WHO DOES HISTORY BELONG TO IF NOT THE HISTORIANS?
By Semih Idiz
Turkish Press
May 25 2006
MILLIYET- I said earlier that the bill to criminalize denial of the
so-called Armenian genocide would be passed by France’s Parliament.
We can’t say that it didn’t pass. In other words, we can’t say that
common sense won. Observers believe that the bill will pass if it comes
to a vote. Now people say the bill will be brought to the agenda by
the end of this year.
The French Armenians aren’t satisfied with the situation either. They
would prefer for the bill to be passed in the General Assembly and
stay in legal procedures even if it’s not accepted. Armenian Deputy
Partick Deveciyan lashed out at French Foreign Minister Philippe
Douste-Blazy. In his speech in Parliament, Balazy pointed to France’s
important political and economic interests in its relations with Turkey
and said the bill should be rejected. Deveciyan branded Blazy’s request
“unethical.”
However, the French are concerned about their economy. Smart observers
know that foreign trade and foreign investment are very important
in their economy. In other word, they are aware that Blazy’s words
aren’t empty. If we come to ‘ethical’ Deveciyan, in light of the
French approach to Algeria, he is also aware that the bill isn’t at
all ethical. He’s already stated his views on history.
After being reminded how at least one leading French historian is
opposed to the bill, he said meaninglessly: ‘History isn’t the private
property of historians.’
Judging from the comments of French Armenians, this problem is
a political problem rather than a historical one. That’s why the
Armenians are against Turkey’ proposal for a commission of historians
which was also supported by Douste-Blazy. They try to base the problem
on demagogy. That’s why Turkey hast to stick to its proposal.
But Ankara isn’t doing much about this.
The fact that the Armenians didn’t reach their goals this time doesn’t
change the situation much, because there are third parties who want
to use this issue for their own interests.

JOINT STATEMENT OF OSCE MG CO-CHAIR STATES WAS RED OUT IN YEREVAN
Author: A.Mammadov
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
May 25 2006
Today, the Russian deputy foreign minister Grigori Karasin, the USA
state secretary assistant Daniel Freed and advisor of the French
Foreign Ministry Pyer Morel red out the joint statement of the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chair states in Yerevan as a result of their visit
to Armenia.
According to information of Medimaks, it was stated in the statement:
“We, deputy foreign ministers of Russian Federation, the United States
of America and France, together with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk
Group and the special representative of the present chairman of OSCE,
arrived in Yerevan to assist in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
peacefully and therefore, it is high time for both sides to reach an
agreement on the basic solution principles,” told in the statement.
It is necessary to note that practically the text is similar with
the previous statement of the representatives of the OSCE Minsk group
co-chair states.

ENERGY INSECURITY, FROZEN CONFLICTS PREOCCUPY GUAM SUMMIT
By Vladimir Socor
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
May 25 2006
The GUAM summit in Kyiv on May 23 called international attention
to the challenges and threats posed to the four member countries by
energy insecurity and secessionist conflicts. Furthermore, Moldova
and Georgia are the targets of politically motivated Russian embargoes
on agricultural products and wine, their main exports.
The founding Declaration of the new GUAM Organization for Democracy and
Economic Development asserts that economic pressures and monopolization
of energy markets are unacceptable. The document commits the member
countries to work together to promote the security of energy supplies.
In their speeches at the summit, Presidents Mikheil Saakashvili
and Vladimir Voronin cited Azerbaijan’s and Ukraine’s emergency
deliveries of gas to Georgia and Moldova, respectively, when Russia
stopped supplies in January of this year. Although the emergency
deliveries were small, they were vital at that time and a mark of
political solidarity (Channel 5 TV [Kyiv], May 23). However, GUAM
Organization member countries have yet to begin discussions toward a
common energy-security policy. Voronin’s chief adviser, Mark Tkachuk,
told the media during the summit that such a policy would require a
two-fold focus: attracting investments to create alternative routes
of supply and concluding agreements on the free flow of supplies
through member countries’ territories (Kommersant, May 23).
For his part, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko urged the president
of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to consider the possibility of setting
up a network of gasoline and fuel supply stations in Ukraine.
Yushchenko would order a Ukrainian working group to deal with this
issue “within three days,” he stated. Furthermore, he sought Azeri
commitments to: supply crude oil to the Odessa-Brody pipeline in the
northward direction; co-invest in expanding the terminal capacity at
Odessa to take Azeri and Kazakh oil; co-invest in building a refinery
in Brody to refine that oil; and support extending the pipeline
to Gdansk — a project that the European Union may help finance
(Interfax-Ukraine, 1 + 1 TV [Kyiv], Interfax-Ukraine, May 23).
Kyiv has submitted such proposals to Baku repeatedly during the
last year and Yushchenko has aired them internationally. They seem
unrealistic, because the great bulk of Azerbaijan’s crude oil output
is pre-committed to the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. Building a refinery
at Brody seems incompatible with extending the pipeline to Gdansk,
inasmuch as the Odessa-Brody line’s annual throughput (projected at 8
million tons, potentially up to 14 million) can hardly sustain both the
refinery and the extension. In any case, the Odessa-Brody pipeline’s
future depends almost entirely on the availability of Kazakh oil,
but Russia stands in the way.
The summit’s Declaration expresses a shared concern in pointing out,
“Occupation of a country’s territory through military force or threats
of force is unacceptable. Territorial annexations and the creation of
enclaves can never become legal. No country may intervene into another
country’s affairs through military, political, or economic pressures.”
Yushchenko referenced the controversial plan that carries his name
regarding settlement in Transnistria, which he claimed was “supported
by both the Moldovan and the Transnistrian side.” Moreover, he advised,
“A plan along the same lines should be developed for Karabakh and one
along the same lines for Abkhazia.” But he seemed to change thought
immediately: “The solution to each conflict, however, requires an
individual plan and there can be no recipe on resolving the Karabakh
problem along with the problem of Transnistria or Abkhazia. It takes
an individual approach” (Interfax-Ukraine, May 23). Voronin chose
to focus on the positive side, expressing gratitude for Ukraine’s
recent cooperation with Moldova and the EU in curbing Transnistria’s
contraband trade.
Aliyev and Voronin called for better coordination among GUAM member
countries in international organizations regarding the secessionist
conflicts and foreign troops (Moldpres, 1 + 1 TV [Kyiv], May 23). The
unspoken reason behind that call is that Ukrainian representatives
have stopped subscribing to joint GUAM positions on those issues in
some meetings of the OSCE’s Permanent Council and Joint Consultative
Group in recent months.
That joint stand was GUAM’s primordial raison d’etre. The group emerged
during debates at the OSCE in 1996 on the Treaty on Conventional Forces
in Europe in order to seek Russian compliance with force limitations,
specifically on GUAM countries’ territories.
The four countries’ joint stand, authorizing one of them to speak for
the four, had become its hallmark in international organizations and
one of the few tangible manifestations of GUAM’s viability. Kyiv’s
recent tendency to stand aside from the GUAM position at the OSCE
has become a matter of concern to some NATO diplomats as well. This
situation might now be corrected after the presidents’ private
discussions at the Kyiv summit.

ARMENIA NOT PARTICIPATING IN THE MEETING OF CIS DEFENSE MINISTERS IN BAKU
Author: E. Javadova
TREND, Azerbaijan
May 25 2006
Chief of Armenian Defense Ministry is not participating in the 31
May meeting of CI Defense Ministers in Baku, Trend reports quoting
Ilgar Verdiyev, acting head of press service of Azeri Defense Ministry.
Verdiyev said Defense Ministers of 10 countries are participating in
the meeting.
The meeting agenda is still unclear. Also, specific issues to
be discussed are in the air, although the meeting in total aims
at boosting military cooperation and exchanging experience among
defense ministries.

