Agence France Presse — English
April 14, 2006 Friday 5:32 PM GMT
Rare books go on display in Istanbul
ISTANBUL, April 14 2006
Some 75 rare books from the collection of late Armenian oil magnate
and art connoisseur Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian will go on display in
Istanbul’s Sakip Sabanci museum on Saturday.
The highlight of the exhibition is a 241-page prayer book that was
printed on parchment in Italy at the end of the 13th century, the
museum said, adding that its colours had withstood age well.
The books from the Gulbenkian collection will form part of an
exhibition titled “The art of the book in the East and the West” that
runs until May 28.
It features antique books from France, Iran, Japan and the Ottoman
empire, but also more recent rare books such as illustrated copies of
the works of Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac.
“We have never before mounted an exhibition of a such a combination
of books from the East and the West. We wanted it to serve as a
symbolic bridge between the two cultures of our founder,” said the
president of the board of the Gulbenkian Foundation, Emilio Rui
Vilar.
Gulbenkian was born to Armenian parents in Istanbul. He spent many
years in Portugal and died in 1955 in Lisbon, which is home to the
Gulbenkian Museum.

Agence France Presse — English
April 14, 2006 Friday 3:44 PM GMT
Nationalists protest sentencing of Azeri who axed Armenian
Students from a nationalist organisation demonstrated Friday in Baku
against the sentencing by a Hungarian court of an Azerbaijani officer
found guilty of axing to death an Armenian lieutenant.
About 40 youths from the Karabakh Liberation Organisation met in a
Baku park to call for Ramil Safarov, the Azeri officer, to be freed.
“Freedom for Ramil!” they chanted before police quickly dispersed
their rally.
Safarov was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment Thursday in
a Budapest court for his murder of Armenian Lieutenant Gurgen
Markarian in 2004 while the two were attending a NATO-sponsored
training course in the city.
Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said it would pay the costs of an
appeal. “We want to express our disagreement with this verdict,”
ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev told AFP.
The shocking murder in a Budapest hotel highlighted the tense
standoff between Azerbaijan and Armenia since a 1994 ceasefire in the
disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic-Armenian forces
drove out the Azeris during the early 1990s.
Ever since the conflict, the two neighbours have had no direct road
or commercial links, while internationally backed peace talks have
dragged on for years without result.

Agence France Presse — English
April 13, 2006 Thursday 10:39 PM GMT
Armenian, Azerbaijani leaders could meet again on Karabakh: French
negotiator
The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan may meet again in the coming
months to resume talks over the contested Nagorno Karabakh region, a
French mediator in the conflict said here Thursday, expressing the
hope that negotiations between the leaders could take place in June.
“We are prepared to present the presidents with new ideas to renew
and develop the principles on which the parties are already working,”
Bernard Fassier, who co-chairs the Minsk group of Russian, French and
American mediators on Karabakh, told reporters.
The negotiation process continues, despite failed talks between
Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Azerbaijani leader Ilham
Aliyev at the Rambouillet castle near Paris last February, Fassier
said.
He said the Minsk Group’s co-chairmen would meet in Moscow in May,
before visiting the Caucasus region.
The Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno Karabakh seceded from
Azerbaijan in the late 1980s, sparking a six-year conflict between
Armenia ad Azerbaijan that claimed that 25,000 lives and displaced
hundreds of thousands of people.
Despite a 1994 ceasefire, tensions remain high and the mountainous
region, surrounded by Azerbaijani territory, is separated by one of
the world’s most militarized zones.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RIA OREANDA
Economic News
April 13, 2006 Thursday
Gazprom and ArmRosgazprom Discuss the Course of Realization of
Agreement on Strategic Principles of Cooperation
Moscow. OREANDA. Gazprom’s Headquarters has hosted a working meeting
between Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee and
Karen Karapetyan, Director General of ArmRosgazprom. The parties
discussed the implementation of the Agreement on the strategic
principles of cooperation between Gazprom and the Government of the
Republic of Armenia.
Special attention was paid to the purchase and rehabilitation of the
fifth power-generating unit of the Razdan CHP with the view of
ensuring efficient gas-fired power generation in Armenia.
Gazprom resumed natural gas deliveries to Armenia in June 2003 and,
at present, is the only supplier of gas to the Republic. Gazexport, a
Gazprom 100% subsidiary, delivers gas to the Armenian-Russian border,
where gas is purchased by ArmRosgazprom. Over 2005 Gazprom provided
Armenian consumers with 1.7 billion cubic metres of natural gas. The
ArmRosgazprom Company was incorporated in December 1997. Gazprom, the
Armenian Energy Ministry and ITERA own 45%, 45% and 10% of
ArmRosgazprom’s stake, respectively.

Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
April 13, 2006 Thursday
AZERBAIJANI OFFICIAL SENTENCED TO LIFE FOR KILLING ARMENIAN
Budapest, April 13 (MTI) – An Azerbaijani army officer who killed an
Armenian classmate during a NATO Partnership for Peace course in
Budapest two years ago was sentenced to life imprisonment by a
Budapest Court on Thursday.
Ramil Safarov, when he was 27, used an ax to hack to death his
sleeping colleague Gurgen Markarian, 26, of Armenia, in the dormitory
of Miklos Zrinyi National Defence University, where both of them were
attending a three-month English-language course.
Safarov, who showed no repentance in court, said the murder had been
a revenge for a 1992 Armenian assault of Azerbaijanis in the
Nagorno-Karabakh region, which he witnessed as a child. The
Azerbaijani officer said that the Armenians he had met in the
dormitory “were smiling mockingly and were behaving the way members
of a victorious army usually behave towards the defeated.”
Safarov was charged with premeditated murder carried out with unusual
cruelty and vicious motives and sentenced to life in prison without
any chance of parole.
Safarov’s lawyer said they would immediately appeal the verdict.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 13, 2006 Thursday 01:06 PM EST
OSCE Minsk group to suggest more ideas for Karabakh settlmnt
by Tigran Liloyan
The Minsk group of the OSCE on Nagorno-Karabakh will suggest to
Armenia and Azerbaijan more ideas for the settlement of the Karabakh
conflict, Bernard Fassier, the co-chairman of the MInsk group from
France, said in Yerevan on Thursday. He said these ideas would enrich
and develop the principles of peace settlement.
Fassier said the Minsk group of the OSCE with three co-chairmen –
from Russia, France and United States – would remain the format of
the talks on Nagorno- Karabakh. Despite the setback at Rambouillet,
the negotiating process goes on, and the co-chairmen act in
coordination, Fassier said.
“The three countries- co-chairmen of the Minsk group on
Nagorno-Karabakh are convinced that there is no alternative to peace,
and continue to say so,” he noted. “War cannot be a way to settle
the conflict,” he said.
The co-chairman from France said the demands of all the parties
involved cannot be fully met in settling the conflict. Compromise
usually means meeting the demands of each party 50 percent. If we
meet their demands 80 percent, this will be absolutely fantastic
success, Fassier said.

