Author: Kafian Jirair

Iraq Wants Money Back; Annan Promises Action

Reuters
February 4, 2005

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iraq said it wanted its money back from the
scandal-tainted U.N. oil-for-food program Friday as Secretary-General
Kofi Annan vowed to get to the bottom of wrongdoing by U.N. staff.

“Huge sums of money which should have served the needs of the Iraqi
people who were suffering at that time — a lot of these resources were
squandered and misspent,” said Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, Samir Sumaidaie.

Iraq, he said, should at minimum not have to pay for the independent
probe set up by the United Nations from remaining oil-for-food funds.
The inquiry panel has spent $30 million so far, with the approval of the
Security Council.

A key report by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman
appointed by Annan to probe the $67 billion program, found that the
director of the plan, Benon Sevan, helped steer oil contracts to a
relative of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The report does not accuse any U.N. officials of getting bribes. But it
says Sevan received $160,000 from an aunt in Cyrus, who has since died
and had few resources.

“We are as determined as everyone to get to the bottom of this. We do
not want this shadow to hang over the U.N.,” Annan said as he arrived at
headquarters.

Annan said U.N. officials would be disciplined and that if criminal acts
were committed, diplomatic immunity would be lifted. He said he was
consulting with lawyers on how to do this, as Sevan, who has denied he
received as much as a penny, has retired and is on $1 a year retainer

Among other questionable deals in the report was one in which another
U.N. official, Joseph Stephanides, colluded with a former British U.N.
ambassador so that Lloyd’s Register Inspection Ltd. could get a
lucrative contract.

The report showed that if the humanitarian program were audited more
thoroughly, it might have uncovered the cheating by Saddam Hussein’s
government. Most of his skimming, which some estimates put as high as $8
billion, was earned by illegal oil sales outside the program, some of
them permitted by the council.

DUBIOUS CHOICES

Investigators questioned Boutros-Ghali for choosing the Banque Nationale
de Paris, now known as BNP-Paribas, to handle the program’s account. He
did so after council members asked him to select a bank but was
criticized for asking Iraq its preference.

He was in office in 1996 when the program was negotiated and the Volcker
report alleged that Stephanides interfered in the awarding of contracts.

But there are no allegations Boutros-Ghali deliberately undermined the
program.

The program began in December 1996 and ended in November 2003, after the
United States overthrew Saddam Hussein. Iraq was allowed to sell oil to
buyers of its choosing and contract for food, medicine and other
necessities to ease hardships caused by U.N. sanctions, imposed in mid-1990.

Volcker said his 240-page report was preliminary and that the final one
would be produced in June. He said he may have another interim report to
deal with the alleged role of Annan’s son, who had worked in West Africa
for Cotecna, another Swiss company that replaced Lloyd’s in 1998 to
inspect goods.

The Iraqi ambassador said the United Nations received $1.14 billion to
administer the program and wanted to see how much actually reached its
destination or was squandered by outside contractors working for the
world body.

“The question arises whether the secretariat is subject to its own
political culture, which tends to subvert the will of the Security
Council,” said Sumaidaie. “This is serious.”

But he avoided blaming the Security Council, which had to approve
contracts and whose key members were deadlocked in dealing with any
improprieties on Iraq.

The U.S. Congress has initiated several investigations as has the U.S.
Attorney’s office.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, said that “part of the blame for the current imbroglio lies
with the U.N.” but that one had to recognize that council members,
including the United States “must also answer questions as to why they,
too, did not pay greater scrutiny to this program.”

But U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, said the Volcker
report reinforced evidence of U.N. lapses in overseeing the program and
“even the most rudimentary standards of accountability.”

;ncid=721&e=1&u=/nm/20050204/wl_nm/iraq_un_annan_dc

Georgia Official Urges Nation to Press On

Associated Press
February 4, 2005

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI, Associated Press Writer

TBILISI, Georgia – Georgia’s parliamentary speaker cut short a foreign
trip after the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania and returned to the
stunned republic Friday, urging the government to retain its momentum in
reinvigorating the country.

Parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze, an ally of Zhvania and President
Mikhail Saakashvili, returned from a private visit to Italy and called
on the government to continue working as usual despite “a big loss for
Georgian politics and the Georgian state.”

Zhvania, 41, was found dead early Thursday at a friend’s home,
apparently poisoned by carbon monoxide from a gas-fired heating stove.
Initial tests showed Zhvania’s blood had nearly double the fatal level
of carbon monoxide, a forensics service spokeswoman said. His host also
died.

Authorities called Zhvania’s death an accident, but many people in
Georgia – plagued by a history of political intrigue, conflicts with
breakaway regions and tense relations with Russia – were skeptical. One
lawmaker linked Zhvania’s death and a car bombing Tuesday near
separatist South Ossetia, and hinted at Russian involvement.

A small knot of mourners gathered for a second day Friday outside the
home of Zhvania’s mother in central Tbilisi. Rudimentary repairs were
swiftly made to the old brick building’s dilapidated facade, and flowers
were laid on a windowsill outside Rimma Zhvania’s first-floor apartment.

A wooden coffin was delivered to her home Thursday. Zhvania’s body will
be moved to the capital’s Holy Trinity Cathedral for public viewing
Saturday before Sunday’s funeral.

On Thursday, a visibly shaken Saakashvili lit candles in Zhvania’s honor
at the cathedral and urged Georgians to remain calm.

“I assume control over the executive branch and I call on members of the
Cabinet to return to work and to continue their work as normal,” said
Saakashvili, who appointed Zhvania after his election in January 2004 –
rewarding a key ally in the November 2003 protests against election
fraud that became known as the “Rose Revolution.”

Zhvania was considered a moderate in the government of the fiery
Saakashvili, and worked to overcome endemic corruption that had enriched
some officials during the era of ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze while
the economy deteriorated.

Many people rely on gas or wood stoves in their homes in Georgia, where
central heating is scarce, and fatal leaks and accidents are common. But
several Tbilisi residents said they believed the prime minister’s death
was suspicious.

“There were plenty of people who envied Zurab. Many were hoping that a
conflict would break out between him and the president,” said historian
Grigory Dardzhanian.

Georgian lawmaker Alexander Shalamberidze linked Zhvania’s death to a
car bombing that killed three policemen in Gori, the city nearest to
South Ossetia, this week. Shalamberidze pointed at “outside forces” in
remarks clearly aimed at Russia, which has ties with the separatist
Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Zhvania was a key figure in efforts to resolve the conflicts with
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away from the central government
after wars in the 1990s. Saakashvili has vowed to reunite his fractured
country, but tension is high and erupted into deadly fighting in South
Ossetia last summer.

Zhvania “counterbalanced Saakashvili’s policies,” said Georgy
Gelashvili, a former colleague of Zhvania in the Greens party. “I’m
afraid that the people close to the president who didn’t much like
Zhvania may push (Saakashvili) toward extreme measures in settling
conflicts and in the economy.”

A minister in South Ossetia’s separatist government, Boris Chochiyev,
said Zhvania was “among the Georgian politicians who favored a peaceful
settlement of the conflict” and expressed hope that his death would not
aggravate tensions.

;u=/ap/georgia_prime_minister

YaleGlobal Online, CT
Feb 4 2005

Over 200,000 people have died in the violence in Sudan’s Darfur
provinces. And as the bloodshed continues, genocide scholar Ben
Kiernan writes, members of the international community – who may
actually have the influence to halt the killings and prosecute the
perpetrators – have been preoccupied with semantic and jurisdictional
wrangling. Kiernan provides an historical background to the legal
definition of “genocide,” noting that the concept pre-dated the term.
He writes, “After a century of genocide, resistance, and research on
the phenomenon, the world community has a legal definition, an
international statute outlawing the crime, and a court asserting
jurisdiction over it,” And now, in order to halt the massacres in
Sudan, punish those responsible, deter such crimes elsewhere, Kiernan
concludes that the next step must be for the International Criminal
Court to hear the Darfur case. – YaleGlobal

Letting Sudan Get Away with Murder

Debate over whether to call the mass murder in Darfur “genocide” is
preventing efforts to bring those responsible to justice

