31 January 2005
U.S. Seeks Peaceful Settlement on Nagorno-Karabakh
State Department fact sheet provides background on conflict, U.S. policy
The U.S. Department of State issued the following fact sheet January 25:
U.S. Department of State
Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs
Washington, DC
January 25, 2005
FACT SHEET
THE UNITED STATES AND NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Background
The armed conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) lasted from 1990 to 1994. By
the time a cease-fire went into effect in 1994, Armenian forces controlled
most of N-K, as well as large swaths of adjacent Azerbaijani territory. The
fighting plus the expulsion of Armenians from Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis
from Armenia produced more than a million refugees and internally displaced
persons (IDPs). Approximately 100,000 Azerbaijanis remain in refugee camps
today, where they face desperate living conditions. Turkey closed its land
border with Armenia during the conflict to show solidarity with Azerbaijan
and has not reopened it.
The parties have observed a cease-fire agreement since 1994. Although
cease-fire violations and cross-border sniping occur, all sides insist on
their continued commitment to a peaceful settlement reached through
negotiation.
Peace Process
In 1992, the CSCE (now the OSCE) created the Minsk Group, a coalition of
member states dedicated to facilitating a peaceful resolution of the
conflict. The Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group (Russia, France, and the U.S.)
serve as mediators, working in close and effective cooperation with the
parties. In 1997-98, Co-Chair shuttle diplomacy generated three separate
peace proposals. Each of these proposals was rejected by one or another of
the parties.
Beginning in 1999, Presidents Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Robert
Kocharian of Armenia began a direct dialogue through a series of bilateral
meetings. Positive developments during a March 2001 Paris meeting among
Presidents Aliyev, Kocharian, and Chirac inspired Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell to invite both Presidents to continue their dialogue in the United
States. Aliyev and Kocharian met with the Co-Chairs in Key West in April
2001. The sides made significant progress but failed to reach a
comprehensive settlement. Presidents Aliyev and Kocharian met on the margins
of multilateral meetings in late 2001 and on the border between the two
countries in August 2002 but failed to narrow their differences. President
Heydar Aliyev died in 2003, and negotiations slowed as both countries held
presidential elections that year.
In 2004, the Co-Chairs initiated a series of meetings in Prague between the
Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The “Prague Process” was
designed to reinvigorate dialogue between the sides. Following a series of
meetings between the Foreign Ministers, as well as meetings in Warsaw and
Astana between Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharian, the Co-Chairs
and the parties agreed the Prague Process should continue in 2005, with a
focus on advancing negotiations towards a settlement.
The U.S. As Mediator
The U.S. remains actively engaged in advancing a peaceful settlement of the
conflict. Cooperation among the U.S., Russian, and French mediators is
excellent. The United States does not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an
independent country, and its leadership is not recognized internationally or
by the United States. The United States supports the territorial integrity
of Azerbaijan and holds that the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh is a
matter of negotiation between the parties. The United States remains
committed to finding a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
through the Minsk Group process. We are encouraged by the continuing talks
between the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: )

Stop gift of Indian Elephant to Armenia: Born Free Foundation:
[World News]: London, Feb 1 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s intervention
has been sought by an international wildlife and animal welfare charity to
prevent transfer of a Bangalore based elephant to Armenia.
“The Born Free Foundation urges the Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh
to reconsider this gift and to call the move off,” its CEO Will Travers said
here last night.
He said the Foundation, founded by actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers,
believed that there were many other ways of improving relations between New
Delhi and Yerevan which would not involve the potential suffering and
possible demise of animals.
Virginia McKenna, OBE, who starred in the classic 1966 movie “Born Free”,
said “It is deeply disheartening that the custom of using animals as
diplomatic gifts still continues. Animals are not inanimate objects and
certainly deserve to be treated with due respect for their nature and needs.
“The proposed removal of an elephant from Bangalore to Yerevan Zoo
highlights the urgent need for this issue to be addressed on an
international basis, and I can only hope that it is not too late to change
hearts and minds. Not only for this elephant, but in future no more animals
should be used in this way.”
According to information received by the Foundation, the Elephant is due to
leave Bangalore and is destined for Yerevan. The exchange is in the form of
a diplomatic gift consigned by the Indian Prime Minister to his counterpart
in Armenia, the foundation cliamed. PTI

Prove Hitler wrong
Remember Ottoman Turkey’s slaughter of Armenian Christians:
Saturday October 23rd, 2004
World Magazine

By Marvin Olasky

Editor’s warning: This article contains graphic material.

