Author: Badalian Vardan

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT TO PAY WORKING VISIT TO RUSSIA OCTOBER 30-31

PanARMENIAN.Net
24.10.2006 13:31 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian President Robert Kocharian will pay a
working visit to Russia October 30-31, reports the Press Office of
the Russian Embassy to Armenia. The recurrent visit of the Armenian
leader is to enhance Russian-Armenian relations of complex partnership.

2005 was marked by the Year of Russia in Armenia, while 2006 is the
Year of Armenia in Russia. The Embassy noted that implementation
of large-scale events and actions promoted activation of relations
and cooperation. Urgent matters of bilateral cooperation will be
discussed during the visit of the Armenian leader. The implementation
of agreements at the highest levels for further building of the
Russian-Armenian interaction, specifically in energy, fuel and
transport will also be under consideration.

Exchange of views is planned to strengthen cooperation within the
CSTO. The meeting will also focus on CIS issues, specifically matters
of coordination of efforts to make situation in the Caucasus healthier,
build confidence to arrange cooperation in the region and conflict
settlement.

The solution of the Karabakh issue will be specially accentuated during
the talks in Moscow. "Welcoming the Armenian-Azeri dialogue at various
levels, first of all between the Presidents, Russia proceeds from
the conflict parties themselves should find a mutually acceptable
solution to the conflict. Russia is ready to actively assist it –
both bilaterally and as an OSCE MG co-chair," the release says.

"First Dynasty Mines" Company of Canada invested US $22, 1 in gold extraction in Azerbaijan territories

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006

[ 20 Oct. 2006 18:11 ]

"First Dynasty Mines" (FDM) Company of Canada invested US $22, 1 in
gold extraction in Nagorno Garabagh, occupied Azerbaijan territories.

It plans to invest US $12mn in Armenia’s gold extraction by the end of
next year," Arif Iskenderov, the chief of Ecology and Natural Resources
Ministry Ecology and Nature Protection Policy Department told the
APA. He said that Armenian government negotiates with International
Financial Corporation of World Bank and other foreign banks. FDM
invested US $4mn in geological exploration in Armenia and occupied
Azerbaijan territories. The company plans to extract over five tones
of gold in Kelbejer, occupied Azerbaijan region. It established a lab
of US $70 00 in Soyudlu field in Kalbajar. It plans to establish the
same in Ararat gold extraction.

73 percent of Soyudlu field is situated in occupied Azerbaijan
territory. The exploitation of the field was stopped in 1992. US
specialists began geological exploration of the field in 1996.

Armenian Industry and Commerce Ministry and FDM Company signed a
contract of US $63, 3mn in 1997. Sterlite Gold Ltd owns assets of
FDM Company. The same company bought stocks of Ararat Gold Recovery
Company in 2002 and became its owner.

12 000 employees of FDM work in Armenia and occupied Azerbaijan
territories. Their average monthly salaries are US $150-160. /APA/

RF DUMA WORKING GROUP TO VISIT RUSSIAN MILITARY BASES IN ARMENIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.10.2006 14:34 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Russian State Duma working group led by deputy
chair of the defense committee Mikhail Babich will visit the Russian
military bases in Armenia October 17-20. The Babich administration said
the delegation includes defense committee member Nikolay Bezborodov,
members of the committee on CIS Affairs Konstantin Zatulin and Vasiliy
Teterin and the RF Defense Ministry’s representatives. The delegation
members will meet with the administration of military units of the
Russian Armed Forces in Armenia and attend the military base in Gyumri
and the aviation base in the Erebuni airdrome, reports Interfax.

DEBATE NEEDED
By Tulin Daloglu

Washington Times, DC
Oct 17 2006

Today’s Columnist

A few months ago, I came across an article in the Middle East Quarterly
entitled "Armenian Massacres: New Records Undercut Old Blame." Its
author, Edward J. Erickson, a retired U.S. Army officer, categorically
dismissed the claims of genocide perpetrated against the Armenians
by the Ottomans during World War I. "In bitter internecine fighting,
many civilian Turks, Armenians, and other ethnic groups were massacred
indiscriminately," Mr. Erickson wrote.

The claim of Armenian genocide is an incredibly emotional subject,
fraught with political and violent undertones. Only a small number
of scholars dare to question the notion that what happened was
genocide. When Stanford Shaw, a pioneer scholar and former UCLA
professor, disputed it in 1977, a bomb exploded in front of his house.

