SAAKASHVILI: NEW ROADS TO PUT AN END TO JAVAKHETI’S ISOLATION
Civil Georgia, Georgia
April 19 2006
President Saakashvili said on April 19 that a total of “GEL 400
million [USD 219 million] is planned to be spent over the course
of the next few years” on rehabilitating and constructing roads in
Samtskhe-Javakheti, which will “put an end to the isolation of this
region,” which is in southern Georgia.
Saakashvili was speaking in Akhalkalaki, a predominantly
ethnic Armenian populated town in the Samtskhe-Javakheti
region, at a groundbreaking ceremony of the construction of the
Akhalkalaki-Akhaltsikhe road, which is planned for completion by
next year.
“Later this autumn we will launch the construction of another new
highway linking Akhalkalaki with Tbilisi; GEL 300 million will be
spent on the construction of this road,” Saakashvili said.
“[New roads] mean that Javakheti’s geographical isolation from the
rest of Georgia will end once and for all; this means that local
peasants [sic]will be able to freely export their products from here;
this means that more businesses will come here; this means that more
transit will take place here… Roads and development – these are
what Javakheti needs now,”
The rehabilitation of roads in this region is also envisaged by the
U.S. funded USD 295.3 million aid program in frames of the Millennium
Challenge Account. A major part of the funding – USD 102 million –
will be spent towards rehabilitating some 245 kilometers of the main
road traversing the Samtskhe-Javakheti region.

BERN ASKS ANKARA TO PLAY FAIR IN AIRCRAFT DEAL
Swissinfo, Switzerland
April 19 2006
The PC-21 is the latest in a long line of Pilatus training aircraft
(Keystone)
The Swiss foreign ministry has intervened with Turkey over a boycott
of trainer aircraft from the Pilatus company of Stans in central
Switzerland.
The move follows a decision by Ankara barring Pilatus from putting
in a bid to supply the PC-21 turbo trainer to the Turkish Air Force.
A Pilatus spokesman confirmed to swissinfo earlier this month that
the Turkish authorities had forbidden the company from tendering for
a contract.
“The foreign ministry is informed about this matter. We have addressed
the Pilatus case at the diplomatic level both in Bern and Turkey,”
ministry spokeswoman Carine Carey told swissinfo.
She added that the ministry would follow the matter closely.
Economics Minister Joseph Deiss has offered to try to find a solution
to the problem during a visit to Turkey, which has long been on
the cards.
However, the two countries have still not agreed on a date after a
planned visit last September was postponed.
Boycott
News of the boycott came in a letter sent to Pilatus from the Turkish
defence ministry.
The Turkish Daily News reported a week ago that Pilatus had been
excluded from bidding for the $500 million (SFr634.4 million) contract
because of a diplomatic row between the two countries.
It quoted a defence official as saying he did not think Swiss
contenders would be reliable partners in defence contracts.
Bilateral relations have been strained, particularly since 2003
when the Swiss House of Representatives recognised the “genocide”
of Armenians at the time of the First World War.
However, the Swiss government does not officially speak of “genocide”
but of “mass deportation” and “massacre”.
Highly qualified
The chief executive of Pilatus, Oscar Schwenk, told the Tages-Anzeiger
it was the first time in the company’s history that the company was
not allowed to bid for a deal for which it was highly qualified.
The company has been talking to Turkish authorities and companies
for four years about the supply of aircraft.
In the meantime, Turkey has been in contact with other companies,
including Embraer of Brazil, South Korea’s Aerospace Industries and
Raytheon of the United States.
“As an enterprise we can do nothing; only Bern can unblock the issue,”
Schwenk commented.
Photo:
siness/detail/Bern_asks_Ankara_to_play_fair_in_air craft_deal.html?siteSect=161&sid=6639770&c Key=1145442468000

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPUTER TEACHING FROM FIRST CLASS
National Assembly of RA, Armenia
April 19 2006
On April 18 RA NA President Artur Baghdasaryan received Nigel Townson,
Director of the British Council Armenia.
The NA President highlighted the British Council mission, expressing
a hope that the cooperation will effectively continue. Mr. Townson
presented their several programmes, which can be good bases for good
cooperation with the National Assembly.
During the meeting the opportunities of the British Council’s
assistance on NA President Artur Baghdasaryan’s new legislative
initiative of organizing English language and computer teaching from
first class in general schools in future was discussed. The sides
highlighted the teachers’ training especially in the marzes, the
instructional support services and study of international experience.
Welcoming the initiative, Mr. Townson expressed readiness to assist
that initiative. The meetings will continue, and a working programme
will be prepared in order to regulate and make closer the British
Council and National Assembly ties.