WORLD WATCHES IN SILENCE AS AZERBAIJAN WIPES OUT ARMENIAN CULTURE
By Lucian Harris
Art Newspaper, UK
May 25 2006
>From Conservation
Western governments have failed to condemn the destruction of a unique
medieval cemetery by Azerbaijani soldiers
Armenia says the Christian cemetery of Jugha, dating from the ninth to
16th centuries, has been completely destroyed by Azerbaijani soldiers.
LONDON. A delegation of European members of Parliament was last month
refused access to Djulfa, in the Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan,
to investigate reports that an ancient Armenian Christian cemetery
has been destroyed by Azerbaijani soldiers.
The delegation of ten MEPs from the commission on EU-Armenia
parliamentary co-operation travelled to Armenia on 17 April following
a resolution passed by the EP’s conference of presidents on 6 April.
An EP spokesman told The Art Newspaper that when the party tried to
enter Nakhichevan, it was “opposed by the Azerbaijan authorities”.
Azerbaijani soldiers photographed destroying headstones at Jugha
This was despite the Muslim country’s outright denial that the
cemetery has been destroyed-and despite the fact that Azerbaijan is
a member of the Council of Europe and thus committed to respecting
cultural heritage.
According to witnesses, as quoted in Armenian reports, in a three-day
operation last December, Azerbaijani soldiers armed with sledgehammers
obliterated the remnants of the Djulfa cemetery (known as Jugha
in Armenian). Until the early 20th century it contained around
10,000 khachkars, dedicatory monuments unique to medieval Armenian
culture. They are typically carved with a cross surrounded by intricate
interlacing floral designs.
A great number of khachkars, the majority of which date from the 15th
to 16th centuries, were destroyed in 1903-04 during the construction
of a railway, and by the early 1970s only 2,707 were recorded.
Armenian culture has always had a precarious existence sandwiched
between Russia and the Islamic spheres of Turkey and Iran. The
Armenians are still fighting to get acknowledgement of the genocide
of their people by the Ottoman Turks which reached its peak in 1915.
After 1921, when the southern enclaves of Nakhichevan and Nagorno
Karabakh were absorbed into Soviet Azerbaijan, many Armenians fled
the area and much of their cultural heritage was destroyed. By the
late 1980s when the Soviet Union crumbled, less than 4,000 Armenians
remained in Nakhichevan-so few that the exclave avoided the ethnic
warfare that exploded in Karabakh where a larger Armenian population
remained under the administration of Muslim Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijani army began clearing the Jugha cemetery in 1998,
removing 800 of the khachkars before complaints by Unesco brought
a temporary halt. But the destruction commenced again in November
2002, and by the time the incident was written up by Icomos in its
World Report on Monuments and Sites in Danger for that year, the
1500-year-old cemetery was described as “completely flattened”. It
is not clear exactly how many khachkars were left, but on 14 December
2005, witnesses in Armenian reports said that soldiers had demolished
the remaining stones, loading them onto trucks and dumping them in the
river, actions that were filmed from across the river in Iran by an
Armenian Film crew, and aired on the Boston-based online television
station Hairenik.
Armenians say the destruction of the Jugha cemetery represents the
final move in Azerbaijan’s systematic cleansing of Armenian cultural
heritage from Nakhichevan, mostly carried out between 1998 and 2002.
On a visit to Armenia in March, the director of the Hermitage Museum in
St Petersburg, Mikhail Piotrovsky, whose mother is Armenian, reacted
to the destruction by likening it to the Taleban’s obliteration of
the Bamiyan Buddhas. His comments elicited an angry response in the
Azerbaijani press. However, the lack of international condemnation
of Azerbaijan’s actions has been a source of frustration to many
Armenians. Baroness Cox, a long-standing campaigner for the protection
of Armenian heritage in Azerbaijan who has urged the British government
to take action, told The Art Newspaper that, despite the influential
Armenian Diaspora, both the US and UK administrations are more
concerned with cultivating close relations with oil-rich Azerbaijan
and its ally Turkey, than with Armenia.
A response issued by the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Brussels in
January, insisted that Armenian allegations were made “to delude
the international community” and detract attention from “atrocities
committed by the Armenian troops in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan, where no single Azerbaijani monument has been left
undamaged”. It also contained an implied historical claim on the
Jugha cemetery stating that it was not Armenian but created by
“Caucasian Albanians”.
The Azerbaijani allegations, which claim the destruction of hundreds
of mosques, religious schools, cemeteries and museums in the Shusha,
Yerevan, Zangazur and Icmiadzin districts of Armenia, have undoubtedly
compounded the reluctance of international organisations to get
involved in a situation described to The Art Newspaper by Guido
Carducci, the head of Unesco’s International Standards Section, as
“a political hot potato”.
According to Baroness Cox, even during the war, mosques in Armenia
were generally protected by the Christian population, but with so
many emotive claims and counter claims being made, and both sides
accusing each other of rewriting history, non-partisan monitoring
and verification of all alleged cultural crimes seems more important
than ever. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Mikhail Piotrovsky said:
“Any destruction of the cultural heritage is a crime, whether that
heritage be Armenian, Russian, Azerbaijani, or Iraqi. The cultural
heritage belongs to the entire world, not just to one nation.”
for photos: 1

DIPLOMATS OF OSCE MG CO-CHAIRING STATES DISCUSS NK CONFLICT SETTLEMENT WITH ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
May 25 2006
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Yuri Merzlyakov (Russia), Bernard Fasier
(France), Steven Mann (US), as wells as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Grigori Karasin, Political Affairs Director of French FM Stanislas
de Laboulaye and US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried met
with Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan today (APA).
The discussions focused on the settlement of the Nagorno Garabagh
conflict.
The diplomats also discussed the settlement of the conflict with
Armenian President Robert Kocharian. They are expected to make a join
statement in the evening.

RA FM AND REPRESENTATIVES OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS OF CANADA DISCUS ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES OF “ARMENIA-DIASPORA” FORUM
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
May 25 2006
YEREVAN, May 25. /ARKA/. The RA Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan
Oskanian and representatives of Armenian communities of Ottawa and
Toronto (Canada) discussed organizational issues of Armenia-Diaspora”
forum, which is going to be held in Armenia on September 18-20.
According to the Press and Information Department of the RA Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, their meeting took place in the framework of
Oskanian’s visit to Canada on May 22.
According to the press-release, Oskanian and representatives of
Armenian communities of Canada also discussed program on development
of rural communities of Armenia, particularly issues of implementation
of long-term program on development of agricultural infrastructure.
Oskanian pointed out important strategic role of this program.
During the meeting sides also discussed issues of development and
deepening relations between Armenia and Diaspora.
Representatives of Armenian communities of Canada highly estimated
efforts of the RA Government directed toward development of its
economy and expressed willingness to take part in implementation of
the agricultural development program.
During short working visit to Canada Oskanian also made a speech in
the RA Embassy in Ottawa and answered to questions of representatives
of Armenian communities in Canada.

“ENTREPRENEUR” NEW DEPUTY GROUP FORMED IN RA PARLIAMENT
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
May 25 2006
YEREVAN, May 25. /ARKA – Novosti-Armenia/. Today “Entrepreneur” new
deputy group, which consists of 10 former members of “Orinats Yerkir”
faction, has been formed in the RA National Assembly (NA).
During May 25 session of the parliament the RA NA Vice-Speaker Tigran
Torosyan read the corresponding statement signed by 10 members of
the group.
“Having concept about development of our country and for more
active and organized participation in political life of our country,
development of free relations and strengthening of democratic values
and for more effective use of our abilities we create “Entrepreneur”
deputy group, the statement says.
The document was signed by Grigor Margaryan (head of “Entrepreneur”
group), Mekhak Mkhitaryan (Secretary), Sayat Zakharyan, Eduard
Gabrielyan, Samvel Shakhgeldyan, Arshak Mkhitaryan, Alexander
Petrosyan, Tigran Yeganyan, Arkady Hambartsumyan and Artak Sargsyan.
>From beginning of May 20 members of “Orinats Yerkir” faction quitted
because of contradictions with leaders of the party. 10 of them became
members of a newly-formed “Entrepreneur” deputy group.
On May 11, the council of “Orinats Yerkir” party decided to leave the
ruling coalition of Armenia explaining this step by disagreements over
issues of internal and foreign policies and deepening of democracy.
On May 22, the leader of the party Arthur Baghdasaryan made an official
statement about his resignation from the post of the RA NA Speaker.
“Orinats Yerkir” party was part of the ruling coalition of Armenia
together with Republican Party of Armenia and Dashnaktsutyun ARF
since May 2003.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FRADKOV: FAMILIES OF RUSSIANS KILLED IN A-320 AIR CRASH TO GET FINANCIAL AID
ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 25 2006
MOSCOW, May 25 (Itar-Tass) — Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov
decreed to pay the one-time financial aid to the families of Russian
citizens killed in the crash of an Armenian airplane A-320 near
Sochi. They will get 100,000 roubles for each air crash victim, the
Russian governmental press service said. The prime minister ordered
to assign the necessary sum from the governmental reserve fund in 2006.
The Ministry of Health and Social Development and the Transport
Ministry should submit in the Finance Ministry the lists of the
families of the Russians killed in the crash of the airplane A-320.
The Krasnodar territorial administration is instructed to pay the
one-time material aid.
The airplane A-320 crashed near Sochi on May 3, 2006.

AZERI FM INVITED TO CUBA
Author: S.Agayeva
TREND, Azerbaijan
May 25 2006
Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov received an official invitation
from his Cuban mate Felipe Perez Roje on May 25. Foreign Ministry
officials told Trend that the invitation was handed by Eumelio
Cabalero, deputy Foreign minister of Cuba.
Cuba wants to develop cooperation with Azerbaijan in the field of
trade, energy and health, Cuban diplomat said at the meeting. Cuba,
he said also, fully supports Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and
calls Armenia to commit to UN resolutions approved for the settlement
of Azeri-Armenian conflict.
In turn, Elmar Mamedyarov stated Azerbaijan’s interest in close
cooperation with all countries of the world, including Cuba.
At the meeting, a memorandum on mutual cooperation of the countries
was signed.