PRESIDENTS OF AZERBAIJAN AND KOREA MEET IN PRESENCE OF DELEGATIONS
AzerTag, Azerbaijan
May 11 2006
The one-on-one meeting of Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and
Roh Moo-hyun of Korea was continued in presence of the two countries’
delegations.
Greeting once again visiting President Rooh Moo-hyun and members of
his delegation, the Azerbaijani leader expressed confidence that the
visit would contribute to development of bilateral relations in various
fields. “At the meetings we are going to have today and tomorrow, we’ll
have the opportunity to discuss issues of bilateral relations. I am
sure that after this visit, our relations with the Republic of Korea
will be more intensively developed in all spheres,” he said.
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun first expressed deep gratitude to
the President and people of Azerbaijan for the hospitality shown to
him and his delegation. “I am the first President of the Republic
of Korea to pay an official visit to Azerbaijan since our counties
established diplomatic relations. Today’s political and economic
development of Azerbaijan creates additional opportunities to enhance
our cooperation. Both countries’ potential is huge, and must be used
in full measure. This is why I am accompanied by four ministers. Mr.
President, taking this chance, I would like to invite you and your
ministers to our country,” he said.
President Ilham Aliyev thanked his Korean counterpart for the
invitation, and said: “You came to Azerbaijan with so representative
delegation. I share your opinion that the huge economic potential of
the two countries will serve development of our bilateral relations.”
He noted that Azerbaijan is already capable to make investments itself,
and stressed the necessity of taking advantage of not only Korean
investment opportunities but also the country’s personnel potential
and experience in economic sphere.
President Roh Moo-hyun pointed to importance of restoration of the
historic Silk Road and other transport corridors, noting that his
country is interested in the global projects being implemented in
the region, as well as in opening of an embassy in Baku.
President Ilham Aliyev noted in his turn that Azerbaijan’s rich natural
resources, the global energy projects implemented in the country and
the attention paid to the non-oil sector and regional development on
the one hand, and high technology and great experience of the Republic
of Korea on the other hand, could balance trade relations between
the two countries. “They (relations) do not meet today’s potential;
there are great opportunities for their expanding,” he said.
The Azerbaijani leader also highly appreciated the Republic of
Korea’s position with regard to settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan,
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
President Roh Moo-hyun said Korea will continue the international
and regional cooperation with Azerbaijan and to support its fair
position in the conflict. He also expressed his county’s readiness to
cooperation with Azerbaijan in the fields of air transport, sea ports
construction and applying high technology in chemical and engineering
industries.

PLAYING FOR HER MOTHER
Alyson Sena , Reporter
Palisadian-Post, CA
May 11 2006
For classical concert pianist Ritta Bardakjian, playing piano is a
gift her parents gave her when she was just a child growing up in
Kuwait in the 1970s. The gift originally came in the form of a piano
that her parents shipped from England, where they traveled frequently
on business.
“I sat at the piano whenever I felt lost, lonely or sad,” says
Bardakjian, a Pacific Palisades resident who earned her Doctor of
Musical Arts degree from USC last May. The rich and soothing power
of music has inspired Bardakjian throughout her life, and became
particularly resonant last July, when her mother passed away.
“I wanted to do something in my mom’s memory,” says Bardakjian,
who organized a concert that will take place on May 20 at 7 p.m. at
Pepperdine University’s Raitt Recital Hall. “I just know she would
want me to continue to practice and perform.”
Bardakjian’s program will include Beethoven’s Opus 13 (Path’tique),
Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 (“Funeral March”) and Schumann’s Symphonic
Etudes because her mother, Jackline, “adored Schumann.”
Bardakjian, who is Armenian, grew up listening to Western as well as
Eastern music. She started playing piano when she was about 5 years
old and studied with a teacher from South America who was “very
focused and intense.” As young Ritta developed her playing skills,
the teacher advised her mother to send her outside Kuwait where she
would have the opportunity to seriously pursue her talent.
So, when Bardakjian was 13, she went off to a boarding school in
Uppingham, outside London. Her choirmaster at the school encouraged
her to audition for a conservatory in London and, two years later,
she was training at the London School of Music, where William Lloyd
Webber (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s father) was director.
Bardakjian received her music degree from the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver and made her Canadian debut in 1981, performing
Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. In 1983, at age 20, she got the
opportunity to play at Carnegie Hall because the Armenian Ladies’ Guild
was looking for Armenian talent and chose her to perform at an event.
She says she wasn’t nervous because “when you’re young, you’re more
gutsy. Egos don’t play as big a role.” It was a thrilling experience
just knowing she was “touching the keys the greats have touched.”
Bardakjian was accepted to The Julliard School and the Paris
Conservatory on scholarships but declined them both to study with
Hungarian pianist Georgy Sebok at the University of Indiana while
working towards her master’s degree in music.
Sebok “taught me that I had to use the piano as an instrument but
not battle with it,” says Bardakjian, who has also studied with other
renowned artists such as Polish pianist Marek Jablonski and American
pianist Leon Fleischer and Kevin Fitz-Gerald.
Currently, Bardakjian teaches piano to students as young as 5,
though she says that children at that age have to be “exceptional”
in their skills. Bardakjian has a 10-year-old daughter, Angelica,
who studies piano and ballet.
To inquire about lessons with Bardakjian, contact: 573-9622. For
tickets to the Pepperdine concert, contact: 506-4522.