Recently, two researchers have debated the nature of World War I
Armenian massacres, Dr. Erickson wrote. The first, Vahakn Dadrian, is
director of genocide research at the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary
Armenian Research and Documentation. Mr. Dadrian wrote that Stange
(a Prussian artillery officer known in records only by his last name)
was the "highest-ranking German guerrilla commander operating in the
Turko-Russian border" area and the Ottoman government ordered him to
deport Armenians. Stange and his soldiers became principals in the
Armenian massacres, Mr. Dadrian found.

But last year, Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science
at the University of Massachusetts, challenged Mr. Dadrian’s claim,
concluding that Stange’s unit did not even operate in the area. "Tribal
Kurds or Circassians may have deported the Armenians in the spring
of 1915," Mr. Erickson wrote.

The debate over the historical record goes on, and Turkey has finally
begun to allow its citizens to engage in controversial debates. This
makes one wonder what the members of the French Parliament were
thinking last week when they made it a crime to question the claim
of Armenian genocide. The lower house decided that the punishment
for denying the genocide would be one year in prison and a fine of
45,000 Euros. It would only take effect if it passed the upper house
and was agreed to by French President Jacques Chirac.

According to Turkish media reports, Mr. Chirac called Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and said he would do his best to keep
the legislation from becoming law.

Making it a crime to dispute the idea of an Armenian genocide is so
outrageous that senior European Union officials sided with Turkey.

"This is not the best way to contribute to something we think is
important," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European
Commission. Oli Rehn, the EU commissioner for enlargement, agreed,
saying, "We don’t achieve real dialogue and real reconciliation by
ultimatums, but by dialogue. Therefore this law is counterproductive."

Indeed it is. This law displays the aggressive tactics of the Armenian
diaspora to prevent any objective re-examination of history.

They demand that Turkey accept that what happened was genocide. But
is the goal to find the truth, or to make political arguments? Mr.

Erdogan offered to open the Turkish archives to study the matter,
and called for Armenians to do the same. They denied his request. The
other side can’t stand the idea of questioning whether what happened
was genocide.

Turks have done a poor job in dealing with the claims. They let one
narrative dominate the world’s understanding of the incident.

They did not write about the Armenian attacks on Muslim villages. But
now Turks are paying attention. They are angry. But they are not
hateful like the Armenians who killed almost four dozen Turkish
diplomats over "history."

I sat down with Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy in Washington,
and asked him whether the French Parliament’s vote will make it
more difficult for him to deal with the resolutions likely to be
presented this year in the U.S. Congress, calling for recognition of
Armenian genocide. Sixteen countries have already passed legislation or
resolutions to recognize the Armenian genocide, he said. "The Congress
has never been affected by the decisions of the foreign parliaments,"
he said. "The U.S. knows to think independently in its own democracy,
and they know their own responsibilities."

The French Parliament’s law is even more absurd than the section of
the Turkish penal code that calls for Turkish citizens to be punished
if they insult "Turkishness" — by accepting the genocide claims, for
example. Orhan Pamuk, this year’s Nobel Prize winner for literature,
was charged under that law. The charges were dropped, and no one has
been punished.

But even the existence of such a law is embarrassing to a country
wrestling with how to deal with freedom of expression. What Mr. Pamuk
said about the Armenian genocide claims is irrelevant. What’s important
is that he should feel free to say whatever he thinks. But historians
should have the definitive say on the issue — and they haven’t
written the final chapter yet.

Tulin Daloglu is a free-lance writer.

ROMANIAN AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA COMPLETING MISSION

PanARMENIAN.Net
16.10.2006 17:55 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian President Robert Kocharian received
Romanian Ambassador to Armenia Nicolae Iordache, who is completing
his mission in Armenia, reported the RA leader’s press office. The
parties thanked each other for joint work and voiced assurance that
the Armenian-Romanian ties will be developing and strengthening in
future. They also referred to the Romanian President’s visit during
which a number of agreements on further cooperation were signed.

The Guardian, UK
Oct 13 2006

A Nobel winner for our times

Margaret Atwood
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian

‘Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth’
… Orhan Pamuk. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

Orhan Pamuk, the celebrated Turkish novelist, has won the Nobel prize
for iterature. It would be difficult to conceive of a more perfect
winner for our catastrophic times. Just as Turkey stands at the
crossroads of the Muslim East/Middle East and the European and North
American west, so Pamuk’s work inhabits the shifting ground of an
increasingly dangerous cultural and religious overlap, where
ideologies as well as personalities collide.
It’s no exaggeration to say that you have to read Pamuk if you want
to begin to understand what’s going on in people’s hearts, minds and
souls, not only in Turkey, but also in Britain, where the current
Jack Straw headscarf controversy eerily mirrors the subject matter of
Pamuk’s recently-translated 1996 novel, Snow (in which we are
reminded that Ataturk’s ruthless modernisation campaign included a
much-disputed banning of headscarves.

