CONSULTATIONS WITH AZERI, ARMENIAN FMS IN MOSCOW WERE SUBSTANTIAL – US AMB AT OSCE MG
Author: E.Huseynov
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
The consultations held with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers in Moscow were very substantial, Russian Ambassador Yuriy
Merzlyakov, the OSCE Minsk Group told Trend. He was commenting on a
meeting held last week between the Foreign Ministers of Armenian and
Azerbaijan, Vardan Oskanian and Elmar Mammadyarov within the framework
of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers.
“We mulled the details of further discussions (under the negotiation
process – Trend). So, the next round of talks will start shortly,”
Merzlyakov announced, hinting at the next round of talks on the level
of the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers.
According to Merzlyakov, the meeting is to be held in May, while the
term and place of talks are still to be defined. Upon the completion of
the meeting of the ministers the diplomats will mull the opportunities
for organization of a dialogue of the Presidents.
Merzlyakov noted that in the beginning of May the OSCE Minsk Group
co-chairs will set up consultations in Moscow, and after tour the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region.

TURKEY TO ADDRESS UNESCO WITH COMPLAINT AT FRANCE REGARDING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEMORIALS
Author: R. Abdullayev
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Turkey is going to address UNSECO with a complaint at France regarding
so-called Armenian genocide memorials, Trend reports with reference
to Turkish media.
The ground for the complaint was erection of monuments in memory of
so-called Armenian genocide in Paris and Lion. Both the monuments
are erected on grounds on the list of “world’s cultural heritage”
by UNSECO.
For instance, Lion’s monument is located on historical square
Antonin-Ponchet that was claimed the part of “world’s cultural
heritage” in 1998.
The message says also Syria has addressed UNESCO accusing Paris of
demolishing historical fortress Yejjad.

ARMENIAN ARMED FORCES VIOLATE CEASE-FIRE IN GAZAKH FRONT
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Armenian side keeps on breaking the cease-fire. Azerbaijan’s Defense
Ministry informed APA that the companies of the Armenian armed forces
from their positions in 0.8 km south of Mazam village of Azerbaijan’s
region of Gazakh fired on the opposite positions of the Azerbaijani
armed forces from 20.25 till 20.30 on 23 April.
The enemy forces from their positions in Vozkevan and Shavarshavan
villages of Noyemberyan region, Armenia, again fired on the opposite
positions of Azerbaijani forces and Gushchu Ayrim village from 22.30
till 22.45. Armenian forces from their positions located in the
north-east of Aznakar mountain, Noyemberyan, fired on the positions
of the Azerbaijani forces in Gushchu Ayrim, Gazakh, with submachine
and machine guns from 23.35 till 23.45.
The enemy was silenced by response fire. No casualties were
reported.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MOSCOW HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT DETAINED IN ALLEGED RACE HATE KILLING
RIA Novosti, Russia
April 24, 2006
MOSCOW, April 24 (RIA Novosti) – Police officers have detained a high
school student in connection with the killing of an Armenian teenager
in the Moscow subway at the weekend, prosecutors said Monday.
“A 17-year-old student from a Moscow high school has been detained in
connection with the killing of an Armenian committed last Saturday,”
a spokesman for the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office said, adding that the
teenager had admitted his involvement in the incident.
Vagan Abramyants, a 17-year-old student at the Moscow Academy of
Management was attacked and stabbed to death on the platform of
Pushkinskaya metro station in the center of the capital at about 5
p.m. on Saturday.
Prosecutors launched a criminal case into the killing, which they
said could be racially motivated.
But a source close to investigation said the suspect, who has been
identified as a soccer fan, claimed that the victim had insulted his
girlfriend in a subway train and he stabbed the man to get even.
“We can now say with certainty that the slaying occurred after a
common argument and was not racially motivated,” the source said,
adding that a group of soccer fans was presumably heading to watch
a game played by their favorite club.
Nevertheless, it is the latest of a series of attacks across
the country that have affected foreigners and people with a dark
complexion.