OSCE MG CO-CHAIRS EXPECT RESPONSE OF YEREVAN AND BAKU ON NEW NK PROPOSALS
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
May 11 2006
The OSCE Minsk group (OSCE MG) Co-Chairs wait for the response of
Yerevan and Baku on the mediators’ “new proposals” during RA and AR
FMs’ meeting in Strasbourg May 18 – 19, the OSCE MG Russian Co-Chair
Yuri Merzlyakov stated, REGNUM reports.
Having refused to comment on the essence of the “new proposals”, the
Russian mediator remarked “they contain some new elements, mainly,
concretization and detailing of the proposals put forward before”.
“They have already been delivered to the conflict parties by a French
Co-Chairman Bernard Fassier”, Merzlyakov said. He also informed the
mediators’ visit to the region had been scheduled for mid-May.

HEARINGS ON STABILITY IN S. CAUCASUS TO BE HELD IN PACE MAY 12
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
May 11 2006
Parliamentary hearings on the subject “A Pact on Stability in the
South Caucasus” will be held in Strasbourg May 12, 2006.
In the course of the hearings the MPs’ attention will be focused
on the ways of achieving stability in the South Caucasus region
applying the model of the South – Eastern Europe, “Novosti – Armenia”
Information Agency reports quoting the Press Service of the Council of
Europe. A Romanian MP Adrian Severin is to make a report. To note,
the hearings have been initiated by the PACE Political Affairs
Committee. Representatives of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the
European Union, the World Bank and the counties of the “Great Eight”
will participate in the hearings.

TURKISH DELEGATION ON FRENCH BILL: OBJECTION ALONE NOT ENOUGH
Zaman, Turkey
May 11 2006
A Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) delegation arrived in Paris
Tuesday to meet with members of the French Parliament over the new
legislative proposal to criminalize denial of the so-called Armenian
genocide.
The Turkish delegation, made up of Parliamentary Foreign Affairs
President Mahmet Dulger and parliamentarians Musa Sivacioglu, Onur
Oymen, Gulsun Bilgehan Token, met President of the French National
Parliament Jean-Louis Debre, leader of the People’s Movement Union
(UMP) Bernard Accoyer, and PS Group Leader Jean Marc Ayroult.
French politicians asserted that they are opposed to the bill,
officials reported.
Turkish parliamentary members then asked their French counterparts
to persuade other groups as well.
Known for his anti-Turkish viewpoints, former Prime Minister and
Parliamentary Foreign Affairs President Eduard Balladur said his
group also opposes the bill.
Moreover, the Turkish delegation also met some French members of the
parliament and Jacques Blanc, the Turkey-France Friendship Group Chair.
Communicating the Turkish people’s harsh criticism of the French
proposal, the delegation highlighted that history was the subject
area of historians.
As part of the latest developments, a declaration made by a group
in Turkey consisting of journalists, authors, and academics, known
for their controversial opinions on the so-called Armenian genocide,
was published in the French Liberation newspaper.

