American Chronicle, CA
April 29 2006

Irish Famine Education and the Holocaust ‘Straw Man’
James Mullin

April 28, 2006

When I first contacted Dr. Paul Winkler, Executive Director of the
New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, and asked him to
consider adding the study of the Great Irish Famine to the state
curriculum, he asked me if I was claiming Genocide. I said I wanted
the teachers and students to make up their own minds. He agreed with
that approach.

On Feb. 11th, 1996, a full seven months before New Jersey became the
first state to approve a curriculum on the Irish Famine, the Sunday
Telegraph of London published an article, `US Schools Say Irish
Famine was Genocide’.

As expected, the Telegraph article was filled with misrepresentation,
willful errors, and sentences like: `Hard-line Irish-American
Nationalists have been increasingly vocal in their demands that the
Famine be recognized as a Genocide’.

Still, it was surprising to read that, `the issue has divided the
Irish-American community, with some moderate groups concerned that
comparing the famine with the Nazi-inspired Holocaust will cause
offense to Jews.’ I had not made, nor had I heard of any such
comparisons; in addition, I had an excellent working relationship
with the Commission, some of whose members were death camp survivors.

The Holocaust comparison theme appeared again in an October 16th,
Sunday Times (Dublin) article, `American Pupils Told Irish Famine was
Act of British Genocide’. It said that, `British diplomats in America
are dismayed at the portrayal of the Irish famine as a genocide
comparable to the mass extermination of six million Jews by the
Nazis.’ Who was responsible for this `portrayal’?

Since I subscribed to the Irish People, Irish Voice, Irish Echo,
Irish Edition, and Irish Democrat, (London) and I had not read or
heard of anyone making any such comparisons, I concluded that the
analogy was a propaganda device called the `straw man’. Rather than
answer to credible evidence of genocidal acts during the mass
starvation, the British would argue that the `Famine’ was not a
genocide because it was not the Holocaust.

In October, 1996, New York Governor George Pataki signed an education
law mandating instruction on the mass starvation in Ireland. He was
attacked in a Sunday Times of London editorial entitled, `An Irish
Hell, but not a Holocaust’.

Here was the propaganda masterstroke full blown. The Times editorial
said, `It is true the British government does not come out
particularly well from the tale…but to compare, as Mr. Pataki has
done, its policy with that of Hitler toward the Jews is as
unhistorical as it is offensive. (Not least to the Jews, the tragedy
of whose Holocaust is necessarily lessened by comparison with an
Irish catastrophe that was neither premeditated nor man-made.) To
mistake these human errors and shortcomings for a Nazi-style policy
of deliberate racial extermination is absurd.’

So absurd that this `straw man’ argument could easily be knocked
over.

Governor Pataki had not mentioned the Holocaust in his speech on
signing the bill into law, nor had his subsequent press release. The
comparison was based on the simple fact that the newly signed Act
added the words, `the mass starvation in Ireland from 1845 to 1850′,
to state education law which mandated instruction on `human rights
issues, genocide, slavery and the Holocaust.’

British Ambassador John Kerr then carried the misrepresentation to
the highest diplomatic levels, by attacking Governor Pataki in a
letter he released to the press. It said: `It seems to me rather
insulting to the many millions who suffered and died in concentration
camps across Europe to imply that their man-made fate was in any way
analogous to the natural disaster in Ireland a century before. The
Famine, unlike the Holocaust, was not deliberate, not premeditated,
not man-made, not genocide.’ Who drew the analogy, and for what
purpose?

On March 10th, 1997, the Washington Times Magazine, Insight, carried
a full-page editorial, `You say Potato, They say Holocaust’,
illustrated with a photograph of a potato wrapped in barbed wire. It
attacked Governor Pataki and the whole idea of Irish famine
education. `The Holocaust was Hitler’s inhuman policy to eradicate
Jews in Germany and from his Thousand-Year Reich. To equate the
potato famine with that barbarism makes Pataki a contender for the
title of `The Greatest Liar in America.’ The British-fabricated
analogy was proving itself stronger than the truth, and it made
better copy.

On Aug. 26th, 1997, the Boston Globe opposed Irish Famine education
in a staff-written editorial entitled, `Unnecessary Curriculum Bill’.
`As the Tolman bill is now worded’, the Globe said, `teachers might
be encouraged to treat the Irish famine on the same level of moral
depravity as the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. That would be a
misreading of the historical record. While the British approach to
the mass starvation was often brutal, arrogant and unfeeling. No
state-run death camps disfigured the Irish countryside.’ Did
thousands of homeless, starving people, ruined hovels, and mass
graves `disfigure the countryside?’

