Author: Toneyan Mark

Speaker’s departure signals redistribution of political forces –
Armenian paper

Hayots Ashkharh, Yerevan
13 May 06

Text of report by Armenian newspaper Hayots Ashkharh on 13 May
headlined “Breaking the rules of the game has never been forgiven”

The departure of the Law-Governed Country Party [LGCP] from the ruling
coalition and the expected resignation of its leader, Armenian
parliament speaker Artur Bagdasaryan, are the first serious signals of
the redistribution of the country’s political forces in the run-up to
elections.

In order to understand what has actually happened in the LGCP, we
should, first of all, point out that this party has failed to break
the existing unwritten rules of the country’s political field. It is
not that somebody has punished the LGCP – the party itself dug the pit
in which it is now.

One cannot be a key executive and legislator and at the same time,
take opposite positions in the government and parliament: the LGCP
ministers conscientiously did what the government told them, while in
the parliament LGCP MPs conscientiously voted against the same
government’s “anti-national” activities.

Sometimes, they came up with radical opposition views, while the
LGCP’s inefficient appointees strongly damaged the government’s
reputation.

We can only say that “the drayman creaked instead of the dray” and now
this “drayman” is alleging that it was he who returned Soviet-era
savings to the people, he who supports the media and finally he who
objects to the privatization programme of 2001-2004, a programme
adopted with the active participation of the LGCP ministers.

True, as an advocate of European integration, the LGCP and its leader
ensured the coalition’s “complimentary image.” But here, too, they
broke the rules. In fact, they persistently undermined the coalition
from both inside and outside by their socialist populism on the one
hand, and by their statements about “a new foreign policy doctrine” in
the German press on the other.

Politics is cruel and never forgives those who break its rules.
p 2

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 12 2006

Russia doubles contingent at airbase in Kyrgyzstan – commander
12:36 | 12/ 05/ 2006

BISHKEK, May 12 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has more than doubled
personnel numbers at its airbase in Kyrgyzstan, but will move the
additional personnel in when housing construction is finished, the
head of the Air Force said Friday.

Vladimir Mikhailov, currently visiting the Kant base, located about
20 miles west of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, at the moment said: “A
new staff table has been drawn up already.”

But he added that they would be sent to the Central Asian base when a
new 160-apartment block for their families was completed, along with
a kindergarten and a school also currently under construction.

Mikhailov said the servicemen were ready to depart for the base at
any moment, but added that the base was currently capable of
fulfilling its security obligations to the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), which comprises the former Soviet republics of
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

The base was established in October 2003 to enable Russian jets to
provide close air support for ground units of CSTO member states.

Russia announced plans to double the base’s personnel and aircraft
numbers in February, saying the objective would be achieved within a
year.

In Bishkek, Mikhailov met with Kyrgyz Defense Minister Ismail Isakov,
confirming that Kyrgyz pilots would undergo training at the Kant
base. Russia plans to airlift four overhauled L-39 training aircraft
for this purpose.

They also discussed Russia’s assistance to Kyrgyzstan in establishing
own air defenses. So far, Russia has provided military equipment
worth 15 million rubles ($554,006) to the Central Asian nation as
part of their cooperation in the military sphere.

ARMENIA MUST INTEGRATE WITH THE NATO MAINTAINING FRIENDLY RELATIONS
WITH RUSSIA

Yerevan, May 12. ArmInfo. ‘I do not think that my resignation will
influence external policy of Armenia. Moreover, I do not think that it
will spoil the Armenian-French relations,’ said on a press conference
at the National Assembly Arthur Bagdasarian, leader of the party at
the same time admitting that the opposition bloc possibly will not
welcome that.

Nr. Bagdasarian added that Orinats Yerkir has political contacts
abroad. He said that his party stands for Armenia’s integration with
the NATO and maintaining friendly relations with Russia. Integration
with Europe and the EU in particular is the only way for Armenia, he
said. The Speaker added that this position on foreign policy was one
of the causes of the breakdown of the alliance with Dashnaktsutiun and
the Republican parties.

ARMENIA BACK FROM WESTERN EUROPE FOR 30 YEARS

Panorama.am
16:40 11/05/06

“The situation observed on roads of Armenia was existing in Western
Europe 30 years ago when the number of cars increased sharply,” Max
Mosly, the president of International Automobile Federation told a
press conference today.