ARMENIA IN CONTEXT OF IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM: “THERE CANNOT BE SO EVIDENT CONNECTION”
Regnum, Russia
May 11 2006
“A stage-by-stage and, which is most important, well-considered
settlement of the Iranian problem could encourage easing tension in the
world on the whole. And, on the contrary, any deviations can provoke
a completely unexpected deterioration of new conflicts including the
one in Nagorno Karabakh,” chair of comparative politics department
of Moscow State Institute of International relations of Foreign
Affairs Ministry of the Russian Federation (MGIMO), Mikhail Ilyin,
PhD, has said to a REGNUM correspondent.
According to him, the Iranian nuclear program is “a complicated issue
that influences world development ion the whole, various countries
and regions, and moreover, Transcaucasus, and Armenia, which is a
close neighbor of Iran.” However, talking about the risk of Armenia
becoming a hostage to Iranian nuclear ambitions, Mikhail Ilyin said
that “there cannot be so evident connection” in this.
Earlier today, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei approved
decision made by the UN Security Council to postpone the issue of
sanctions against Iran.

ARMENIAN JOURNAL: SITE PROVIDES CONSTANT UPDATES OF AIRLINER CRASH
By Timothy Spence, Knight International Press Fellow
International Journalist’s Network
May 11 2006
Region :Eastern Europe-Central Eurasia
Country :Armenia
Within hours of when an Armenian airliner plunged into the Black Sea
on May 3, killing all 113 people on board, the staff of the ArmeniaNow
online newspaper were providing readers with hourly updates on the
country’s first major air accident in decades.
It is the first time in its four-year history that the news
organization provided such intensive coverage of a breaking news event,
said editor John Hughes.
“I always wondered how our staff would react to a disaster like this,
but in my mind it was always going to be an earthquake,” said Hughes,
co-founder of ArmeniaNow and a veteran American newspaper reporter.
“Given what we all have to work with, what I saw was as good as
anything I’ve seen.”
The day’s news gripped the Caucasus nation of 3.2 million people.
Cafes and restaurants kept televisions tuned to local and international
news reports of the accident. Nearly all the 105 passengers and eight
crew members on board Armavia Flight 967 were Armenian.
“Armenia is a small country and I’m sure most people had relatives
or friends or friends of friends on that plane,” said ArmeniaNow
reporter Suren Musaelyan. “It’s a huge tragedy and everybody feels
sympathy to the victims and wants to know what happened.”
Most of the public and independent television stations interrupted
their regular programming throughout the day to provide live coverage
and updates of the crash of the Airbus 320, which went down in stormy
weather after trying to make a landing at Sochi, Russia.
The last major crash of a plane that originated in the Armenian
capital of Yerevan was in 1976.
Musaelyan said he last saw such energy in the news media when he
covered the 1999 assassination of Armenian Prime Minister Vazgen
Sargsyan and five other members of Parliament. He worked at the time
as a reporter for the independent Noyan Tapan news agency.
Hughes mobilized eight reporters, a photographer and three translators,
who provided hourly updates throughout the day and evening.
Veteran Armenian reporter Aris Ghazinyan flew to the crash site off
the Russian coast and phoned in reports from there. Three ArmeniaNow
staff members filed reports from Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport.
At the ArmeniaNow office in central Yerevan, three reporters worked
the phones while the newspaper’s three translators provided real-time
updates in English and Armenian.
Gayane Abrahamyan, who normally covers the arts for ArmeniaNow, said
being assigned to cover the scene at the airport was emotionally trying
but an important experience in how to deal with covering tragedies.
She said families of the victims, overcome with grief, did not want
to answer reporters’ questions. “I tried to approach people from a
different point, by trying to understand and sympathize with their
personal emotions,” Abrahamyan said, and found that people were
willing to talk freely with her.
But that was a challenge for the 22-year-old reporter. “It was
impossible not to cry. It was even difficult to talk. But I tried to
gather all my strength and just to talk to them.”
ArmeniaNow also produced special coverage for the regular weekly
update of the Web site, interviewing family members of those who
perished in the crash and covering announcements from the airline
and Armenian and Russian airline safety officials.
ArmeniaNow is published every Friday in Armenian and English, serving
the nation’s large Diaspora community in the United States, Europe and
Australia, as well as people in the country. The online publication
claims a weekly readership of 12,000 “unique visits.”
Figures for visits on May 3 were not immediately available.
It routinely updates breaking stories during the week and provided
updated results of the 2003 presidential election. But Hughes said
the air crash coverage was something new to his 20-person staff.
“It’s the first time there’s been an event like this that merited
that kind of coverage,” he said. “The reason what we did was pretty
much my instinctual reaction.”
Hughes said he first heard about the crash from a friend who phoned
from the airport around 9 a.m., about five hours after the crash
occurred. Within 90 minutes, ArmeniaNow published its first detailed
news bulletin from reporters.
ArmeniaNow is independently financed and is a partner of the Knight
International Press Fellowships in Washington. Along with Knight,
it is sponsoring an internship program for journalism students at
Yerevan State University. It also participates in a Yerevan State
training program sponsored by the International Center for Journalists.
Timothy Spence is a Knight Fellow working with journalists
in Armenia. This is his second tour with the program; he
was previously in Ethiopia. The John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation sponsors the fellowships, administered by the
International Center for Journalists. For more information, visit

