MESROB II TO ATTEND ARMENIAN CONFERENCE
Hurriyet
Turkish Press
April 18 2006
Press Review
Mesrob II, the Armenian patriarch of Turkey, will attend for the
first time a conference on the Armenian issue entitled, “The Art of
Co-Existence in Ottoman Society: The Case of the Turkish-Armenian
Relations.” Mesrob II confirmed that he would attend the three-day
conference beginning Thursday in Kayseri and said, “I am going
to the conference this time because it’s been organized by young,
well-intentioned academics. They came to Istanbul and sincerely told
their stance.” Professor Metin Hulagu, deputy dean of the Faculty of
Science and Letters of Erciyes University, said that the participation
of the patriarch was very important for them, and added, “We spoke
face to face with Mesrob II in Istanbul. We told him our aim. We
told him that we’re not destructive but constructive. And he agreed
to attend the conference and give a speech.”

KOTRA STAFFER WAS MISS IRAQ FOR A DAY
Chosun Ilbo, South Korea
April 18 2006
The recently crowned Miss Iraq, Tamar Goregian is interviewed on ABC
television on April 11./AP-Yonhap
The recently crowned Miss Iraq, Tamar Goregian, has returned the crown
after receiving death threats from Islamic extremists. Goregian is a
former employee of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA).
According to KOTRA’s Baghdad trade office, Goregian, who is of Armenian
descent, worked as a part time employee and was in charge of arranging
negotiations when a KOTRA market opening team was in the country. “I
do feel proud that we had Iraq’s most beautiful woman working for us,”
trade office chief Seo Kang-suk said,
AP reported on April 13 that the winner of the competition was “very
troubled” by the death threats from Islamic extremists.
According to the report, the pageant to pick Iraq’s representative
for the Miss Universe contest in Los Angles in July was held on April
9 in a club in Baghdad. Four days later, Goregian returned the crown.
It passed to the runner-up, who also refused citing the same fears,
as did the third runner-up. Now the crown has finally settled on the
hardy scalp of originally fourth-ranked Silva Sahagian.
To avoid the extremists, Sahagian is hiding at an undisclosed location.
news/200604/200604180019.html

ALIYEV’S VISIT NOT TO SOLVE GARABAGH CONFLICT – US ENVOY
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 18 2006
The US ambassador in Baku Reno Harnish has said Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev’s upcoming visit to the United States will not solve
the long-standing Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper (Garabagh) conflict.
“The US and Azeri presidents may exchange views on the principles
discussed by the [mediating] OSCE Minsk Group over the past two years,
while the conflict resolution depends on future meetings between the
Azeri and Armenian leaders,” Harnish told local ATV channel.
The envoy said Aliyev’s visit will be essential in terms of bilateral
ties as well as Azerbaijan’s development on the regional and global
scale.
Harnish said he had no specific information concerning bilateral
documents to be signed during the visit.
“I have focused my attention on the discussions to be held by the Azeri
president. He will hold important talks with a number of White House
officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary
of Energy Samuel Bodman, Treasury Secretary John Snow and others. A
meeting between the two countries’ presidents will be held as well.”
The ambassador added that President Aliyev may also meet with ethnic
and religious groups, representatives of democratic institutions and
businesspeople. A number of regional issues will be in focus during
the meetings, including the Iran problem.

US MEDIATOR TO VISIT AZERBAIJAN
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 18 2006
The US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group brokering settlement to
the Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper (Garabagh) conflict is due to arrive
in Baku from the Armenian capital this weekend, according to the
spokeswoman for the US embassy in Armenia, Elizabeth Santos.
Steven Mann’s visit was earlier scheduled for Tuesday and the reasons
for the postponement are not disclosed.
Santos said that prior to the visit, Mann is expected to meet with
the Russian mediator Yuri Merzlyakov. He will leave for Yerevan on
Thursday and further visit Azerbaijan.
While in Armenia, Mann is scheduled to meet with President Robert
Kocharian and Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian. He may hold a news
briefing in conclusion of the discussions, the diplomat said.
Armenia earlier claimed that the US mediator’s visit to the region
would be confined to his meetings in Azerbaijan.
This will be the second visit by Mann to the region since the fruitless
round of talks between Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharian
in Rambouillet, France in February. He paid his last visit to Baku
jointly with the US Department of State Assistant Secretary for
European and Eurasian Affairs, Daniel Fried, on March 13.

GREEK MINISTERS PUSH FOR RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS
The New Anatolian
April 18 2006
Greek state ministers yesterday increased pressure on Turkey and on
the international community to recognize Armenian genocide claims
before next week’s annual commemoration of the claims.
While Greek Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopulos expressed hope
that the Armenians would soon receive the respect they “deserve”
from the international community, Deputy Foreign Minister Teodoros
Kasimis urged Ankara to recognize the genocide claims.
“The genocide conducted against the Armenian nation will never be
erased from the minds of Greeks,” said Minister Pavlopulos in his
letter sent to the Armenian National Commission ahead of April 24,
the date that Armenians commemorate genocide claims.
“Ninety-one years have passed since the genocide. The Greek
Parliament’s recognition of the commemoration day aims to honor and
commemorate the innocent victims of the genocide. The decision also
represents our responsibility in preventing the repetition of such
events in the future,” Pavlopulos said.
During his speech at a meeting organized by Armenians in Athens,
Minister Kasimis expressed Greek support to the Armenian genocide
claims, saying, “Turkey should accept its past mistakes to draw
lessons from them in order to avoid any repetition of events.”

