Author: Zakarian Garnik

Lithuania can regain regional leadership – foreign minister

Veidas, Vilnius
18 Mar 04

Lithuania is capable of regaining its status as regional leader
despite its continuing domestic political problems, the Lithuanian
foreign minister, Antanas Valionis, has told the magazine
Veidas. Valionis said that Lithuania’s mission was to serve as a model
for other post-Soviet countries, and that it would be helping these
countries in the future. The following is an excerpt from an interview
with Valionis, conducted by Audrius Baciulis, entitled “We have to
prove first that our democracy is strong” and published on 18 March;
subheadings inserted editorially:

Lithuania’s political isolation continues

Lithuania has been living in mild isolation for some time
already. Leaders of neighbouring countries pass Lithuania and
agreements normally signed by the presidents are signed by foreign
ministers. Estonia is aiming at taking over the position of the
region’s front-runner. The magazine Veidas discussed with the foreign
minister, Antanas Valionis, whether it was possible to regain the lost
positions.

Question More than six months ago, there was talk that, after the
completion of the second round of NATO expansion, a summit of the
Vilnius Ten group of countries which are joining NATO or seek its
membership will be held in Lithuania. Is the summit still on the
agenda?

Valionis No, it isn’t. The initiative was suspended in spite of some
support we received from several countries. Unfortunately, bearing in
mind the current internal political situation, this is not
realistic. The initiative was taken over by Slovakia. The summit of
the Vilnius Ten and the leaders of several other countries will be
held in Bratislava on 19 March . The Lithuanian prime minister will go
to the summit.

Question Is this not an example of how the presidential scandal
impedes Lithuania’s foreign policy?

Valionis You see, it is difficult to present this as an example
because the whole initiative to organize a conference of the Vilnius
Ten was abandoned at the stage of discussions. This is not an
initiative which was fully agreed and then recalled.

However, it can be seen in that light as well. Until the impeachment
process has not been completed, we will be treated differently from
before.

Neighbours benefit from political turmoil

Question Perhaps this is why the Estonian foreign minister told his
Ukrainian counterpart, arrived in Estonia from Vilnius, that Estonia
would be Ukraine’s advocate in its aspirations to join the EU. If am
not mistaken, Lithuania was engaged in this for several years until
now.

Valionis The most important instrument in our foreign policy, the
heavy artillery of sorts, has not worked in Lithuania for some months
already. Thus, understandably, Lithuania’s possibilities decreased
accordingly. The fate of Ukraine is one of the most important European
geopolitical factors, and I think that Ukraine must become a member of
the European Union and NATO. Lithuania will be Ukraine’s advocate in
any case.

Question The former president, Valdas Adamkus, said that it was
possible to regain Lithuania’s leadership in the region if we try hard
enough.

Valionis It is certainly possible. And, undoubtedly, we shall have to
make efforts. First of all, we will have to prove to ourselves and to
our partners abroad that democracy in our country is strong enough and
capable of coping with such serious challenges as the presidential
scandal.

Our regional leadership will materialize through our strategic
partnership with Poland, and through our active policy on Kaliningrad
Region, and this will enhance our role in the European Union.

Question How long could this take?

Valionis It is difficult to say. The task of the Foreign Ministry is
to do everything in order to make this happen as soon as possible. It
should not take too long because we are showing initiative and we are
persistent.

Lithuania’s presence in Transcaucasus justified

Question In spite of all the scandals, Lithuania decided to open its
embassy in Georgia. Who needs that?

Valionis There are reasons for this. This is a matter of Lithuania’s
strategic decision. The Caucasus is a very sensitive and a very
important region and, until now, we did not have an embassy there. A
resident ambassador in Georgia can represent Lithuania in Armenia and
Azerbaijan.

What our partners in Europe and the United States have been saying is
true – Lithuania can be a good expert on former Soviet countries. The
contacts we have maintained until now have shown that we are capable
of carrying out this task successfully. This is consistent with
Lithuania’s interests because, apart from the EU market of 450m
people, we are also interested in the markets of Ukraine, Moldova,
Russia and the Transcaucasus countries. The more so that Lithuania has
long-standing cultural links with these countries.

Finally, having established strong democracy in this country (the test
of impeachment will prove this), we could be a model for the
Transcaucasus countries. We feel it is our moral duty to help them as
the European Union helped us some time ago.

Having liberated ourselves from the Soviet Union we all started on the
same level. But our actions, which were more efficient, helped us to
achieve such results that these countries look at Lithuania with
admiration. Therefore, our objective now is to help them by showing
how we did it.