Pamuk has felt the shockwaves from such factional collisions. He has
never been one to duck controversy: just a year ago he was facing
prosecution on charges of "un-Turkishness" – he’d been so rash as to
have mentioned the fate of the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th
century, a taboo subject for the authorities. Possibly in response to
international outcries, the charges were dropped, but many
lesser-known Turkish writers have not been so lucky.
He has already won many literary prizes, including the 2003 Dublin
Impac Award for his sixth novel, My Name Is Red. In Turkey, he is far
more than a novelist: people rush to read his novels as if he’s a
kind of sure-fire prophet, or a hugely popular singer, or a national
psychoanalyst or a one-man newspaper editorial page. There is nothing
programmatic about his novels; he simply writes out of the centre of
the whirlwind both his characters and his Turkish readers feel swept
up in every day.

Where is Turkey going? How will it come to terms with its
once-glorious, often-troubled history, and resolve the conflict
between old and new, and handle the power struggle between
secularists and Islamists, and find self-respect, or peace of mind,
or inner wholeness or a new direction? Pamuk’s novels don’t provide
cut-and-dried solutions, but they follow the tortuous lines of such
questionings with anguished and wrenching fidelity. Sometimes his
characters are almost literally torn apart by choices they don’t know
how to make, but are forced to make. His power as a novelist stems in
part from his refusal to judge the choices his characters make: their
tragedy is that no matter what path they take, they can’t be at ease;
and, worse, some other element in their society is bound to condemn
them.

Thus Pamuk’s heroes – they are typically heroes, not heroines –
wander through the plots of their books as if in caught in a
particularly anxious and threatening collective dream.

I wrote of his novel Snow in the New York Times Book Review: "The
twists of fate, the plots that double back on themselves, the
trickiness, the mysteries that recede as they’re approached, the
bleak cities, the night prowling, the sense of identity-loss, the
protagonist in exile – these are vintage Pamuk, but they’re also part
of the modern literary landscape."

It is not unusual for a Pamuk protagonist to end up dead at the hands
of persons unknown.

Pamuk’s heroes are pestered by Turkey’s former pre-eminence: they may
stumble upon architectural fragments of the huge, opulent Ottoman
empire, or see an Armenian church standing empty, or be reminded of
earlier Russian rulers, or glimpse a fly-spotted picture of the once
revered Ataturk, whose attempts to forge a fully westernised, secular
Turkey now seem futile. Where has all the power gone? such echoes
say. The Christian Byzantine city of Constantinople casts a long
shadow, and the European west and the Muslim east are seen as
mirror-opposite twins ensnared in a net that traps them both.

Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth.
Not the truth of statistics, but the truth of human experience at a
particular place, in a particular time. And as with all great
literature, you feel at moments not that you are examining him, but
that he is examining you. "No one could understand us from so far
away," says a character in Snow. Reader, it’s a challenge.

TURKISH PM SAYS FRENCH REASON IN ‘ECLIPSE’ OVER GENOCIDE BILL

Agence France Presse — English
October 10, 2006 Tuesday

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired a broadside at
France Tuesday in a mounting row over a draft law on the massacres
of Armenians under Ottoman rule, calling the bill the product of "an
eclipse of reason" and urging Paris to rethink its own colonial past.

"We expect Paris to avoid this blunder, this political accident that
will harm Turkish-French relations," Erdogan told the parliamentary
group of his Justice and Development Party in a speech interrupted
by applause.

"The EU must absolutely take a stand against this eclipse of reason
in France," he said.

Erdogan rejected suggestions by some Turkish lawmakers for Ankara
to retaliate, if the bill is voted, with a similar law making it a
crime to deny that the killings of tens of thousands of Algerians
under French colonial rule amounted to genocide.

"No, we will not retaliate in kind — we do not clean filth with
filth," he said, but he urged the bill’s backers to closely examine
their own past.

"Those vehicles of of slander and lies should look at their own
past… Let them look at what happened in Algeria between 1954 and
1962," he said.

The French bill, to be debated and voted at the National Assembly
on Thursday, calls for one year in prison and a 45,000-euro
(57,000-dollar) fine for denying that Armenians were the victims of
genocide during World War I.

Erdogan said the bill will prevent free debate on a historical subject
and violate freedom of expression, a basic EU norm that Turkey itself
is under pressure to respect.

