Author: Tumanian Talar

Azeri MPs urge foreign colleagues to condemn Karabakh polls

Trend news agency
22 Jun 04

Baku, 22 June, Trend correspondents X. Azizov and E. Huseynov:
The Azerbaijani Milli Maclis [parliament] adopted an appeal to the
parliaments of the world and international organizations on 22 June
in connection with the 9 August municipal elections in the occupied
Nagornyy Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

The appeal decisively condemns plans to hold the elections, which
are gauged as a gross violation of Azerbaijani laws. The document
says that by taking these steps Armenia proves once again that it
has no intention of giving up on its aggressive policy and neglects
the norms of international law, the UN Security Council resolutions
[on Nagornyy Karabakh] and the principles of the OSCE’s Budapest,
Lisbon and Istanbul summits.

The Milli Maclis calls on the parliaments of the world and
international organizations to decisively condemn such steps and not
to recognize the results of the elections.

All the 96 MPs who attended the session voted for the appeal.

MONITORING OF MASS MEDIA: VIEW FROM ASIDE

Azat Artsakh – Republic of Nagorno Karabakh (NKR)
18 June 2004

With the assistance of the international organization “Article 19”
the Stepanakert Press Club organized training for the representatives
of the Stepanakert mass media. This is another event in the process
of democratization of the society. Training began on June 15. At the
training was present the representative of “Article 19”, coordinator
on South Caucasus Irina Smolina. The training was conducted by the
deputy chairman of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, expert of the
organization “Article 19” Alexey Koshel and the representative of the
Yerevan Press Club Elina Poghosbekian. Of the Artsakh mass media were
invited representatives of the republic newspaper “Azat Artsakh”,
Public Radio and TV, official organ of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation “Aparazh”, newspaper “Hayrenik” as, well as members of the
Press Club. The first day of the training was mainly devoted to the
experience of the mass media of conducting public opinion polls,
monitoring. In reference to this topic Alexey Koshel and Elina
Poghosbekian raised a number of acute problems which were actively
discussed by the participants of the training. At the end of the first
day the participants of the training were offered to take part in a
game and monitor Artsakh mass media. According to the experts, both
teams managed to keep up to the requirements of the game. The second
day was devoted to such important issues as the ethic, the moral code
of the journalist. Both chairperson-experts spoke on these topics. On
the same day due to the efforts of the organizers of the training the
meeting with the chairman of the NKR Central Election Committee Sergey
Davtian took place. The chairman of the CEC pointed out the role of
the mess media during elections. “Without the mass media elections
are impossible,” he said. S. Davtian spoke about certain drawbacks of
the law “On Elections to Municipalities”. Nevertheless, the CEC will
meet the requirement of providing equal rights and conditions for
all the candidates. During the second day the task of the activities
of lawyers and their services was discussed which is important for
maintaining trust between the mass media and the reader or viewer.

SUSANNA BALAYAN. 18-06-2004

Armenian political representatives from parliaments abroad meet in Yerevan

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
17 Jun 04

The Armenian MPs of 25 counties’ parliaments around the world and their
colleagues from other nationalities assembled in the Armenian capital
[on 17 June]. A session of the Armenian Assembly of [Deputy] Friendship
will be held for the first time in Armenia, on Friday [18 June].

President Robert Kocharyan received the MPs who had arrived from
abroad at his residence on Thursday [17 June]. He expressed the hope
that this event will continue.

We have gained a working experience with those countries where there
is an Armenian Diaspora and have many friends there. We are interested
in consolidation of friendly relations and will enrich them by various
means. The participants of the Yerevan assembly are sure, irrespective
of the results, that the assembly itself is a significant start for
Armenia-Diaspora political relations.

[Video showed the meeting.]

