Agence France Presse
13 avril 2006 jeudi 6:04 PM GMT
Une proposition de loi pour punir la négation du génocide arménien
MARSEILLE 13 avr 2006
Le groupe socialiste à l’Assemblée nationale va proposer une loi
sanctionnant la négation du génocide arménien lors de la séance
d’initiative parlementaire le 18 mai, a-t-on appris auprès jeudi du
Conseil de coordination des organisations arméniennes de France
(CCAF) à Marseille.
Cette proposition de loi, si elle est adoptée, viendra compléter la
loi du 29 janvier 2001 dans laquelle l’Etat français reconnaissait le
génocide arménien, a expliqué le président du CCAF Marseille-Provence
Pascal Chamassian.
Le président du conseil général des Bouches-du-Rhône, Jean-Noël
Guérini, a annoncé officiellement jeudi soir que le groupe PS allait
proposer cette loi, rédigée à l’initiative de députés du département
et qui a été appuyée par l’ensemble des élus socialistes à
l’assemblée.
“Pour nous c’est une grande nouvelle car la loi de 2001, magnifique
pour nous, était tronquée à la base: tous les négationnistes
pouvaient continuer à oeuvrer tranquillement”, a expliqué à la presse
M. Chamassian.
La communauté arménienne de Marseille et de France se prépare à
commémorer le 91ème anniversaire du génocide arménien, le 24 avril.
Un mémorial, le premier financé par l’Etat, doit notamment être
inauguré à Marseille en présence du préfet de région Christian
Frémont, du président du Conseil régional Michel Vauzelle, du maire
de la ville Jean-Claude Gaudin, de M. Guérini et du président de
l’Assemblée nationale d’Arménie Arthur Baghdassarian.
Les Arméniens affirment que jusqu’à 1,5 million des leurs ont péri
dans un génocide orchestré par l’empire ottoman (1915-1917). Ankara
soutient que 300.000 Arméniens et au moins autant de Turcs ont été
tués au cours de troubles suscités par des soulèvements d’Arméniens
et leur ralliement aux armées russes en guerre contre l’empire
ottoman, et lors des déportations qui ont suivi.

Members of the EU-Armenia Cooperation Commission to visit the
Armenian-Turkish border

ArmRadio.am
15.04.2006 14:10
Next week members of the EU-Armenia Cooperation Commission will visit
the Armenian-Turkish border.
The 8th sitting of the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Commission
will be held April 18-19 in Yerevan.
In the framework of the visit members of the Commission will have
meetings with RA President Robert Kocharyan, Chairman of the National
Assembly Arthur Baghdasaryan, Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan,
Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan and Human Rights Defender Armen
Harutyunyan.
Members of the delegation will meet also representatives of
independent TV Channels, Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan Vladimir
Pryakhin and Ambassadors of EU member states.

Protests at Hungarian sentence continue in Azeri towns
ANS TV, Baku
15 Apr 06
[Presenter Natavan Babayeva] Protest actions continue against the life
sentence by a Budapest court to Ramil Safarov accused of killing
Armenian officer Gurgen Markaryan [at a NATO course in Hungary].
Young people staged an unauthorized protest action outside State
University of Languages a short while ago. The protesters chanted:
“Down with injustice”, “Freedom to Ramil Safarov” and “Karabakh is
ours and will be ours”. They tried to march towards Azadliq Square
along Rasid Behbudov Street [central Baku]. Police stopped them and
detained five people.
The local branch of the Karabakh Liberation Organization, war veterans
and families of martyrs today staged a march and rally in Mingacevir
[central Azerbaijan] to protect the rights of Ramil Safarov. They
chanted “Freedom to Ramil Safarov” and demanded that the Budapest
court’s unfair verdict be cancelled. The rally also said that this was
not just the violation of Ramil Safarov’s rights, but that of war
veterans and families of martyrs. The march started at the town’s
Heydar Aliyev Avenue and ended at the Martyrs’ Avenue. The action
passed off without incidents.
A group of young people tried to stage a picket in the central square
in Ganca [northwestern Azerbaijan] with the same demands. Ten minutes
following the beginning of the action policemen arrived at the square
and dispersed the pickets. Two pickets were detained and taken to the
Nizami district police department. The ANS Ganca bureau reports that
Irada Agayeva and Elsan Mammadov were released after the two-hour
detention in the police department. The young people spoke about their
plans to continue protests against the verdict by the Budapest
court. The Ganca town police department said that the picket was
dispersed because it was unauthorized and the actions of this nature
will be thwarted in the future as well.
[Video showed protest actions]

Editorial&Opinion: Traitors, martyrs or just brave men?