As Mosly and David Ward, Executive Director of Fund FIA noted their
visit aims to support the newly established National Council of Road
Safety in Armenia. “Actually, no one in Armenia uses security belts,”
Mosly said. David Ward assures that after 5 years of using security
belts the records on road mortality will report sharp decrease. They
say 95% of drivers in Switzerland use security belts.

Today in the capital park “Victory” a special training apparatus
will be exhibited for showing the usage of security belts. This is
a start of public advocacy program to use security belts. The second
part of the program will be education on driving, Mkrtich Piltoyan,
Armenian Automobile Federation president said.

CANADIAN FILMMAKER EGOYAN PRAISES HARPER’S STANCE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By: Jennifer Ditchburn

CP
10, MAY, 2006 – 3:47 pm

OTTAWA (CP) – Celebrated filmmaker Atom Egoyan, perhaps the most
famous Canadian of Armenian decent, praised Prime Minister Stephen
Harper for his controversial recognition of the Armenian genocide.

“I think the Harper government has taken a courageous stand in its
early days, on several issues that could have faded into history
but bear scrutiny,” Egoyan said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s
interesting to me that very often Conservative governments seem to
be more morally responsible than one might imagine.”

Harper recently became the first Canadian prime minister to publicly
declare that the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during
the First World War constituted a genocide.

The remark has caused a diplomatic row with the Turkish government,
including that country’s withdrawal from an international military
exercise in Canada.

The Turkish press has speculated that Canada could be prevented
from competing for the lucrative sale of reactors for Turkey’s first
nuclear plant.

Egoyan, who devoted his 2002 film Ararat to the issue of an Armenian
genocide, says he has faced plenty of pressure from the Turkish
government over his film and his views, and doesn’t think governments
or individuals should bend on recognition.

“Ultimately, I believe that the only way to have any sort of move
on this issue is to try and seek recognition from as many different
places as possible and isolate the Turkish government,” Egoyan said
from Toronto.

“That’s the only way change will be effected.”

The House of Commons passed a resolution in 2004 characterizing what
happened in Armenia as genocide, but the Liberal government at the
time said it did not constitute government policy. Harper’s comments
went further than any previous government by commemorating what he
termed a “genocide.”

“Ninety-one years ago the Armenian people experienced terrible
suffering and loss of life,” Harper said last month.

“We must never forget the lessons of history. Nor should we allow
the enmities of history to divide us.”

But history has certainly set Turkey against any other government
that has examined the issue of a genocide. Turkish officials have
said there were deaths on both sides during that time, and that they
are casualties of war.

Ankara recently withdrew its ambassador to Canada over Harper’s
remarks, and has now pulled its jet fighters and support aircraft
out of an exercise at a Canadian Forces base in Alberta, scheduled
for next week.

The Turkish embassy wouldn’t comment on suggestions that Canada could
be barred from competing for a contract to outfit a major nuclear
plant project.

But an official noted that the Turkish Foreign Affairs department had
been communicating frequently with Harper’s office to try to dissuade
him from wading into the issue, fearing the Armenian community was
swaying the government.

“There is no scholarly consensus on this, so one way is to go after
politicians and try and change history,” the official said of the
Armenian community.

A similar row is going on between Turkey and France. The French
government is proposing a law that would criminalize denial of the
Armenian genocide, a much more incendiary issue there because of its
large Turkish immigrant population.

To date, 23 countries have recognized the Armenian genocide.

Harper’s comments were not a complete surprise to those who follow
the issue closely.

The Conservative party, and the Canadian Alliance and Reform parties
before it, were consistently supportive of any move to recognize the
death of 1.5 million Armenians during the reign of the Ottoman Empire.

MP Jason Kenney in particular, now parliamentary secretary to Harper,
has pushed for recognition for years.

“It just is a question of fundamental justice for me. I’ve done a
lot of reading of the historical record, and I don’t think this could
legitimately be called as anything but a genocide,” Kenney said.

“This is a particular aspect of the history of the 20th century that
the world needs to never forget.”

ARKADI GHUKASYAN: KARABAKH ISSUE CANNOT BE RESOLVED VIA FORCE

ArmRadio.am
10.05.2006 13:27

“The war imposed to us proved that the Karabakh issue cannot be
resolved via force,” NKR President Arkadi Ghukasyan declared yesterday
during May 9 festive events.