But he said the bill would not discourage Turkey from pursuing its
bid to join the European Union.

"Minor snags will not deter us from pursuing our major goals… Work
on our EU (membership) process continues unabated," he said.

Ankara has warned France that it will be barred from potentially
lucrative economic projects in Turkey, including a planned nuclear
power plant, if the bill is adopted.

In a 2001 resolution, France recognized the Armenian massacres as
genocide, prompting Ankara to sideline French companies from public
tenders and cancel several projects awarded to French firms.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians seeking
independence in eastern Anatolia sided with invading Russian troops
as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.

U.S. POLICY AND THE GEORGIAN-RUSSIAN CRISIS
by Dr. Ariel Cohen

Heritage.org, DC
The Heritage Foundation
Oct 11 2006

Amid great power fretting over North Korea’s nuclear test and
continuing Iranian truculence against the West, Russia escalated
its confrontation with the neighboring Georgia. Moscow is now using
Georgia’s arrest of four alleged Russian intelligence officers two
weeks ago as a pretext to escalate its conflicts with Tbilisi. This
is a dangerous development for the West, and specifically the
United States, which could see its influence in the Caucasus region
crumble if Russia is successful in forcing Georgia into its sphere
of influence. U.S. policy must walk a fine line of encouraging
settlement of the current dispute without becoming a liability through
over-involvement.

Georgia may have overplayed its hand in arresting the Russian military
intelligence officers, whom it accused of sabotage, and not just
expelling them quietly-the normal modus operandi in such cases.

In response to the arrests, Moscow recalled its ambassador from
Tbilisi, evacuated diplomats and their families, and halted issuing
visas to Georgian citizens. The Russian military forces stationed
in Georgia are on high alert. Russia cut air and railroad links to
Georgia, and blocked money transfers from Georgians working in Russia,
an important source of income for many Georgian families.

Bearing the brunt of this invigorated conflict is one-million-strong
Georgian Diaspora in Russia. Ethnic Georgians, including children,
were loaded onto cargo planes and expelled from Russia. Russia cites
their illegal immigration status. Prominent Georgian intellectuals
who are Russian citizens are being harassed by the tax police.

Georgian businesses in Moscow are being singled out by law enforcement
authorities. The handling of this crisis is further damaging Russia’s
international standing as a dependable member of the G-8.

Georgian Overkill?

Since Mikheil Saakashvili rose to power in the Rose Revolution of
2003, Russia has warily witnessed anti-Russian statements by Georgian
leaders, a relentless push to evacuate Russian military bases (to which
Russia had agreed previously), an attempt to join NATO, and opposition
to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. In response,
the Putin administration has embargoed Georgia’s key exports into
Russia: Borjomi mineral water and wine.

Russia has made little secret of its desire to spark a war
in the Caucasus to force regime change in Tbilisi. (See Ariel
Cohen, "Preventing a Russian-Georgian Military Confrontation,"
Heritage Foundation Webmemo No. 1024, March 31, 2006, at
ia/ wm1024.cfm.) It may
get its wish. In September, South Ossetian separatists, who receive
Russian military support, fired on a Georgian helicopter carrying the
Georgian Minister of Defense. This provocation, if successful, could
have led to renewed hostilities in the small secessionist territory
that is a part of Georgia.

Geopolitical Roots

Russia’s regional and global strategic aims explain why Moscow is
escalating its conflict with Georgia. First, Russia has attempted
before to block NATO enlargement into former Soviet territory. In 1999,
Russia fulminated against the Baltic States’ NATO membership.

But at that time, Russia was extricating itself from the 1998 economic
crisis while a power struggle was afoot in Moscow to succeed President
Boris Yeltsin. In part because energy prices were much lower in 1999,
Western European countries supported the Baltic States’ NATO bid
despite Russian protests. Today, with the West increasingly dependent
on Russia’s Gazprom, they are taking Russia’s foreign policy positions
much more seriously.

Second, the Kremlin is now buoyed by $250 billion in petro-dollar
reserves. These funds can buy a lot of hardware for the Trans-Caucasus
Military District and pro-Russian separatists in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia.

Third, Russia is uneasy over the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan main export
pipeline (MEP), which takes Azeri oil to Mediterranean markets and
crosses Georgia but bypasses Russia. Soon the Absheron-Erzurum gas
pipeline will come online, bringing Azeri gas to Turkey and Europe,
again bypassing Russia. Gazprom fears that this gas pipeline may
eventually allow Turkmeni and Kazakhstani gas to circumvent its
pipeline network on its way to Europe.