PBS STANDS BY ‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’
By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff
Boston Globe
April 18 2006
Andrew Goldberg realized how powerful a word could be — particularly
a powerful word like “genocide” — when he got a call, several years
ago, from a PBS station in Fresno, Calif. A studio full of Armenians,
answering phones for a pledge drive, had been watching his 2001
film “The Armenians: A Story of Survival.” When a Turkish scholar
acknowledged that his country’s massacre of Armenians was genocide,
the room burst into applause.
For decades, the Turkish government has resisted the “genocide” label
for the events of 1915-1918, insisting that the deaths of 1.5 million
Armenians were part of a civil war. Turkey has lobbied vigorously to
keep the US government from declaring the killings a genocide. The New
York Times only officially added “Armenian genocide” to its stylebook
in 2004. The Globe, before 2003, would only use the term “genocide”
in direct quotations when referring to the Armenian genocide.
So it is significant that Goldberg’s latest documentary, which airs
tonight at 10 on Channel 2, is called “The Armenian Genocide” — no
equivocation, no hint of doubt. And, in a sense, it’s surprising that
PBS decided to air the film, title and all. “I shopped it at multiple
cable networks,” Goldberg said. “Nobody would touch this thing.”
PBS, he said, “never wavered. They were strong. I really appreciated
that.”
Critics have accused PBS of squandering that good will by commissioning
a companion piece: a half-hour panel discussion that includes Turkish
scholars who deny that a genocide took place.
Armenian-Americans and their allies say the forum gives voice to an
untenable point of view; some have compared it to following a World
War II film with a panel stocked with Holocaust deniers. Several
major PBS stations, including Boston’s WGBH, have chosen not to air it.
Lea Sloan, PBS’s vice president of communications, said the panel
doesn’t question the genocide, but explores “how historians can come
to such radically divergent conclusions about these events.” She
said PBS has produced discussions to accompany about a dozen recent
documentaries, including a May 2005 film on the Rwandan genocide and
a January 2004 film on Alzheimer’s disease.
And she noted that the panel’s title is “Armenian Genocide:
Exploring the Issues.” That’s “an implicit positioning,” Sloan said,
an acknowledgement that genocide took place. That, in itself, is
a sign of how much has changed since the 1980s, when Boston-based
filmmaker Ted Bogosian proposed a documentary on the subject. At
the time, Bogosian said, he had to leave his job as a staff producer
at WGBH-based “Nova” and form his own company to make his film. He
had to pitch the documentary as a first-person account, a search
for his roots. And when the documentary was set to air, he said,
PBS downplayed the publicity, expecting — correctly — that the
Turkish backlash would be fierce.
Bogosian was propelled by his ethnic background and his journalistic
hunger. He snuck into Turkey, filmed a genocide survivor in her
village in eastern Turkey, and retrieved Turkish war crimes trial
transcripts that corroborated her story. The resulting film, 1988’s
“An Armenian Journey,” was “the most satisfying credit I’ve ever had,”
Bogosian said.
Like Bogosian, Goldberg sets out to settle history; his film features
omniscient narration, context from scholars, and harrowing footage
from the time, along with descriptions of Armenian death marches and
suffering families.
Goldberg includes official denials from both Turkish leaders and
Turks on the streets. He acknowledges that Armenians murdered some
Turks at the time of World War I, and that Armenian terrorists
slaughtered Turkish officials in the 1980s. But he also features
vivid testimonials from Turks who recall their own relatives’ stories
of being encouraged to kill Armenians. And he shows footage of an
interview with Rafael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in the
1940s, partly in reference to the Armenian slaughter.
The result is so balanced that a panel discussion seemed unnecessary,
said Lucy Sholley, a spokeswoman for WGBH. (KCET, in Los Angeles,
is showing neither Goldberg’s film nor the discussion; it is airing
a French documentary on the Armenian genocide.)
Bogosian said he’s cheered by the fact that so many stations have
turned down the panel — and that so many more scholars and journalists
have been focusing on the Armenian massacre. Over time, he said,
“the lens sharpens, the filter changes, and this stuff stands out in
much more sharp relief.”
6/04/18/pbs_stands_by_armenian_genocide/

AZERBAIJANI STUDENTS IN ROMANIA APPEAL TO HUNGARIAN COURTS
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 18 2006
Azerbaijani students studying in Romania held a protest action related
to the Budapest court’s unfair verdict on Azerbaijani army officer
Ramil Safarov by jailing him to life in prison.
The Eastern Europe bureau of APA reports that the protest action
brought together authorities of Azerbaijan-Romania Culture and Youth
Association, Romania-Azerbaijan Friendship and Romania-Azerbaijan
Commerce and Industry Chamber, members of managing staff, Azerbaijani,
Turkish and Tatar who are living or studying in Romania.
The protesters demanded that Armenian terrorists, who are conducting
ethnic cleansing, murdered and committed torture against Azerbaijanis
with special cruelty, mercilessly in the occupied Nagorno Garabagh and
surrounding regions, should be brought to justice by international
criminal court. The participants of the protest action adopted an
appeal to Hungarian Embassy in Romania, Hungarian Supreme Court,
Hungarian Court of Appeal and the International Criminal Tribunal
in The Hague. The authors of the appeal demand fairly reconsidering
Ramil Safarov’s case.

