Author: Vasilian Manouk

WORKING GROUP SET UP TO DRAW UP KARABAKH CONSTITUTION

Mediamax news agency
3 Jun 04

Yerevan, 3 June: The first sitting of the new composition of the
constitutional commission of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic (NKR)
was held in Stepanakert (Xankandi) today.

According to a Mediamax correspondent in Stepanakert, NKR President
Arkadiy Gukasyan told the sitting that “life dictates the urgent need
to adopt the NKR constitution”. According to Gukasyan, the adoption
of the constitution will become another important step in establishing
the NKR’s statehood.

Gukasyan said that the delay in the elaboration of the NKR constitution
could be explained by a number of objective domestic and foreign
policy reasons, including with regard to the settlement of the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict.

“We cannot wait forever until Azerbaijan deigns to start a direct
dialogue with Nagornyy Karabakh for a political settlement to the
problem. The NKR should develop in line with the norms of a modern
democratic society where the supremacy of the law is a must,”
Gukasyan said.

He said that there were all opportunities in the republic today to
prepare and adopt the NKR constitution.

At Gukasyan’s proposal, the sitting made a decision to establish
a working group to elaborate a draft NKR constitution. The NKR
presidential adviser for state and legal issues, Armen Zalinyan,
was appointed head of the group. He was instructed to submit a list
of the working group members to the constitutional commission for
consideration.

WHY SHOULD KOCHARIAN GO TO ISTANBUL?

AZG/am
2 June 04

Turkey’s Official Position and the Position of the Armenian Opposition
Inadvertently Coincide

The policy adopted by the official Ankara towards Yerevan is
anti-Armenian and hostile and it wasn’t changed since 1991. Perhaps,
the strategy of the anti-Armenian policy has changed. If before
1994 Turkey was obviously making military threats to Armenia it
has blocked, after the Karabagh war, feeling the uselessness of the
abovementioned strategy transferred the anti-Armenian struggle to
the sphere of propaganda. Turkey still keeps refusing to establish
diplomatic relations with Armenia, conditioning this with several
preconditions. Hence, on conditions of the current Armenian-Turkish
relations (read: absence of relations) RA President doesn’t find
it expedient to participate in NATO’s regular summit envisaged in
Istanbul on June 28-29.

Firstly, the press secretary of RA President, then RA Foreign Minister
Vartan Oskanian explained the decision of the president not to leave
for Istanbul: notwithstanding the numerous statements made by the
Armenian side to improve the relations with Turkey no positive results
are fixed. Particularly, Oskanian repeated that Yerevan is ready to
establish diplomatic relations with Ankara without any pre-condition.

Abdullah Gul, Turkish Prime and Foreign Minister, commenting on the
decision of the Armenian president on May 20 in Moscow, reminded,
“this is a NATO summit”. “Armenia has an office in Istanbul within
the framework of the Black Sea economic cooperation. Perhaps, Armenia
will close it?” Gul said.

In fact, the Turkish Foreign Minister tries to condition the current
Armenian- Turkish relations by the refusal of Kocharian to go to
Istanbul. On the other hand, Giul keeps reminding that the opening of
the Armenian-Turkish border is possible only in case Armenian forces
liberate “the occupied Azerbaijani territory.”

The Gumhuriet, one of the Turkish central newspapers reminds in one
of the articles of May 30 issue (“The Relations with Yerevan are
Stuck”) that “the process of naturalizing expected in Ankara â^À^Ó
Yerevan relations can’t begin, as Armenia takes no positives steps
in Nagorno Karabakh’s and Turkey’s issues. Ankara defines that on
current conditions the establishment of diplomatic relations and
opening of the borders will not be included in the agenda.”

The Gumhuriet also emphasizes that in Istanbul Turkey, Armenia and
Azerbaijan envisaged to discuss the issue of Nagorno Karabagh and the
suggestion of Baku to call off the Armenian forces (from the territory
of Azerbaijan: editor). “Thus, Kocharian makes us think that he is not
going to discuss the topic,” the newspaper writes. Whatever comments
are made, one thing is obvious. In the international practice, when
the two states have no diplomatic relations, according to the given
situation, one can participate on a lower level on one or more stages
in the arrangement taking place in the country with no relations.
Thus, the refusal of Kocharian to go to Istanbul is no queer phenomenon
for the diplomatic practice.

More likely, the queer is the coincidence of the official Turkish
and Armenian opposition’s (that of its part) positions.

If the Turkish officials and the Press use the refusal of Kocharian
to go to Istanbul for Ankara’s political agenda, as if Armenia is
unwilling and doesn’ t establish relations with Ankara, the Armenian
opposition uses this fact to remind of its existence to the home and
foreign political forces. What would be the achievement of Kocharian
if he went to Istanbul? We merely have to remember that since 1991
the visits of the Armenian high ranked officials to Istanbul or
Ankara didn’t yield anything. On the contrary, Turkey demands more
preconditions for the establishment of diplomatic relations with
Armenia.

By Tatoul Hakobian.

ARMENIA RECKONED AMONG AUTHORITARIAN STATES

A1 Plus | 21:45:54 | 25-05-2004 | Politics |

Azatutyun radio station reports Freedom House New-York-based
organization after conducting certain researches issued a list of
authoritarian countries and countries with dictatorship.

Armenia was placed among authoritarian states. Azerbaijan was among
the countries ruled by dictators. Georgia is included in the democratic
states’ list.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
May 21, 2004, Friday

Jobava jumps ahead

By Malcolm Pein

BAADUR JOBAVA, the Georgian Grandmaster whose fine win from round two
was given in Wednesday’s paper, carried on his winning ways and moved
to 3/3 at the fifth European Individual Championship organised by the
Turkish Chess Federation and the ECU at Antalya.

In round three Jobava overcame the dangerous Armenian GM Artashes
Minasian, a former winner of the New York Open. Jobava, 20, faces
another prodigy David Navara, 19, of the Czech Republic in round
four. These two are the only players on 3/3.

The favourite Vassily Ivanchuk is recovering from a disastrous start
and has won two straight games to reach 2/3. My thanks to Michael
Boyce for writing in and pointing out that Ivanchuk’s conqueror in
the first round Julian Radulski played a couple of similar games in
the recently concluded Bulgarian Championship.

The local boys Lenier Dominguez and Lazaro Bruzon continue to
dominate the Capablanca Memorial at Havana and have 8.5/10 and 8/10
respectively with a game to play. Bruzon is at his brutal best in
this strange game. Black is in desperate trouble after 7 Qb3! because
the follow-up g4-g5 wins the d5 pawn. The black bishop on g6 then
becomes a target for the white pawn advance and its absence proves
fatal as an exchange sacrifice creates a pawn wedge on f7 and total
white squared domination for the first player. The Bf8 never sees the
light of day. If 16Qg3+ 17.Nf2 and every black defensive try is met
by another sacrifice.

L.Bruzon – A.Ramirez

Capablanca Mem Havana (10)

Slav Defence

1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 e3 a6 5 Qc2 Bg4 6 f3 Bh5 7 Qb3! b5 8 cxd5
cxd5 9 g4! Bg6 10 g5 Nfd7 11 h4 h6 12 h5!! hxg5 13 hxg6 Rxh1 14 Qxd5
Qc7 15 gxf7+ Kd8 16 Nh3! Ra7 17 f4 Qc6 18 Nxg5 Qh6 19 Bd2 Qh4+ 20 Ke2
Kc8 21 Nxb5! Rh2+ 22 Kd3 axb5 23 Ne6 Rxd2+ 24 Kxd2 Qf2+ 25 Be2 Nb6 26
Rc1+ Nc4+ 27 Rxc4+! bxc4 28 Qc5+ Kb7 29 Nd8+ Ka8 30 Qd5+ Nc6 31 Qxc6+
Kb8 32 Qb6+ Ka8 33 Nc6 1-0

Ramirez ) p p k p

7 p o b o
f ‘ p p p p p p p
p c n n p p p n p b n d A g p p p p p

Bruzon

Final position after 33.Nc6

Cyprus, Armenian FMs discuss regional issues and bilateral relations

Cyprus News Agency
May 20 2004

Nicosia, May 20 (CNA) — The Cyprus problem, Cyprus’ accession to the
EU, the Cyprus – Armenia relations, the problems in the Caucasus region
and the issue of Nakorno Karabagh were on the agenda of discussions
here today between Cyprus Foreign Minister George Iacovou and his
Armenia’s counterpart Vartan Oskanian, who is paying a working visit
to Cyprus.

In his statements after the meeting Oskanian stressed the importance
of Cyprus’ accession to the EU for Armenia noting that “we see Cyprus
as a friendly country, as an insider in the EU and that we can rely
on its help to further advance our integration processes with European
structures and particularly with the EU”.

He also said that the reason of his visit to the island is “first of
all to advance and deepen our bilateral ties at all levels.”

