Author: Chavushian

The Monitor (Kampala)
August 9, 2004

It’s Genocide in Darfur

Muniini K. Mulera
Toronto

One watches in disbelief as the world’s great and not-so-great
leaders continue to debate, once again, whether or not the deliberate
extermination of humans and the despoliation of entire black African
communities in western Sudan amount to genocide.

After visiting Sudan, Mr Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, and Mr
Colin Powell, the Secretary of State of the United States of America,
pronounce themselves on the killing fields of Darfur which have
reportedly consumed the lives of over 50,000 Africans and sent over
one million living dead into an exile of assured disease, starvation,
lost dignity and perpetual terror.

What is happening in Darfur, the two distinguished African gentlemen
inform the world, is a “humanitarian catastrophe” but there is not
enough evidence to elevate it to genocide.

Just to make it clear how serious the situation is, the UN calls
Darfur the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” But since this is
merely a humanitarian crisis, no immediate and decisive action is
necessary. We still have time to talk, and to threaten.

And talk we do, until we come up with an acceptable UN Security
Council Resolution (UNSCR) after the usual debate over words like
“sanctions” versus “measures” to be taken against the government of
Sudan if it does not comply by August 30.

So is born UNSCR 1556, one of those documents that the great
wordsmiths in New York have a knack for churning out as a temporising
measure while the world ponders what to do .

Memories of a similar debate ten years ago flood back like the
blood-stained waters of the River Kagera. Even as Rwanda’s rivers and
rivulets were overflowing with thousands of bloated corpses of
Batutsi and Bahutu, a fraction of the hundreds of thousands who were
wiped out in barely three months, as the world watched and debated.

Perhaps the River Nile will need to stop flowing, on account of dams
of rotting human corpses, before the men and women who divine these
things call the systematic killings in Darfur genocide.

But as one begins to despair, one learns on August 7 that Asma
Jahangir, the United Nations investigator on executions, has blamed
Sudan’s government for what she calls extra-judicial killings in
Darfur.

“The government of the Sudan is responsible for summary executions of
large numbers of people,” Ms Jahangir, a Pakistani human rights
lawyer, confirms what many have known all along.

One reads the UN expert’s report with great anticipation. Surely
Jahangir is going to call it what it is: genocide. Not a chance!
These government-sponsored mass executions, the lady informs the
world, amount to “crimes against humanity,” whatever that means. She
cannot bring herself to utter the G-word.

For months, of course, many of us have been calling the widespread
massacres in Darfur exactly what they are: genocide. But just in case
we have been exaggerating, we revisit the most authoritative source
on the definition of genocide, the UN itself, to make absolutely
certain that Darfur really qualifies.

So we turn to the UN Convention for the Prevention and the Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on December 9, 1948, which defines
it in terms that leave little room for equivocation.

Article 2 of the Convention states that “genocide means any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing
members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.

In Darfur, it is as if the Arab militia, the Janjaweed, who have been
engaging in a sustained programme of ethnic cleansing against the
Fur, Massaleet and Zagawa communities, have been using Article 2 of
the Convention on Genocide as their working manual.

As was emphasised by Alain Destexhe, former Secretary General of
Doctors Without Borders, in his excellent book, Rwanda and Genocide
In The Twentieth Century, the specificity of genocide does not arise
from the extent of the killings, nor their savagery or resulting
infamy, but solely from their intention: the destruction of a group.

In Darfur, the Arab militia is committing criminal acts with the
intention of destroying people of a specific race, whom they are
targeting as such. This is what is happening in Sudan, a country
whose name, we are told, comes from the Arabic phrase “bilad
al-sudan”, or land of the blacks.

As it was in Nazi-occupied Europe, between 1939 and 1945 when
millions of Jews and Gypsies perished, so it is in Darfur. As it was
with the genocide against Armenians by the Young Turks in 1915, so it
is in Darfur.

As it was in Rwanda in 1994 and in the Congo Free State in the years
that followed, so it is in Darfur. It is genocide in Darfur and the
wise men and women at the UN and in the great capitals of the world
know it. Yet they dither and play with words and phrases. Why?

Part of the answer lies in Article 8 of the same Convention which
authorises signatories to the convention, once they have determined
that there is genocide, to “call upon the competent organs of the
United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United
Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and
suppression of acts of genocide.”