The Independent – United Kingdom; Apr 15, 2006
ROBERT FISK
More than 15 years ago, I travelled to the Belgian city of Ypres with
an Irish friend. She was from a good Fine Gael family which nursed a
healthy disrespect for the amount of romantic green blossom draped
around Padraig Pearse’s neck for the militarily hopeless but
politically explosive Dublin Easter Rising of 1916. But she displayed
an equally admirable suspicion of British – or “English” as she would
have put it – intentions towards Ireland, north and south. Her mother
once recalled for me a British military raid on their home in County
Carlow. “I was a little girl and one of the soldiers patted me on the
head and I told him: ‘You keep your hands off me.'”
But at Ypres one evening, beneath the great Menin Gate – upon which
are carved the names of 54,896 First World War British soldiers whose
bodies were never found – my Irish friend faced a real political
challenge. She had noted, among those thousands, the names of hundreds
of young Irishmen who had died in British uniform while their
countrymen at home were fighting and dying in battle against the same
British Army. She looked at one of the names. “Why in God’s name,” she
asked, “was a boy from the Station House, Tralee, dying here in the
mud of Flanders?” And it was at this point that an elderly man
approached us and asked my Irish friend to sign the visitors’ book.
She looked at the British Army’s insignia on the memorial volume with
distaste. There was the British crown glimmering in the evening
light. And the Belgian firemen who nightly play the Last Post beneath
the gate were already taking position. There was not much time. But
my friend remembered the young man from Tralee. She thought about her
own small Catholic nation and its centuries of suffering and she
realised that the boy from Tralee had gone to fight – or so he thought
– for little Catholic Belgium. She decided to inscribe the British
Army’s book in the Irish language. Do thiortha beaga,” she wrote. “For
little countries.”
All this happened years before an economically powerful and
self-confident Irish Republic would face up to the sacrifice its
pre-independence soldiers made in British uniform’ the estimated
35,000 Irishmen who died in the 1914-18 war wildly outnumber the few
hundred who fought in the Easter Rising. The total of dead, wounded
and missing among Irish Protestants in the 36th (Ulster) Division on
the Somme and at Ypres came to 32,180. The same statistics among
soldiers of the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions – most of them Catholics
– amounted to 37,761.
My own father was to fight alongside the Irish on the Somme in 1918
although – a fact I used to keep quiet about when I was The Times’s
correspondent in Belfast in the early 1970s – he was originally sent
to Ireland in the aftermath of the Rising. I have a faded photograph
of Bill Fisk, then in the Cheshire Regiment, kissing the Blarney
Stone, and some pictures he took of the front gate of Victoria
Barracks – now Collins Barracks – in Cork, its stonework plastered
with ap-peals to Irishmen to join the British Army and fight for
Catholic Belgium and France. It was only when I was invited to give
the annual Bloody Sunday memorial lecture in Derry – the first Brit to
be asked to honour the memory of the 14 Catholics who were killed by
the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment in 1972 – that I talked
about my Dad’s fight against Sinn Fein (whom he always called the
“Shinners”). If Padraig Pearse had not raised the flag over the Dublin
Post office in Easter Week of 1916, I told my audience, Bill Fisk
might have been sent to die in the first Battle of the Somme three
months later – and his son Robert would not exist. So did I owe my
life to Pearse? I can already hear that most polemical, visceral,
poignant, absolutely infuriating, brilliant and doggedly insulting
Irish Times columnist Kevin Myers bursting into fits of sarcastic
laughter and carefully aimed fury at such a remark. Kevin was among
the fir st to hammer away at Ireland’s shameful refusal to acknowledge
the vast sacrifice of its sons in the 1914-18 cauldron. And Kevin it
has been, while foolishly taking the Turkish line of denial of the
Armenian genocide of 1915, who has repeatedly tried to hack down the
reputations of martyrs Pearse and James Connolly and John MacBride –
and Eamon de Valera, who escaped execution because of his American
passport – and present the Rising as not only a military disaster but
an unnecessary sacrifice of civilian life and the first example of
“green fascism”.
I don’t like the way the “fascist” label gets stuck on anyone we
dislike.
Lefties used to call policemen fascists. And now we have
“Islamofascism” which effectively binds Mussolini to one of the
world’s great religions. No wonder we could draw those outrageous
cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban.
But I’m still not at all sure how to regard the men of 1916. The very
best book on the Rising – George Dangerfield’s magnificent The
Damnable Question -proves that the “rebels” (as my father called them)
were very brave as well as very dismissive of their own and others’
lives. They were not to know the deviant way in which their “blood
sacrifice” – which was not exactly the first in Irish history – would
be adopted by later armed groups who sought their mandate in blood
shed before those 1916 British execution parties.
Had they not been so cruelly shot down as punishment for their armed
assault on British power, would they have been so honoured in the
long, dark, stagnant Ireland of the 1920s and 30s and then in the
terrible and much later years of the civil conflict in Northern
Ireland? Do you have to be a martyr to have honour?
I was much struck by this thought five years ago when I was searching
through the British National Archives at Kew for details of the
execution of a young Australian soldier in the British Army whom my
father was ordered to shoot at the end of the First World War. Bill
Fisk refused, so another officer performed the dirty deed. But there
in the documents of British military executions – routinely filed
under 1916 – were the names of Pearse and Connolly and McBride. The
exemplary punishment accorded to them and their comrades in Dublin
turned Irish public scorn to sympathy and admiration. But to the
Brits, it was just another act of military law, the shooting by firing
squad of traitors to the Crown – in just the same way as deserters,
army murderers and cowards were shot at dawn behind the trenches of
France. The martyrs of the Easter Rising suffered Western Front
punishment.
And now Ireland’s minister for defence tells us the military Easter
Rising pomp in Dublin this weekend symbolises the end of the war in
the North. Maybe.
But who will remember the boy from the Station House, Tralee?
The leaders of the Easter Rising suffered Western Front punishment

