Author: Khoyetsian Rose

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
February 14, 2005, Monday

AN AZERBAIJANI SOLDIER CRITICALLY WOUNDED AT THE LINE DIVIDING THE
AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN ARMED FORCES

Positions of the Azerbaijani army came under enemy fire at the Agdam
direction on the line dividing the Armenian and Azerbaijani armed
forces. Serviceman Samir Bekirov of the Azerbaijani army was
critically wounded. (…) This has been the fifth case of gross
violation of the ceasefire agreement by Armenia since the start of
2005. According to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, soldier Adyl
Akhmedov was killed when positions of the Azerbaijani army in the
village of Shurabad (Agdam district) came under fire on January 26.
Positions of the Azerbaijani troops deployed near the village of Ayag
Garvand (Agdam region) came under intense fire from the same
direction on January 27 and 28, soldier Fuad Shikhiyev was critically
wounded in Armenia’s fire in the same area on January 31.

Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin

ARMENIAN DEFENSE MINISTER SURE THAT AZERBAIJAN’S MILITARY
STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN FAVORED BY USA

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 11. ARMINFO. <I military statements have not been
favored by the USA,> says Secretary of the Presidential National
Security Council, Defense Minister of Armenia Serge Sargsyan in
response to the questions of the readers of “Yerkir” newspaper.

As regards Azerbaijan’s direct threats to resume military actions,
they are for both “internal and external consumers,” he says, i.e. 11
years have passed since the cease-fire agreement and the staff of
the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has not changed practically. That is
why the ministry tries to prove the fighting efficiency of its army,
which is allegedly able to solve the problem in the military way.
Otherwise, <the domestic political opponents will ask themselves a
question that rather big funds are spent to keep the army, so why it
yields to the Armenian army as to it combativity,> Sargsyan says.

Meanwhile, the “external consumption” of the Azerbaijani military
statements is a way to exert pressure both on the Armenian party and
the mediators to catch compromises in favor of Azerbaijan, he says.
Maybe it is to some extent simplified, but the aforementioned is most
likely to be the goal of the militarist statements of Azerbaijan,
which are, undoubtedly, a style to work, Minister Sargsyan says.

Iran, Armenia expands bilateral energy ties

MehrNews.com, Iran
Feb 11 2005

TEHRAN, Feb. 11 (MNA) – Iranian and Armenian ministers of energy
met here to negotiate ways of expansion of bilateral ties in the
energy sector.

In this meeting, the Iranian minister asked to jointly carry out an
expert-level study in order to clarify the details of the contract
before coming up to a final agreement.

Iran had earlier agreed to import power from Armenia and export gas
to that country after a 160 km gas pipeline is constructed between
the two countries.

Armenia has stored 600 million KWH power this year and is keen to
export it to Iran.

The two ministers agreed to establish a wind power plant with a
capacity of 90 MW, the third power transmission line, two circuit
lines with a capacity of 220/230 KV to boost transmission capacity
from Harazdan to Agarak power plants, 312 KM transmission line with
a capacity of 220 KV between Harazdan and Agarak power plants, the
Aras dam and its power plant, and to develop the fifth 130 MW unit of
Harazdan power plant which needs 90-100 million dollar in investment.

The Iranian minister asked the Armenian side to calculate precisely
how much power is supposed to be exported to Iran via the first,
second, and third transmission lines and to determine the price of
the power too.

The Iranian minister said that Iran needs a couple of months to sign
the agreement.

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Feb 11 2005

Green Lane agricultural NGO founded in Armenia

Military statements necessary to Azerbaijan to support fighting
efficiency of the army – S.Sargsian

*********************************************************************

GREEN LANE AGRICULTURAL NGO FOUNDED IN ARMENIA

YEREVAN, January 10. /ARKA/. USDA MAP Director Jeffrey Engels
participated in the opening of the office space of the new
Agricultural Assistance NGO, Green Lane, on February 8. Green Lane
was established in December 2004. It involves more than 50 members of
MAP-supported farmer groups and cooperatives and will operate in the
field of organic agriculture. According to Nune Sarukhanyan, the
Chairperson of the new NGO, these farmer groups left behind a long
transition period to organic agriculture. Green Lane, inspired and
funded by USDA MAP, now belongs to these farmer groups: Farmer Field
Schools, Local Extension Research Groups, and cooperatives. Mr.
Engels warmly welcomed and congratulated the members of the NGO and
valued their future contribution in the development of organic and
general agriculture in the country. He expressed his willingness to
further provide support to Green Lane. Ms. Sarukhanyan cordially
thanked Jeffrey Engels, Dave Slusser and other MAP consultants for
the moral and financial support in this starting period. The main
goal of Green Lane is to assist farmers in establishment and
sustainable development of farmer groups and cooperatives to produce
high quality and competitive products, thereby increasing incomes of
member-farmers and cooperators. Nune said Green Lane, with its
research potential, funds and close collaboration contacts in the
regions of Armenia, is ready to start its activity. In the first
month of its existence, Green Lane has sufficient investments from
individuals and organizations. The number of the NGO members is
growing each day. L.D. –0–

*********************************************************************

MILITARY STATEMENTS NECESSARY TO AZERBAIJAN TO SUPPORT FIGHTING
EFFICIENCY OF THE ARMY – S.SARGSIAN

YEREVAN, February 11. /ARKA/. Military statements are necessary to
Azerbaijan to support fighting efficiency of the army, RA Minister of
Defense Serge Sargsian stated in the interview to Yerkir Newspaper.
According to him, Azeri military men need to “prove” that they can
settle issues by force. “If they admit that cannot take the lost
lands by force, then their opponents will surely interested in the
reason of that and the administration of defense department will have
no answer”, Sargsian said. He also said that similar statements in
negotiating process are means of pressure not only on Armenian party,
but on mediators as well. “It is not perspective style of work”, he
resumed. L.D. –0–

*********************************************************************

–Boundary_(ID_jKiZdsaqc4uH8ZBqMhxusA)–

AllAfrica. com
Feb 8 2005

Deadly Semantics

Sunday Times (Johannesburg)

OPINION
February 7, 2005
Posted to the web February 7, 2005

Andrew Donaldson
Johannesburg

If a United Nations report can decree, just days after Holocaust
Memorial Day, that the killing of tens of thousands of people in
Darfur did not amount to genocide, then what does it mean to say
‘Never again’? asks Andrew Donaldson

‘China wants the country’s oil and Russia wants to sell it weapons.
Africans will die, bluntly speaking, so their businessmen may profit’

THEY gathered at Auschwitz in the bitter cold as a light snow fell on
the crematoriums, the dark rows of huts, the barbed wire, the guard
towers and the railway sidings. Among the dignitaries were world
leaders and, of course, the frail and elderly survivors of that
horror in southern Poland – all commemorating the 60th anniversary of
the Nazi death camp’s liberation.

The media was there, too, and, amid the reflections and the
recollections of the Holocaust, one particular phrase, uttered by
politicians that day, once more, via newspaper headlines and
broadcast sound bites, made its way into our collective
consciousness: “Never again”.

Now, as ever, the blunt intention was abundantly clear: Evil like
this, and the ideology from which it stemmed, shall no longer be
allowed or tolerated in our world; that active, forceful measures
shall be taken to prevent its reappearance; and that those who
transgress in this regard shall be punished. So it was written in the
United Nations Convention on Genocide, adopted in 1948 and which came
into effect in 1951.

And yet, this week a definition over what is “genocide” has emerged
as a bitter and essentially pointless source of tension between the
US and the UN.

The context is Darfur, the victims Africans. In July last year, a US
state report found evidence of genocide in the oil-rich region where
the Sudanese government and its militia, the Janjaweed, have murdered
about 70 000 people, although there is no official confirmation of
this figure. Almost two million others have been driven from their
homes and villages in a merciless campaign of ethnic cleansing that
began in earnest in 2003. The then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell
endorsed the US’s position.

However, a UN report released just days after Holocaust Memorial Day
has ruled otherwise – thus freeing the international community, or
the 96 countries which had ratified the Genocide Convention at least,
from a legal and binding obligation to bring to a swift end the
killings there and to punish the perpetrators.

Drawn up by a five-member commission of inquiry, led by Italy’s Judge
Antonio Cassesse, who was the first president of the International
Criminal Court (ICC), the report found that the raiders of Darfur, in
their “indiscriminate attacks” and “killing of civilians, enforced
disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of
sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement throughout Darfur”
have not intentionally pursued “a policy of genocide”.

The semantics become all the more confusing when one turns to the
convention for its definition of genocide. The definition in 1948
stated that genocide could be “any of the following acts committed
with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group killing members of the group; causing
serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its destruction in whole or in part; steps intended to prevent births
within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group”.

Nevertheless, the panel’s report has pleased Khartoum, which quickly
leaked it. Washington and its supporters are dismayed; as an
editorial in the Chicago Tribune claimed: “It’s as if the [UN] is
saying, ‘Never again? Never mind.’ ”

But Cassesse’s panel did recommend that the atrocities in Darfur be
investigated by the ICC. And, should that happen, it may well find
that genocidal acts had taken place and that some individuals may
have acted with “genocidal intent”.

Here, though, is more confusion. The Bush administration vehemently
opposes the ICC in principle and practice, and has negotiated
agreements with dozens of countries that they will not surrender US
citizens to the court.

Instead, Washington argues that a special Darfur war crimes tribunal,
independent of the I CC, be set up, possibly in Tanzania, and run
jointly by the UN and the African Union.

There is no denying there have been atrocities. Only last week a
Sudanese aircraft bombed a village, according to AU observers,
killing some 100 people, mostly women and children.

In his reaction to the report, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said,
“Regardless of how the commission describes what is going on in
Darfur, there is no doubt that serious crimes have been committed.
Action will have to be taken [to end the conflict].”

And that will probably mean a lot more than the promised deployment
of 3 500 African Union troops.

To date, three UN resolutions have condemned the violence. The
Security Council, which was due to have discussed the report on
Friday, has threatened sanctions against Khartoum and a travel and
assets freeze against those suspected of war crimes.

Sanctions have, however, been opposed by China and Russia. As
Security Council members, both have the power of veto and both have
offered lengthy and quite often garbled diplomatic arguments against
punishing Sudan. But the truth of the matter is that both have
economic ties with the country – China wants the country’s oil and
Russia wants to sell it weapons. Africans will die, bluntly speaking,
so their businessmen may profit.

In the meantime, the debate sparked by the Cassesse panel’s report on
the definition of “genocide” has deepened. There is the suggestion,
on the one hand, that in terms of the Genocide Convention, the
definition is too narrow and that none of the mass killings
perpetrated since the convention’s adoption would fall under it.
There are, for example, those who say the Holocaust was the only
genocide in the last century.

The convention’s critics point out that it excludes targeted
political and social groups, and that the definition of “genocide” is
limited to direct acts against people – but excludes acts against
environments which sustain them or their cultural distinctiveness.

Then, as Darfur has shown, there is the difficulty of proving intent
beyond reasonable doubt. UN member states are reluctant to single out
other members or intervene.

Then there is the argument, incredibly, about establishing how many
deaths amount to genocide.

Such an argument was heard in April last year, when the Bosnian Serb
military leader, General Radislav Krstic, appealed against his
sentence for genocide for his role in the slaughter of Bosnian
Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, Europe’s worst massacre since World
War Two.

The Hague tribunal, thankfully, rejected his contention that the 7
000 Muslim men and boys murdered at Srebrenica was “too
insignificant” to be genocide. (Krstic’s conviction was reduced to
one of aiding and abetting genocide His jail sentence was cut from 46
years to 35.)

On the other hand, others have claimed that, like “fascist” or
“racism”, the term “genocide” has become devalued through misuse.

One such person is Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Centre for
Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, who argued in a recent
lecture: “Those who should use the word genocide never let it slip
their mouths. Those who unfortunately do use it, banalise it into a
validation of every kind of victimhood. Slavery for example, is
called genocide when – whatever it was, and it was an infamy – it was
a system to exploit, rather than to exterminate, the living.”

There is a danger, of course, that such a position trivialises the
deaths of the victims of what many have, whether incorrectly or not,
labelled genocide. They include, among others, those worked to death,
starved or who died from disease in the Congo under Belgium’s King
Leopold II a century ago, the Hereros butchered by German
imperialists in what is now Namibia, the Armenians murdered by
Ottoman Turks, those who died as a result of the Soviet man-made
famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, those who died in Mao’s Cultural
Revolution in the 1960s, those who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge
in Cambodia in the 1970s, those who were killed in the Palestinian
conflict, those who were slaughtered in the Indonesian invasion of
East Timor in 1975, and those who were hacked and bludgeoned to death
in Rwanda in 1994.