Europe Information Service
Euro-East
June 17, 2004

ARMENIAN DIPLOMATS ATTEND EURO-INTEGRATION INTERNSHIP IN LITHUANIA

Armenian diplomats attended an internship at the Lithuanian
Foreign Ministry from May 31 to June 11 to learn more about
European integration. According to the Ministry, they studied the
Lithuanian experience of preparations for EU membership, various
aspects of co-ordination of EU-related activities, and formation of
public opinion on Euro-integration, as well as attending a series
of meetings in the Lithuanian institutions and visiting the Vilnius
University’s International Relations and Political Science Institute.
The Ministry explained that representatives of the countries of
the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) would attend
various training activities on public administration in Lithuania in
2004-2005, in the framework of a programme to transfer Lithuania’s
Euro-integration experience to these countries. A similar internship
was held for Ukrainian officials in January.

Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for “war on terror”
By Barry Mason

World Socialist
June 17 2004

Christian Aid, the British development charity, recently issued a
report entitled “The Politics of Poverty Aid in the New Cold War.” It
states: “Aid is viewed increasingly as a means of promoting and
safeguarding the donors’ own interests, particularly their security,
rather than addressing the real needs of poor people. Aid, in other
words, is being co-opted to serve in the global ‘War on Terror.’ ”

The report points out: “Already some of the world’s poorest people
are paying for the War on Terror. Programmes designed to help them
have been cut, budgets reallocated and hopes dashed as donor
priorities have switched to addressing the needs of ‘global
security.’ ”

What is beginning to take place is the blurring between military aid
and development aid. This change in orientation is being actively
promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), which comprises the world’s leading industrial nations. Its
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has been reviewing aid policy.

In 2003, it published a paper, “A Development Cooperation Lens on
Terrorism Prevention.” In the paper it commented: “Development
cooperation does have an important role to play in helping to deprive
terrorists of popular support…and donors can reduce support for
terrorism by working towards preventing the conditions that give rise
to violent conflict in general and that convince disaffected groups
to embrace terrorism in particular…. [T]his may have implications
for priorities including budget allocations and levels and
definitions of ODA [Official Development Aid] eligibility criteria.”

Christian Aid explains that behind its opaque language, the OECD is
considering a “seismic shift in its policy.” Following the report, a
DAC workshop was held in Paris in February of this year. Among the
issues discussed was whether aid could be used for military training.
Whilst perhaps not financing armies directly, the workshop discussed
providing training to the trainers of security forces, training to
armed forces—such as helping militias being integrated into regular
forces—and training to the military in how to enforce peace-keeping
and planning missions. There is an ongoing debate over these issues
within the DAC.

In a similar development, European Union ministers meeting in March
of this year agreed that aid donations and trade concessions to
non-EU countries should be linked to security cooperation. Javier
Solana, the EU foreign affairs chief, described it as a “significant
step in the area of counter-terrorism and intelligence cooperation.”
The EU bloc is responsible for dispensing US$35 billion a year in aid
donation, of which US$7.9 billion is directly distributed by the
European Commission.

Currently, the EU has separate directorates with responsibility for
foreign policy and overseas aid. It is proposed that in future these
responsibilities will be merged in line with the politicisation of
aid.

Danida, the Danish development agency, has announced a switch in its
policy for the period 2004-2008, allocating money to the Middle East.
It will give US$49 million to an aid and reconstruction package for
Iraq, switching the money from grants to Africa.

Australia is using its official ODA money for various anti-terrorism
measures in Indonesia, the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia.
It will channel AU$120 million (US$83.5 million) of its ODA to Iraq.
The report points out that with an increase of only AU$79 million
(US$55 million) in its ODA budget compared to last year, this will
inevitably result in cuts to other areas.

For its part, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated:
“Since the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September
2001, there has been greater international awareness of the
possibility of poverty [zones] becoming hotbeds of terrorism and the
role of ODA is being reconsidered.”

At the end of 2002, Japan allocated ODA money to the Philippines,
including US$22.6 million to a governance-improvement programme for
the autonomous region of Mindanao in a “package for peace and
security” and nearly US$370 million for a “peace-building and
counter-terrorism programme.”