In Darfur’s case, everybody knows that the only effective action that
will halt the genocide is a massive military intervention by the
international community. But since few, if any, countries want to get
involved in the bloody mess that awaits any intervention force in
Sudan, better to pretend that the killing fields of Darfur fall short
of genocide.

Relevant Links

East Africa
North Africa
Uganda
Civil War and Communal Conflict
Sudan

The world’s faithful pray to their gods that the problem of Darfur
will go away. Except it is not going to go away. The Arab militia,
fully supported by the Sudanese authorities, are not about to let up
on their singular mission to take full control of the oil-rich swathe
of desert that they have hitherto shared with millions of black
Africans. Unless of course they are forced out of Darfur.

Whether or not this will happen will first depend on the resolve of
Africans, both on the continent and in the Diaspora, to speak loudly,
clearly and repeatedly to the UN and the rest of the world that our
kinsmen, nay, our fellow humans are being systematically annihilated
in the first genocide, yes genocide, of the 21st Century.

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Aug 6 2004

Glendale races funded early

Mayor’s bankroll bulges months before election

By Naush Boghossian
Staff Writer

GLENDALE — With city elections still eight months away, Mayor Bob
Yousefian already has raised $63,594 for his re-election campaign.

Councilman Frank Quintero raised $39,133 in contributions between
Jan. 1 and June 30, while Councilman Dave Weaver collected $8,500,
according to campaign finance reports.

Councilman Gus Gomez is running for a Superior Court judgeship in
November, and his election could leave the council with four seats up
for grabs.

“It’s very early to be raising that kind of money for an April
election,” Councilman Rafi Manoukian said. “It discourages people who
are planning on running for the office by having funds that large
available for a candidate.”

Quintero disagreed, saying that people who want to run for a council
seat will not be swayed.

“I think in the political process, whoever is determined and
interested is going to run,” he said.

Early fund raising is becoming more and more common in politics, said
Democratic consultant Rick Taylor.

“I think politics has changed in general. These days you have someone
campaigning for state Assembly 1 years away from the election. I find
it to be the way you do business in politics today,” said Taylor of
West Los Angeles-based Dakota Communications.

Also, the increasing cost of running campaigns drives the need to
raise more money, Quintero and Yousefian said.

“Glendale is a large city — the third largest in Los Angeles County
— and the days you can run a campaign on a shoestring budget are
unfortunately over,” said Yousefian, who expects to spend about
$100,000 on his campaign.

Taylor agreed, saying times have changed since candidates in small
cities could spend $17,000 on a campaign and win.

“I think in all small cities the amount of money spent now is 15
times what they used to spend just a handful of years ago,” Taylor
said. “Today things have changed dramatically, and part of that
change is the consultant factor — hiring people to run their
campaigns, to have better-looking mail and all those things that go
in(to) a modern-day political campaign.”

But Weaver, who held a fund-raiser in July, questioned the effect of
contributions to Yousefian from as far as Nevada.

“In my opinion, there are more individuals and groups out there that
are trying to gain influence on the council with their large
donations,” Weaver said. “We’re starting to see moneys come in from
outside the community and more development money showing up from
people who could potentially do business in the city of Glendale.”

Rafi Manoukian changed the face of Glendale politics and the amount
of money required to run a campaign in this city, Yousefian said.

In 1999, Manoukian registered 4,000 Armenian voters — where there
were 800 before — and successfully ran against 13 people for an open
seat by spending nearly $100,000. In 2003, he received the largest
number of votes in an election in Glendale’s history.

“At this point, I wouldn’t put any kind of weight on the amount of
funds raised,” said Manoukian, who always began raising funds in
December. “But, it certainly gives them a leg up on everybody else.”

Armenian premier, Syrian trade minister discuss cooperation

Noyan Tapan news agency
5 Aug 04

YEREVAN

Stimulating multilateral Armenian-Syrian relations plays an important
role in Armenia’s Middle East policy, Armenian Prime Minister Andranik
Markaryan has said at a meeting with a Syrian delegation led by the
trade minister and co-chairman of the Syrian-Armenian intergovernment
economic commission, Ghassan al-Rifa’i. Markaryan added that although
over the period of establishing diplomatic relations the sides have
made efforts to develop trade, economic, scientific and cultural
relations and bring economic relations in line with political
relations, the economic relations between the two countries, however,
could not have been regarded as satisfactory up till now.

Ghassan al-Rifa’i informed Markaryan about the second sitting of the
intergovernment economic commission. He said that a number of
important agreements on healthcare, communications,
telecommunications, tourism etc. had been signed as a result of the
sitting. He spoke about Syria’s plans to establish a special working
group to monitor the fulfilment of these agreements.

Noyan Tapan learnt from the government’s press service that the sides
hoped that the forthcoming visit to Armenia by Syrian Prime Minister
Muhammad Naji al-Itri would give an extra impetus to the development
of the bilateral relations.

ARMENIAN WRESTLERS SUCCESSFULLY PERFORM IN EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP

YEREVAN, August 6 (Noyan Tapan). Armenian wrestlers successfully
performed in the European Junior Championship on Graeco-Roman
Wrestling. They won 1 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze medals in the
Bulgarian city of Varna. Arsen Julfalakian placed first with his
69-kilogram weight class and won a gold medal of the European
champion. Vahram Khachatrian (46 kilograms), Armen Melikian (58
kilograms) and Pargev Khachatrian (63 kilograms) became the second
prize winners of the European Championship, they were awarded with
silver medals. Robert Kirakosian (50 kilograms) placed third and
received a bronze medal.

CNSNews
Thursday Aug 5, 2004

Russia Struggles to Contain Hate Crimes

By Sergei Blagov
CNSNews.com Correspondent
August 05, 2004

Moscow (CNSNews.com) – A series of violent attacks and incidents with an
apparent racist motive has added to Russia’s reputation as a country where
xenophobia is unchecked and on the rise.

Last week, Siberia’s oldest synagogue was destroyed in a fire. Authorities
investigating the fire at the 125-year-old Irkutsk synagogue and adjoining
community center have so far ruled out arson, but the incident has
contributed to concerns about anti-Semitic sentiment. Around 10,000 of
Irkutsk’s 675,000 people are Jewish.

Earlier in July, vandals painted swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans on the
walls of a Jewish community center in Russia’s internal republic of Mari-El.
The building had been targeted before.

The most serious recent incident occurred last June, when a prominent expert
on Russian minorities issues, Nikolai Girenko, was shot dead in his St.
Petersburg home.

Police suspect neo-Nazis were behind the killing.

Girenko, 64, had been an advisor in 15 top-profile court cases which saw
extremists convicted. In the last such case before his death, he was a
witness in the trial of a neo-Nazi group called Schultz-88 (88 is an
international “skinhead” code for Heil Hitler, H being the eighth letter of
the alphabet).

Before the shooting, an obscure group, Russian Republic, posted on an
Internet website a “verdict” issued by its self-styled government,
sentencing Girenko to death. It called him “an enemy of the Russian people”
who was guilty of helping to imprison “patriots.”

St. Petersburg prosecutors said they were investigating the web site, and
vowed to solve the murder, assigning 120 investigators and turning the case
over to a newly-created department specializing in hate crimes.

At the same time, officials have not ruled out the possibility that he was
the victim of a random crime or hooliganism. No arrests have yet been made.

The Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ) has
appealed to the authorities to take seriously the murder in particular, and
“extremist activity and xenophobic incidents in general.”

According to the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, between 2002 and 2004 the
number of skinheads in Russia has risen from 30,000 to 50,000. The office
predicts that number could double in the next two years.

St. Petersburg has become a focus of hate crimes, prompting the Novye
Izvestia daily to ask in a commentary whether the city was “the cradle of
Russian Nazism.” Racially-motivated murders there have included those of a
nine-year-old Tajik girl last February and a six-year-old Roma girl almost a
year ago.

However, Russia’s smaller urban centers face similar problems.

Voronezh in Central Russia is known as a center for skinhead activity. An
African medical student was killed there last February, and in recent months
human rights activists in the city have complained about attacks and
harassment by extremists.

Despite repeated official pledges to crack down, Russia is struggling to
contain racial violence. Many non-Russian migrants from former Soviet states
do not feel safe, having fallen prey to violent incidents.

Some attacks also have an economically motivation. Many market stalls in
Moscow and other centers are run by traders from neighboring states such as
Azerbaijan and Georgia and they are often targeted for attack.

Victims often complain that some police officers are themselves racist and
that random document checks, detentions and even beatings of migrants are
commonplace.

Authorities point out, however, that measures like document checks are
needed amid the recent increase in terrorist attacks in Russia.

The Russian government has been working on an education program aimed at
fostering tolerance among its citizens and in the police force. However,
last June the government decided to discontinue its $860,000-a-year
“Tolerance” from next year.