VAN, Turkey — As Turkey moves toward eventual membership in the
European Union (see Madisonian Turkey from this week’s issue), this
Muslim nation should also come to grips with a terrible crime that has
gone largely unpunished.
Armenians, many of them Christian, lived in this area of what is now
eastern Turkey for about 2,000 years. Despite suffering massacres in
1894 and 1895 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, they still numbered
well over 1 million in 1914. Ten years later only scattered handfuls
were left.
Adolf Hitler used what is now called the Armenian holocaust as his
model for an even greater holocaust. Ottoman Turks developed
techniques later used by the Nazis, such as piling 90 people into a
train car with a capacity of 36, and leaving them locked in for days,
terrified, starving, and often dead.
Hitler was even more impressed with how the Turks got away with
genocide. When Hitler on Aug. 22, 1939, explained that his plans to
invade Poland included the formation of death squads that would
exterminate men, women, and children, he asked, “Who, after all,
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
In recent years some have. Books such as Peter Balakian’s The Burning
Tigris (HarperCollins, 2003) tell of the Armenian tragedy in a way
that also helps us to understand radical Islam. That’s because the key
incitement to massacre came on Nov. 14, 1914, when Mustafa Hayri Bey,
the Ottoman Empire’s leading Sunni authority, urged his followers to
commence a jihad: One pamphlet declared, “He who kills even one
unbeliever . . . shall be rewarded by Allah.”
The jihad proclamation received wide dissemination. When a priest
asked a Muslim army officer how he could participate in killing
several thousand Armenian women, Captain Shukri’s answer was simple:
It was jihad time, and after the murders he could “spread out my
prayer rug and pray, giving glory to Allah and the Prophet who made me
worthy of personally participating in the holy jihad in these days of
my old age.”
The Ottoman Turk government set up and paid special killing
squads. The Ministry of the Interior gave instructions to “exterminate
all males under 50, priests and teachers, leave girls and children to
be Islamized.” Historians and journalists have estimated that Turks
killed 800,000 to 1 million Armenians in 1915 alone, and an additional
200,000 to 500,000 over the next seven years.
Here in Van 89 years ago, provincial governor Jevdet Bey gained the
nickname “the horseshoe master” because he nailed horseshoes to the
feet of Armenians. Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to
Turkey, described in 1918 testimony of torture he had heard: “The
gendarmes would nail hands and feet to pieces of wood–evidently in
imitation of the Crucifixion, and then while the sufferer writhes in
his agony, they would cry, ‘Now let your Christ come help you.'”
Aurora Mardiganian, the only member of her family to survive, told of
killing squads that planted their swords in the ground, blade up, at
intervals of several yards. Killers on horseback each grabbed a girl,
rode their horses at a controlled gallop, and tried to throw the girl
so she would be impaled on a sword: “If the killer missed and the girl
was only injured, she would be scooped up again until she was impaled
on the protruding blade.”
The silent film Ravished Armenia, based on Aurora Mardiganian’s
account, caused a U.S. sensation–but British officials demanded
before showtime in London the deletion of a scene of Armenian women
being crucified. Miss Mardiganian agreed that the scene, which showed
the women being crucified on large crosses with their long hair
covering their nude bodies, was inauthentic.
The scene was inaccurate, she said, because the crosses in the film
were large, but in reality they were little and pointed: “They took
the clothes off the girls. They made them bend down. And after raping
them, they made them sit on the pointed wood, through . . .”
Americans, she said, “can’t show such terrible things” (and I can’t
write about them in full detail).
After the World War ended in 1918 several Turks, including “the
horseshoe master,” were executed for war crimes. Hundreds of
perpetrators went free, and to this day Turkish textbooks cover up the
slaughter of Armenians, as they also cover up the slaughter of Greek
Christians in western Turkey during that same era.
Prove Hitler wrong.
Governments are to wield the sword to bring justice, so remember
Armenian and other victims of governments that killed their own
people, and thank God that the United States has worked to protect
innocent people in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan.
Copyright © 2005 Armenian National Committe of Australia

Rice faces a key test in visit to Turkey
By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
WASHINGTON Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Ankara this
weekend for talks likely to test her fence-mending talents as much as
will her stops in Paris and Berlin. The United States and Turkey are
still trying to recover from an unusually bitter pre-Iraq war
dispute. .
After a new Muslim-dominated government blocked an urgent Pentagon
request for access to Turkish territory that would have permitted a
northern push into Iraq, some Turks called the U.S. negotiators
arrogant and peremptory; the American side appeared taken aback by the
new Muslim power centers in a long-secular country..
The strains remain vivid, according to Turkish and American officials
as well as analysts at a conference here of the American Turkish
Council and the Atlantic Council..
And as Turkey opens talks in October on European Union membership,
U.S.-Turkish ties might face further strains..
“Turkish-EU relations are at an all-time best,” said Omer Taspinar,
director of the Turkey Program at the Brookings Institute, “while
trans-Atlantic relations are going through one of their worst
patches.” So even as the Bush administration cites Turkey as a model
of the Western-oriented Muslim democracy that President George W. Bush
wants for the region – he underscored this goal in his inaugural
speech and may repeat it Wednesday in his State of the Union address –
relations between the two countries remain raw..
How bad is Turkish public opinion toward the United States?.
A current best-selling thriller in Turkey is based on the premise that
strains over Iraq escalate into a major U.S. war on Turkey, said Soli
Ozel, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in
Istanbul. The scenario seems absurd. But a June 2003 survey by the Pew
Research Center found that 71 percent of Turks worried that the United
States was a potential military threat..
The war changed opinion dramatically. The 2003 poll found that 83
percent of Turks viewed the United States unfavorably, up from 55
percent the previous year. And 82 percent of Turks expressed
disappointment that Iraqi forces had not fought harder against the
U.S. coalition..
“Turkey is on the receiving end of America’s grand designs in the
Middle East,” said Ozel, and as a neighbor of Iran, Iraq and Syria,
the Turks would like a voice on how those designs are carried out. .
The invasion of Iraq “simply has broken the back of U.S.-Turkish
relations,” Taspinar said. .
The containment of Iraq had been a cornerstone of America’s ties to
Turkey, a NATO partner, said Soner Cagaptay of the Washington
Institute. “It has been damaged.” A major unknown is how the situation
in Iraq, particularly northern Iraq, will evolve..
The administration hopes the unexpected success of the Iraqi elections
will give it a boost as Rice begins her trip Thursday. The elections
underscored “how important it is for all of us to encourage and
support those steps,” the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher,
said Monday..
But Turks have a series of worries..
Turkey is deeply concerned that the Kurds of northern Iraq,
strengthened by election results and with a decade’s experience of
near-autonomy, will declare independence, emboldening
separatist-minded Kurds in Turkey..
Turks believe that some in the Bush administration – including Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who led the failed access
negotiations – would not try to block an independent Kurdistan..
Many Turks say the U.S. failure to apprehend and turn over Iraq-based
Kurdish extremists of the PKK group reflects a double standard by an
administration that calls the war on terrorism a top priority. “The
PKK is the thorn in Turkey’s foot, and it needs to be taken out,”
Cagaptay said. “There’s no other way to move forward on U.S.-Turkish
relations.” .
Preston Hughes, a retired U.S. Army colonel and Turkey expert, said
that the U.S. approach on the PKK “has caused bitter frustration and
even anger at the highest levels” in Turkey..
Turks also worry about a Kurdish takeover of the northern Iraqi city
of Kirkuk, which controls great oil wealth. Taspinar went so far as to
suggest that Turkey might “go it alone in northern Iraq” if “there is
a civil war centered around Kirkuk between the Kurds, the Arabs and
the Turkmens.” Turks would also like reassurances about neighboring
Iran. “We are really waiting, biting our nails,” over the possibility
of a U.S. attack on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, Ozel said..
What else would Turks like to hear from Rice? Clearly, analyst said,
an unequivocal assertion that the United States opposes an independent
Kurdistan and, above all, a concerted push for Israeli-Palestinian
peace. .
Taspinar’s advice: “Public diplomacy should not be seen as an
alternative to changes in policy.” .
Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said that as EU
accession talks progress, a shift away from the United States might
widen. “Turkey’s imagination, its talent, is inevitably going to be
drawn toward Europe,” Parris said. .
While the United States and Europe may be vying for Turkish attention
and business, their hopes for Turkey largely coincide: Both want to
see it ensure the rights of ethnic Armenians and Kurds, of women and
of trade unions. And both want a resolution of the decades-old
controversy over divided Cyprus. .
As fence-mending proceeds, many Turks acknowledge that they, too, have
work to do. Cagaptay suggested that the government and elite needed to
work “to filter out the vast amount of anti-American talk” and to
counter widespread anti-American conspiracy theories..
See more of the world that matters – click here for home delivery of
the International Herald Tribune. .
< < Back to Start of Article WASHINGTON Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Ankara this weekend for talks likely to test her fence-mending talents as much as will her stops in Paris and Berlin. The United States and Turkey are still trying to recover from an unusually bitter pre-Iraq war dispute. . After a new Muslim-dominated government blocked an urgent Pentagon request for access to Turkish territory that would have permitted a northern push into Iraq, some Turks called the U.S. negotiators arrogant and peremptory; the American side appeared taken aback by the new Muslim power centers in a long-secular country.. The strains remain vivid, according to Turkish and American officials as well as analysts at a conference here of the American Turkish Council and the Atlantic Council.. And as Turkey opens talks in October on European Union membership, U.S.-Turkish ties might face further strains.. "Turkish-EU relations are at an all-time best," said Omer Taspinar, director of the Turkey Program at the Brookings Institute, "while trans-Atlantic relations are going through one of their worst patches." So even as the Bush administration cites Turkey as a model of the Western-oriented Muslim democracy that President George W. Bush wants for the region - he underscored this goal in his inaugural speech and may repeat it Wednesday in his State of the Union address - relations between the two countries remain raw.. How bad is Turkish public opinion toward the United States?. A current best-selling thriller in Turkey is based on the premise that strains over Iraq escalate into a major U.S. war on Turkey, said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. The scenario seems absurd. But a June 2003 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 71 percent of Turks worried that the United States was a potential military threat.. The war changed opinion dramatically. The 2003 poll found that 83 percent of Turks viewed the United States unfavorably, up from 55 percent the previous year. And 82 percent of Turks expressed disappointment that Iraqi forces had not fought harder against the U.S. coalition.. "Turkey is on the receiving end of America's grand designs in the Middle East," said Ozel, and as a neighbor of Iran, Iraq and Syria, the Turks would like a voice on how those designs are carried out. . The invasion of Iraq "simply has broken the back of U.S.-Turkish relations," Taspinar said. . The containment of Iraq had been a cornerstone of America's ties to Turkey, a NATO partner, said Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute. "It has been damaged." A major unknown is how the situation in Iraq, particularly northern Iraq, will evolve.. The administration hopes the unexpected success of the Iraqi elections will give it a boost as Rice begins her trip Thursday. The elections underscored "how important it is for all of us to encourage and support those steps," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said Monday.. But Turks have a series of worries.. Turkey is deeply concerned that the Kurds of northern Iraq, strengthened by election results and with a decade's experience of near-autonomy, will declare independence, emboldening separatist-minded Kurds in Turkey.. Turks believe that some in the Bush administration - including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who led the failed access negotiations - would not try to block an independent Kurdistan.. Many Turks say the U.S. failure to apprehend and turn over Iraq-based Kurdish extremists of the PKK group reflects a double standard by an administration that calls the war on terrorism a top priority. "The PKK is the thorn in Turkey's foot, and it needs to be taken out," Cagaptay said. "There's no other way to move forward on U.S.-Turkish relations." . Preston Hughes, a retired U.S. Army colonel and Turkey expert, said that the U.S. approach on the PKK "has caused bitter frustration and even anger at the highest levels" in Turkey.. Turks also worry about a Kurdish takeover of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, which controls great oil wealth. Taspinar went so far as to suggest that Turkey might "go it alone in northern Iraq" if "there is a civil war centered around Kirkuk between the Kurds, the Arabs and the Turkmens." Turks would also like reassurances about neighboring Iran. "We are really waiting, biting our nails," over the possibility of a U.S. attack on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, Ozel said.. What else would Turks like to hear from Rice? Clearly, analyst said, an unequivocal assertion that the United States opposes an independent Kurdistan and, above all, a concerted push for Israeli-Palestinian peace. . Taspinar's advice: "Public diplomacy should not be seen as an alternative to changes in policy." . Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said that as EU accession talks progress, a shift away from the United States might widen. "Turkey's imagination, its talent, is inevitably going to be drawn toward Europe," Parris said. . While the United States and Europe may be vying for Turkish attention and business, their hopes for Turkey largely coincide: Both want to see it ensure the rights of ethnic Armenians and Kurds, of women and of trade unions. And both want a resolution of the decades-old controversy over divided Cyprus. . As fence-mending proceeds, many Turks acknowledge that they, too, have work to do. Cagaptay suggested that the government and elite needed to work "to filter out the vast amount of anti-American talk" and to counter widespread anti-American conspiracy theories..

