Football UEFA CUP
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Jul 27, 2006
First qualifying round, second leg
Banants Yerevan v Ameri Tbilisi (3.0)
CSKA Sofia v Dinamo Tirana (6.0)
Derry City v IFK Goteborg (7.30)
Dinamo Bucuresti v Hibernians (7.0)
Dinamo Minsk v Zaglebie Lubin (4.30)
Domzale v Orasje (7.15)
Drogheda Utd v HJK Helsinki
Etzella Ettelbruck v Atvidabergs FF (5.0)
FBK Kaunas v Portadown (6.0)
FC Haka v Levadia Tallinn (5.0)
FC Nistru Otaci v BATE (5.0)
FC Spartak Trnava v Karvan Evlakh (6.0)
FC Vaduz v Ujpesti (6.30)
FK Suduva v Rhyl (4.0)
Flora Tallinn v Lyn Oslo (4.45)
GI Gota v FK Ventspils (6.0)
IA Akranes v Randers FC (7.0)
IK Start v Skala (6.0)
Kairat Almaty v Videoton FC Fehervar (2.30)
Karabakh Azersun v CSF Zimbru (4.0)
Liteks Lovetch v Koper (6.45)
Llanelli v Gefle IF (7.30)
Makedonija Gj. P v Lokomotiv Sofia (6.30)
Murata v Apoel Nicosia (8.0)
Omonia Nicosia v Rijeka (6.0)
Ranger’s Venecia v FK Sarajevo (5.0)
Roeselare v Vardar (7.0)
SK Brann v Glentoran (6.30)
SK Tirana v Varteks (4.0)
Skonto Riga v Jeunesse Esch (4.0)
Sliema Wanderers v Rapid Bucuresti (5.0)
Tobol Kostanay v Basle (2.0)
Valur Reykjavik v Brondby
WIT Georgia Tbilisi v Artmedia Bratislava (3.0)
Young Boys v Mika Ashtarak (6.30)

David Simonyan: Surrender of territories to Azerbaijan: strategic consequences
for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh
Permanent news address:
13:32 27.07.2006
REGNUM publishes the article of security expert David Simonyan
(Yerevan), which reflects his vision of the future of the Karabakh
conflict. The article is published in the author’s wording.
In the light of the continuing discourse on how to preserve the
“favorable window of opportunities” in the Karabakh peace process,
people in Armenia keep actively talking about the settlement
principles that have reportedly been presented to the Armenian
and Azeri presidents for discussion and possible signing. These
principles stipulate that Armenian troops be withdrawn from the
liberated territories and the territories, except for the Lachin
corridor, be given back to Azerbaijan.
The article is about the importance the liberated territory has for
ensuring the key element of Armenia’s national security – its military
component. When speaking about Armenia, you should keep in mind two
states, the Republic of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
(NKR), who are fully integrated in military and economic terms. As
you may know, military security is a condition of a state that allows
it to exclude any damage to its vital interests that can be caused
by threat or practical armed violence.
The given analysis is based on an axiom that is generally accepted
among experts: for ensuring national security one should be ready
for the worst scenario. And now, let’s more thoroughly consider the
significance the liberated territory has for ensuring the military
security of Armenia (RA and NKR).
The military conflict of 1991-1994 has improved the quality of the
following elements of the military-strategic position of the Armenian
states:
1. Frontline configuration
The present configuration of the frontline is optimal for the
Armenian side. The southern flank of the Artsakh front is shielded
by the Iranian border, the northern flank – by the hard-to-access
Mrav mountain range. In the east – from the mountains of Mrav to the
river Arax – the Armenian side has a well-fortified multi-echelon
defense line.
Should the Armenian side give back the territories of six districts
and keep only Lachin, the total frontline of the two Armenian states
with Azerbaijan, including Nakhichevan, will get 450 km longer to 1,100
km. The frontline between Artsakh and Azerbaijan will lengthen by 150
km to 360 km. For you to have the full picture of how long a border
Armenia will have with its conflicting neighbors, we should remind
you that Armenia also has a poorly protected 268 km border with Turkey.
In order to effectively fortify the extended frontline the Armenian
side will have to mobilize substantial human and financial resources.
First, the Armenian side will have to increase its army personnel (the
Armed Forces of Armenia and the Defense Army of Artsakh (Karabakh))
and, therefore, to prolong the compulsory service term for privates
and to enroll contract officers.
Second, after withdrawing troops, the Armenian side will have to
undertake big expenses to create new defense lines. To carry out the
above measures, the Armenian side will have to augment its military
budget, but to do this, it will have to further curtail its scarce
social financing and to face the ensuing negative consequences.
2. Depth of defense
The liberated territories have allowed the Armenian side to ensure
the minimum defense depth and to solve several important strategic
problems:
First, the present depth of defense has allowed the Armenian side to
form a multi-echelon defense line. Should the first line be broken, the
Armenian side will be able to resist on the following ones and to keep
the enemy outside Artsakh until additional troops come from Armenia.
