Agence France Presse — English
October 14, 2005 Friday 3:32 AM GMT
Armenia faces key referendum on boosting parliament’s powers
by Mariam Kharutyunyan
YEREVAN
Armenia will hold a referendum on November 27 on constitutional
changes that would strengthen the Caucasus nation’s parliament, but
which have failed to win round opponents of President Robert
Kocharian.
Reforming the constitution has moved up the agenda of this ex-Soviet
Caucasus republic since a 2003 referendum failed to gain the required
number of votes to endorse reforms, leading the 46-nation Council of
Europe, a democracy-promoting body, to threaten symbolic sanctions.
“Fulfilling this obligation is important for our country,” analyst
Alexander Iskandaryan said. “The existing constitution, which was
accepted in 1995, is now obsolete and needs to be amended for the
country’s political development. Otherwise we will stand still.”
For the reforms to be approved, at least half of those who vote must
give their approval and the “yes” votes must equal at least a third
of eligible voters.
The package, which was approved by parliament on September 28, would
limit the president’s powers, boost the role of parliament and the
cabinet and would also strengthen the independence of the judiciary.
It also aims to strengthen human rights protection.
Under the reformed constitution, “parliament would at any time be
able to vote no confidence in the government, ordinary citizens could
address the constitutional court, and parliament would appoint a
human rights ombudsman,” parliament speaker Tigran Torosyan said.
“The parliament is becoming the strongest branch, which is natural
for countries seeking major reforms,” he said.
Kocharian has resoundingly endorsed the reform package.
“This is undoubtedly a high quality document,” he said earlier.
But this view is not unanimously shared.
>From February 2004 until recently the opposition had boycotted
parliament, angered at what it saw as abuses by Kocharian. It only
returned at the urging of the Council of Europe, which has been
involved in drafting the reform package.
The opposition declined to vote on the reforms, objecting that the
president would still have the right to dissolve parliament if it
blocked government-backed legislation over a two-month period.
The opposition also objects that the constitution leaves in place the
president’s immunity from prosecution, both during and after his term
in office.
“The president should know he will answer for violations of the law,
both during his rule and afterwards,” said Viktor Dallakyan, a leader
of the Justice opposition bloc.
Following popular uprisings in three other ex-Soviet republics —
Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan — the opposition sees in the
referendum a chance to boost its standing and push out Kocharian’s
leadership, Dallakyan said.
“If this project does not go through, it will be the authorities’
political death,” Dallakyan said.
However analysts doubt that the opposition can really win mass
support.
“It may be that the opposition will not let this chance pass and will
destabilise the situation, but it will not be able to manage a
revolution… there is no basis for it in the country and the
opposition lacks the forces to do it,” Iskandaryan said.
Baku residents questioned by AFP had mixed views, but underlined
their dissatisfaction with the present situation.
“I do not yet know what changes there are, but I will vote for it
because European experts have worked on it. It can’t be worse than
the present constitution,” Mkhitar, a 60-year-old street vendor, told
AFP.
Arus Mnatsakanyan, a 46-year-old mother of three, said she doubted
the changes would have much effect.
“It is not what is written in the law that matters, it’s how it is
implemented,” she said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Press Association
October 14, 2005, Friday
TRAINEE PILOT JAILED FOR PASSPORT FRAUD
by Melvyn Howe, PA
A trainee pilot at the heart of a US terror alert was jailed for a
year today for obtaining a bogus passport.
Zayead Hajaig, 36, used it to pursue his “dream” to get round visa
restrictions and fly commercial planes in America.
But earlier this year, he aroused suspicion when he tried to persuade
instructors to falsify qualifications that could have put him at the
controls of passenger jets.
The FBI was alerted, but an attempt to catch him failed when he
learned they were on his trail.
He promptly used the false passport to flee to Britain, “terrified”
that if he was caught he would end up in Guantanamo Bay.
London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that, once back here, he
eventually contacted Scotland Yard anti-terrorist branch officers and
was finally arrested in connection with the passport matter.
In the meantime, a US grand jury indicted him on three counts of
being “an illegal alien” in possession of a small armoury of hunting
rifles.