Agence France Presse — English
April 15, 2006 Saturday 2:00 PM GMT
Greek-Armenians stage anti-Turk march over WWI massacre
ATHENS, April 15 2006
Around 300 Greeks of Armenian descent marched on the Turkish embassy
in Athens on Saturday to mark the 91st anniversary of massacres
allegedly committed against their kin by the Ottoman Empire during
World War I.
Waving Armenian flags and chanting anti-Turkish slogans, the marchers
sent a delegation to deliver a message of protest to the Turkish
ambassador but were denied access to the embassy, organisers said.
The message warned Ankara that “the gates of Europe, which it so
greatly desires to cross, will remain closed” if it continues to
refuse to recognise the 1915-17 massacre.
Turkey is seeking to join the European Union, of which Greece is a
member.
The peaceful demonstration, which included both toddlers and elderly
people, momentarily soured when a group of protestors started burning
a Turkish flag. That prompted riot police guarding the embassy to
intervene with truncheons.
The marchers later dispersed without further incident.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen were slaughtered in
an orchestrated genocide in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
Ankara denies the attacks amounted to genocide but the Armenian view
has been endorsed by countries such as Greece, France and Russia.
These three countries recognise April 24 as a day of rememberance for
the Armenian genocide, as does the European Parliament — the EU’s
direclty-elected assembly — and the United Nations Sub-Commission on
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Turkey categorically rejects claims of genocide. It argues that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when Armenians began fighting for independence in eastern Anatolia
and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Azeri officer’s extradition impossible – Armenian lawyer
Arminfo
15 Apr 06
Yerevan, 15 April: The sentence handed down by the Hungarian court on
[Azerbaijani officer] Ramil Safarov is the triumph of justice, lawyer
Nazeli Vardanyan has told our correspondent.
On 13 April the Hungarian court sentenced Safarov to life imprisonment
without the right to amnesty for 30 years. Safarov hacked to death his
Armenian counterpart Gurgen Markaryan in Budapest on 19 February
[2004] and tried to kill another Armenian officer Ayk
Makuchyan. Lawyer Vardanyan represented the interests of Markaryan’s
family in the trial.
Commenting on the fuss raised after the sentence in some circles of
Azerbaijani society and the promises that Safarov will be extradited
to Azerbaijan soon, Vardanyan said that extradition at the current
stage is impossible. She pointed out that fine-sounding statements by
Azerbaijani politicians and officials are connected with the fact that
the Azerbaijani side realizes that they failed the case and is doing
its best to keep up morale in society.
Moreover, the current situation is a continuation of the policy of
misinformation chosen by the Azerbaijani side. Throughout the trial,
Azerbaijan deceived its own people for propaganda purposes. For this
purpose, they distorted the words of the prosecutor, saying that he
had allegedly demanded not life imprisonment, but 30 years for
Safarov. They hoped that the verdict would be softer and that they
would get away with lies, Vardanyan said.

Power plant deal aimed at supporting Armenian authorities – politician
Arminfo
14 Apr 06
Yerevan, 14 April: “The so-called strategic partnership between
Armenia and Russia resembles the Soviet Union’s support for African
regimes,” the leader of the opposition National Democratic Union
[NDU], Vazgen Manukyan, said at the Zerkalo discussion club today.
He said that the money Armenia will receive from the sale of the fifth
unit of the Razdan thermal power plant will not reach ordinary
citizens and as a whole, the deal is totally aimed at supporting the
current authorities. The NDU leader gave a similar assessment to the
US Millennium Challenge Corporation as well. The corporation has
decided to allocate 235m dollars in the next few years on condition
that democratic reforms are carried out.
Manukyan said that this loan will only strengthen “the positions of
anti-democratic forces in the country”. “If the corporation suspends
the financing when elections are rigged, responsibility for that will
be placed on the opposition which will try to expose ballot-rigging,”
he said.
Asked by journalists whether the loan of the American corporation and
the commitments of Russia’s Gazprom to Armenia can be assessed as the
superpowers’ support for candidates to supreme power – Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan and Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan,
Manukyan said that such a version has the right to exist.
His opponent, the former prime minister and leader of the Christian
Democratic Union, Khosrov Arutyunyan, said that “he is not going to
comment on old wives’ tales”.

Armenian opposition official criticizes handover of power plant to Russia
Arminfo
14 Apr 06
Yerevan, 14 April: At a briefing in the parliament today, the
secretary of the opposition Justice bloc, Viktor Dallakyan, sharply
criticized the sale of the fifth unit of the Razdan thermal power
plant to Russia’s Gazprom as compensation for softening the
consequences of the rise in Russian gas prices.
Dallakyan said that Iran had offered a more advantageous option for
investing in the fifth unit of the Razdan power plant. Iran offered
Armenia a 150m-dollar loan for completing the unit and 90m dollars for
building a high voltage line and would be obliged to buy electricity
generated by the power plant. As a result of this deal, Armenia would
have made a profit of 100m dollars per year. Most importantly, the
unit would have remained Armenia’s property. However, Armenia refused
to accept such a profitable deal in favour of Russian interests.
“The Armenian authorities signed an absolutely unfavourable deal with
Russia, under which Armenia will get only 250m dollars and lose
ownership rights to the unit. Russia aims to make Armenia
dependant. And this is not only against Armenia’s energy security but
also its national security,” Dallakyan said.