TURK ANALYST CONDEMNS OSKANIAN OF INSULTING JEWS FROM THE UN PODIUM
Azg/arm
2 Feb 05
Armenian foreign affairs minister Vartan Oskanian’s speech at the
Special Session of General Assembly of the UN dedicated to the 60th
anniversary of Auschwitz death camp liberation caught the attention of
Hatem Jabbarl from Caucasian Department of Eurasian Military Research
Institute. In an article of January 28 of Haberanaliz newspaper
Jabbarl draws readers’ attention to Vartan Oskanian’s readiness “to
join other survivors on behalf of the people and government of
Armenia” and to “Jews and Armenians are linked forever by Hitler”
statement and says that the General Assembly’s Special Session played
more into Armenians hands than into Jews as the Holocaust is
recognized worldwide while the “so-called genocide” is only
recognized, Jabbarl thinks, by states that are unwilling to see Turkey
developed due to their past enmity.
Jabbarl considered Oskanian’s speech an opportune occasion to
influence the international community from such an authoritative
podium as UN’s and expressed an opinion that the Armenian foreign
minister “insulted the memory of Holocaust, the Jewish people as well
as the participants of the Special Session by offering his
condolences”.
Jabbarl explained Oskanian’s “insult” by anti-Semitism rampant in
Armenia. Writing that anti-Semitism has grown into a state policy in
our country, he merely points out to Roman Yepiskoposyan’s “The
National Systems” book and chairman of Armenian Aryan Union Armen
Avetisian’s statements that “the Yezids and Jews should be put out of
Armenia” as well as to the head of Armenia’s Jewish community,
Rima Varzhapetian, as she feverously seeks signs of anti-Semitism.
This means that the Turkish analyst is more concerned with creating an
illusion of anti-Semitism than with the real state of things.
But what really lies behind Jabbarl’s words is the concern that the
condolences of the Armenian minister to the Jewish nation create
grounds for friendship which will supposedly bind Turkey’s hands as it
is striving to remove the US Congress resolutions on Armenian Genocide
by means of Jews institutions. In other words, the reason Hatem
Jabbarl on “finding” anti-Semitism in Armenia raised it to the rank of
state policy is that he wanted to oppose anti-Semitism to Armenian
foreign minister’s speech, rather annoying for Turkey.
By Hakob Chakrian
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA’S TRADE WITH RUSSIA IN 2004 DOWN 11 PERCENT
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 1, ARMENPRESS: Armenia’s trade with its biggest
trade partner, Russia, was down 10.6 percent in 2004 against the
previous year standing at $266 million, a $31 million downfall from
almost $298 million in 2003.
According to Armenian national statistical service, Armenian
exports to Russia went down last year 17.3 percent, making only $78
million. Last year Armenia imported from Russia $188 million worth
goods, a 7.9 percent decrease over the previous year.
Share of Armenia’s trade with Russia, in the overall trade volume
was 12.9 percent.

