HUMANITARIAN PROGRAM TO BE IMPLEMENTED IN ARTSAKH ON THE INITIATIVE OF BARONESS COX
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
July 27, 2006
Vice-speaker of the House of Lords of the UK Parliament Baroness Cox
will visit Artsakh, this time with a new humanitarian program.
Her partners are a representative of The Children’s Hospital Trust Fund
Daniel Liles, the responsible of the Birth Links Company Cathy Malone,
who will render humanitarian and technical aid to the Center of the
Newborns’ Reanimation that will be opened in Stepanakert within the
program’s frames. The Center being opened in Artsakh will become a
branch of the Center of the University Hospital N 3 in Yerevan.
Baroness Cox informed that a representative of Birth Links Company
Cathy Malone had been to Karabakh six years before and was implementing
various programs there at present. “My goal is to bring to Armenia and
Karabakh as many people as possible, as they will tell the truth about
the Armenians and Karabakh in the future”, Caroline Cox underscored,
Noyan Tapan reports.

Summer reading blowout
Hour.ca, Canada
July 27, 2006
Brett Hooton and MJ Stone
After Pride, you’ll need some recuperation time! Make the most of
summer’s potential for relaxation by picking your favourite park
bench, poolside, beach or hammock and curling up with one – or five –
of these summer reading critics’ picks.
[parts omitted]
Sosi By Linda Ghan (Signature Editions), 222 pp.
Okay, it’s not exactly the lightest of summertime books, but Sosi is
worth the serious effort. Marked forever by the loss of her Armenian
mother and Turkish father, Sosi is raised by Jewish relatives. Events
in Turkey inspire Sosi, who’s haunted by the Armenian genocide,
to flee to Jerusalem with her family. There she falls in love with
a young photographer named Ara and begins to think she’s finally
putting her past behind her. But when Ara disappears under mysterious
circumstances, Sosi seeks sanctuary in Montreal, fuelling her sorrow
with gin and jazz until fate finally provides her with an opportunity
to heal. (MJS)
cle=9847

Pilot Error Blamed In Armavia A320 Accident
Aero-News Network, FL
July 27, 2006
Russian investigators say it was pilot error that caused the crash
of an Armavia Airlines Airbus A320 back in May… killing all 113
people on board the plane.
As Aero-News reported, the accident happened during foul weather as
the Armenian aircraft was on approach to the airport in Sochi… a
Russian seaside resort.
A spokeswoman for the civil aviation authority that links Russia with
eleven of its former republics says a terrain avoidance alarm sounded
in the cockpit shortly before the crash… but the crew was unable
to add power and pull up in time to avoid crashing into the Black Sea.
Of the 113 people on board that flight… 26 were Russian citizens.
Their families will receive about $3,800 from the state… on top of
the $8,900 already paid out by the airline.

Crew blamed for Armenian air crash
Western Mail, UK
July 27, 2006, Thursday
First Edition
RUSSIAN air safety officials said the crash of a commercial airline
in May that killed 113 people was due to pilot error.
The pilots of the Airbus-320 operated by Armenia’s Armavia airline
allowed the plane to descend too low as it faced bad weather on its
approach to the airport outside the Russian resort town of Sochi.
Tatyana Anodina, the head of the region’s civil aviation agency,
said an automated system warned the two pilots that the plane was
flying dangerously low, but that a last-ditch effort to gain altitude
failed to head off the crash into the Black Sea.
‘The human factor in bad weather played a role,’ Russian Transport
Minister Igor Levitin said. Most of the victims were Armenian, but
there were also 26 Russian citizens.