Russia’s Constitution and laws forbid statements and actions that “incite
ethnic and
religious strife,” but few have been punished for making such remarks.

Some perpetrators of racial or religiously motivated violence have, on the
other hand, been punished. Last month a Moscow court sentenced five
skinheads aged between 17 and 22 to prison terms ranging from nine to 14
years. They were found guilty of involvement in the beating to death of an
ethnic Azeri and an Armenian in December 2003.

Alaskajournal.com, AK
Aug 2 2004

Constant learning keeps Bell’s Nurseries green

By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Bell’s Nurseries’ Mike Mosesian is constantly developing his
technique for growing tomatoes and other products like poinsettias.
PHOTO/Margaret Bauman/AJOC

In the great Alaska gold rush, an Armenian refuge named Paul Mosesian
tried his luck and failed. More than seven decades later, his great
grandson, Mike Mosesian, came north to ski and struck gold in
tomatoes.

“I went to the grocery store (in Anchorage) and I couldn’t believe
how expensive tomatoes were, and they were just horrible,” Mosesian
said. “I thought maybe I can grow tomatoes up here.”

That was the winter of 1972. Today, plump, ripe, tasty tomatoes by
the hundreds from Bell’s Nurseries are snapped up by supermarket
customers from produce bins just a day after being plucked from
greenhouse vines.

“The best tomatoes I like are when you pick them of the vine to eat,
and they are warm, hot,” Mosesian said. “You get the full flavor.”

Mosesian, who holds a master’s degree in viticulture from the
University of California at Davis, hails from a family of passionate
growers. He was helping his father farm 1,000 California acres of
table and wine grapes when he came north with his wife, Joanne, to
ski and visit with her family in the winter of 1972. Six months
later, he had purchased five acres. Inspired by a produce convention
demonstration on hydroponic tomatoes, he was ready to try his hand
growing them.

“To be honest, I didn’t know anything about growing tomatoes,” he
said. “I thought a greenhouse as a house painted green. But I had a
minor in chemistry and I just started reading about it, and I started
learning.”

Getting started wasn’t easy, despite Mosesian’s background in his
family’s California vineyard.

His first crop of tomatoes was “not good,” Mosesian said. “It almost
died in the summer, and I found out I wasn’t feeding them enough.
They weren’t getting enough fertilizer because of the long days.”

Mosesian thought they were deficient in magnesium, so he sprayed them
with magnesium and the plants got worse. Finally he got the plants
analyzed by a Colorado laboratory and learned what they needed was
nitrogen. “I fed them and they came back,” he said.

“I’m still learning,” he said. “I’m doing things today that I didn’t
do last year.”

The 2004 tomato crop, for example, is planted in coconut fiber
imported from India. “This year, the tomatoes are not stressed out
and the coconut fiber seems to work well,” he said. “It’s a
replacement for peat moss.” Once the tomato season has passed, the
coconut fiber can be recycled to grow flowers in pots, he said.

Mosesian is also an optimist in the midst of pending disaster. In the
mid 1970s his tomato crop was struck with a root disease. Local
agriculture extension agents told him his plants were finished. “But
I just kept feeding them, and they came back,” he said. “Each year I
learn more. It’s just experience.”

In the early 1980s, Mosesian tried his hand at growing red
poinsettias. First, he grew some 200 poinsettias and gave them away
to Catholic churches for Christmas for decorations.

“Then I grew 1,000, then 5,000,” he said.

The 2004 holiday crop of poinsettias is in varied shades of pink, red
and white. They are already potted and growing. Mosesian figures he
will sell 40,000 to 50,000 poinsettias again this year, starting
three weeks before Thanksgiving.

The three Anchorage greenhouses operated by Mosesian also feature, in
season, hanging baskets, bedding plants, trees and shrubs, and garden
supplies, plus upscale gift shops.

“We are successful because we have a market and we cultivate that
market by taking care of you as a customer, by offering a whole
spectrum of plants and an ambiance that you enjoy walking around in,”
he said.

Mosesian credits much of his success to America’s passion for
gardening. “Far more money is spent on gardening than any other
hobby,” he said. “There is a lot of joy and satisfaction in planting
something and watching it grow, and harvesting either beautiful
flowers in front of your home or a vegetable garden.”

Mosesian’s real passion these days is his family, and his roots. His
great-grandfather, Paul, in the 1920s, helped found the farmers’
raisin cooperative known today as SunMaid Raisins.

