WORLD ARMENIAN CONGRESS SUGGESTS APPLYING THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
ArmRadio.am
16.05.2006 17:55
The World Armenian Congress suggests submitting an application on
recognition of the Armenian Genocide to the European Court of Human
Rights. For this purpose a three-day conference will be held May
17-19 in Yerevan.
RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan noted today at the sitting of
the World Armenian Congress that it is necessary to wait for the
suggestions of historians and lawyers in this direction.

TRIAL OF ARMENIAN-TURKISH NEWSPAPER EDITOR POSTPONED AFTER RUCKUS IN ISTANBUL COURTROOM
Benjamin Harvey
AP Worldstream
May 16, 2006
An Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor faced nationalist lawyers and
shouts of “traitor” as he went on trial Tuesday, forcing the judge
to postpone the case because of the ruckus in the courtroom.
Prosecutors have charged that Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen, committed
the crime of “attempting to influence the judiciary” when his bilingual
Turkish-Armenian newspaper ran articles criticizing a law that makes
it a crime to “insult Turkishness.”
The law has been used to try writers and intellectuals, including the
novelist Orhan Pamuk, for commenting on the mass killings of Armenians
by Turks around the time of World War I, which a number of governments
and scholars have said were the first genocide of the 20th century.
Dink has been careful to avoid public comment on the issue, but has
supported an open discussion of the issue among historians and has
become a target of nationalist lawyers who see genocide allegations
as treason.
Armenians say around 1.5 million of their ancestors were killed in
a genocidal campaign carried out by Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915.
Turkey acknowledges mass killings, but insists the numbers are inflated
and vehemently denies that Turks committed genocide, saying Armenians
were killed as the Ottoman Empire tried to secure its border with
Russia and stop attacks by Armenian militants.
Three other writers at the Agos newspaper, including Dink’s son,
also went on trial Tuesday.
Turkey has been struggling to balance EU demands for tolerance of
free expression with a reluctance to discuss the mass killings of
Armenians or to tolerate arguments that they constituted a genocide.
The subject is rarely discussed openly in Turkey, and those who say
Turks were guilty of genocide can end up in a Turkish court and be
branded as traitors.
Nationalist lawyers led by Kemal Kerincsiz of the Turkish Lawyers’
Union frequently stand in on trials dealing with what they see as
threats to Turkish interests, and can be disruptive to proceedings.
At Dink’s case on Friday, the lawyers argued heatedly with defense
lawyers, yelled for the removal of the judge and apparently threw a
coin at Dink, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Saying “the trial’s discipline has been broken,” the judge postponed
the case to July 4, Dink’s lawyer Fethiye Cetin said.
Internationally, Turkey has been struggling to fight genocide
recognition by other countries with a combination of political and
economic threats.
In the past week, Turkey has lobbied French politicians and companies
to help kill a proposed French bill that would make it a crime to
deny that Armenians were victims of genocide, in the same way that
denying the Holocaust is a crime in France.
The French parliament is expected to vote on the bill on Thursday.
Turkey also briefly recalled its ambassadors to both France and
Canada last week after developments in those countries related to
the genocide issue, and pulled out of a Canadian military exercise
because Canada’s prime minister said he supported a parliamentary
declaration stating that Armenians were victims of genocide.
Prosecutors have asked the court to sentence Dink to a jail term of
up to three years.
As he left, protesters threw eggs and chanted the Turkish slogan,
“How happy the person is who says ‘I am a Turk.'”
In addition to the trial for attempting to influence the judiciary,
Dink has also been tried previously for “insulting Turkishness”
and for saying the Turkish national anthem was discriminatory.

USA REPORTEDLY PERSUADES ARMENIAN LEADER TO SIGN KARABAKH ACCORD
Iravunk, Yerevan
16 May 06
Text of report by Armenian newspaper Iravunk on 16 May headlined
“Americans ask to wait a little”
According to a source close to US diplomatic circles, over the
recent two months US diplomats have met the so-called pro-Western
representatives of Armenia several times. During those meetings the
Americans asked Armenian opposition leaders not to carry out intensive
work against the government till the end of June.
The Americans explained their position by their hope that a document
on the Karabakh issue would be signed between [Armenian President
Robert] Kocharyan and [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev before that
time. They told the leaders of the opposition that they had carried
out serious work to make the signing of the document possible and
that there were all grounds to believe that Kocharyan would fulfil his
promise given to Americans. Therefore, Americans think that possible
anti-Kocharyan work of the opposition may become a serious obstacle
to implementing the US plans.