Political crises last long

Question Do our diplomats explain to our partners abroad what is
currently going on in Lithuania and, most importantly, why this is
taking such a long time?

Valionis We can recall the Watergate scandal – the process until the
resignation of the US president, Richard Nixon, lasted for seven
months. The impeachment process against Bill Clinton also lasted for
several months. The drawback of democracy is that all procedures take
a long time. However, there is no other way out. Otherwise, Lithuania
could hardly be described as a democratic country.

Question Journalists of neighbouring Poland wonder what will happen if
Lithuania accedes to NATO and the European Union with a “lame-duck”
president.

Valionis Not only Polish journalists ask me this question. I do not
know either how the European Union and NATO would treat a president
who has been handed down a ruling by the Lithuanian Constitutional
Court.

Question However, a certain international isolation does exist. It
will be the prime minister and not the president who will go to the
ceremony of signing NATO entry documents.

Valionis There will be no signing of documents. The Seimas parliament
has ratified the North Atlantic Treaty and it will be deposited at the
US State Department on 29 March. From that moment, Lithuania will be a
member of NATO and the prime minister, Algirdas Brazauskas, will
attend the festive membership inauguration ceremony, which will bear a
symbolic rather than legal significance. Like hoisting the Lithuanian
flag at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on 2 April. Passage omitted

Agreement on EU constitution to be reached soon

Question What is the situation with regard to the EU constitution? As
of 1 May Lithuania will be an EU member, yet the internal rules
regulating the EU’s internal life still do not exist.

Valionis This only demonstrates the existence of internal democracy in
the European Union. This is not the first or the last case when EU
members failed to agree . This proves that there is no diktat in the
EU, and that each member state has its voice and its point of
view. Moreover, this demonstrates the importance of the search for
compromise in the EU.

I think that the matters related to the EU constitution will start
moving forward in the near future. In principle, all the issues have
been resolved, except the issue of defining the qualified majority
voting. Germany has tabled a new proposal which is similar to
Lithuania’s proposal and we discussed it at the conference of foreign
ministers in Naples. The proposal concerns linking the percentage of
votes given to countries and their population. It is beneficial to
Lithuania. The reaction of Spain is not known yet because of the
recent elections there after which a new government came to power ,
and it is not yet clear how France will react to the proposal. Poland
was a strong opponent of the new voting procedure as defined in the
draft EU constitution and it is still not known how it will react to
the new proposal.

In any event, this is a step towards a compromise. I think that the
agreement will be reached.

NATO security guarantees in real terms

Question And what about the split inside NATO that surfaced last year?
It has been patched up by smooth talk so far.

Valionis I would not say it was patched up by words. We must recall
the history of NATO – many things happened in the past. We must not
forget that some time ago NATO’s headquarters had to be moved from
France to Brussels. However, the willingness to talk and to reach
agreement prevailed. What is important for us is what is taking place
now. After Lithuania ratified the North Atlantic Treaty, political
security guarantees stipulated in its paragraph five will evidently
turn into defence guarantees in real terms.

Question Military bases were also mentioned.

Valionis The talks about military bases are some kind of
misunderstanding which stems from our mentality problems. We have been
saying “We and NATO”, as if some sort of a military base is moving
from NATO to Lithuania. NATO does not have military bases outside its
territory that would not be subject to the laws of the country on the
territory of which they are set up. Lithuania is NATO. If we are
talking about airspace policing, the aircraft will be deployed at
Lithuanian military bases. This must be understood. Therefore, talks
about amending some article in the constitution presumably to allow
NATO bases is some kind of misunderstanding.

Apart from this, there are no reasons to think that we live in a
conflict region. On the contrary, our NATO membership will further
increase stability in the region.

Russia does not pose military threat

Question Is it possible to live peacefully in Russia’s neighbourhood
when we see that not much democracy is left in that country?

Valionis We watch closely the processes in Russia because we cannot be
indifferent to them. We are prepared to cooperate and we have proved
this more than once, and the example of this can be the solution of
the Kaliningrad transit issue or discussing the issues of the transit
of goods and delivering supplies to Kaliningrad Region after we join
NATO.

Concerning the political situation in Russia, it is better to leave
this to political analysts to discuss. Ministers should be rather
careful about what they say. However, we do not see any signals
indicating a military threat. Passage omitted

As a member state of NATO and the European Union, we will feel more
secure and will be therefore able to be more open in cooperation with
Russia.