Second, the central densely-populated areas of Artsakh, including
its capital, Stepanakert, as well as the settlements of the Goris,
Kapan and Meghri districts of Armenia have become inaccessible for
shelling by Azeri artillery and multiple rocket launching systems
(BM-21 “Grad”).
Third, by liberating the Zangelan, Jebrail and Fizuli districts
and moving the frontline over 100 km eastward, the Armenian side
has liquidated the threat to the vulnerable, just 40 km wide Meghri
district of the Republic of Armenia.
If the six districts are given back to the enemy and the frontline is
moved back to the former administrative border of Nagorno-Karabakh
Autonomous Region, the Armenian side will lose the necessary depth
for effective defense and will face bigger difficulties in defending
Artsakh should a new war begin.
The new frontline will run just 5 km away from the district centers of
Mardakert, Askeran and Hadrut and 18 km away from Stepanakert. If the
Armenian side gives back the Karvachar (formerly Kelbajar) district
too, the Martakert district will get vulnerable to possible military
attacks from three sides.
Even fortified to the maximum, the new defense line will not be a
reliable guarantor of Artsakh’s military security. As we know from
military history, any well-fortified defense line (Mannerheim line,
Siegfried line, Bar-Lev line) can be broken by the attacker, and only
sufficient depth of defense can allow the defender to organize new
resistance lines and by wearing the enemy out to stop his attack. For
example, during the Yom Kippur War (1973), when the Egyptian troops
overran the 157.5 km long and 15 km deep Bar-Lev line in Sinai in just
six hours, it was exactly the depth of the line that allowed Israel
to stop the Egyptian troops, to prevent them from going deep into
its territory, to mobilize new forces and to turn around the situation.
Besides, if the border is moved, most of the settlements of Artsakh
and the Sunik region of Armenia, first of all, Stepanakert, Kapan and
Goris, will find themselves unprotected in the face of possible massive
shelling by the enemy. If a new war starts, a sudden massive bombing
of towns, district centers and villages by artillery and “Grads”
will cause big casualties among civilians and heavy in destruction
in Artsakh and Sunik. This may result in a mass exodus of people from
the area.
3. Military communications
Efficient military communications, well-trained and equipped mobile
troops, timely supply of arms, hardware, ammunition, fuel and other
stuff and quick evacuation are really crucial in modern war. For
the Armenian side, regular military communications would be really
indispensable, should the enemy get big superiority during the first
days of the war.
Let’s see in detail what military communications each side has:
Azerbaijan
The densely-populated areas of Azerbaijan are connected with the
Artsakh front by two railroads: Baku-Yevlakh and Baku-Horadiz station
and several motor roads: Baku-Shemakha-Yevlakh, Baku-Kurdamir-Yevlakh
and Baku-Birmai-Bailakan (Zhdanovsk) as well as belt road
Yevlakh-Barda-Agjabedy-Bailakan – quite a convenient road running
along the frontline. All running via steppe, these roads will allow
the enemy to quickly send mobilized troops to the Artsakh front and
to get multiple superiority in personnel and hardware before the
approach of the Armenian troops.
Artsakh
With the present frontline configuration, there are four motor roads
connecting Armenia with Artsakh and the frontline: Vardenis-Mardakert,
Goris-Stepanakert-Askeran-Agda m, Kapan-Zangelan-Jebrail and
Meghri-Mijavan-Horadiz. If the war resumes, these roads will allow
the Armenian sides to bring up quite big troops from Armenia to the
Artsakh front in just a few days.
So-called belt roads – communications running along the frontline
– are crucial for the frontline resistive capacity. They allow
to quickly redeploy troops to wherever there is a danger of
breach. At present the Artsakh Defense Army has two belt roads:
Mardakert-Agdam-Fizuli-Jebrail and the North-South highway project
to connect Mardakert-Stepanakert-Red Bazar-Hadrut.
If the six liberated districts are surrendered, the Armenian armed
forces will control only one belt road – Mardakert-Hadrut and
only one road connecting mainland Armenia with Sunik and Artsakh –
Yerevan-Goris-Stepanakert. This road runs through a highly mountainous
area with many passes.
If a new war starts, the Armenians will find it extremely difficult
to keep the narrow Lachin corridor from the enemy’s two-side strikes,
but even if they retain Lachin, the enemy will use its artillery and
aviation to make it as hard as possible for Armenia to quickly transfer
big military forces and material and medical assistance to Artsakh.
Meanwhile, the fate of Artsakh will depend exactly on how quickly
Armenia will supply it with troops as the Defense Army of Artsakh
may prove not strong enough to resist the onslaught of the greatly
prevalent enemy.