OPPOSITION LEADER CALLS ARMENIAN LEADER “BAD MANAGER”
Mediamax news agency
16 May 06
Yerevan, 16 May: The leader of the National Democratic Union [NDU],
Vazgen Manukyan, today described Armenian President Robert Kocharyan as
“a bad manager” and compared him with “a tank driver, sweeping away
everything in his path”.
Speaking at a news conference in Yerevan today, the leader of the
NDU said that the Orintas Yerkir [Law-Governed Country] Party which
had pulled out of the ruling coalition has become “another victim”
of the state management system which has disastrous shortcomings”.
Vazgen Manukyan said that the Orinats Yerkir Party “was removed from
power under pressure from the president and nobody can be insured
against such a blow”.
The leader of the NDU called on opposition forces to unite and to
establish a new public and political field, “which will not only aim
to change the management system but also to establish dual power in
the country”.

ARMENIAN GENERAL URGES GOOD ARMS MAINTENANCE
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
13 May 06
[Presenter] The Armenian Defence Ministry held a session on 13 May.
The session discussed military hardware used by the armed forces.
[Correspondent over video of session] Armenian Deputy Defence Minister,
Lt-Gen Yuriy Khachaturov spoke about the military hardware used by the
Armenian armed forces, its maintenance and extending its service life.
He noted that a lot of work had been done over the past period to
provide the republican army with military hardware.
Progress has been made in the area of arms supplies, upgrading arms
depots, training the army’s engineering staff and increasing their
state of combat readiness. A number of organizational and technical
events were held in military units aimed at ensuring the correct
handling of arms, their maintenance and extending their service life.
[Passage omitted: minor details]
The chief of the General Staff of the Armenian army, Col-Gen Mikael
Arutyunyan, urged the units’ commanders to handle arms carefully and
to maintain them in a state of combat readiness.
The issues discussed at the session are very important to our people
and Armenia’s security, Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan said summing
up the session’s results.

ARMENIAN MINISTER NOT TO JOIN OPPOSITION
Noyan Tapan news agency
15 May 06
Yerevan, 15 May: “I cannot imagine my further political activities
in the opposition,” the deputy chairman and one of the founders of
the Orinats Yerkir (Law-Governed Country) Party, Sergo Yeritsyan,
has said while commenting on his quit from the party. Asked by from a
Noyan Tapan correspondent whether he will get any post, Yeritsyan said:
“Time will show”.
According to some reports in the press, Yeritsyan will be appointed
as Armenian presidential advisor.
Yeritsyan is now the minister of education and science in the ruling
coalition.
[Passage omitted: The Orinats Yerkir Party officially quit the ruling
coalition at the end of the last week]

WORLD ARMENIANS CONGRESS TO CONSOLIDATE ARMENIA-DIASPORA TIES
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
16 May 06
[Presenter] A regular sitting of the supreme board of the World
Armenian Congress [WAC] opened in Yerevan today. Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan took part in the sitting.
The chairman of the WAC, Ara Abramyan, said that the report on the
supreme board’s activities in 2004-05 was presented at the sitting.
The supreme board will also discuss the WAC’s goals and work done
during the third Armenia-Diaspora forum in 2006. More than 100,000
Armenians live outside Armenia and every condition must be created
for those who want to return to the motherland, Ara Abramyan said.
The chairman of the WAC said that he was talking about the creation
of jobs and development of the Armenian economy.
[Ara Abramyan captioned] We should create jobs and conditions in
Armenia with help from the diaspora and people who are working
abroad so as those who are looking for jobs would be able to return
to the motherland.
[Vardan Oskanyan speaking at the sitting] We have done a lot to boost
the Armenian economy, maintain our statehood and settle the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict. The congress has done a lot to deepen relations
between Armenia and the diaspora and will continue to work towards
uniting the Armenians.

AZERBAIJAN DENIES REPORT OF DESTRUCTION OF ETHNIC ARMENIAN CEMETERY
AP Worldstream
May 16, 2006
An aide to Azerbaijan’s president on Tuesday denied a report that a
centuries-old ethnic Armenia cemetery had been destroyed.
The report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said the
medieval-period Djulfa cemetery in the exclave of Nakhichevan, which
once had thousands of intricately carved crosses, had vanished. The
report said its journalist was not allowed by accompanying security
forces to go to the cemetery site, but that the journalist was near
enough to see the cemetery was gone.
“This is an absolutely lying publication and statement,” said Ali
Hasanov, an aide to President Ilham Aliev. “Not one cultural-historical
monument, not one Armenian cemetery in the Nakhichevan autonomous
republic has been destroyed.”
Accusations that Azerbaijan had destroyed the cemetery have raised
tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are at odds over
Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control
of Armenian and local Karabakh forces since a separatist war ended
with a shaky cease-fire in 1994.
The Djulfa cemetery site is generally off-limits because it lies in
a security zone along the Iranian border.
Hasanov said the government was ready to work with international
commissions to clarify the status of cultural and historical sites,
including within Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan accuses Armenians in
the enclave and surrounding occupied territories of destroying mosques
and Muslim cemeteries.