ANKARA PREPARES AGAINST ‘APR. 24’ WITH JEWISH LOBBY
By Suleyman Kurt, Ankara
Zaman Online, Turkey
April 19 2006
Ankara intensifies efforts against the Armenian Diaspora, which
attempts to “make the so-called Armenian genocide recognized,” as
the anniversary of “24 April 1915 events” approaches.
Turkish officials, who closely monitor the resolution drafts in the US
Congress, French and Argentinean parliaments, continue their efforts
to prevent a counter decision.
Diplomatic sources oppose claims suggesting that the Jewish lobby has
ended its support to Turkey in relation to the “so-called Armenian
genocide allegations” following the Islamic Resistance Movement’s
(HAMAS) Ankara visit. They also do not think it is possible for the
US Congress to take such a decision.
US President George W. Bush is not expected to use the word “genocide”
in his April 24 speech.
“Turkey and the Jewish lobby have always had good relations. If there
is a weakness in the relations, we will do our best to eliminate it, we
are working towards this end,” a foreign ministry official explained.
Along with the US Congress, developments in the French and Argentinean
parliaments are being closely monitored.
A draft law in the French parliament foresees the “punishment of
those deny the existence of Armenian genocide,” and another law in
the Argentinean parliament aims to “giving the Armenian genocide
issue a place in the school books.”
Ankara realized the “necessary” efforts to the Argentinean government
and asked them “not to nurture generations being hostile to Turkey”.
Political experts comment that the draft will not be passed by
parliament.
Secret diplomacy continues with Yerevan
Problems between Turkey and Armenia, including the “so-called genocide
allegations,” were handled in the Austrian capital, Vienna, by the
diplomats of both countries.
During these talks, the “commission of historian” project put forward
by Turkey concerning the Armenian genocide allegations was not adopted.
Ankara rejected the proposal of Armenia relating to the issue as well.
In order for the start of diplomatic relations between the countries,
a text should be signed by the both parties, which shows that some
of the problems between the countries, including the dispute over
borders, have been settled.
The parties have not reached such a level, it is noted. Along with
the diplomatic meetings, Turkish diplomats recently gathered with
representatives of the Armenian Diaspora defending “moderate” opinions
in the US.