American authorities also placed him on an international “no fly”
list – effectively making him a “prisoner” in Britain for the rest of
his life – scrapped his light aircraft pilot’s licence and rescinded
all his qualifications.
Although no moves are currently being made to extradite him, the
possibility of such a development remained like a “sword of Damocles”
hanging over his head.
Hajaig, of Howard Road, Ilford, Essex, admitted one count of
dishonestly obtaining a UK passport by deception between January 29
and February 6, 1997.
The charge stated he “falsely represented” that the details of the
passport photograph were a true description of Barry Felton – a
former colleague at a record shop he once worked at in Essex.
A second allegation claiming he stole the man’s driving licence to
provide identification for the passport application was ordered to
lay on file and not be proceeded with.
“You did this in order to gain entry into the United States, where,
previously, you had overstayed on a tourist visa.
“You knew you would have difficulty obtaining a further visa
yourself, so you used deception to get another passport in a
different identity. Your deception worked and you stayed in the US
until earlier this year.
“But it is true to say that, while there, you did not use that
passport again except to return to this country.”
The judge said that, following his return to the States, Hajaig
resumed the pilot’s training he began in the early ’90s and gained
further qualifications.
“But your deception caught up with you,” said the judge.
“After the atrocity of September 11, someone in your position was
bound to fall under suspicion and, eventually, you did. That prompted
you to return to this country.”
He went on: “I make it clear there is no evidence whatever before the
court to suggest for a moment that you have had any terrorist
connections.
“I accept that you were genuinely training to be a pilot. I also make
it clear that I am sentencing you today only for obtaining a passport
by deception.
“You were charged with the theft of the driving licence, which you
used for identification in 1997, but the Crown has asked for that to
lie on the file and I don’t sentence you for it.
“Nevertheless, to obtain a passport by deception in circumstances
like this is a very serious matter and to commit such an offence now,
when proper immigration control is one line in the defence against
terrorism, is highly culpable and would call for a long sentence.
“In 1997, when you committed this offence, the world was a different
place. The terrorist threat did not exist in the same way and your
sentence will reflect the date when you committed the offence.
“But, even then in 1997, to obtain a passport by deception in
circumstances such as these is so serious that a custodial sentence
is inevitable.”
Bearing in mind his guilty plea, his previous good character and his
poor health, the minimum term he could impose was one of 12 months.
Hajaig, who had remained impassive throughout the hearing, gave the
tiniest of bows in the judge’s direction, muttered a barely audible
“Thank you” and was then led from the dock.
The court heard Hajaig had been born in Nigeria to Armenian parents.
Because his father had a British passport, that allowed him to have
one too and he eventually settled in Britain.
As the years passed, he developed a “dream and ambition” to fly
commercial aircraft in America.
Finally, in the early ’90s, he travelled to the States as a
holidaymaker and immediately began taking lessons.
He later returned briefly to Britain, only to realise he would almost
certainly not be able to go back to America.
At the time, he was working in a record shop in Barking, Essex, as a
security guard, and decided the only way to resume his training was
to get a new identity.
After using Mr Felton’s identity to get the passport, he flew to the
US and enrolled once more in flight school.
He chose Atlanta in Georgia – where two of the September 11 suicide
hijackers also trained – to continue his lessons.
Leo Pilkington, prosecuting, told the court that in March this year
Hajaig came to the attention of the FBI.
“That followed allegations that during his pilot training – and he is
a qualified pilot – he tried to persuade and convince the instructors
to overstate his qualifications and falsify his pilot records.
“As a result, the flight school in question was contacted by
officers. They ascertained that the defendant would be there the
following day and decided to meet him.
“Unfortunately, there was a mistake by the flight school and he was
informed about this in advance and as a result failed to appear,
flying instead to the United Kingdom.”
The barrister said inquiries into his background continued, leading,
amongst other things, to the discovery that he had three rifles.
Stephen Requena, defending, said his client had felt he had no option
but to flee America.
“He was absolutely terrified about the treatment he might receive at
the hands of the US authorities.
“Whatever the rights and wrongs of Guantanamo Bay, one can perfectly
understand that such a hard-working man would be terrified.”
