Agence France Presse — English
September 23, 2005 Friday 2:57 PM GMT
Azerbaijan police crack down on protest over activist
BAKU
Police in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan violently
disbanded a demonstration Friday where protesters demanded the
release from custody of a youth activist.
Some 40 police officers charged a group of 15 peaceful demonstrators
as they unraveled signs that read “Free Said Nuri,” a leader of the
Yeni Fikir (New Idea) youth protest movement who was arrested and
hospitalized after being questioned earlier this month.
Police were seen punching demonstrators in the chest before the
protestors fled while one man who appeared to be a plain-clothes
security official was seen hitting Razi Nurullayev, a candidate in
upcoming parliamentary elections.
“We tried to use the Georgian method and protest peacefully but they
just charged us” one of the demonstrators, Murad Gassanly said in
reference to the popular revolt that toppled a regime in neighboring
Georgia in 2003.
Demonstrators included members of three protest movements — Yeni
Fikir, Magam and Yokh — which have modeled themselves on groups that
played a lead role in peaceful revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine.
The crackdown comes just before this strategically important oil-rich
nation — sandwiched between Russia and the Middle East — holds
parliamentary elections in November.
“This is very bad for Azeri society because they came for a peaceful
protest,” said Nurullayev, who leads the Yokh opposition youth
movement.
Police who broke up the demonstration refused to identify themselves
or explain their reasons for acting against protestors while Interior
Ministry officials left phones unanswered on Friday.
Nuri was arrested earlier this month for questioning in connection
with alleged plot hatched by the protest movement to overthrow the
Azeri regime.
Two other Yeni Fikir activists have been arrested for anti-government
activity which the authorities allege was backed by Azerbaijan’s foe
Armenia and the Washington-based National Democratic Institute.
Both Armenia — with which Azerbaijan fought a war in the early
1990’s — and the US democracy advocacy group have denied the
allegations.
Nuri was hospitalized two days after his arrest with acute liver
failure in what the opposition said might be a case of police
brutality.
After his hospitalization became public, prosecutors announced they
were not pressing charges against him.
Nevertheless access to the 20-year-old continues to be blocked by a
police detachment over 10 days after his detention.
Azerbaijani law allows for suspects to be held for a maximum of 48
hours without charge.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 24, 2005 Saturday
Armenians living in Georgia demand autonomy for Javakheti district
By Tengiz Pachkoria
TBILISI
Organizations of ethnic Armenians living in southern Georgia have
asked the country’s leadership to consider “a federal structure for
Georgia” and to provide “the status of an autonomous territory” for
Javakheti district.
The appeal was issued at a congress of Armenian organizations of the
Samtskhe-Javakheti region that was held in the town of Akhalkalaki
Saturday.
Ethnic Armenians make up the majority of population in two of the
region’s five districts – Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda, although they
all also live in other parts of the Samtskhe-Javakheti territory.
The congress brought together about 300 activists of the
organizations Virk, Javakh and Young People’s Union, who discussed a
bill wherein the Georgian parliament proposed self-government for
various parts of the country.
The ethnic Armenian activists also asked the Georgian government to
speed up the scrutiny of job-placement opportunities for local
population, since many people are going to lose jobs after Russia
closes a military base in Akhalkalaki.
“Georgian authorities have taken a range of important steps recently
to solve social and economic problems of this territory and to
rehabilitate roads, but they solved far from all the problems,
including jobs for the people,” participants in the forum said.
“The situation with jobs may aggravate after the pullout of the
Russian military base [Russia is due to close its bases in Batumi and
Akhalkalaki in 2008 – Itar-Tass] where thousands of local residents
are working now,” one of the speakers said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
September 23, 2005, Friday
14:47:17 Central European Time
Loophole allows Armenian genocide conference to go ahead in Turkey
ANKARA
An academic conference in Istanbul looking into the events of 1915
during which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed is set to
go ahead despite a court injunction, after organizers discovered a
legal loophole in the court order on Friday.
The injunction bans the conference venue but not the meeting itself,
which is now to take place Saturday at a new location.
The events of more than 90 years ago are still a sore topic in
Turkey. Armenian historians claim that as many as 1.5 million
Armenians were killed when they rose up in revolt against the
crumbling Ottoman Empire during the First World War and that the
massacres constituted genocide. The official Turkish line is that
while many Armenians may have died in the struggle it was not
genocide.
More than a dozen European countries have passed resolutions
specifically stating that the events of 1915 did constitute a
genocide and that Turkey should accept this and make appropriate
apologies.
In a decision blasted by the Turkish government and E.U. officials,
the Istanbul 4th Administrative Court, acting on a request from a
nationalist group called the Lawyers Union Foundation, ordered that
the conference be cancelled.
But it emerged on Friday that the order only applied to Istanbul’s
Bogazici and Sabanci universities where the conference was to take
place and not other universities in Turkey.
Bilgi University, also in Istanbul, later announced it would allow
the conference to take place on its campus on Saturday, a day later
than originally planned.
“The court decision has not only trampled upon academic and
university autonomy as it is universally understood but also
trespassed very strongly on freedom of expression … as well as the
Turkish constitution itself,” Halil Berktay, a member of the
organizing committee told reporters Friday.
This week’s postponement is the second delay to hit the conference.
Organizers cancelled the original May 25 date after Justice Minister
Cemil Cicek described the gathering as a “stab in the back”.
Cicek has since tempered his comments and on Friday said that the
conference could go ahead but told NTV television that he didn’t
regard the timing as appropriate.
The controversy comes two weeks after prosecutors filed charges
against Turkey’s internationally famous author Orhan Pamuk for
“denigrating the country” when he told a Swiss news magazine that “a
million Armenians were killed”. Pamuk faces up to three years
imprisonment if found guilty.
The conference organisers expect protests from ultra-nationalists and
the gathering is likely to take place under tight security. dpa cw sr