“Zerkalo”: US Department of Justice Officially Registered “Representation of
Nagorno-Garabagh Republic to Washington”

F. Teymurkhanli
_www.zerkalo.az_ ()
15.04.2006
Azerbaijan meets with next failure in ideological war
The fact that the Armenian are ongoing to prevail over the
Azerbaijanis in ideological war does not require any proofs. The best
confirmation is the Nagorno-Garabagh conflict the truth about which
Azerbaijanis cannot bring to the notice of international community.
Approximately 20% Azerbaijani territories is under occupation, about 1
million refugees and internally displaced persons in the country, and
at the presence of these facts Azerbaijan failed to get some cogent
victories in diplomacy.
Yesterday Panarmenian.net referring to Liberty Radio informed that US
Department of Justice published report on registered lobbyist
organizations in the United States. Under the report, US Department of
Justice officially registered lobbyist organization “Representation of
Nagorno-Garabagh Republic to Washington”.
American sources note that it does not mean the official recognition
of the independence of Garabagh by the United States, as in US it is
possible to register under any name. Law regulates lobbyists’ activity
in US, as they are regarded as fourth power pursuing to influence upon
the US policy, informs Liberty Radio. What kind of steps are our
diplomats taking on this point, and in general, do they know about
registration of the above-mentioned lobbyist organization in US? In
talk with correspondent of “Zerkalo” newspaper Tahir Taghizadeh, Chief
of Department for Information Policy of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Azerbaijan, stated that “so-called office of the
Nagorno-Garabagh operates in Washington for some years”. “The
relations in this point were developing not simple. The question
concerns that till December 2004 I worked at the Embassy of Azerbaijan
to US and that’s why I am well-informed about it. In response to our
repeated protests US Department of State replied following: differing
from diplomatic representation, this organization is registered by US
Department of Justice, i.e. as lobbyist non-profit organization”,
stressed T. Taghizadeh.
I.e. according to T. Taghizadeh, US Government accentuated the fact
that this condition does not influence upon the official position of
American authorities towards recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial
integrity and recognition of independence of Nagorno-Garabagh. “The
name of this lobbyist organization has been evolved. At first, it was
called “Society for Public Relations of Nagorno-Garabagh””, then
“Nagorno-Garabagh office”, and later transformed to “Office of
Nagorno-Garabagh Republic”. But we failed to exclude the word
“Republic” from the name”, said T. Taghizadeh.
But the Armenian succeeded to register entitled “Representation of
Nagorno-Garabagh Republic”. In connection with that T. Taghizadeh said
that the Embassy of Azerbaijan will make all efforts in order to
change the name of this organization. He also emphasized that during
trips of Azerbaijan’s officials to the US, and during the US
officials’ visit to Baku, this matter has been repeatedly discussed.
So, we see that the Armenians have prevailed us once again. Why don’t
Azerbaijan’s Diaspora in US manage to set up Azerbaijani non-profit
organization and to register it there, moreover, according to
T. Taghizadeh, there are not any problems? The reason is likely in
mentality of our people. In words we are for solidarity, we compose
songs and make verses of poems about inviolability of our nation
unity, but no more. Our words do not meet our works. But the Armenians
without phrase-mongering do their deeds.
We should not be reassured that NGO is registered and it won’t
influence upon US official position towards Nagorno-Garabagh
conflict. The official Baku should be concern with the fact that NGO
under such name has been registered. This organization aiming to
lobby its interests together with “Armenian Group of US Congressmen”,
not today, but tomorrow can influence upon US state policy. It does
not rule out that if we do not raise the alarm on time, then in future
the Armenians by means of “their people” will achieve their purpose in
US Congress. But the purpose is clear: to get recognition of
independence of Nagorno-Garabagh.