Ben Kiernan
YaleGlobal, 4 February 2005

Horsemen of death: Janjaweed rebel leader Musa Hilal (left) and his
men have been accused of committing genocide in Darfur

NEW HAVEN: In two years of mass killings and forced population
displacements, Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias have caused the
deaths of over 200,000 Africans in the country’s Darfur provinces.
Though existing international law already provides both a relevant
statutory definition of genocide and a court to judge these crimes,
needless semantic disputes are hampering effective punishment and
deterrence. Failure to promptly bring those responsible before the
International Criminal Court (ICC) could render the international
community helpless onlookers – and would further encourage such
crimes.

Despite persistent reports of attacks on Africans in Darfur, military
intervention has been slow. The African Union peacekeeping force is
small. Guarding their own sovereignty, few African or Arab
governments will intervene in a regional Islamic state, or prosecute
its crimes. US intervention, with American forces extended in Iraq
and elsewhere, seems unlikely. Washington favors a genocide tribunal,
in a special court restricted to hearing the Darfur case. It opposes
the new permanent ICC, which one day might try US war crimes.

Differing definitions of genocide plague the legal response. A United
Nations commission, urging referral of the case to ICC prosecutors,
recently found that crimes against humanity and war crimes are
occurring in Darfur. The commission avoided charging Sudanese
government officials with genocide – the most heinous crime against
humanity – stating that “only a competent court” can determine if
they have committed “acts with genocidal intent.” Meanwhile, the US
government, the German government, the Parliament of the European
Union, the US Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Conscience, and Yad
Vashem, all accuse Khartoum of “genocide.”

Why this debate over the definition of genocide? Although the concept
of genocide preceded the invention of the term, the jurist Raphael
Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in his 1944 classic Axis Rule in
Occupied Europe. Warning of what we now call the Holocaust, he cited
previous cases, particularly the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated
by the Ottoman Young Turk regime. Lemkin thought that the term should
denote the attempted destruction not only of ethnic and religious
groups, but also of political ones, and that it encompassed
systematic cultural destruction as well.

The 1941-45 Nazi genocide of Jews and Gypsies constitutes not only
the most extreme case of genocide; it differs from previous cases –
the conquistadors’ brutality in the New World or nineteenth-century
Ottoman massacres of Armenians – in an important respect: The
Holocaust was one of the first historical examples of attempted
physical racial extermination. On a smaller scale, this fate had
already befallen a number of indigenous peoples in the Americas,
Africa, and Australia – and later, the Vietnamese minority in
Cambodia, and Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. By then, planned
near-complete annihilation of a people had become the colloquial
meaning of “genocide.”

Yet the postwar United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide adopted Lemkin’s broader concept, which
encompasses the crimes in Darfur. Ratified by most UN member states,
the 1948 Convention defines genocide as acts committed “with the
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial,
or religious group, as such.” It includes even non-violent
destruction of such a group. While excluding cultural destruction and
political extermination, the Convention specifically covers removal
of children, imposing living conditions that make it difficult to
sustain a group’s existence, or inflicting physical or mental harm,
with the intent to destroy a group “as such.” Australia’s Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found in 1997 that the UN
definition of genocide applies to the removals of Aboriginal children
from their parents to “breed out the color” – as one Australian
official put it in 1933. The law thus expands the popular
understanding of genocide. As in the case of Darfur, genocide may
fall well short of total physical extermination.

While some scholars use the term more broadly, to include destruction
of political groups, the legal recourse now available to victims
under international law is a good reason to accept the 1948 UN
definition. In 2003, Sudan acceded to the Genocide Convention (which
the US ratified in 1988). It is statutory international law, binding
on 136 states. In the past decade, UN tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda
have prosecuted and convicted genocide perpetrators from both
countries. The Convention’s definition is enshrined in the statute of
the ICC, created in 2002 and ratified by 94 states.