Traitors, martyrs or just brave men?
By Robert Fisk
Gulf Times, Qatar
April 19 2006
LONDON: More than 15 years ago, I travelled to the Belgian city of
Ypres with an Irish friend. She was from a good Fine Gael family which
nursed a healthy disrespect for the amount of romantic green blossom
draped around Padraig Pearse’s neck for the militarily hopeless but
politically explosive Dublin Easter Rising of 1916. But she displayed
an equally admirable suspicion of British – or “English” as she would
have put it – intentions towards Ireland, north and south. Her mother
once recalled for me a British military raid on their home in County
Carlow. “I was a little girl and one of the soldiers patted me on
the head and I told him: ‘You keep your hands off me.'”
But at Ypres one evening, beneath the great Menin Gate – upon which
are carved the names of 54,896 World War I British soldiers whose
bodies were never found – my Irish friend faced a real political
challenge. She had noted, among those thousands, the names of
hundreds of young Irishmen who had died in British uniform while their
countrymen at home were fighting and dying in battle against the same
British Army. She looked at one of the names. “Why in God’s name,”
she asked, “was a boy from the Station House, Tralee, dying here in
the mud of Flanders?” And it was at this point that an elderly man
approached us and asked my Irish friend to sign the visitors’ book.
She looked at the British Army’s insignia on the memorial volume
with distaste. There was the British crown glimmering in the evening
light. And the Belgian firemen who nightly play the Last Post beneath
the gate were already taking position. There was not much time. But
my friend remembered the young man from Tralee. She thought about
her own small Catholic nation and its centuries of suffering and
she realised that the boy from Tralee had gone to fight – or so
he thought – for little Catholic Belgium. She decided to inscribe
the British Army’s book in the Irish language. “Do thiortha beaga,”
she wrote. “For little countries.” All this happened years before an
economically powerful and self-confident Irish Republic would face
up to the sacrifice its pre-independence soldiers made in British
uniform; the estimated 35,000 Irishmen who died in the 1914-18 war
wildly outnumber the few hundred who fought in the Easter Rising. The
total of dead, wounded and missing among Irish Protestants in the 36th
(Ulster) Division on the Somme and at Ypres came to 32,180. The same
statistics among soldiers of the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions –
most of them Catholics – amounted to 37,761.
My own father was to fight alongside the Irish on the Somme in 1918
although – a fact I used to keep quiet about when I was The Times’s
correspondent in Belfast in the early 1970s – he was originally sent to
Ireland in the aftermath of the Rising. I have a faded photograph of
Bill Fisk, then in the Cheshire Regiment, kissing the Blarney Stone,
and some pictures he took of the front gate of Victoria Barracks –
now Collins Barracks – in Cork, its stonework plastered with appeals
to Irishmen to join the British Army and fight for Catholic Belgium
and France. It was only when I was invited to give the annual Bloody
Sunday memorial lecture in Derry – the first Brit to be asked to honour
the memory of the 14 Catholics who were killed by the 1st Battalion,
the Parachute Regiment in 1972 – that I talked about my Dad’s fight
against Sinn Fein (whom he always called the “Shinners”). If Padraig
Pearse had not raised the flag over the Dublin Post office in Easter
Week of 1916, I told my audience, Bill Fisk might have been sent to
die in the first Battle of the Somme three months later – and his son
Robert would not exist. So did I owe my life to Pearse? I can already
hear that most polemical, visceral, poignant, absolutely infuriating,
brilliant and doggedly insulting Irish Times columnist Kevin Myers
bursting into fits of sarcastic laughter and carefully aimed fury at
such a remark. Kevin was among the first to hammer away at Ireland’s
shameful refusal to acknowledge the vast sacrifice of its sons in
the 1914-18 cauldron. And Kevin it has been, while foolishly taking
the Turkish line of denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915, who has
repeatedly tried to hack down the reputations of martyrs Pearse and
James Connolly and John MacBride – and Eamon de Valera, who escaped
execution because of his American passport – and present the Rising as
not only a military disaster but an unnecessary sacrifice of civilian
life and the first example of “green fascism”.
I don’t like the way the “fascist” label gets stuck on anyone we
dislike. Lefties used to call policemen fascists. And now we have
“Islamofascism” which effectively binds Mussolini to one of the
world’s great religions. No wonder we could draw those outrageous
cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban.
But I’m still not at all sure how to regard the men of 1916. The
very best book on the Rising – George Dangerfield’s magnificent The
Damnable Question – proves that the “rebels” (as my father called
them) were very brave as well as very dismissive of their own and
others’ lives. They were not to know the deviant way in which their
“blood sacrifice” – which was not exactly the first in Irish history
– would be adopted by later armed groups who sought their mandate in
blood shed before those 1916 British execution parties.
Had they not been so cruelly shot down as punishment for their armed
assault on British power, would they have been so honoured in the long,
dark, stagnant Ireland of the 1920s and 30s and then in the terrible
and much later years of the civil conflict in Northern Ireland? Do
you have to be a martyr to have honour?
I was much struck by this thought five years ago when I was searching
through the British National Archives at Kew for details of the
execution of a young Australian soldier in the British Army whom
my father was ordered to shoot at the end of World War I. Bill Fisk
refused, so another officer performed the dirty deed. But there in the
documents of British military executions – routinely filed under 1916
– were the names of Pearse and Connolly and McBride. The exemplary
punishment accorded to them and their comrades in Dublin turned Irish
public scorn to sympathy and admiration. But to the Brits, it was just
another act of military law, the shooting by firing squad of traitors
to the Crown – in just the same way as deserters, army murderers and
cowards were shot at dawn behind the trenches of France. The martyrs
of the Easter Rising suffered Western Front punishment.
And now Ireland’s minister for defence tells us the military Easter
Rising pomp in Dublin last weekend symbolised the end of the war in
the North. Maybe. But who will remember the boy from the Station House,
Tralee? – The Independent.

AKSU: AZERBAIJAN’S TERRITORIES REMAINING UNDER OCCUPATION POSES GREAT OBSTACLE TO STABILITY IN THE REGION
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
Turkey’s Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu today started his visit
to Azerbaijan at the invitation of his Azerbaijani counterpart,
Colonel-General Ramil Usubov (APA).
Mr.Aksu visited the tomb of the then President Heydar Aliyev in the
Honorary Alley, Martyr’s Alley and the Alley of Turkish martyrs.
Following that, the two Interior Ministers had talks in the Interior
Ministry. Mr.Usubov said that Azerbaijan-Turkey relations are
developing in all spheres. The Azerbaijani Minister noted that the
relations between the Interior Ministries of the two countries were
established in 1992 and the ties are strengthening.
“These relationships should be further strengthened. We should unite
our efforts to fight against transnational organized crimes such
as terrorism, illegal arms and drug traffic, trafficking in human
beings, illegal migration, which poses a serious threat to stability,”
Usubov underlined.
The Minister also said that the meeting of Turkish, Azerbaijani and
Georgian Interior Ministers is intended to be held soon.
Turkish Minister said that this visit will promote deepening of the
cooperation relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey. Stressing the
importance of collaborating to fight transnational crimes, the visitor
proposed to conduct exchange of information between Azerbaijan and
Turkey in this field.
“Nagorno Garabagh or in general, 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territories
remaining under occupation is unacceptable. This factor poses a great
obstacle to ensure stability in the region,” Mr.Aksu underlined.
The Ministers signed a document on cooperation between bodies of
interior affairs of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

