PACE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NAGORNO GARABAGH MIGHT CHANGE ITS STATUS
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
March 15 2006
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) Bureau today discussed
the report submitted by chairman of PACE Subcommittee on Nagorno
Garabagh Lord Russell-Johnston (APA).
The head of the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE Samad Seyidov said the
report was approved and submitted to the sitting of the Subcommittee to
be held in Strasbourg on April 13-14. According to Mr.Seyidov, though
the Council of Europe does not play a decisive role in settlement of
the Nagorno Garabagh conflict, it has an impulsive force regarding
this issue.
“Therefore, the Azerbaijani side takes serious the activity of the
Subcommittee. The documents adopted by the subcommittee can be a
basis for resolutions in favour of Azerbaijan,” Seyidov said.
Armenian sources reported today that, the future status of the
subcommittee was discussed at the sitting. According to the head of
the Armenian delegation to PACE Tigran Torosian, the Subcommittee
will continue its activities under the aegis of the Bureau.
Concluding his speech Lord Russell-Johnston spoke for the preservation
of the status by the Committee.
Mr. Russell-Johnston stressed that the Subcommittee’s main goal
will be the preparation of the two peoples for the settlement of the
conflict.

SEYIDOV: “PACE BUREAU WILL TAKE CONTROL OVER THE AD-HOC COMMITTEE ON NK”
Today, Azerbaijan
March 15 2006
MP holds a press conference.
“Ad-hoc committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe (PACE) on Nagorno Karabakh will now continue its work under
the direct control of organization’s Bureau, the head of Azerbaijani
parliamentary delegation to PACE,” said Samed Seyidov at the press
conference on the results of his visit to PACE committee in Paris.
Commenting on the speech of the committee head, Lord Russell-Johnston,
Seyidov underlined that the content of this speech was known
beforehand, as it was included in the Council of Europe’s agenda
during the January session of the committee.
“We hold similar evaluation. Following the resolution adopted at the
Council of Europe’s conference, Lord Johnston continues to reflect on
the realities of the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict and the interests
of Azerbaijan,” Seyidov said. “The date of a meeting of the Ad Hoc
Committee will be defined at a meeting of PACE in April.”
Seyidov stated that together with PACE Azerbaijan will have to appoint
a representative of the mission to participate in talks. “But our
delegation has not been completely formed, we are waiting for the
results of the re-run parliamentary elections in May,” Seyidov
emphasized.
He also said that another meeting of the CE representatives will take
place on March 16 in Istanbul, though no issue on Azerbaijan was not
included in the agenda.
URL:

USA WISH QUICK RETURNING OF AZERBAIJANIS TO NATIVE LANDS
AzerTag, Azerbaijan
March 15 2006
The United States wish quick returning of Azerbaijanis to their
native lands, stated the visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried at press conference
on March 14 in Baku.
D. Fried has emphasized, that on the meetings he held in
Baku, discussed were negotiations on peace settlement of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and also results of
the meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in February in
France. He has told: “The delegation of Azerbaijan during negotiations
very persistently and resolutely protects the national interests. At
the same time, they are ready to research of constructive ways of
the settlement’.
The Assistant Secretary of State, having informed also about the
carried out exchange of opinions concerning strategic relations of
the USA and Azerbaijan, has told: “Between the USA and the government
and people of Azerbaijan, there are strong friendly connections. We
wish to see Azerbaijan on the Euro-Atlantic space as a country living
in peace conditions, independent and economically developing. This
condition is the important stimulus for the further development of
our relations with Azerbaijan”.
Having informed that at meetings discussed were basically regional
questions, successes of Azerbaijan in power sphere, and also democratic
development in the country, the diplomat has emphasized, that the
United States support development of democracy in Azerbaijan.
Having noted, that cooperation of the USA with Azerbaijan in military
sphere and in sphere of safety constantly becomes stronger, D. Fried
has highly estimated the contribution of military cooperation to
development of relations.