The legal definition is broad in another sense, too. In criminal law,
the term “intent” does not equal “motive.” One of Hitler’s motives
for the construction of Auschwitz was to destroy the Jews directly,
but other genocide perpetrators have pursued different goals –
communism (Stalin and Pol Pot), conquest (Indonesia in East Timor),
“ethnic cleansing” (in Bosnia and Darfur) – which resulted in more
indirect cases. If those perpetrators did not set out to commit
genocide, it was a predictable result of their actions. The regimes
pursued their objectives, knowing that at least partial genocide
would result from their violence: driving Muslim communities from
Bosnia or Africans from Darfur, crushing all national resistance in
East Timor, imposing totalitarian racism in Cambodia. When such
policies, purposefully pursued, knowingly bring genocidal results,
their perpetrators may be legally judged to have possessed the
“intent” to destroy a group, at least “in part,” whatever their
motive. Such crimes are not the same as the Holocaust, but
international law has made them another form of genocide.

The 1948 Convention also outlaws complicity, incitement, conspiracy,
and attempt to commit genocide. A government could commit those
crimes by facilitating an ongoing genocide against indigenous people.
Darfur may include such cases of official complicity with the
Janjaweed militia attacks. In colonial Australia, British authorities
did not set out to exterminate Aborigines, but some police and
settlers did. Nor did US federal officials adopt such a goal in
California and the West, though some state governments and
bounty-hunting posses did. Yet courts in both countries prohibited
testimony by native people. Such official policies and their
deliberate, sustained enforcement facilitated or resulted in the
predictable genocide of a number of Aboriginal and Native American
peoples.

Complicity, discrimination, and refusal of legal responsibility to
protect threatened groups continued in the twentieth century. Even
after World War II, the UN Security Council failed to enforce the
1948 Genocide Convention until the crime recurred in Europe. By then
genocides had proliferated elsewhere. A few independent scholars,
inspired by Lemkin, had long been working to broaden understanding of
the phenomenon beyond the Holocaust. Most scholars now include the
Armenian, Bangladeshi, Cambodian, East Timorese, Guatemalan,
Sudanese, and other cases, along with those of Bosnia and Rwanda.

Attention has also turned to indigenous peoples. A German official
recently apologized to the Herero people of Namibia for Berlin’s
genocidal conquest of Southwest Africa in 1904-05. The United States
and Australia have yet to acknowledge earlier genocides against their
indigenous inhabitants, but now the Muslim Africans of Darfur have a
legal remedy.

After a century of genocide, resistance, and research on the
phenomenon, the world community has a legal definition, an
international statute outlawing the crime, and a court asserting
jurisdiction over it. The task now requires less definitional
disputation, more investigation, rigorous enforcement, and
compensation for the victims. Unless either the Sudanese government
invites the ICC, or the UN decides to send the case before the ICC,
the Darfur crimes may go unpunished. Lest international efforts to
prevent genocide disintegrate into empty talk, the ICC should be
allowed to take up the case of Darfur.

Ben Kiernan is the A.Whitney Griswold Professor of History and
Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University,
He is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power, and
The Pol Pot Regime (Yale 2002, 2004), and co-editor of The Specter of
Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2003).

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Feb 4 2005

AZERBAIJAN KEEN IN DEVELOPMENT OF LINKS WITH OSCE
[February 04, 2005, 20:35:58]

On February 4, Chairman of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Murtuz
Alaskarov has received Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Christian Strohal and persons
accompanying him.

Having welcomed the visitors, Murtuz Alaskarov has told: `After
signing in 1998 of the protocol on mutual understanding between
Azerbaijan and ODIHR, the existing links between Azerbaijan and OSCE
have required new phase. We pay special attention of integration into
Europe, to development of democracy, protection of human rights. The
law giving to citizens the right to address in the Constitutional
Court was adopted, founded the institute of Ombudsman and public TV.
For last 5 years, the parliament has ratified more than 40
conventions concerning human rights. Taking into account the role of
ODIHR in the given area, we pay special attention to cooperation with
you.