A1 Plus | 17:29:52 | 18-03-2004 | Politics |

PRESIDENT KOCHARYAN RESTORES JUSTICE

President Kocharyan introduced newly appointed Prosecutor General Aghvan
Hovsepyan to the office staff on Thursday.

Kocharyan said there is no need of special introducing as his nominee is
well-known in justice area: he worked at the post of Prosecutor General for
long years and has been dismissed not for mismanagement but because of
political situation in the country.

President said his move is motivated by desire to restore justice. “A real
professional, a strong and high-principled man”, Kocharyan said portraying
Hovsepyan. “I’ve known him since 1981, he has long worked in Nagorno
Karabakh”, Kocharyan added.

In his opinion, Prosecutor Office is increasingly loosing confidence and its
role as one of the most important institutions in the country.

In his words, the Prosecutor Office must be the key institution in combat
against corruption and other crimes. It should secure state property and
state interests.

“We expect more vigorous work from the new prosecutor”, Robert Kocharyan
said.

—

OSCE chairman optimistic about resolution of Georgia-Ajaria row

Arminfo
17 Mar 04

YEREVAN

Armenia hopes that relations between Georgia and Ajaria will improve,
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan told a news conference today
held jointly with the OSCE chairman-in-office and Bulgarian foreign
minister, Solomon Passi.

If the tension between Georgia and Ajaria aggravates, there is no
doubt that it will a have negative impact not only on Georgia but on
the whole region. “We hope that the negotiations which are now being
held will yield positive results, the situation will get better as
soon as possible and, therefore, we will be able to avoid additional
difficulties,” Oskanyan noted.

“For his part, Passi noted that he was “optimistic” and said that the
situation can be resolved peacefully and called on the sides to calm
down and start dialogue. “The escalation of tension can be avoided
through direct dialogue,” Passi said.

Armenian foreign minister off to Slovakia for EU conference

Arminfo
18 Mar 04

YEREVAN

A two-day international conference “Enlarged Europe – New Agenda”
opens in the Slovak capital, Bratislava today. Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan will attend the conference. The Foreign
Ministry told Arminfo agency that the Armenian minister plans to
address the conference.

[Passage omitted: countries participating in the conference cited]

Armed Turks infiltrate Georgia’s Armenian-populated region – agency

Arminfo
17 Mar 04

AKHALKALAKI

Armed citizens of Turkey constantly infiltrate Georgia’s Akhalkalaki
region without official permission, A-Info news agency reports.

According to the source, the Javakhk section of the Georgian-Turkish
border is virtually unprotected. The Armenian-populated village of
Kartsakh in the Akhalkalaki region is particularly vulnerable.

The infiltration of Turkish citizens into Akhalkalaki has become more
frequent since the Turkish side started supplying Georgian border
posts with electricity.

Armenian leader, OSCE head discuss Karabakh, Georgian crisis

Arminfo
17 Mar 04

YEREVAN

Armenian President Robert Kocharyan today met a delegation led by the
OSCE chairman-in-office, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passi.

The press service of the Armenian president reports that Robert
Kocharyan welcomed the OSCE chairman’s visit and said that such visits
were already becoming a tradition. The president said that the visit
will allow the sides to sum up all the directions of bilateral
cooperation.

Touching on the Karabakh conflict, the sides agreed that there was no
alternative to a negotiated settlement.

The sides also spoke about the recent developments in the
region. Speaking about the situation in Georgia, Kocharyan said
stability in Georgia was extremely important to Armenia and that
Yerevan was interested in the speediest solution to all problems.

The president praised effective cooperation between the Yerevan office
of the OSCE and pointed to joint work on an anti-corruption programme
and the Armenian electoral code.

Lunch with the FT: Play it again, Sam
By Paige Williams

FT
March 12, 2004 18:59

One of Samantha Power’s favourite lunch spots is a place off Harvard
Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Casablanca. Decorated with
20ft murals of the movie, Bogart and Bergman gaze with melancholy at
diners digging into their seared cod and mixed greens.

The theme has echoes of Hitler and of Hollywood, which resonate
because Power’s seminal writings on war and human rights have made her
a celebrity favoured by the American left.

Heads turn as she strides past Bogey and Bergman and slides into a
banquette. Power seems not to notice. She is so focused that I’m a
little surprised she has not come dressed like a distracted professor
(she lectures in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of
Government). She wears a stylish leather coat, black slacks and a
starched, striped muslin shirt with a silver and turquoise
necklace. Long and lean, she has intense blue eyes and voluminous
auburn hair. With a fedora she might look a little like Bergman, but
with freckles.