‘FRANCE SHOULD FIRST ADDRESS ALGERIA AND RWANDA’
Zaman, Turkey
May 11 2006
British-Armenian historian Ara Sarafian spoke to Zaman daily about the
controversial bill at the French parliament which would criminalize
denial of the so-called Armenian genocide. Despite his defense of the
genocide thesis, Sarafian criticized France, recalling the massacres
that took place in Algeria and Rwanda, and said “The French attitude
is ironic in light of its past.”
The historian voiced fierce objection to the Armenian bill at the
French parliament, citing France, who appears willing to pass the
bill, should first start with Algeria and Rwanda. Sarafian, whose
“Blue Book” caused a small-scale crisis between Turkey and Britain,
has reservations that the bill in France would stop the discussions
in Turkey. Regarding the declaration by nine Turkish intellectuals
that was published in the French daily Le Liberation, Sarafian said
he would sign the document “in principal.”
Sarafian, who heads the Gomidas Institute in London, told Zaman that
approval of the bill will have a negative impact on Turkish-European
Union relations, and the nationalist tendency would gain momentum in
Turkey, essentially cutting off the democratic process. Sarafian went
on to say that this scenario will work to the advantage of the Armenian
as well as Turkish nationalists, only fostering the problem in the end.
With an emphasis on the need for continuation of discussions, Sarafian
pointed to the opportunity of dealing with the Armenian issue in a
peaceful way.
In this regard, Europe received a warning from Sarafian to evaluate
and judge Turkey and Armenia on the basis of progress they have made.
The bill stands to be a game of “power politics,” said Sarafian when
he challenged the administration in Paris to face its own history.
“It is ironic that France should choose this path as the country
accountable for all that has happened in Algeria and Rwanda.”
In his criticism of the Armenian Diaspora as well as Turkey, Sarafian
said the Armenian issue has become a power politics for which both
Turkish and Armenian nationalists are struggling.
Sarafian, stressing his point that the Turkish government has by
far refused to acknowledge the existence of an Armenian “question,”
went on to say that it has been the Turkish government that wrote “the
rules of the game,” and that helped the radical Armenian nationalist
front to gain additional power.
The Armenian nationalists have found themselves in a powerful position
during the Turkish negotiations with the EU, said Sarafian, and added
that the Armenian question is being addressed in two different ways,
which is contradictory.
On the one hand, there are efforts to measure Turkish respect for
EU standards by way of considering the difference in the Turkish
retrospection of the Armenian question, said Sarafian, adding that
on the other hand, this difference in the Turkish vision of the
Armenian question provides racists, xenophobes and anti-Islamists
the opportunity to block Turkey’s progress towards the ideal of the
European Union.
Previously, while conducting research in the Turkish archives,
Sarafian’s research permit had been cancelled. The British-Armenia
historian took part in the Armenian Symposium held at Istanbul
University, despite the harsh reactions of the Armenian Diaspora. He
was granted an “unconditional” research permit in archives recently for
the second time. Sarafian referred to the present Turkish government’s
serious efforts to resolve the Armenian issue as a real tragedy,
and noted that the Justice and Development Party government at least
did not “censure” debates over the Armenian genocide in Turkey.
Sarafian emphasized the Turkish government opened the thesis of the
Turkish History Council to discussions at the arena where there are
other voices and where discussions are slow to move forward, and some
laws are used to suppress the discussions.
Noting that Turkish people have started to openly talk about the issue
regardless, the Armenian-born historian highlighted some publications
do not welcome an official thesis on the “genocide.” The historian
believes occasions to solve the situation peacefully will be available
the near future.
Algerians maintain that under the French administration, hundreds of
thousands of people were killed, as well as those exposed to “identity
genocide,” and that France should apologize. While France refuses
to heed demands calling for an apology, it is also been accused of
training Hutu militia and encouraging genocide by turning away from
the reality.