Unfortunately, the organizations, preparing reports connected to
human rights, do not take into account the consequences of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia has occupied
20 percent of the Azerbaijan lands, rights more than 1 million people
have been roughly violated. UN Security Council and other
international organizations considered the given problem. On January
25, this year the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has
adopted a resolution in which has once again called Armenia to put an
end to aggression. The OSCE Minsk Group directly engaged in
settlement of the conflict, also should make active efforts to
achieve quick, fair resolution of problems. We believe that you and
the organization supervised by you will take into account this fact
and will increase the efforts’.

Having thanked for warm reception and detailed information, Christian
Strohal has told: `The organization headed by me is interested in
expansion of links with Azerbaijan. We are glad to help you in
development of democracy, in the field of human rights, adoption of
civil laws. Certainly, the successes achieved in your country are
also pleasant. The basic purpose of our visit to Baku consists in
exchange of views on the condition of execution of the
recommendations given by us on improvement of some structures, about
preparation for forthcoming parliamentary elections and on other
questions, to make new recommendations.

At the meeting, also were exchanged opinions on other questions
representing mutual interest.

Armenia sends doctors to Indonesia to aid tsunami victims

Public Television of Armenia,, Yerevan
3 Feb 05

A group of Armenian doctors will leave for Indonesia to provide
medical aid to people hit by the tsunami on 26 December.

A trauma specialist, doctors specializing in infectious diseases and
an epidemiologist will leave for the disaster zone.

The decision was made at a cabinet meeting on Thursday [3 February]
under the chairmanship of President Robert Kocharyan.

Today the government instructed and allotted 8m drams [16,000 dollars]
to the Health Ministry to arrange the dispatch of the specialists.

It was also reported that the humanitarian aid – six tonnes of
medicines and warm blankets – sent by the Armenian authorities has
already been delivered to Sri Lanka.

RIA Novosti, Russia
Feb 1, 2005

RUSSIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER STARTS AZERI VISIT

BAKU, February 1 (RIA Novosti) – Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Minister of
Foreign Affairs, arrived tonight in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, on a
two-day official visit.

The visit is coming in conformity with top-level bilateral
understandings for a dynamic political dialogue. It aims to carry on
efforts to step up bilateral foreign-ministerial contacts, says
Alexander Yakovenko, Russia’s official Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Mr. Lavrov intends to discuss implementation of understandings for
extended economic partnership-in particular, in the fuel-and-energy
complex, and work for closer direct economic contacts between Russian
and Azeri regions. The visit schedule also envisages an opinion
exchange on current efforts to elaborate the Caspian Sea legal
status, and on prospects for another, second summit of the five
littoral countries, Mr. Yakovenko went on.

There are serious problems between the Caspian basin countries with
their different stances on the sea legal status. The problems forced
the five Caspian countries-Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and
Turkmenistan-to put off their summit, initially scheduled for January
2005, with Tehran for venue. Their maiden summit, of April 2002, in
Turkmenistan’s Ashgabat, was an utter failure as the Parties could
not overcome their differences for a coordinated final statement. The
work goes on now on a multilateral arrangement, having gone over to
an ad hoc team, made of Deputy Foreign Ministers and special envoys.

Russia and Azerbaijan mean, during Mr. Lavrov’s visit, to pay
particular attention to coordinating both countries’ efforts
enhancing the effect of their anti-terror alliance.

Karabakh settlement will not stay out of the agenda, added Mr.
Yakovenko.

It is up to the conflicting parties themselves to come at a mutually
acceptable way to settle the conflict. That is what Russia’s Foreign
Ministry proceeds from. Russia is willing to do as much as possible
for the cause on a bilateral arrangement and as co-chair of the OSCE
Minsk group. It is also willing to be guarantor of prospective
understandings, reassured the diplomat.

The Russian and Azeri Foreign Ministers intend to exchange opinions
on topical regional and global developmental issues. They will also
discuss the ways to promote the United Nations’ leading role, and to
step up cooperation within the CIS. The negotiators will debate the
ways to step up partnership of the two countries’ Foreign Ministries
in the Caucasus and worldwide, and to coordinate their activities in
international organizations.

President Ilkham Aliev of the host country is expected to receive Mr.
Lavrov.

