Azerbaijan: EU Keen To Get Involved In Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process
By Ahto Lobjakas

RFE/RL
May 18, 2004

On his first visit to Brussels, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
today visited European Union headquarters for talks with the
president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. Prodi took the
opportunity to underline the commission’s recent decision to include
the three South Caucasus countries in the EU’s European Neighborhood
Policy. However, Prodi also indicated the EU will be taking a closer
interest in resolving the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia
in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Brussels, 18 May 2004 (RFE/RL) — Being made a “new neighbor” by the
European Union involves both privileges and obligations.

The bloc holds out the offer of near-total economic integration and
political dialogue. In return, it asks for reforms and — above all —
stability and a readiness to peacefully defuse conflicts.

In the case of the South Caucasus, this is taking the EU into
uncharted waters. So far, the bloc has sat back and let Russia,
the United States, the United Nations, and the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) do the mediating in the
region’s so-called frozen conflicts. “Azerbaijan’s strategic policy
towards integration into European structures continues, and today’s
visit confirms that once again. We made that choice 10 years ago,
and Azerbaijan is moving very actively and quickly into the more
active integration with Europe” — President Aliyev

However, as today’s visit to Brussels by Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev indicated, the greater integration with the EU also means
greater EU involvement in trying to resolve the conflicts.

European Commission President Romano Prodi made clear today that
bilateral relations between the EU and Azerbaijan — as well as
Armenia — should be seen against the backdrop of the neighborhood
program. Prodi said that what he called the EU’s “ring of friends”
cannot tolerate conflicts.

Prodi said the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has gone on too long. He
strongly hinted that greater EU involvement may be needed.

“We’re worried that the [peace process] has stopped since 10
years. [There was] an armistice 10 years ago, [but] no peace. Clearly,
[EU nations] don’t want to interfere with the Minsk Group, but we’re
urging and pushing that the Minsk Group has some result. I expressed
my will to be at the disposal of the two nations in order to help the
Minsk Group [under the aegis of the OSCE] find a solution,” Prodi said.

Prodi said there is “urgency” felt within the EU for a solution,
and that the bloc could help “speed up the solution.”

However, he acknowledged that the EU “cannot make positive proposals
at this stage,” as it has not been asked to get involved. The EU,
Prodi said, has “complete respect” for the political autonomy of
Azerbaijan and Armenia.

After meeting Prodi, Aliyev welcomed the extension of the EU’s
neighborhood program to Azerbaijan and the rest of the Southern
Caucasus. He promised continued improvement through political, social,
and economic reforms, as well as closer political dialogue with the EU.

“Azerbaijan’s strategic policy towards integration into European
structures continues, and today’s visit confirms that once again. We
made that choice 10 years ago, and Azerbaijan is moving very actively
and quickly into the more active integration with Europe,” Aliyev said.

However, Aliyev stopped short of endorsing full EU involvement
alongside the Minsk Group, which is chaired by Russia, the United
States, and France.

He stressed that the Minsk Group will continue to retain the mandate
for mediation, adding he hopes it will become “more active.” Asked
by RFE/RL what precise role Azerbaijan would like the EU to play,
Aliyev said he had simply asked the EU to more actively support
international efforts.

“We already asked [the EU] and during today’s meeting once again,”
he said. “Of course, we all understand that [the] Minsk Group has a
mandate from the OSCE, and nobody is going to question that mandate,
and the Minsk Group is trying to do its best to find a peaceful
resolution. But at the same time, we think that European organizations,
[the] European Union, [the] Council of Europe, European public opinion
can also be involved in the process.”

Aliyev then added: “We do not mean that any country or institution
can be an alternative to the Minsk Group.”

Aliyev said Azerbaijan is seeking a peaceful resolution of the
conflict, but said such a resolution must be based on international
law.

“Of course, the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was
one of the topics of our discussions. Azerbaijan [intends] to continue
its policy to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. But at the same
time, this resolution must be based on the recognized principles
of international law. The territorial integrity and sovereignty of
Azerbaijan must be restored,” Aliyev said.

He added that the immediate withdrawal of Armenian troops from
Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories is “one of the major
conditions for finding a peaceful resolution.”

Aliyev said dialogue with Armenia is continuing, but warned that if
no concrete issues remain on the agenda, it is “not right to continue
[and] imitate negotiations.”

DEPT. OF STYLE
WORD PROBLEM
by Gary Bass

The New Yorker
Issue of May 3, 2004

Among the many peculiarities of the Times house style–such as the
tradition, in the Book Review, that the word “odyssey” refer only to
a journey that begins and ends in the same place –one of the more
nettlesome has been the long-standing practice that writers are not
supposed to call the Armenian genocide of 1915 a genocide. Reporters
at the paper have used considerable ingenuity to avoid the word
(“Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915,” “the tragedy”) and have
sometimes added evenhanded explanations that pleased many Turks but
drove Armenian readers to distraction: “Armenians say vast numbers
of their countrymen were massacred. The

The quirk was not strictly policed, and a small number of writers,
intentionally or otherwise, managed to get the phrase into the
paper. Ben Ratliff wrote, in 2001, that the Armenian-American metal
band System of a Down “wrote an enraged song about the Armenian
genocide of 1915.” Another writer who slipped it in was Bill Keller,
in a 1988 piece from Yerevan, during his time at the paper’s Moscow
bureau: “Like the Israelis, the Armenians are united by a vivid sense
of victimization, stemming from the 1915 Turkish massacre of 1.5
million Armenians. Armenians are brought up on this story of genocide.”

Keller, who became the paper’s executive editor last July, finally
changed the policy earlier this month. During a telephone conversation
the other day, he said that his reporting in Armenia and Azerbaijan
“made me wary of reciting the word ‘genocide’ as a casual accusation,
because in the various ethnic conflicts that
arose as the Soviet Union came apart everyone was screaming
genocide at everyone else.” He said, “You could portray a fair bit
of the horror of 1915 without using the word ‘genocide.’ It’s one
of those heavy-artillery words that can get diminished if you use
them too much.”

Most scholars use the United Nations definition of genocide, from the
1948 Genocide Convention: killing or harming people “with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group.” But, Keller says, “we were using a dictionary definition that
was the purist definition–to eliminate all of a race of people from
the face of the earth.” The Times’ position was based on the notion
that the systematic killing that began in 1915 applied mainly to
Armenians inside the Ottoman Empire.

Last July, the Boston Globe started using the term, which, Keller says,
“made me think, this seems like a relic we could dispense with.” In
January, the Times ran a story about the release in Turkey of “Ararat,”
Atom Egoyan’s 2002 movie about the events of 1915. The piece, which
referred to “widely differing” Turkish and Armenian positions,
prompted Peter Balakian, a professor of humanities at Colgate,
and Samantha Power, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book
“A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” to write a
stinging letter to the editor. Balakian also got in touch with Daniel
Okrent, the paper’s new public editor, asking if he and Power could
come in and talk to the Times about the genocide style problem.

Okrent found the issue “intellectually interesting and provocative
enough that I thought Keller and Siegal”–Allan M. Siegal, the
paper’s standards editor–“might be interested.” Balakian and Power,
joined by Robert Melson, a Holocaust survivor and Purdue professor,
met Keller in his office on March 16th. Before the meeting started,
Keller told the group that he was going to make the change. “A lot
of reputable scholarship has expanded that definition to include
a broader range of crimes,” Keller said later. “I don’t feel I’m
particularly qualified to judge exactly what a precise functional
definition of genocide is, but it seemed a no-brainer that killing
a million people because they were Armenians fit the definition.”

Siegal drew up new guidelines. “It was a nerdy decision on the merits,”
he said. Writers can now use the word “genocide,” but they don’t have
to. As the guidelines say, “While we may of course report Turkish
denials on those occasions where they
are relevant, we should not couple them with the historians’
findings, as if they had equal weight.” Okrent pointed out that “the
pursuit of balance can create imbalance, because sometimes something
is true.”

Although the word “genocide” was not coined until 1944, a
Times reporter in Washington in 1915 described State Department
reports showing that “the Turk has undertaken a war of extermination
on Armenians.”

You might say it has been a kind of odyssey

PRESS RELEASE

Stillwater Productions
410 West 53rd Street, #712
New York, NY 10019
Contact: David Grillo
212-541-4502 (home/office)
[email protected]

PETER BALAKIAN, AUTHOR OF NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLER THE BURNING TIGRIS,
CRITICIZES TURKISH GOVERNMENT FOR COERCING GERMANS INTO CANCELING
PERFORMANCES OF PLAY ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Praises BEAST ON THE MOON and castigates Turkey for repressing artistic
expression and refusing to own up to its past

Peter Balakian, who in 1998 led a discussion with the audience
following the premiere performance in Boston of Richard Kalinoski’s
BEAST ON THE MOON ,noted, “it is a superb play about the traumatic
impact of the Armenian Genocide on a married couple living in the
American Midwest in the 1920s.”

The play, which has been produced in major cities across the United
States and Canada and in fifteen other countries has received thirty
awards to date, among them, five Molieres from France and five Ace
awards from Argentina–awards comparable to America’s Tonys.

Performances of BEAST were scheduled to be part of Karlsruhe,
Germany’s European Culture Days festival, a major biennial event
that in April of this year celebrated the city of Istanbul. Then,
Karlsruhe’s Turkish consul general, stating that he was acting on
orders from Ankara, threatened to enjoin the large Turkish population
of that region of Germany to boycott the festival unless the play
were pulled from the schedule. The consul’s argument, according to
Knut Weber, the director of the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe,
was that the occurrences of 1915-16 were “historically debatable and
under-worked-through by historians.” The consul told Weber that the
official Turkish stance was, they would understand the inclusion of
the play in the festival schedule as an insult to Turkey. The Festival
managers agreed to cancel the production.

Commenting on the consul’s statements, Weber referred to Hitler’s
response to the concerns of his top generals, days before Germany
invaded Poland in 1939: “Who today, after all, speaks of the
annihilation of the Armenians?” “That’s what made me want to present
the play,” he said. Turkey’s policy ignores this history, although
they want to be a part of the European community.”

On learning the details of BEAST’s removal from the Karlsruhe Festival
schedule, Peter Balakian remarked that, in addition, due to Turkey’s
continuing denial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, movie theaters
in Turkey have been prohibited from showing ARARAT, Atom Egoyan’s
recent film dealing with the subject.

The Armenian Genocide was of such horrific proportions that
it coalesced an American international human rights movement and
produced 145 New York Times articles in 1915 alone. It is recognized
by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, along with
the European Union, many of the world’s countries, and thirty-three
states of the United States.

THE BURNING TIGRIS, which will be published in paperback this fall,
is a landmark book–the first trade book on the Armenian Genocide to
be published by a major publisher. It is meticulously documented,
drawing on a wide range of sources, including the official Ottoman
archives. Balakian’s work leaves no doubt about Turkey’s culpability
for the planned extermination of 1.5 million Armenians on their
ancestral lands. Yet the Turkish government continues to use
intimidation to try to repress creative works that deal with the
historical reality.

Knut Weber knew the facts. He moved Beast to another theater.
Tickets sold out. Little else about the Istanbul Festival was covered
by the press. “Mr. Kalinoski’s play is not only about Armenians but
about exile and about healing,” Weber said. The Festival was “not
just a tourist attraction, but also to ask serious questions about
the history and culture of Turkey.”

Playwright Richard Kalinoski recently teamed up with New York producer
David Grillo to mount the first New York City production of BEAST ON
THE MOON in spring 2005.

For more information on these events or on the New York Production
of Beast on the Moon: [email protected]

International Journalist’s Network
May 18 2004

How to Use ‘News Factory’
May 24, 2004 – May 24, 2004

Seminar

In Yerevan, Armenia. Organized by Internews-Armenia. Trainers
Konstantin Naumov and Denis Shchevchenko of Internews-Russia will
lead the seminar. They will present the News Factory program, which
facilitates the organization of newsroom work for TV stations.
Internews-Russia created the software to help regional stations
automate their news production, while creating computerized archives
of their local news reports. No more than one representative from
each TV company may attend. Contact David Aslanyan at
[email protected], telephone +374 1 58-36-20. Internews-Armenia:

Three Armenian demonstrators get prison terms for “hooliganism”

Noyan Tapan news agency
18 May 04

Yerevan, 17 May: Sentences into the case of gross violation of public
order have been passed with regard to three people arrested during
the 28 March rally in Gyumri [northwestern Armenia].

Noyan Tapan news agency has learnt from the Armenian
Prosecutor-General’s Office press service that the first instance
court of Shirak Region gave Martin Kazaryan a one-year sentence.

Ararat Petrosyan on 13 May was given one year in prison as well,
but was given a trial period with the sentence suspended for a year.

Gamlet Lazarian was given nine months in prison on 13 May. A judge
found three people guilty under the “hooliganism” Article of the
Criminal Code.

Armenians direct water to flood Azeri frontline village – TV

ANS TV, Baku
17 May 04

[Presenter] The situation in the area of Agdam District of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani front is specially tense.

[Correspondent, over video of a board captioned as Xacincayi] Armenians
again stepped up their activities in the direction of Agdam on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani front on the night of 16-17 May. This time,
the enemy directed stream waters at the village of Tazakand in Agdam
District via a Friendship gas pipeline formerly laid in Yerevan. As
a result, houses of refugees settled in the area were flooded.

[Video shows a flooded house]

[Tahir Ibayev, refugee] This happened at about 0500 [0000 gmt] this
morning. The stream rushed into the house.

[Correspondent, over video] According to approximate calculations, the
gas pipeline is made up of pipes of about 730 millimetre in diameter
and one metre deep [underground]. According to local residents,
Armenians blew up the pipeline in 1994 and stopped exploiting
it. Specialists think that Armenians pump water from Xacincayi to
Tazakand through the pipeline and this is another provocation by
Armenia against the Azerbaijani people.

[Nizami Aliyev, deputy executive head of Agdam District, in his office]
[Sentence indistinct] Such a case has not occurred so far. For this
reason, we have not taken any preparatory measures beforehand to
prevent this.

[Correspondent, over video] The volume of water flowing through
the pipeline has reduced a little now and reached 2 cubic metres per
second. It is assumed that the enemy will suddenly increase the volume
of the pumped water at night. In this case, not only Tazakand, but
other villages nearby might be flooded. For this reason, the district
executive head is implementing urgent measures to avoid the imminent
disaster and change the course of water flowing through the pipeline.

Afat Telmanqizi, Sahin Rzayev, Zaur Naibov, ANS.

Georgian premier visits Armenian-populated region

Yerkir web site, Yerevan
18 May 04

17 May: Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania made an unofficial
visit to Javakhk [Georgia’s Samtskhe- Javakheti region predominantly
populated by Armenians] on 15 May, A-Info news agency reported.

He toured the Georgian church at the village of Poka on the shore
of the lake Parvana, meeting with the nuns. He also engaged in a
conversation with the local residents, who asked the prime minister
to provide the village with an antenna so that they could watch
Georgian TV. Prime Minister Zhvania has not held any meetings with
local officials.

Five arrested on 14 May – Armenian web site

A1+ web site
18 May 04

17 May: The [opposition] Justice Party headquarters has been conducting
detailed research, the results of which were announced today.

The party members try to prove with the help of facts that the ninth
point of the PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe]
resolution has been violated in Armenia up until now. The practice
of administrative arrests has not stopped: five people were arrested
on 14 May.

>>From the morning through to the evening of 14 May, barriers were
put out to block the movement of people and some roads were closed.

Violating the constitution and the PACE requirements, the mayor’s
office has not authorized a peaceful rally on Freedom Square.

Akdamar Church in Ruins

ZAMAN 05.14.2004, By Ahmet Ãœnal, Van

Link: ;alt=&hn=8549

Famous for its 10th century Church of the Holy Cross, the Akdamar
Church on the island of Akdamar in Lake Van’s is almost in ruins.

The church, which is visited by many foreign tourists, is worn out and
close to ruins. The church has been neglected and harmed by treasure
hunters and at risk of collapsing. Both its foundation and ceiling
have cracks and holes.

The City of Van’s Culture and Tourism Province Director, Bilal Sonmez,
told Zaman that a project for the preservation of the historical
identity of the church is already being prepared. Sonmez said that
the issue has already been transferred to the Culture and Nature
Assets Council and that the directorate is waiting for a decision.

Erdogan Acar, a tourist at the church, said that he was nervous to
walk around inside the church because of its near ruined condition. He
added, “We could prove that we are a great nation if we claim our
historical heritage.”

US CITIZEN KILLED IN YEREVAN

18.05.2004 13:36

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In the evening of May 17 US citizen Joshua Haglund
was killed in the center of Yerevan. As reported by the Police of
Armenia, the 33-year-old Haglund’s body with knife wounds was found
in one of the yards adjoining Sayat Nova Street. The Police does not
report about the professional activities of the victim. Meanwhile,
according to the some information, English language specialist
J. Haglund worked in the US Embassy in Armenia. In its turn the US
Embassy thereupon refrains from comments.