He said Hajaig had not obtained the passport for any “nefarious
reason”, but simply to “resume his training and pursue his dream”.
His decision to do so had resulted in all that he had achieved and
the hopes he still had and the hopes he had had being destroyed.
In addition, the publicity his case had attracted had resulted in him
being spat at in the street, his car being damaged, and his children
being bullied and abused at school.
Furthermore, he now found himself in an “extraordinary, nightmarish
situation” as a virtual prisoner in his home country because of the
no-fly list.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
October 14, 2005 Friday
Azerbaijan still committed to peaceful Karabakh settlement – pres
By Sevindzh Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman
BAKU
Azerbaijan’s President Ilkham Aliyev said his country remains
committed to a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict
as the potential of negotiations has not been exhausted.
However, “despite all efforts, the talks remain uneventful,” Aliyev
said Friday as he addressed the participants in the fourth forum of
young people.
Azerbaijan can only claim certain diplomat success, because one can
feel positive changes in the positions on the problem held by
different international organizations. “But this success has no
significance if there are no results,” the president said.
“As long as the opportunities of the negotiating process have not
been exhausted, we’ll be committed to a peaceful way of settling the
conflict, but our patience is not endless,” Aliyev said, adding that
the “current situation cannot keep forever.”
“I’m sure that if we wish a just solution of the problem, we must pay
special attention to army construction,” Aliyev said.
He noted that this thesis was among the priorities during his
election campaign in 2003.
Azerbaijan’s defense spending in 2004 made up 170 million dollars and
is expected to reach 600 million dollars in 2006.
“We’ll make sure that Azerbaijan’s defense budget will be as big as
the entire budget of Armenia,” the president said.
Azerbaijan will create a power army, and the occupied territories of
the country will certainly be liberated, he stated.

German DDP news agency, Germany
Oct 12 2005
Turkey “irrevocably” on way to EU – outgoing German chancellor
Istanbul: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (SPD [Social Democratic
Party]) sees Turkey as being irrevocably on its way into the EU. The
goal of the accession negotiations opened on 3 October can only be
the country’s membership in the European Union and “nothing else”
said Schroeder on Wednesday [ 12 October] in Istanbul according to
the text of his speech at the breaking of the fast together with
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The chancellor described
the start of membership negotiations as a historic event. Regardless
of the differing opinions of the Union [CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic
Union/Christian Social Union)] and the SPD on the Turkish issue,
Schroeder, according to the text of the speech distributed
beforehand, emphasized: “When we close this chapter, it will no
longer be called Turkey and the European Union but Turkey in the
European Union.”
Until then, however, the road is still a long and laborious one. “But
this effort is worth it, because it makes a common future possible,”
said Schroeder and added: “And our future can only be a common one,
with a strong Turkey in a strong European Union.”
Schroeder praised the radical path of reform which Turkey has entered
onto under his “friend” Erdogan. The chancellor expressly
acknowledged that Erdogan is making efforts to normalize relations
with Armenia.
Europe and Turkey now have the important task ahead of them to show
that despite such disagreements “a cooperation has developed and can
continue to develop.” It is important to eliminate mutual
reservations and doubts. In this context Schroeder referred to the
fact that many Turks live in Western Europe; there are 2.5 million in
Germany alone.
Erdogan had invited Schroeder as the first Western head of government
to break the traditional fast with him early in the evening. During
Ramadan devout Muslims are not allowed to have any food from sunup to
sundown. The daily breaking of the fast – called Iftar – is a festive
meal, which is often eaten with the immediate family or with close
friends. Schroeder said he was aware of this honour. Late in the
evening he intended to meet with Erdogan for political discussions.
The chancellor is expected back in Germany on Thursday.

The International Herald Tribune
October 13, 2005 Thursday
Turks embrace novelist’s war on EU
by Dan Bilefsky
The year is 2010 and the European Union has rejected Turkey. Fascist
governments have come to power in Germany, Austria and France and are
inciting violence against resident Turks and Muslims. A vengeful
Turkey joins forces with Russia and declares war against the EU.
Turkish commandos besiege Berlin, obliterate Europe and take control
of the Continent.
