ARMENIAN MP, ARTASHES GEGHAMYAN, CALLES ARMENIAN PRESIDENT TO DISSOLVE
PARLIAMENT AND BECOME GUARANTOR OF NEW FAIR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 11. ARMINFO. Friday, an Armenian MP, Artashes
Geghamyan, called Armenian President Robert Kocharyan to dissolve the
parliament and become a guarantor of new fair parliamentary elections
in the country.

Speaking at an assembly of the National Unity party’s activists,
Geghamyan said that such a step would justify the president’s “previous
sins.” He also urged the former ruling party of Armenia, the Armenian
Pan National Movement (APNM), not to “bomb” the opposition with its
biting sarcasm, but to join it for restoration of the Constitutional
order in Armenia.

In his speech, Geghamyan also touched upon a possible departure of
Armenian militaries to Iraq. Of course, we must combat terrorism,
but Armenia has no moral right to send its experts to other country
struggling against terrorism when terrorism prospers inside it
and the killers of the Georgian citizen Poghos Poghosyan and the
organizers of the terrorist act in the Parliament have not been
punished so far. Artashes Geghyamyan touched upon the failure of
Armenian sportsmen at the Olympic Games in the Athens, the heavy
socio-economic situation in the country, the inevitability of the
Karabakh clan’s exile from Armenia, his vacation in the Spanish
Valensia and others things. However, during 2-hour sitting of the
party’s activists, no one remembered the tragic events in Beslan,
which took the lives of 300 hundreds of people, including 9 Armenians.

TRADE OBJECTS OF ARMENIANS AND AZERBAIJANIS DESTROYED IN YEKATERINBURG

BAKU, SEPTEMBER 10. ARMINFO-TURAN. Four cafes belonging to the
Armenians and Azerbaijanis were destroyed in Ekaterinburg and in its
suburb Verkhnaya Pishma on September 9 at night. One man is killed,
the Moscow newspaper “Commersant” reports. An action was brought on
the Article “Hooliganism” on the facts. The owners of the destroyed
objects believe that the attacks express their intolerance to the
origins from Caucasus.

The first attack was made at 1:50 on cafe “Oasis plus”, 20 people
run into the cafe with sticks and lashes. For several minutes they
beat the people and broke furniture and then hid away. As a result
four Armenians were injured and two of them were hospitalized with
trauma in their brains.

In an hour the case “Caspian” in the Proyezaya street was attacked. The
attackers destroyed all they could and then threw bottles with burning
substances into the cafe. The cafe burnt out. As a result of fire the
relative of the owner of cafe 52 years old Safarov died. Half an hour
later the bandits threw several bottles with burning substances into
the snack- bar “Shartash”.

The same day the attackers threw several bottles with burning
substance into the window of the accounting office of the restaurant
“David’s”. The eye-witnesses tell that the bandits were in masks. The
militia detained 8 people. The owners of the destroyed cafes suppose
that the attacks on their objects is a result of the intolerance
to people coming Caucasus after the latest acts of terrorism in the
planes, in Moscow and in Beslan.

However, militia states that the attackers are the “criminal
clarifications”. It is not the first case of attack on the origins
from Caucasus over the last days. Thus, at night on September 6
two strangers shoot from sub-machine gun the visitors of the cafe
“Snezinka” . Then four people died and five were wounded. Among the
suffered are the people from Azerbaijan and Daghestan.

Two days ago in Moscow two militiamen beat the former secretary of
the security Council of Daghestan Magomed Tolboyev.–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Leading Article: Darfur: Action not words

Guardian Leader

The Guardian/UK
11 Sept 2004

America’s declaration that genocide is taking place in Sudan has
injected fresh urgency – and controversy – into the international
debate about what the UN unhesitatingly calls the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis. It was only to be expected that the Khartoum
government would reject the charge, but there has also been a lukewarm
response elsewhere to Colin Powell’s statement to the Senate foreign
relations committee. The US secretary of state says genocide is
taking place on the basis of evidence that black African villagers
in Darfur are being targeted with the specific intent of destroying
“a group in whole or part”. Human rights organisations have welcomed
the shift. Britain’s official response is that grave crimes are
being committed by the government-backed Janjaweed Arab militias and
that the UN should mount an urgent investigation. Is this a case of
diplomatic sensibilities masking a brutal truth? Is it right to have
reservations about using the G word?

Situations previously characterised as genocide include the Turkish
massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during the first world war and,
less controversially, the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews
in the second world war, when the term was coined from the Greek
word genos (race or tribe) with the Latin word cide (to kill). It
has been widely applied to Pol Pot’s Cambodia of the 1970s and made
bloody reappearances in Rwanda in 1994 and in the aftermath of the
wars of the Yugoslavian succession. Slobodan Milosevic, the former
Serbian president, is facing a genocide charge at the Hague war crimes
tribunal. Radislav Krstic, a Bosnian Serb general, was convicted of
genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre of 7,000 Muslim men
and boys.

Sudanese officials will admit to nothing more than a humanitarian
crisis created by ethnic strife and have contemptuously accused Mr
Powell of seeking black votes in the forthcoming US pres idential
election. Khartoum also argues that the intervention will undermine
delicate peace negotiations with Darfur rebel groups in Nigeria. Most
of the facts, though, are indisputable: 50,000 people have died since
February 2003 and over a million have been displaced. Aid workers
yesterday reported a new mass influx of refugees into one camp in
southern Darfur. Harrowing images have been on our TV screens for
long enough to fuel demands for something that goes beyond agonised
handwringing and ineffective quiet diplomacy

It is true that behind the debate in the US lies guilt about
the shameful failure to act when the first reports of genocide
emerged from Rwanda a decade ago. That is only natural. The genocide
characterisation may also be intended to galvanise the international
community -though targeted sanctions such as an assets freeze and a
travel ban on senior Sudanese officials would be more effective than
the oil embargo currently being proposed by Washington. That is opposed
by China, an importer of Sudanese oil and a security council member,
as well as by Pakistan and Algeria. And there is the familiar dilemma
that such sanctions are a notoriously blunt instrument, as the Iraqi
experience taught. But urgent though the crisis is, Washington and
London are still not trying the sort of heavy-duty arm-twisting they
tried when seeking a second UN resolution authorising war on Saddam.

Mr Powell’s intervention puts the US a step ahead of the EU, which
says it wants a UN investigation. But the real question is not about
a dictionary definition of genocide. No one can claim that Sudan
is not experiencing a terrible human tragedy. As Oxfam has been
warning in appeals for help to save lives: time is short and people
are dying. Recognising the scale of human suffering is a prerequisite
to action. Words, however resonant, are not enough.

Azerbaijan, Armenia To Have ‘Make-or-break’ Peace Talks

TurkishPress.com
Saturday, September 11, 2004

AFP: 9/11/2004

BARDA, Azerbaijan, Sept 11 (AFP) – Talks next week between the
leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan could make or break the fragile
peace process between the warring neighbours, Azeri President Ilham
Aliyev said Saturday.

Aliyev is due to meet face-to-face with his Armenian counterpart
Robert Kocharian on the sidelines of a summit of former Soviet
republics which begins on September 15 in Kazakhstan`s capital, Astana.

The Azeri president said the meeting could be a watershed after a
decade of unsuccessful negotiations which followed a war between
Azerbaijan and Armenia in the early 1990s over the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh.

“A lot depends on the meeting in Astana,” Aliyev said on a visit to
Barda, in north-western Azerbaijan.

“It could bring clarity to the question of where we are, whether we
are getting closer to an agreement or whether we are going in the
opposite direction.”

“Now there is a chance to determine the road map for achieving an
agreement. This is the main thing: real, fundamental negotiations
will start only after that.”

Aliyev added: “First of all we must agree on the principles. If we
achieve that, afterwards the detailed negotiations can get underway.”

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a five-year war over
Nagorno-Karabakh. Some 35,000 people were killed and about one million
civilians were displaced by the fighting.

The conflict ended with Armenian forces in control of Nagorno-Karabakh,
which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan`s territory.

Though a fragile ceasefire is in force, the two sides are still
officially in a state of war. Azerbaijan has threatened to renew
hostilities unless peace talks produce results soon.

Azerbaijan says reserving right to free its occupied territories
By Sevindj Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

ITAR-TASS News Agency  
September 11, 2004 Saturday

BARDA, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijani government envisions an increase of
defense spending in 2005, President Ilham Aliyev said Saturday during
a meeting with Azerbaijani refugees in the Barda district that borders
the much-troubled region of Nagorny Karabakh.

“This increase will strengthen our Armed Forces and will make it one
of the guarantors of settling the Karabakh conflict,” Aliiyev said.

That conflict in the mostly Armenian-populated Karabakh enclave
has been going on since 1988 along a pattern similar to most ethnic
conflicts on the territory of the former USSR.

Karabakh’s Armenians are trying to win independence from Azerbaijan. In
the early 1990’s, the tensions between the sides took the form of
open armed hostilities.

Efforts to settle the conflict have been made for years, but they
have produced small results so far.

Aliyev reiterated that Azeirbaijan is seeking a peaceful solution to
the conflict.

“As long as there is hope for that [peace settlement], we’ll continue
the talks, but if they prove ineffective, the Azerbaijanis will free
the occupied territories by any means,” he said. “We have all the
prerequisites for it – the patriotic spirit, mobilization of our
people, and the persistently growing economic potential”.

As he addressed a meeting with public representatives in Barda on the
same day, Aliyev said: “The people of Azerbaijan must be prepared to
liberate its occupied lands by force”.

“There is no possibility of making compromises in what concerns
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity,” he said.

Pay to official on trip abroad questioned

DA’s office eyes $1,000 paid to then-Councilman Kirk Cartozian during 56-day leave.
By Jenny Marder, Staff writer

Long Beach Press Telegram

Tuesday, September 07, 2004 – DOWNEY â^À^Ô The Los Angeles County
district attorney’s office is looking into whether about $1,000 in
city stipends that Mayor Kirk Cartozian received while studying in
Armenia last year constitutes a misuse of city funds.

The preliminary investigation comes after a complaint filed by resident
and city gadfly Lennie Whittington on August 8. Whittington and others,
including City Councilwoman Anne Bayer, question whether Cartozian
should have been paid during his 56-day leave of absence.

Cartozian said that, though thousands of miles away, the stipend was
justified because he spent that much money paying for Internet access
and long-distance phone calls while working for about two hours every
day corresponding with city officials and Downey residents.

Cartozian was on the council but not mayor when he was in Armenia
taking an intensive language, cultural and history program from June
18 to August 13, he said.

Under a city ordinance, each council member is allotted about $600
every month to cover gas, phone calls, stamps, stationery, meals away
from home, minor entertainment expenses and other costs incurred in
connection with council duties.

“What they’re intended to do is reimburse council members for expenses
they incur for their role as council member or mayor,” Assistant City
Manager Lee Powell said of the stipends.

Each month while abroad, Cartozian said, he racked up as much as
$300 for e-mail at Internet cafes, where he did most of his work,
and at least a couple of hundred dollars in work-related phone calls.

Council members are not required to submit itemized spending reports.

Members of the Downey City Council do not receive many of the perks
awarded to council members in other cities, such as health insurance,
cars or cell phones.

Whittington plans to demand that the mayor provide evidence of the
work that he did while abroad.

“I don’t think he deserves anything when he’s out of the country,”
Whittington said. “He should not get reimbursed for nothing.”

Bayer also wants proof.

“I think he really owes it to the city of Downey to explain what city
business he was on,” she said.

Cartozian fired back that he has 175 to 200 pages of e-mails sent
during that time, adding that that’s only a fraction of the work that
he did and that he has no record of all the e-mails that he read.

“I don’t do this for money,” he said. “I get close to $9,000 a year
total. â^À¦ And I have verifiable proof of countless hours that I
spent to correspond on a daily basis with City Hall. It’s my job to be
abreast and informed on everything that’s going on in the city. That’s
my life.”

Shirley Conte, council secretary, said she can attest to his work
during that time. He e-mailed or called her every day while in Armenia,
she said.

“When I would send out e-mails to all of the City Council members,
many times I got an answer from him before I heard from anyone else,”
Conte said. “He was definitely in touch all the time.”

David Demerjian, head deputy district attorney of the office’s public
integrity division, said that the complaint is under review and
investigators will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.

Misuse of public funds is a felony, he said.

Tbilisi, Moscow Engaged in Abkhazia Railway Row

Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 2004-09-11 11:47:08

Georgian Foreign Ministry has summoned the Russian Ambassador to
Vladimir Chkhikvishvili to express protest over, as Tbilisi put
it, “unilateral and illegal” decision of Moscow to resume railway
connection with unrecognized Abkhazian Republic.

In a statement issued on September 10, the Georgian Foreign Ministry
described the move as “a violation of Georgia’s sovereignty.” The
railway connection between Moscow and Sokhumi, capital of Georgia’s
breakaway Abkhazia was resumed on September 10.

According to the agreement signed by the Presidents of Russia and
Georgia in March, 2003, the return of internally displaced persons
to Abkhazia and resumption of the railway should be simultaneous
processes.