There are millions and millions of them. But it is not about the
numbers, it is about action. Or, rather, the lack of action.

As for Darfur, well, one may cynically wonder whether there too shall
be memorials to what has happened there. Perhaps we may even gather
there one day, amid the oil refineries, and promise ourselves once
more, “Never again.”

Greater Kashmir, India
Feb 7 2005

No ideology of hate

No bloody borders, as Huntington sees, the whole affair needs to be
seen from an objective perspective, writes
ASHFAK BUKHARI

How and why 9/11 occurred, shattered the myth of America’s supremacy
of power for a while, and provided a raison d’etre for the renewal of
‘crusades’ against Islam, as a religion and society, is a theme that
has seized the attention of western intelligentsia since the event
and led to a flood of books on the subject in the market. But the way
this sensitive subject has been treated and the explanations offered
in most of the essays, 20 in all, in this outstanding work by a
Pakistani economist who teaches in an American university, is
inspiring.
The question commonly asked is: Is there an Islamic problem behind
this unthinkable tragedy? The answer the author gives is: there is no
Islamic problem – and, if any, it is a problem of temporary
disruption in the West’s legacy of plunder, conquest and massacres to
subjugate the rest of the world. Two opposite visions dominate
American scholarship on Islam and Islamic societies. One represents
Islam as an enemy that must be destroyed, or otherwise it will
destroy the West. Its prominent advocates are Bernard Lewis, Daniel
Pipes, Charles Krauthammer and Martin Kramer.
The second vision tends to accommodate Islam and argues that since
political Islamists do not reject modernity, they must be given a
chance to run Islamic societies as this will, ultimately, either
discredit them or bring them into political mainstream of western
orientation. The upholders of the first vision, whom the author calls
“anti-Islam warriors”, consider Islamic societies lagging in economic
development, deficit in democracy, and having “bloody borders” – a
phrase coined by Samuel Huntington.
The author, Shahid Alam, says the evidence fails to support these
charges. Although the Islamic countries do face numerous serious
economic problems, they are not worse or much worse than others.
Judging from the 1999 living standards, according to the World
Development Report, 2000, one can see Muslims have not done too
badly: Malaysia is well ahead of Thailand, Iran fares better than
Venezuela, Egypt is modestly ahead of Ukraine, Turkey is slightly
behind Russia, Tunisia is well ahead of Georgia and Armenia, etc.
Regarding bloody borders, Jonathan Fox has shown that Islam was
involved in 23.2 per cent of all inter-civilizational conflicts
during 1945-1989 period and 24.7 per cent of these conflicts during
1990 to 1998. This is not too far above Islam’s share in the world
population, nor is there any dramatic rise in this share since the
end of the cold war. Hence, Huntington’s claim of “Muslim
bellicosity” does not qualify as a fact. Islamic societies have not
suffered from democracy deficit either. Incredible as it may appear,
Tunisia, Egypt and Iran were in the process of making a transition to
constitutional monarchies during the 19th century but their attempts
were foiled by the West. In 1881, the Egyptian nationalists had
succeeded in convening an elected parliament but the British
disbanded it when they occupied the country a year later. Tunisia
promulgated a constitution in 1860, setting up a supreme council with
an intention to limit the powers of monarchy. Ironically, the French
suppressed this council in 1864 when they discovered that it
interfered with their ambitions in Tunisia.
Turkey elected its first parliament in 1877; it was dissolved by the
Caliph a year later. A second parliament was convened in 1908. In
1906, Iran’s first elected parliament adopted a constitutional
monarchy limiting the powers of the monarch but in 1911, with the
support of Russia and Britain, the pro-monarch forces defeated the
constitutionalists and the parliament was dissolved.
And in recent period, it has been oil, Israel and the old antipathy
to Islam that have kept democracy away from the Arab world. It is
interesting to note that the western donors have, especially after
the end of the cold war, used their financial leverage to encourage
democratization in client countries. But not so in the case of Arab
countries because democracy there could bring Islamists to power.
They do get enough support of various kinds so long as they come to
terms with Israel and are willing to suppress Islamist opposition.
When Iraq violated this understanding in 1990, it faced endless war
and crippling sanctions. Then, Algeria shows the fate a Muslim
country can face if the Islamists seek to capture power.
The author takes note of an essay written by a well-known physicist
and activist, Pervez Hoodbhoy, in December 2001 in which he argues
that a deadening obscurantism has paralyzed Islamic civilization
since the 12th century and that the Muslims can end this paralysis
only if they decide to “replace Islam with secular humanism which
alone offers the hope of providing everybody on this globe with the
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. This suggests,
the author says, Hoodbhoy has been raised “on a pure diet of
Orientalism and its falsification of Islamic history”.
Shahid Alam refutes the claim of Eurocentrists and their Muslim
acolytes quite forcefully that religion and culture are the principal
source of backwardness of Islamic societies and its so-called
antipathy to science, rationality and modernity. He quotes a
historical fact, often ignored by the western scholars, that had the
Egyptian bid to industrialize – initiated by Muhammad Ali Pasha in
1810 – not been dismantled by the European powers, the Middle East
would have been industrially transformed. But since an industrialized
Middle East would have renewed the “old threat of Islam”, the
European powers united to abort Pasha’s great initiative. In
contrast, when Japan made a similar industrial drive some 60 years
later, Europe did not block it.
Referring to Hoodbhoy’s advice to the Muslims to “give up the false
notions” of Islam, the author asks them instead to give up false
Orientalist notions of an Islam that has been misrepresented as
“irrational, fatalist and fanatical”. Rational thinking, he says, did
not begin with the Enlightenment as the West claims. In fact, several
Enlightenment thinkers turned to Islam to advance their own struggle
against medieval obscurantism. Shahid Alam concludes his first
chapter, which is the core essay lending its name to the book, by
suggesting that the Muslims, a fourth of the world’s peoples, are
today seeking their identity within a stream of history that flows
from the Quran. The Quranic impulse towards truth, justice, sincerity
and beauty will find expression again, not in combat, but in a new
Arabesque of creative minds.
The book is divided into three parts: Islamic societies and the West,
Arabs and the United States, and Palestine and Israel. Each chapter
begins with a verse from the Quran , relevant to the subject-matter.
The author has devoted one chapter to Huntington’s thesis “Clash of
Civilizations”, calls it utter nonsense and demolishes his
philosophy. Another chapter takes to task Bernard Lewis, the doyen of
the Orientalists, who has actually been serving the Zionist interests
for 50 years.
“Why 9/11 and why now” is a fascinating essay in which he says the
tragic event, irrespective of whoever engineered it, has incidentally
enabled the quartet of American Likudniks, Corporate America, the
Zionists and the Christian coalition to launch their project of a
‘new American century’.

–Boundary_(ID_Joy5q+94Wnpv1FnkxNhraA)–

The New York Times
X-Sender: Asbed Bedrossian <[email protected]>
X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 — ListProcessor(tm) by CREN

Inquiry on Food-for-Oil Plan Cites U.N. Diplomat for Conflict

By JUDITH MILLER and WARREN HOGE
Published: February 4, 2005

An interim report by a commission investigating the United Nations
oil-for-food program in Iraq said the former head of the program had
violated the United Nations Charter by helping a company owned by a friend
to obtain valuable contracts to sell Iraqi oil.

The conduct of Benon V. Sevan, a Cypriot official who ran the program from
1997 until its demise in 2003, was a “grave and continuing conflict of
interest” and had “seriously undermined the integrity of the United
Nations,” the report concludes.

The 219-page report, issued yesterday by the Independent Inquiry Committee,
the United Nations-appointed panel headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former
Federal Reserve chairman, depicts what was the United Nations’ largest
relief effort as riddled with political favoritism and mismanagement.

The $64 billion program, under which Iraqi oil revenues were used to buy
relief goods for Iraqis, is also being investigated by five Congressional
committees and a federal prosecutor in New York.

The report also says officials violated United Nations competitive bidding
rules in hiring contractors for the program. It says important parts of the
program were not audited, allowing evidence that Saddam Hussein was
demanding and receiving kickbacks from companies selling his oil to go
undetected.

A senior United Nations official announced yesterday that Secretary General
Kofi Annan would try to discipline Mr. Sevan, who retired last year, and
another senior official, Joseph Stephanides, who oversaw the selection of
the program’s major contractors.

The report does not say that Mr. Sevan, or other officials it criticizes,
benefited personally from their actions.

But it discloses that Mr. Sevan received $160,000 in cash between 1999 to
2003 from an aunt in Cyprus, a retired government photographer who has since
died. Mr. Volcker did not tie that money to his efforts on behalf of his
friend’s company, but the report says that the aunt’s way of life did not
suggest that she was wealthy and that the panel was continuing to
investigate “the full scope and extent of benefits received by Mr. Sevan.”

It also discloses that the Swiss-based company that Mr. Sevan helped, Africa
Middle East Petroleum, made a $1.5 million profit by selling the oil
allocations that Mr. Sevan had repeatedly solicited on its behalf from
senior Iraqi officials. The report accuses the company of paying an illegal
surcharge of $160,088 to Iraq in 2001.

In a statement yesterday, Eric L. Lewis, a lawyer for Mr. Sevan, denied his
client had acted improperly. He said Mr. Sevan had no interest in any oil
company and had never “accepted anything from anyone.” The statement said he
had always acted “in the best interests” of the oil-for-food program and the
United Nations.

Mr. Lewis accused the panel of trying to “scapegoat” Mr. Sevan for
“mentioning a company to the Iraqis as part of his role in advancing the
process of trading oil for food.”

“Mr. Sevan never took a penny,” Mr. Lewis said, accusing the commission of
succumbing to “massive political pressure.”

Describing Mr. Sevan as “proud” of his 40-year service to the United Nations
in some of the world’s most dangerous places, the statement said that Mr.
Sevan had fully disclosed the income he had received from his aunt.

The report accuses Mr. Sevan of not having been “forthcoming” with the
committee about his relationship with the oil company, AMEP, or its owner,
Fakhry Abdelnour, a distant relative of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former
United Nations secretary general, whom the report criticizes separately for
his role in selecting the program’s main banker.

Reached by telephone in Paris, Mr. Boutros-Ghali said he had done nothing
improper, calling Mr. Volcker’s investigators “ignorant” of the United
Nations system and their allegations about his conduct “silly.”

Mr. Volcker said yesterday that the panel was continuing to investigate Mr.
Sevan and his connections to Mr. Abdelnour, his company and other friends
and associates.

Efforts to locate Mr. Abdelnour for comment yesterday were not successful. A
call placed to his office in Geneva was not answered yesterday evening.

Mr. Stephanides, who oversaw contractor selection, did not return messages
left on his office phone Wednesday night and yesterday morning.

(Page 2 of 3)

Mark Malloch Brown, Mr. Annan’s new chief of staff, said Mr. Stephanides
could pay a high price as a result of disciplinary action up to and
including dismissal, but he acknowledged that there was little the United
Nations could do about Mr. Sevan, since he had retired. He said Mr. Annan
would immediately lift the diplomatic immunity of any United Nations
official charged with criminal conduct.

Mr. Volcker said, “This is a painful episode for everyone in the U.N.”

This interim report defers judgment on fundamental issues of responsibility
for corruption in the oil-for-food program, saying its investigations are
continuing. Mr. Volcker and the two other commissioners – Richard Goldstone,
a South African judge, and Mark Pieth, a Swiss financial expert –
specifically deferred comment, for example, on allegations that the
secretary general had a conflict of interest because his son Kojo had worked
for Cotecna Inspection, a Swiss-based company hired to inspect the aid
bought by Iraq.

Mr. Annan, who became secretary general in 1997, has previously said he had
no role in selecting contractors.

Mr. Volcker said he hoped to issue his final report this summer.

The interim report, however, criticizes the way in which United Nations
officials selected all three of the program’s major contractors: Banque
Nationale de Paris, a French bank that the panel said was not even on the
United Nations’ initial “long list” of the most technically qualified banks
for the program; Saybolt Eastern Hemisphere BV, a Dutch oil inspection
company that Mr. Stephanides was said to have promoted; and Lloyd’s Register
Inspection Ltd. of Britain, which the report said was chosen partly to
balance lucrative contracts geographically among member nations.

The panel’s investigators found “convincing and uncontested evidence” that
the selection process had been “tainted” by irregularities in the case of
all three contractors. The report does not accuse the contractors of acting
illegally.

Both the report and Mr. Volcker emphasized that the major source of Mr.
Hussein’s illicit money was not kickbacks from the oil-for-food program but
the estimated $8 billion in illegal oil sales to Jordan, Turkey and Syria
that occurred even before the program was created. Mr. Volcker said that
those sales were known to Security Council members, including the United
States, and that Washington had specifically waived American laws barring
such sales.

The report reserves its harshest criticism for Mr. Sevan, whose contacts
with Iraqi officials on behalf of Mr. Abdelnour and his company AMEP, it
details. The report states that Mr. Sevan first asked senior Iraqi officials
for an allocation of oil “to help a friend” who was from Egypt in mid-1998,
soon after the Security Council permitted Iraq to use up to $300 million of
oil revenues to purchase spare parts for renovations. It was “highly
unlikely,” the report notes, “that Iraq would sell oil to a company such as
AMEP unless sponsored by a beneficiary that Iraqi officials wished to
favor.”

Citing several Iraqi documents, the report concludes that Iraqi officials
gave the allocations to AMEP at Mr. Sevan’s requests hoping that this would
“ensure a good relationship with him” and would help them obtain Mr. Sevan’s
assistance in lifting holds on spare part sales that Security Council
members had placed on them.

The former Iraqi oil minister, Muhammad Rashid, specifically told the
panel’s investigators that the Iraqi government had allocated oil to Mr.
Sevan “because ‘he was a man of influence,’ ” the report states.

After Mr. Sevan turned out not to be “as helpful as hoped,” it continues,
the allocations for AMEP were reduced. “Neither Mr. Sevan nor Mr. Abdelnour
was pleased with the reduction in the oil allocation,” the report says. Mr.
Sevan spoke to Mr. Rashid about it at an OPEC conference in Vienna in March
1999.

In the next phase of the program, AMEP’s allocation was restored within five
days after Mr. Sevan traveled to Iraqi to meet with Mr. Rashid again in the
summer of 1999 to “discuss an expansion of the oil spare parts program.”

The report says Mr. Sevan “denies that he asked for oil allocations or
recommended any company to Iraqi officials for purchasing oil.”

(Page 3 of 3)

“But these claims are contradicted by the firsthand accounts of Iraqi
officials involved,” as well as by Iraqi oil company documents that list
both Mr. Sevan and AMEP as recipients, “often following occasions when Mr.
Sevan met with Oil Minister Rashid,” the report states.

The report says Mr. Abdelnour said Mr. Sevan did not assist him in obtaining
the allocations from Iraq.

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It says Mr. Sevan initially told investigators he had met Mr. Abdelnour only
briefly at the OPEC Vienna conference in 1999. But in later interviews he
“admitted that he had passed at least one inquiry from Mr. Abdelnour to the
Iraqi oil minister.”

The report says that after being confronted with United Nations telephone
records showing calls between himself and Mr. Abdelnour, Mr. Sevan
acknowledged that the two men had “developed an acquaintanceship” lasting
“over several years.” It quotes Mr. Sevan as telling investigators: “I came
to like the guy. He is an interesting character you know, he’s been around
the world.”

At the United Nations, Mr. Malloch Brown said the secretary general was
shocked at the report’s findings about Mr. Sevan in particular.

“The secretary general is shocked by what the report has to say about Mr.
Sevan, terribly dismayed that a colleague of so many years’ standing is
accused of breaching the U.N. code of conduct and staff rules in the ways he
did, and he very much doubts that there can be any extenuating circumstances
for the behavior which appears proven in the report,” Mr. Malloch Brown
said.

The mood toward Mr. Sevan, a longtime friend and confidant of Mr. Annan’s,
appeared unforgiving.

Mr. Malloch Brown said: “Let me be clear that while Benon Sevan is a very
dear friend of many of us – I’ve worked with him for years – when you put
together three international investigators, $34 million worth of
investigations, 65 investigators, you don’t then set yourselves up as a
court of appeal over the results of that investigation.” Any further
investigation, he said, would be in “a judicial process.”

Reaction to the report from Congressional investigators was mostly
supportive of Mr. Volcker’s work.

Representative Henry J. Hyde, the Illinois Republican who is the chairman of
the House International Relations Committee, said in a statement that the
report painted a picture of “mismanagement, neglect and political
manipulation that resulted in significant corruption of the oil-for-food
program.”

“I am reluctant to conclude that the U.N. is damaged beyond repair,” he
said, “but these revelations certainly point in this direction.”

A similar, but even harsher reaction came from Senator Norm Coleman, a
Minnesota Republican and chairman of the Senate Permanent Committee on
Investigations, who called on Mr. Annan to lift Mr. Sevan’s diplomatic
immunity immediately. “The report shows that he repeatedly lied to
investigators, has misled the inquiry about the source of $160,000 in cash
deposits and unethically steered oil-for-food contracts to close associates
and lied about those relationships to authorities,” he said.

Armenian Court of Appeal upholds ruling to keep nationalist leader in custody

Noyan Tapan news agency
4 Feb 05

YEREVAN

The Court of Appeal for criminal and military cases has rejected the
appeal on changing the restraining measure against the chairman of the
Armenian Aryan Union (AAU), Armen Avetisyan, the member of the AAU,
Mar Martirosyan, has told our correspondent.

He also said that the AAU will appeal to Armenian Prosecutor-General
Agvan Ovsepyan and submit a petition by the deputies of the Armenian
National Assembly, Viktor Dallakyan and Manuk Gasparyan, politicians
and representatives of the intelligentsia, as well as signatures in
favour of changing the restraining measure.

[Avetisyan was arrested under a ruling of the court of Yerevan’s
Kentron and Nork-Marash communities for inciting national, racial and
religious hatred and is being charged with propagating hatred between
Armenians and Jews in public and in the media between 2003 and 2005.]

PanArmenian News
Feb 2 2005

ARMENIA ONE OF LEADING STATES IN EURASIA, US STATE DEPARTMENT
CONSIDERS

02.02.2005 16:06

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Thanks to political and economic reforms Armenia is
occupying one of the leading positions among the Eurasian states, US
Aid to Armenia in Fiscal Year 2004 report published by the European
and Eurasian Bureau of the US State Department says. The report
mentions that Armenia has been chosen one the states eligible for
grants awarded by Millennium Challenges program. Though US assistance
to Armenia made $89.7 million last year and despite obvious economic
growth the report notes that the income of average Armenian citizens
should be increased.

Moreland Leader (Australia)
January 31, 2005 Monday

The beat of love goes on

by Rick Edwards

IVAN Khatchoyan’s love affair with drums started as a five-year-old
and is as strong as ever 30 years later.

The Fawkner man is drumming in one of Melbourne’s hottest groove,
jazz and hip hop bands True Live and is enjoying every minute.

“We just started out jamming but once we got all the players we have
now, we thought we have something good here,” Khatchoyan said.

“We have chemistry and, being the drummer, that’s what I vibe on . .
. it’s top priority for me.

“If I don’t enjoy musically what someone is doing or them personally,
it’s do-able but it’s not ideal.”

Khatchoyan, who hails from an Armenian background, nominated Stewart
Copeland (ex-Police) and Jack De Johnette (ex-Miles Davis group) as
his favourite drummers.

“I tend to crank it I really like high-energy fun,” he said.

“I am pretty energetic and creative. I am always learning I’m happy
to keep learning.”

Apart from playing drums, 34-year-old Khatchoyan is a music teacher
and producer.

“I tend to produce at home during the day and do gigs at night,” he
said.

“I love producing just as much as playing drums.”

True Live’s debut album is expected to be released mid-2005.

Khatchoyan said the band’s brand of hip hop differed from the style
coming from the US.

“It’s got elements of it but they are not obvious . . . we try to
make it as booty as possible so you can move to it and dance,” he
said. “It’s kind of mixing it up with good musicality, a bit more on
the jazz side.”

* True Live plays the Melbourne Afrobeats Festival, a free all-day
event at Birrarung Marr on Saturday, February 5.