Some critics will be quick to dismiss “The Third World War,” a new
futuristic novel by a 30-year-old Turkish writer, Burak Turna, as the
wild imaginings of a conspiracy theorist and literary shock jock and
in many ways it is.
But the novel, which dominates bookstore display windows in Istanbul,
has sold more than 130,000 copies in just two months and is rising on
best-seller lists across the country. As Turkey embarks on 10 years
of tortuous talks to join the EU, Turkish observers say the novel’s
popularity reflects the growing wariness of Turks about a Europe that
is increasingly wary of them.
“Turks are getting fed up with the EU’s constant demands and ‘The
Third World War’ has tapped into that,” said Sinan Ulgen, a Turkish
commentator. He noted that the book’s pithy, cinematographic style
has helped it resonate with taxi drivers, government officials and
housewives alike.
Turna is no fringe figure. His first novel, “Metal Firtina” (“Metal
Storm”), became the fastest-selling book in the history of Turkey
when it was published in December, a time of deep Turkish ambivalence
about the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The book is a fictional account of a U.S. invasion of Turkey that
provokes a Turkish agent to detonate a nuclear bomb in a park in
Washington, leveling the capital. Overnight, the grungy former
journalist and philosophy student became a chat-show celebrity, a
cult figure among 20-somethings and an unofficial cultural barometer
for his country.
Turna says Turks’ fear of U.S. domination, reflected in the
popularity of “Metal Storm,” is being supplanted by a growing Turkish
ambivalence about Europe an ambivalence that has lurked in the
Turkish soul since after World War I.
At that time, West European powers dismembered the Ottoman Empire.
He says he wrote “The Third World War” “Ucuncu Dunya Savasi” in
Turkish to give Turks an outlet for their wounded pride about the
EU’s constant snubbing.
“Turks are waking up to two facts,” Turna said at a cafe near
Istanbul’s bustling Taksim Square, where he was greeted like a rock
star by young fans. “One is that everything told to the Turkish
people by EU leaders is lies. Two, that a Muslim country will never
get into an EU that doesn’t want us.”
Turna is a self-confessed history and science fiction junkie, whose
authoritative descriptions of U.S. military maneuvers in “Metal
Storm” prompted some in Turkey to accuse him of being a CIA agent.
He says he began researching “The Third World War” by brushing up on
1,000 years of European history and concluded that Europe will
inevitably reject Turkey and that the Continent will descend into
chaos and war.
“Europe is based on a racist nation-state structure that has created
world wars for the last 900 years,” said Turna, who added that none
of his works have been published abroad due to his incendiary themes.
“Even if there are no guns, the EU’s decision to turn its back on
Turkey will create a cultural war between Islam and the West.”
His novel pours scorn on the West in passages like one in which
Russian and Turkish officers discuss how they will carve up Europe
after defeating it:
“You are right, no matter what the consequences, a new European order
will be established,” interrupted Cemil Pasha, “and a new European
Union will be formed, and this time the strength will lie with
Eastern Europe.” The Russian general was pleased with this
assessment. “I will never say no to Istanbul being the center of the
new European Union. After all, I’ve been there myself,” the general
joked, “and I’ve seen the Bosporus which was quite enough for me!”
Cemil Pasha said, “Such an outcome would please me. Then Western
Europe would watch with grief the reconciliation between the Orthodox
world and Istanbul.”
The author has been spreading his “clash of civilizations” ideas on
the Turkish chat-show circuit and in fiery speeches titled “The World
Order After the Dissolution of the EU” to sold-out audiences across
the country. At a recent book signing event in Izmir, an Aegean port
facing Greece, he began by asking the crowd of mostly 15- to
25-year-olds how many supported Turkey’s joining the EU. Not a single
hand was raised.
He says this is a Turkish backlash against what he calls the
“anti-Turkish mania” on the Continent.
Sales of “The Third World War” have been helped by the fact that the
book was published in August against a backdrop of rising nationalism
in Turkey.
In recent weeks, as the EU intensified its demands for Turkish
concessions in sensitive, emotionally charged policy areas like
Cyprus and Armenia, sales of Turkish flags have surged.