AZERBAIJAN RECEIVES NO OFFICIAL PROPOSAL ON RESOLUTION OF NK CONFLICT FROM WASHINGTON – AZERI DEPUTY FM
Author: S.Agayeva
TREND Info, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
Azerbaijan has not officially received from Washington proposals on the
resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh,
Trend reports citing Araz Asimov, the Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign
Minister, as saying to journalists.
No document, or a project in form of new proposals, has been
presented to Azerbaijan. “They have only proposed concrete ideas
on the establishment of normal relationships with Armenia on the
completion of the military conflict,” he stressed.
The Deputy FM noted that the liberation of the Azerbaijani territory
will become the first step in the resolution of the conflict.
Azerbaijan does not support war. “We are interested in continuing peace
talks on the resolution of the problems,” the diplomat underlined.
Concerned on the frequent meetings of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs
the diplomat said he did not expect more progress from the meeting
of the settlement of the problem.
The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit Yerevan and after Baku.
“The key objective is to continue outlining the future steps upon
the meeting in Rambouillet,” Azimov underscored.

BAKU-SHUSHA ROUTE IS ONE OF PRIORITY DIRECTIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF TOURISM – SENIOR OFFICIAL OF TOURISM MINISTRY ASSURES
Author: R.Abdullayev
TREND Info, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
The Baku-Shusha route is one of priority directions for development of
tourism, the statement was sounded by Faik Gurbanov, the head of the
Division on internal tourism development of the Azerbaijani Ministry
of Culture and Tourism, at a news conference held in Baku on 19 April
in connection with the opening of 5th jubilee international exhibition
‘Tourism and Traveling’.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has defined 6 directions for
development of tourism in Azerbaijan, including the Baku-Shusha
direction.
“Upon liberation of the lands from Armenian occupation this direction
will become a priority and there no doubt in this respect,” Gurbanov
underlined. A list of historic and culture monuments located in the
occupied territory of Azerbaijan has been compiled. However, possible
destruction of part of these monuments by Armenians excites deep alarm,
he warned.

ARMENIAN FM: “US PLANS TO BUILD NUCLEAR PLANT IN ARMENIA”
Today, Azerbaijan
April 19 2006
Vardan Oskanyan, Foreign Minister of Armenia, reportedly said: “Today
Americans are almost eager to build a new nuclear plant in Armenia.”
As Trend reports, in his interview published today Oskanyan said “there
was a time when they (Americans) didn’t even want to hear of it.”
“The USA is concerned in this issue, the US government discusses it
and, I suggest, we have a chance to replace our old nuclear plant
with a new one,” Minister said.
“As far as I know, the USA are going to solve regional problems through
constructing this new plant and thus are seriously thinking it over,”
Oskanyan added.
URL:

ARMENIA HAS SET THE GOAL TO JOIN TRANS-CASPIAN GAS PIPELINE AND ALREADY STARTED SERIOUS CONVERSATIONS WITH THE USA (VARDAN OSKANYAN)
Caucaz, Georgia
April 19 2006
Yerevan, 19 April 2006 (Trend.az- website) – Vardan Oskanyan, Armenian
Foreign Minister, said “Armenia has set the goal to join Trans-Caspian
gas pipeline and already started serious conversations with the USA.”
Trend reports with reference to Mediamaz agency that in his interview
published today in Armenian Aykakan Zhamanak, Oskanyan said the goal
of Trans-Caspian gas pipeline is “supply of gas from Central Asian
countries and Azerbaijan to Europe through our region”. “Standard
bearers in this program are the USA and the EU”, – minister said.
“In the event of the project execution Armenia will possess three
gas supply sources – from Russia, Iran and Central Asia”,- Oskanyan
stressed.
Alongside, the minister opined that sale of 5 power block at Razdan
head power plant to Russia would not adversely influence Armenian
policy in respect of power sources diversification.
“These facilities are located in Armenia and the owner is unable to
take them away. Moreover, these facilities are privatized or handed
over at very strict terms”, – Oskanyan said.