Iacovou said “Armenia is a friendly country with very old ties with
Cyprus” and that their modern ties develop continuously at all levels
and mostly at the political level.

Security Forces Capture 105 Illegal Immigrants

Anadolu Agency
May 20 2004

EDIRNE – Security forces captured 105 illegal immigrants who were
trying to pass border in northwestern Edirne province in the last
two days.

A total of 26 Iraqis, 20 Bangladeshis, 14 Pakistanis, five Indians,
four Armenians, three Iranians, one Somalian and one South African,
who were trying to proceed to Greece illegally, were captured in Meric,
Ipsala and Uzunkopru towns of Edirne in the last two days.

Meanwhile, nine Somalians, six Nepalese, six Syrians, four Chinese,
three Georgians, one Algerian, one Iraqi and one Tunisian, who were
trying to enter Turkey illegally from Greece, were captured in Meric,
Ipsala and Uzunkopru towns of Edirne in the last two days.

Illegal immigrants will be deported after legal procedures.

Turkey is a route of illegal migration due to its geographical
location lying between Asia and Europe like a bridge with its rough
mountainous eastern and southeastern borders difficult to control.
Illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern, Asian and Far Eastern countries
generally use this route to sneak into European countries.

In the West, northwestern Edirne province and some other Aegean
provinces are routes for illegal immigrants to cross the border.
Particularly Meric River, a natural border between Turkey and Greece,
and Aegean provinces which are close to Greek Islands in the Aegean
Sea are used by illegal immigrants to go to European countries.

In recent years, there has been a considerable increase in the number
of illegal immigrants who were caught by the Turkish security forces
who stepped up security measures against illegal migration.

EU asked to help resolve territorial dispute in the Caucasus

EUbusiness, UK
May 18 2004

Azerbaijan asked the European Union on Tuesday to help find a
solution to its territorial dispute with Armenia which has eluded
other international mediators for a decade.

President Ilham Aliyev told reporters that “Azerbaijan is very strongly
interested that other important European organisations, first of all
the EU, take a more active stand” in helping to end the dispute over
the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Aliyev had earlier met Romano Prodi, the president of the EU
Commission, who said he was “worried” that there had been no moves
towards peace since the two former Soviet republics signed a ceasefire
to end a bloody war 10 years ago last week.

The five-year war claimed 35,000 lives and forced one million people
to flee their homes, according to independent estimates.

It also left the 4,400-square-kilometre (1,700-sq-mile) enclave —
about five percent of the area of Azerbaijan — in Armenian hands,
together with seven adjoining Azeri districts and a land corridor
to Armenia.

Both Aliyev and Prodi said that any initiative involving the EU
should complement and not replace the efforts of the Minsk Group,
a a 13-nation body set up to mediate and co-chaired by the United
States, Russia and France.

“The Minsk group has a mandate from the OSCE (the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe) and nobody is going to question
that mandate,” Aliyev said.

But, he said, “if we consider ourselves as a part of Europe… the
occupation of the territory of one country must be stopped.”

The newly enlarged EU has adopted what it calls a “neighborhood
policy” towards Azerbaidjan, Armenia and Georgia, the third former
Soviet republic in the Caucasus.

FINDING BEAUTY AMID THE WOUNDS OF WAR
by Jessica Slater, Special To The News

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
May 14, 2004 Friday Final Edition