The visitor’s close schedule for tomorrow includes laying wreaths to
the monument of Geidar Aliev, Azerbaijan’s previous President, and to
the Eternal Fire memorial. He will meet at the negotiation table with
Elmar Mamedyarov, his Azeri counterpart, visit the Slav University of
Baku, and meet in conference with Abbas Abbasov, Azerbaijan’s First
Deputy Prime Minister.

Azeri official hopes international mission to prove settlement in occupied
lands

Trend news agency
2 Feb 05

BAKU

The information registered by the [OSCE fact-finding] mission, which
is establishing facts of settlement in Nagornyy Karabakh, should be
seen as proof of the documentary evidence provided by Baku,
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov told Trend today.

Azimov said “it is of course impossible to expose all facts of
settlement in the occupied Azerbaijani territories, but there are
sufficient facts to conclude that the Armenian side is implementing it
as a programme”.

“And this has not been done unofficially. This officially approved
policy is being implemented with the immediate support of the Armenian
government. We have sufficient facts published in the Armenian media
which provided strong emotional and ideological support for this
policy,” the deputy minister said.

Azimov added that the mass media describe those who agree to being
settled as heroes. These people enjoy different privileges, including
tax and land benefits, while their children get an exemption from
military service.

All this information has been taken from open sources, the web sites
of the Armenian media, as well as collected by relevant services and
handed over to the OSCE fact-finding mission in Baku.

“I hope the documents and facts we have provided have given them some
insight into the problem. They cannot be denied or ignored. The facts
will be registered,” Azimov said.

[Passage omitted: reported details]

THEME OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TO BE INCLUDED INTO TURKISH SCHOOL HISTORY
TEETBOOKS, BUT “IN LIGHT OF HISTORICAL TRUTH”

YEREVAN, January 27 (Noyan Tapan). The “Consumer Expo Food Expo” first
Armenian-Georgian-Turkish joint exhibition scheduled for late February
or early May 2005 in Tbilisi was postponed for indefinite
time. Rafayel Kakoyan, Director of “Expo Service” center, informed a
Noyan Tapan correspondent that holding of the exhibition was postponed
by the request of the co-organizer “Ekspres danismanlik reklam
orgsnizasyon” Turkish company because of Armenian-Turkish political
disagreements. To recap, the organization of the exhibition had
already been postponed for technical reasons, at first it was planned
to hold it in December 2004.

ARMENIA’S PRESIDENT STARTS THREE-DAY OFFICIAL VISIT TO ITALY

YEREVAN, JANUARY 27. ARMINFO. Armenia’s President Rabert Kocharyan
started today a three-day official visit to Italy on the invitation of
his Italian counterpart Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Kocharyan is being accompanied by FM Vardan Osknayan, Trade and
Economic Development Minister Karen Tchshmarityan, Agriculture
Minister David Lokyan, businessmen.

The president is to meet with the Italian president, PM, senators and
businessmen.

The sides are to sign agreements on cooperation and mutual assistance
in small and medium-sized business and customs. In Vatican Kocharyan
is to meet with Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Catholicos
of the Great House of Cilicia Nerses Pogos and to see the newly
unveiled monument to Grigor the Enlightener. Jan 28 Kocharyan is to go
to Venice to meet with the local authorities and Armenian community.

One of the goals of the visit is to enlarge Armenian-Italian political
ties, exchange views on the political issues of mutual concern and to
conclude agreements on cooperation within international
organizations. This is the first official visit of Kocharyan to
Italy. Kocharyan is to come back Jan 30.

The National Statistical Service of Armenia reports that in Jan-Nov
2004 the Armenian-Italian trade turnover totalled $63 mln – Armenian
exports $26 mln, Italian imports $36.5 mln.

Armenian Atomic Dilemma

Aging nuclear power station is a vital source of energy for Armenia, but its
future is uncertain given its location on geological and political
faultlines.