WORLD BANK CITES WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION IN ARMENIA
AssA-Irada, Azerbaijan
July 26, 2006 Wednesday
Corruption and bribery in Armenia has increased compared to previous
years, the World Bank said in a recent report. A survey conducted
among representatives of numerous private companies of the country
suggests that Armenian companies continued to give bribes last year,
the WB Yerevan office said. Armenian customs and taxation bodies
are the most corrupt, as businesspeople and potential investors
continue to face serious problems in this area and are regularly
prompted to give bribes, according to the study. Corruption is also
ingrained in the judiciary field, although its levels remain unchanged
compared to 2002, the WB said. The World Bank experts indicated that
corruption poses serious risks to business in Armenia, Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan. The reforms in Armenia, Russia and Albania carried
out in 2002-2005 to solve the problem were very slow. The cases of
corruption are widespread in the registration of companies in Armenia,
Russia and Moldova, the report said. The WB research of this kind is
conducted in 26 countries and Turkey three times a year.
From: Baghdasarian

Elmar Mammadyarov: “We are rather speaking of a poll”
Today, Azerbaijan
July 27, 2006
Elmar Mammadyarov comments the Minsk Group member countries’ positions.
Basic elements suggested by the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs and
discussed during the last negotiations “are acceptable if the basics’
essence is preserved that the conflict should be resolved gradually,
based on the principles and norms of international law,” Day.Az quotes
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov to comment
on the Minsk group member countries’ positions.
According to Mammadyarov, the international community has a clear
understanding that “when we speak of international law, the factor
of territorial integrity is primary,” whereas “the self-determination
principle does not imply breaking territorial integrity.” He brought
in this regard a number of examples of state structures where
nations determine themselves in the framework of states’ territorial
integrity. “I have continually spoken out of the examples of Tatarstan,
Bashkiria; there is Trieste and other instances,” Mammadyarov said.
As regards the acceptability of the Trieste model in solving the
Nagorno Karabakh issue, Mammadyarov was told that the model presumes
the existence of many elements that had been at some points offered to
the official Baku and were rejected, particularly, the availability
of an autonomy’s own army, state symbols, passports, currency,
etc. Azerbaijani minister said that there is a huge difference between
the Trieste in 1950s and in the 21st century.
Mammadyarov said that “thanks to the economic development and
normalization of the everyday life, the Trieste society starts to
react differently to sensitive issues. In this context, the problem
of Nagorno Karabakh was perhaps a problem of the Soviet totalitarian
regime under which all the population of the Soviet Union was in a
grave state.”
Mammadyarov says that in this context, taking into account Azerbaijan’s
building a law-abiding society, democracy, and market economy, the
situation changes drastically, therefore, one should look at the
prospect. On the first stage, it is necessary, of course, to solve
the issue of displaced persons, for the problem is serious enough,
as well as issues of security, economy, and communications.
Azerbaijan, co-chair countries, and EU member countries “explain
to the Armenian side that prolonging the destructive policy in the
region will make it difficult for them to expect a lively development
in the future.” “If they in Armenia think that they will be able
to preserve control over the occupied territories, this, I suppose,
would be equal to a suicide,” Mammadyarov claimed.
“We will persist in continuing our policy of developing Azerbaijani
economic and political systems, all its institutions, including
military ones,” Mammadyarov says. “To move forward, one needs to
understand the situation in the region, which will come at some point.”
Speaking of the possibility of holding in Nagorno Karabakh referendum
on its status, the minister said: “We are rather speaking of a poll.”
He specified that “this will become possible after the life of both
Azerbaijani and Armenian communities is normalized in Nagorno Karabakh
itself, after the Azerbaijani displaced persons have returned.”
What questions are to be asked in the poll, is, in his words, still a
matter of negotiations, “for if a question posed disputes territorial
integrity, the question can only be solved based on the Constitution
of Azerbaijan.”
Touching upon the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry position on journalists’
visits to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, the minister said; “Considering
that Nagorno Karabakh is an inseparable part of Azerbaijan, I do
not see a problem in the country’s representatives’ visiting the
region. But naturally, this depends on the level of cooperation. If
a need arises for citizens to visit journalists, NGO workers, even
official representatives we have no objection to it.”
“I think we have to overcome the barrier of hatred that exists between
Azerbaijan and Armenia on some issues. We are neighbors, and we will
have to deal with each other,” Elmar Mammadyarov concluded.
/Regnum/
URL:

The turbulent march of history past Beirut woman’s window
Agence France Presse — English
July 27, 2006 Thursday 6:48 AM GMT
By Haro Chakmakjian
>From the evacuation of Yasser Arafat in 1982 to the current foreign
exodus, Makrouhie Yerganian has seen the troubled history of Lebanon
unscroll in front of her eyes at her vantage point in front of Beirut
port.
Just last week, two truck drivers having coffee were killed when
their parked and apparently empty vehicles were blown apart in an
Israeli air strike on the edge of the port, just 50 metres (yards)
away from her modest home in a three-storey apartment block.
“It was a very strange noise that rattled our nerves. We thought we
had heard all sorts of explosions but this was something new even for
us,” says the Lebanese Armenian schoolteacher who has lived in the
Mar Mikhael area for more than half a century.
Her 85-year-old mother was just about to water the flowers on the
window ledge, until Yerganian changed her mind. Many of the windows
in her building were shattered, but the women escaped unharmed from
Israel’s latest salvo in its war on Hezbollah.
“I believe it is written on your forehead. If it is written, you can
die wherever you are. But that day, the Lord protected us,” says the
60-year-old woman from her sitting room where sheets cover the
furniture, as the shutters slam from the sea breeze.
A vivid memory still stencilled into her head came in 1976 when
militiamen massacred Shiites, Druze and Palestinian refugees in the
nearby Karantina camp, now closed.
“A boy whose voice had not even broken kept pleading: ‘Don’t kill
me’. They dragged him off to the corner of the street and shot him,”
she says. “I can still hear his voice in my head, begging for his
life, as they dragged him off.”
Two years later, in another of the multiple wars within a war which
devastated Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, the Phalange, a Christian
militia, battled Syrian forces.
“The Syrians were parked right in front of our windows, and the
Phalange behind. They started fighting and we were caught bang in the
middle,” she says.
During the brief deployment of the Multinational Forces sent to
oversee the Palestinian evacuation after Israel’s invasion and
supposedly to protect the refugees, they had new neighbours in the
shape of American, French and Italian troops.
“They were all clean, except the Israelis. The Americans and the
others used metal shacks and they would burn their waste,” she says.
“We would be hanging the washing and they (Israeli troops) would be
doing their dirty business or relieving themselves in full public
view. We had to move away for a while,” says a grimacing Yerganian.
“The Italians were friendly and we even learnt a few words of
Italian. The Americans and the French would hand out chocolates to
the neighbourhood kids,” she says. “People would come from far to see
them from our house. We had a lot of guests in those days.”
But things went sour yet again. President-elect Bashir Gemayel was
assassinated and “the radios tried to reassure the people by saying
he had survived the bomb blast”, Makrouhie recalls.
“At midnight, we heard the marching of boots. We looked out of the
window and saw the Jewish soldiers heading toward west Beirut”, on
the eve of the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatila by Phalangist militiamen.
Before the massacres, French soldiers had been posted with huge guns
on the rooftops, including Yerganian’s, to protect the evacuation of
late Palestinian leader Arafat and his PLO fighters in 1982.
In 1984, west Beirut fell to Muslim militias and the US and European
troops withdrew through the port after their barracks were blown up
by suicide bombers at a cost of some 300 lives.
The Lebanese army posted heavy artillery outside the house to bombard
the mostly Muslim western sector, opening up with 55-mm rounds that
rocked the building to its very foundations.
“I was going mad, with pillows on each ear to muffle the horrific
noise. I was going to go out and tell them to stop, please, please.
My mother told me: ‘Don’t worry, this will pass too’,” says
Yerganian.
Despite everything, “I love Lebanon. I was born here and this is my
country. Anything that happens to our poor Lebanon, it breaks our
heart.
“We were so happy seeing the new bridges and the revival of the
downtown thanks to Hariri after the civil war, but they won’t allow
us to have any joy,” she says, referring to the 2005 murder of former
premier and architect of Lebanon’s revival, Rafiq Hariri.
While the tens of thousands of foreigners were fleeing the Israeli
air strikes across from her window, “at least we had hopes for a
little calm in our area. But after the last US evacuations (on
Wednesday), we fear the worst for Lebanon”, she says.

AKP releases booklet to tout its EU efforts
The New Anatolian, Turkey
July 27 2006
The ruling party, which pledged to make Turkey a member of the European
Union when it assumed power in 2002, yesterday published a booklet in a
move to further inform the public about the body and tout EU accession.
The booklet — “The EU in 100 questions” — was prepared by the AK
Party’s Foreign Relations Department and reportedly aims to introduce
Turkey’s EU accession process to the public.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, emphasizing a rising need for
a unification of countries to ensure peace, touted his party in the
booklet’s preface for its sincere efforts to become a member state.
Erdogan also reaffirmed that Turkey has always aspired to full
membership of the EU.
In the booklet, answering 100 questions about the foundation of the
EU, its history and administration, Turkey’s “red lines” are listed
in broad detail.
The booklet underlined that Turkey can’t recognize the Greek Cypriot
administration as the “Republic of Cyprus” and added that such
political recognition will only be possible after a comprehensive
and durable settlement to the problems on the divided island.
It also ruled out the possibility of the so-called Armenian genocide
claims becoming a pre-condition in the negotiations process.
Opening Turkey’s territorial integrity for discussion is also a no go
area, the booklet stressed. It also stated that any attempt to force
the government to accept “privileged partnership” status instead of
full membership would be unacceptable.
The booklet underscored how difficult the negotiations process can
be, saying that agriculture and the environment will be the two most
difficult topics for Turkey.

ARMENIA CONDUCTING EXERCISES TO CHECK INSTITUTIONS’
ABILITY TO DEAL WITH BREAKDOWN IN ANPP
Arka News Agency, Armenia
July 27, 2006
YEREVAN, July 27. /ARKA/. Armenia is now conducting exercises aimed
at checking all relevant agencies’ and ministries’ ability to act in
case of breakdown in Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, ANPP., Armenian
Rescue Service’s press office reported on Tuesday.
This two-day training will enhance these institutions ability to
shield people from consequences of the nuclear breakdown, if any. The
exercises are based on Armenian population protection national plan
worked out in conformity with IAEA.
The plant started operating in 1976. Its 407.5-megawatt first-breed
soviet-era block is operating now. Experts say the plant can remain
functional until 2016. INTER RAO UES (parent company is RAO UES
Russia) possesses 60% of shares and the remaining 40% belong to
Rosenergoatom. M.V. -0—

Turkish Author Cleared Of Turning People Against Military
Easy Bourse (Communiques de presse), France
July 27, 2006
ANKARA (AP)–A court Thursday acquitted a Turkish author of charges she
turned people against military service by defending a conscientious
objector in a weekly magazine column – a decision rights groups
hailed as a victory for freedom of expression. A court in Istanbul
ruled Perihan Magden’s article amounted to “heavy criticism conveyed
within the scope of freedom of expression” and didn’t constitute
a crime. Magden was among a string of writers and journalists
to stand trial for expressing opinions, despite pressure from the
European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, to scrap repressive laws
and improve freedoms. She is the second person to be acquitted in
recent months. In November, a court acquitted Internet journalist
Rahmi Yildirim of charges of insulting the military. In her column,
published in the weekly Yeni Aktuel magazine in December, Magden
defended conscientious objector Mehmet Tarhan who was sentenced to
four-years in a military prison for disobedience after he refused to
wear his military uniform. She argued Turkey needed to establish a
civilian service as an alternative to compulsory military conscription.
Conscription in Turkey is obligatory for men over 20, and the country
doesn’t recognize the right to conscientious objection. Objectors
have also been prosecuted on charges of turning people against
the military. Had she been convicted, Magden faced up to three
years in prison. The lack of “press freedoms had become unbearable
in recent months and put Turkey in a humiliating position,” said
Ahmet Abakay, the head of the Contemporary Journalists’ Association.
“I want to congratulate the judge that gave this decision. It should
be an example to other judges and prosecutors.” Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s government has said it has no plans to change such
laws, saying where appropriate the charges are eventually dropped and
defendants are acquitted. E.U. officials argue, however, that even
if the charges are dropped the threat of prosecution deters people
from expressing opinions. Late last year, a court dropped charges
against novelist Orhan Pamuk, who faced trial on charges of insulting
“Turkishness” for commenting on the mass killings of Armenians by
Turks around the time of World War I. The charges were dropped for
technical reasons amid intense international pressure. Earlier this
month a high court confirmed a six-month prison sentence imposed on
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink for attempting to influence
the judiciary after his newspaper criticized the law that makes it
a crime to insult Turkishness. Dink’s sentence, however, was suspended.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress