TREND Information, Azerbaijan
May 6 2006

Goran Lenmarker: My report is representing facts

Source: Trend
Author: E.Huseynov

06.05.2006

Azerbaijan’s dynamical progressing can play a significant role in
various spheres, including conflicts resolution, reportedly said Goran
Lenmarker, PACE chairman’s special representative for Azeri-Armenian
conflict.

At his meeting with vice-speaker Bahar Muradova May 5 in Baku, Mr
Lenmarker highly appraised PACE’s and PA NATO’s attention to this
conflict resolution. Alongside, he assured Ms Muradova that his report
would met the reality.

In turn, Muradova said Azeri public hopes for OSCE in resolution of
the conflict.

Airbus fuselage believed found in Black Sea rescue operation
10:44 | 06/ 05/ 2006

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 6 2006

SOCHI, May 6 (RIA Novosti) – Rescuers said Saturday they thought they
had found the fuselage of an Armenian Airbus that crashed off Russia’s
Black Sea coast three days ago, killing all 113 people onboard.

“An object measuring 20m x 30m has been found in the search area,”
rescue worker Sergei Biryukov said, adding that the object had yet
to be identified, as it could be also a part of an undersea cliff.

Rescuers are continuing efforts to identify the object and would use
an Obzor-600 remotely controlled device to give a more precise visual
picture of the object Saturday, Biryukov said, adding that the device
could not be used to recover the object.

He said the sea floor was rugged, which complicated the efforts.

Earlier reports said the recovery operation involved more than 700
rescue workers, 40 boats, deep-sea vehicles, an amphibious aircraft
and a helicopter, an experimental Katran rescue boat and a new Kalmar
deep-sea search vehicle were also working at the scene to locate
parts of the wreckage and flight recorders, which are seen as the
key to explaining the cause of the tragedy.

Fifty-one bodies have been recovered at the site, and 42 of them have
been identified, the ministry said Friday.

The Airbus A-320 operated by Armenia’s Armavia was flying from the
Armenian capital, Yerevan, to Adler airport, which services the
popular Russian resort at Sochi, when it crashed six kilometers off
the Russian coast early Wednesday morning.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenia to begin second day of morning for plane crash victims

ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 6 2006

YEREVAN, May 6 (Itar-Tass) — Armenia is entering the second day of
morning for the victims of the May 3 Airbus-320 passenger plane crash.

Flags are flying at half-mast in the country and its diplomatic
missions abroad.

A religious service for the victims will be held at Yerevan’s main
cathedral on Saturday evening. The head of the Armenian Apostolic
Church, Catholicos Garegin II, will lead the service. Similar services
will be held in all foreign dioceses of the Armenian Church.

A fund raising campaign for the families of the crash victims is under
way. Armenian President Robert Kocharyan has donated his one-month
salary for the purpose, presidential press secretary Viktor Sogomonyan
told Itar-Tass.

The president receives about $700 a month. Donations by members of
the presidential administration will be transferred to a special
account opened at the Armenian Finance and Economy Ministry, he said.

On Friday, hundreds of people prayed for victims of the crash at
the Armenian church at Moscow’s Vagankovo cemetery. The head of
the Russian diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Bishop Ezras
(Nersisyan) led the service.

“People are carrying flowers and lighting candles near the list of
the crash victims,” a church source told Itar-Tass.

Prayers for the air crash victims will be said in all temples of the
Armenian Apostolic Church on May 5-6. There are about 50 Armenian
churches in Russia.

A commemoration service for the crash victims was also conducted
at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral as well as other Orthodox
cathedrals.

Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II presented condolences on
the death of the plane passengers and crewmembers.

The Russian Orthodox Church is praying for the dead and presenting
condolences to all residents of Armenia, especially to the friends
and families of the air crash victims, Alexy II said.

The patriarch will commemorate the crash victims during the May 6
service on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, a spokesman for the Moscow
Patriarchate, Vladimir Vigilyansky, told Itar-Tass.

Meanwhile, the search operation is continuing on the Black Sea where
an Armenian Airbus-320 passenger plane crashed on May 3.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived at the scene on Friday
evening.

So far 42 bodies of victims have been identified, an official at the
Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said.

“Forensic tests on the victims’ bodies are nearing completion,”
the prosecutor said, adding that samples had been obtained for DNA
analysis of body fragments.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said 53 bodies had been
recovered. The remains of 26 passengers were flown to Yerevan earlier
on Friday.

Investigators from the Prosecutor-General’s Office have questioned
air traffic controllers as witnesses in the case.

Sources at the Prosecutor-General’s Office said “the investigators
keep studying a large amount of retrieved documents, including
technical ones.”

“The available fragments of the plane are being examined in cooperation
with specialists. All information collected so far is being checked on,
verified and summarised. The crew’s verbal exchanges with the ground
services are being studied and witnesses questioned, including the
personnel of air traffic control services,” the sources said.

Earlier, Georgia handed over to Armenia important materials that
may help to investigate the A-320 airliner crash, an official at the
Armenian Embassy in Georgia told Itar-Tass.