By Kerob Sarkisian in Yerevan, Sophie Bukia in Tbilisi and Idrak Abbasov in
Baku (CRS No. 271, 26-Jan-05)

Its four giant cooling towers dominating the skyline outside Yerevan, the
Metsamor nuclear power station is a huge presence in Armenia – and a major
controversy outside it.
Armenians depend on the station for about 40 per cent of their electricity,
so most believe they cannot do without Metsamor – even bearing in mind the
potential risks from the earthquake-prone land it has stood on for three
decades.
“I have worked at the station for many years and I don’t think it is more
dangerous than any other in the world,” said Metsamor employee Araik
Ovsepian. “Of course, it would be better to live further away from it,
especially as they keep the nuclear waste on site. But I want to work in my
own [professional] field, and I need to feed my family.”
Constructed in 1976, the twin-reactor station sits near major geological
faultlines, one of which caused the Spitak earthquake that killed at least
25,000 people in 1988. Metsamor is also in one of Armenia’s most densely
populated areas. The capital Yerevan is 30 kilometres away.
Only one 440-megawatt reactor is running today, but the European Union says
that given the plant’s location and age and the need for its nuclear fuel to
travel by air, Metsamor should close down altogether. The plant, which is
managed by Russian electricity giant RAO UES, also gives rise to concerns in
the immediate region. The Turkish border is just 16 kilometres away, Iran’s
about 60 kilometres, and Azerbaijan and Georgia are less than 150 kilometres
away.
“God forbid that there should be an earthquake there. There would be a
catastrophe, and there would be radiation fallout within a radius of at
least 400 kilometres,” said Yetermishli Kurban, deputy director of
Azerbaijan’s Seismological Centre.
Georgian Green Party leader Giorgi Gachechiladze added, “According to
computer modelling done by our experts, if anything happens on the Armenian
plant’s territory, we’d have only eight hours to evacuate Tbilisi’s
population,”
Alvaro Antonian, the head of Armenia’s own National Seismic Protection
Service, said he couldn’t rule out the possibility of another major
earthquake before 2008 or 2010, it would happen in the south of the country,
relatively far away from Metsamor.
Armenian officials insist that Metsamor was specially built by Soviet
engineers to survive earthquakes of up to 8-9 on the Richter scale. And
although of a similar vintage, the VVER-440 reactor it uses is safer than
the type at Chernobyl, experts say.
During the 1988 earthquake, the nuclear plant withstood tremors measuring
five to six on the Richter scale. Both reactors at the plant were shut down
in the aftermath of that earthquake, but the second unit was restarted in
1995 because of the country’s dire need for energy.
While Metsamor was out of action, the country suffered electricity
rationing, economic decline and environmental damage as people felled trees
to get through the freezing winters.
“The tragedy was that many people left in winter, while those who stayed had
to warm themselves with firewood and other fuel. This led to deforestation
of Yerevan and the surrounding areas and reduction of the population by a
third,” said a report by the PA Consulting Group, which represents USAID in
Armenia.
The European Union argues that the risk of accidents or earthquakes is too
great, and that more effort must be made to find alternative power sources.
In June last year, the EU froze a grant of 100 million euros because of what
it said was the Armenian government’s slowness in fulfilling earlier
commitments to close the station.
One detail that worries the EU – which wants to see the closure of
Chernobyl-era power plants right across Europe – is Metsamor’s lack of a
secondary containment facility, a failsafe in case of radioactive spills.
Another problem is the need to fly in fuel on Russian planes through
Georgian airspace to Armenia. That “is the same as flying around a potential
nuclear bomb” said Alexis Louber, head of the EU delegation in Armenia, who
has been quoted as saying the plant poses “danger to the entire region”.
Metsamor general director Gagik Markosian said the flights, which pass over
Georgia, take place once a year.
However, Soso Kuchukhidze, in charge of nuclear energy matters at the
Georgian environment ministry, insisted that flights are made only once
every five years. and said he thought there was no danger.
“We know precisely when the fuel is to be transported and on what plane. The
fuel which is carried through Georgia’s airspace is totally harmless and
presents no danger whatsoever until it enters the reactor’s active zone and
the chain reaction begins. When passing through Georgian airspace, the fuel
is a normal substance emitting no radiation.”
Kuchukhidze said the last load was shifted in the summer of 2004, when two
