NO PROSPERITY WITHOUT PEACE – US OFFICIAL
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 11 2006
Baku, April 10, AssA-Irada
Azerbaijan wants to earn significant resources by producing and
exporting its oil and gas but this can only become a possibility in
the event of peace in the region, the Department of State Assistant
Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Daniel Fried, has told
European journalists in Washington.
Fried said the most important issue to the negotiated settlement of
the Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh conflict is that Azerbaijan and Armenia
have to understand that neither of them can receive everything at once.
“Neither country can get the maximum. At the same time, it cannot
happen that either of them receives nothing at all. Both countries
have interests at stake and these interests have to be taken into
account,” he said.

FRENCH MEDIATOR, AZERI OFFICIALS TO MULL GARABAGH
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 11 2006
Baku, April 10, AssA-Irada
The French co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group brokering settlement to
the Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh conflict Bernard
Fassier arrived in Baku on Monday evening as part of his visit to
the region. He will discuss with officials the course of peace talks
after the latest fruitless meeting between Presidents Ilham Aliyev
and Robert Kocharian in Rambouillet, France in February.
Fassier is scheduled to hold meetings at the Foreign Ministry and the
Milli Majlis (parliament). He is also to meet with President Aliyev.
The hard-line Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO) has come out
against the activity of the OSCE mediators and plans to hold a protest
against Fassier’s arrival. The GLO was to discuss the form of the
protest action at its meeting on Monday.
Azeri officials said shortly before the French mediator’s visit that
it would not affect the country’s position on the Garabagh conflict.

NO FRESH US-ARMENIAN TALKS
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 11 2006
Baku, April 10, AssA-Irada
The reports saying that Armenian President Robert Kocharian has
recently had a telephone conversation with US State Secretary
Condoleezza Rice are wide of the mark, the spokesman for the Armenian
president, Viktor Sogomoyan, has said.
He said the two had last discussed the Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper
(Nagorno) Garabagh conflict in February prior to the latest round of
talks between the two presidents.
The discussions held by Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharian
in the French town of Rambouillet in February turned out fruitless,
as the parties failed to iron out issues of principle.
“It appears that authors of this information have simply got the time
wrong,” he said.

AZERI NGOS TO SUBMIT DATA ON GARABAGH CONFLICT TO THE HAGUE
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
April 11 2006
Baku, April 10, AssA-Irada
A group of local NGOs intends to send 85 volumes of unique archive
material on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh conflict
to the International Tribunal in The Hague.
The work has been carried out by the Center for Refugee Rights chaired
by the well-known Latvian journalist, Tatyana Chaladze, and the Public
Association for the Protection of Migrants and IDPs in Azerbaijan,
both members of the Civil Society Development Association.
The documentary material about Garabagh, collected by Chaladze
over four years, is now being converted into electronic format and
translated into English, a source from the Association said.

ARMENIA’S PROGRAM OF ACTION AS PART OF EU NEW NEIGHBORHOOD POLICY NEW RESOURCE OF DEVELOPMENT
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
April 11 2006
Yerevan, April 10. /ARKA/. Armenia’s program of action as part of
the European Union’s (EU) new neighborhood policy will become a new
resource of the country’s development, RA President Robert Kocharyan
stated at his meeting with the newly appointed EU Representative to
the South Caucasus Peter Semneby. President Kocharyan stressed the
importance of launching the program as soon as possible.
The sides also discussed issues related of holding parliamentary and
presidential elections in Armenia in 2007 and 2008 in conformity with
international standards.
Kocharyan appreciated the formation of the institute of EU
Representative to the South Caucasus, which allowed Armenia to
systematize its relations with the European structures. The President
expressed hope for more serious cooperation with the European Union
during Peter Semneby’s activities in Armenia.
In his turn, Semneby stated that he has been appointed as EU
Representative to the South Caucasus while the South Caucasus-EU
relations are entering a new stage. He pointed out that the
establishment of stability remains in the center of the EU’s attention.
President Kocharyan also briefed the guests on the negotiations for
the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, latest developments and Armenia’s
position.

EXPERIENCE OF ENTERPRISE INCUBATOR FOUNDATION TO BE PRESENTED AT WORLD CONGRESS
Noyan Tapan
Apr 11 2006
YEREVAN, APRIL 11, NOYAN TAPAN. Work expetience of the Enterprise
Incubator Foundation (EIF) will be presented as the best example
during the world congress of business incubators to be held in Saint
Louis (US) on May 1-5. EIF Director Bagrat Engibarian announced it
at the April 11 press conference. In his words, EIF is not only an
incubator of enterprises engaged in the information technologies (IT)
sector but also an agency that assists the enterprises not making
part of the incubator by offering the models which were developed in
Armenia. B. Engibarian said that EIF gives advice to the appropriate
Ukrainian bodies with the aim of creating an enterprise incubator in
this country.
Ii is also envisaged to use EIF’s experience for establishing a
similar incubator in Georgia. As an evidence of EIF’s successful
activities, he indicated the fact that the donor organizations and some
international organizations on development programs implementation in
Armenia have cofinanced EIF’s programs by allocating 3 mln USD. It
was noted that the impact of the EIF on development of Armenia’s
IT sector was acknowleged by the famous KPMG audit and consulting
company. In the opinion of B. Engibarian, EIF’s contribution to a 15%
annual production growth of the Armenian IT sector and attraction of
considerable investments (in 2005, investments of 14.4 mln USD were
made) was quite significant. To recap, the EIF is operating under the
5 mln-dollar World Bank program envisaged for 2002-2005. The program
has been extended until late 2006, after which the EIF will operate
by self-financing principle.

GENOCIDE DEBATE CASES DISMISSED AGAINST 4 OF 5 TURKISH JOURNALISTS
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 11, 2006, Tuesday
12:12:03 Central European Time
A court in Istanbul on Tuesday dismissed charges laid against four
prominent journalists who had criticised another court’s decision
to ban a conference on the politically-sensitive Armenian question,
the Anadolu news agency reported.
The court was to continue hearing a case against a fifth journalist,
it said.
The five journalists were charged with “trying to influence judicial
process” and “insulting the judiciary” over comments they made after
a court had ordered a halt to a conference on the controversial issue
of the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during and after World
War I.
The conference was later held after lawyers found a loophole in the
original banning decision.
The court on Tuesday found that complaints lodged against four of
the journalists by a group of nationalist lawyers, and later taken
up by prosecutors, were lodged outside of a two-month time limit.
The court decided, however, to continue to hear the case against the
fifth journalist, Murat Belge, as the complaint in his case was made
within the two-month period. If found guilty, Belge faces up to 10
years imprisonment.
The journalists were charged under controversial Article 301 of the
Turkish penal code – the article under which world-renowned author
Orhan Pamuk had been charged.
Those charges, in which Pamuk was accused of “insulting Turkishness”
for his comments on the massacres of Armenians, were later dropped.
The massacres of Armenians are still an extremely sensitive subject
in Turkey.
Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, instead claiming
the deaths occurred after Armenians joined invading Russian forces
during World War I. It also claims that the numbers of people who
died were much lower than the 1.5 million figure often cited.

FOUR TURKISH JOURNALISTS ESCAPE TRIAL, ONE STILL RISKS JAIL
Agence France Presse — English
April 11, 2006 Tuesday 1:14 PM GMT
A Turkish court Tuesday dropped charges against four prominent
journalists, but will continue to try a fifth in a high-profile freedom
of speech case linked to debate over the massacres of Armenians under
the Ottoman Empire.
The five were indicted in December for criticizing a court decision
that briefly blocked a landmark conference in Istanbul on the World
War I massacres, a long-standing taboo that Turks have only recently
began to debate.
The prosecution charged them under articles that penalize insults to
the judiciary and attempts to influence the justice and carry up to
10 years in prison.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has repeatedly
warned Ankara to stop prosecuting intellectuals for exercising their
right to free speech.
“The court dropped the charges against me and my colleagues Hasan
Cemal, Ismet Berkan and Erol Katircioglu, citing the statute of
limitations,” Haluk Sahin, a columnist for the liberal daily Radikal,
told AFP by telephone.
“The judge decided to continue trying Murat Belge because his articles
were published later and do not fall under the scope of the statute
of limitations,” he added.
Like Sahin, Katircioglu and Belge are columnists for Radikal, while
Berkan is also the newspaper’s editor-in-chief.
Cemal is a senior editorialist for the mass-selling Milliyet.
A landmark conference contesting Ankara’s official line on the mass
killings of Armenians was blocked in September when a court, petitioned
by a group of nationalists, ordered the suspension of the event.
The event, already postponed once earlier in 2005, was finally
held with a one-day delay after the organizers changed the venue to
circumvent the court order.
The ruling came under widespread criticism, including harsh words by
the EU and even the Turkish government, which backed the holding of
the conference in a bid to prove its tolerance of dissenting views.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917 and wage a campaign for
an international recognition of the massacres as genocide.
Turkey categorically rejects genocide allegations and argues that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia
and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

NATO NOT PLANNING MILITARY INVASION OF IRAN – ALLIANCE REPRESENTATIVE
Central Asia General Newswire
April 11, 2006 Tuesday 5:29 PM MSK
NATO has no plans to stage a military invasion of Iran, said NATO
Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia Robert
Simmons.
Speaking at a news briefing in Baku on Tuesday following negotiations
with the Azerbaijani leadership, Simmons said, however, that NATO is
concerned about the situation in Iran and hopes that the negotiating
process involving three of its members, Germany, the UK and France,
will be completed successfully.
Azeri Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said Baku is also concerned
by how the Iran crisis will be resolved, due to the geographical
proximity of the two states.
Azerbaijan is following the negotiating process with Iran closely,
he said.
“The problem is currently being discussed at the UN Security Council,
and we hope that it will be resolved at a political, diplomatic level,”
Azimov said.
Azimov also pointed out that, while the Iranian nuclear problem poses
a strategic threat to Azerbaijan, the Metsamor nuclear power plant
functioning in neighboring Armenia is a real threat to Azerbaijan’s
and the entire region’s security, which, he said, has been confirmed
by international experts.

BAKU COMMITTED TO PEACEFUL SOLUTION TO KARABAKH CONFLICT
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Military Newswire
April 11, 2006 Tuesday 2:15 PM MSK
Azerbaijan wants a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
as soon as possible, but warns that its patience is wearing thin, Ali
Gasanov, head of the Azeri presidential administration’s department
for public and political issues, told journalists on Tuesday.
“We have no territorial claims. We only want to get our lands back.
We have the right to it,” he said.
Commenting on a recent statement by a U.S. Department of State official
that a new war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region would make it difficult
for Azerbaijan to earn money implementing regional energy projects,
Gasanov said that other countries involved in such major energy and
transport projects do not want the Karabakh conflict to be resolved
through the use of force.
“We do not want that, either. But what are we supposed to do? We
have our own rights and we cannot allow the occupation of our lands
to continue. Our patience is not endless,” he said.
All the parties involved realize the negative consequences of a new
war in the region and are doing everything they can to find a peaceful
solution to the conflict, Gasanov said. The OSCE Minsk Group has also
stepped up its activities, he said.
“Armenia understands that it will have to liberate Azerbaijan’s lands
sooner or later,” he said.