OPPOSITION LEADER CALLS ARMENIAN LEADER “BAD MANAGER”
Mediamax news agency
16 May 06
Yerevan, 16 May: The leader of the National Democratic Union [NDU],
Vazgen Manukyan, today described Armenian President Robert Kocharyan as
“a bad manager” and compared him with “a tank driver, sweeping away
everything in his path”.
Speaking at a news conference in Yerevan today, the leader of the
NDU said that the Orintas Yerkir [Law-Governed Country] Party which
had pulled out of the ruling coalition has become “another victim”
of the state management system which has disastrous shortcomings”.
Vazgen Manukyan said that the Orinats Yerkir Party “was removed from
power under pressure from the president and nobody can be insured
against such a blow”.
The leader of the NDU called on opposition forces to unite and to
establish a new public and political field, “which will not only aim
to change the management system but also to establish dual power in
the country”.

ARMENIAN GENERAL URGES GOOD ARMS MAINTENANCE
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
13 May 06
[Presenter] The Armenian Defence Ministry held a session on 13 May.
The session discussed military hardware used by the armed forces.
[Correspondent over video of session] Armenian Deputy Defence Minister,
Lt-Gen Yuriy Khachaturov spoke about the military hardware used by the
Armenian armed forces, its maintenance and extending its service life.
He noted that a lot of work had been done over the past period to
provide the republican army with military hardware.
Progress has been made in the area of arms supplies, upgrading arms
depots, training the army’s engineering staff and increasing their
state of combat readiness. A number of organizational and technical
events were held in military units aimed at ensuring the correct
handling of arms, their maintenance and extending their service life.
[Passage omitted: minor details]
The chief of the General Staff of the Armenian army, Col-Gen Mikael
Arutyunyan, urged the units’ commanders to handle arms carefully and
to maintain them in a state of combat readiness.
The issues discussed at the session are very important to our people
and Armenia’s security, Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan said summing
up the session’s results.

ARMENIAN MINISTER NOT TO JOIN OPPOSITION
Noyan Tapan news agency
15 May 06
Yerevan, 15 May: “I cannot imagine my further political activities
in the opposition,” the deputy chairman and one of the founders of
the Orinats Yerkir (Law-Governed Country) Party, Sergo Yeritsyan,
has said while commenting on his quit from the party. Asked by from a
Noyan Tapan correspondent whether he will get any post, Yeritsyan said:
“Time will show”.
According to some reports in the press, Yeritsyan will be appointed
as Armenian presidential advisor.
Yeritsyan is now the minister of education and science in the ruling
coalition.
[Passage omitted: The Orinats Yerkir Party officially quit the ruling
coalition at the end of the last week]

WORLD ARMENIANS CONGRESS TO CONSOLIDATE ARMENIA-DIASPORA TIES
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
16 May 06
[Presenter] A regular sitting of the supreme board of the World
Armenian Congress [WAC] opened in Yerevan today. Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan took part in the sitting.
The chairman of the WAC, Ara Abramyan, said that the report on the
supreme board’s activities in 2004-05 was presented at the sitting.
The supreme board will also discuss the WAC’s goals and work done
during the third Armenia-Diaspora forum in 2006. More than 100,000
Armenians live outside Armenia and every condition must be created
for those who want to return to the motherland, Ara Abramyan said.
The chairman of the WAC said that he was talking about the creation
of jobs and development of the Armenian economy.
[Ara Abramyan captioned] We should create jobs and conditions in
Armenia with help from the diaspora and people who are working
abroad so as those who are looking for jobs would be able to return
to the motherland.
[Vardan Oskanyan speaking at the sitting] We have done a lot to boost
the Armenian economy, maintain our statehood and settle the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict. The congress has done a lot to deepen relations
between Armenia and the diaspora and will continue to work towards
uniting the Armenians.

AZERBAIJAN DENIES REPORT OF DESTRUCTION OF ETHNIC ARMENIAN CEMETERY
AP Worldstream
May 16, 2006
An aide to Azerbaijan’s president on Tuesday denied a report that a
centuries-old ethnic Armenia cemetery had been destroyed.
The report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said the
medieval-period Djulfa cemetery in the exclave of Nakhichevan, which
once had thousands of intricately carved crosses, had vanished. The
report said its journalist was not allowed by accompanying security
forces to go to the cemetery site, but that the journalist was near
enough to see the cemetery was gone.
“This is an absolutely lying publication and statement,” said Ali
Hasanov, an aide to President Ilham Aliev. “Not one cultural-historical
monument, not one Armenian cemetery in the Nakhichevan autonomous
republic has been destroyed.”
Accusations that Azerbaijan had destroyed the cemetery have raised
tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are at odds over
Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control
of Armenian and local Karabakh forces since a separatist war ended
with a shaky cease-fire in 1994.
The Djulfa cemetery site is generally off-limits because it lies in
a security zone along the Iranian border.
Hasanov said the government was ready to work with international
commissions to clarify the status of cultural and historical sites,
including within Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan accuses Armenians in
the enclave and surrounding occupied territories of destroying mosques
and Muslim cemeteries.

RUSSIAN AIR FORCE CO BLAMES ARMENIAN AIRLINER CRASH ON PILOT ERROR
Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow
16 May 06
[Presenter] The Air Force commander-in-chief, Vladimir Mikhaylov,
believes there is no point in raising the black boxes of the Airbus
that crashed near Sochi. Yuliya Kosilova has more.
[Correspondent] The cost of searching for and retrieving the on-board
recorders of the lost A-320 is unjustified, Vladimir Mikhaylov,
commander-in-chief of the Air Force, thinks. Even if the black box
is brought up from the bed of the Black Sea, he believes, it won’t
tell the experts anything new. It will only confirm that it was all
down to the weather.
But Mikhaylov blames the crash not on the weather itself but an error
by the pilot, who failed to take proper account of the difficult
weather conditions. That said, Mikhaylov thinks that the captain’s
decision not to try and land at Sochi and instead return to Yerevan,
whence the aircraft had taken off, was the right thing to do. That’s
what he should have done, according to Mikhaylov. There’s little
point in changing your mind, because it can bring serious consequences.
Mikhaylov pointed out that the black boxes are at the heart of
media comment, which he regards as distressing for the victims of
the relatives. However, he added, military specialists are willing
to help decode the on-board recorders.
[Presenter] The Armenian airliner crashed into the Black Sea on 3 May,
with 112 people on board. All perished.
[The operation to raise the black boxes continues, RTR Russia TV
reported at 1300 gmt. There are fears that the batteries powering
the boxes’ location transmitters will soon go flat.]

RUSSIA LAUNCHES OPERATION TO RECOVER CRASHED PLANE’S FLIGHT RECORDERS FROM SEA FLOOR
Steve Gutterman
AP Worldstream
May 16, 2006
Russia launched an operation Tuesday to recover the flight recorders
from an Armenian passenger plane that crashed in the Black Sea,
sending a robotic device with a hydraulic arm to the sea floor in an
attempt to bring up the “black boxes.”
Authorities hope the recorders will help determine the cause of the
May 3 crash of the Armavia Airbus A-320, which plunged into the sea
in heavy rain and poor visibility as it approached the airport on
a flight from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to the Russian resort
city of Sochi, killing all 113 people on board.
An official involved in the operation said the recovery device was
lowered from a ship and reached the sea floor, where the recorders
were believed to by lying about 5 meters (15 feet) apart at a depth of
just under 500 meters (1,640 feet), the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The RT-1000 apparatus has been used by geologists to lift natural
objects weighing up to 40 kilograms (88 pounds) from the sea floor,
but has not been used at such depths, ITAR-Tass quoted a Transport
Ministry official, Alexander Davydenko, as saying.
He said authorities believe the device can lift fragments of the plane
weighing up to 12 kilograms (26 pounds) and the flight recorders,
which weigh 7 kilograms (15 pounds), the report said. The operation
to pinpoint the boxes and lift them to the surface could take three
days, officials said.
Russian prosecutors dismissed the possibility of terrorism, and
officials pointed to the rough weather or pilot error as the likely
cause. But officials with Armavia have suggested that air traffic
controllers should at least share the blame.
The plane had covered most of its route from Yerevan to Sochi when it
turned back after air controllers in Sochi said the weather was too
rough for landing, but it headed for Sochi again after air traffic
controllers said the weather had improved.
Mikhail Bagdasarov, the owner of Armavia, said days after the crash
that a controller had “made a mistake that worsened the situation”
by ordering the crew to make another run when it came too close,
but that other factors may also have been involved. The plane was
turning back when it hit the water.
On Tuesday, Bagdasarov said that “the weather was bad, of course,
but not so bad that an A-320 could not land.”
Russia’s air force chief, however, was adamant that weather caused
the crash and said the plane should not have turned back toward
Sochi after the decision was made to return to Yerevan _ a decision
he seemed to blame on the crew.
“The whole reason is the weather,” Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov said in a
televised comment. “We’ll get these recorders, decode them, and this
will all be confirmed.”
“It is obvious that the pilots misread the (weather) conditions,”
RIA-Novosti quoted as saying.

ARMENIAN-FRENCH GROUP ACCUSES TURKEY OF BLACKMAILING FRENCH LEGISLATORS INTO OPPOSING BILL
AP Worldstream
May 15, 2006
An umbrella group accused Turkey of trying to blackmail French
lawmakers into opposing proposed legislation making it a crime to
deny that the killings of Armenians in World War I was genocide.
The Council of Coordination of Armenian Organizations in France said
Ankara was trying to exert pressure on France with letter-writing
campaigns to French lawmakers and threats of an economic boycott.
On Thursday, the French National Assembly is set to consider a bill,
presented by the opposition Socialists, that would make it a crime to
deny the Armenian genocide of 1915. It is already a crime in France
to deny the Holocaust.
Last week, Turkey briefly recalled its ambassador to France in protest,
and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told French corporate
leaders that the bill would damage bilateral ties.
“The Armenian genocide: Turkey’s unacceptable blackmail,” the council
said in a statement.
Turkey also complained recently about a resolution adopted by Canada’s
parliament that recognizes the killings as genocide.
The French Foreign Ministry said last week France was “very attentive”
to Turkish authorities’ concerns.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were killed as the Ottoman
Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923 _ and
that it was a deliberate campaign of genocide by Turkey’s rulers.
Turks say the figure is inflated and insist that Armenians were killed
or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to secure its border with
Russia and stop attacks by Armenian militants.
The chances of the bill passing in the French assembly appeared slim.
The National Assembly is overwhelmingly controlled by President
Jacques Chirac’s conservatives, who have not passed a bill floated
by the Socialist opposition since they took over parliament in 2002.

TURKISH BODY CALLS ON FRENCH PARLIAMENT TO REJECT ARMENIAN “GENOCIDE” BILL
Anatolia news agency
16 May 06
Ankara, 16 May: The National Security and Strategic Studies Association
(UGSAD) sent a letter to French Parliament Speaker Jean Louis Debre
on Tuesday [16 May], and called on him to reject the draft law, which
was submitted to the French parliament with the aim of punishing
individuals who deny so-called Armenian genocide.
In its letter, UGSAD stressed that the draft was against human rights,
democracy and understanding of law.
“It is quite offensive if a parliament makes unilateral decisions on
issues concerning another country. Such a draft will overshadow the
friendly relations between Turkey and France. Scientific researches,
which were carried out on the basis of documents of western sources,
revealed that Armenian allegations were totally baseless. When we
compare Armenian population before 1914 and after the World War I,
we can easily see inconsistency of such claims that 1.5 million
Armenians were killed. Although Turkey has opened all its archives,
Armenia constantly refrains from opening its archives,” it said.
UGSAD emphasized that Turkey would never recognize so-called Armenian
genocide as it had never committed such a thing in its history.
“Historical facts cannot be changed through such laws. If the draft is
approved, it will inevitably play havoc with Turkey-France relations,”
it added.

TOP ARMY OFFICER SAYS RUSSIAN-ARMENIAN RELATIONS UNABATED
Armenpress
May 16 2006
YEREVAN, MAY 16, ARMENPRESS. A top Armenian army officer downplayed
today the significance of a chain of swift political developments
in Armenia resulting in resignation of parliament chairman Arthur
Baghdasarian and the withdrawal of his Orinats Yerkir party from the
ruling coalition for Russian-Armenian relations, saying they remain
as solid as they used to be.
“Linking political developments in Armenia with Armenian-Russian
relationships is wrong,” Mikael Harutunian, chief of staff of Armenian
armed forces said today in the Russian embassy after being awarded
a Russian medal.
Mikael Harutunian recalled that both Armenian president and its
defense minister have many a time declared that Armenia and Russia
are strategic partners, however he added, “We likewise want to build
good relations with other countries, with Europe and NATO, but we also
say that Armenia’s accession with NATO is not on our agenda. Armenia
is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
and cannot be simultaneously in NATO,” he said. Harutunian described
Armenia’s relations with NATO as normal, which he said are proceeding
in line with Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP).
Apart from Harutunian, another top army officer, Gurgen Dalibaltayan,
Armenian chief prosecutor Aghvan Hovsepian, a businessman Mikhail
Baghdasarov and some others were awarded Russian medals. Defense
minister Serzh Sarkisian was also to be awarded, but he did not attend
the ceremony because of heavy schedule.