In St. Petersburg, an African student was shot dead with a rifle marked
with a swastika on April 7, while two Mongolian students were beaten
up in the city’s subway a week later. A Chinese student was attacked
outside her apartment block this month, while a nine-year-old girl of
mixed Russian and African origin was hospitalized after being stabbed
near her apartment building March 25.
Four Chinese students, studying at Kostroma State University in
central Russia, were attacked last Friday afternoon outside a school.
These incidents have prompted Russian and foreign human-rights groups
to raise concerns over the alarming spread of racist and xenophobic
attitudes in the country.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DEBATE CONTINUES
By: Matthew Watkins
Texas A&M The Battalion, TX
April 24, 2006
Adan Peña, Robert Saucedo, Wade Barker – THE BATTALION. Susan Gordone
discusses photos of her relatives who experienced the Armenian genocide
that started in 1915.
Very few would doubt that Armenian-American Susan Gordone’s family
has suffered. However, what to call the cause of their suffering is
a ninety year-old debate.
In 1913, Gordone’s grandmother, Rose, was asked by her pregnant
mother to help deliver her younger sister. At the time, her whole
family lived in Turkey.
“Rose was eight years old. The baby, with its afterbirth, slipped
through her hands and died. Three days later, her mother died,” said
Gordone, who lives in College Station and is a former worker for the
Texas A&M theater arts and English departments. “A week later when
her father returned, he told the remaining members of the family that
they must leave immediately, pack into a wagon or be killed.”
Seven years after the death of her mother and sister, Rose traveled
to America to escape the danger in her home country.
“But in those seven years, she, along with my Uncle John and Aunt
Tervanda, would persevere in the death caravans, watching other family
members die along the way before arriving in Ellis Island in 1920,”
Gordone said.
On Monday, Gordone, along with the Armenian community, will observe
the 91st anniversary of the Armenian genocide, which some estimates
indicate took the lives of as many as 1.5 million Armenians. However,
others, including the Turkish Government, contend that the Armenian
genocide never happened.
The events of the Armenian genocide occurred when the Young Turks, who
had power over Turkey at the time, relocated or deported the country’s
Armenian population during World War I. Most of the Armenians were
relocated on foot causing many to die of exhaustion or starvation. Most
Armenians and many scholars contend that the deaths were genocide.
The Turkish government acknowledges the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Armenians between 1915 and 1917, but says the deaths were the
result of a civil war and starvation that affected all members of
the Turkish population.
The debate about the events has become so heated that it has sometimes
prevented Armenians and Turks from becoming friends at A&M, said Yaman
Evrenoglu, a Turkish graduate student in electrical engineering. He
said he remembers at least five times when a personal friendship
between an Armenian and Turk was halted when the pair’s nationality
was revealed.
The most recent shake up in the controversy was an hour-long
documentary, “The Armenian Genocide,” which aired on PBS and told
the story of the genocide. The film featured many scholars, some
of whom were Turkish, telling the story of death marches in which
Armenians were pushed off cliffs, drowned, starved and exhausted. A
25-minute panel discussion about the Turkish involvement in these
deaths followed the documentary.
“(The documentary) provides a blatantly one-sided perspective of a
tragic and unresolved period of world history,” Turkish ambassador
to the United States Nabi ?ensoy said in a statement after the
documentary’s airing. “Its premise is rejected not only by my
government, but also by many eminent scholars who have studied the
period in question.”
Armenians and the myriad of scholars who contend that the genocide
is a historical fact said the panel legitimized a view that hatefully
refused to acknowledge the genocide.
“Turkish denials of the genocide are part of a state-sponsored policy
of propaganda that serves only the interests of Turkey. The historical
truth of the Armenian genocide has been established beyond reasonable
doubt by abundant documentary and eye-witness evidence from thousands
of sources,” Vako Nicolian said in an online petition he authored
and sent the vice president of programming at PBS.
As of Sunday, the petition has gathered 22,195 signees.
Gordone said she had no problem with the airing of the panel
discussion, which featured two scholars on each side of the issue,
because it simply revealed the lack of depth to the Turkish
government’s claims.