“We were defending our land, we won, but we cannot say that Armenian
and Azeri people are happy today. It means that the issue should be
resolved on the political level, and there is no alternative to it,”
Arkadi Ghukasyan said, adding that it is our common problem not to
allow resumption of military actions. According to NKR President,
to exclude the resumption of war, we should be always ready for it.

NO CHANGE OF PRIME MINISTER ENVISAGED IN NKR

Noyan Tapan
May 05 2006

YEREVAN, MAY 5, NOYAN TAPAN. NKR President Arkadi Ghukasian disproved
the news about the NKR Prime Minister’s expected change. “There is
no such an issue on our agenda,” Arkadi Ghukasian stated in the May
5 interview given to journalists in Yerevan.

ACCIDENTS INVOLVING ARMAVIA PLANES CONTINUE

Lragir.am
05 May 06

Four planes burnt down in a fire at the airport of Brussels. One of
these planes, an A320, belonged to Armavia Airlines. The plane was
in Europe for a technical examination. Armavia Airlines rented three
A320 planes, one of them crashed on May 3 in Sochi. Another Armenian
plane burned in the capital of Belgium. This A320 belonged to the
Armenian International Airlines. However, unlike the plane of Armavia,
the plane of the Armenian International Airlines was damaged slightly.

The Armenian International Airlines does not have flights from
Armenia. It is interesting that Armavia was likely to rent the A320
plane of this company. The owner of Armavia Mikhail Baghdasarov
announced in a press conference on April 1 that they wanted to aid
Versand Hakobyan, the owner of the Armenian International Airlines,
and rent his only and unused plane. Baghdasarov said they wanted to
help Versand but the latter demanded a too high price, and they could
rent a better plane on the same money.

TURKEY EXTENDS CONDOLENCES TO ARMENIA OVER ACCIDENT

New Anatolian, Turkey
May 4 2006

Ankara yesterday set aside its deep political differences with
neighboring Armenia to extend sympathy over the tragic death of
Armenian citizens in a jet crash.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul sent a message to his Armenian
counterpart Vartan Oskanian and expressed sincere condolences to
relatives of Armenian citizens killed in the crash, The New Anatolian
learned.

Turkey and Armenia do not have diplomatic relations and the two
countries are at odds over the Armenian claims of genocide. The
Armenian diaspora accuses the Ottoman Empire of deliberately massacring
up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1919. Turkey stresses
that these figures are inflated and says that far fewer Armenians
died, due to civil unrest under the conditions of World War I and
the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Ankara suspended its diplomatic
relations with Yerevan a decade ago due to Armenian occupation of
the Azeri territories of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkish sources confirmed to The New Anatolian yesterday that Gul’s
message of condolence to Oskanian would be sent to Yerevan through
diplomatic channels. They didn’t provide any more details.

Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter to
Armenian President Robert Kocharian suggesting putting an end to
the dispute over genocide claims through a joint study of Turkish
and Armenian scholars. But the Armenian president turned down the
suggestion, asking first that Ankara revive diplomatic relations and
discuss all issues of concern on an intergovernmental platform. At
that time, the messages were sent through the embassies of both
countries in neighboring Georgia.

Clash leaves 113 dead

A total of 113 people are dead after an Armenian-owned Airbus plunged
into the Black Sea in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

According to the report by RIA Novosti news agency, the A-320
passenger jet, which was flying from Yerevan to an airport servicing
the popular Russian resort of Sochi, disappeared from radar screens
at 2:15 a.m. local time (Tuesday, 10:15 p.m. GMT).

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that the most likely
cause of the crash was bad weather — the Armavia Airlines plane
had reportedly been trying to make its second landing attempt in
heavy rain — and an expert with Russia’s Air Traffic Organization
concurred that poor visibility may have caused the accident.

“These were the actual weather conditions at the moment of the crash:
the lowest level of cloud lay at 100 meters, visibility was at four
kilometers, and it was raining heavily,” the expert said.

Prosecutors ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack and a
representative of the Interior Ministry in the southern Krasnodar
Territory said investigators were considering three possibilities.

“We are considering several versions: a mistake made by the pilot,
a technical malfunction or a mistake by air traffic controllers,”
Igor Zhukov of the North Caucasus transport police said.