TURKEY QUITS INTERNATIONAL MILITARY MANEUVERS IN CANADA
By Cihan News Agency, Toronto
Zaman, Turkey
May 11 2006
Turkey, recalling its ambassador to Canada after Canadian Prime
Minister Stephen Harper used the word “genocide” in a statement he
made on April 24, the date Armenians remember the events of 1915,
also withdrew from international military maneuvers in this country.
Turkey Embassy officials announced aircraft and support craft of the
Turkish Air Forces that were earlier confirmed to take part in the
international maneuvers at Canada’s Cold Late Bay in the province of
Alberta on May 17-June 24, withdrew from the maneuvers.
Canada Defense Ministry spokesman Gordon O’Connor confirmed Turkey
withdrew from the military maneuvers on Friday.

TURKEY WARNS OF DIPLOMATIC DAMAGE OVER ARMENIAN ISSUE
By Andrew Borowiec
Washington Times, DC
May 11 2006
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Turkey this week summoned its ambassadors to France
and Canada for consultation in an escalating row over the World War
I massacres of more than 1 million Armenians.
The government in Ankara has warned of “irreparable damage” to its
relations with France if the National Assembly approved law to make
any denial of the massacre a criminal offense.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently referred to the
deaths of Turkish Armenians as genocide, drawing Turkish ire.
In an unusual move, the Turkish Foreign Ministry has suggested that
the French government should prevent the adoption of the denial bill
by the lower house of parliament.
“Accepting this draft law would cause irreparable damage to
Turkish-French relations. It should not be permitted,” the ministry
said.
Unlike Germany, which has acknowledged the Holocaust of the Nazi era
and compensated some of the survivors, Turkey dismisses the massive
documentation of the Armenian massacres by the Ottomans.
The European Parliament has already approved a nonbinding resolution
requiring Turkey to recognize the death of Armenians as genocide
before it is admitted to the European Union.
The draft bill before the French National Assembly was strongly
influenced by the presence in France of some 400,000 Armenians,
the largest Armenian diaspora in Europe. Many are active in French
political life.
Turkish authorities continue to oppose any public discussion of
the Armenian problem. Several journalists have been charged with
violating the code on “insulting Turkishness” for writing about the
90-year-old massacres.
However, under strong EU pressure, similar charges were dropped
against Orhan Pamuk, an internationally known Turkish novelist who
had called on Turkey to admit its guilt.
According to the prevailing Turkish version, Armenians living in
Turkey had to be resettled in the desert areas of the Ottoman Empire
because they were “the fifth column” on behalf of Russia and the
Western Allies.
Turkey fought on the side of Germany and Austria in World War I.
According to the version of the London-based Minority Rights Group,
in the spring of 1915, less than a year after the start of the war,
“Turkish Armenians in the Ottoman army were disarmed and herded into
labor battalions where they were starved, beaten or machine-gunned.
“A ‘resettlement campaign’ followed in which most Armenian men were
summarily executed while women and children were “forced to walk
southward in huge convoys to the burning desert of northern Syria.
Few survived the privations of these terrible death marches.”
The Minority Rights Group concluded that before 1914 over 2 million
Armenians lived under the Ottomans, but the figure has hardly exceeded
100,000 since World War I.
“Thus the number of Armenian dead may safely be put at around
1,500,000. Another half a million became homeless refugees whose
descendants, with their tragic memories, can be found today in a
score of countries.”