ArmenPress
Jan 24 2005

HEALTH MINISTRY LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO IMPORTED FOODSTUFF

YEREVAN, JANUARY 24, ARMENPRESS: Armenian health ministry has
ordered a thorough investigation to find out which of imported
foodstuff contain E 216 and E 217 food conservants (preservatives),
which are found harmful to people health. Chief sanitary doctor,
Vladimir Davidiants, said Friday “appropriate measures will follow”
after the investigation was over.
Russia has banned import of food which contains these conservants.
According to Russian Ria Novosti news agency, E 216 and E 217
conservants were found in imported candies, meat products, chocolate,
different pates, instant soups and others.
The European Union has imposed a temporary ban on use of such
concervants since January 1, 2005.

Tehran Times
Jan 25 2005

Iranian, Azeri presidents call for expansion of ties

Tehran Times Political Desk
TEHRAN — Immediately after the formal ceremony to welcome Azeri
President Ilham Aliyev to Tehran, Iranian president Mohammad Khatami
and his Azeri counterpart talked to reporters at a joint press
conference in which they called for the expansion of Tehran-Baku
relations.

President Khatami said that Iran is keen on the further development
of relations with the Azerbaijan Republic.

Responding to an Azeri reporter about what Iran will do to help
resolve the Karabakh crisis, President Khatami said that Iran is
among the few countries which supports Azerbaijani national
sovereignty and territorial integrity. “Iran believes that the
Karabakh crisis can be resolved with logic and understanding between
the two parties without resorting to force.”

“I believe that the Karabakh conflict will be resolved if the two
sides seriously decide to do so,” IRNA quoted President Khatami as
saying.

He said that Iran has friendly relations with both Azerbaijan and
Armenia and is ready to mediate between them to help resolve the
crisis and also hopes for an immediate settlement of the Karabakh
conflict.

Another Azeri reporter asked Khatami whether there is any similarity
between occupation of the Arab lands by the Zionist regime and
occupation of Karabakh by Armenia, the Iranian president said that
Iran condemns occupation with the use of force by any country.

“Still, there is a difference. I believe Israel has occupied the
entirety of Palestine and has also established an illegitimate
existence, but Armenia is a country itself. But at the same time,
occupation and seizure of even an inch of another country’s territory
should be condemned, and the international community should help end
that occupation,” President Khatami said.

President Aliyev told reporters that his visit to Iran is aimed at
developing relations in all fields including the economy.

He pointed to the accords President Khatami has signed during his
visit to Baku and said the Azerbaijan Republic calls for
implementation of these accords.

The Azeri president added that Tehran-Baku relations are developing
rapidly and political and economic cooperation is excellent.

“The exchange of visits by the presidents of both countries indicates
the great extent of relations that we both enjoy,” President Aliyev
said. MS/DJ

ArmenPress
Jan 24 2005

GEORGIAN AUTHORITIES PLAN MAJOR ROAD RECONSTRUCTION IN JAVAKHETI

AKHALKALAKI, JANUARY 24, ARMENPRESS: A senior official of the
Georgian Department of Roads was quoted by A-Info news agency as
saying that Samtskhe-Javakheti, the predominantly Armenian-populated
region of South Georgia, will see a number of road building projects
this year.
Giorgy Tsereteli, deputy head of the department, reconfirmed
during a Saturday meeting at the region’s governor’s office that the
Tbilisi-Tsalka-Akhalkalaki-Kartsakh road will be repaired on funds
expected from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a
US-government-funded organization.
Tsreteli said some $105 million are earmarked also for the repair
of another key road in the region stretching from Akhalkalaki to
Akhaltsikha.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Macedonian Press Agency

MONDAY, 24 JANUARY 2005

SAE PRESIDENT VISIT TO WASHINGTON

Washington, 24 January 2005 (14:39 UTC+2)

World SAE President Andrew A. Athens, attended the festivities for President
Bush’s inauguration in Washington and concluded a series of meetings dealing
with the U.S. position on Turkey and Cyprus, Omogeneia issues in Albania and
SAE’s medical program.

`It was a very productive visit, especially in planning Omogeneia actions on
Cyprus’, Mr. Athens stated. `At the meeting with the officers of the major
Cypriot organizations we decided to focus on a short-term, intensive effort
in anticipation of the October deadline Turkey is facing on the future of
its discussions with the European Union.’ The meeting was requested by PSEKA
President Phil Christopher and attended by Cyprus Federation of America
President Panicos Papanicolaou and former president Savvas Tsivicos; Greek
Ambassador George Savvaidis and Cypriot Ambassador Evripides Evriviadis.

In meetings with highly placed Congressmen and State Department officials,
Mr. Athens sought and received key U.S. backing in support of the
application of Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and Albania to be granted
Albanian citizenship. `Because Albania does not have clear laws regarding
citizenship, it has taken a long time to act on the application of his
Eminence’, Mr. Athens said.

At a dinner hosted by Mr. Athens and Mr. Andrew Manatos of the Coordinated
Effort of Hellenes, the Omogeneia honoured his Eminence Archbishop Demetrios
of America. Among about 50 invitees were Congressman Bilirakis and State
Department and National Security Council officials, including Undersecretary
Barbara Pope, and USAID Director Andrew Natsios.

During his visit to Washington, Mr. Athens also presented reports on the
Primary Health Care Initiative to USAID Director Natsios and Ambassador for
Humanitarian Assistance Tom Adams. The development agency supports SAE’s
health care program for Hellenes and recently utilized PHCI to upgrade
health care stations in Armenia and Georgia.

After the visit to Washington, Mr. Athens was scheduled to fly to
Thessaloniki to attend the commemoration of the Memorial Day honouring Greek
victims of the Holocaust.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EurasiaNet Organization
Jan 24 2005

PROMISES STILL POWER GEORGIA’S ELECTRICITY SYSTEM
Molly Corso 1/24/05
A EusrasiaNet Photo Essay

This New Year’s, the television was on at Imzari Chartishvili’s home
in the West Georgian village of Lesa. Although no one watched it most
of the time, its presence was a comfort. The broadcasts came as a
special holiday gift from the Georgian government: a 24-hour supply
of electricity.

After years of inadequate or non-existent maintenance following the
breakup of the Soviet Union, the problems of Georgia’s electricity
system are legion – and legendary. But with expectations of a cash
windfall from the current privatization campaign, the government is
promising that the situation might – after 13 years – finally change.

A December 23 statement by Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania set the tone.
In it, Zhvania pledged that $70 million out of an expected $200
million from state property sales would go to “securing electricity
supplies” by autumn 2005. Energy Minister Nika Gilauri later went one
step further and even named a concrete date: October 1, 2005.

But whether that amount will be enough to turn the lights on is open
to debate. Dana Kenney, senior energy advisor at the US Agency for
International Development’s Office of Energy and Environment in
Tbilisi, stated that the figures touted by the government will fall
far short of solving Georgia’s energy woes. Pervasive corruption and
problems with bill collection also plague the energy sector. Though
breaking the system up into separate generation, transmission and
distribution units helped curtail some of the corruption, Kenney
said, those problems still linger on. “Money has to flow through the
system,” she commented.

How the government plans to keep that money flowing, however, is
unknown. For now, in addition to the privatization revenue, emphasis
is being placed on outside assistance. At a June 2004 donors’
conference in Brussels, Georgia submitted requests for $82 million in
assistance for the energy sector, an amount second only to “budget
support,” the online news service Civil Georgia reported. The
government also expects to use funds from the US-run Millennium
Challenge Program for refurbishing small hydropower stations and
monies from the German bank KWF to revamp the regions’ electricity
supplies, Gilauri told a January 6 press conference, the Prime News
Agency reported. The exact amount of these funds has not been
disclosed.

A comprehensive government plan to revamp the energy system has also
been announced, but not made public. The Energy Ministry did not
respond to EurasiaNet requests for information on the plan in time
for this article.

Meanwhile, despite the government’s promises, public exasperation
with Georgia’s energy crisis shows no sign of abating. In December
2004, some 600 protestors in Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city,
took to the streets with placards bearing a simple message: “Give us
light.” They were joined by 200 demonstrators in the nearby town of
Zestafoni.

At the time, local officials appeared divided on how to respond to
the crisis. While Giga Shushania, deputy governor for Imereti
province, home to Kutaisi, took aim at power distributors for leaving
the city “blacked out for the past few months” and without adequate
drinking water, Deputy Governor Gia Tevdoradze took issue with
protestors, asking “You haven’t had electricity for 13 years [so] why
do you remember it?” the daily 24 Hours reported.

Georgia produces mainly hydropower, which provides enough energy for
the spring, summer and autumn when water levels are high. When water
levels fall in the winter, imports – from Russia, Armenia, Turkey and
Azerbaijan – cover the gap. Energy Efficiency Center Georgia, a
renewable energy consultancy sponsored by the European Union,
estimates that Georgia’s domestic oil, gas and coal supplies can
cover only 20 percent of annual demand.

These days, the degree of the problem is not always felt in Tbilisi,
where the situation has drastically improved over the past few years.
But the capital still feels the pain of aging transmission lines and
equipment. Periodic blackouts hit the capital in October, November
and December; largely the result of faulty transmission lines, in
addition to the general disrepair of the entire sector.

But while Tbilisi may go several days without reliable electricity,
several weeks or even months is more the norm in the regions, home to
approximately 68 percent of Georgia’s population of 4.7 million.

Bill payment is one frequent explanation cited by both the government
and energy sector experts for the electricity system’s woes.
According to statistics from the Energy Efficiency Center, roughly 60
percent of Tbilisi residents pay their electricity and gas bills. In
the regions, though, that number drops to around 30 percent.

“There is a difference between [electricity company] management in
Tbilisi and the rest of the country,” said George Abulashvili,
director of Energy Efficiency Center Georgia, “The customers in
Tbilisi are paying for the energy.”

But in the western province of Guria, home to Imzari Chartishvili,
paying or not paying electricity bills makes little difference. While
electricity company officials have announced that they will provide
electricity for a few hours per day only to account holders who have
paid their monthly bills (roughly nine lari, or about $5), recently,
even those residents who had paid their bills have still been left
sitting in the dark for days on end, villagers in Lesa say. What
power there is comes for a few hours at night only.

Ongoing corruption at each stage of the electricity system –
generation, transmission and distribution – plays a large role in
hampering bill payment, commented USAID’s Dana Kenney. “People don’t
want to pay because they don’t know where the money is going,” she
said.

So far, under Saakashvili’s relatively free-form anti-corruption
campaign, few details have been provided on how the government plans
to tackle that problem.

Meanwhile, outside interest in Georgia’s energy industry continues
apace. In December, plans were announced by Canargo Energy
Corporation, a Channel Islands-based oil and gas production company,
for a $57 million oil drilling project in the Samgori and Ninotsminda
fields. Georgia’s Vartsikhe Hydro Power Plant was recently sold
together with Chiaturmanganumi, a manganese mining enterprise, to the
Russian company EvrAz Holding and the Austrian-Georgian company
DCM-Ferro for $132 million. Talks have also reportedly started about
selling the country’s gas distribution stations, a heating plant and
a backline pipeline, to Russian energy giant Gazprom, according to
Rustavi-2 television – deals that would require amendments to
existing legislation.

But whether or not this show of investor interest will make a
difference for ordinary Georgians remains unknown. So far, the lack
of workable solutions has only slowed Georgia’s economic recovery
still further, observers say. The country’s per capita income and
economic growth rates lag far behind those of neighbors Armenia and
Azerbaijan.

“Energy is everything for our people . . .They can’t do anything
without energy,” said Manana Dadiani, head of the EEC’s Renewable
Energy Department. “Giving them energy gives them the possibility to
do something.”

Editor’s Note: Molly Corso is a freelance journalist and photographer
based in Georgia.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

UN on Holocaust: evil wins when the good are quiet

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Those who incite hatred and mass
murder are not always extremists but men of culture, Secretary-General
Kofi Annan told world leaders in opening the first-ever General
Assembly commemoration of the World War Two Holocaust.

The special memorial, at which survivors and the foreign ministers of
Israel, Germany, France, Argentina, Armenia, Canada and Luxembourg are
scheduled to speak, is a memorial to the 60th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi Germany death camp.

The session began with a minute of silent prayer.

“How could such evil happen in a cultured and highly sophisticated
nation-state in the heart of Europe whose artists and thinkers had
given the world so much,” Annan asked. “Truly is has been said: “All
that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.”

“The purveyors of hatred, were not always and may not be in the
future, only marginalized extremists,” he said.

Although the world rightly says “never again,” action is harder. Since
the Holocaust genocide has occurred in Cambodia, in Rwanda and the
former Yugoslavia, he said.

And at this moment, “terrible things are happening today in Darfur,
Sudan,” Annan said. He asked the Security Council to take action once
it received a report on Tuesday determining whether genocide has
occurred and identifying gross violations of human rights.

During World War Two, the word “concentration” camp was a euphuism for
exterminating an entire people, including Roma or Gypsies, Poles,
Soviet war prisoners, homosexuals and political opponents, Annan said.

A MILLION CHILDREN

But, he said the tragedy of the murder of 6 million Jews was unique,
with two-thirds of European Jews including 1.5 million children
murdered.

Jorge Semprun, a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp in
Germany, addresses the session as the representative of Spain’s
Foreign Ministry, as will Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, a survivor.

Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy secretary of states, is leading the
U.S. delegation. Italy sent its speaker of the senate and Russia,
whose troops freed Auschwitz at the end of the war in 1945, is
represented by its human rights commissioner.

The liberation of Auschwitz is to be observed this year as Holocaust
Memorial Day, with world leaders attending ceremonies in Poland on
Jan. 27.

The major powers knew of and discussed the Nazi mass murder of Jews
but did not take measures against it, such as bombing the railways
leading to the camps. Holocaust researchers have pressured the
Vatican to open its archives, hoping to learn whether such information
reached the pope from priests in the field.”

To accompany the assembly session, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan
Shalom opens an exhibit of photos and sketches from the Auschwitz
camp, called “The Depth of the Abyss”, including some 60 sketches by
Zinovii Tolkatchev, a private in the Soviet Red Army who drew them at
the time of the liberation of the Majdanek and Auschwitz camps.

They were donated to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance,
documentation, research center, by his daughter and son in Kiev, Anel
and Ilya Tolkatchev.

At a breakfast for survivors New York’s two U.S. senators, Hillary
Clinton and Charles Shumer attended, along with Henry Kissinger, a
former secretary of state and a German refugee.

Also at the event was Congressman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat
who was saved from death by Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who
rescued tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary. Wallenberg is the uncle
of Annan’s wife, Nane.

The meeting was requested by U.S. Ambassador John Danforth in a letter
on Dec. 9, and backed by Russia, the European Union, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand. Annan polled member states and 138 nations in the
191-member assembly agreed.

01/24/05 14:08 ET

UN asks if world can stop future genocide

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 (Reuters) – If the world had listened to the
horrors of the Nazi death camps, perhaps genocide in Cambodia, Bosnia
and Rwanda could have been prevented, speakers told the first-ever
U.N. General Assembly session on the Holocaust.

Both U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Nobel Laureate author Elie
Wiesel, a World War Two death camp survivor, questioned whether the
nations had the will to stop mass murder in the future.

“If the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia,
Bosnia and naturally Rwanda,” Wiesel said.

“We know that for the dead it is too late. For them, abandoned by God
and betrayed by humanity, victory did come much too late,” Wiesel
said. “But it is not too late for today’s children, ours and yours. It
is for their sake alone that we bear witness.”

Annan told the assembly that at this moment, “terrible things are
happening today in Darfur, Sudan.” He asked the U.N. Security Council
to take action once it received a new report determining whether
genocide had occurred in Darfur and identifying gross human rights
abuses.

The special session, at which survivors and the foreign ministers of
Germany, France, Argentina, Armenia, Canada and Luxembourg spoke, is a
memorial to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the
largest Nazi death camp.

The meeting was first called by the United States and backed by Annan,
who polled the 191-member assembly.

More than 150 nations agreed to the session, including Islamic
nations. But among Muslim nations, only Afghanistan and Jordan’s
U.N. ambassadors are scheduled to speak to the General Assembly, often
accused by Israel of being anti-Semitic.

BACH AND SCHILLER

The liberation of Auschwitz is to be observed this year as Holocaust
Memorial Day, with world leaders attending ceremonies in Poland on
Jan. 27, exactly 60 years after Soviet Red Army troops liberated the
camp.

Up to 1.5 million prisoners, most of them Jews, were killed in
Auschwitz alone, dying in gas chambers or of starvation and
disease. During the war, six million Jews overall were exterminated
and millions of others including Poles, homosexuals, Russians and
Gypsies were killed or used as slave labor, at several Nazi death
camps.

“How could intelligent, educated men, or simply law-abiding citizens,
ordinary men, fire machine guns at hundreds of children every day” and
read Schiller and listen to Bach in the evening,” Wiesel asked.

To warm applause, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called the
Holocaust “barbaric. “For my country it signifies the absolute moral
abomination, a denial of all things civilized without precedent or
parallel,” he said.

He assured Israel that it could “always rely” on support because “the
security of its citizens will forever remain nonnegotiable fixtures of
German foreign policy.”

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who lost most of his
extended family in the Holocaust, said if there was one thing the
world had learned, it is that nations “cannot close their eyes and sit
idly by in the face of genocide.”

“We know that there have been far too many occasions in the six
decades since the liberation of the concentration camps when the world
ignored inconvenient truths so that it would not have to act or acted
too late,” Wolfowitz said.

And Israel’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, warned that “the brutal
extermination of a people began not with guns or tanks but with words
systematically portraying the Jews and others as not legitimate,
something less than human.”

He said one would never know if the United Nations, born from the
ashes of World War Two and instrumental in the founding of the State
of Israel, could have prevented the Holocaust. But he said each
U.N. member state needed “to rededicate ourselves to ensuring that it
will never happen again.”

Wiesel also drew attention to the indifference of the West during the
war to accept more refugees, allow more Jews to go to Israel, or bomb
the railway lines to the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau camp site.

“In those times those who were there felt not only tortured, murdered
by the enemy but also by what we considered to be the silence and
indifference of the world,” Wiesel said. “Now, 60 years later, the
world at least tries to listen.”

French Foreign minister Michel Barnier acknowledged that German
occupiers were helped by the Vichy government in deporting Jews but
that others resisted.

“When the first signs of persecution of the Jews announcing the Shoah
occurred, how many stood up? How many spoke out?,” Barnier asked.

01/24/05 14:37 ET

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ArmenPress
Jan 24 2005

ARMENIAN PM TO ATTEND CEREMONY OF LIBERATION OF NAZI DEATH CAMP IN
POLAND

YEREVAN, JANUARY 24, ARMENPRESS: Armenian prime minister Andranik
Margarian and several other government officials are flying to Polish
Krakow to attend January 27 ceremonies there marking the 60-th
anniversary of liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet
troops near the town of Oswiecim.
The ceremonies will be attended by many heads of states and
governments. Armenian officials will meet also with members of the
Armenian community of Poland.
For the first time in its history, the United Nations on Monday
marks the liberation of Nazi death camps during World War II.
Foreign ministers of Israel, Germany, France, Argentina, Armenia,
Canada and Luxembourg, representing the European Union, are scheduled
to speak. Between 1 million and 1.5 million prisoners, most of them
Jews, were killed in Auschwitz alone, dying in gas chambers or of
starvation and disease. Six million Jews overall were exterminated in
Nazi death camps.
Some 600,000 citizens of Soviet Armenia, then a republic of less
than two million inhabitants, took part in the WW II . Only half of
them stayed alive.

Agency outlines prospects for Armenia in USA’s Middle East plans

Mediamax news agency, Yerevan
24 Jan 05

The Armenian news agency Mediamax has praised government’s decision to
send peacekeepers to Iraq as this move is in line with processes going
on in the Middle East. The USA will probably prefer Armenian President
Robert Kocharyan’s pragmatic policy to the opposition’s pro-Russian
orientation, it said. The following is an excerpt from report in
English by Armenian news agency Mediamax; subheadings as published:

On 18 January, with a difference in only several hours 46 Armenian
peacekeepers and Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan left for
the Middle East. The peacekeepers’ destination was Kuwait, and the
Armenian foreign minister’s – Egypt. Despite the fact that the visits
were not interrelated, this coincidence became very symbolic.

Non-combatant unit of the Armenian armed forces, which includes
sappers, medical officers and drivers, will stay in Kuwait for two
weeks. After it, they will leave for Iraq where they will serve as
part of multinational division under the Polish command.

Vardan Oskanyan arrived in the capital of Egypt to sign a memorandum
with the Arab League countries on granting Armenia with a status of a
special invitee to this organization. According to Oskanyan, “the
signing of this document is undoubtedly a historic event. I consider
that it opens the new page for the further development and
intensification of the Armenian-Arab relations”.

According to the official Egyptian news agency MENA, Arab League
Secretary-General Amr Musa has said at the meeting with Oskanyan that
Condoleezza Rice, designated US Secretary of State, used “new
language” when talking about the USA’s Middle East policy at last
week’s confirmation hearing in the Senate. “We hope that the new
language used by Rice will transform into new actions,” the
secretary-general of the Arab League countries said.

We would like to mention that it is hardly that the Armenian foreign
minister deliberately scheduled the terms of signing the memorandum
with the League so that it would coincide with the dispatch of the
Armenian peacekeepers to Iraq, thus softening the hypothetical
negative reaction of the Arab countries to the decision of official
Yerevan.

However, the symbolism does not become smaller from this. The
coincidence, which took place, was the vivid example of the fact that
Armenia can play certain role in the US project on the democratization
of the region, which is now more often called the Greater Middle East.

The first step

On 24 December 2004 the Armenian National Assembly ratified at the
closed meeting the memorandum on the dispatch of 46 Armenian medical
officers, drivers and sappers to Iraq. 91 deputies voted for and 23 –
against the ratification. In particular, the factions of Justice
opposition bloc and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Dashnaktsutyun Party, which makes part of the ruling coalition, voted
against the dispatch of Armenian humanitarian contingent to Iraq.

The dispatch of the peacekeepers to Iraq, being a purely foreign
policy event, has become a subject of internal political speculations
in the course of the several last months. By the highest standards,
nobody in Armenia wanted to risk the lives of its citizens in Iraq
reigned by chaos and uncertainty. The problem should be considered
exclusively in the context of political necessity. If the Armenian
authorities managed to advance serious reasons in defence of their
position, the opposition again demonstrated lack of principles and
absence of any ideological motivation.

Mediamax learned from the informed sources that the higher echelons of
the Armenian leadership gave a command to speak about the motives of
the dispatch of Armenian contingent to Iraq as rare as possible. It is
obvious that Armenia w ould never send its servicemen to Iraq but for
certain commitments before the USA. The main burden of “explanatory
work” fell on the shoulders of Armenian Defence Minister Serzh
Sarkisyan, who, to give him his due, managed to formulate the motives
of official Yerevan’s decision in accordance with the stylistics
commonly accepted in the Euro-Atlantic community.

Still in December the head of the Defence Ministry said that “Armenia
is obliged to dispatch a contingent to Iraq”. “If we bear losses in
case of the dispatch of our contingent to Iraq, they will be
considerably small than if we stay aside these processes,” Serzh
Sarkisyan said.

On 18 January, the day of the dispatch of the peacekeepers to Kuwait,
the defence minister said that “Armenia is being involved in a
process, which, despite the ambiguous perception on the part of the
international community, as well as by Armenian society, is one of the
most important components of building international security”. This
has become first such statement of Armenia, which was the only country
in the South Caucasus that did not support the USA’s war against Iraq.

As to the opposition, discussing the issue on the dispatch of the
peacekeepers to Iraq, it did not think about Armenia’s participation
or, vice versa, Armenia’s non-participation in the establishment of
stability in the Middle East at all, it was involved in achieving its
own aims. How, for example, can we explain the fact that last October
the secretary of the National Unity opposition faction, Aleksan
Karapetyan, spoke about the “unacceptability of the dispatch of
Armenian contingent to Iraq as it can turn into Armenians’ mass
emigration from the Arab countries” and on 25 December this faction
unanimously voted for the dispatch of the peacekeepers? It can be
explained, most likely, by the unwillingness to spoil the relations
with Washington and not by radical rethinking of its approaches to the
issues of providing regional security.

Yerevan’s Aykakan Zhamanak newspaper, which is one of the most radical
critics of the Armenian authorities, informed on 20 January about the
details of the meeting between the representatives of the Armenian
opposition and the delegation of advisers and assistants of the US
congressmen held in Yerevan in mid-January. According to the
newspaper, the leader of the National Unity Party, Artashes Gegamyan,
decided not put the Justice bloc in “inconvenient position” and told
the members of the US delegation that his opposition colleagues
abstained from voting on the issue of the dispatch of the peacekeepers
to Iraq.

Aykakan Zhamanak notes with indignation that the leader of the Justice
bloc, Stepan Demirchyan, who was Armenian President Robert Kocharyan’s
opponent at the second stage of the presidential elections of 2003,
kept silence and did not mention that he himself and his colleagues
did not abstain and voted against the dispatch of the peacekeepers to
Iraq.

Sometimes the Armenian opposition demonstrated elementary
unawareness. On 29 October, one of the leaders of the opposition
Republic Party, Albert Bazeyan, called to take into account the fact
that “Armenia is in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
and the forces of its member states are not present in Iraq”. The
Armenian defence minister’s answer was short: first, we are not the
first CSTO member state, the servicemen of which are taking part in
the operation on the stabilization of Iraq (the matter concerns CSTO
member state – Kazakhstan); second, “Armenia informed its allies in
CSTO of the intention to send a contingent to Iraq”.

It is natural that nobody has the right to condemn a political force
for its adherence to this or that position. However, in our case the
problem is that the opposition did not manage to bring even one
trustworthy argument in support of its thesis that the participation
of Armenian sappers and drivers in the restoration of Iraq would
negatively affect Armenia’s relations with the Arab world.

One of the Justice representatives and leader of the Democratic Party
of Armenia, Aram Sarkisyan, said in the interview published in Russian
Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 19 January: “A great number of Armenians have
been living on the territory of the Middle East countries for hundred
years after the genocide. The authorities of the Arab countries gave
them not only shelter but also an opportunity to develop their
individuality. That’s why, we find it wrongful to interfere in the
affairs of the Arab countries. We possess information that already
today a wave of anti-Armenian moods aroused in the Arab countries,
especially in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and the United Arab
Emirates. Moreover, we do not rule out dramatic consequences for our
country as well after the decision of the Armenian leadership.”

There is not a single concrete evidence of “a wave of anti-Armenian
moods in Arab countries”. In case of existence of such a “wave” Vardan
Oskanyan would hardly decide to visit Egypt, and Amr Musa, in his
turn, would not hurry with granting Armenia with a special status in
the Arab League countries.

We are not so naive to explain the Armenian authorities’ decision on
the dispatch of Armenian peacekeepers by a desire to make a real
contribution to the democratization of Iraq. The Armenian president’s
negative approach to the US incursion into Iraq is well
known. However, Kocharyan proved that he possessed the political
resource necessary for making unpopular decisions. Moreover, Armenia
is sending a contingent to Iraq at a time when other countries stop
taking part in the peacekeeping operation, and this fact will,
undoubtedly, bring additional dividends to him in his relations with
the West.

The Armenian opposition, vice versa, again demonstrated that it is not
only unable to set tasks and solve them but also has difficulties to
formulate its strivings. Voting against the dispatch of the contingent
to Iraq, the Justice bloc was guided by two main factors: the desire
to oppose everything suggested by the authorities and the desire “not
to anger” Russia. In any case, the same Albert Bazeyan openly stated
in October that Moscow “would not like” the decision of official
Yerevan, and in case of the dispatch of the Armenian contingent to
Iraq “Russia may apply certain sanctions in relation to Armenia”.

But two questions remained unanswered. First, why should Armenia
always do things which Russia likes? Second, why did Bazeyan think
that Moscow would not like Armenia’s decisions? The absence of answers
to these questions reveals the main problem of the Armenian opposition
Justice bloc – its leaders continue to mechanically defend Russian
interests even at a time when they are not asked. Not to mention that
the dispatch of the Armenian sappers and doctors to Iraq can hardly be
called an event, which touches upon Russia’s interests.

Long-term choice

The task of sending the peacekeepers to Iraq was solved by the
Armenian authorities quite successfully. At the same time, there are
serious reasons to doubt that official Yerevan has a formulated
strategy of relations with a huge region, which the Americans call the
Greater Middle East. Or, if we reformulate the question, will Armenia
recognize itself a constituent part of Greater Middle East? The only
official, who has stated Armenia’s belonging to the Greater Middle
East until now, is the Armenian ambassador to Washington, Arman
Kirakosyan. Speaking at the conference in Virginia University on 12
November, he said that “being a part of the Greater Middle East,
Armenia has been and is concerned about the situation in Iraq”.

Active talks on the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) started in
February 2004, when the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat
published a “leaked” US-compiled document. The original document was
meant to signal a new US plan for reform of the Middle East and some
other Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. A
number of non-Arab countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and
Turkey have been mentioned as candidates for the initiative. However,
speculation is growing that the US plan may also have an impact on
other Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Central
Asian countries of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan
and Tajikistan.

The essence of the GMEI was reflected in the speech by US President
George Bush in November 2003 before the most influential
neoconservative organization in Washington, the American Enterprise
Institute. In his speech, Bush spoke of a “freedom deficit” in the
Middle East.

“In many nations of the Middle East, democracy has not yet taken
root. And the questions arise: are the peoples of the Middle East
somehow beyond the reach of liberty? I, for one, do not believe it. I
believe every person has the ability and the right to be free,” the US
president said. If we take into account the fact that the idea of
spreading liberty was the key moment in the US president’s
inauguration speech last week, there must be no doubt that the
negative and in some cases openly hostile attitude of the Arab leaders
towards the GMEI will not make the US administration give up their
plans on the practical realization of the initiative.

Many people in our country may ask – what does Armenia have to do
here? The adherents of such an approach may say that Armenia should
work out tactics of behaviour in case of aggravation of situation
around Iran, its direct neighbour, and should stay aside from the
Greater Middle East. However, the case in point is that the GMEI
authors, as well as the experts, who carried out the “modernization”
of this initiative, have already included the South Caucasus and
Armenia into the wider Black Sea region, which they consider to be the
key for the successful realization of the GMEI.

Passage omitted: quote from article published in the Policy Review

The case in point is not whether Armenia believes in the possibility
of successful realization of the GMEI ideas or how much democratic the
USA’s intention to implant democracy is. The matter is that this
process exists, develops and, most likely, will be actively put into
life during George Bush’s second term whether Armenia wants it or
not. And here comes a situation, which contains big challenge for
Armenia – should it observe the situation from the outside or take
active participation in the process?

If we judge by the persistence and determination with which the
Armenian authorities solved the issue of the dispatch of the
peacekeepers to Iraq we can draw a conclusion that Yerevan realized
the necessity to assume a certain role. On the other hand, the
Armenian authorities like their Azerbaijani and Georgian counterparts
must consecutively work on themselves and one another for a long time
in order to solve the existing democratic and economic problems and
conflicts.

The mediations over these themes are much more important than the
hackneyed speculations whether the USA is going to “export” to Armenia
the “rose revolution” from Georgia or the “orange revolution” from
Ukraine. First, the comparison between the behaviour of the
authorities and the opposition on the Iraq proves that it is
advantageous for the West to deal with Kocharyan. Second, even if we
assume that the USA is really going to “export” a revolution to
Armenia, we must understand why they want to have more compliant
partners in Yerevan. Third, the Armenian leadership has to more
decisively establish order inside its own country, to more actively
get rid of corruption and other negative things hampering the normal
development of the country.

Still in June 2001, president Robert Kocharyan, meeting Belgian
senators in Brussels, said that “being at the junction of
civilizations, Armenia is the guard of European values”. It looks as
if it is high time for the “guard” to begin acting and prove its
readiness to defend these values in practice.

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER LEAVES FOR NEW YORK TO ATTEND UN SPECIAL
SESSION DEVOTED TO 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF RELEASE OF HOSTAGES FROM
CONCENTRATION CAMPS

YEREVAN, JANUARY 24. ARMINFO. Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan
Oskanyan has left for New York to participate in a special session of
the UN, today. The event is devoted to the 60th anniversary of release
of hostages from, concentration camps in the course of the World War
II.

Minister Oskanyan will also speak at the special session. Earlier, he
reported that the major topic of his speech would be prevention of
genocides through their recognition and condemnation. Foreign
Ministers of Germany, France, Argentina, Canada, Israel, Armenia and
Luxembourg will speak at the session. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
and Chairman of the 59th session of General Assembly Jean Ping will
open the session. The idea of the session was supported by 150 of 191
UN member-states. The initiators are Australia, Canada, Israel, New
Zealand, Russia, the USA and EU member-states.

Wednesday, talking to journalists, Kofi Annan told that the world
community must not allow repetition of the horrors at Nazis camps. The
estblishment of the UN was a direct result of the Holocaust, he said.

Executive for Human Rights in the Russia Federation Vladimir Lukin is
also expected to make a speech at the session. Photo-exhibitions
telling about the horrors suffered by the hostages of Osvencim and
Majdanek will be held at the foyer of UN headquarters.