The argument that classroom discussion of the mass starvation should
be discouraged because British criminality did not match the
barbarity of the Nazis during the Holocaust is a pervasive and
virulent virus imbedded in every dose of propaganda against Famine
education. The perpetrators hope to convince everyone that because
the Famine was not the Holocaust, it could not have been genocide.

Instead of the British being forced to explain massive commodity
exports during mass starvation, Irish Famine education activists were
left to defend a `Famine is Holocaust’ argument they never made.

On September 17th, 1997 the Washington Post published `Ireland’s
Famine Wasn’t Genocide’ It was written by Timothy W. Guinnane,
associate professor of economics at Yale University, and author of
The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in
Post-Famine Ireland. It said, in part:

`Several states have mandated that the Great Irish Famine of
1845-1850 be taught in their high schools as an example of genocide,
sometimes in courses originally intended for the study of the
Holocaust… The reinterpretation of the famine as genocide has not
been well received by scholars who study the Irish famine. Those who
view the famine as genocide claim either that the government
engineered the crisis or that its reaction to the blight promoted as
many deaths as possible. …But does the government’s inadequate
response to the famine constitute genocide? The contrast with the
Holocaust is instructive. The Nazis devoted considerable resources to
finding and murdering Jews. The regime’s stated intention was the
elimination of the Jewish people. Nothing like this can be claimed
against the British government during the Irish famine. The British
government’s indifference to the famine helped cause thousands of
needless deaths, but it was indifference nonetheless, and not an
active effort at systematic murder… To call the famine genocide
cheapens the memories of both the famine’s victims and the victims of
real genocides.’

While the Holocaust is the best documented, most systematic, ruthless
and brutal genocide of the 20th century, it is not the definition of
genocide. Since the United States and Britain are parties to the 1948
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
the definition that applies is contained in Article II:

`In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of
the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of
the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its phyisica1 destruction in whole or
in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group.’

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of
Illinois, with experience arguing on matters of genocide before the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, wrote to the New Jersey
Commission on Holocaust Education on May 2, 1996, saying, in part:

`Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government
pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy
in substantial part the national, ethnical, and racial group commonly
known as the Irish People.’

Professor Boyle’s legal opinion concludes that Britain’s actions
violated sections (a), (b), and (c) of Article II, and therefore
`constituted acts of genocide against the Irish People.’

On April 26th, 1849, one hundred years before the Genocide Convention
was signed, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon,
wrote to the Prime Minister, John Russell, expressing his feelings
about the lack of aid from Parliament:

`I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would
disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or
coldly persist in a policy of extermination.’

Clarendon’s words make it clear that Britain would also be guilty
under the definition of Genocide provided by Richard L. Rubenstein in
his book The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World: “A
government is as responsible for a genocidal policy when its
officials accept mass death as a necessary cost of implementing their
policies, as when they pursue genocide as an end in itself.”

Orange County Register, CA
April 29 2006

Foreign trade offices could make comeback

A Register investigation exposed how the offices inflated accounts of
their economic impact.

By BRIAN JOSEPH
The Orange County Register

SACRAMENTO – Three years after they were written out of the state
budget, foreign trade offices are back, with lawmakers and Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger working to revive the programs even though
they’ve never been able to prove their value.

The California Legislature in 2003 eliminated the Technology, Trade
and Commerce Agency and its 12 trade offices across the globe after
an Orange County Register investigation exposed how the offices
inflated accounts of their economic impact. The Register found
offices taking credit for any business deal in which they were even
remotely involved, resulting in at least $44.2 million in false or
overblown claims in one report alone.

Since then, legislators and private trade groups annually have tried
to resurrect the programs to no avail, but this year could be
different. Three bills in the Senate and another in the Assembly have
emerged from hearings this month with some momentum as legislators
from both parties are signaling renewed support for trade offices.

“This is a big push,” said Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian, R-Stockton,
who was carrying a bill for the governor that would have opened one
office in Mexico and two in Asia. It died in the Assembly Committee
on Jobs, Economic Development, and the Economy this week along with
three other trade office bills.

He is now co-authoring, with committee chair Juan Arambula, D-Fresno,
and several other Assembly members, a bill that wouldn’t directly
establish trade offices, but rather calls for the state to develop an
overall trade strategy, then determine whether trade offices could
play a role.

“The goal is to re-establish trade offices, but do it the right way
this time,” Aghazarian said.

Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on Arambula’s bill, but his
deputy assistant press secretary, Darrel Ng, said expanding trade
remains a priority for the governor and “He believes trade offices
are a component of that.”

In the Senate, the three bills there call for the private funding of
trade offices, with public disclosure of contributors on the Web and
a $10,000 limit per quarter. Like many lawmakers, Sen. Kevin Murray,
D-Los Angeles, who has two bills that would establish offices in
Seoul, Korea and Johannesburg, South Africa, views private funding as
a solution to the concerns about the previous programs.

“The problems we had previously had to do with cost effectiveness,”
he said. “This is not an issue because we’re not using state funds.”

Trade experts, however, see potential problems with privately funded
offices carrying California’s stamp of approval. With someone else
controlling the purse strings, they worry private contributors could
control offices bearing California’s name. Lawmakers counter a trade
office without the California seal would carry no weight with
potential business partners.

Said trade consultant Jock O’Connell: “If they’re producing a public
good, they should be publicly financed.”

O’Connell and other experts aren’t convinced trade offices produce
any public good. California exports increased by nearly $7 billion
last year, to $116.8 billion, the second-highest on record, according
to the Public Policy Institute of California. Howard Shatz, a
research fellow for the institute, said closing the offices has had
little impact.

“Somehow trade offices are viewed as being very important, but
there’s just not evidence that they are,” he said, noting academic
research is inconclusive on what trade offices accomplish. It appears
they don’t have much an economic impact, good or bad.

“The jury is out as to the value that these offices have,” said
Michael White, editor of the CalTrade Report, an online magazine
covering international trade as it relates to California. He said
lawmakers don’t understand the dynamics of international trade.

“They’re going to produce a mandate to reopen trade offices,” White
said, “and they’ll think they’re accomplishing something.”

What the Legislature should do, experts say, is create an
international trade agency in California that would coordinate all of
the state’s programs. Otherwise, the trade offices are on their own,
without direct oversight or leadership. O’Connell said Arambula’s
bill, which first examines the state’s role in international trade,
then considers trade offices, is a “big” step in the right direction.

Experts are also concerned the Legislature hasn’t solved all of the
problems under the previous program. Before they were shut down,
trade offices were broadly taking credit for any deal in which they
were even remotely involved under criteria that “but for” the
involvement of the trade office, the deal would not have taken place.

“Has the ‘but for’ problem been solved yet?” Shatz asked. “If we’re
not solving that up front, we’re probably setting ourselves up for a
repeat.”

Other questions remain. When the trade offices were eliminated in
2003, the Legislature reserved the power to establish a privately
funded office in Armenia as part of a political move by a lawmaker
facing re-election in a district with a large Armenian population. It
took from 2002 to 2005 to collect the necessary funds and it won’t be
until 2007 when the Legislature receives a report on the success of
the Armenian office and its oversight.

There’s also the question of whether the Legislature is duplicating
efforts by Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who, in his role as chairman of
the California Commission for Economic Development, has established
nine unofficial trade offices, in places like Mexico City and Taipei.

These offices, which are financed and staffed by local organizations
under an agreement with the lieutenant governor, were some of the
first efforts to fund trade offices with private dollars.

THE DEBATE

Proponents want to start state-backed trade offices that are
privately funded, with full disclosure of funders on the Internet.

Opponents say it’s risky to put California’s stamp of approval on
something it does not control through funding.

Déjà vu

The state’s 12 foreign trade offices were eliminated in 2003, but
bills proceeding through the Legislature now could lead to new ones.

AB 2601: By Assemblyman Juan Arambula, D-Fresno, and several other
Assembly members of both parties. In the process of being amended.
Would require the Secretary of Business, Housing and Transportation
to study the state’s potential role in international trade then
develop an overall trade strategy, including, possibly, trade
offices.

SB 1513: By Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles. Would require the
Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing to study the
desirability of trade offices, then produce a strategy for the
Legislature if there is a need. Stipulates private funding for trade
offices, with donations limited to $10,000 per quarter. Requires
donations to be posted on the Web.

SB 1525: By Sen. Kevin Murray, R-Los Angeles. Would create a
privately funded trade office in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Donations limited to $10,000 per quarter. Donations posted on the
Web.

SB 1529: By Sen. Kevin Murray, R-Los Angeles. Would create a
privately funded trade office in Seoul, Korea. Donations limited to
$10,000 per quarter. Donations posted on the Web.

North Shore Sunday, MA
April 29 2006

The Turks talk back
By Barbara Taormina/ Staff Writer
Friday, April 28, 2006

When it comes to Armenia , Turkey has always told a different story.

Many Turks believe that the current push to have the world
recognize the Armenian genocide is an attempt to force Turkey to pay
reparations and to annex the eastern part of the country to
present-day Armenia.

According to Turkish literature, the estimate of 1.5 million
Armenian deaths is exaggerated. Instead the Turks claim 700,000
Armenians were killed or died of starvation and disease during World
War I in eastern Anatolia.

But Turkish histories also point out that more than 2 million
Turks and Muslims died during the same time frame. And they say many
were massacred by the Armenians, while others died during the war
fighting Armenians and Russians.

Demir Delen, a Turkish writer who now lives in Canada, has been
trying for years to counter the claim of an Armenian genocide.
According to Delen, Armenian revolutionaries joined forces with the
Russians in an attempt to take advantage of a chaotic political
situation during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

Delan says the attempt to relocate the Armenians was an attempt
to create some order and stability inside Turkey.

Like other Turks writing about the early 20th century history,
Delen claims many of the sources and documents supporting the claim
of an Armenian genocide are fake.

“Armenians, in their attempts to convince the world opinion about
the existence of a genocide perpetrated against them during the First
World War, resort to forgeries and falsifications,” he writes.

“It is ironic that Armenians accuse anyone who opposes their
allegations of a so-called genocide by exposing the historical facts,
as ‘rewriting history,'” says Delen. “Yet Armenians are rewriting
history more than 80 years later, in parliaments of western countries
and in the legislatures of several states and provinces in the U.S.
and Canada where they have a considerable population, by lobbying,
donating to election campaigns and influencing politicians.”

North Shore Sunday, MA
April 29 2006

See no evil

By Barbara Taormina/ Staff Writer
Friday, April 28, 2006 – Updated: 07:01 PM EST

People might not always know how to define genocide, but they know it
when they see it.

And yet, there have always been problems with the Armenian
genocide, a brutal stretch of early 20th century history during which
1.5 million Armenians were beaten, shot, hung and herded on long
death marches into the Syrian desert by a Turkish government bent on
seizing a strategic piece of land and creating a Pan-Turkish empire.

Armenian genocide

The Turks talk back

The Turks say it never happened. They admit the Armenians
suffered a huge death toll between 1915 and 1918, but they say the
deaths were due to a civil rebellion and the vast destruction left in
the wake of World War I. Despite the photographs, the news reports,
the eyewitness accounts and the stories of survivors, the Turks have
fought the charge of genocide since the United Nations accepted the
term and declared it an international crime in 1948.

Those denials were stepped up last week as Armenians the world
over held commemorative services to mark the 91st anniversary of the
genocide and to remember those who died and those who survived. And
in Massachusetts, people are watching the debate on the Armenian
genocide play out on a local, state and federal level.

Apo Torosyan, an Armenian artist and filmmaker who now lives in
Peabody, says Turkey has buried the truth of what happened to the
Armenians because they don’t want the national stigma.

“They are trying to cover up their shame,” says Torosyan, whose
grandparents died of starvation during the genocide. “I would be very
ashamed. This was a very systematic murder.”

Torosyan and others also feel the Turkish government is
determined not to acknowledge anything that could leave it open to a
flood of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in reparations.

And because Turkey now plays a strategic role in a turbulent part
of the world, few people, particularly those in the U.S. government,
want to rock the boat by demanding that Turkey accept responsibility.

Torosyan understands that politics have dictated how the story of
the Armenian genocide is being told. But like others, he believes
denial is the final act of any genocide. And like others he believes
the truth about Armenia and those who died will eventually be
acknowledged and accepted.

The politics of denial

As a kid, Mary Foley remembers people she didn’t know would
sometimes visit her home to talk with her parents.

“My mother used to tell me go into the bedroom and play,” recalls
Foley, the sister of former Peabody Mayor Peter Torigian

As she grew older, Foley realized the visitors were Armenian
immigrants looking for clues or scraps of information about people
who may have escaped Turkey and survived the genocide.