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 23, 2005 Friday
Russian experience may be useful for Armenian pension reform – pres
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
Russian experience may be useful for the pension reform in Armenia,
President Robert Kocharyan told Russian Pension Fund head Gennady
Batanov on Friday, the presidential press service said.
Russia is ready for more active cooperation with Armenia, and an
agreement to be signed on Saturday will be a part of it, Batanov
said.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 23, 2005 Friday
Interenergo to control Armenian electricity distribution grid
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
The Armenian government has decided to transfer the entire stock of
the republican electricity distribution grid to Interenergo – a
component of the Unified Energy System of Russia, Armenian Energy
Minister Armen Movsesian told a Friday press conference in Yerevan.
He said the Unified Energy System of Russia would assume all the
commitments of the current owner of the republican electricity
distribution grid, the British-based Midland Resources. The British
company suggested the stock transfer two weeks ago.
The minister denied claims that the Unified Energy System of Russia
would allegedly become the monopoly on the Armenian energy market. He
said the Russian company produces only 10% of the republican
electricity.
On June 23 Interenergo acquired the right to 99-year control over the
Armenian electricity network with $73 million.

Anatolian Times, Turkey
Sept 25 2005
Conference On Ottoman Armenians Continues In Istanbul
ISTANBUL – ”Ittihat & Terakki Party (Party of Union & Progress) had
a plan to purify whole Anatolia from the non-Turks, starting from the
Aegean Region, before the World War I, and this plan was carried out
in entire Anatolia during the years of the war (World War I)”,
argued associate professor Taner Akcam of Minnesota University.
Taking the floor on the second day of the Conference titled ”The
Armenians during the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire” held at
Istanbul’s Bilgi University, Akcam said that the relocation decision
was made at the end of long discussions and debates.
”The Ottoman documents indicate that the decision to relocate the
Armenians was made to end a deeper problem defined as the ‘eastern
problem’ and to end the dissolution process of the Ottoman Empire.
This decision was not a result of a need that erupted during the war.
There are many documents in hand with respect to the destruction of
Armenians,” claimed Akcam.
On the other hand, Dr. Ahmet Kuyas of Galatasaray University referred
to the four members of the Ittihat & Terakki Party, and said that a
serious massacre was made those days. According to Kuyas, the
architect of this massacre was Enver Pasha. Kuyas expressed his view
that the other three people who were responsible for these massacres
were Talat Pasha, Dr. Bahattin Sakir and Dr. Nazim.
Also speaking at the conference, professor Baskin Oran of Ankara
University’s Political Sciences Department said, ”concept of class,
criticisms of Ataturk, Cyprus, socialism, communism and Kurdistan are
no more taboos in Turkey. There was only one taboo left, and it was
Armenian issue. Now, it is no more a taboo.”
Referring to Armenian Diaspora, Oran said, ”Diaspora talks about
‘recognition, compensation and territory’, and this prevents
‘recognition’. Nobody in Turkey can think of paying compensation for
things that an empire (Ottoman Empire), the alphabet of which you
have abandoned, did. Moreover, territory claims are nonsense.”
Oran pointed out that assassins of Turkish diplomats should not
remain unpunished, and added, ”assassins of 35-40 Turkish diplomats
were not punished or sentenced to minor punishments. And, this caused
as much reaction in Turkey as the 1915 incidents caused in Armenia.
And, this was the factor which increased this taboo in Turkey.”
Before the conference started, a group of people who were the members
of the Grand Unity Party (BBP) threw rotten tomatoes and eggs to
participants and the building where the conference is being held.
Also, the audience was protested by the group.