RUSSIAN AIR FORCE CO BLAMES ARMENIAN AIRLINER CRASH ON PILOT ERROR
Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow
16 May 06
[Presenter] The Air Force commander-in-chief, Vladimir Mikhaylov,
believes there is no point in raising the black boxes of the Airbus
that crashed near Sochi. Yuliya Kosilova has more.
[Correspondent] The cost of searching for and retrieving the on-board
recorders of the lost A-320 is unjustified, Vladimir Mikhaylov,
commander-in-chief of the Air Force, thinks. Even if the black box
is brought up from the bed of the Black Sea, he believes, it won’t
tell the experts anything new. It will only confirm that it was all
down to the weather.
But Mikhaylov blames the crash not on the weather itself but an error
by the pilot, who failed to take proper account of the difficult
weather conditions. That said, Mikhaylov thinks that the captain’s
decision not to try and land at Sochi and instead return to Yerevan,
whence the aircraft had taken off, was the right thing to do. That’s
what he should have done, according to Mikhaylov. There’s little
point in changing your mind, because it can bring serious consequences.
Mikhaylov pointed out that the black boxes are at the heart of
media comment, which he regards as distressing for the victims of
the relatives. However, he added, military specialists are willing
to help decode the on-board recorders.
[Presenter] The Armenian airliner crashed into the Black Sea on 3 May,
with 112 people on board. All perished.
[The operation to raise the black boxes continues, RTR Russia TV
reported at 1300 gmt. There are fears that the batteries powering
the boxes’ location transmitters will soon go flat.]

RUSSIA LAUNCHES OPERATION TO RECOVER CRASHED PLANE’S FLIGHT RECORDERS FROM SEA FLOOR
Steve Gutterman
AP Worldstream
May 16, 2006
Russia launched an operation Tuesday to recover the flight recorders
from an Armenian passenger plane that crashed in the Black Sea,
sending a robotic device with a hydraulic arm to the sea floor in an
attempt to bring up the “black boxes.”
Authorities hope the recorders will help determine the cause of the
May 3 crash of the Armavia Airbus A-320, which plunged into the sea
in heavy rain and poor visibility as it approached the airport on
a flight from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to the Russian resort
city of Sochi, killing all 113 people on board.
An official involved in the operation said the recovery device was
lowered from a ship and reached the sea floor, where the recorders
were believed to by lying about 5 meters (15 feet) apart at a depth of
just under 500 meters (1,640 feet), the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The RT-1000 apparatus has been used by geologists to lift natural
objects weighing up to 40 kilograms (88 pounds) from the sea floor,
but has not been used at such depths, ITAR-Tass quoted a Transport
Ministry official, Alexander Davydenko, as saying.
He said authorities believe the device can lift fragments of the plane
weighing up to 12 kilograms (26 pounds) and the flight recorders,
which weigh 7 kilograms (15 pounds), the report said. The operation
to pinpoint the boxes and lift them to the surface could take three
days, officials said.
Russian prosecutors dismissed the possibility of terrorism, and
officials pointed to the rough weather or pilot error as the likely
cause. But officials with Armavia have suggested that air traffic
controllers should at least share the blame.
The plane had covered most of its route from Yerevan to Sochi when it
turned back after air controllers in Sochi said the weather was too
rough for landing, but it headed for Sochi again after air traffic
controllers said the weather had improved.
Mikhail Bagdasarov, the owner of Armavia, said days after the crash
that a controller had “made a mistake that worsened the situation”
by ordering the crew to make another run when it came too close,
but that other factors may also have been involved. The plane was
turning back when it hit the water.
On Tuesday, Bagdasarov said that “the weather was bad, of course,
but not so bad that an A-320 could not land.”
Russia’s air force chief, however, was adamant that weather caused
the crash and said the plane should not have turned back toward
Sochi after the decision was made to return to Yerevan _ a decision
he seemed to blame on the crew.
“The whole reason is the weather,” Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov said in a
televised comment. “We’ll get these recorders, decode them, and this
will all be confirmed.”
“It is obvious that the pilots misread the (weather) conditions,”
RIA-Novosti quoted as saying.