Foley’s father left Armenia for the United States in 1912, the
year before the killings and deportations started. Her mother, who
was a child at the time, lost her family and managed to survive with
the help of Turkish families who took in and hid Armenian orphans.

But those Turks who helped took a huge risk, says Foley. Homes
were searched and if any Armenians were found, the entire household
would be killed.

Years later, when she was 94 and suffering from Alzheimer’s
disease, Foley says her mother would sometimes call out in Armenian,
“They came, they came, they came.” The tears would roll down her
cheeks as she relived the terror of hiding from Turkish death squads.

“These aren’t stories that people can make up,” says Foley. “How
could the Turks deny these things happened?”

But Foley knows that politics have interfered with the way
history is being remembered and told. For years, American political
leaders have been walking a fine line between acknowledging the
suffering of the Armenians and placating the Turkish government by
going easy on the blame. It’s a difficult balancing act.

Just ask Deval Patrick, a Democratic candidate for governor, who
took a visible seat at an Armenian memorial service at the State
House last week. Patrick made sure he had time to attend after the
Boston Herald reported he had ties to lobbyist Bernie Robinson, whose
Washington-based firm, the Livingston Group, has been working for the
Republic of Turkey on its campaign to deny or downplay the Armenian
genocide.

According to the watchdog group Public Citizen, the Turks have paid
the Livingston Group more than $9 million to fight a congressional
amendment recognizing the Armenian genocide and to help steer $1
billion in U.S. aid to Turkey, even though American troops are barred
from using Turkish soil as a staging area for Iraq.

Patrick’s Democratic opponent Tom Reilly wasted no time racking
up a few political miles with the incident.

“Anyone who would try and undermine the history and the truth of
what happened to the Armenian population, I certainly would be
disappointed in that. I certainly would not want to have anything to
do with that,” Reilly said.

On a national level, the Armenian sidestepping has been
bi-partisan. Both presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush have
refused to sign on to the Armenian Genocide Resolution, which would
formally recognize the suffering of the Armenians.

“There are congressmen and senators who support the Armenian
people,” says Foley. “But on the whole, America likes to ignore it
because the Turks have been allies for many years.”

Not only did the United States have military bases in Turkey
during the Cold War, the country’s strategic location and its role as
a moderate Muslim country make it a critical ally to American
interests in the Middle East.

“It’s wrong, but no one want to make enemies of the Turks,” says
Foley.

And while the American stand against acknowledging the Armenian
genocide is difficult, Torosyan says it’s not only the national
response that Armenians find troubling.

Israel, which also depends on alliance with Turkey, has also
refused to formally recognize the genocide, says Torosyan.

The Israeli position has been that the question of the Armenians
should be left to the historians, not the politicians.

Spinning the story

Denying or rewriting history takes some effort, but it seems the
Turks are doing their best and succeeding, at least inside of Turkey.

“This history has been fabricated by the Turkish government,”
says Torosyan. “Their history has been written by the politicians,
not the historians. They are rewriting history to their own benefit,
not to the benefit of humanity.”

According to Torosyan, the Turkish government archives have been
purged and all documents that trace the official program of
deportation and killing are gone.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces in the middle are
missing,” says Torosyan. “There are a few pieces on the sides, but
that’s all that’s left.”

As for events that captured the world’s attention, the Turkish
government has done its best to spin them. For example, the Turks say
episodes during which Armenian professionals and intellectuals were
rounded up and killed were a necessary step to quell an internal
rebellion.

The Turks also brush off the post-war trials of those who led the
Armenian genocide. Although several key Turkish leaders were tried
and executed for their role in the Armenian genocide, the Turks now
say those trials were political showmanship, the result of political
infighting between the pre- and post-war government.

And the Turks don’t appear satisfied with rewriting just their
own history books.

Late last year, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, a
student and two teachers sued the Massachusetts Board of Education,
claiming it had censored history and interfered with the right of
speech. The state has curriculum guidelines for teaching students
about human rights and genocide. But it has refused to include in its
material links to Turkish government-sponsored Web sites that deny
the Armenian genocide.

According to Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil rights lawyer
representing the plaintiffs, the suit isn’t about being on one side
or the other – it’s about censorship. Silverglate says students
should be able to look at different historical sources and come to
their own conclusions about what happened to the Armenians.

Members of the state board of education have argued that the Web
sites in question are not academic sites.