“How did I become this sort of man?” asks the central character of
The Daydreaming Boy. Born in Armenia two years after the Ottoman
Turks inflicted genocide on his people in 1915, Vahe Tcheubjian was
sold to the Turks and then left at an orphanage in Lebanon. As an
adult living in Beirut in the 1960s with his wife, Juliana, he tries
to put the past behind him. The novel traces his unraveling
consciousness as the ghosts of his childhood come back to haunt him
with increasing intensity. It’s a stunning portrait of war’s bleak
inheritance. Despite the grueling subject matter, Micheline Aharonian
Marcom’s prose spans the full range of human emotion with
spellbinding and luminous beauty. The novel is broken into short
chapters that skip back and forth in time from Vahe’s married life in
Beirut in the ’60s to his childhood years in the early 1920s at the
Bird’s Nest orphanage and briefly forward to Beirut in 1986, after 11
summers of civil war. Marcom doesn’t provide page upon page of
historical detail about the Armenian genocide. Rather, she draws us
into the mind of a refugee, where memory, history, lies and
imagination chase one another’s tails for so long that they become
inseparable. The disjointed transitions can be confusing, but once
you enter the rhythm of the writing, the juxtapositions become as
telling as the events and recollections themselves. Through the
fractured lens of his consciousness, the answer to Vahe’s question
emerges: “The nows become jumbled, riff, they flow together as the
tributaries will flow into the sea and become one strain of water
indistinguishable from the other waters – because: all of it is me.”
Vahe’s relationships betray the extent of damage inflicted on him by
his experiences. Several characters figure prominently in his
thoughts: the specter of Vosto, a boy from the orphanage whose
arrival provides fresh prey for the boys who had been tormenting
Vahe, thus relieving his suffering but also compounding his guilt;
Vahe’s absent mother and his wife; Beatrice, a young Palestinian girl
who works as a domestic for Vahe’s neighbor in Beirut and for whom
Vahe develops an obsessive longing; and Jumba, a chimpanzee at the
local zoo, where he often walks, and who becomes a measuring stick
against which Vahe tries to fathom his own humanity. Vahe’s marriage
to Juliana is described as the result of “desperate convenience, a
coincidence of time and place and sentiment.” As the intensity of his
obsession with Beatrice increases, so does the loneliness within his
marriage: “Our marriage became a container that held the lonely like
a boy holds an empty soup cup and wants just a small amount, just the
littlest bit more of some fatty soup.” His relationships sink further
and further into the realm of fantasy, and the fantasies are often
disturbingly violent. He perceives himself as a beast, partly because
of his brutal desires but more deeply because of the inhumane
treatment he and his people have endured: “What distinguishes us from
the dark beast?” he asks, drawing parallels between the bars of
Jumba’s cage and the balcony railings that divide his own sight. This
obsession with violence and dehumanization makes hideous sense in the
context of genocide: The Armenian language, writes Marcom, “was
murdered in the summer 1915 when no word or sentence or lyric or ode
to man’s dignity or proclamation or newspaper article or pleading by
the Patriarch or pleading by the girl before the soldier violated or
letter or bill or identity card could say, say it so that it would be
heard, . . . their tongue could not alter the smallest breeze. . . .
It could not say (for pity’s sake, honor’s sake) to the Turkish
soldier gendarme kaimakam: Please, sir. I am a man.” One chapter
describes Vahe’s mother being raped by a Turkish soldier, whom Vahe
refers to as his father. Whether it’s the truth or Vahe’s conception
is uncertain. What matters is that it’s there in his mind, part of
the distillation of experience, history and imagination that has made
him who he is: “Perhaps all of the lies together will form some kind
of truth about the man, the orphan, the refugee. . . . My lies are my
history and they have altered with time. . . . Now I have no
assurance as to what happened or did not and it matters little.” The
Daydreaming Boy is dreamlike – surreal, disturbing and stunningly
beautiful by turn – but its final effect is one of awakening. As the
pieces of the puzzle fall together, the picture that emerges is not
just of one man but of the vast machine of conflict and war that has
made (or unmade) him. Marcom’s astonishing achievement is that this
novel contains enough sadness to crush all hope but enough startling
beauty and strength to ignite it all over again. INFOBOX The
Daydreaming Boy * By Micheline Aharonian Marcom, right. Riverhead
Books, 212 pages, $23.95 * Grade: A

NOTES:
Jessica Slater is technology editor at the Rocky Mountain News.

The Russia Journal

Gazprom CEO and Armenian President consider gas supplies

BUSINESS » :: May 14, 2004 Posted: 18:47 Moscow time (14:47 GMT)

MOSCOW – Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller and Armenian President Robert
Kocharian discussed the current situation with Russia’s gas supplies
to Armenia. According to the press service of Gazprom, the sides
discussed issues connected with the condition of the gas transportation
network in Armenia and neighboring transit states. Miller and
Kocharian considered activities of the joint Russian-Armenian company
ArmRosgazprom and some other issues of bilateral cooperation.

The Armenian energy sector almost completely depends on gas
imports. Gazprom resumed its supplies to Armenia in June 2003 and at
present is the only supplier. /RosBusinessConsulting/

Armenian and Azeri foreign ministers to meet in Strasbourg

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
11 May 04

Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan is leaving for Strasbourg on Wednesday
[12 May] to attend the 114th session of the Council of Europe [CE]
ministerial committee. Minister Oskanyan will deliver a speech in
Strasbourg on Armenia’s fulfilment of its commitments to the CE,
the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the country’s
current situation.

According to the preliminary accord Vardan Oskanyan will meet his
Azerbaijani counterpart (Elmar Mammadyarov) in the presence of the
OSCE Minsk Group’s co-chairmen.