“Turks are a proud people,” Turna said. “Countries like France think
we are begging them to join the EU, but the reality is that we will
just turn in on ourselves, become skeptical or just lose interest.”
His depiction of Turks’ growing skepticism is borne out by opinion
polls here. One by the Istanbul-based Foundation for Economic
Development, an independent research institute, showed that Turkish
support for EU membership plunged in May to 63 percent from 94
percent a year earlier.
Turna acknowledges that his propensity for satire and hyperbole often
gets in the way of the facts. In “The Third World War,” Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger has become president of the United States and
supports Europe’s offensive against Turkey. He provides backing
through a secret pagan society, the Brotherhood of Death, that seeks
global domination and is meant to represent U.S. neo-conservatives.
Turna grew up in a traditional but intellectual family in Istanbul,
imbibing a mix of military history, Kantian rationality and secular
Islam. As a student, he spent hours on the Internet, googling U.S.
military sites and memorizing Pentagon jargon. In college, he studied
business and philosophy, then worked briefly as a journalist before
writing “Metal Storm” with a friend, Orkun Ucar.
He confesses that his only trip to Europe was one visit to Munich
five years ago, a fact that helps explain why “The Third World War”
features baroque descriptions of Germany’s beer capital but is
spartan in its characterizations of the rest of the Continent.
His frequent travels in Asia, he said, have led him to conclude that
Turkey’s future rests in an “eastern alliance” rather than in the
West.
Turna proposes that Turkey limit its relationship with the EU to a
free-trade agreement and instead link up politically with China,
India and Russia.
“India has 250 million rich people, China has a huge economy and
middle class. Russia is flowing with cash. Why are my politicians
wasting time in the corridors of the EU when they should be visiting
and courting these countries, like the U.S. does?”
Just as Europeans are ignorant about the real Turkey, Turna argues,
Turks are ignorant about the real EU. He blames the Turkish media and
the political establishment for portraying the EU as a panacea that
will help make poor, agrarian Turkey flush with cash.
“There is not a proper debate on Europe in Turkey,” Turna said. “It
has become taboo to criticize the EU. The Istanbul elite sell the EU,
while the rural part of the country has little understanding of what
joining the bloc really means.”
Pressed about the benefits that Turkey’s EU membership drive has
brought, including better rights for minorities and the
liberalization of the Turkish economy, Turna acknowledged that the
carrots and sticks of the EU process have been important for a
country that has been plagued by instability. But he adds a caveat
often heard in the salons, cafes and boardrooms of Ankara and
Istanbul.
“What matters for Turkey is being part of a process that has
accelerated political and economic change,” he said. “But the process
is more important than the endgame, and no one will shed a tear if
the EU doesn’t let us in 10 to 15 years’ time.”
Since “The Third World War” came out, Turna has been working on a
soon-to-be-published philosophical treatise called “Sistema.” He also
has started his own publishing house to translate new foreign authors
into Turkish.
These days, he says, he spends a lot of time playing video games. His
favorite? A game called the Rise of Nations in which countries
compete for global domination. “I love to pretend that I’m China and
to bomb Europe into the Stone Age,” he says.

RosBusinessConsulting Database
October 13, 2005 Thursday
Russia discusses cooperation with Armenia
Trade between Armenia and Russia grew by 31 percent to $120.4m in the
first half of this year. Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markarian
met today with Russian transportation minister Igor Levitin. The
sides said they were satisfied with the advance in trade, the ARKA
news agency said. Markarian underscored the fact that Russia remains
Armenia’s largest trade and economic partner. Levitin expressed his
hope that the Russian Prime Minister’s visit to Armenia at the end of
2005 would provide a new stimulus to the development of political and
economic relations between the two states.