“If we are going to pretend that a stateless Christian minority
population, unarmed, is somehow in a capacity to kill people in an
aggressive way that is tantamount to war, or civil war, we’re living
in the realm of the absurd,” said Peter Balakian, a professor at
Colgate University in the debate.
Evrenosoglu said he was more upset about the debate than the
documentary.
“The documentary was much more moderate compared to ones that I
have witnessed,” he said. “It was too biased for us of course, but
at least they presented the Turkish government and the Turkish point
of view. The debate was a complete disaster because the theme of the
debate was not about discussion of the Armenian genocide but why the
Turkish government is rejecting it.”
7/news/2006/04/24/News/Armenian.Genocide.Debate.Co ntinues-1867136.shtml?norewrite200604241732&so urcedomain=
–Boundary_(ID_1Q2JEUg ClZLbxBHxGkw/yQ)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

REPS OF TURKISH, AZERI DIASPORAS RALLY IN DEFENSE TO ANKARA’S POSITION ON ‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’
Author: R.Abdullayev
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Representatives of the Turkish and Azerbaijani Diasporas of the United
States held a rally in Washington in defense to Ankara’s position on
the ‘Armenian genocide’ in Osman Empire, Trend reports citing the
Turkish media. Over 250 people participated in the rally staged in
front of the Turkish embassy.
Participants in the action held flags of Turkey and Azerbaijan,
scanning ‘Go away from Turkey’, ‘Enough Armenian lies,” etc.
Meanwhile, the Turkish embassy in the United States set up
consultations with members of the US Senate with respect to remove
from agenda three documents on the so-called ‘Armenian genocide’
of 1915. A resolution by the speaker of the senate is required to
remove any issue from the agenda.
One of the similar documents had been submitted former US President
Bill Clinton, who is refused to ratify it.
The Turkish authorities on behalf of Prime Minister Erdogan had sounded
a proposal on the necessity of study of the events developing upon
the collapse of the Osman Empire by the Armenian-Turkish scientific
commission, whilst Yerevan came out against it.

ARMISTICE BREACH ANEW FIXED IN ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI FRONTLINE
Author: E.Javadova
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
On 23 April the units of the Armenian armed forces dislocated in
0.8km south of Mazamli village of Gazakh District fired from 22:30pm
to 22:45pm the positions of the Azerbaijan National Army placed in
the opposite, Defense Ministry told Trend.
The same day the Armenian armed forces placed in Voskevan and
Shavarshan of Noyamberian District fired the Azerbaijani positions
dislocated in Gushchu Ayrim village of Kazakh District. From 23:35
to 23:45 the Armenian troops in the northwest of Aznakar mountain in
the territory of Noyamberian District from guns and machine-guns the
Azerbaijani positions near Gushchu Ayrim village of Kazakh District.
Reply fire was opened. No causalities were reported.

A SOLEMN ANNIVERSARY
By Jessica Scarpati / Daily News Correspondent
Daily News Tribune, MA
April 24, 2006
BOSTON- Shoushan Kalaydjian is left speechless by people who say
Turkish attacks against World War I-era Armenians do not constitute
genocide.
“My father’s side lost all six members of his family, including
his parents,” said Kalaydjian, 70, of Waltham. “There is no single
Armenian family you can talk to that hasn’t lost someone.”
After rumor spread that Germans would poison the soup in the Turkish
orphanage where her father lived, Kalaydjian said he fled to Iraq.
“He was 7 years old,” she said after a State House remembrance service
on Friday. “He slept on a carpet in a mosque in the middle of Baghdad
and one of the imams took care of him.”
Kalaydjian and her husband Ara, 68, attend the Beacon Hill ceremony
each year.
“What happened to the Armenian people and our ancestors shouldn’t
happen again,” said Kalaydjian, an Israeli native. “We don’t pray
for ourselves only. We pray for all.”
Over 300 Bay State Armenians, politicians and survivors gathered in
the House chamber to honor the 1.5 million lost 91 years ago and to
condemn attempts to deny the genocide took place.