ALUMNI OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES MAY RECEIVE STATE DIPLOMAS
Lragir.am
15 April 06

In Nagorno Karabakh Republic with a population of 139.4 thousand by a
census taken in 2005 there is a state university and 7 private
universities, some of them are branches of universities of
Armenia. Statistics suggests that 86 per cent of young people enter
universities after leaving school. Besides, after the adoption of the
law on civil service civil servants have to get corresponding higher
education. Instead, the number of technical specialists is going
down. For instance, last year they had to invite builders from Armenia
to repair the roofs of buildings in Stepanakert.
Nevertheless, in Karabakh they have decided to solve the problem of
people who studied in private universities, but are sure of their
knowledge and are ready to take exams to get a state diploma.
Recently the government has adopted a corresponding decision. The
alumni of private universities can take state exams before the end of
the academic year of 2006-2007 to get a state diploma.

MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT PREDICT REPRESENTATION OF POLITICAL FORCES IN
PARLIAMENT IN 2007
Lragir.am
15 April 06
The new parliament will be based on the people’s will. The author of
this statement is the secretary of the Ardarutiun Alliance Victor
Dallakyan. During the parliamentary briefing on April 14 Victor
Dallakyan and the leaders of the other factions predicted the
representation of forces in the parliament in 2007.
Victor Dallakyan thinks the parliamentary election in 2007 will differ
from 2003 because it will be held before the presidential
election. Victor Dallakyan thinks the coalition forces will hardly
make a deal with the president for a share of power.
The coalition forces avoided specific forecasts. The leader of the
Dashnaktsutiun faction, for instance, says there are members of
parliamentwho have been in the parliament since 1990 and will stay
there with this or that political force.
`To be more serious, the ongoing political processes in Armenia are
quite interesting, and the political forces are now trying to assess
their potential to make decisions on further action and partnership,’
says Levon Mkrtichyan.
Mher Shahgeldyan, the Orinats Yerkir Party, also finds it difficult to
forecast who will appear in the next parliament, saying that in the
long run it is important to specify civilized pre-election rules.
`The system should be designed in a way so as to express the will of
the voter,’ says Mher Shahgeldyan, considering the outcome less
important. The leader of the faction of the Republican party Galust
Sahakyan carries on the general forecast of the coalition; he is also
reluctant to give names of future members of parliament.
`It is still presumptions, no pre-election processes have started
yet. But I think that the main forces represented in this parliament
will be represented in the next one as well,’ says the leader of the
faction of the Republican Party. Only the leader of the faction of the
United Labor Party Gurgen Arsenyan specifies his forecast for 2007. He
announces that from the current parliamentary forces the United Labor
Party, the National Unity, Dashnaktsutiun, the Orinats Yerkir Party
and the Republican Party will be represented in the parliament of
2007. `Also one of the new political parties will appear in the
parliament,’ says Gurgen Arsenyan, without specifying, of course.
The deputy leader of the National Unity Alexan Karapetyan thinks the
future parliament greatly depends on the standpoint of the president
of Armenia. The leader of the National Unity says if Robert Kocharyan
were active in the parliamentary election, the outcome of the
parliamentary election would not be good.
The leader of the Dashnaktsutiun faction Levon Mkrtichyan also thinks
that the president has a considerable influence on the electoral
processes. He says the three parties of the coalition government and a
number of other political forces voted for Robert Kocharyan in 2003.
`So, it is apparent that the president has a political influence,’
says Levon Mkrtichyan. And the leader of the Republican parliamentarians
Galust Sahakyan, answering the question what depends on the president
in the next parliament, announced: `Much depends on the will of the
president.’