DEADLY BLAST HITS GEORGIAN CITY
TBILISI, FEBRUARY 1, ARMENPRESS: A powerful car bomb exploded
Tuesday outside a police station in Georgia, killing at least five
people and wounding several others.
The blast occurred near a regional police headquarters in the
townof Gori, about 100 kilometers west of the capital Tbilisi and the
closest regional center to the breakaway South Ossetia region.
The force of the explosion badly damaged about 10 cars near the one
that exploded and also damaged the police building, the ministry
said. A ministry spokesman Guram Donadze said it was a terrorist
act. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

26th anniversary of victory of Islamic Revolution celebrated in Armenia
Tehran Times Culture Desk
2 Feb 05
TEHRAN — The 26th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic
Revolution is being celebrated in Armenia.
According to the Public Relations Office of the Islamic Culture and
Relations Organization (ICRO), several programs, including exhibitions
and poetry nights with the participation of Iranian scholars, are
scheduled for the Ten-Day Dawn celebrations. * Exhibition of Iranian
miniature works underway in Moscow
An exhibition of Iranian contemporary miniature works opened in Moscow
on January 31.
Over 50 works created by Amir Tahmasebi, Amir-Hussein Aqamiri, and
other Iranian artists are on display.
Russian and Iranian officials and a group of Iranian artists attended
the opening ceremony of the exhibition, which will run through until
February 6. * Iranian Arts Room to open at Armenian National Museum
The new Iranian Arts Room of the Armenian National Museum in Yerevan
is to open on February 3.
Iranian art and cultural works will be put on display permanently in
the museum’s new section. * Iranian cultural exhibition underway in
Kazakhstan
An Iranian cultural exhibition opened on Monday at the National Museum
in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Iranian arts such as glassworks, inlaid works,
miniatures, and intarsia works as well as beautiful earthenware are on
display in the two-week exhibition.

DISCUSSIONS ON TOPIC “DIPLOMACY FOR SETTLEMENT OF KARABAKH CONFLICT
AND THE PROBLEM OF STATE CONSTRUCTION OF ARMENIA AND NAGORNY KARABAKH”
AT HOTEL YEREVAN
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 1. ARMINFO. The current format of negotiations for
settlement of Karabakh conflict has not exhausted yet, it does not
allow maneuvers either, say the participants of discussions on the
topic “Diplomacy for settlement of Karabakh conflict and the problem
of state construction of Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh” held at the
Hotel Yerevan, Tuesday.
Leader of the National-Democratic Union, MP Vazgen Manukyan,
representing the opposition bloc Justice, says that
In his turn, Leader of the Union Self-Determination party Papuyr
Hairikyan says that ten years ago the whole native public was united
around the Karabakh problem, today, the negotiation process is a
prerogative of several people protecting the interests of groups and
not the national ones. The National Security Council does not
function; the relations between Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh are not
regulated. In these conditions, the role of independent experts
increases, they can create mechanisms of control over state structures
NKR Presidential
Adviser for Foreign Political Affairs Georgiy Petrosyan is sure that
solution is in establishment and triumph of democratic principles,
transparency and honesty of the policy, including foreign
policy. Leader of the Union of Socialist Forces of Armenia Ashot
Manucharyanm in his turn, asks whether the OSCE Minsk Group aims
contribution to the settlement process or it is just an instrument for
containment of negative processes in the South Caucasus.
Head of the NKR Press Club Gegham Baghdasaryan makes rather harsh
statements, in particular, saying that Karabakh must become an active
part of the negotiations, the NKR authorities must be maximum active
in the process, but the present Administration of Stepanakert is
unable to do it, as The meeting-participants decided to continue the discussions in future
as well. Their next meeting may take place in Karabakh. – M-

SHAVARSH KOCHARYAN: CONCLUSION OF OSCE EXPERT GROUP ON STUDY OF
REGIONS UNDER CONTROL OF ARMENIAN PARTY WILL BE HARDLY FAVOURABLE FOR
ARMENIAN PARTY
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 1. ARMINFO. The conclusion of the OSCE expert group
on study of situation in the regions, being under control of the
Armenian party, will be hardly favourable for the Armenian party, PM
from the opposition bloc “Justice” Shavarsh Kocharyan expressed such
an opinion at the press-conference at “Pakagits” club, Monday.
According to him, it is wrong enough that Nagorny Karabakh turned out
in the situation of exculpatory party as a result of formation of that
group and its visit to these territories. “NKR authorities are forced
to make excuses to the international experts and to explain that a
special program on overpopulation of territories, being under control
of Armenian party, is not implementing, and only Armenian people who
were served by a miracle from slaughter in Baku, Sumgait and Kirovabad
are living in that territories at present”, S. Kocharyan noted.
To note, the OSCE expert group accompanied by co-chairmen of the OSCE
Minsk Group are implementing monitoring of regions, under control of
Armenian party. On completion of the mission, the experts should
present the conclusion on situation in these territories to both the
OSCE and the OSCE MG. -R-