Los Angeles Times
Sept 25 2005
Forum on Armenian massacre defies ban
By Amberin Zaman
ISTANBUL, Turkey – A controversial conference on the mass killings of
ethnic Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire opened
here amid heavy security Saturday in defiance of a court ban.
The forum was hailed by participants and Western observers as a
groundbreaking event where Turkish academics for the first time
publicly could challenge their country’s official version of the
events leading to the Armenian tragedy.
Hundreds of protesters waving Turkish flags pelted the arriving
panelists with eggs and rotten tomatoes, expressing the fury felt by
many Turks over efforts to open their country’s painful past to
debate.
“The aim (of the conference) … is to declare Turkey guilty of
genocide,” said Erkan Onsel, head of the local branch of the small,
left-wing Turkey’s Workers’ Party.
The conference was canceled twice before, most recently on Thursday,
when an Istanbul court ruled in favor of a group of lawyers who
opposed the gathering on procedural grounds.
Turkey’s reformist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, harshly
condemned the ruling, saying it was timed to undermine the country’s
efforts to join the European Union.
Turkey is scheduled to open long-awaited membership talks with the EU
on Oct. 3.
“I want to live in a Turkey where freedoms are enjoyed in their
broadest sense,” Erdogan told reporters Saturday.
His words were echoed by Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who sent a
letter of support to the conference.
He earlier termed the cancellation a further example of how “Turks
are so good at shooting themselves in the foot.”
Emotions ran high among a packed audience of academics, journalists
and diplomats as panelists deconstructed Turkey’s official
explanation of how the country’s once-thriving Armenian population,
estimated at more than 1 million in the early 20th century, was
reduced to its current level of 80,000.
Armenians say more than 1 million of their people systematically were
killed in a genocide campaign launched by Ottoman forces from 1915 to
1923.
Turkey says several hundred thousand Armenians did die but of
exposure, disease and attacks from brigands as they journeyed south
to Syria after being deported for collaborating with invading Russian
troops.
Most speakers took a cautious tone, saying the purpose of the
conference was not to deliver a verdict on whether the killings
constituted genocide or not.
“We cannot allow debate to be trapped between these two conflicting
points of view. We need to try and understand what happened in 1915,”
said Halil Berktay, a prominent Ottoman historian. He noted
nonetheless that Ottoman officials had declared “an open season to
hunt Armenians” at the start of World War I.
One of the speakers stated outright that the killings constituted
genocide.
“That is my view,” said Fikret Adanir, a Turkish historian.
“What about the Muslims who were killed, why won’t you mention them?”
demanded audience member Mustafa Budak, deputy director of the
state-run Ottoman archive, during a heated question-and-answer
session.
Turkey recently opened the archive to the public, but critics say
incriminating documents have been purged.
Budak denied the claim in an interview and added that “the
conference’s credibility would have been vastly enhanced had other
academics (supporting the official line) been invited to speak as
well.”
A European diplomat observing the panel said its significance went
beyond free debate of the Armenian issue. “It proves that Turkey is
maturing into a Western-style democracy, where all opinions, no
matter how contentious, can be freely expressed.”

