning to Baku Azeri journalist Alekper Aliyev published travel
notes Trip from Baku to Erivan, where he distorted the statement
of editor of web-site Luiza Poghosyan on
problems between the two peoples. Aliyev interpreted her words as,
“The myth on genocide, we are stuffed with, has become a complex
for the Armenian society and made it sick. We raise our children
in hatred towards Turks. In this case Turks for us are Turkey and
Azerbaijan. We are told we won a war, however, actually our entire
region lost, specifically we lost.
No development is observed, nothing good is taking place. How long
can this hatred propaganda last? We cannot work for the future,
constantly thinking retrospectively.”
“Azeri journalist Alekper Aliyev was invited to Yerevan as a
participant, not a journalist to cover the event and his reports
represent his personal impression from what he heard and saw in
Yerevan.
Thus, in my opinion, he does not have to be literally exact in his
wordings,” Luiza Poghosyan told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.
“I spoke of the Genocide when discussing the question of stereotypes. I
said the following: “The issue of reconciliation of the Armenian
and Azeri peoples cannot be viewed separately from the process
of reconciliation of Armenia and Turkey. Hostile stereotypes,
rooted in the Armenian consciousness, in most cases are general,
referring both to Turks and Azeris. Myths on Genocide, we were fed
with for many years during the soviet period, transformed into a
doomed concept about eternal hostility between Armenians and Turks,
as well as Azeris. I have a deepest conviction that the process of
recognition of the Genocide, the process of denouncing the crime
against humanity has turned in us, Armenians, into a complex of being
exceptional and complex of superiority over the rest of the world. This
is the disease, hampering us from adequately perceiving the reality
and moving forward. I summed up my statement with a suggestion to the
colleagues from Azerbaijan to discuss our capacities and work together
in an Armenian-Azeri-Turkish format for joint search for rapprochement
and overcoming stereotypes. I want to add also that at our meeting
a moratorium for political topics was announced and each of us spoke
of the problems of his or her own society,” L. Poghosyan said.

Recall of Evans to Have Negative Impact on US-Armenian Relations
PanARMENIAN.Net
21.07.2006 15:10 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The story of recall of US Ambassador to Armenia
John Evans can have a negative impact on the US-Armenian relations,
Head of Hay Dat Office, ARF Dashnaktsutyun Bureau Responsible for
Foreign Policy Affairs Kiro Manoyan stated in Yerevan. In his words,
the trouble is that the US State Department still cannot clearly
explain the cause of recall of the head of the diplomatic mission. At
that Manoyan refrained from evaluation on the real cause of recall
of Amb. Evans.
We note that the major version explaining the reason for John Evans’
recall is his statement on the Armenian Genocide.

Armenia Interested in Strengthening State Ties with Iran
PanARMENIAN.Net
21.07.2006 15:24 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ No relations can substitute for the Armenian-Iranian
ones and Armenia is interested in further strengthening state ties with
Iran, Head of Hay Dat Office, ARF Dashnaktsutyun Bureau Responsible
for Foreign Policy Affairs Kiro Manoyan stated in Yerevan. In his
words, Armenia has diplomatic relations in the region only with Iran
and Georgia, which is also a friendly state.
“Armenia’s relations with those two countries should be arranged
to a degree to replace the absence of relations with Azerbaijan and
Turkey. If the international community applies sanctions against Iran,
Armenia will not support these,” the ARF Dashnaktsutyun representative
said.