Al-Jazeera, Qatar
July 28 2004

Shift in US arms-sales policy deplored
By Ben Duncan in Washington DC

US foreign policy is now driven by the need for logistical support

US arms-control experts are expressing concern that the need for
allies has made Washington more willing to sell dangerous weapons to
countries previously shunned owing to poor human-rights records,
nuclear-proliferation activities and suspected links to terrorism.

They cite such nations as Pakistan, which provides much of the
intelligence and manpower needed to go after armed organisations bent
on attacking US interests.

Then there are allies in Central Asia that provide basing and
overflight rights for the US military. In the case of Djibouti,
cooperation is needed to secure ports of entry used by people
described by the US as terrorists going to and from the Horn of
Africa.

Officials from the Bush administration often cite 11 September 2001
as the day the world changed. One of the changes included relaxing
arms-export regulations in an effort to curry favour with countries
deemed strategically important in the fight against al-Qaida and
other jihadist groups, some experts said.

Policy reversal

“Certainly the day after the 9/11 bombing attacks, we saw the Bush
administration ask for a blanket lifting of restrictions on
arms-export controls,” said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the
Center for Defence Information (CDI), a Washington thinktank.

Once Taliban’s sponsor, Pakistan
today is an indispensable US ally

This constitutes a reversal of a long-standing US policy, Stohl wrote
in a recent CDI report.

“The Bush administration has expressed a willingness to provide
weapons to countries that in the past have been criticised for
human-rights violations, lack of democracy, and even support of
terrorism,” she said.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, President George Bush waived
sanctions established under the Arms Export Control Act against
India, Pakistan and several other countries.

Bush said the sanctions were not in the “national security interests
of the United States”, a move some experts said sent a message that
the US would lift penalties on states that provided assistance in the
“war on terrorism”.

“We are definitely seeing, since the war on terrorism, this ramping
up in arms export, especially to new allies in the campaign,” said
Frida Berrigan, deputy director of the Arms Trade Project at the
World Policy Institute.

New yardstick

Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act in 1976 to establish a
licensing system for the commercial sale of arms to foreign
governments.

“We are definitely seeing, since the war on terrorism, this ramping
up in arms export, especially to new allies in the campaign”

Frida Berrigan,
Deputy Director of the Arms Trade Project at the World
Policy Institute, Washington DC

“That is the yardstick by which all arms exports are supposed to be
measured, but that yardstick isn’t being used,” Berrigan said.

Prior to September 11, US sanctions greatly diminished weapons sales
to several countries now receiving such aid, according to a recent
CDI report.

Pakistan, India, Armenia, Tajikistan and Yugoslavia have all had
their sanctions lifted and are all considered allies in the US war on
terrorism.

In the case of Pakistan, the need to secure its help in confronting
Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in neighbouring Afghanistan was of such
strategic importance, that past transgressions involving nuclear
proliferation were overlooked, experts say.

“We needed to woo them, we needed to get them back in the fold,” said
Matt Schroeder, project manager of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project
at the Federation of American Scientists.

Blank cheques?

By most accounts, Pakistan’s cooperation in the “war on terror” has
been significant. Such assistance was rewarded with $75 million in
2002 for the purchase of US-made weapons and more than $200 million
in 2003 for such purposes, according to the CDI report.

Pakistan was recently given “major non-NATO ally status”, making it
eligible to receive increased levels of US military equipment.

Several countries in Central Asia, including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
Azerbaijan and Armenia, received substantial US funding in the two
years after 9/11 for weapons or military training. All had been
denied such assistance before the attacks, yet subsequently all were
recruited as allies in the “war on terrorism”.

Some, as in the case of Turkmenistan, provided overflight rights,
while others such as Azerbaijan were given millions of dollars for
“specialised training and equipment to prevent and respond to
terrorist incidents”.

Central Asian nations are getting
rewards for security cooperation

Many of these countries have troubling political histories involving
military coups, civil wars and various inter-state conflicts.

Some arms-control experts worry about the difficulty of ensuring that
weapons sold to such countries aren’t diverted into the hands of
terrorist groups or other private militias.

“A lot of the mechanisms that are in place to control and safeguard
US weapons from being misused aren’t enforced,” Berrigan says.

End-user agreements, designed to ensure that weapons shipments reach
their intended destinations, have been broken in the past, she said,
and the offending nations often go unpunished.

“We are sort of looking the other way when they violate end-user
agreements,” she says.