She is equally distinguished in accomplishment. Over-achievement is de
rigueur in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but rarely does it come so
globally at the age of 33. In her best-selling book of 2002, A Problem
from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Power chronicled the role
of the US in the history of genocide. The book criticises America’s
record of passivity in the face of international slaughter and has
become required reading for anyone hoping to strengthen US foreign
policy on human rights. Power pushes the issue as founding executive
director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard, where her
obsessive tendencies have not gone unnoticed. (When she was working on
the book she would crank the heat up to 80 deg F during the day so she
could stay warm while she worked late into the night.)

Yet lately, to her dismay, she has been at risk of being interpreted
as a bit more hawk than dove – of being appropriated to justify
President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. She cringes at the idea.

“But, wait – food,” Power says. “Let’s get that out of the way.”

She opens the menu. She is fond of the bluefish, but what she calls
the “chicken roll” suddenly looks good: grilled, lemon-marinated
chicken on a homemade pitta roll with feta. It comes with mixed greens
in lemon vinaigrette. The bluefish cake, on the other hand, is made
with shallots, creamy mustard and parsley.

“What do you think?” Power, ever the reporter, asks the server – who
says she would go for the bluefish, but it doesn’t come with mixed
greens.

Power orders the chicken and hands over the menu.

“No wait,” she says. “You know what? I’ll have the bluefish and the
mixed greens.” No appetiser? No wine?

“Diet Coke,” Power says, yawning. “Wine would put me right to sleep. I
was up until 3am.”

This makes her smile, almost shyly, and Power is not a shy woman. Upon
graduating from Yale University she went as a freelance reporter to
cover the war in Bosnia. When her articles for The Boston Globe and
The Washington Post failed to prompt a satisfactory US response, she
decided to obtain a law degree in the hope of answering a question:
why does the US consistently do so little to prevent genocide (Bosnia,
Iraq, Cambodia, the Holocaust, Armenia)? After graduating from Harvard
Law School she decided to answer the question and went into a mode
that friends describe as “all genocide, all the time”.

She spent six years researching and writing the book, which was
rejected by almost every leading publishing house in Manhattan, before
becoming the first acquisition of Basic Books editor Vanessa
Mobley. This publishing upstart pushed it into print and on to win
several of the biggest prizes in US literature, including the
Pulitzer.

As Power takes a fork to her mixed greens, she says she has just
agreed a new two-book deal with Mobley and Henry Holt and Company of
New York. One book involves the lessons of German philosopher Hannah
Arendt, the other the consequences of amnesia in US foreign
policy. Neither is likely to trigger the rightwing appropriation that
Power is experiencing with the genocide book, which will probably be a
relief.

“It causes me great discomfort when my book is read in its most narrow
sense, which is that, ‘The United States should intervene militarily
when it feels like it’,” she says. She puts down her fork. “I mean,
the book is the furthest thing from a plea for American military
intervention, and certainly for unilateral military intervention on a
whim or on a subjective set of excuses and justifications. It’s not
even about genocide. It’s about are we injecting concern for foreign
life, for human life, into our foreign policy as a matter of course
and not as a fluke matter of convergence with national interests? And
the answer remains no.” Up comes the fork again.

Power has a husky voice that every now and then reveals a flicker of
her native Dublin. She moved to the US when she was nine and credits
her mother and stepfather (her father died when she was very young)
with an intellectually supportive and stimulating childhood.

“My mother is epic,” she says. “She played at Wimbledon, she has a PhD
in biochemistry, she’s a kidney transplant doctor, and she’s hilarious
– she’s taking film classes and patching people up and running the New
York marathon. Epic, truly. And also a great friend.”

Power is hyper-articulate, and unhesitant in her delivery, which gives
me a chance to work on the grilled pear salad. She is also fiercely
accommodating of the tape recorder under her nose and doesn’t knock it
over once, even though she speaks with her hands: twisting and turning
as though wringing out a point, this one being that the US should have
intervened in Iraq not last year but in 1987-88, when Saddam Hussein’s
regime was exterminating an estimated 100,000 Kurds.

“I think the narrow read on my book is, ‘Intervene when there is
badness on the face of the earth, and if you can’t get (UN) Security
Council support, well, so what?’

“Having experienced a little of war in Bosnia, it is so awful that it
really is something one should employ as an absolute last resort, and
my criteria for military intervention – with a strong preference for
multilateral intervention – is an immediate threat of large-scale loss
of life. That’s a standard that would have been met in Iraq in 1988,
but wasn’t in 2003.”