Thus, you clearly see that the liberated territory is extremely
important for keeping the military balance between the conflicting
sides, while its surrender by the Armenian side will break
it to Azerbaijan’s advantage and will strongly aggravate the
military-strategic situation of the Armenian states – something
neither peace agreements nor international peacekeepers will compensate
for. This is especially dangerous as Azerbaijan is heavily swelling its
military potential, particularly, by redoubling its military budget
in 2006 — from $300 mln to $600 mln – while Armenia will hardly be
able to keep pace in the coming years for the following reasons:
1. The state budget of Armenia is 3.5 times smaller than the state
budget of Azerbaijan ($1 bln against $3.5bln) and this gap will
continue to grow as Azerbaijan will increase its oil exports.
Meanwhile, Armenia’s economic potential will not allow this country
to allot as much money to the military as to keep the military parity
with Azerbaijan.
2. Armenia can no longer hope for the big free military hardware
supplies that it got from Russia in the mid 1990s and that helped it
to keep military balance with Azerbaijan for the last decade. The key
military partner of Armenia, Russia has begun to show more pragmatic
policy in the last years, with no political or economic preferences.
Hence, only by retaining the liberated territory, carrying out military
reforms and improving the state administration system as a whole will
the Armenian side be able to offset the growing military potential
of the enemy and, thereby, to keep the Azeri side from temptation to
resume military actions.
Given the continuing variance of the sides concerning the status of
Artsakh, any change in the present configuration of the contact line
will not stop the conflict but will simply create another, much more
conflict-prone situation in the sphere of security.
Should Azerbaijan, whose leadership keeps saying that it will never
put up with the loss of Karabakh, agree to sign peace agreements, but
will later prove not content with the return of just six districts
and will make up its mind to get back the whole Artsakh by war,
Armenia will get in a serious danger.
Turning to advantage the change in the military balance and the
consequent vulnerability of Artsakh’s whole defense system, Azerbaijan
may use some convenient political moment to launch a blitzkrieg attack
and to occupy Artsakh. In order to break the frontline, the Azeris
will quickly concentrate strongly prevalent forces for one main
blow – not a hard thing to do for them given the big quantitative
and technical prevalence of the Azeri Army over the Defense Army
of Artsakh and the facts that 70% of Azeri troops are deployed near
the frontline and that Azerbaijan has better capacities for quickly
deploying mobilized troops to the Artsakh front. The outcome of the
war will greatly depend on its very first days, particularly, on the
ability of the Defense Army of Artsakh to keep the frontline intact,
which may prove quite a hard job.
Armenia will have very limited capacities to help Artsakh: it will
not be able to use the vulnerable Lachin corridor for transferring
big military contingents. If the frontline is broken and the Armenian
troops fail to stop the enemy at Stepanakert, the Armenian side may
lose not only Artsakh but also Sunik. If Azerbaijan occupies Artsakh,
Turkey will certainly encourage it to try to make true the Pan-Turkic
dream: to seize the Meghri district, thereby, linking Azerbaijan with
Turkey and cutting Armenia from Iran. To this end, the enemy may strike
from two sides – from Zangelan and Nakhichevan. After losing Artsakh,
it will be extremely hard for the Armenian side to keep Meghri:
the district is very narrow and lacks the necessary defense depth,
while the motor roads connecting it with the rest of Armenia are
quite vulnerable.
The liquidation of Serbian Krajina in Croatia in 1995 is one example
of how real this scenario can be: Croatia broke earlier cease-fire
agreements, mobilized its armed forces and suddenly attacked
Serbian Krajina. In some few days they broke the frontline and
occupied the region. As a result, Serbian Krajina stopped to exist
and half million of Serbs were forced to leave their homeland and
become refugees. This tragedy happened in the center of Europe in
the presence of thousands-strong UN peacekeeping contingent and led
to no sanctions against the aggressor side.
Conclusions:
1. One of the key factors keeping the military balance between Armenia
and Artsakh, from the one side, and Azerbaijan, from the other, and
compensating for Azerbaijan’s personnel and hardware superiority and
capacity to increase its military potential is the present optimal
configuration of the Artsakh frontline.
2. The existing military balance rather than the cease-fire agreement
of 1994 is keeping Azerbaijan back from resuming large-scale military
actions.
3. By giving back any part of the liberated territory, the Armenian
side will give Azerbaijan a military advantage and will reduce its
own military security. This may inspire the enemy – should there be
convenient moment — to solve the Karabakh problem by war.
That’s why it is absolutely inadmissible to surrender the liberated
territory to the enemy.
4. Given the aggressive and genocide-prone Azeri-Turkish alliance,
with its overwhelming military prevalence and open desire to destroy
the Armenian statehood, the key security guarantee for Armenia and
Artsakh must be the Armenian Army and the present territory of the
Armenian states (42,000 sq. km.)
© 1999-2006 REGNUM News Agency
–Boundary_(ID_CTAZ1u/4WiiwQtjC9sWuIg)–

Not Islamic Fascism But Something More Sinister
American Daily, OH
July 27 2006
By Bruce Walker on Jul 27, 2006
Good people – good conservative people grappling for a way to describe
the current world war between good and evil – have latched onto the
term Islamic Fascism to describe the dangerous lying sadism stalking
the planet today. The reasoning behind using that term goes something
like this. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the current Baathist thugs
ruling Damascus, the former Baathist thugs ruling Baghdad and the
current brutal mullahs of Teheran are Moslems, so the threat is
Islam. The monsters trying all over the world to terrorize humanity
into surrendering to evil are Fascists because, well, because that
is the only politically correct term used today to describe evil
totalitarianism. Unfortunately, both words in the term Islamic Fascism
are not only wrong, but each creates more problems than it solves.