Torosyan agrees and says those Web sites are just Turkish
propaganda. He believes the information that has survived speaks for
itself.

“Denials are denials,” he says. “You could never have a
curriculum that denies the Holocaust. People have a right to speak up
and not tell lies and not tell man-made history.”

But Torosyan, who is a member of the International Association of
Genocide Scholars, is also doing his part to contribute to the
history through his artwork and through two short films, “Discovering
My Father’s Village – Edinick” and “Witness,” both of which feature
survivors of the Armenian genocide and an analysis of events.

The Turkish government hasn’t taken kindly to those who buck
their trend of retelling the story. In recent years, there have been
several high-profile cases of writers and journalists who have been
imprisoned for publishing accounts of the Armenian genocide.

Torosyan, who had a display of his artwork at the annual memorial
service in Peabody for Holocaust survivors this week, explained the
cost of telling his stories to those who stopped by his exhibit.

“This,” he said as he pointed to copies of his films, “is why I
can never go back.”

Boston Herald report Kevin Rothstein contributed to this story.
E-Mail Barbara Taormina at [email protected].

Voice of America
April 29 2006

Bush and Aliyev Discuss Oil and Democracy
By Scott Stearns
Washington
28 April 2006

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev (left) with President Bush
President Bush welcomed the leader of Azerbaijan to the White House
for talks Friday about democratic reforms and energy supplies.

The former Soviet republic has substantial oil and natural gas
reserves that the Bush Administration sees as central to reducing
European dependence on Russian supplies. Azerbaijan has also been an
important Muslim ally in the fight against terrorism, with troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the nation also has human rights and governance issues, with the
U.S. State Department saying President Ilham Aliyev’s administration
engages in corruption, political repression, and mistreatment of
prisoners.

President Bush sought to address both sides of that relationship in
his Oval Office meeting with President Aliyev, thanking him for
supporting U.S. military operations while pushing for further
democratic reforms at home. “We talked about the need for the world
to see a modern Muslim country that is able to provide for its
citizens, that understands that democracy is the wave of the future,
and I appreciate your leadership, Mr. President,” he said.

President Aliyev has been waiting for this White House meeting since
his widely criticized 2003 election. He denies allegations of
corruption and vows to continue reforming Azerbaijani politics. “I
consider this instrumental in the future development of Azerbaijan as
a modern, secular, democratic country. We share the same values. We
are grateful for United States assistance in promotion of political
process, process of democratization of our society and very committed
to continue that cooperation in the future,” he said.

Energy was also on the agenda. A 17-hundred-kilometer long pipeline
from the Caspian Sea through Georgia and Turkey is expected to bring
millions of barrels of Azerbaijani crude oil to market when it comes
on line later this year.

President Bush says Azerbaijan has a very important role to play in
helping the world achieve energy security.

President Aliyev thanked the U.S. leader for his support. “We are
very grateful for the leadership of the United States in promotion of
the energy security issues in the region, in assisting us to create a
solid transportation infrastructure which will allow for the
development of full-scale Caspian oil and gas reserves and deliver
them to the international markets,” he said.

President Aliyev said the men also discussed the disputed region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been controlled for more than 10 years by
its majority ethnic-Armenian population.

Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS General Newswire
April 28, 2006 Friday 7:18 PM MSK

Karabakh will never be part of Azerbaijan – Armenian minister (Part 2)

STEPANAKERT April 28

Nagorno-Karabakh will never be a part of Azerbaijan, said Armenian
Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian.

“I don’t know what status the Nagorno-Karabakh republic will have,
but I know for sure what it will not be, namely, Nagorno-Karabakh
will never be within Azerbaijan. This is absolutely impossible,”
Oskanian said speaking at the Nagorno-Karabakh State University in
Stepanakert.

Oskanian is on a working visit to Stepanakert to hold consultations
with the leadership of the self-proclaimed republic.

“The wheel of history cannot be turned backwards, and all that
Azerbaijan is saying about granting Nagorno-Karabakh a highest
possible level of autonomy within its borders should not be taken
seriously,” he said.

The Armenian diplomatic corps sees its task in ensuring international
recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence, although this is
“quite a difficult problem,” Oskanian said.

The foreign minister also called the creation of a comprehensive
security system for the Armenian people an important component of
Armenia’s foreign policy. In this context, he particularly mentioned
strategic partnership with Russia, with which Armenia has a bilateral
agreement on mutual assistance in case of aggression against either
party.

Talking about possible compromises that Armenia could agree to in the
negotiations on settling the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh, Oskanian
said “no concessions can be made” as regards Nagorno-Karabakh’s
sovereignty, security, and permanent land communication with Armenia.

Armenia is open to discussing any other issues concerning the
consequences of the conflict on condition that Azerbaijan recognizes
the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s right to self-determination, Oskanian
said.

The only reason why Nagorno-Karabakh is not involved in the
negotiating process between Baku and Yerevan is Azerbaijan’s refusal
to maintain dialogue with Nagorno-Karabakh, the minister said.

Nagorno-Karabakh is formally a province of Azerbaijan populated
mostly by ethnic Armenians, control over which Baku lost in a bloody
conflict with Yerevan in the 1990s.

Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS General

Georgian authorities slam protest against Russian base’s withdrawal

TBILISI April 28

The people who joined this week’s picket protesting the withdrawal of
military hardware from Russia’s military base in Akhalkalaki are
representatives of “destructive forces”, the Georgian Foreign
Ministry said in a commentary on Friday.

“There are destructive forces in the region of Javakhetia that are
not interested in the area’s revival and are doing everything
possible to destabilize it,” the commentary said.

The authorities are building new roads and infrastructure in the
region, it reads. “This does not meet the interests of the forces
that staged a rally outside the Russian military base in
Akhalkalaki,” it reads.

“The situation in the country is under control. The Russian bases
will be withdrawn from Georgia as agreed,” the commentary reads.

Several dozen residents of the Akhalkalaki district blocked a local
motorway on Wednesday, preventing Russian trucks from leaving for
Armenia.

Akhalkalaki residents fear they will lose their jobs, because most of
them work at the base, Georgian Parliamentary Speaker Nino Burjanadze
said.

Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS General

Policemen killed in Moscow on duty to receive awards

MOSCOW April 28

Awards will be presented posthumously to the police officers who died
in Moscow on Friday while protecting an Armenian family.

“Senior officials of the Moscow central interior affairs department
said that the police officers who died heroically protecting an
Armenian family would receive awards,” Viktor Tsoi, Moscow mayor’s
spokesman, told Interfax.

“A woman who lives on Kirovogradskaya Street, 17/1 called the police
at 7:08 a.m. and said that she could hear somebody crying for help in
a neighboring apartment. Twenty-eight-year-old Senior Lieutenant
Andrei Ashurkov and 39-year-old police officer Sergei Rebrikov
arrived at the scene,” Tsoi said.

The burglars who were robbing the Armenian family’s apartment on the
ground floor saw a police car pulling up outside the building and
decided to stage an ambush, the press secretary said.

“The police officers were shot point blank by criminals wearing
masks, who fled immediately after the crime,” Tsoi said.

“None of the family members was injured,” he said.

National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: All Things Considered 9:00 PM EST
April 28, 2006 Friday

Georgia May Face Breakaway by Armenians

ANCHORS: MELISSA BLOCK
REPORTERS: IVAN WATSON

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

Relations between Russia and the small former Soviet Republic of
Georgia have been getting steadily worse. A revolution swept a
pro-Western government to power in Georgia two years ago. Recently,
Moscow agreed to withdraw a military base from a community in
southern Georgia. The U.S. has stepped in with aid money to prevent
ethnic passions from flaring in the area. NPR’s Ivan Watson traveled
to the mountains of southern Georgia and filed this report.

IVAN WATSON reporting:

When the snow melts in Alkhankalaki, it turns the road running
through the town’s main market into one long, muddy puddle. Russian
soldiers in green uniforms wander through the market alongside locals
who almost all speak Armenian. The street signs are written in
Armenian, too, along with Russian and Georgian, and Armenian dance
tunes blare from bootleg music shops.

(Soundbite of music)

WATSON: For a moment, it’s hard to tell what country you’re in.
That’s because most of the residents are ethnic Armenians who can’t
even speak the Republic’s official language, Georgian. Some of them,
like this schoolteacher named Ofelia Ambartonmien(ph), say they’re
suffering from an identity crisis.

Ms. OFELIA AMBARTONMIEN (Resident, Georgia): (Foreign language
spoken)

WATSON: Who are we, she asks. We were educated in Russian schools. We
are also ethnic Armenians. But we live in Georgia. It’s very
difficult, she adds, to understand what our identity is. To
complicate matters, the locals here often appear to have stronger
ties to Russia than to the Georgian government in Tbilisi. That’s
partly because the Russian military base on the edge of town is the
single largest employer in an otherwise impoverished region. And now
it’s due to be closed. Nearly everyone you talk to in Alkhankalaki
opposes that decision.

(Soundbite of men speaking foreign language)

WATSON: There’s no other work here aside from the Russian base,
complain these young, unemployed Armenian men, who spend their days
hanging out in a local gambling hall.

Mr. ARMEN POGASIEN(ph) (Resident, Georgia): (Foreign language spoken)

WATSON: The Russian soldiers are like peacekeepers. They protect us,
says 29- year-old Armen Pogasien. We don’t want a conflict with the
Georgians, he adds. Some here complain that the Georgian government
in Tbilisi discriminates against the Armenians here. Nonsense, says
Alexander Rundeli(ph), a Georgian political scientist.

Mr. ALEXANDER RUNDELI (Georgian political scientist): Armenian
minority is brainwashed quite seriously by, you know, Russians
standing there, you know, staying there as military base.

WATSON: But high unemployment and the presence of a disaffected
ethnic minority are dangerous ingredients in the Caucasus, which has
already had its share of separatist ethnic conflicts. Artur Shambert
Sumyan(ph) is an ethnic Armenian and a former adviser to the Georgian
president. He says dark forces are at work, promoting a separatist
movement among the Armenians here.

Mr. ARTUR SHAMBERT SUMYAN (Former advisor to president of Georgia):
(Through Translator) We need to be very careful right now. The
Russians will leave in 2008. Neighboring countries are trying to
create problems between Armenians and Georgians, and we have to make
sure that doesn’t happen.

WATSON: Tbilisi is already struggling with two separatist regions
which broke away from Georgia in the ’90s and are, to this day,
supported by Russia. The U.S. is keen to help the Georgian government
avoid making the same mistake with its ethnic Armenian minority. Matt
Bryza of the U.S. State Department says the U.S. is giving Tbilisi
aid money and advice to help boost the local economy after the
Russian military leaves.

Mr. MATTHEW J. BRYZA (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
European and Eurasian Affairs): Well, yeah, we’re watching it, we’re
concerned, but we’re also actively involved in trying to improve the
situation.

WATSON: U.S. aid money will help build a new highway through
Alkhankalaki, but the ethnic tensions have not gone away. Last month,
Georgian TV reported that the murder of an ethnic Armenian in another
town triggered a riot here, as several hundred Armenians stormed a
university and a courthouse. Artur Shamberg Sumyan, the former
adviser to the Georgian president, is calling for calm.

Mr. SUMYAN: (Foreign language spoken)

WATSON: He says the world’s oldest Christians are Georgians and
Armenians. If a fight breaks out between these two ancient peoples,
he adds, it will mean the death of Christianity in the Caucasus.

Ivan Watson, NPR News.

MILITARY BASE IN ARMENIA ALSO SEUCRES DEFENCE FROM UNAUTHORISED
SHOOTING OF IRANIAN ROCKETS FOR RUSSIA

Yerevan, April 29. ArmInfo. The Iranian nuclear program threatens
national security of Russia. Colonel Anatoliy Tsyganok, head of RF
Forecasting Center at the Institute of Political and Military
Analysis, said this at “Caucasus 2005” international conference in
Yerevan, today.

He emphasized that the destruction fire of the Iranian and Pakistani
rockets didn’t reach the South Federal region of Russia and Ural. He
believes that Russia should strengthens the air defense in South,
taking into account the “probable unauthorized shooting of the Iranian
rockets.” In this context, he emphasized the importance of the Russian
military base in Armenia, which is aimed to control mainly the
Armenian-Turkish border. “The Institute of the Political and Military
Analysis recommended RF Foreign Ministry to support economic sanctions
against Iran, we should express our solidarity with the international
community in aversion of spreading nuclear weapons,” Tsyganok said. He
added that Russia should change the foreign political vector in the
region of the Near East, making development of relations with Israel a
priority issue.

Tsyganok said in the interview to ArmInfo that the economic sanctions
against Iran envisage embargo on several goods, including high
technologies and high tech goods, as well as stopping Tehran-Paris and
Tehran-London flights. He added that after adoption of the sanctions
Iran may develop “Peaceful Atom” project independently. Besides, Iran
may join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.