The report states: “Within the official 2004 ODA budget, the funds
allocated for peace building and conflict prevention have risen
dramatically from 12 billion yen to 16.5 billion yen. Meanwhile,
Japan has cut its total ODA budget from 857.8 billion yen in 2003 to
816.9 billion yen in 2004. Again, the implications are clear.
Targeting the poor is likely to take second place to security
interests.”

In Britain last year, the director of Christian Aid, Daleep Mukarji,
wrote on behalf of five leading aid agencies to Prime Minister Tony
Blair regarding funding commitments to Iraq from the government’s
Department for International Development (DFID). Blair replied that
“funds will not be redirected from other…programmes.”

But the Christian Aid report says that an internal DFID document
entitled “Resource Reallocation” was leaked last October that stated:
“The burden of financing Iraq will have to be borne by the
contingency reserves and reductions in middle-income country budgets.
These plans will mean that a number of our current programmes in
middle-income countries will close.”

DFID will need to find £267 million (US$489 million) over the next
two years from cutting projects to “middle-income” countries.
Projects to provide drinking water in Guyana and to give support to
indigenous Indians in Bolivia are amongst those to be cut, according
to the Christian Aid report.

The British Overseas NGOs for Development (BOND), an umbrella group
of British development charities, wrote in a report last year: “This
international focus on security and terrorism is having an impact on
development, not only by drawing political and media attention away
from development concerns, but by influencing aid allocations and the
nature of donor cooperation with developing countries.”

The New York-based think tank, the Centre for Defence Information
(CDI), noted how the United States has realigned its relationship
with countries that were previously ineligible for military aid but
are now seen as vital in the “War on Terror.” These include Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. CDI reports that the US has sold
US$1.2 billion of fighter jets and missiles to Oman and around US$400
million of missiles to Egypt. It is providing large shipments of
military aid to countries identified as fighting terrorist groups.
Indonesia is getting training from the Department of Defence’s new
Counter Terrorism Fellowship Programme. That country was previously
banned from receiving such training following its role in East Timor.

A stark example is the increase in ODA by the US government to
Pakistan following 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. From a figure of
less than US$100 million per year, it has risen to nearly US$800
million.

In the conclusion to the CDI report, it states: “Having a new
quasi-ideological theme to justify most security assistance is
extremely convenient for the Bush administration. Policy objectives
that could not have been pursued in the pre-September 11 security
environment can now be repackaged and sold as part of the
counter-terrorism effort. In addition, wrapping new security
assistance programs in a counter-terrorism cloak allows the
administration to provide support for repressive regimes and aid to
states verging on, or currently involved in, armed conflict.”

In the recommendations section of the report, Christian Aid states:
“We have shown that dark clouds are already gathering over the ideal
that aid should be exclusively directed towards these that need it
most…. World leaders must ensure that aid is not hijacked by the
imperatives of the War on Terror, as it was by the Cold War.”

The continuing intensification of the drive towards re-colonisation
by the imperialist powers is bringing out the true nature of
international relationships. Christian Aid’s report shows that the
aid programmes of the major powers are not isolated from this
development. In spite of the appeals by Christian Aid, this trend
will not be moderated but will intensify.

TV poll shows Azeris against Armenian officers’ presence in NATO conference

ANS TV, Baku
9 Jun 04

[Presenter] Armenian officers’ visit to Baku [to attend NATO exercises]
does not cause any problems on the state level. However, this is
not the case among the public. Our correspondent has come to this
conclusion after conducting an opinion poll among Baku residents.

[Correspondent, over video of central Baku] Armenian officers’ visit
to Baku is an insult to the spirit of thousands of our martyrs and
our national values. This is the position of the Union of National
Democratic Forces [UNDF] on Armenian officers’ intention to attend
a conference due in Baku within the framework of NATO’s Partnership
for Peace programme.

Today’s sitting of the UNDF discussed attempts of the Armenians to
come to Baku. They decided that this was inadmissible. According
to Elcin Mirzabayli, secretary of the United People’s Front Party,
which is a member of the UNDF, Armenian officers will not be allowed
to arrive in Baku until Azerbaijani lands are freed from occupation.

[Mirzabayli, in his office] Using all the rights granted by the
constitution, the UNDF will try to prevent this and will use all
possible means not to allow Armenian officers to visit Baku. We
think that our actions will be quite harsh. We think that it is very
difficult to curb emotions of Karabakh war veterans and refugees from
the occupied districts who are members of our party. It is difficult
for me to predict what these actions will cost the Armenians.

[Correspondent] Elcin Mirzabayli went on to say that leaders of
the UNDF member parties had instructed their party members to foil
the Armenians’ expected visit. Our party members will be posted at
different places of the city and will prevent the visit, end of quote.

An opinion poll that we have held among Baku residents has enabled
us to approximately clarify the position of ordinary people on the
issue. Almost all the city residents we polled said the same.

[Unidentified man in the street, captioned as a Baku resident] My
mother, sister and relatives are in Armenian captivity. They have
played thousand tricks on us and are mocking us.

[Second man] It is difficult to say if their visit to Baku is good
or bad. But I do not regard it as necessary at this stage.

[A woman] This is very bad. No, they should not be allowed to
come. No-one has the right to allow the enemy into our country. My
son was martyred. I will never accept this. I do not want this and
I do not support this.

[Third man] What does the word officer mean? An officer is an armed
person who kills another person, is he not? How can we then allow
them into the republic?

[Passage omitted: others repeat similar ideas]

[Correspondent, over video of Mammadov] MP Elman Mammadov [former
executive head of occupied Xocali District] also protested against
the Armenians’ visit to Baku. According to him, the mass media and
public figures foiled the previous attempts of enemy officers to visit
Baku. The MP thinks that the same should be done this time as well.

[Mammadov] I cannot understand how some people, people who describe
themselves as Azerbaijanis, can accept the fact that Armenians,
who have occupied over 20 per cent of our territories, made over a
million of our compatriots abandon their lands and shed the blood
of tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis, will arrive in Azerbaijan,
Baku. Do you know how they will come to Baku, Azerbaijan? They will
come to the capital of the country they have occupied as victors.
They will rejoice at this fact and will tell criminals like them
back home that they have been to the capital of the country whose
territory they occupied and enjoyed themselves.

[Correspondent] Thirteen days are left until the start of the
conference which Armenian officers want to attend.

Mahir Mammadli, Sehrac Azadoglu, ANS.

United Press International
June 6 2004

D-Day: A close-run thing
By Martin Walker
UPI Editor
Published 6/4/2004 5:41 PM

WASHINGTON, June 4 (UPI) — Sixty years on from that grim day in June,
time enough has passed to take the shock from the news that German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will attend the D-Day commemoration
ceremonies. And by saying that he is one of that very large number of
Germans today who say that D-Day also marked the beginning of their
liberation from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, Schroeder has added grace
to his presence.

It is also right that Russia’s Vladimir Putin will attend. They may
have been Soviets back then, but until D-Day, the Red Army took the
brunt of the war and the mass of casualties, and they tore the heart
out of Hitler’s Wehrmacht. They were comrades-in-arms, and with the
Cold War more than 10 years over, it is right that the Russians now
take their place on the Normandy beaches.

Perhaps Vladimir Kuchma of Ukraine should also be there. When the
British and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Gold and Juno beaches,
they encountered whole battalions of Ukrainian, Cossack and Tartar
troops in the 709th Division, recruited by the defecting Soviet Gen.
Andrei Vlasov from German prisoner-of-war camps. And after the
devastation of their country by the great famine that came with
Stalin’s collective farms, who can blame them?

Perhaps the Koreans might be there too, and the Georgians and
Armenians. Korean troops who had somehow been dragooned into the
Red Army, captured and then put into Wehrmacht uniform, were among
the prisoners the Americans took on the first day ashore. There
were Georgian and Armenian, not to mention Latvian, Lithuanian and
Estonian troops, all wearing the field gray of the Wehrmacht, having
laid aside the khaki and the red star of the Red Army.

Wars are like that, hauling in whole continents and peoples, and
subsuming millions of personal dramas and improbable fates into the
vast anonymity of armies. And there were Indian and South African and
Rhodesian and Australian and Polish and Czech troops and airmen and
sailors in the British forces, while the American melting pot meant
that the GIs probably comprised the most polyglot and cosmopolitan
force of all.

But the presence of all these lesser-known players in the great assault
on Hitler’s fortress Europe should serve to remind us of something
important. There were very few of Hitler’s best troops guarding the
Normandy beaches. There were whole units of the German army known as
“ulcer battalions” from the special diet required by these second-line
troops, and one of them was in the 243rd Division among the forces
guarding Omaha beach. But Allied intelligence had failed to record
the presence of one front-line German division at Omaha, the 352nd,
reinforced by elements of the 3rd Sturm-Flak Korps with 37mm and 88mm
anti-aircraft guns.

Hitler’s reserve of five panzer divisions, the armored fist of the
Wehrmacht, were concentrated nearly 200 miles north of Normandy in
the Pas de Calais, just across the most direct invasion route from
England. Hitler was convinced the main attack would come there, and
even after the D-Day landing he believed the Normandy invasion was
but a ruse.

Well, there was a ruse, but it was not Normandy. Called Operation
Fortitude, it was the presence of a handful of signalers with their
radio transmitters in southeast England, keeping up the constant
flow of radio traffic that signaled the presence of a vast force,
the nonexistent 7th Army Group. The trick — and it worked — was to
convince Hitler and his High Command that the aggressive American
General George Patton was preparing to invade near Calais. So that
was where the bulk of the German tanks and the best troops — 19
divisions in all — were kept fruitlessly waiting.

Only one panzer division, the 21st, stationed around Caen, was sent
into action against the beaches on the morning of D-Day. Two more,
the Panzer Lehr and the even bigger 12th SS Panzer (SS divisions
were almost twice as large and better equipped than standard Panzer
divisions), were ordered to mount a counterattack at 4 a.m. on D-Day
by Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, but Hitler’s HQ refused to confirm
the order while the Führer was sleeping. By the time they got underway
in the early afternoon, the overcast skies of the morning had given
way to clear weather and the British and U.S. fighter-bombers exacted
a high toll for all German road movements.

One other unit should have arrived to counterattack the Normandy
beachhead by June 10. This was the SS Das Reich Panzer division,
which had been refitting and resting near Toulouse in Southern France
after being nearly destroyed in the battle of Kursk on the Eastern
front the previous summer. Rested and reinforced, at full strength
and equipped with Panther and Tiger tanks, it was probably the most
powerful single armored unit in Western Europe.

Allied planners estimated it would take four days for Das Reich to
reach Normandy. But thanks to air attacks on bridges and railroads
and to some heroic actions by the French resistance in the Perigord
and Limousin regions, blowing bridges and mounting doomed but valiant
ambushes, and provoking the Germans into turning aside to commit
hideous atrocities against civilians, it took three weeks for the
division to come into action against the beachhead. (At the village
of Oradour-sur-Glane, over 400 civilians, mainly women and children,
were locked inside a church that was then set on fire by SS Das
Reich; this was supposedly a reprisal for the killing of a German
officer.) The official historian of Britain’s Special Operations
Executive, M.R.D. Foot, concluded that the delays in Das Reich reaching
Normandy may have saved the invasion.