However, Artyom Movsisyan, the head of Armenia’s main civil aviation
department, ruled out the possibility of a technical error. He said
the A-320 had undergone a complete technical overhaul last month
and experts from Sabina Technics had given a positive report on its
technical condition shortly before takeoff.

Movsisyan said the plane had been filled with 10 metric tons of fuel
and a flight to Sochi lasting less than an hour needed only 3.5 tons.

IN AFTERMATH OF PLANE CRASH, GRIEF AND SPECULATION ABOUND
Compiled By Rachel Thorner

New York Times
May 4 2006

A summary of the top stories in the Russian newspapers appears Monday
through Friday.

The crash of an Armenian airliner in southern Russia, which killed
all 113 aboard, led the newspapers. The airliner, an Airbus 320
belonging to Armavia airline, crashed into the Black Sea as it flew
to the resort city of Sochi from Armenia’s capital of Yerevan.

Vremya Novostei reported that by Wednesday night, rescue workers had
found 47 bodies and continued to search for the others as relatives
waited anxiously for news.

A team of experts has been assigned to investigate the the crash. “We
are considering two versions-technical problems and a mistake by
the pilot,” Izvestia quoted the prosecutor general in Krasnodar, the
region’s capital, Sergei Yeremin, as saying. A colleague of the crew,
whom it did not name, said that they could not “imagine that these
people who knew the route like the back of their hands could make
a mistake.”

Kommersant reported that investigators suggested that the crewmembers’
“moral state” had been affected by the fact that they had to turn
back to Yerevan because of a storm, and that this might have caused
them to falter. Vremya Novostei reported that reason for the crash
would likely never be established conclusively.

Vremya Novostei led with a photograph of distraught relatives. Many
sat around an airport television, with their heads in their hands,
consoling one another. The airports in Sochi and Yerevan have provided
medical and emotional support to family members and friends.

“Many of them needed our help,” an airport nurse told Izvestia after
being called to work at 4 A.M. “But I understand that it is impossible
to console them right now.”

IZVESTIA

GEORGIA TO WITHDRAW FROM ALLIANCE: President Mikheil Saakashvili of
Georgia announced his intention to resign from the Commonwealth of
Independent States, a loose political and economic alliance of former
Soviet republics. “Georgia does not get anything from the C.I.S.

except humiliation,” he said, in the latest manifestation of a
deepening rift between Russia and Georgia.

KADYROV GIVES INTERVIEW: Ramzan Kadyrov, the prime minister of
Chechnya, said in an interview that it was his duty either to “jail
or destroy” Shamil Basayev, the notorious Chechen rebel leader who
has carried out some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Russia.

VREMYA NOVOSTEI

RICE URGES CHANGES BY RUSSIA: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said at a news conference that although Russian-American relations
were mutually beneficial, Russia needed to shift its stance on several
issues. Ms. Rice cited Russia’s position on Iran and the Middle East,
and its reaction to former Soviet republics that form alliances with
the United States, among other things. Her comments were followed up
today in a speech given by Vice President Dick Cheney, who sharply
criticized Russia for what he said was backsliding on human rights;
Mr Cheney also suggested that Moscow is interfering with democratic
movements among its neighbors.

KOMMERSANT

RUSSIAN ROLE IN SERBIA DISPUTE: The European Union ended talks with
Serbia on normalizing relations after the country refused to turn
over the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic
– its leading war crimes suspect – to the International Criminal
Tribunal. The paper suggested the conflict could entangle Russia
because it is harboring another Bosnian Serb, Dragan Zelenovich,
who is also wanted by the Tribunal for war crimes.

MEETING WITH JAPAN COAST GUARD: The head of Japan’s Coast Guard,
Hiroki Ishikawa, is to meet with Russian security service officials to
discuss environmental-protection projects, the preservation of marine
biological resources, and joint efforts against contraband goods.

ROSSIISKAYA GAZETA

CLAIMS OF PROGRESS ON PIRACY: The paper reported that Russia is
clamping down on the pirating of intellectual property, one of the
major impediments to its entry into the World Trade Organization.

“America refuses to also recognize the positive changes in our
country,” the paper said.

MOSKOVSKAYA PRAVDA

INSIDE THE KREMLIN: A new television film, to be shown on May 10,
explores the mysteries of the Kremlin, showing chambers that, the
article says, some politicians do not have access to. The film is
named after the garden just outside the Kremlin, Alexander Garden.