Members of the investigating group were in Tbilisi for two days and
left Georgia on Friday.

On Thursday, the Georgian air traffic control service provided
investigators and reporters with the recording of the conversation
with the plane crew when the aircraft was in the area controlled by
Georgia and expressed readiness to cooperate with Russian and Armenian
specialists in the investigation.

The search operation involves 23 ships, two Ka-32 and Mi-8 helicopters,
the research ship “Katran”, which has an automatic bathyscaphe,
an underwater “Kalmar” device with a multi-ray sonar, and a Be-200
amphibious plane.

Up to 10 percent of the plane’s fragments have so far been raised from
the bottom of the Black Sea, the Emergencies Ministry’s Operations
Department Director Gennady Korotkin, who heads the department’s task
team now working in the area of the accident, said.

The recovery of the Airbus A-320 flight recorders is crucial for
finding out the cause of the crash. French specialists detected the
flight recorders emitting radio signals at a depth of 680 meters.

The Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia plunged into the
Black Sea as it was making a landing manoeuvre in the early hours of
May 3. The accident claimed the lives of 113 people.

Taipei Times, Taiwan
May 6 2006

Russia, Armenians mourn crash victims, raise bodies

AP , SOCHI, RUSSIA
Saturday, May 06, 2006,Page 6

Advertising Forty-one of the 53 bodies pulled from the Black Sea after
an Armenian airliner crash have been identified, Russian Transport
Minister Igor Levitin said yesterday, as Russia and Armenia observed
a day of mourning for the 113 victims of the disaster. A special
diving vehicle was sent to the site of the crash, about 6km off the
southern Russian resort of Sochi, to try to pinpoint the remains of
the plane’s fuselage on the sea floor.

Levitin said authorities were searching both in Russia and abroad
for equipment to raise the fuselage, where some bodies are thought
to be trapped.

“I want to say, for us the most important thing now is raising the
bodies, because we understand that for the victims’ relatives not
raising the bodies or fragments would be an even bigger tragedy,”
Levitin told reporters.

He had said on Thursday that searchers had located a large part of the
plane’s fuselage that was emitting a radio signal believed to be from
a flight recorder, and he later said a signal from the plane’s other
“black box” had been detected.

Russian Catholics Pray for Jetliner Victims

Zenit News Agency, Italy
May 6 2006

MOSCOW, MAY 5, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Catholics in Russia will unite
their prayers for the some 113 passengers of an Armenian jetliner
that crashed into the Black Sea.

Catholics will dedicate today and Sunday to pray for those who died
Wednesday when Armenian Airbus A-320 crashed near Sochi, Russia. The
majority of those on board were Armenians returning to their country,
or going to visit relatives.

Today has also been declared a joint day of mourning by Russia and
Armenia.

Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of the Archdiocese of the Mother of
God in Moscow, in statements to ZENIT, expressed his profound
sympathy for the Armenian and Russian community “over the death of
their loved ones.”

Armenian faithful hold an important place within the Christian
community of Russia, not only because of their number — around
54,000 — but because they have kept their own ancient liturgical
rite.

Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official
religion in the early fourth century.

The Catholic community and parishes of the Armenian Apostolic Church
worldwide will offer a Requiem Mass for the dead.

Peninsula On-line, Qatar
May 6 2006

Emir sends cable to Armenia
Web posted at: 5/6/2006 2:31:30
Source ::: QNA

Doha: The Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has sent a
cable of condolences to Armenian President Robert Kocharian on the
victims of the Armenian passenger plane which crashed yesterday. The
Heir Apparent H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has sent a similar
cable of condolences to the Armenian president on the victims of the
Armenian plane.

Russia, Armenia in mourning

Peninsula On-line, Qatar
May 6 2006

A young woman throws flowers into the sea during a mourning ceremony
for victims of the Airbus 320 plane crash in Adler near Russia’s
Black Sea city of Sochi.

SOCHI: As Armenia and Russia marked an official day of mourning
yesterday, grieving relatives cast flowers into the Black Sea at the
spot where an Armenian jet plunged into the waters, killing all 113
on board.

To the sound of mournful music and the boom of a fog horn, they
scattered carnations and roses over the waters six kilometres offshore
from the Russian resort of Sochi, where the Armenian Airbus A320
crashed on Wednesday.

A woman holding a photograph of two young newly-weds who died in the
crash fainted on the deck of the boat that took them to the site.
Several others also passed out.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin, who was in Sochi, said it was
essential to find the corpses of the many victims still lost in the
sea – more than half of the people on the plane. Only 50 bodies have
been recovered so far, according to the emergency situations ministry.

A first plane carrying 26 bodies arrived at the airport in the Armenian
capital, Yerevan, yesterday after an initial delay, apparently due to
a lack of coffins. “The victims’ bodies are unrecognisable, horribly
disfigured. A mother wouldn’t know her own son,” said one young man
who had returned from Sochi after failing to find his brother-in-law,
his eyes red from crying and fatigue.

Flags flew at half mast across Armenia, radio and television channels
played sad music and memorial services were held at churches across
the country.