D-Day, despite the ruse of Operation Fortitude, despite allied air
power and command of the sea, and despite the bravery of allied troops
(and the French Resistance), was a close-run thing. Had Hitler not
been fooled, and had the panzer divisions been in the right place,
the allies might well have been thrown back into the sea. Even when
established ashore, it took the allies almost six weeks to break out of
the beachhead and into France, so resourceful was the German defense.

By the time the allies finally broke out from Normandy in later July,
the cream of the German army in France and all available panzer
divisions had finally been committed to the battle. Their defeat was
total. The American breakout threatened to cut off the entire army,
as the British and Canadians and Polish troops advanced from Caen to
join up with the American pincer at Falaise. As the Germans fought
desperately to prevent the jaws from closing, the Falaise gap was
turned into a giant killing ground for the German troops trying to
escape encirclement.

Among those fleeing were the remnant of SS Das Reich. They had begun
on June 6 with 23,000 troops and nearly 500 armored vehicles. But
only 240 men and three tanks got out of the Falaise gap.

Report shows UkraineTs industrial growth fastest in CIS

Interfax
Jun 4 2004 1:59PM

MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax) – The CIS Statistics Committee reported on
Friday that Ukraine’s industrial output had grown at the fastest rate,
17.8%, among CIS member nations from January-April 2004.

In Georgia, the rate was 14.9%; in Moldova, 14.1%; in Belarus and
Kyrgyzstan, 11.3%; in Tajikistan, 11.2%; in Kazakhstan, 9.3%; in
Russia, 7.4%; in Armenia, 7.1%; in Azerbaijan, 3.8%. No data is
available on Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the committee reported.

The CIS industrial output growth averaged 9% and GDP increased by an
average of 8%, the report said. <>

PRIME MINISTER ANDRANIK MARGARIAN’S ADDRESS ON THE OCCASION OF FIRST
REPUBLIC DAY

ArmenPress
May 27 2004

YEREVAN, MAY 27, ARMENPRESS: Armenian prime minister Andranik Margarian
issued a message today to the nation on the occasion of the First
Republic Day, which runs below.

“Dear compatriots, I congratulate you on the occasion of the First
Republic Day. Due to the collective will of our nation and its
unbending spirit the centuries-long desire to restore Armenia’s
statehood came true On May 28, 1918.

In the row of our victories, celebrated in May, the heroic battles of
Sardarapat, Bash-Aparan and Karakilisa stand, in terms of implementing
the idea of independence by relying on our own strength after a
six-century long break that has become later a basis for new feats
of arms and new manifestations of Armenia’s freedom-loving spirit.

Though the First Republic did not live long, but its lessons-freedom,
independence, sovereignty and building a strong state, and which is
more important-to maintain it, have been passed from generation to
generation to have displayed itself anew in late 1980-s. The struggle
for the independence of Artsakh has reaffirmed our resolute to maintain
our historical achievements.

The 13-year long Third Armenian Republic is moving ahead today
resolutely, developing gradually its economy and consolidating its
sovereignty, reinforcing its role and place in global processes.

There is no alternative to independent Armenia, based on democratic
values and I believe that no force, no difficulty is able to impede
our march.

I once again congratulate you all on the occasion of this beautiful
festive day. I wish you all good health. strong belief, strength and
will to surmount difficulties. We have to be united and our historical
achievements will become the guarantee of our efforts for building
a strong and prospering homeland.

President to Grant Dual Citizenship to Georgians Living Abroad

Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 2004-05-26 13:25:33

President Saakashvili said on May 26 that he will issue a special
decree on granting dual citizenship to those Georgians, who currently
live abroad.

“Under the Constitution of Georgia, I have the right to grant dual
citizenship. So, each Georgian, who currently lives abroad, will have
a possibility to receive dual citizenship,” President Saakashvili
said at a military parade on May 26.

He said, the authorities should implement relevant measures to ensure
that Georgian emigres return to their native country.