Cape Cod Times, MA
Sept 25 2005
Rock star
Mason’s elaborate stonework becomes two-year dream project
By JOHANNA CROSBY
STAFF WRITER
EAST DENNIS ”’ Only a portion of Tigran Gichunts’ ”masonry
paradise” is visible from the road in this seaside neighborhood.

Tigran Gichunts’ stone work at Fawaz and Jo-Ellen El Khoury’s home
in East Dennis began with a wall to stop erosion, and blossomed into
a “masonry paradise” that took two years to build.
—————————————————————-

Halfway up a long driveway, a rambling yellow, federal-style house
perched on a hilltop comes into full view. The sloping front lawn is
framed by two tiers of stone walls.
But Gichunts didn’t stop there. His handiwork includes 10,000 square
feet of stone walls that wrap around most of the secluded 3-acre
property. Some of the 4 1/2-foot-high walls – which run for 1,500
feet, or more than a quarter of a mile – flaunt built-in planters and
graceful columns.
Gichunts also built three patios – a large one of Turkish marble in
the backyard with an outdoor gourmet kitchen for entertaining; a
fieldstone patio in the backyard; and a side-yard rectangular patio,
made of concrete pavers that resemble bricks, that is designed with a
herringbone pattern. He combined landscape materials of different
textures and colors throughout the project. In the front yard, a
network of fieldstone pathways trimmed with cobblestone is connected
by a circular walkway of concrete pavers. The formal entranceway is
made of tumbled bluestone edged with granite.
The ambitious project took Gichunts, a masonry designer whose
business is based in South Yarmouth and Brewster, two years to
complete. He finished it last month.
His first day on the job, he walked the property and ideas began
percolating in his mind.
Gichunts did not work from a blueprint. Instead, he relied on his
mind’s eye to detail the plans.
”I’m usually a hands-on kind of person,” says owner Fawaz El Khoury
of Westborough, a real estate investor
who is also in the import/export business. But after seeing Gichunts’
work on the entranceway he was hired to build, El Khoury and his wife
Jo-Ellen had confidence in Gichunts’ talent and vision and gave him a
fairly free hand on the project. The designer would run his ideas by
them and they usually agreed.
The couple declined to say how much the project cost. But Gichunts
says he builds fieldstone walls for an average of $50 per square
foot, including material and labor.
A family trade
Gichunts, 24, was eager to showcase his stonework skills on such a
grand scale.

This gourmet kitchen built by mason Tigran Gichunts boasts a double
chimney oven made of river rocks and fire bricks, with an upper oven
for baking and a larger one below that can accommodate a whole pig or
lamb.
(Staff photos by VINCENT DeWITT)
—————————————————————-