The grilled bluefish came on hot oval plates with squiggled ribbons of
fried onion. “Oh, could we have some bread, too, please?” Power
asks. “Some of that good sesame bread? But wait, there was one other
point I wanted to make.

“The war in Iraq very plainly was not about Saddam’s genocide against
the Kurds and human rights. It was about a perception of Saddam as a
threat to very traditional American security interests. Now the
so-called [WMD] security threat has been exposed as exaggerated, at
best, and concocted, at worst, the only argument this administration
has left for having gone to war is the human
rights-democratisation-genocide argument. So they have an awful lot
invested in trying to make Iraq a more humane place.”

The fork comes up and starts taking apart the bluefish. The sesame
bread arrives, but Power ignores it. In fact, lunch seems incidental
to her.

“A paradox is that I would hope I was a poster child for the
integration of consideration of human rights into American foreign
policy, and for the recognition that American interests will best be
advanced if we do this,” she says.

Other than her close friend Doris Kearns Goodwin, the historian, Power
is the only person I’ve met who can speak at such length while barely
coming up for air.

She says it’s critical for the US to win back some credibility, “and
not be the bull in the china shop”.

“Can this administration restore America’s credibility?” I ask.

“No,” Power says. “I don’t think so.”

The dessert menu arrives, but she decides not to open it. She doesn’t
even care for a coffee. “We’re still going to have special interests
no matter who’s the president,” she says. “We’re still going to have a
reluctance to subject ourselves to international law that we feel
we’re above. The unfortunate part of the relationship about human
rights and security is that now we view the welfare of foreign
citizens as valuable and relevant only in so far as it advances our
security.”

Power is sliding out of the banquette and into her leather coat. She
has a student’s paper to read before their 2.30pm meeting, which was
two minutes ago.

Later, long after Casablanca has closed, I stop by the Nieman
Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and run into someone who says of
Power, “She’s brilliant, just brilliant. But it’s such a lost cause.”

“How’s that?” I ask.

“Surely she doesn’t think it will ever end: man’s inhumanity to man.”

Probably not. But unlike most of us, that is unlikely to stop Power
trying.

Casablanca, Cambridge, Massachusetts

1 x Diet Coke

1 x pear salad

1 x mixed greens

2 x bluefish

1 x sesame bread

2 x coffees

Total: $63.58

Azeris picket Armenian embassy in Moscow

ANS TV, Baku
13 Mar 04

[Presenter Leyla Hasanova] Representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora
living in the Russian capital today picketed the Armenian embassy in
Russia. The pickets demanded an end to Armenia’s aggressive policy and
the urgent withdrawal of its armed groups from the occupied
Azerbaijani territories. ANS Moscow bureau correspondent Vuqar Sukurov
has the details.

[Sukurov on the phone] Armenia has to pull out of Azerbaijan’s
occupied lands and end its aggressive policy against Azerbaijan. These
demands were voiced during a protest action outside the Armenian
embassy in Moscow today. This action was organized by the Movement for
Azerbaijan. Nearly 40 Azerbaijani intellectuals and businessmen living
in Russia took part in it. Addressing the pickets, the chairman of the
Movement for Azerbaijan, Ilqar Qasimov, read out a letter to Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan. The letter demands the fulfilment of UN
Security Council resolutions No 822, 850, 874 and 884, unconditional
withdrawal from the occupied territories, the recognition of
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and the payment of financial
compensation for damage inflicted on Azerbaijan. The text of the
letter was submitted to the Armenian embassy. No confrontation was
registered during the hourlong action.

Vuqar Sukurov for ANS, Moscow.

Azeris surprised at Kazakh minister’s letter on Armenian officer’s killing

ANS TV, Baku
13 Mar 04

Kazakh Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev has sent a letter of
support to his Armenian counterpart, Vardan Oskanyan. Tokayev assured
Oskanyan in his letter that Kazakhstan had taken the tragic news about
the murder of an Armenian officer [at a NATO course in Hungary] with
concern and pain. We condemn this inhumane and savage incident and
believe that such actions cannot be justified.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry is at least surprised at Astana’s
lopsided position on this dubious case which is being investigated.
This position is rather cold-blooded with regard to Armenian
atrocities on Azerbaijani territory and the Xocali genocide [massacre
of Azeris in Karabakh].

As for the Kazakh embassy in Azerbaijan, it has no details of Mr
Tokayev’s letter.