‘Counter-intuitive’

With the rise of illegal arms trafficking, experts fear the
possibility that US arms shipments will be bought and rerouted by
third-party middlemen to free-lance terrorists seeking high-tech
weaponry.

“The risk of diversion is significant,” Stohl said.

Experts say the risk of diversion
of US arms exports is significant

Stohl said the Bush policy of expanding arms sales to countries with
unstable political climates is “counter-intuitive” in the post-9/11
environment.

Some analysts also question the practice of lifting arms-export
sanctions against countries often criticised for human-rights
violations.

Several countries in Central Asia condemned for human-rights abuses
by the State Department have benefited from US military assistance in
exchange for support in the “war on terrorism”, experts say.

The sale of small arms, in particular, has allowed certain countries
to crack down on political dissent from opposition groups, Berrigan
said.

“These are the sort of weapons that are used to perpetrate
human-rights abuses,” she said.

UPFPA CHAIRMAN GUDRAT HASANGULIYEV CRITICIZES AUTHORITIES

YEREVAN, JULY 27. ARMINFO-TURAN: The United Popular Front Party of
Azerbaijan will hold in early August a protest action against arrival
of Armenian officers for participation in NATO training courses in
Baku.

UPFPA chairman Gudrat Hasanguliyev said at today’s press conference
that international organizations, particularly NATO, insist on arrival
of Armenian representatives in Baku. Thus, NATO demonstrates
“disrespect” of Azeri nation and state. “This is aimed at forcing the
nation of Azerbaijan to yield to the existing situation and forget
about Nagorno Karabakh”, said Hasanguliyev.

He also criticized the position of the leadership of
Azerbaijan. According to Hasanguliyev, the Head of State expresses
readiness to liberate the occupied territories by military methods, if
no peace solution is found. However, the Head of State does not
specify when it will happen – under the current regime or 20-30 years
after, ironizes Hasanguliyev.

He also charged the authorities with refusal to register his party. He
considers this is aimed at preventing his followers from participation
in municipal elections.

As for the upcoming elections, gaps in electoral legislation may call
in question the holding of municipal elections in Baku, Sumgayit and
Ganja. Hasaguliyev complained that his inquiry on the matter to the
leadership of the Parliament is remaining unanswered.–

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
—————————————— —-
PRESS AND INFORMATION DEPARTMENT
375010 Telephone: +3741. 544041 ext 202
Fax: +3741. .562543
Email: [email protected]:

PRESS RELEASE
23 July 2004

Foreign Minister Oskanian Receives Joint Mission of US German Marshall
Fund and Project on Transitional Democracies

Minister Oskanian received a joint mission of the German Marshall Fund
(GMF) of the US and the Project on Transitional Democracies (PTD) on
22 July.

On the same day, GMF-PTD mission members met with the President of
Armenia and Deputy Minister of Defense. On 23 July, the mission
visited Stepanakert to meet with the Nagorno Karabagh authorities.

The objective of the mission is to study the history of Nagorno
Karabagh conflict and its consequences and obtain the views and
positions of leaders of Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh.

The mission, convened in the framework of a joint GMF-PTD Project on
the Resolution of Frozen Conflicts in Europe, aims at informing lead
experts and decision makers in Washington and Brussels on the Karabagh
conflict, thus encouraging interested governments to render support
for the settlement of the conflict.

In addition to the above issues, the program of the mission included
discussions on regional development.

The mission will present its findings to senior officials of the US
Administration and Congress.

ArmenPress
July 27 2004

CAROLINE COX PAYS ANOTHER VISIT TO KARABAGH

STEPANAKERT, JULY 27, ARMENPRESS: Nagorno Karabagh leader Arkady
Ghukasian received today a delegation led by Caroline Cox, the deputy
speaker of the House of Lords of the British parliament.
Ghukasian’s press office said Caroline Cox praised the authorities
for conspicuous progress reached in Karabagh since her previous visit
in terms of building a civic society and elimination of the
consequences of the war.
Caroline Cox said she had founded a new charity organization-HART-
with branches in Great Britain and the US designed for providing
humanitarian assistance to various nations, including also Nagorno
Karabagh.
Ghukasian in turn thanked Caroline Cox for her devotion to the
fate of Karabagh and its people and for her huge contributions to
help it overcome the aftereffects of the war. He also expressed
confidence that her objective perception of the position of Karabagh
on the conflict resolution is contributing greatly to its fair
resolution.