ANKARA ROUTS SO-CALLED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE FILM
By Suleyman Kurt, Ankara
Zaman Online, Turkey
March 15 2006
Ankara is annoyed over a film about so-called Armenian Genocide
allegations developed by Eurimages, an organization that promotes
common art forms and works in affiliation with the European Council.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the initiative with Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s authority, and Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul said the efforts of the Turkish administration in
opposition to the film continue.
Diplomatic sources say the attempts made so far in relation to the
Italian Director’s film, “The farm of the skylarks,” have ended in
vain. The director was called to the Foreign Ministry, but he refused
to give up his ideas of support in the film. Italian Prime Minister
Berlusconi wrote a letter to the director asking him “not to present
Turks negatively.”
Minister Gul was reminded of the interpretations on the change in
the US Jewish Lobby’s positive attitudes in relation to the “Armenian
Genocide Allegations” after the HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
visit to Ankara. “They talked to us in a different way, “Gul responded,
“Ask them.”

NK CONFLICT HANGS OVER GEORGIA’S ARMENIAN-POPULATED REGIONS
By Zaal Anjaparidze
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
March 15 2006
Tensions are running high in Tsalka and Akhalkalaki, two regions of
Georgia that are predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians.
The latest problem began in Tsalka on March 9, when a trivial brawl
at a restaurant between local Armenians and Georgians resulted in the
death of Gevork Gevorkian, a 24-year-old Armenian, and injuries to
four other Armenians. However, Maria Mikoyan of the Armenian Union
in Georgia (Nor Serund) claimed that the fight began because the
Georgian young men were irritated by the Armenian music playing in
the restaurant.
Although police have arrested five Georgian suspects, about 500
Armenian protesters gathered outside the Tsalka administrative building
on March 10, calling for prosecution of the suspects. On March 11,
the upheaval spread to Akhalkalaki, a town in the predominately
Armenian populated Samtskhe-Javakheti region in southern Georgia.
About 300 participants in the Akhalkalaki rally were Tsalka
Armenians. They later took their appeal to the Georgian government
and demanded that Tbilisi “stop the policy of pressure by fueling
interethnic tensions” and “stop the settlement of other nationalities
in Armenian-populated regions.” Later, the protesters voiced demands
related to the right to conduct court proceedings and government
business in the Armenian language. Specifically, they want the central
government to make the Armenian language a state language equal to
Georgian in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region. Reiterating the alleged
threat to the rights of Armenians in Georgia, the appeal also demanded
political autonomy for the region.
The rally soon turned violent. The protesters, mostly youth, left
the government building and raided a local court chamber, ousting
a Georgian judge. They also attacked a building on Tbilisi State
University’s Akhalkalaki campus and a local Georgian Orthodox Church.
Later on Khachatur Stepanian, a representative of the council of
Armenian civic groups in Samtskhe-Javakheti, which organized the rally,
attempted to soften the anxiety and called the incident a “provocation”
staged by “someone else.”
On March 11, leaders of the public movement Multiethnic Georgia and
the Armenian Union in Georgia complained that police had brutally
dispersed the rally in Tsalka where “ethnic confrontation is
increasingly becoming a reason behind crimes.” They said that if
