CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF OF RA ARMED FORCES SUGGESTS THAT KARABAKH
ARMED FORCES SHOULD PARTICIPATE IN RA – RF MILITARY TRAININGS
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
April 20 2006
“Azerbaijan violates Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE),
according to which such countries as Azerbaijan and Armenia must have
up to 220 tanks, 285 units of field artillery, etc. Azerbaijan has
already surpassed the limit. We informed the corresponding
international organizations of the fact, having requested them to
undertake measures and affect Baku not to build up military force in
a quantitative aspect”, RA Deputy DM, Chief of the General Staff of
RA Armed Forces, Colonel-General Mikael Harutyunyan stated, De Facto
Information-Analytics Agency’s correspondent in Stepanakert reports.
While speaking about the level of the Karabakh army’s operational
readiness, the General noted, in part, “All the subdivisions and
units of the NKR Defense Army are ready to operate under mountainous
conditions, efficiently use artillery and aviation”. He stressed
subdivisions of the Defense Army could successfully participate in
the counterterrorist operations as well. RA Deputy DM spoke up for
“more frequent conduct of joint Armenian-Russian trainings with the
Karabakh Armed Forces’ participation”. “These are not politicized,
but purely military trainings”, Mikael Harutyunyan noted. In his
words, the situation in the border zone is normal. According to Chief
of the General Staff of RA Armed Forces, “April proved to be quieter
than March”.

EU supports peaceful settlement of Nagorno Garabagh conflict
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 20 2006
[ 20 Apr. 2006 15:57 ]
“The European Union supports peaceful settlement of the Nagorno
Garabagh conflict, and is ready to render all-round assistance to the
sides to solve it,” EU Troika delegation leader, Austrian Foreign
Ministry State Secretary Hans Winkler stated (APA). He said the delay
of settlement poses great obstacle to the development of the region.
“Only the conflicting sides can find the way out of the problem. If
they ask our assistance, we’ll provide it immediately,” Mr.Winkler
said.
Commenting on the opening of Armenia-Turkey border, and Turkey’s
recognizing the so-called “Armenian genocide”, Winkler said that the
European Union wants that Armenia and Turkey have normal relations.
/APA/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 20 2006
Mustafa Mohammed Neccar: Iran has never had military cooperation with
Armenia and won’t have
[ 20 Apr. 2006 15:37 ]
“The reports on Iran’s having military cooperation with Armenia
are absolutely false. Iran has never had military cooperation with
Armenian and won’t have in future,” Iran’s Defense Minister Mustafa
Mohammed Neccar stated while visiting Azerbaijan (APA). He said
Iran is cooperating with Azerbaijan in various spheres, including
military sphere.
“My visit to Azerbaijan aims at expanding the cooperation on the basis
of the already signed treaties,” Mr.Neccar said. “Tehran can assist
Azerbaijan in developing military-industrial establishment. We can
exchange experience in this field. I’ll raise this issue in the talks
with Azerbaijani Minister for Defense Industry,” Iranian minister
underlined. /APA/

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 20 2006
Arbitrators might offer new formulations, not the resolution
principles – Armenian Minister of Exterior
Source: “Trend”
Author: Z.Ibrahimli
20.04.2006
Vardan Oskanyan, Armenian Minister of Exterior, said in Yerevan today,
quoting, “if Azerbaijan recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh’s people’s right
for independent identification of their future status, Armenia is
ready to make serious conversations on resolution of war consequences.”
Mediamax agency reports Armenian Minister of Exterior said today on
a news conference ion Yerevan that this was Armenia’s position for
conversation process.
Commenting on the last news about arbitrators’ “new offers”, Oskanyan
said this notion is ‘right and wrong at the same time’.
“The document that states resolutions principles is on the table.
Some principles have led to mutual agreement and some have not. I guess
when arbitrators say “new offers” they actually mean new formulations
for the principles we did not agree on. The principles as such do
not change”, – Minister explained.

MARIE-ANNE ISLER-BEGUIN: NAGORNO KARABAKH PEOPLE CAN USE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
April 20 2006
There is no alternative to peaceful settlement of the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict, Co-Chair of the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation
Committee Marie-Anne Isler-Beguin stated in Yerevan, Regnum Information
Agency reports. In her words, both countries should learn to live
together.
The Armenian party has the will and aspiration for the conflict’s
peaceful settlement, she noted. “The right to self-determination is
an international right Nagorno Karabakh people can use. We hope the
Azeri party avows”, Isler-Beguin said. She expressed regret for the
fact that RA and AR Presidents “failed to achieve specific agreements”
in Rambouillet.

New Anatolian, Turkey
April 20 2006
Sensoy: Turkey will act responsibly to help defuse Iran issue
The Associated Press / Washington
Turkish Ambassador to Washington Nabi Sensoy late Tuesday dismissed
speculations that the Iranian nuclear standoff could create a crisis
between Turkey and the U.S., saying that Ankara will act as a
responsible member of the international community on the Iranian
issue.
Addressing Turkish-U.S. relations in a speech at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading U.S.-based
think tank, Sensoy said that there may be nuanced differences in
policies followed by the two countries towards Iran, but the goal is
the same.
“During their talks with Iranian leaders, Turkish officials should
pressure them to voice their real intentions about their nuclear
activities in order to convince the international community,” said
Sensoy, underlining that Turkey favors a diplomatic solution to the
dispute between Tehran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program.
—————Ara Baslik————–
‘Turkey wants to take Britain’s role in US-EU relations’
Sensoy expressed Turkey’s goal of taking over Britain’s powerful role
as a bridge between U.S. and European Union relations following its
accession to the 25-nation bloc.
“Ankara is trying to bring its foreign policy and security
initiatives in line with those of the EU. It is also working to share
common values and goals with the U.S.,” said the Turkish ambassador,
stressing the importance of good U.S.-EU relations for Turkey. “NATO
is the backbone of transatlantic relations, and cooperation between
Turkey, the EU and the U.S. under the umbrella of NATO will be
crucial to respond to new security threats,” he added.
Sensoy stated that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured
him that there is a political will to protect and develop strategic
partnership between the two countries, adding that two “hiccups”
appear to have damaged the relations. “One of them is the movie
‘Valley of the Wolves Iraq,’ and the other is the surprise visit of
the Hamas delegation to Turkey [in February]. I call these events
‘hiccups’ because they are too tiny to damage well-established
bilateral relations” he said.
“Valley of the Wolves not only tatters the image of Turkey in the
U.S., but it also negatively affects Turkish psychology. Ankara
conveyed not only the international community’s but also Turkey’s
requests and expectations from Hamas during their visit,” he added.
‘PBS documentary one-sided’
Sensoy lashed out at the U.S. public television network PBS for
airing a controversial documentary about the Armenian genocide
claims, saying that the documentary was one-sided since it gave
little opportunity for scholars who don’t support the Armenian thesis
to have their say.
“Instead of accepting the Armenian genocide claims as an unresolved
issue, the documentary aimed to silence legitimate discussion on the
controversial issue. In contradiction to the thesis of the
documentary, Armenian genocide claims have never a found historical
or legal basis,” Sensoy said.

Express India, India
April 20 2006
>>From the fringes: Votes without a voice
SHARMI ADHIKARY
Posted online: Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 0355 hours IST
A lone Portuguese, a handful of Armenians, a dwindling community of
Parsis, a relatively bigger but fast migrating population of Chinese.
Their numbers are not enough to tilt the scales, but they are all an
integral part of Kolkata. SHARMI ADHIKARY finds out what elections
mean to them
Chinese
There are about 1,500 Chinese in Tangra, and 60 per cent of them have
EPICs. They may have a vote, but most feel that they don’t have a
voice. ”The roads need repair, there should be more street-lights,
but who will listen to us? We do our duty, and go out and vote. But
since we belong to the Chinese community, no one cares,” says Ling
Liang, a teacher at the local Chinese school.
Portuguese
Leon Joseph Madeira, an undertaker by profession, is reported to be
the lone Portuguese in the city. He does not intend to vote, but
makes it a point to mention that his forefathers always exercised
their franchise. Madeira says no political leader today is fit to
shoulder any responsibility. ”Today’s leaders only know personal
benefits. I will not vote because no minister has ever helped me,”
he says.
Armenian
As per official records, there are over 100 Armenians in Kolkata. But
barring three of them, none are Indian citizens. And of the three,
two are still minors while the third is not on the electoral rolls.
“I still have my Chennai EPIC as I was residing there till six months
back,” says Michael Stephen.Father Oshagan Gulgulian of the Armenian
College would just like to see a cleaner Kolkata.
Parsis
Numbering about 650 in the city, the Parsis are determined to have a
say in the polls. ”Yes, I vote from Burrabazar constituency. Most of
our people vote. Why shouldn’t we? We are Indians after all,” says a
member of the community at the Zoroastrian Anjuman Atash Adaran.
Cyrus Madan adds: ”The government is moving on the right track and
should continue the same developmental work in infrastructure.”

Armenian-Americans commemorate genocide
Boston Globe, MA
April 20 2006
Armenian-Americans throughout the Boston area will gather this weekend
and next week to commemorate the genocide that resulted in the deaths
of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923.
Armenians mark Monday as the 91st anniversary of the night in 1915
when the Ottoman Turkish government arrested 200 Armenian community
leaders in Constantinople — the beginning of the campaign.
The events are seen by Armenians as pivotal in their people’s
history. The Turkish government has denied that the mass killings
were part of a government-sponsored campaign.
“It was one of the defining events in Armenian history and certainly
modern Armenian history,” said Marc Mamigonian, director of programs
and publications at the National Association for Armenian Studies and
Research. “It’s the reason most of us are living [in the United States]
in one way or another. Most everyone around here can trace a family
member to the Armenian genocide either as a survivor or someone who
was lost.”
Along with events in Boston, Cambridge, Worcester, and other
communities, three ceremonies will take place in the suburbs northwest
of Boston.
On Saturday, an Armenian Memorial Observation will be held in Lowell.
It will include a procession that will begin at the corner of John
and Merrimack streets at 10 a.m. and proceed to City Hall for the
raising of an Armenian flag, speeches, and a musical presentation.
On Sunday, there will be a remembrance ceremony at 3 p.m. at North
Andover High School, 430 Osgood St. The ceremony will consist of a
cultural presentation and requiem service.
On Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., the public is invited to gather in
the Goddard Chapel at Tufts University for a program by the Tufts
University Armenian Club titled “Beyond Genocide Recognition —
Our Next Challenge.”
Stephen Kurkjian, senior assistant metropolitan editor at The Boston
Globe and a Pulitzer Prize winner, will speak at the North Andover
and Medford events.
DONNA NOVAK

Iran’s Azeris or the Azeris’ Iran
By Cem Oguz
New Anatolian, Turkey
April 20 2006
[email protected] April 2006
A couple of years ago a close friend of mine, after coming back from
a long journey by car across northern Iran (or “Southern Azerbaijan,”
as it is referred to in nationalist Azeri literature), was telling me
how Iranian Azeris were undergoing a cultural revival. There was a
real boom in nationalist publications and a growing interest in both
Azerbaijan and Turkey among Iranian Azeris. A considerable part of
Azeris he spoke to said that they only watched Turkish TV channels.
The most popular songs playing on the streets of Tabriz were those of
Turkish singers.
This cultural revival (or transformation) has seemingly attracted
increasing interest from the U.S. administration that was recently
reported to be willing to foment ethnic-inspired unrest in Iran. It
is for this reason that the book by Brenda Shaffer, whom I happened
to meet in the second half of the 1990s when she was doing her Ph.D.,
has captivated the attention of many influential figures in
Washington. In the book, entitled “Borders and Brethren: Iran and the
Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity,” Shaffer, currently Harvard
University’s Caspian Studies director, challenges the popular
assumption that a broad Iranian national identity supersedes ethnic
identities and discusses the cultural reawakening among Iranian
Azeris.
The revival of nationalist sentiment among ethnic groups in Iran,
first and foremost among Azeris, is indeed a fact. But the question
henceforth should be what this phenomenon might lead to. Could it be
a catalyst for a regime change, as asserted by some circles in the
U.S.? To find a reliable answer to this question we need to elaborate
on the fundamental features of the Azeri community in Iran.
Until Ahmed Shah, who was replaced in 1925 by Reza Khan (Pahlavi),
Iran was mainly ruled by the Turkmen/Azeri Qajar dynasty. Historical
legacy thus had an important impact on the mentality of today’s
Iranian Azeris. Their feeling of affiliation with Iran and the
Iranian state is undisputable. One would not be surprised to even see
the most nationalist Iranian Azeris denounce aspirations of
separation, since, in their words, “Iran is theirs.” Given this
backdrop, Iranian Azeris, the total number of which is estimated to
be anywhere between 16 to 30 million, according to different sources,
are well-integrated into Iranian society. Presently some highly
influential figures in the establishment are of Azeri descent; even
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose native town is Ardebil, a mostly
Azeri-populated place in the western part of the province of Western
Azerbaijan in Iran, is rumored to come from an Azeri family. Azeris
also constitute a considerable part of people in Tehran.
An important factor that influences bi-communal relations, on the
other hand, is economics. Some among Persian nationalists question
why the oil-rich south should feed the relatively poorer northern
regions which are mostly populated by Iranian Azeris. Due to such a
line of thinking, Persian nationalism has gradually come to contain a
considerable level of anti-Azeri feeling. The Azeris, in turn, don’t
seem to be willing to renounce the wealth coming from the south’s oil
reserves.
The influence of nationalist leaders among Iranian Azeris is very
limited as well. This, in fact, should be well understood by the U.S.
authorities. A couple of years ago, Movement of National Revival of
Southern Azerbaijan head Mahmudali Chehregani, a prominent and
respected academic imprisoned for three years in the past for his
outspoken opposition to the regime, was invited to Washington. With
the help of Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican advocate of regime
change in Iran, he held various meetings with U.S. officials. The
main claim asserted by Chehregani was that his movement could spur
millions of its followers into protesting on the streets. However,
such public demonstrations never materialized.
No one can deny that Tabriz, the so-called capital of Southern
Azerbaijan, is at present the center of the most active student
democracy movement outside Tehran. Nevertheless the aspirations of
Iranian Azeris are more for cultural autonomy. In fact, their
ultimate goal is not at all different from the rest of the country:
More reforms and more rights.
In such an atmosphere, to assume that Iranian Azeris are ready to
rise up against the mullah-led regime in Tehran is not only
unreliable but also risky. Nonetheless, there are clear signs that
some circles in Washington are very eager to play the Azeri card up
to the last moment. It is in this regard, for instance, that three
years after his election Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has only
just now received an official invitation to visit Washington. His
meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush is set for April 28. The
two main issues to be discussed between both leaders, analysts argue,
will be the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Iran. There is no doubt
that Aliyev’s stance on the Iranian question will exercise a
considerable level of influence on the U.S.’ position over the
resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute as well as the future of
Azerbaijani territory still under Armenian occupation.
We will soon see how Washington’s attempts at influencing their
allies’ strategic calculations, as put in the U.S.’ new National
Security Strategy just recently, works.

Boston Globe, MA
April 20 2006
Armenians get allies in genocide teachings
Group stands up ‘against denial’
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | April 20, 2006
Leading politicians and groups from a range of communities are
joining with Armenians in their battle to ensure that the Armenians’
early-20th-century history be taught as genocide.
The Armenians are fighting a federal lawsuit that seeks to include
opposing views of the genocide in teaching materials for
Massachusetts high schools.
A new group, called kNOw Genocide, includes the Jewish Community
Relations Council, the Irish Immigration Center, the Massachusetts
Council of Churches, Rwanda Outlook, and the Cambodian Mutual
Assistance Association, among others. Standing with them will be
Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey
— both gubernatorial candidates — and several state legislators.
A rally tomorrow at the State House is expected to draw
representatives from the diverse coalition, in a testament to the
political clout that the Armenian community has in Massachusetts.
”This allows our community, together with other communities, to
stand together against denial,” said Anthony Barsamian, a member of
the Armenian Assembly of America board, based in Washington. ”And
those who try to deny genocide will be beaten back.”
The coalition is being launched at a time of considerable debate over
events in Ottoman Turkey early last century. Several PBS stations
were criticized this week for airing a documentary called ”The
Armenian Genocide” and declining to air an accompanying panel
discussion that included scholars who have denied that a genocide
took place.
Those who believe that both views should be heard accused PBS
stations, including Boston’s WGBH, of bowing to pressure from
Armenians and their supporters.
Armenians and many historians have long maintained that the events of
1915 in Ottoman Turkey — in which more than 1 million Armenians were
killed and many more were driven from their homes — constituted
genocide.
In Massachusetts, home to about 30,000 Armenians, legislators
established a day of remembrance for victims.
But the Turkish government, and some historians, say what happened
should not be described as genocide because the deaths were part of a
civil war that resulted in the murder of innocent people on both
sides.
In the lawsuit, now pending at US District Court in Boston, a teacher
and a student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, and the
Assembly of Turkish American Associations, have demanded that the
state Department of Education include dissenting views on the
Armenian genocide in a curriculum guide on the topic.
A draft of that guide originally included the dissenting views, but
did not mandate that they be taught in Massachusetts schools. The
plaintiffs say the removal violates freedom of speech.
The attorney general, who is defending the state, argues that because
the curriculum guide is a government document, it is not bound by
free speech. Armenians and supporters say presenting opposing views
of the 1915 events is like denying the Holocaust.
The struggle has drawn support from other groups who say they speak
from their own painful histories of oppression.
”As members of the Jewish community, we identify with the Armenian
community in terms of the Armenian genocide, and it’s important to
fight denial,” said Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish
Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. ”We thought this was
a battle that had been won long ago.”
Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the
Department of Education suit, said his clients are not denying that a
genocide took place. ”We are not admitting it, we’re not denying it,
we’re taking no position,” he said. ”We simply want to open up the
avenues for honest debate and restore the censored articles to the
Massachusetts curriculum.”