Independent on Sunday (London)
October 16, 2005, Sunday
BOOKS: WITNESS FROM THE SAVAGE ZONE;
THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION BY ROBERT FISK FOURTH ESTATE £25
by NEAL ASCHERSON
Robert Fisk recovers after being beaten by a mob on a road near
Quetta, Pakistan, 2001 HUSSEIN MALLA/AP
Robert Fisk is the sort of reporter who walks in the opposite
direction. I first came across him as an absence, 30 years ago in
Belfast. We, the pack, had spent the day waiting for the big Paisley
briefing, but where was Bob? It turned out that he had gone off alone
to the battlefield of the Boyne, to see what the place and the past
would say to him. In the first Gulf war, he enraged ‘pool’ colleagues
under Army control by hiring an old car, putting on a borrowed helmet
and driving down forbidden roads until he reached the front. When a
‘facility trip’ is laid on for the press corps, Fisk stays behind,
suspecting ” usually rightly ” that it’s to get the hacks out of the
way while something interesting happens.
Right at the end of this book, he describes himself sitting in the
roadside mud with an Iraqi family, watching as a 40-mile convoy of
American armour thunders up Highway Eight towards Baghdad. For Fisk,
it’s a moment to reflect on Roman and American empires which have a
visceral need to ‘project power on a massive scale’. For the reader,
it’s almost a caricature: the journalist who wants to see the world
from down in the muck with the victims, rather than from a tank
turret as an ’embedded’ correspondent.
Today, Robert Fisk is one of the best-known reporters in the world.
Long before 11 September, he had an enormous following of readers who
had come to regard him as the only journalist consistently describing
the Middle East ‘as it is’. He has also accumulated a pack of
vengeful enemies, longing to discredit and silence him. Not all of
them are Israelis or American diplomats. Some are fellow-journalists,
maddened by his gift for being in the right place at the right time.
(The bomb which changed Near-Eastern history went off down his street
in Beirut; the dead man with his socks still burning turned out to be
his friend Rafiq Hariri, ex-prime-minister of Lebanon…)
For the last 30 years, Fisk has been covering an enormous arc of
territory which is not just ‘the Middle East’ but reaches from the
Moroccan Atlantic to the Punjab with a northward extension into the
Balkans. Almost all the peoples who live there are Muslim. All of
them, without exception, have been the objects of imperial conquest
and colonialism, of cultural suppression and big-power
frontier-drawing.
This is a book about what Fisk saw, heard, thought and wrote in those
years. It is not an autobiography. Apart from his relationship with
his parents, the door on his private life is locked. Neither is it a
complete chronicle. Having just written a separate book about them,
Fisk leaves out the experiences in Lebanon which generated some of
his best-known writing (his accounts of the Israeli shelling of Qana
in 1996, for instance). But what remains is overwhelming.
This is a very long book, allowing Fisk to interleave political
analysis, recent history and his own adventures with the real stories
which concern him. These are the sufferings of ordinary people under
monstrous tyrannies or in criminal, avoidable wars. Fisk reported the
Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf war of 1991, the Palestine intifadas, the
Taliban rule in Afghanistan and its sequel as the Americans and their
allies invaded in 2002, the terror regimes of Saddam, the Shah and
the ayatollahs, the frenzy of bloodshed in Algeria as Islamists and
security forces competed to slaughter the innocent, and ” of course ”
the Bush-Blair war against Iraq and its outcome. His chapter on the
1915 Armenian genocide, still unpardonably denied and evaded and not
only by Turks, revives his famous report from Syria when he stumbled
across the mass graves at Margada (see extract, above).
The source of most of this horror, for Fisk, is the post-1918
carve-up of the Middle East between European powers. ‘We’ ” Britain,
France and much later America ” are responsible. Subtly, Fisk weaves
this sense of guilt around his own ambiguous feelings for his father,
a young officer in the Great War for civilisation who became at once
a cold, bullying husband and a stiffly proud parent. Shame for that
generation’s imperial mistakes, he seems to feel, is heritable, and
when he is attacked and almost killed by an Afghan refugee mob,
Fisk’s impulse is that they are not to blame. He might have done the
same to a Westerner, in their place.
All the same, the cumulative impact of these terrible accounts of
massacre, torture and almost unimaginable ruthlessness may not be
what Fisk wants. The case against ‘Us’ (the West) diminishes; the
unjust impression that this is a zone of endemic savagery grows
stronger. He writes with a marvellous resource of image and language.
His investigative reporting is lethally painstaking (see how he
pieces together the biography of an American missile which somehow
came into Israeli hands, was fired at an ambulance and killed an
innocent Lebanese family).
But the sense of inescapable doom which builds up in this book is
misleading. What’s missing is a sense that it’s not just Fisk but
most of the world which finds Western policy crazy. Fisk includes
here several unforgettable, marvellously observed meetings with Osama
bin Laden. Maybe he should try his talents on a meeting with George W
Bush.

Independent on Sunday (London)
October 16, 2005, Sunday
‘THE TURKS BROUGHT WHOLE FAMILIES UP HERE TO KILL THEM’
ROBERT FISK DESCRIBES HIS RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE;
THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION BY ROBERT FISK FOURTH ESTATE £25
by ROBERT FISK
Robert Fisk recovers after being beaten by a mob on a road near
Quetta, Pakistan, 2001 HUSSEIN MALLA/AP
Exposed to the air, the bones became soft and claylike and flaked
away in our hands, the last mortal remains of an entire race of
people disappearing as swiftly as their Turkish oppressors would have
wished us to forget them. As many as 50,000 Armenians were murdered
in this little killing field, and it took a minute or two before
Ellsen and I fully comprehended that we were standing in a mass
grave. For Margada and the Syrian desert around it ” like thousands
of villages in what was Turkish Armenia ” are the Auschwitz of the
Armenian people, the place of the world’s first, forgotten,
Holocaust.
The parallel with Auschwitz is no idle one. Turkey’s reign of terror
against the Armenian people was an attempt to destroy the Armenian
race. The Armenian death toll was almost a million and a half. While
the Turks spoke publicly of the need to ‘resettle’ their Armenian
population “as the Germans were to speak later of the Jews of Europe”
the true intentions of the Turkish government were quite specific.
On 15 September 1915, for example ” and a carbon of this document
exists ” the Turkish interior minister, Talaat Pasha, cabled an
instruction to his prefect in Aleppo. ‘You have already been informed
that the Government… has decided to destroy completely all the
indicated persons living in Turkey… Their existence must be
terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard
must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience.’
Was this not exactly what Himmler told his SS murderers in 1941? Here
on the hill of Margada, we were now standing among what was left of
the ‘indicated persons’. And Boghos Dakessian, who along with his
five-year- old nephew Hagop had driven up to the Habur with us from
the Syrian town of Deir es-Zour, knew all about those ‘tragic
measures’. ‘The Turks brought whole families up here to kill them. It
went on for days. They would tie them together in lines, men,
children, women, most of them starving and sick, many naked. Then
they would push them off the hill into the river and shoot one of
them. The dead body would then carry the others down and drown them.
It was cheap that way. It cost only one bullet.’

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
October 16, 2005 Sunday 10:29 AM Eastern Time
Armenian president’s protocol dept head dies in traffic accident
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
Head of the Armenian president’s protocol department Mamikon Tonoyan,
32, died in a traffic accident on the northeastern outskirts of
Yerevan on Saturday, a source in the presidential administration told
Itar-Tass on Sunday.
His speeding car hit a barrier and slid onto a wrong lane. Tonoyan’s
wife was taken to a hospital with fractured bones.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
October 15, 2005, Saturday
PICK OF THE PAPERBACKS
By Rebecca Sparkes
Look at Me, Look at Me! by Dom Joly (Bloomsbury, pounds 8.99)
Dom Joly is the man behind – or rather screamingly at the front of –
Trigger Happy TV, aseries that elevated the silly prank to an art
form. Overnight, he became instantly recognisable by the giant mobile
phone, a latter-day Orville to Joly’s Keith Harris. Now, in homage to
the celebrity confessional, he has produced the bashfully titled Look
at Me, Look at Me!
Born in war-torn Beirut, the young Dom should have enjoyed all the
fortunes of the “Joly Fyne Homoepathic Remedys” (sic) dynasty. Oddly
enough, the baby Dom was surrendered to the care of a grunting
Armenian nanny and Arthur, an opinionated Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Luckily, the English public school system equipped the effete young
Joly for an early career first in espionage and then, more
successfully, hanging out in Notting Hill, wearing too much make-up.
This is a ridiculous, and extremely funny book. Arthur would be
proud.