“The denial of genocide . has allowed genocide actions to be
perpetrated decade after decade,” said Rep. Peter Koutoujian,
D-Waltham. “Keeping the memory alive is a method for protecting our
and others’ futures.”
Koutoujian said he would file a bill today (Monday) to forbid the
state from investing in countries where genocide occurs, such as Sudan.
“Even if this itself does not stop genocide, it is a way of making
our voice heard,” he said.
The state Board of Education, defended by attorney general and
gubernatorial candidate Tom Reilly, is locked in a federal lawsuit
against Turkish interest groups and a Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High
School student and teacher.
The coalition has accused Massachusetts schools of censoring statewide
history curriculum by only using “genocide” to define the Armenian
experience in the Ottoman Empire.
Lincoln-Sudbury High School senior Ted Griswold and history teacher
Bill Schechter joined plaintiffs this October in alleging that the
removal of dissenting views over the massacres from curricula violated
free speech.
The Legislature passed a law in 1998 requiring high schools to teach
genocide and human rights topics, specifically naming the Armenian
genocide.
“The case should be dismissed because the state has a right to
teach its students what it wants to, especially when that is the
truth,” Arnold Rosenfeld, a lawyer on the case, told a rally after
the ceremony.
U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler used
public ignorance of the Armenians’ strife to justify killing six
million Jews during World War II.
“There are those who will deny the Armenian genocide just as there
are those who will deny the Nazi Holocaust,” Markey said.
Gesturing to a group of three elderly women from Belmont and Andover
who huddled silently next to the podium during the two-hour service,
state Rep. Rachel Kaprielian, D-Watertown, struggled to keep her
voice steady.
The genocide survivors-Naomi Armen, Eva Loosigian and Alice
Shnorhokian-had fled to the Syrian desert as children under Turkish
persecution.
“Mrs. Loosigian apologized to me for not being able to focus because
she had lye poured into her eye by a Turkish soldier,” Kaprielian said,
her voice cracking.
The women, along with Areka DerKazarian of Watertown, who was not
present, were recognized by Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.
“You stand as living proof of a dark chapter world history and you
cannot be denied,” Healey said, proclaiming April 24 as Armenian
Martyrs Day in Massachusetts.
Following the ceremony, coalition group “kNOw Genocide” announced
its mission to fight denial Armenian and other genocides.
“Whenever we read or hear that people deny our genocide, it is as
if we are being killed again, slowly,” said Jean Nganji, a Rwandan
refugee who lost his entire family to genocide in 1994.
State police moved three protestors who shouted, “Don’t forget the
Palestinians!” over televised speeches.
With his face obscured by sunglasses, a Red Sox baseball hat and a
bandana around his nose and mouth, one protestor waved a sign that
read, “Defend Sudan from Zionist UN.”
Interrupted by the heckling, Brookline rabbi Moshe Waldoks said the
world should “create a culture of life.”
“And precisely, there are people here who support the culture of
death,” said Waldoks, an author and board member of Jewish Community
Relations Council, as police moved protestors from the State House
steps.
“We’re not here to teach that we’re victims. We’re here to teach that
there should be no more victims,” Waldoks said.

TURKEY FINALLY HEARS ITS PAST
By Henry Morgenthau III
Boston Globe, MA
April 24, 2006
“AMBASSADOR Morgenthau’s Story,” my grandfather’s account of the
killings of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, was published just before
World War I ended in November 1918. A personal chronicle of his service
as the US ambassador to Ottoman Turkey for 26 months, the book was
published last month for the first time in Turkish, a milestone in
informing the Turkish people of what happened in their country more
than 90 years ago.
The term genocide had not yet been invented when my grandfather wrote
his book. Thus, Morgenthau refers to “the destruction of the Armenian
race” as “the murder of a nation.” It was Henry Morgenthau’s lonely
voice that alerted the world to the premeditated atrocities of the
Young Turk leaders and the complicity of their German allies.
Why Morgenthau chose to speak out on behalf of the Armenians is a more
complex question than how he did so. Almost from the time he arrived
in New York as a 10-year-old German Jewish immigrant, he envisioned
public service as his ultimate calling. When the opportunity arose,
he attached himself to Woodrow Wilson’s rising star and was appointed
US ambassador to Turkey.
At the end of 1914, Morgenthau noted a pattern: Palestinian Jews were
conscripted into the Turkish army, then promptly disarmed and placed
in labor battalions. This was a tactic the Turks used against Greeks
and other minorities, and, most ominously, against the Armenians.
Fearing reprisals against Jews in Turkish territories, Morgenthau
warned international Zionist leaders to contain their indignation.
Then he took it upon himself to call on the US Navy for help. In
January 1915, the USS Tennessee was ordered to Alexandria, Egypt,
ostensibly to protect US citizens. In fact, it made possible the
evacuation of impoverished Jewish refugees, including David Ben-Gurion
and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who became respectively Israel’s first prime
minister and second president.
Morgenthau was never able to carry out a rescue of the Armenians with
the effectiveness he achieved in saving Jews, though certainly not
for want of trying. There were fundamental differences between the
Armenian and Jewish situations. The Armenians were a minority located
within the borders of Ottoman Turkey and Czarist Russia. The Jews, on
the other hand, were widely dispersed throughout Eastern and Western
Europe and the United States, and to a much lesser extent in the Near
East, including the Holy Land. In Western Europe and the United States,
Jews had risen to positions of power and had learned how to network
internationally. The diaspora Armenians had not yet achieved such
status and so could not mobilize support for their persecuted kinsmen.
When Morgenthau appealed to Enver Pasha, the Turkish minister
of war, to permit US missionaries to feed starving Armenians, the
response was coldly cynical. “We don’t want the Americans to feed the
Armenians. . . . That is one of the worst things that could happen
to them. . . . It is their belief that they have friends in other
countries which leads them to oppose the government and so bring down
upon them all their miseries.” The Turkish minister of the interior,
Talaat Pasha, was equally callous: “The hatred between the Turks and
the Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish them. If
we don’t, they will plan their revenge.”
The memoirs of my grandfather factually chronicle an important
period of history. Yet, 91 years later, the Turkish state insists
the genocide of the Armenians did not happen. Why does Turkey protect
the murderers of the past? That is a question that needs to be asked
over and over again until the truth is acknowledged. As Turkey seeks
membership in the European Union, it is being challenged to open up
its society and adopt free speech.
But its penal code has resulted in several Turkish writers being
brought before their own courts for speaking out about the Armenian
genocide. Surely a modern country like Turkey needs to treat its
citizens with more respect. Free speech cannot be denied, especially in
a country seeking to join the EU. Whatever may have motivated Turkish
officials to deny the genocide for more than 90 years, there now
appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The US government,
which had knuckled under in support of the Turkish policy of denial,
is now urging all parties to accept the realities of history.
At this critical moment, the publication of the Turkish edition of
“Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story” is an important step for the citizens
of Turkey. It is their right to know their own history, good and
bad, without interference from the state. A crime denied is a crime
repeated. Great nations in history have acknowledged the misdeeds of
their earlier governments. It is time for Turkey to join the ranks
of those great nations.
Henry Morgenthau III, who lives in Cambridge, is the author of a
family history, “Mostly Morgenthaus.”
itorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/24/turkey_fi nally_hears_its_past/

OUR YOUTH PUBLIC UNION HOLDS CONFERENCE ON “ARMENIAN GENOCIDE”
Today, Azerbaijan
April 24, 2006
Our Youth Public Union organized conference-“The so-called Armenian
genocide-historic truths and facts” in the Ataturk Center.
As APA reports, the conference brought together representatives of
youth organizations and parliament members. Head of the Union Shamsi
Akhundov addressing the meeting said that youths need to be informed
about alleged facts such as “Armenian genocide” in order to arouse
patriotism spirit in them.
“All Turk world should protest against Armenians claims on the
so-called “genocide of Armenians,” Akhundov stressed.
Historians talked about the troubles Armenians caused for Turk. Film
on genocide of Azerbaijanis committed by Armenians was displayed in
the end of the conference.
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