Islam has sometimes been a force against evil. Afghan Moslems resisted
the invading armies of the Soviet Union almost single-handedly
for ten years. These fearless warriors were a critical element in
bringing down the Evil Empire. How did America defeat the Taliban
in Afghanistan? American special forces fought side by side with
devout and brave Moslems of the Northern Alliance. The Shah of Iran
used modernized Islam to improve life in his nation, before he was
overthrown and replaced by the current evil mullahs. During the
Second World War, it was the Arab Legion of Amir Abdullah which
provided critical military support in defeating the pro-Axis Vichy
forces in Syria and then the pro-Nazi Iraqi forces; Abdullah was not
just a good Moslem, but a descendent of Mohammed.
Islam is not a “religion of peace” – some of the critiques of Islam
are probably long overdue – but Islam is also not a “religion of
evil.” Islam does not work as well as the Judeo-Christian faith, but
nothing works as well as the Judeo-Christian faith. Suicide bombers
are nothing new: remember Kamikaze pilots in the Second World War?
Evil, not Islam, is the problem.
Many evil regimes in the world are hostile to Islam. Kim Jong Il,
ruler of North Korea, times his saber rattling to distract America
in the Middle East and Near Asia and supplies Iran with weapons and
support. His tortured, tiny empire always sides with these so-called
Islamic Fascists against America and Israel. China cynically plots
to weaken America for the next hot war, using Moslems as pawns in a
grand chess game.
Castro and Hugo Chavez support terrorism in the Middle East and Near
Asia. In June 2006, Hugo Chavez visited Iran, Syria, China and North
Korea to show solidarity with these enemies of America and Israel.
Cuba is the nation most hostile to Israel in the entire Western
Hemisphere and it is one of only seven regimes formally classified by
the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. Latin America
is brimming with terrorism that threatens us, and which we ignore at
our peril.
Are these threats Islamic? Kim Jong Il is not Moslem nor are the
rulers in Peking. Kim Jong Il has converted Marxism into a sort of
“man-god” theology, with his father, the “Great Leader,” and him as
the “Dear Leader,” made divine, but this bears no resemblance at all
to Islam. The Chinese have, in fact, a “Moslem problem” and are more
apt to be suppressing Moslems simply for being Moslems than almost
any other nation on Earth (except, perhaps, North Korea.) Castro is
a militant atheist, not a Moslem at all. Hugo Chavez is nominally a
Catholic (although the Catholic Church has been one of the fiercest
opponents of his Marxist regime in Venezuela.) The terrorists in
Columbia and Peru are not inspired by the Koran. How, then, could
any of these be characterized as “Islamic” anything? They cannot,
of course.
Today there is serious talk by serious people that the real culprit is
anti-Semitism, and it undoubtedly true that anti-Semitism is raising
its ugly head again. But anti-Semitism as a horrible evil was present
in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union and even in Imperial Japan,
which had almost no Jews or Moslems. (Ironically, the only evil
totalitarians who were long strong opponents of anti-Semitism in
the last century were the Fascists, who were also long the strongest
opponents of the Nazis for many years.) It is not Islam, peculiarly,
that descends into anti-Semitism and its attendant evil, but all
forms of true evil inevitably become anti-Semitic.
What about those craven, corrupt apologists for global terrorism
who take their pot shots at America safely behind the lines of our
bloodied troops? Senator Patty Murray famously said after 9-11 that
Osama bin Ladin did much good, building hospitals and schools, and that
poverty drove people into al-Qaida (nonsense, of course.) Yet is Murray
Islamic? Hardly. What about Cindy Sheehan and Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney, slavish excusers of savage evil. Are they Moslems? No.
Jacques Chirac is a not Moslem. Vladimir Putin is not Moslem and he,
in fact, kills Moslems. Yet both presidents lean strongly toward the
side of evil in the global war today. These and other many other
supporters of evil obviously have a faith that transcends reason,
but it is often not the faith of Islam or faith in God of any sort.
Another problem with the Islamic part of Islamic Fascism is that
Arab totalitarianism has not always even been Moslem. Most people
recognize that the Baathist Party of Saddam Hussein is evil and so
would consider that Baathist Party as part of Islamic Fascism. Yet
the single good thing anyone can say about the Baathist Party of
Iraq is that it was not Islamic: it was, in fact, overtly secular;
the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq under Hussein was Tarik Aziz, a
Christian. Most people recognize that the Baathist Party of Assad in
Syria is also evil, and yet how many people know that the founder of
the Baathist Party itself, both the Syrian and the Iraqi branches,
was Michel Aflaq, a Christian? The Baathist Party was intended to
represent the forces of Arab nationalism, not Islam. Kemal Ataturk
and those others who murdered over one million Armenians in the first
holocaust of this century were militantly secular and scrupulously
exclude Islam from the Turkish Republic.
Christians and Jews can, and have, cast their lot with the worst forces
of evil in the world. Aside from the awful Christians, like Aziz,
there have been awful Jews. Lazar Kaganovich, the Heinrich Himmler of
the Gulag, was Jewish as was Genrich Yagoda, head of Stalin’s secret
police. Some of the most vicious foes of Israel today are Jews and
some of the most cynical apologists for evil in America have been
Jewish. Surrendering to evil is an individual decision and neither
Torah nor Christ can prevent people from choosing to be evil.
If Islamic is an inaccurate term to describe our current war on evil,
the Fascism is even less accurate. Fascism existed as a ruling regime
in precisely one country in human history, Fascist Italy, and although
it has come to be used as a generic curse for any movement on the
non-existent Far Right, any examination of the forces of evil show
that they are all on the very real Far Left.
Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez – all passionate supporters
of evil today – have done everything humanly possible to place
themselves as far to the Left as they can. China stubbornly holds on
to Marxism and Maoism as its formal political framework.
The motto of the Baathist Party is “Unity, Freedom, Socialism”
sounds remarkably like every Left-wing organization in the world. The
Baathist Party itself was relatively small until in 1952 it merged
with the Arab Socialist Party. The Baathists were the party within
Syria that favored close ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold
War. Ali Salih al-Sa’di, the practical leader of the Baathist Party
during much of the 1960s, declared himself a Marxist. General Afif
al-Bizri, the army chief of staff in Syria, was a Marxist. The Baathist
Party in Jordan never gained power, but it also worked closely with
the Communist Party in Jordan. Clearly this parent of two terrorist
nations – Syria and Iraq – and in other parts of Islam is not on the
nonexistent Far Right but rather on the very real Far Left (and allied
with atheistic Marxism.)
The strongest supporters in America of the global evil we face
are on the Far Left – Sheehan, Murray, McKinney as well as their
counterparts in the parliamentary democracies of other nations.
According to the politically correct ideological spectrum, which
places Fascism on the Far Right, this not only makes no sense but it
is flatly contradictory. Why is this so?
The Right – or rather, what has been called the Right or Far Right
– the group of people who embrace truth and decency and who do not
consider themselves anywhere on an invented political spectrum with
Fascism at one end and Marxism at the other end – there are the only
people fighting the common evil that we find in Hezbollah, Baathists,
al-Qaida, North Korea, Cuba, China and elsewhere. Fascism is the Far
Right according to the punditry of political science on our campuses
and in our media. So how can those who war on America, the nation
farthest to the Right on Earth, and Israel be Fascist? They cannot,
of course, any more than they can be Islamic or, even worse, Islamic
Fascist.
Is there a way to explain the vast evil that connects Kim Jong Il
to Cindy Sheehan to Osama bin Ladin to Jacques Chirac to the Shiite
mullahs of Iran? Yes, there is: I have written an entire book,
Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, which describes how evil
could come from a Baathist Party founded by a Christian Syrian and run
by an Iraqi Marxist, how evil could come from atheist Communists in
Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and China who openly side with that which
we have come to call Islamic Fascism, and how this evil is exactly
the same evil that was Hitler and Stalin: that evil is Sinisterism.
The salient characteristics of Sinisterism are an insatiable lust for
power and a willingness to do anything, especially deliberate lying,
to acquire or to maintain power. This one term describes the odd
continuum that travels from bin Ladin, laughing with his companions
at the gullibility of suicide pilots, to the pandemic dishonesty of
the American Left, to the absurd lies of North Korea and Iran.
Sinisterists hate Jews, Christians, Israel or America for being Jews,
Christians, Israel or America. Sinisterism explains why the Baathist
Party could be allies of Hitler and then allies of the Soviets,
why the man-god Kim Jong Il supports the mullahs of Iran, why the
atheist Castro trains Palestinian terrorists, and why the good guys –
conservatives in democracies, loyal citizens of Israel and serious
Jews and Christians – also find themselves on the same side, whatever
their other differences.
The enemy we are fighting today is not just like the enemy we fought
in the Second World War or the Cold War, the enemy we fight today is
the same enemy we fought in the Second World War and in the Cold War.
The common enemy of all decent people is Sinisterism. It seeks to
destroy all serious Christians, all the Jewish people, the State of
Israel and America. And then it seeks to plunge mankind into the sort
of dark, eternal nightmare which George Orwell described so well. Know
your enemy, and our enemy – as Christians, as Jews, as Americans or
as Israelis – is Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie.

Writer Magden Acquitted Under ‘Freedom of Expression’
Zaman, Turkey
July 27 2006
Journalist and writer Perihan Magden has been acquitted in the case
brought against her for allegedly discouraging people to perform
their military service.
The Istanbul 2nd Court of First Instance decided on Thursday to
acquit Magden in the case due to “a lack of legal grounds for the
crime in question.”
Writer Magden did not attend the final hearing of the trial. The
presiding judge declared that the actions of the writer constituted
criticism within the limits of freedom of expression.
A lawsuit had been filed against Perihan Magden for her criticism of
Turkey’s compulsory military service. Up to three years in prison had
been sought for Magden for the crimes of “prompting, encouraging or
spreading propaganda to deter people from performing their military
service.”
In a column she wrote in December 2005, Magden, 45, defended the
position of Mehmet Tarhan, who was in prison for refusing to do his
military service. In her article, she argued that conscientious
objection – for which there is no provision under Turkish law –
was a fundamental human right.
Speaking after the first hearing in early June, Ms Magden stated
that in her article she had only defended conscientious objection as
a human right – a right that is recognized by the United Nations and
other countries. She had added that she was surprised to find herself
in court, forced to defend herself for what she had written.
Under current Turkish law, all Turkish males have to complete a
military service of up to 15 months.
The European Union has repeatedly criticized Turkey for its lack of
progress under freedom of expression for writers and journalists.
Earlier this year, an Istanbul court dropped a case brought against
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk on charges of ‘insulting Turkishness’,
following remarks he had made concerning the killings of Armenians
during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
For further information please visit

South Ossetia Braced for Conflict
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
July 27, 2006
A summer full of fear and violence leaves South Ossetians expecting
the worst in the confrontation with Tbilisi.
By Irina Kelekhsayeva in Tskhinval
One of the points of tension in South Ossetia this July has been
the unofficial border-post between South Ossetia and Georgia near
the village of Ergneti. For several months now, the border has been
under the control of special units of the Georgian interior ministry
and military police. The Georgian troops are in uniform with black
masks hiding their faces.
For three weeks, a group of cars has been waiting at this post. Their
passengers are Russian, Armenian, and Lithuanian citizens of Armenian
origin – all of them wanting to travel to Armenia via South Ossetia,
after passing through North Ossetia and the Roki tunnel into the
unrecognised republic. They have about 20 children with them, who
cannot remember when they last took a bath or ate a proper meal.
Agaron Babaian, heading for Armenia from Volgograd, has been stuck here
for 19 days. He said that the only reason given to them for refusing
them onward passage is that “we’ve travelled through South Ossetia”.
The hot summer is proving full of tension for South Ossetia. Georgian
defence minister Irakli Okruashvili recently raised the temperature
when he said he hoped to celebrate next New Year in Tskhinvali (which
Ossetians call Tskhinval).
Georgia’s conflict resolution minister Giorgi Khaindrava, who was
responsible for dealing with South Ossetia, was sacked on July 21
after openly disagreeing with Okruashvili about the situation in the
troubled region.
South Ossetia has been outside Tbilisi’s since 1992 and has declared
independence. After years of relative peace, fighting broke out there
again in the summer of 2004 and dozens of people were killed.
This summer, tensions are running particularly high near the
Tamarasheni, an ethnic Georgian village inside South Ossetia. Most
residents of South Ossetia have Russian passports, which provides a
pretext for the Georgian policemen near Tamarasheni to harass them.
Dina Alborova, a human rights campaigner from South Ossetia,
experienced this at first hand.
“At the end of June, I was going back home to Tskhinval from a
trip abroad,” she said. “In Tamarasheni our car was stopped by two
Georgians, who asked us to show our passports. They looked through
our gear and started examining our documents. They had no military
insignia, and it was unclear which service they belonged to. Then
they started to demand an entrance visa to Georgia, although they
knew I lived in Tskhinval. They made fun of me, saying there was no
South Ossetia, there was only Georgia which I, a Russian citizen,
was trying to enter.”
A businesswoman from Tskhinval, Zalina Gabayeva, says that after she
showed her Russian passport at the same checkpoint, a uniformed man
threatened to tear it up or rub out everything that was written in it.
The situation first began to heat up more than a month ago, after a
Georgian police post was unexpectedly moved 400 metres nearer to the
village of Pris on June 14 and a brigade of Georgian interior ministry
special forces appeared in the village, frightening the locals.
Then, early on the morning of July 9 the secretary of South Ossetia’s
security council, Oleg Alborov, was killed by a remote-controlled
bomb as he was opening the doors of his garage.
The South Ossetian authorities accused the Georgian government of
plotting Alborov’s assassination – although some locals are inclined
to point to other causes, such as an incident in which Alborov shot
dead a teenager trying to highjack his car.
Five days later, another explosion targeted Bala Bestauty, a deputy
in the South Ossetian parliament and commander of a defence ministry
unit. The explosion killed two teenagers who were passing by, while
Bestauty himself escaped death.
Bestauty is a popular and respected figure in South Ossetia who took
part in the defence of the Pris Heights above Tskhinval in 2004,
so most people saw this as a purely politically motivated attack.
Predictions that war was about to break out became rife on July 13 and
14, when travellers on the Trans-Caucasian highway connecting South
Ossetia and Russia saw a military column of 300 military vehicles,
tanks and other military equipment moving towards the Roki Tunnel
from the North Ossetian side.
Three days passed before any information was made public, and it was
then announced that the armoured column was taking part in Russian
“military exercises” in the North Caucasus
On July 16, the parliament of Northern Ossetia, on the Russian side
of the border, passed a resolution promising to “provide any kind of
help to our brothers in South Ossetia if necessary”.
In its turn, the Georgian parliament passed a July 18 resolution
calling for the withdrawal of all Russian peacekeeping forces from
both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The sacking of Khaindrava on July 21 confirmed in the minds of many
that Georgia was preparing for war.
Boris Chochiev, South Ossetia’s chief negotiator in the talks with
Georgia, commented, “The ‘party of war’ in the Georgian leadership is
taking the lead. The resignation of Giorgi Khaindrava is a continuation
of the programme devised by defence minister Irakli Okruashvili and
it’s aimed at resolving the conflict by force.”
South Ossetian resident Yuri Dzidtsoity agrees. “I think war is a
real prospect,” he said. “A gun hanging on the wall in the first act
of a play is sure to go off in the second. If they hold exercises,
and build bases and morgues, then they have some intentions. Russia
taking its troops to the Roki Tunnel is no coincidence either. It’s
ludicrous to think that [the Georgians and Russians] will just exchange
fire and bypass our territory.”
South Ossetia is thus bracing itself for conflict. Men of all ages
have been receiving call-up papers and are preparing to be drafted
into armed militias.
Even patients at the Nadezhda addiction clinic are being drafted. The
director of the centre Lira Tskhovrebova said that two of her charges
had been called up and would have to cut short the treatment and go
for military drilling. Other South Ossetians say they are praying
they won’t be caught up in a new war.
According to teacher Esma Abayeva, “A war will begin only if their
[the Georgians’] heads stop working. Because that will be the end
of Georgia, as it is sure to lose the war. If a war does begin, I’m
not going anywhere. I was born here, I live here and I have to see
my people become free at last.”
Pensioner Vera Jagayeva said, “I don’t think there will be a war. I’m
sure of it, because Georgians know that they won’t win this war. This
is what all ordinary Georgians are sure of, too. If a war does start,
I will send my children away, but I won’t move a single step out of
here myself. I’m certain ordinary Georgians don’t want a war either.”
Irina Kelekhsayeva is a freelance journalist in Tskhinval, South
Ossetia.

Now Margaryan wants Court to block Inquiry
Capital FM, Kenya
July 27, 2006
By Rob Jillo/Maryanne Mbogo
Controversial Armenian Artur Margaryan has now gone to court seeking
to have the Kiruki Commission of Inquiry stopped from conducting
its proceedings.
Through lawyer Oscar Avedi, Margaryan complains that the Commission
has denied him legal representation despite being adversely mentioned
in the hearings.
He also wants the court to declare the previous proceedings null and
void and compel the commissioners to allow a lawyer to subsequently
represent him.
Constitutional judge Roslyne Wendoh has now directed his lawyer to
serve the commission with the suit papers so that the case can be
heard in the presence of all parties on Wednesday next week.
The Kiruki commission was appointed in June and had been expected to
conclude its sittings next week.
Meanwhile, police today came under sharp criticism for conducting
haphazard and unprofessional investigations into the Artur brothers.
Lawyer Jane Ondieki who is representing suspended CID director Joseph
Kamau accused the police of mishandling the items that were recovered
from the Armenians’ Runda Residence.
She questioned Head of the Special Crimes Prevention Unit Richard
Katola, why they did not secure the scenes from which evidence was
gathered as is required by procedure.
Ondieki: Were you wearing gloves when you opened these vehicles?
Katola: No, my Lords
Ondieki: Did you consider it necessary to have scenes of crime personel
dust these items for fingerprints before you trumpled all over them?
Katola: No
Earlier, Jiwan Yusuf whose company transported 2 containers to the
Kensington Holdings warehouse in Nairobi told the inquiry that he
has since been unable to trace the people who hired him to do the job.
“After transporting he told me to wait for the payment. But after a
month, I went to the office and found no office, they had relocated,”
he said.
Hearing continues.

They’re safe and sound
THE 69 Fairfield residents who were stranded in Beirut have been
returned safe and sound, to the delight of their family and friends.
The Hamazkaine Sevan dance group members landed in Sydney on Thursday
night and Bossley Park resident Tatiana Arabian, whose daughter Rose,
16, and son Sion, 15, were with the group, said they received a warm
welcome home.
“Someone said ‘Tatiana, just look behind you’,” she said. “I did and
they were all just standing there looking at us.
“Then everyone was running, and everyone was hugging, and everyone
was crying and kissing.
“It’s like, when you want something so bad, when you finally get it
you don’t know if it’s real or not.”
The group had been in Lebanon on the last stop of a tour, which
included Armenia and Syria, when Israel launched its offensive against
Hezbollah militants in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli
soldiers.
They were evacuated from the war-torn city to Jordan by bus, then
flown home to Sydney.
“My son is sleeping on the couch and I was watching him from the door
and my husband asked what I was doing,” Ms Arabian said.
“I said, look at him, he’s here, just look.
“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
“Even people I don’t know very well are calling to wish us well.
“It’s amazing because at the end you feel like we’re all human and
we’re all thinking about each other and we’re all taking care of
each other.”
For her part, Rose said she was relieved to be back in Australia.
“We could hear the bombs, but we were fairly safe most of the time,”
she said.
“The day we left though, we were sitting in the bus waiting to go
and one fell so close that a piece of debris fell next to us.
“That was really frightening, just waiting to leave and wanting to
be home and safe.”
Rose said flying into Sydney was a special experience.
“That was the best feeling,” she said.
“Seeing the city and the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.
“To be back in our own country, our own city was great.
“We’re the lucky ones, we were just visiting.
“It’s the people who live there that are having the hardest time.”

Human error to blame for May 3 Black Sea air crash
RIA Novosti, Russia
July 26, 2006
YEREVAN, July 26 (RIA Novosti) – Human error caused a crash of an
Armenian Airbus into the Black Sea on May 3, Russian Transportation
Minister Igor Levitin said Wednesday.
The A-320 Airbus, operated by the Armavia Airline, came down in stormy
weather off Russia’s Black Sea coast May 3 with the loss of all 113
passengers and crew on board.
“The human factor in bad weather played a role,” the minister said.
Members of the Interstate Aviation Committee came to this conclusion
on the results of the investigation of the Armenian liner’s crash.
Investigators said the liner stopped descending at a height of 340
meters and started turning to the right with a simultaneous climb.
The pilot then turned off the automatic pilot system and started
landing the liner even though he had totally lost control over the
parameters need for landing, the committee said.
The crash investigators said further actions by the crew were
uncoordinated but there had been no engine failure or fuel shortage.

Government urged to conform to European Court’s rulings on Freedom of expression
Turkey26 July 2006
As Turkey often violates freedom of expression, Reporters Without
Borders today hailed yesterday’s ruling by the European Court of
Human Rights that it breached article 10 of the European Convention
on Human Rights, concerning free expression, by prosecuting the editor
and owner of a pro-Kurdish daily.
The court ruled that Turkey should not have convicted the journalists
for an article in 2000 about the trial of Abdullah Ocalan, leader
of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK-Kongral Gel), or for
publishing a letter he wrote, as they “did not exhort the use of
violence or incite armed resistance or rebellion,”
Reporters Without Borders said: “The court’s decision highlights
the difficulties journalists face in Turkey. They cannot discuss the
Kurdish issue freely without being accused of collaborating with the
PKK-Kongral Gel armed separatists. The Turkish government does not
tolerate criticism and has just adopted a new anti-terrorism law that
will considerably broaden the sanctions against the press.”
The organisation added: “Turkey must find a compromise between its
security concerns and the need to respect press freedom by referring
to European Court of Human Rights case law.”
The two journalists are Cihan Capan, the editor of the pro-Kurdish
daily Ozgur Bakis, and Halis Dogan, its owner. Both were fined in
2000. Capan also received a 13-month prison sentenced which he has
never served. Several issues of the newspaper were seized in the
course of 2000 and the newspaper was also ordered to pay heavy fines
under different laws including the anti-terrorism law.
The European Court of Human Rights yesterday ordered Turkey to pay
Capan and Dogan 5,000 and 7,000 euros respectively in compensation.
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press
freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections
(Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden
and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New
York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents
worldwide.
© Reporters Without Borders 2006
–Boundary_(ID_C4lgdALiMWzKIX/rxZV3vQ)–

Armenian Organization Call Armenia to Accept OSCE Minsk Group Proposal
Baku Today, Azerbaijan
July 27, 2006
Frame document for settlement the Karabakh conflict published by the
OSCE Minsk Group’s cochairmen is the end of the mislead the Armenian
and Azerbaijani people by their presidents, reads the statement of
the Armenian Common National Movement (ACNM).
These principles once again prove that stage by stage settlement of
the conflict on which ACNM insisted does not have alternative.
Armenia’s uncertain position in the negotiation process testifies
Yerevan’s willingness to postpone settlement of conflict, what isolated
Armenia from participation in regional political and economic programs,
the statement reads.
Variants of the conflict’s settlement proposed today run counter
Armenia’s interest more than it was eight years ago, statement’s
authors consider. They are sure that documents, which will be
submitted later, will less and less meet Armenia’s interests. Taking
into account geopolitical and economic processes, and perspectives
of further development of situation, Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh
must accept the Minsk Group’s proposals, because fair resolution of
the conflict will provide security guarantees for Karabakh’s people,
and allow them to carry out state building at their discretion.