However, Ambassador Chkhikvishvili told the reporters after meeting
with the Georgian Foreign Ministry officials that Russia “is not
violating the agreements.”

“The sides have agreed earlier that it is not always necessary to
synchronize these two processes – return of the IDPs and resumption of
the railway [communication] – if there is a progress in one direction,
we should not stop and should move further,” Vladimir Chkhikvishvili
said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued on
September 10, that restoration of railway will benefit the entire
South Caucasus region, including Georgia and Armenia.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Aliyev against Armenian officers arriving in Baku for exercises
By Sevindzh Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

ITAR-TASS News Agency  
September 11, 2004 Saturday

BARDA, Azerbaijan — Ilham Aliyev opposes Armenian officers arriving
in Azerbaijan for participation in the planned NATO field exercises
to be held in accordance with the Partnership for Peace programme.

“I do not want Armenian servicemen to arrive in Baku, and Azerbaijan
will take necessary measures for it,” the president told reporters
on Saturday.

Aliyev noted the exercises in Baku, which will be held from September
14 to 26, were organised by NATO and Azerbaijan did not invite
servicemen from other countries, including Armenia, to the exercises.

According to reports from Yerevan, a delegation of five officers of
the Armenian Armed Forces will participate in the planned exercises in
Baku, and the defence minister’s press secretary Seiran Shakhsuvaryan
confirmed this.

The stand is unchanging. As planned, the delegation will come for
the exercises, the press secretary said, noting that there were no
refusal from the organiser – NATO – or changes in the programme.
From: Baghdasarian

Protest Action to be Held in Russia

Baku Today
Eurasia

11/09/2004 11:46

The Movement for Azerbaijan will hold a sanctioned action in Moscow
on September 25 in protest against Armenia’s unfair policy toward
Azerbaijan.

Assa-Irada — Along with Azeris living in Russia, the rally, aimed
at conveying Armenia’s policy of occupation to the international
community, will be joined by intellectuals of Russian and other
nationalities.

A resolution to be adopted by the protesters will be forwarded to
diplomatic representations of the UN Security Council permanent
members and the Armenian embassy in Moscow.

Azeri Pres calls forthcoming Azerbaijan-Armenia talks crucial
By Sevindj Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

ITAR-TASS News Agency  
September 11, 2004 Saturday

BAKU — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev believes that his meeting
with Armenian President Robert Kocharian as part of the CIS summit
in Astana, Kazakhstan, in mid-September will have crucial importance
for settling the dragged-out conflict in Nagorny Karabakh.

As he addressed correspondents in the town of Barda, western
Azerbaijan, Saturday, Aliyev said: “That meeting may introduce clarity
into the situation so that we could see where we actually are at the
moment and whether we’re getting closer to an agreement or drifting
away from it”.

He also said the co-chairmen of the so-called Minsk group for Nagorny
Karabakh settlement, set up by the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, had made known their willingness to attend
the Azerbaijani-Armenian talks in Astana.

“I’m for it, too,” Aliyev said.

When he was asked about his own assessment of the current situation,
he said there were no agreements between the sides at the moment.

“But even without breaking the confidentiality of the negotiations
process, I can tell you we have fair chances of reaching such
agreements,” Aliyev said.

As he met with a group of refugees in the Barda district earlier in
the day, he said Azerbaijani government envisioned an increase of
defense spending in 2005

“It will strengthen our Armed Forces and will make the army one of
the guarantors of settling the Karabakh conflict,” Aliyev said.

He reiterated that Azerbaijan is seeking a peaceful solution to
the conflict.

“As long as there is hope for that [peace settlement], we’ll continue
the talks, but if they prove ineffective, the Azerbaijanis will free
the occupied territories by any means,” Aliyev indicated.

“We have all the prerequisites for it – the patriotic spirit and
moral mobilization of our people, and the persistently growing
economic potential”.

As he addressed a meeting with public representatives in Barda on the
same day, Aliyev said: “The people of Azerbaijan must be prepared to
liberate its occupied lands by force”.

The conflict in the mostly Armenian-populated Karabakh enclave has
been going on since 1988 along a pattern similar to most ethnic
conflicts on the territory of the former USSR.

Karabakh’s Armenians are trying to win independence from Azerbaijan. In
the early 1990’s, the tensions between the sides took the form of
open armed hostilities.

Efforts to settle the conflict have been made for years, but they
have produced insignificant results so far.