A Balance of Power Shift

If Georgia comes under the Russian sway, neighboring Azerbaijan and
Armenia will feel the full weight of the Russian presence. Foreign
policy experts in Moscow believe that the Russian government is angry
that Azerbaijan has not allocated enough oil patches to Russian
companies and has facilitated its oil exports via Turkey instead
of Russia. With increased power in the region, Russia will act on
these concerns.

Armenian opposition openly seeks a more pro-Western and less
pro-Russian policy, pointing out that close ties with Moscow did
not improve Armenia’s abysmal living standards and did not bring
international recognition of the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh,
a breakaway province of Azerbaijan, populated mostly by Armenians.

A pro-Russian Georgia in the Collective Security Treaty Organization
of the Commonwealth of Independent States would permit Russia and
Iran to dominate Azerbaijan and Armenia, severely limiting U.S.

policy options there. Furthermore, such a development would put to
rest American ambitions in Central Asia and could cut off strategically
important Kazakhstan from western energy markets.

The Kosovo Ripple Effect

Russia has warned repeatedly that it will retaliate severely if Kosovo
is granted independence against the will of Serbia, a historic ally,
and Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for the imposition of
the Kosovo criteria on separatist enclaves in the former Soviet Union,
including Transnistria (a part of Moldova), Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
and Nagorno-Karabakh. Under this policy, Russia would enforce referenda
in these territories and recognize their independence, opening the
door to their eventual incorporation in the Russian Federation. This
approach would create a dangerous precedent for the Crimea, where
the majority of the Russian-speaking population is pro-Russian;
Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine; and the predominantly Slavic
Northern Kazakhstan.

Violations and alternations of the current borders of the former
Soviet Union could generate severe tensions in Europe and open a
Pandora’s box of territorial claims and ethnically based border
challenges there and elsewhere, such as in Iraq and Kurdistan.

Conclusion

The United States today is preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran,
and North Korea. Russia is a key player in all of these, and its
increased cooperation in these disputes would be welcome. The future of
U.S.-Russian relations and global security requires that Moscow behave
responsibly and constructively. Quickly defusing the Georgian crisis
through diplomacy would be a good place to start. Washington should
encourage the European powers, the European Union, and Turkey to become
more engaged in defusing the Georgian-Russian confrontation. Finally,
the U.S. should advise Georgia not to escalate its rhetoric on Russia
unnecessarily or needlessly antagonize its large neighbor. After
all, a peaceful and prosperous Caucasus is in Russian, Georgian,
and American interests.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian
Studies and International Energy Security at the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn
and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The
Heritage Foundation.

VAHAN HOVHANNISYAN: TO RUSSIA GEORGIA IS CLOSER AND MORE FRATERNAL, THAN ARMENIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
10.10.2006 13:46 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ November 6 the next session of Armenian-Russian
Interparliamentary Commission on Cooperation will be held in Yerevan,
Armenian Vice-Speaker Vahan Hovhannisyan stated at a news conference
in Yerevan. In his words, at the session the Armenian party intends
to discuss the situation Armenia is in due to the tension in
Russian-Georgian relations.

"Georgia’s actions are aimed at withdrawal of Russia from the region
at any price," the Armenian Vice-Speaker said. In his words, Armenia’s
actions should be aimed at reduction of economic threat within the
period of Russian sanctions against Georgia.

At that V. Hovhannisyan underscored that to Russia Georgia is a closer
and more fraternal people, than Armenia. "Not Armenia, but Georgia
is Russia’s advanced post. Georgian leaders want to turn the Georgian
people towards the West," he said. He said that if Abkhazia and South
Ossetia do not want to live with Georgia it is their business. "I
do not think Armenians should interfere with internal affairs of
neighboring states," Hovhannisyan added.

PRESS SCAN: HURRIYET

Turkish Press
Oct 9 2006

WHAT YOU`RE DOING WAS DONE BY STALIN AND HITLER

Journalist-writer Kenize Murad, citizen of Turkey and France, objected
to French Parliament`s bringing draft on so-called Armenian genocide
onto agenda again. Murad said that French Parliament`s initiative is an
intellectual terrorism, adding that re-writing history for political
interests was earlier done by Stalin and Hitler, and concluded with
a disaster.

FORGET NUCLEAR TENDER TO FRANCE

Turkish FM Abdullah Gul assessed the tense relations with France
to Hurriyet. Gul told French FM Blazy that if draft on so-called
Armenian genocide is adopted at French Parliament on October 12th,
then France shall forget all important tenders especially the one
for nuclear power plant.