April 16 is Police Day

ArmRadio.am
15.04.2006 15:06
It is 5 years already that Armenia is celebrating Police Day on April
16. On this occasion, the parade was accepted today by President
Robert Kocharyan. The President congratulated the employees of the
system and veterans.
`The Police is one of the most essential state structures, which
carries out its duty with honor,’ the President said. He noted that
the Police should be able to respond to the process of corresponding
development of the society and its possible negative expressions.
In President Kocharyan’s word it is necessary to pay special attention
to the Police, to arm it with modern armaments, improve the
professional capacity of the Staff.
`We should strengthen the primary directions. Special attention shold
be paid to the improvement of the spheres, which immediately have to
do with citizens. During the Artsakhi war the employees of the
Armenian Police demonstrated great dignity in keeping the country’s
borders secure. Today we must remember those, who fell on the field of
war. The development of our country is greatly conditioned by the
quality of your work,’ The President said in his congratulating
address.
On the occasion of the Police Day, Robert Kocharyan awarded titles and
medals to a number of Police workers.

Governor of Ulyanov region to visit Armenia

ArmRadio.am
15.04.2006 15:12
April 20-21 Governor of Ulyanov region of Russia Sergey Morozov will
visit Armenia.
The Russian `Commersant’ newspaper informs that Sergey Morozov will be
accompanied by governmental and business delegations. The major aim of
the visit is to establish trade relations between Ulyanov region and
the Republic of Armenia. In the framework of the visit Sergey Morozov
will meet President Robert Kocharyan and business circles of the
Republic.

Budapest Court Has Sentenced Ramil Safarov

01&p=0055&n=001418&g
15.04.2006
Final process concerning Azerbaijani Officer, Ramil Safarov, was held
on April 13, 2006 in Budapest City Court.
First, long-awaited verdict of the Court was delivered. Judge, Andras
Vashkuti, on behalf of Hungarian Republic, announced that Ramil
Safarov is sentenced to life in prison for killing an Armenian
officer, Gurgen Margaryan, with a 30-year minimum before parole
hearing.
After delivering the verdict, judge, A. Vashkuti, informed about the
details of the crime and results of investigation. To comprehend the
fact of the crime, judge informed about Armenian-Azerbaijan,
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He underlined that the above conflict
caused numerous victims, and that Armenian military forces control the
territory of the Upper Karabakh. Accused, R.
Safarov, accordingly to judge, not partaking in military operations,
witnessed many killings and suffering of his compatriots. And these
facts inspired him to choose military profession.
However, despite these facts, the judge did not take into account
post-traumatic shock of the accused officer believing that R. Safarov
got the weapon earlier and was ready to commit a crime, and having
done it he voluntary gave himself up to representatives of law
enforcement authority.
After announcement of court decision, Public Prosecutor expressed her
consent with decision. The accused, said he did not agree with the
decision demanding appeal. R. Safarov’s lawyer, Gyorgy Magyar also
expressed his discontent and demanded appeal. Lawyer did not agree
with the final verdict of the judge as well as definition of the crime
as assassination committed deliberately and cruelly, in this
connection he said that appeal would be lodged immediately.
The judge announced that the court of appellate jurisdiction would
consider the case and R. Safarov would stay in the same detention
place until completion of court process.
Court meeting was over. Representatives of the Embassy of the Republic
of Azerbaijan to Hungary, our diaspora members, Azerbaijani students,
representatives of Hungarian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Armenian etc. mass
media attended court meeting.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress