Author: Nalbandian Eduard

FATE OF MANY "GHOST PRISONERS" STILL UNKNOWN
by Eli Clifton

Inter Press Service
Thursday, March 1, 2007

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government should account for all "ghost
prisoners" detained by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret
prisons around the world, urges a new report by Human Rights Watch
(HRW). The report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,"
contains detailed descriptions from a Palestinian detainee of his
experience in a secret CIA prison before his release last year.

On Sep. 6, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush said that all CIA
prisoners have either been released or sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
but HRW claims that many other prisoners were simply "disappeared"
by the CIA.

"The question is: what happened to these people and where are they
now?" said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director
at HRW, in a statement.

Marwan Jabour, the former CIA detainee, says that a number of these
"disappeared" individuals are still in CIA prisons and that he
personally saw one of these men, Algerian terrorism suspect Yassir
al-Jazeeri, in July 2006 in CIA custody.

The location of the missing detainees is unknown but one possibility
is that they have been moved from CIA "black sites", U.S. prisons
rumoured to be present in Thailand, Afghanistan, Jordan, Pakistan,
Morocco, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Armenia,
Georgia, Latvia, and Bulgaria, to foreign prisons where they remain
under CIA control, and may face torture at the hands of U.S. or
local interrogators.

In May 2004, Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities and
held for more than a month at a "black site" in Islamabad staffed
by both U.S. and Pakistani personnel, during which time he was badly
tortured.

In June, he was taken to a secret prison, believed to have been in
Afghanistan, where the personnel were nearly all U.S. nationals.

Upon arrival at the secret prison, he says he was left completely
naked for a month and a half, during which time he was questioned by
female interrogators and filmed.

He was chained to the wall of his cell so he could not stand up, placed
in stress positions so that he had difficulty breathing and told that
if he did not cooperate he would be put in a suffocating "dog box".

Jabour says he worried incessantly about his wife and three young
daughters but was not allowed to send a letter to reassure them he
was alive during his more than two years spent in a windowless cell.

"It was a grave," Jabour told HRW, "I felt like my life was over."

The report not only calls attention to the trauma experienced by the
detainees but also addresses the hardships and confusion faced by
the families of detainees whose husbands, fathers and sons have been
"disappeared".

HRW offers recommendations for how the U.S. and foreign governments
should confront the human rights failures posed by the CIA rendition
of terrorism suspects.

It urges the U.S. to repudiate the use of secret detention and coercive
interrogation as counterterrorism tactics and permanently discontinue
the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme, and to disclose the
identities, fate and whereabouts of all detainees previously held at
the facilities operated or controlled by the CIA since 2001.

Other governments should refuse to assist or cooperate in any way with
CIA detention, interrogation and rendition operations, and disclose
any information that they have about such operations, HRW says.

The release of the report was accompanied by a letter to President
Bush, expressing the group’s concern over the use of secret prisons
to hold people suspected of involvement in terrorism.

"By holding such people in unacknowledged, incommunicado detention, the
United States violated fundamental human rights norms, in particular,
the prohibition on enforced disappearance," the letter states.

Although 14 CIA detained terrorism suspects were transferred to
Guantanmo Bay, after Bush acknowledged the transfer and said there
were no more secret CIA prisoners, Director of National Intelligence,
John Negroponte, publicly acknowledged there were three dozen people
in detention in April 2006, three months before Bush’s announcement.

HRW does not believe satisfactory information has been released about
every person detained since 2001 in CIA prisons, states the letter.

The message to Bush concludes with a list of 16 people believed to
have once been held at CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are
unknown and a separate list of 22 people who were possibly once held
in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Earlier this month, the European Parliament released a report accusing
Britain, Germany, Italy and other European nations of tolerating CIA
flights transporting terrorism suspects to secret prisons, a practice
known as "extraordinary rendition", in an apparent breach of EU human
rights standards.

PROCèS DE DOGU PERINCEK MARDI PROCHAIN A LAUSANNE LES PARTISANS DU LEADER TURC CRITIQUENT LA POLICE

Schweizerische Depeschenagentur AG (SDA)
SDA – Service de base francais
27 fevrier 2007

Lausanne (ats) Les partisans du leader turc Dogu Perincek, qui doit
etre juge dès mardi prochain a Lausanne pour negation du genocide
armenien, critiquent l’attitude de la police. Elle les empecherait
de trouver des salles pour se reunir et s’exprimer, ce qui est dementi.

Selon eux, la police aurait fait pression pour que ceux qui etaient
d’accord de louer des salles y renoncent finalement a cause des risques
inherents a de telles reunions. Dans leur communique diffuse mardi, ils
appellent les autorites a les "aider a utiliser leurs droits legaux".

La police lausannoise dement ces allegations, rappelant uniquement
que la commune de Renens a renonce a leur louer sa Salle de
spectacles. Elle indique etre en negociation avec les partisans de
Dogu Perincek, president du Parti des travailleurs turcs.

"La situation est très evolutive, un accord devrait etre trouve
d’ici vendredi", precise la police lausannoise. Les amis du leader
turc annoncent la venue dans la capitale vaudoise d’au moins 200
intellectuels pour ce procès.

Dogu Perincek est renvoye devant la justice pour discrimination raciale
après avoir declare en juillet 2005 sur les bords du Leman que le
genocide armenien etait "un mensonge". L’Association Suisse-Armenie
s’est constituee partie civile.

–Boundary_(ID_5kRfPGxzW2P6N8xbQdQs9Q)–

RADICAL TURKISH GROUP MAIN SUSPECTS IN HACKER ATTACK
By Ashfaq Ahmed, Staff Reporter

Gulf News, United Arab Emirates
March 1 2007

Dubai: Hackers from Turkey managed to access Dubai eGovernment
hosted websites but the attempt was foiled within two hours, a senior
official said.

"We have successfully foiled an attempt by hackers to corrupt data and
impair some government websites that are hosted by Dubai eGovernment,"
said Salem Al Shair, eServices Director of Dubai eGovernment.

He told Gulf News the hackers accessed the Dubai International Quran
Awards website and also managed to damage some data.

"They managed to enter the environment and also hacked into two other
sites of Dubai Awqaf and one other department but our security team
blocked the hacking within two hours," he added.

"We believe the hackers belonged to an extremist group in Turkey as
they also pasted a message in Turkish apparently referring to the
killing of Hrant Dink and the approving of it," he said.

Fifty-three-year-old journalist Dink, who was a Turkish citizen of
Armenian descent, was shot in January this year.

According to reports, he faced constant threats and legal proceedings
and had gone on trial numerous times for speaking out about the mass
killings of Armenians by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century.

He had also received threats from nationalists, who viewed him as
a traitor.

Al Shair said the hackers also damaged some files.

"There was no motive to make money as there is no financial data on
the websites," he said.

Dubai eGovernment hosts more than 30 websites.

Earlier, in a statement issued by the Dubai eGovernment, Al Shair said:
"We have yet to ascertain the identities of the hackers and the exact
location of their operation, but we have generated significant leads
that will ultimately lead us to the persons behind this act."

Al Shair said hackers have attacked some sites on eHost, which has
caused a malfunction to some services and loss of data. "We have taken
immediate action by disabling the hacked sites to fix the problem. We
have also checked other sites and guarantee that they are safe and
secure from future attacks. Within a short time, our teams were able
to recover all the files that were lost and restore all programs that
were affected," he said.

Al Shair said there had been previous hacking attempts, which were
also foiled due to the team’s expertise. He added Dubai eGovernment
adopts a high-security system to prevent hacking, but this does not
mean that it is completely impregnable.

"This problem is not unique to us as it has happened to other
high-profile organisations in other countries. One of the positives
from this incident is that it has allowed Dubai eGovernment to learn
more about the latest techniques and strategies used by hackers.

"This way, we were able to close the gaps in our system and take
appropriate action to prevent similar incidents."

eneral/10107887.html

MAN DIES AFTER SELF-IMMOLATION
By Irina Hovannisian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Feb 27 2007

A man from a village in southern Armenia died after burning himself
near the main government building in Yerevan under uncertain
circumstances on Tuesday.

Eyewitnesses said the man, identified as Jivan Hakobian, poured petrol
all over his body and set himself ablaze before being rushed to a
hospital early in the afternoon. A senior doctor there told RFE/RL
that he died of severe injuries about eight hours later.

The doctor, Hovannes Aslanian, said earlier in the day that Hakobian’s
chances of survival are slim. "His condition is extremely grave and,
I would say, incompatible with life," he said. "Eighty percent of
his body surface is covered by deep burns. On top of that, he has
respiratory burns."

Hakobian was said to have chanted anti-government slogans moments
before the self-immolation. "Some people tried to put out the fire,
but he got totally burned," said one witness.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the 44-year-old father of
four to take the extreme and desperate action. His wife and other
relatives declined a comment as they arrived at the Yerevan clinic
specializing in treatment of burns.

Hakobian and his family reside in the village of Dalarik in the
southern Armavir region. He reportedly worked in Russia for several
years before returning to Armenia recently.

The Dalarik mayor, Pargev Saghatelian, said Hakobian has never
approached him with any complaints or grievances. "He never lodged
any complaints," Saghatelian told RFE/RL. "He just said once that he
wants to borrow a loan."

Prime Minister Andranik Markarian’s office, meanwhile, revealed that
it received a letter from Hakobian on February 20 demanding that the
government grant him a 10-year interest-free loan in compensation for
his bank savings that had been wiped out by the hyperinflation of the
early 1990s. According to a government spokeswoman, he complained that
his similar letters to President Robert Kocharian and the National
Assembly remained unanswered.

The official said Hakobian also asked the government to help him get
an audience with business tycoon Gagik Tsarukian or opposition leader
Stepan Demirchian. He was informed by phone that the government can
not deal with such matters, she added.

This is the second case of public self-immolation registered in Armenia
in less than three months. An elderly woman and her three grandsons
set themselves on fire outside Kocharian’s official residence in early
December, in protest against an alleged cover-up of the killing of
a family member. All of them stayed alive after hospitalization.

TURKEY IS ALWAYS READY TO CONCLUDE SECURITY AGREEMENT WITH AZERBAIJAN

Today, Azerbaijan
Feb 26 2007

"The United Nations and the world countries should feel ashamed
for the Khojaly genocide. The world does ignore the occupation of
Azerbaijan’s lands, its one million refugees and Khojaly genocide."

"I condemn the occupation of our lands and those who do not want to see
it," former secretary-general of Turkey’s National Security Council,
resigned Army General Tuncer Kilinc stated, according to APA.

He said it is impossible to open the borders with Armenia, which does
not recognize Turkey’s territorial integrity showing Agri Mountain
in the 13th article of the Constitution as its territory.

"First of all, they should admit Khojaly genocide, leave the occupied
territories," he said.

As to the question whether the Karabakh problem is in the Turkish
national security conception, the Army General said in its policy,
Ankara has always attached great attention to this problem.

"Be sure that Turkey will always defend its brothers’ rights.

National security’s documents confirm this. Turkish foreign policy
attaches great importance to the Karabakh problem," he said.

Commenting on the importance of conclusion of an agreement on security
between Turkey and Azerbaijan, Mr. Kilinc said that this document
can be signed at any time.

"We always support our brothers. Turkish government will never ignore
Azerbaijan’s request," he said.

URL:

WHAT NOVELS SAY, HOW THEY SAY IT BECOMES POLITICAL ISSUE IN TURKEY
By John Freeman

Baltimore Sun, MD
Feb 25 2007

Writer recalls being tried for writing about Armenia

Salman Rushdie once noted that societies that emerged from colonial
rule in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s became hotbeds for literary invention.

"The Empire Writes Back," he called the phenomenon, punning on George
Lucas’ Star Warsfilm.

That phrase is gaining new currency in Turkey, where, according to
35-year-old writer Elif Shafak, a young generation of Turks is using
the novel, a form that came to them from the West, to reimagine their
society from within.

"Novelists have played a very, very critical role as the engineers of
social and cultural transformation in Turkey," Shafak says, sitting
in an empty hotel ballroom in New York City. "Maybe in that regard
we are closer to the Russian tradition than the Western tradition."

The debate over what these novels say about Turkish society, and
how they say it, lurched to the forefront of life in Istanbul in
recent years, as the Turkish government began prosecuting writers for
"offending Turkishness."

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and several dozen other writers were tried
under this code of Turkish law. In September, Shafak, too, was put on
trial because of passages from her new novel, The Bastard of Istanbul
(Viking, $24.95), which referenced the long fallout of what many call
the Armenian Genocide, when up to 1 million Armenians were forcibly
removed from Turkey and killed.

The book has become a best-seller in Turkey, selling more than 60,000
copies, but not without repercussions for Shafak. Shafak explained how
critics within Turkey claimed she "had taken the Armenians’ side by
having an Armenian character call the Turks ‘butchers’ in a reference
to the Ottoman Empire’s deportation and massacre of Armenians during
World War I."