planes transported about 32 tonnes of fuel.
Many Georgians appear poorly informed about the issue, which is rarely, if
ever discussed in the media.
Gachechiladze, the Green Party chairman, said he had never been told. “The
law says no sort of nuclear materials can be transported through Georgian
territory. We are not talking about ordinary fuel. It must be enriched
uranium, which is very dangerous..
“Those who allow it should be imprisoned. Can you imagine what will happen
if such a plane crashes?”
An additional worry is the waste material generated at Metsamor, said Akob
Sanasarian from the Union of Armenian Greens. The practice of burying the
waste on site – in facilities constructed with technical aid from French
firm Fromatom – “cannot be allowed from a security and ecological
standpoint,” he said.
But the main obstacle to shutting down Metsamor is that Armenia simply does
not have the natural resources or the money to find working alternatives.
Energy minister Armen Movsisian said it would cost one billion dollars to
stop the plant. “Negotiations with the [European] Commission are still
underway. Armenia is offering to identify what sources could become the
basis for building new, alternative capacities. But today, when we have no
financial means available, we cannot talk about the closure or any
timelines.”
One plan, which part of the EU grant was meant to help finance, is to lay a
gas pipeline from Iran. However, Movsisian said using gas to power
thermoelectric stations would result in higher electricity bills and have a
negative effect on the economy as a whole.
Electricity tariffs in Armenia are already double those in Russia, according
to RAO UES head Anatoly Chubais. Prices in Georgia are still higher.
Hydroelectric schemes are also limited by the lack of major water resources
in Armenia other than Lake Sevan, which is already suffering the effects of
Soviet-era ecological damage.
While some have even called for a new nuclear plant to be built, Armenian
and Russian experts believe that Metsamor can still function safely for at
least another 11 years.
Plant director Markosian said 35 million dollars had been spent on
improvements since the reopening of the reactor, and 22 million euros have
been provided under the EU’s TACIS programme. “The safety level at power
plant two has increased since 1995 compared with 1989 when the plant was
stopped. We can say with assurance that the safety of the plant has been
growing yearly.”
Markosian said that this second unit should be kept running to the end of
its 30-year service life. Taking into account the six-year period it was
switched off after the earthquake, that would be 2016. However, similar
Russian plants have seen their service life extended by another 15 years,
raising the possibility that Metsamor will stay in operation until 2031.
For neighbouring Georgia, the Metsamor debate is complex. Though some fear
potential disaster, Georgia has its own energy shortages and relies in part
on electricity that Armenia, thanks to Metsamor, is able to export.
Georgia buys between 100 and 150 megawatts of electricity daily from
Armenia – not from Metsamor, but from the Razdan thermoelectric power
station. Bur Georgian energy minister Nika Gilauri warns, “if the Armenian
nuclear power station stops, it will be impossible for Armenia to export
electricity to Georgia. Armenia will have available 400 megawatts less than
now,”
Despite its oil and gas resources, Azerbaijan also experiences electricity
shortages – particularly in the southern Nakhichivan autonomous region,
which is separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory,
leaving it somewhat isolated ever since the war over Nagorny Karabakh in the
early Nineties.
Armenian energy ministry representative Levon Vardanian said at an
EU-sponsored conference in Baku last November that Yerevan was ready to
export electricity to Nakhichevan.
“We know that there are certain problems with electricity supplies in the
Nakhichivan Autonomous Republic, and we are prepared to cooperate with
Azerbaijan in restoring existing links,” Vardanian said. “Energy specialists
are always ready for cooperation and politicians must set aside the
problems.”
However, Azerbaijan’s deputy prime minister Abid Sharifov said there was no
chance of such cooperation as long as the conflict between Azerbaijan and
Armenia remained unresolved.
“As long as there is no peace deal with Armenia, there can be no talk of
mutual links. They can come here to take part in conferences, but that does
not mean we want to begin some sort of links with them,” he said.
Kerob Sarkisian is a correspondent for Iravunk newspaper in Yerevan. Sophie
Bukia is a correspondent for 24 Hours newspaper in Tbilisi. Idrak Abbasov is
a correspondent for Ayna newspaper in Baku. All three journalists
participate in IWPR’s South Caucasus Network project.