Russian officials and members of the public also laid flowers at
the Armenian embassy in Moscow for the victims of the accident. The
crash has shocked the two countries, which have long had close ties.
Meanwhile dozens of vessels as well as helicopters continued efforts
to recover from the sea the victims’ corpses and the black box flight
recorders that might help establish why the plane crashed. Bad weather
is thought to be the cause of the crash, according to investigators.

Relatives face the grim task of identifying their dead loved ones
from photographs pinned on a hotel wall in Sochi, many of the bodies
battered and bloated from submersion in the water.

On board were 85 Armenian citizens, 26 Russians, one Georgian and
one Ukrainian, according to a list published at Yerevan airport.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Lafayette Online , PA
May 6 2006

Will you allow genocide?
By: Jillian Gaeta ’07
Issue date: 5/5/06 Section: Opinion

PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 1 Genocide in Darfur began in
2003, has claimed 400,000 lives and left 2.5 million displaced. The
Khartoum government of Sudan has armed Janjaweed militia to kill
people of non-Arab descent. The United States government has made
efforts to stop the genocide, but they are not enough. On April 30th,
myself, Sarah Belliotti, Gina Brewer, and Kevin Farrell went to a
rally in Washington D.C., along with thousands of other Americans to
show the government that we want stronger action taken for the people
of Darfur.

Throughout history, the U.S. has failed to stop genocide. We watched
as genocide occurred in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and during
WWII. Will the same happen for Darfur? The people in Sudan were
listening to the rally on their radios and waiting to hear our voices
speak up for them, hoping that Americans with the power to protect
them will do so. You may ask why should I care about the people of
Darfur who I share no connection to? The crowd at the rally was
comprised of many different people, Holocaust survivors, Bosnian
refugees, Sudanese refugees, and African Americans, However, most
people, like me, shared only one connection to the Sudanese people;
the bond of humanity.

When one race is degraded we are all degraded, when one culture is
lost a part of ours is lost, and when one part of humanity suffers,
we all suffer. Humanity connects us and because of this we are
responsible to act. The people of Darfur are waiting to hear our
voices and the Khartoum government is thriving off of our silence.
Save Darfur now and urge your congressional leaders and President
Bush to take stronger action for the people of Darfur.

For more information visit savedarfur.org or contact
[email protected].

Search operation continues at Airbus-320 crash scene in Sochi

ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 6 2006

06.05.2006, 02.04

MOSCOW, May 6 (Itar-Tass) — The search operation is continuing on
the Black Sea where an Armenian Airbus-320 passenger plane crashed
on May 3.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived at the scene on Friday
evening.

So far 42 bodies of victims have been identified, an official at the
Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said.

“Forensic tests on the victims’ bodies are nearing completion,”
the prosecutor said, adding that samples had been obtained for DNA
analysis of body fragments.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said 53 bodies had been
recovered. The remains of 26 passengers were flown to Yerevan earlier
on Friday.

Investigators from the Prosecutor-General’s Office have questioned
air traffic controllers as witnesses in the case.

Sources at the Prosecutor-General’s Office said “the investigators
keep studying a large amount of retrieved documents, including
technical ones.”

“The available fragments of the plane are being examined in cooperation
with specialists. All information collected so far is being checked on,
verified and summarised. The crew’s verbal exchanges with the ground
services are being studied and witnesses questioned, including the
personnel of air traffic control services,” the sources said.

Earlier, Georgia handed over to Armenia important materials that
may help to investigate the A-320 airliner crash, an official at the
Armenian Embassy in Georgia told Itar-Tass.

Members of the investigating group were in Tbilisi for two days and
left Georgia on Friday.

On Thursday, the Georgian air traffic control service provided
investigators and reporters with the recording of the conversation
with the plane crew when the aircraft was in the area controlled by
Georgia and expressed readiness to cooperate with Russian and Armenian
specialists in the investigation.

The search operation involves 23 ships, two Ka-32 and Mi-8 helicopters,
the research ship “Katran”, which has an automatic bathyscaphe,
an underwater “Kalmar” device with a multi-ray sonar, and a Be-200
amphibious plane.

The recovery of the Airbus A-320 flight recorders is crucial for
finding out the cause of the crash. French specialists detected the
flight recorders emitting radio signals at a depth of 680 meters.

The Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia plunged into the
Black Sea as it was making a landing manoeuvre in the early hours of
May 3. The accident claimed the lives of 113 people.

Religious services for the crash victims were held in Russian and
Armenian churches on Friday.

Aafathis News, Maldives
May 6 2006

The President extends condolences to the President of Armenia.
6/5/2006 | Aafathis

Thursday, May 4, 2006

The President has sent a message of condolences to the President of
Armenia, Mr. Robert Kocharyan, on receiving the news of the crash of
an Armenian jet into the Black Sea, resulting in the loss of life of
all on board.

The President extended heartfelt sympathy to President Kocharyan, the
Government and the brotherly people of Armenia, at this time of
national grief and mourning. He also conveyed sincere condolences to
the members of the bereaved families.

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