Although Shafak was acquitted, others have not been so lucky. On
Jan. 19, her "dear friend," journalist Hrant Dink, the Armenian
editor-in-chief of a Turkish newspaper, was murdered on a street
in Istanbul, allegedly by an ultra-nationalist teenager. The
reverberations of this event are still etched on Shafak’s face.

"The debate on literature and art is very much politicized," she
says, her voice revealing palpable anguish, "sometimes very much
polarized. I think my work attracted it because I combined elements
people like to see separate."

Shafak is referring to sex and religion, faith and skepticism, and
all these elements come together in The Bastard of Istanbul. The
novel tells the story of two families – one Turkish Muslim, the other
Armenian – who discover they are united by a shared secret.

Set mostly in Istanbul, it is a lively book, populated by powerful,
talkative women who are full of superstitions, folk tales and vengeful
schemes.

"Turkey is incomparable with any other Muslim country with regard to
the freedoms women exercise," Shafak says. "But we have a tradition
of state feminism. To this day, when we talk about women’s rights, we
say Ataturk gave us our rights," she says, referring to the Republic
of Turkey’s first president. "And that tells us a lot. What we need
is an independent women’s movement."

In some people’s eyes, Shafak is a walking contradiction: a radical
feminist Muslim Turk who writes about sex and slang; a leftist on
some issues who believes in the power of religion. Every point of
her identity is politicized, even the types of words she uses.

"Turkish as we speak today is very centralized. We took out words
coming from Arabic origin, Persian origin and Sufi heritage. And I
think in doing so we lost the nuances of the language."

Born in France, Shafak spent her childhood shuttling between Germany,
Jordan and Spain, with stops in between in Turkey. She earned a
graduate degree in international relations and titled her doctoral
thesis "An Analysis of Turkish Modernity Through Discourses in
Masculinities."

Since 2003, she has lived in Turkey and traveled to the United States
to teach. She calls herself a commuter, not an immigrant. "There is
a metaphor I like very much in the Quran, in the Holy Book, and it’s
about a tree that has its roots up in the air. When my nationalist
critics say you have no roots, you are a so-called Turk, I say no,
I do have roots, they’re just not rooted in the ground. They are up
in the air."

In popular conception, Istanbul is the great meeting bazaar
between East and West, but Shafak says the city remains somewhat
uncomfortable with that role. "One thing that worries me is that
there is no … mobility between classes. There’s not that kind of
geographical mobility – east and west, north and south – that you
have in the States."

And yet, Istanbul remains a source of endless inspiration for Shafak,
and it also remains her home. "For anyone," she says, "especially
after 9/11, who is asking herself how Western democracy and Islam
can co-exist side by side, how seemingly opposite forces can be
juxtaposed, for anyone asking these sorts of questions, Istanbul is
a very important case study."

As for how she is going to manage, given the controversy and the real
security issues, she’s up for the challenge.

"My relationship with the city has been like a pendulum. I am deeply
attracted to it, but sometimes suffocated by it.

"So I need to take a step outside of it and then come back."

John Freeman is president of the National Book Critics Circle.

EurasiaNet, NY
Feb 23 2007

CIVIL SOCIETY
ARMENIA: COPPER MINE SPARKS ENVIRONMENTAL OUTCRY

Marianna Grigoryan 2/23/07

The Armenian Ministry of Environmental Protection’s recent decision
to give the go-ahead to the development of a copper-molybdenum mine
in northern Armenia has sparked considerable concern among
environmentalists and related non-governmental organizations.

"We consider the program of operation for the Teghut
copper-molybdenum mine to be illegal," commented Hakob Sanasaryan,
president of the Union of the Greens of Armenia, an activist group.
"It is being implemented with gross violations of the law and without
any environmental impact studies."

The Teghut copper-molybdenum mine, located in the mountainous
northern region of Lori, more than 200 kilometers north of Yerevan,
was well known in Soviet times. At that time, its copper reserves
were estimated at 450-500 million tons. In the 1970s, a ban was
placed on development of the mine to preserve the surrounding virgin
forests and the fauna they contained.

However, in the push to adapt to economic changes, that ban has now
been lifted.

"We were asked `Is it worth or not?’ We said, `Yes, it is,’" Minister
of Environmental Protection Vardan Ayvazian told a June 2006 press
conference in response to a question about the development of the
Teghut mine. Final government approval for exploitation of the
territory came in November 2006. "Wealth is contained here, and the
environmental damage must be compensated."

No one doubts the mine’s earning potential. Currently, the
established reserves in Teghut make 1.6 million tonnes of copper and
99,000 tonnes of molybdenum, a metal primarily incorporated into
alloys to strengthen steel for pipelines and planes, among other
uses. Teghut’s reserves rank it as Armenia’s second largest
copper-molybdenum mine after the Zangezur mine in the town of
Kajaran, according to Gagik Arzumanyan, director of Armenian Copper
Program (ACP), the Armenian company awarded the tender to develop the
mine in 2001.

With copper prices running at record highs in recent years, tens of
millions are expected in estimated profits, with a sizeable hunk of
that amount going to the state in taxes. On February 22, copper was
selling for $5.61 per metric tonne on the London Metal Exchange.

ACP, part of a larger group of companies with operations in Armenia,
Russia and Liechtenstein, plans to run the mine for 25-30 years as an
open-pit mine, a far less expensive operating method, but one which
removes the upper layer of earth, uprooting hectares of lime, beech,
maple and nut trees.

Environmentalists claim that 510 hectares of humus-rich,
forest-covered land out of a local total of 670 hectares are expected
to be lost; an estimated 127,700 trees will be logged.

"A whole eco-system will vanish as a result, the [territory’s
ecological] balance will unequivocally be disturbed," commented
environmental lawyer Nazeli Vardanian, director of the
non-governmental organization Forests of Armenia. Expert assessments
completed for the environment ministry give no estimates of the
number of species of flora and fauna likely to be destroyed by the
mining, or the effect on local humans, he charged.

Experts from the state-run commission in Yerevan that approved the
assessment for the ministry declined to speak with EurasiaNet.

By contrast, a months-long independent investigation conducted by
Vardanian, Union of the Greens of Armenia President Sanasarian and
Social-Ecological Association President Srbuhi Harutyunian found that
the mining will cause tremendous damage to the surrounding
environment.

According to these findings, if the mine is developed, 59 bird
species, 55 mammal species, 10 reptile species, 29 species of fish
and 191 plant species will be destroyed. Twenty-one of the mammals,
11 of the fish species and nine of the plant species are registered
in the International Red Book of Endangered Species published by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources. Two of the plant species can only be found within the
Teghut forests.

Architectural monuments dating from the Bronze Age to the 12th
century — and ranging from tombs and churches to traditional
Armenian khachkars, or stone crosses — will also be destroyed,
specialists fear.

"The development of the Teghut mine will lay the grounds for an
unprecedented process," said Union of the Greens President
Sanasaryan. While mining has destroyed before parts of forests, he
said, "there hasn’t been a case until today that the whole territory
allotted for mining is a natural forest."

In response, Vardanian and his group say that there are "good"
grounds for petitioning the prosecutor’s office to have the
ministry’s allegedly incomplete environmental assessment thrown out.

Optimism, however, does not run high that the group will succeed.
Lawyer Vardanian claimed that Environmental Protection Minister
Ayvazian has called the decision to restart the copper mine "a
political decision, and no matter what you do, it will still be
realized." The ministry failed to object to the 2001 tender for
development of the mine, Vardanian and his associates claim.

At a February 16 press conference, Minister Ayvazian characterized
the government’s position on the issue as "very tough."

"As many as 100,000 cubic meters of wood are logged in Armenia a year
legally, and 600-700,000 illegally, and I see no problem and
difficulty in connection with the tree cutting in Teghut," Ayvazyan
said. Logging will occur sector by sector, he added, and ACP will
"carry out forest rehabilitation works in other areas."

The Lori region in which the mine is situated is already considered
by healthcare and environmental specialists to be an environmental
disaster zone. According to Ministry of Health statistics, the rate
of allergies and asthmatic diseases in the region is ten times higher
than the national average. The rate of abnormal births in Lori is
also one of the highest in Armenia.

Environmentalists point at ongoing extractative activities in the
region as the cause. Aside from Teghut, Lori contains an ore mine at
Akhtala, a chemical plant at Vanadzor, a plant at Tumanyan that
produces fire-resistant materials and a metallurgical plant at
Alaverdi, also run by the Armenian Copper Program. Since 1996, the
Alaverdi plant has been operated without filters, leading to regular
releases of sulfur dioxide and other harmful materials into the air.

"The Lori region has lost the state of eco-balance, and the
development of the Teghut mine will tremendously aggravate that
situation," commented Srbuhi Harutyunyan.

In response, ACP has pointed to the 1,400 jobs the reopened copper
mine will bring to local residents. Poverty in the region runs
rampant.

According to the environmentalists, though, not all villagers are
excited about the possibility of employment. More than half in the
neighboring villages of Teghut and Shnokh have refused to sell their
lands to the mine for exploitation, Vardanian said.

"Elderly people cannot imagine how they can leave the place where
they were born and live," he commented.

Editor’s Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a reporter for the
Armenianow.com weekly in Yerevan.

RA Prime Minister received the Ambassador of Belgium

ArmRadio.am
23.02.2007 17:22

RA Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan received the newly appointed
Ambassador of Belgium Charles Ghislain. Congratulating the Ambassador
on appointment, the Prime Minister expressed confidence that
Armenian-Belgian relations will continue developing successfully
during his tenure in office.

The Prime Minister attached particular importance to the establishment
of closer cooperation with Belgium in the framework of the Armenia-EU
Action Plan. In this regard Andranik Margaryan said the Armenian side
anticipates the participation of Belgium in poverty reduction and
rural development programs in Armenia, which is one of the priorities
of the Action Plan.

The interlocutors also turned to the process of Armenia’s European
integration, reinforcement of democracy and civil society. The Belgian
Ambassador assured that his country intends to promote the process of
development and reforms in Armenia.

CLOSE COOPERATION OF SOUTH CAUCASIAN COUNTRIES TO INCREASE THEIR ATTRACTION FOR EU

PanARMENIAN.Net
20.02.2007 18:50 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In the framework of his visit to Baku EU Special
Representative for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby had meetings
with European Integration Committee and Nagorno Karabakh conflict
settlement Council members. At the meetings issues of Azerbaijan’s
European integration, as well as the problem of the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict were discussed. The special representative was introduced
to activities of these NGOs.

Touching upon the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, Peter
Semneby underlined though the European Union is not involved in
the negotiation process between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Action
Plan in the framework of European Neighborhood Policy signed between
the European Union and Azerbaijan, also indicates ways to solve the
conflict. "In case of close regional cooperation the South Caucasian
states can particularly become attractive for the European Union,"
P. Semneby stressed. European Commission’s special envoy to Azerbaijan
Alan Vaddams was also present at the meetings.

‘AN UNEXPECTED MOVE FROM CONGRESS MAY HARM STRATEGIC TIES’

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 19 2007

Referring to the Armenian genocide resolution pending at the US
Congress, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan said that he
doesn’t expect a decision which would damage US-Turkish relations,
but he is concerned that a surprise move would harm the strategic
cooperation of Turkey and the US.

Erdoðan, who spoke at the third anniversary of the founding of the
American Business Forum in Turkey (ABFT), said, "We’re tired of
the Armenian diaspora’s claims, but they evidently are not tired of
repeating them. They either gain some advantages by bringing this
issue to the table over and over again, or they enjoy it. We say that
this is a task for the historians."

He also said Turkish citizens of Armenian ethnic origin do not face
any problems regarding security in Turkey. In reference to the slain
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Erdoðan said, "If you bring one
unique example to us, we also have much to say in response. 42 Turkish
ambassadors were murdered while on duty. How did the world act then?"

Erdoðan also said about 50 thousand people from Armenia live in
Turkey without necessary permission from the Turkish authorities:
"But we don’t send them back home. They came here for a reason. They
came here because they can have better living standards here."

Noting Turkey’s strategic partnership with the US as a NATO member in
the region, Erdoðan told the businessmen at the ABFT event in Ýstanbul
that he thanks them for their efforts to curb the genocide resolution
which would be harmful to Turkish-US Relations. In a letter sent to
members of the US House of Representatives, ABFT urged US congressional
representatives to reconsider the Armenian genocide resolution and work
toward reconciliation efforts between Turkish and Armenian communities.

Representing about 70 US firms operating in Turkey, ABFT said that
the resolution is counterproductive and could set back recent progress
toward reconciliation between Armenians and Turks. ABFT noted that the
murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink last month brought
tens of thousands of people onto the streets in sympathy and protest,
and has compelled the communities to work even harder to achieve
reconciliation, based on inter-communal dialogue.

–Boundary_(ID_Tvf0p1Shu7bVNTciu0ZFzA)- –