OPPOSITION DEPUTY SUES BRITISH BLUE BOOK
Erol Onderoglu
BÝA, Turkey
April 18 2006
Main opposition CHP MP Sukru Elekdag, a retired diplomat, seeks USD
15,000 in libel damages for alleged insult in the Turkish translation
of British state document: “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire, 1915-1916” against the publishers.
BÝA (Istanbul) – Sukru Elekdag Republican People’s Party (CHP)
deputy and retired ambassador is suing publisher Muzaffer Erdogdu for
the Turkish translation “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire, 1915-1916, Correspondence by Viscount Bryce to Viscount Grey
of Falladon” which is also known as “The Blue Book” in diplomatic
tradition.
The book covers the correspondence and memoirs of witnesses and
officials including refugees and foreign dignitaries, as well as
newspaper articles, on controversial developments related to the
treatment of Armenians in the period of 1915 and 1916.
Elekdag, a member of the Parliamentary Foreign Relations Commission
and the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Commission, is demanding 20
thousand YTL (USD15 thousand) in libel damages from those involved
in the publishing of the book, claiming he was insulted in a section
of the book edited by historian Taner Akcam.
The book’s publisher Erdogdu, historian Akcam and translator Ahmet
Guner will together appear before a court on May 30 as defendants
in the case. Akcam is also being accused by Elekdag for a similar
article he wrote for the monthly Birikim magazine last year.
The “Blue Book” contains research conducted by James Bryce and Arnold
Toynbee who in February 1916 were tasked by the British government
on a fact-finding mission to “collect evidence with regard to recent
incidents taking place in Armenia”.
The eventual report titled “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire” was prepared by the two and later published as part of the
British Parliament “Blue Book” series, earning this book the nickname
of “Blue Book”.
Elekdag: I was insulted
In his suit, Elekdag claims defendant historian Akcam committed
offence in pages 15-49 of the book under the section titled “A scandal:
Where is the letter of the TBMM (Grand National Assembly of Turkey)
Sukru Elekdag and Justin Mc Carthy dragging this country?” as well
as in Akcam’s article published in the May-June 2005 dated issue of
the Birikim magazine.
Elekdag charges that both the book and the article insulted him and
that his individual rights had been attacked. He also says both his
professionalism and credibility suffered severe damages due to the
two articles.
–Boundary_(ID_xtmGZmc3PETfd6xcDr2XTg)- –

MEDIATOR CITES NEW PROPOSALS ON GARABAGH
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 18 2006
Baku, April 17, AssA-Irada
An international mediator says the OSCE Minsk Group brokering
settlement to the Upper (Garabagh) conflict has submitted proposals
to Azerbaijan and Armenia that have not been discussed so far.
“Official Baku and Yerevan are currently scrutinizing these options,”
the Russian co-chair of the OSCE MG, Yuri Merzlyakov, told Lider TV.
He said that although the co-chairs visit the region separately,
they share views on the conflict settlement.
“Our current proposals are new, as they have not been comprehensively
discussed yet. I can’t say how they will be accepted. But this is
not an accord of any kind yet. Some work remains to be done to reach
general agreement,” the diplomat said, noting that a given element may
suit one side and be rejected by the other. “Therefore, such elements
should be dealt with in a subtle and thorough way,” Merzlyakov added.

NGO FORUM TO DISCUSS GARABAGH
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 18 2006
Baku, April 17, AssA-Irada
The National NGO Forum, an umbrella organization for over 400
non-governmental organizations, will hold a regular congress on
April 26, members of the Congress Organizing Committee told a news
conference on Monday.
The forum was set up by 95 NGOs in 1999. A member of the organizing
committee, Farasat Gurbanov, said the congress would be attended by
over 200 organizations. President of the NGO Forum Azay Guliyev and
others are expected to make presentations at the event. According
to Gurbanov, three people have already been nominated to take over
presidency from Guliyev at the congress.
The chairman of the Board of the Forum, Aydin Karimov, said the meeting
would also discuss prospects for resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan
Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh problem. He said the congress would adopt
an appeal to international organizations over the Garabagh issue.
The Forum has established a commission to deal with the conflict. The
chairman of the commission, Nasimi Garabagli, has said discussions
would also be held around Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov who has
recently been sentenced to life in prison by a Hungarian court. A
statement will be adopted demanding that the officer’s rights be
protected.