”It’s an art,” he says, of doing masonry, a trade that apparently
runs in his genes. Gichunts is a native of Armenia and his
grandfather was a mason.
Piecing 15 truckloads of stones together artfully to build a wall is
like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle, he says. It’s also very
detailed, labor-intensive work. The rocks were secured with mortar,
but it was recessed so it wouldn’t show.
The two stone walls in the front yard are primarily decorative. But
they also help to prevent erosion of the hilly terrain. ”At first we
had a concrete wall, but it was ugly,” El Khoury says.
With an artist’s eye toward aesthetics, Gichunts came up with the
idea for two levels of stone walls. He chose attractive tan-colored
New England fieldstone, which blends in with the surrounding
landscape. Besides its natural beauty, the stone was chosen because
it’s durable and maintenance-free, Gichunts says.
But Gichunts wasn’t finished with just the two tiers of stone walls
on the hill. Instead, the walls grew longer and one of his ideas led
to another.
”I never in my wildest dreams thought it would go around the entire
yard,” El Khoury says. ”It became an addiction. Once you do a stone
wall, you want to do another.”
Besides the privacy it affords, the wrap-around stone walls are in
keeping with the historic integrity of the neighborhood and provides
a ”certain harmony” with the natural landscape, Mrs. El Khoury
adds.
Their own castle
The sprawling yard is landscaped with numerous plantings, including
100 rose bushes along one of the stone walls. Hydrangeas, flowers and
other shrubs dot the sweeping front lawn.
At night, when the landscape lights are turned on, the house looks
like a castle, Gichunts says.
The El Khourys bought the 3-acre site, which is bordered by
conservation land, four years ago. They helped design their spacious
12-room summer house, which has a view of Cape Cod Bay from the
second floor. There is also an attached guest suite.
Mrs. El Khoury has fond memories of summering on the Cape as a child
and learning how to swim at nearby Cold Storage Beach. Her parents
live in the neighborhood. The setting attracts an assortment of
wildlife, including birds and deer.
”It’s a dream to be here,” Mrs. El Khoury says.
The couple, who have four children, enjoy entertaining outdoors and
cooking for their guests. Gichunts built a gourmet kitchen at the
edge of the large backyard patio, which is made of marble slabs in a
geometric pattern and a granite border. The 37-foot-island is fully
equipped with a stainless steel bar sink and faucet, stove,
refrigerator, ice machine, and charcoal gas grills.
The double chimney oven – made of river rocks and fire bricks –
features two separate ovens, a small one for baking breads, pizza and
cake and a large one that can accommodate a whole pig, lamb or 10
chickens. The counter top consists of a mosiac of tiny tiles and
sleek granite.
A circular fieldstone walkway from the backyard patio leads to a lawn
area where the owners plan to build a swimming pool. Gichunts is
already envisioning his next project: a patio for the pool.

Southeast European Times, MD
Sept 25 2005
Conference on Armenian Massacres Held With Support from Turkish
Leaders
25/09/2005
ANKARA, Turkey — Following two failed attempts earlier this year,
the first-ever public debate about the early 20th century mass
killings of Armenians was held in Turkey Saturday (24 September),
with the backing of senior Turkish leaders who cited the
participants’ right to freedom of expression. The conference,
attended mostly by academics, took place at the Bilgi University in
Istanbul under tight security as nationalists demonstrated outside,
calling the event “traitorous”.
Last week, a court had banned the event, prompting Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan to say that the ruling was timed to undermine
the country’s efforts to join the EU. “I want to live in a Turkey
where freedoms are enjoyed in their broadest sense,” Erdogan said
Saturday. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul also defended the event,
saying the ban showed that Turks “are so good at shooting themselves
in the foot”. The EU condemned the court’s move as a “provocation”
and warned the conference would be considered a test of freedom of
expression in Turkey, an EU hopeful.
As many as 1.5 million Armenians are thought to have been killed
between 1915 and 1923, in what Armenia and several governments around
the world have termed a genocide. Turkey, however, denies the charge,
arguing that the death toll is inflated and that Turks as well as
Armenians perished in civil unrest and intercommunal fighting as the
Ottoman Empire collapsed.

Baku Today, Azerbaijan
Sept 25 2005
X-Sender: Asbed Bedrossian
X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 — ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
OSCE, Pace Should Cooperate In Karabakh Conflict Resolution – Russian
Co-Chair
Baku Today / AssA-Irada 25/09/2005 19:36
The OSCE Minsk Group mediating settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan
Karabakh conflict and the special committee of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) may cooperate on a number of
issues, the MG Russian co-chair Yuri Merzlyakov said.
He was commenting on the hearings on the Karabakh conflict held in
Paris within the PACE committee last week.
`The OSCE MG co-chairs are mediating the talks and presenting
proposals, while PACE may contribute to mobilizing public opinion in
the two countries to achieve the compromise needed for the conflict
resolution. It may also be actively involved in ensuring
implementation of commitments that the sides assumed upon admission
to the Council of Europe, with a pivotal obligation being the
peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.’
Merzlyakov stated that CE and PACE may take up `control over every
ceasefire violation and influence the sides to honor their
commitments’.
`The belligerent statements that sound every now then and calls for
settling the conflict with the use of force certainly do not promote
conflict resolution…We are ready to share our credentials with PACE
to ensure such statements are not made any longer.’
Merzlyakov said the mediators are concerned over the growing military
budgets of Azerbaijan and Armenia, which `may affect the process of
implementing their commitments on the peace conflict settlement’.