tension in Tsalka and Samtskhe-Javakheti continues, then Tbilisi
would be forced to establish direct presidential rule there.
Although Georgian Public Defender Sozar Subari investigated the Tsalka
incident and ruled it to be a “communal crime,” the majority of the
Armenian communities in these regions consider the incident to be a
demonstration of ethnic hatred towards Armenians, which they believe
is the result of the Georgian government’s misguided policies towards
ethnic minorities. They further alleged that Georgian law-enforcement
agents were working in tandem with those who committed the crime.
United Javakh, a radical Armenian organization in Samtskhe-Javakheti,
issued a statement accusing Tbilisi of “discriminatory policies”
against “the Armenian population of Javakh,” the Armenian nomenclature
for the region. They described the recent dismissal of the region’s
ethnic Armenian judges for ignorance of the Georgian language
as “cynically trampling on the rights of the Armenian-populated
region.” Georgian authorities insist the judges were dismissed for
misconduct.
The United Javakh statement warned about “destructive trends in
the Georgian government’s policy” aimed at artificially creating a
“climate of ethnic intolerance” and “crushing the will of Javakh’s
Armenian population to protect its right to live in its motherland.”
Finally the statement demands that Tbilisi show “political prudence”
and put an end to the “infringement” of the Armenian community’s
rights.
The content and tone of this and previous statements by United Javakh
and other radical Armenian organizations reportedly have strong
backing from political forces in Armenia. In fact, the statements
recall the language used by the Armenian community in Karabakh in its
relations with the Azerbaijani government before war erupted. Vardan
Akopian, chair of the Javakh Youth organization, argued, “The current
situation in Javakheti is a cross between situations in Nakhichevan and
Karabakh.” Several protestors explicitly cited the Karabakh precedent.
Symptomatically, on October 8, 2005, Garnik Isagulyan, the Armenian
president’s national security advisor, bluntly warned Tbilisi to be
“extremely cautious” with regard to Samtskhe-Javakheti “because any
minor provocation can turn into a large-scale clash” (EDM, October
12, 2005). Various Armenian political parties, officials, and media
have actively discussed the problems of the Armenian community in
Samtskhe-Javakheti. Some Armenian members of the Georgian parliament
linked this activity with the approaching parliamentary elections
in Armenia.
Recently Armenian Defense Minister Serge Sarkisian released a paper
on security issues in which he expressed concern over the situation
in Samtskhe-Javakheti. The excessively critical tone of the Armenian
minister towards Tbilisi’s policy in Samtskhe-Javakheti reportedly
alarmed Georgian politicians and analysts, but they preferred to
stay tight-lipped, perhaps to avoid upsetting the already-complex
Georgian-Armenian relationship (EDM, August 3, June 7, May 24, March
23, 2005). Russia has tried to capitalize on the problem by fueling
tensions in Akhalkalaki, location of a Russian military base slated
for closure.
Although the Georgian government is continuously downplaying the
ethnic aspects of the disturbances in Armenian-populated regions,
this factor appears to lurk beneath the surface. Georgia remains
Armenia’s sole transport route to Russia and Europe due to the ongoing
blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan. Thus an unstable Samtskhe-Javakheti
would hardly be a gain for Yerevan. However, the “Karabakh syndrome”
should not be removed from the agenda.
(Resonance, March 9, 11; Akhali Taoba, Civil Georgia, Rustavi-2,
Regnum, vesti.ru, March 11; Imedi-TV, March 10, 11)

ARMENIAN HISTORIANS REFUSED TO PARTICIPATE IN SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE IN ISTANBUL
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
March 15 2006
Today a scientific conference devoted to the Armenian Genocide started
in Istanbul. The Istanbul University initiated the conference.
According to the Turkish scientists, the conference should “throw
light on some problems referring to the Armenian issue”, Freedom
Radio Station reports. Historians from Armenia also were invited to
the conference; however, they refused to participate in the action.
“We received an invitation and turned down the proposal. The Armenian
scientists’ stand is the following: any scientific measure that casts
doubt on the fact of the Genocide is far from science, while a number
of the participants of the scientific conference at the Istanbul
University distort the historic realities”, stated Chief of Turkish
Department of the Institute of History of National Academy of Science
Ruben Safrastyan.

AZERIS FIRED VOSKEPARS – BAGHANIS ROAD
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
March 15 2006
March 14, at 11 a.m., a sector of Voskepars – Baghanis road was
fired for half an hour from the positions of the Azeri Kazakh region,
NOYAN TAPAN reports. The RA Armed Forces did not open retaliatory fire.
Because of the firing, the cars had to go along a comparatively more
secure road of Harsnakar.

OLSON A DOCTOR WITHOUT BORDERS
By Peggy Peck
CNN
March 15 2006
Doctor’s practice is war, epidemics, disasters
MedPage Today Managing Editor
Editor’s note: CNN.com has a business partnership with
MedPageToday.com, which provides custom health content. A medical
profile from MedPage Today appears each Tuesday.
(MedPage Today) — Dr. David Olson has had patients in a remote
region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He has treated people in the
breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia near the Black Sea and in a
gulag prison hospital in Siberia. He has had patients in a northwest
Uganda town called Arua.
He has lived or worked as a doctor in London, England; Paris, France;
Chicago, Illinois; and Brooklyn, New York. He bummed around Berkeley,
California, before medical school.
Olson, 46, has been around.
So it should come as no surprise that when the Texas native graduated
from Oberlin College in Ohio, his first goal was to “do a bit of
traveling.”
These days he rides his mountain bike over the Brooklyn Bridge to work
in New York. There he serves as medical adviser to Doctors Without
Borders, the U.S. affiliate of Medecins Sans Frontières.
MSF is the Nobel Prize-winning international independent medical
humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people
affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or manmade disasters,
or exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries.
Following in Dad’s footsteps Olson, whose father was a general
internist in Fort Worth, Texas, says he decided on a career in medicine
while he was still in his teens.
“I used to go to the hospital with my father and go to his office with
him,” he recalled. “I even worked for him for one summer doing ECGs
(electrocardiograms).”
After Oberlin, a small liberal arts college, he hit the road in a
Volkswagen convertible. He drove to Maine, then eastern Canada, and
then headed west, landing in Berkeley, where he worked at a variety
of jobs, including pizza delivery.
After a year, he started medical school at the University of Texas
Medical Branch in Galveston. From there he went to the University of
Chicago, where he did residency training in internal medicine followed
by fellowship training in pulmonary and critical care medicine.
A non-traditional career choice In the last year in Chicago, he
rejected the two obvious options for the future of a young doctor,
academic medicine or private practice.
“Neither felt right for me,” he said.
He learned about a free clinic that some medical students had started
in a church that housed a shelter for battered women. They needed a
full-fledged doctor to oversee their work, and he did that while he
was still in fellowship training.
“At about that same time I read a book, “Not All of Us Are Saints,”
by a doctor living and working in inner-city Washington. It described
what he did and he wasn’t a perfect person. That humanized this type
of work and made it accessible and attractive to me.”
When he finished his fellowship, he got a job working at a free
clinic that had a federal grant to treat tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS,
which was a good fit for a newly minted pulmonologist and critical
care specialist.
Medicine knows no borders Olson worked at the clinic for two-and-a-half
years and then went to the London School of Tropical Medicine for a
special three-month postgraduate course. When his training in London
was complete, he headed to Paris.
“I got an apartment there and figured that I would spend a year
learning to speak French, because I thought you had to speak French
to join Medecins Sans Frontières,” which had become his goal.
After a year of eating through his savings, he had not only mastered
French but also roller-blading. He also spent some time traveling to
Ireland, England, and Iceland.
Finally, at age 40, he signed on with MSF, and — after a week of
intensive training — was sent on his first mission, to the area
between Armenia and Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh, which was a
hotbed of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Most such missions are limited
to 18 months, but Olson stayed for 24 months, so that he could be sure
the TB treatment plan he had introduced to local physicians worked.
At the gulag During his time there he also worked briefly in Abkhazia
in western Georgia near the Black Sea and made a two-week trip to a
gulag prison hospital in Siberia. Both areas had a number of patients
with drug-resistant TB, but his trip to Siberia was particularly
moving.
“It was interesting, and a bit shocking. One building for
drug-resistant TB had 30 to 35 people sleeping in triple bunks. We
had to step over a frozen body that was lying in the entrance. I
don’t speak Russian, so communication was difficult, but you can
imagine the looks that these people gave us. They were in prison
with a fatal disease and they give you a look that is a mixture of
hope and hopelessness and anger. This really stands out in my mind
because there are times when we just don’t have the resources to help.”
After his first mission, he went to a northwest Uganda town called
Arua. He arrived there in 2001, five days after 9/11. “My mission
was to start an HIV treatment program with the idea of introducing
antiretroviral therapy in a rural part of an African country.”
Ugandan mission He was in Arua for a year, during which time he helped
build a new clinic just for HIV. He returned there in January and
“it was great.
You see people that you started on antiretroviral therapy and they’re
still around. That is very satisfying.”
Less satisfying but nonetheless exciting was a short-term mission in
June 2003 that took him to the capital of Burundi in the final days
of the Hutu-Tutsi civil war.
He said he became inured to the sound of gunfire and mortars “so
that when you eat your dinner on a terrace you realize that when the
gunfire stops, you can hear the birds singing.”
Olson and his wife, Cecile, a French nurse who he met on his first
mission, fill the few empty corners of their lives with recreational
biking, such as a trip to Tucson and the Grand Canyon they have
planned for this spring.
And Olson continues to travel with a guitar, an instrument he has
been playing for 25 years.
le.olson/
–Boundary_(ID_7ue8dZfik441K7CnFic52Q)- –

TURKISH, FOREIGN ACADEMICS DEBATE WWI ARMENIAN MASSACRES
Middle East Times, Egypt
March 15 2006
ISTANBUL — Some 70 Turkish and foreign academics gathered in
Istanbul on Wednesday for a three-day conference to discuss whether
the controversial massacres of Armenians during World War I amounted
to genocide or not.
In a rare move, the gathering, organized by the Istanbul state
university, offered the floor to academics of all convictions even
though it was largely dominated by historians and officials who defend
Turkey’s official position on the 1915-17 killings.
Turkey categorically denies that Armenian subjects under its
predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, were victims of a genocide, but
acknowledges that at least 300,000 Armenians and as many Turks died
in civil strife during the last years of the empire.
Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings.
In the first session of the conference, Yair Auron, an Israeli
researcher of Jewish archives from Ottoman times, openly used the term
“genocide” and appealed on Turks to question their past.
“Every civil society has to deal with its past, including the black
pages of this past,” Auron said.
Books detailing the Armenian claims were also available at the entrance
to the conference hall in a rare move.
Turkey has only recently begun to openly discuss the taboo subject
of the Armenian massacres, which many countries have recognized
as genocide.
In September last year a private Istanbul university hosted a landmark
conference organized by intellectuals disputing Ankara’s official
line on the mass killings, despite a court order to block it.

DEMOYAN: AZERBAIJAN INTERESTED IN RAPID COMPLETION OF SAFAROV’S TRIAL
Karine Karapetyan
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
March 15 2006
The Azeri party is interested in the rapid completion of a trial over
Ramil Safarov accused of a willful murder of an Armenian officer Gurgen
Margaryan, a RA Defense Ministry representative on the Budapest trial
Hayk Demoyan stated.
In Hayk Demoyan’s words, the reason is Ramil Safarov’s affidavits,
according to which the Azeri servicemen are trained on the territory of
the North Cyprus. “If Ramil Safarov had been in Azerbaijan, he would
have had to face court martial”, the representative of RA Defense
Ministry stated having added that Safarov’s utterances had already
had a negative response in Azerbaijan.
In the course of a press conference the outcomes of a current, sixth
sitting of the trial on the case of the murder of the Armenian officer
Gurgen Margaryan held in Budapest March 7 were presented.
According to Hayk Demoyan, the sitting has put an end to the history
of a two-year shameless lie of the Azeri party. “The two years
of the trial may be called Ramil Safarov’s period in Azerbaijan”,
Demoyan said.
The injured party’s lawyer Nazeli Vardanyan informed that testimonies
of the two Hungarian officers – Zoltan Balkoni and Attila Demeter –
had been listened in the course of the sitting. According to the
witnesses, there were no conflicts between the Armenian and Azeri
servicemen during the English courses. To remind, the Azeri party
insisted that one of the motives of Gurgen Margaryan’s murder had
been the provocative behavior of the Armenian servicemen, who had
allegedly insulted the Azeri officers.
The conclusion made by the third expert group was also heard at
the sitting. In Nazeli Vardanyan’s words, there was a psychologist,
psychiatrist and stressologist in the expert group. As it is known,
the third group was to compare the materials of the first two
medical examinations and reveal the reason for disparity between the
conclusions of the first and second expert groups. The third expert
group came to the conclusion that the accused was psychically healthy,
and he had committed a premeditated murder.
The last sitting on the case of the Gurgen Margaryan’s murder will be
held April 4, in the course of which representatives of prosecution
and defense will speak, and then Ramil Safarov will get the floor.
The trial will deliver a verdict April 13.
The press conference’s participants refrained from making prognosis
on the precise term of the criminal’s punishment. “For us it is not
important how many years Ramil Safarov will stay at prison. It is a
principle: the Azeri army’s officer is condemned as a criminal, who
can murder a sleeping man”, Hayk Demoyan stressed. He does not doubt
that the trial’s verdict will be just.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress