Armenia, Azerbaijan `Close To Karabakh Deal'

[Gavur]

Azerbaijan left out of Millennium Challenge program

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Dec 23 2005

Baku, December 22, AssA-Irada -- Azerbaijan has been left out of the
Millennium Challenge program implemented by the United States.

Washington explained the move by what it called stalling democratic
development, shortfalls in state governance and lack of transparency
in economic development.

Azeri officials said they are not concerned over this. The Foreign
Ministry spokesman Tahir Taghizada said the important issue is not
U.S. assistance, but the continuing cooperation between the two
countries.

"The decision was also due to the fact reference was made to biased
research materials on Azerbaijan provided by non-governmental
organizations in the United States when the document was being
developed." The Azeri ambassador to the United States Hafiz Pashayev,
in his meetings with American officials, voiced his objection over
the decision. He called on Washington to use more objective sources
and on Congressmen not to accept the falsehood being spread by some
pro-Armenian forces represented in these NGOs.

The Millennium Challenge program implemented by the Bush administration
targets assisting developing countries. 16 criteria have been set for
admission, including economic reforms, promoting democratic society,
and living conditions of the population.*

[Gavur]

Azeri President Speech Dissonant to OSCE MG Calls

President Aliyev's speech marked the visit of co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group to the region: it was presented to the public December 14, 2005 – on the day of arrival of co-chairs from Russia, US and France. Plenipotentiary Minister and Extraordinary Envoy, full member of the Academy of Military Sciences (Moscow), counter-terrorism scientific expert of US National Defense University (Washington) Hayk Kotanjyan stated it, when commenting on the statement of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, who urged Azeri scholars and respective institutions of the country to involve in the program of grounding absence of historical rights of Karabakh Armenians to their native residence land – Artsakh. Armenian MOD Spokesperson, colonel Seyran Shahsuvaryan told PanARMENIAN.Net. In H. Kotanjyan's words, a political order to the Azeri Academy of Sciences «and other relevant bodies”, as Aliyev significantly said, was a leitmotif of the his speech. The Azeri leader urged the scholars to prove a hypothesis running counter to world science: that Armenian population in the territory of Karabakh (Artsakh) is not indigenous. Thus, President Aliyev has turned the anti-Armenian hysteria to a strategy of Azeri fundamental science,» he stated.

According to H. Kotanjyan, an unprecedented public and paid political order to the fundamental science for falsification of the history of a disputed territory, subject to international consultations on peaceful settlement. On the other hand Azerbaijan states on state sponsorship of escalation of anti-Armenian hysteria on that basis with attraction of modern arsenal of traditional and electronic media. A situation masterly described by George Orwell in his «1984» pamphlet, the expert added. In his words, the Azeri leader's speech is dissonant to calls of OSCE MG and heads of co-chair countries – the US, Russia and France – on refraining from steps aggravating mutual distrust between the conflicting peoples. It also runs counter to the spirit of the encouraging calls for people's diplomacy joining the peace talks over settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

Answering a question what was the purpose of that step, H. Kotanjyan stated, «I would mention not one, but several purposes. Firstly, to redirect the public opinion of Azerbaijan in the post-election period from democracy issues in the country to the habitual dazzling inter-ethnic hostility. Secondly, again to drive into the corner of revenge-seeking forces, positioning themselves in struggle for promoting peace and progressive development of peoples in the region. Finally, to continue demoralization of the fundamental social science, as the bearer of the scientific truth regarding political processes in the country and the world.»
© Panarmenian

[Gavur]

Geghamian Links Cautious Stance To Progress In Karabakh Talks

By Ruzanna Stepanian

Artashes Geghamian, one of Armenia’s most popular opposition leaders, on Tuesday put his refusal to join recent anti-government protests in Yerevan down to substantial progress in international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Geghamian said he believes it is wrong to challenge Armenia’s leadership now that there is a real possibility of securing a solution to the dispute acceptable to the Armenian side. He at the same time complained that the West is disinterested in regime change in Yerevan for that reason.

“The Karabakh issue is a dominant issue [in Armenia] thanks to our people and even the opposition,” Geghamian told RFE/RL. “In order to avoid undermining a possible Karabakh settlement or making it anti-Armenian, we adopted a policy which I believe is definitely justified.”

Geghamian and his National Unity Party (AMK) pointedly avoided any participation in demonstrations staged by the other major opposition groups following the disputed November 27 referendum on President Robert Kocharian’s Western-backed amendments to the Armenian constitution. They until now declined to provide a clear explanation for their reluctance to join the opposition offensive.

The Karabakh peace process, which may well yield a breakthrough next year, is seen by analysts as the main reason for the West’s cautious response to serious fraud reported during the referendum. While the European Union and the United States questioned the Kocharian administration’s commitment to question, they are unlikely to impose any sanctions on Armenia. They have taken a similar stance on the leadership of Azerbaijan which held a reputedly fraudulent parliamentary election last month.

“Unfortunately, the international community, notably the countries co-chairing the [OSCE] Minsk Group, are of the opinion that only these authorities are able to bring the decade-long peace process to an end,” Geghamian said, referring to America, France and Russia.

Geghamian said the Armenian opposition has no choice but to resign itself to this fact. Further attempts to trigger a popular revolt against Kocharian, planned by several opposition parties, are therefore “politically short-sighted,” he added.

Other, more radical opposition leaders will not share this line of reasoning. Some of them believe that Kocharian will never agree to a compromise peace deal with Azerbaijan, while others are not averse to exploiting the Karabakh issue for political aims.

That the conflicting parties have moved closer to hammering out a peace accord, was confirmed by Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian late on Monday. But in an interview with Yerkir-Media television, he cautioned that it is not a forgone conclusion, saying that the Azerbaijani government had already reneged on Karabakh deal reportedly cut on the Florida island of Key West in April 2001.

Oskanian also rejected the notion that the Karabakh conflict must be resolved next year by all means because 2006 will see no national elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan. “If the process continues in the positive direction, we really think that the problem can be solved in 2006,” he said. “But a solution must not be imposed.”

[Gavur]

Aide To Dm Denounces Aliyev's Call To Distort History

Armenpress
Dec 27 2005

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 27, ARMENPRESS: An aide to Armenian defense minister
has denounced Azeri president Ilham Aliyev for urging academics and
historians to look for historical evidence to prove that Armenians
of Nagorno-Karabakh are not indigenous population, but had arrived
where they live now in the second half of the 19-th century.

Aliyev had made the call on December 14 when addressing a gathering of
Azeri intellectuals marking the 60-th anniversary of their Academy of
Sciences, pledging also financial support for their 'researches.". The
aide, Hayk Kotanjian, described the call as 'disgrace' because the
chief of state has actually given an order to academics to distort
the history.

Speaking at a round table discussion convened at the Armenian
Academy of Sciences, Kotanjian said Aliyev's call was dangerous,
coming concurrently with the latest visit of the OSCE Minsk group
to the region and is aimed 'to shatter the basis of a possible
referendum in Nagorno-Karabakh on its political stats, floated by
international peace brokers." Historically Nagorno-Karabakh was the
northeastern province of Armenia. The spread of similar forms of
economic activity, customs, traditions, religious beliefs, and the
same kind of mentality of inhabitants of the entire Armenian plateau
brought about the reality that Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) along with
other regions of Armenia constitutes a single entity in the cultural,
economic, and linguistic sense.

Numerous archeological facts of the eneolite, bronze and iron ages
prove that the culture of Nagorno-Karabakh is in fact a branch of a
single Armenian culture and a great deal of parallels could be drawn
with the monuments of the Armenian Plateau of the same period. The
ancestors of modern-day Karabakh Armenians left a remarkably vast
cultural heritage despite ongoing wars in the past. There are more
than 1700 historic architectural monuments on the territory of the
former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) alone: fortresses,
monasteries, churches and chapels, bridges, palaces, khachkars
(tombstones or monuments, the names of which can be literally
translated as "cross-stone" because of the its composition being
centered around a Christian cross carved in the tradition of Armenian
church art.

The bulk of the historic monuments found on the territory of Artsakh
are Christian worship edifices (approximately 60 monastery complexes
and more than 500 churches) that chronologically reveal all stages of
medieval history (starting from 4th century AD, which is the time when
Christianity was adopted as Armenian state religion.) There are also
monuments of prehistoric age, which are mainly prehistoric campsites,
ruins of ancient Armenian settlements, a part of which belong to
the Ararat Kingdom (Urartu) and Armenian Kingdom of Ervanids period,
sepulchers, cult statuettes of early Armenian epoch, carved stones
from Armenian Artashesids dynasty, capitols, various home utensils
and coins. Thus, in ancient times (1st millennium BC) the summer
residence of Ararat King Rus I was found on the territory of what is
today Istisu village.

The largest and the most renowned settlement of pre-Christian period on
the territory of Artsakh is the city of Tigranakert, which was founded
by the Armenian King Tigran II in the 90-ies BC. Interestingly enough,
this was the first out of four cities founded later by Tigran II in
the different parts of the Armenian plateau and baring his name. The
ruins of that settlement were found on the territory of the present
Agdam region near the border of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

The vast material on the medieval history of Artsakh, which can
be found in the writings of Armenian, Persian, Byzantine and Arab
historians, geographers and travelers as well as the ancient maps of
Armenia (4-6 century AD), undoubtedly prove the Armenian ethno cultural
nature of the region. Thus, Artsakh is mentioned as the tenth region
of Armenia. Ancient epic songs and fairy tales, which still are alive
in the minds of the people of Karabakh, as well as the genre, plot,
artistic and expressive means of Artsakh folklore also affirm their
local origin.

[Gavur]

Azerbaijan Casts Shadow Over Peace Process, Armenian Minister Says

Mediamax news agency
26 Dec 05

Yerevan, 26 December: Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan
has said that the recent actions and statements by the Azerbaijani
authorities cast shadow over positive shifts in the process of settling
the Karabakh issue in 2005.

In an interview with Armenian Public TV on 25 December, the Armenian
foreign minister said that he was referring to the destruction
of Armenian monuments in Naxcivan and Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev's recent speech in the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, in
which he instructed scientists to find proof that Armenians are not
native to Nagornyy Karabakh, Mediamax reports.

Commenting on the settlement process, Vardan Oskanyan said that for
the first time after the Key West talks in 2001, the sides are so close
to the settlement of the conflict. At the same time, the minister said
that "we should not be overly optimistic when we look at the future."

The Armenian foreign minister said that much depends on a meeting
between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents to be held within
the next two months. He said it is difficult to predict whether the
Azerbaijani side will take "a step forward" or whether the talks will
continue as normal.

Commenting on the Azerbaijani authorities' recent actions, Vardan
Oskanyan said it was counterproductive not to prepare society for
mutual compromises and to increase tension and hatred.

[Gavur]

Armenian Paper Accuses Azerbaijan Of Inciting Hatred

Ayots Ashkar, Yerevan
27 Dec 05

Excerpt from report by Armenian newspaper Ayots Ashkar on 27 December
headlined "An obvious challenge to the OSCE Minsk Group".

Azerbaijan has recently adopted and has been implementing a certain
programme of actions because of the failure of the Karabakh peace
process. The existence of such a programme can be proven by specific
steps taken by Azerbaijan in the past couple of months and by the fact
that it is expected to take anti-Armenian actions in international
organizations in 2006.

[Azerbaijani] President Ilham Aliyev, himself, is the initiator of
such steps. It seems that instead of trying to establish democracy
after numerous parliamentary election violations in the country,
Aliyev is sowing anti-Armenian hatred and enmity into the minds of
the people. We think that enmity and hatred will not work, he will
only deceive his own people, and not the world community.

[Passage omitted: recaps reports on alleged destruction of Armenian
medieval cross-stones by Azerbaijani servicemen and Aliyev speech
at the Academy of Sciences on 14 December tasking scientists with
finding proof that Armenians do not belong to Karabakh].

Aliyev is "targeting" the Karabakh settlement programme which the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs brought to the region on 14 December. The public
of the two states had known for a long time about the programme's main
point: the Nagornyy Karabakh republic [NKR] will hold a new referendum
to determine its destiny in exchange for the return of liberated
territories. Let us add that even pro-Azerbaijani [Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe rapporteur on Nagornyy Karabakh]
David Atkinson in his well-known speech [at the PACE session on
25 January 2005] did not rule out the conduct of a referendum on
Karabakh's self-determination. But this was just a principle then.

Today Azerbaijan is simply shocked by the "Kosovo model" [suggested
by Armenia under which Karabakh might get independence] and is
taking certain steps to prevent this from happening. Azerbaijan is
now destroying [Armenian] monuments on it's territory and inventing
stories that the Armenians are "newcomers" to Karabakh. Azerbaijan is
aiming to get back the liberated territories while at the same time
avoid the referendum on the NKR's self-determination. It says that if
the Armenians, who are "newcomers" to Karabakh, demand independence
there, they might demand the same in California or anywhere in Russia
tomorrow.

[Gavur]

Armenian, Azeri Leaders Set For Momentous Deal On Karabakh

By Emil Danielyan

The past year will be remembered by many in Armenia and Azerbaijan for fresh electoral fraud and missed opportunities for democratization, but it may also go down in history as a turning point in the long-running efforts to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

As opposition groups in both countries tried unsuccessfully to replicate the recent ex-Soviet revolutions, Presidents Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliev quietly inched towards a peace accord whose profound repercussions for the entire region can hardly be overestimated. They are expected to meet again in late January or early February for make-or-break talks that could remove the final hurdle to a lasting peace between the two South Caucasus neighbors.

There are strong indications that the two men have already agreed on the basic parameters of a peaceful settlement that would almost certainly formalize Armenian control over Karabakh. For longtime Karabakh conflict watchers accustomed to deadlocked negotiations, this may be too good to be true. But never before have there been so many upbeat statements by
international mediators and even the conflicting parties.

The foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe member states, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, said in a statement earlier this month that the parties are now “poised to make the transition from negotiation to decision.” The French, Russian and U.S. co-chairs of the OSCE’s Minsk Group spoke of a “golden opportunity” to resolve the conflict during an ensued visit to Yerevan and Baku. They warned that failure to cut a peace deal this year would keep the conflict unresolved at least until 2009.

That was followed by an inspection (the first in eight years) of Azerbaijani regions close to the Armenian-populated disputed territory by a team of OSCE military officials. They reportedly looked into logistical aspects of a multinational peacekeeping operation that would necessarily be part of any workable peace accord. They are due to visit other, Armenian-occupied parts of Azerbaijan in January.

Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian cautioned on Wednesday that the OSCE inspection does not mean that the signing of a peace deal is a forgone conclusion. But he did admit that it was made possible by substantial progress made in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. “The year 2006 could see a breakthrough,” Oskanian said in televised remarks.

The beginning of 2005 was anything but promising, with planned talks between Oskanian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov postponed in unclear circumstances and both sides reporting an upsurge in skirmishes along the frontline east and north of Karabakh. Oskanian went so far as to claim on March 29 that Azerbaijan may be preparing for another war.

However, tension eased by the time he and Mammadyarov held “proximity talks” with the mediators in London on April 15. The Minsk Group troika urged the parties to “prepare their populations for a balanced negotiated agreement that will require compromise on both sides.” Their optimism increased after two face-to-face meetings held by Aliev and Kocharian in May and August. The mediators now hope that the two leaders will reach a framework agreement at their next encounter. Officials in Baku and Yerevan agree that it could be decisive.

Details of the peace formula discussed by the parties were leaked to RFE/RL by a senior Armenian official in July. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that at the heart of it is the idea of a referendum in which Karabakh’s predominantly Armenian population will decide whether the region should be independent, become part of Armenia or return under Azerbaijani rule. The referendum, he said, would be held in 10-15 years from the start of a gradual Armenian pullout from all but one of the seven occupied Azerbaijani districts surrounding Karabakh.

The information was confirmed in August by the Turkish newspaper “New Anatolian” that quoted government officials in Ankara familiar with the negotiations. That the Karabakh settlement under discussion envisages such a referendum was also revealed by the Azerbaijani daily “Zerkalo” on Wednesday. Citing “informed diplomatic sources” in Baku, the paper said the sides still disagree on when the vote should be held.

Selling such a solution to the domestic publics would not be an easy task for Kocharian and especially Aliev. Their increasingly marginalized political opponents would not be averse to denouncing any mutual compromise as a “sellout” and using it as a rallying call for disgruntled citizens. Aliev would be particularly vulnerable to attack given his regular threatens to win back Karabakh and the occupied territories by force.

Kocharian, for his part, would have to confront nationalist elements inside and outside his government who regard any withdrawal from the “liberated lands” as high treason. The Karabakh-born president could also find himself at odds with the leadership of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Arkady Ghukasian, the NKR president, was visibly dissatisfied with his most recent meeting with the Minsk Group co-chairs in Yerevan, telling reporters afterwards that “we are pretty far from a settlement today.” The remarks were construed by some observers as a sign of his rejection of the leaked peace plan.

But do the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents really need the consent of their societies for pressing ahead with a Karabakh settlement? After all, public opinion has rarely been a determinant of government policies in Armenia and Azerbaijan. None of the elections held there since the Soviet collapse have been recognized as free and fair by the international community. On top of that, Aliev and Kocharian control powerful security apparatuses that have successfully suppressed all opposition challenges to their rule -- most recently in the wake of last November’s parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan and constitutional referendum in Armenia.

Progress in the Karabakh peace process is widely seen as the reason why the United States and Europe are unlikely to sanction either regime for serious fraud reported during the votes. The next few months will show whether the Western leniency was worth it.

[Hovik]

The referendum, he said, would be held in 10-15 years from the start of a gradual Armenian pullout from all but one of the seven occupied Azerbaijani districts surrounding Karabakh.

Anyone know which one of the seven districts would remain in Armenian control? My guess is Lachin or Agdam, depending on wether or not Lachin is even considered an option...

[Reincarnated Am]

Armenian defense ministry advisor: “President Aliyev suggests faking history instead

Armenian defense ministry advisor: “President Aliyev suggests faking history instead of making compromises”

NOTE: Hayk Kotanjyan — advisor of the Armenian defense minister, doctor of political sciences, full member of the Academy of Military Sciences — Russia, fellow on counter-terrorism — the United States.

On December 14, 2005, on the day of the visit of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs for the Karabakh peace process, when speaking on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev urged Azeri scientists and scientific institutions to get actively involved in a project to prove to the world community that the Karabakh Armenians have no historical rights to their native homeland — Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh — REGNUM). President Aliyev promised to richly subsidize the joint effort by Azeri experts to develop and propagate his thesis that “Armenians are guests who appeared in Karabakh in 70s of XIX and have no rights to the territory of Nagorno Karabakh.”

Press secretary of the Armenian defense minister Seyran Shahsouvaryan has asked Doctor of Political Sciences Hayk Kotanjyan to comment on Ilham Aliyev's speech in terms of its compatibility with the intensified efforts of the Minsk Group to resolve the Karabakh conflict as well as with the standards of scientific ethics.

How much in line is the speech of President Aliyev with the attempts of the OSCE Minsk Group to build confidence between the parties to the Karabakh conflict?

The speech of President Aliyev was specially timed to the visit of the MG co-chairs to the region: it was made public Dec 14 2005, on the very day of the arrival of the Russian, US and French co-chairs. In his speech Aliyev highlights not the strategic programs to develop fundamental science in his country, as one would expect. His leitmotif is a political order to the Azeri Academy of Sciences and “other relevant bodies,” as he said with much consequence, to substantiate things running counter to what the global science says – a hypothesis that Armenians are not indigenous to the territory of Karabakh — Artsakh. Thus, not only does President Aliyev make a science of the anti-Armenian hysteria, but he also ranks it as high as a strategy for the fundamental sciences in Azerbaijan.

We are talking about something unprecedented for democratic societies — a public and paid political order for fundamental science to falsify the history of a disputed territory — an object for international peace talks. On the other hand, the Azeri president speaks about making this a basis for state sponsorship of escalated anti-Armenian hysteria with the modern arsenal of traditional and electronic media recruited to this end. A situation masterly described in the classic anti-despotic pamphlet of George Orwell “1984.”

The speech of the Azeri president is dissonant not only with the call of the Minsk Group and the leaders of the co-chair states — the US, Russia and France — to refrain from aggravating the mutual distrust between the conflicting nations, but also with the academic standards generally accepted in the world. It is also hostile to the spirit of the recent promising calls for having people's diplomats involved in the Karabakh peace process.

What do you think is the purpose of this step?

I would point out several rather than one purpose. First, in the post-electoral period, to digress the public opinion in Azerbaijan from internal democracy problems to the customary course of blinding ethnic enmity. Second, once again, to drive to revanchism the forces posing as champions of peace and progressive development of nations in the region. Ultimately, to continue demoralizing fundamental social science as a herald of objective scientific truth about political processes in the country and in the world.

What do you think about the personal part of the Azeri president in the ethnic hostility propaganda?

This proves that the deep tradition of substitution of social science by pseudo-scientific political propaganda is still existent in the post-Soviet area. Judging from the form President Aliyev spoke in, he is successor to the tradition of the “father of the nation” cult, throned and worshiped in Azerbaijan since the Soviet times. Just imagine Ilham Aliyev as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan and you will see all things in their right places. The monopolistic leader of a political center of Asian despotism keeps strictly to the script of a Soviet-type plenary session by making a political order for total substitution of the accomplishments of the global fundamental science in the history of the South Caucasian nations by political propaganda.

But the question is not only about the form. Discredited in the eyes of the global social science is the very purpose of the Azeri historical science. Through bribery and state protectionism of falsifiers, this science is told to take the place it has been in since the Soviet times — the place of “the most unpredictable sphere of social science,” with historians assigned the customary role of assistants to political manipulators. But most dangerous is the circumstance that the leader of the neighboring state has publicly and officially ordered to concoct the scientific facts of the history of Armenia and Azerbaijan on a global scientific scale. In other words, his command to the Academy of Science is to create sources of counterfeit history of the region's nations and, by sponsoring them, to undermine the confidence in the globally accepted studies in the sphere.

Could you adduce scientifically indisputable facts of Armenians being indigenous to Karabakh-Artsakh?

The aboriginality of the Karabakh Armenians has been acknowledged by plenty of works by both Armenian and world historians. Let's leave details to professionals, but one proof of Armenians being aboriginal to Karabakh and of the role of the populous Armenian Artsakh in the cultural history of the whole Armenian nation is the fact that the first school of the newly invented Armenian alphabet was opened by the inventor Mesrob Mashtots himself 1,600 years ago in Amaras Monastery — exactly in the territory of Karabakh. At the same time, it is evident for the world science that before the medieval times the Turkic ancestors of the present-day Azeris inhabited Altai and contiguous areas — thousands of kilometers away from the South Caucasus. These facts do not certainly make inferior or superior anybody's past in the objective eyes of the world science. The question is about the authenticity of these historical facts as they are and as they are objectively interpreted in any non engaged national circle of academic society, be it American, Russian, French or any other.

What would you say about the fabrication of the Azeri history in the Soviet times?

This is a very sensitive aspect, concerning not only the knowledge but also the feelings of ordinary people. I am deliberately avoiding comments on the flagrant attempts by Soviet-time Azeri scientists and their present-day successors to fabricate facts from the history of Armenia. In order to get into the gist of the fabrications inspired by the Azeri authorities, it is enough to give a coupe of symptomatic and generally known precedents of falsification of the Azeri history through appropriation of the historical legacy of the neighboring nations, including the cultural monuments produced by the indigenous nations in the territories of the South Caucasus before their population by Turkic tribes. The political center instructs constructing a system of pseudo-academic Azeri sources and financing the propaganda of their distortions. The same are the methods of further fraud of the Azeri history at the expense of the historical legacy of the Karabakh Armenians — a thing Aliyev ordered to see about at his puppet academy.

One such fact is the appropriation of the laurels of the Persian poet Nizami (Nizam-uddin Abu Mahommed Ilyas Bin Yusuf, 1141-1203) from the Iranians. This fraud is based on the national identification of “the Soviet Azeri people.” It is known, in the Soviet times Nizami was given the name of “Nizami Gancevi” and the rank of one of the symbols of the national-cultural identity of the Azeri people. In this sense, one of the numerous targets the Azeri president has called to bombard must be Encyclopedia Britannica. A source of stainless reputation, Britannica, says that Nizami, proclaimed by the Communist Party of Azerbaijan as their national poet during the Stalin anarchy, was born to a Persian family from the Persian town of Kum to later move to Ganca, then a part of Persia. Britannica and the world Iranian experts assert that Nizami did not write a single line in Turkic: he versed in Persia and only in his native language — Persian.

In such cases Azeri experts usually say that these are fabrications by foreign research centers influenced by the Armenian lobby. What do you think about this?

Of course, it would be unfair to ascribe manipulation and falsification to all Azeri scientists. As to the neighboring state's method of anticipatory slander against a given object, it is best shown in the well-known Russian proverb saying that the best way for a thief to protect himself is to yell “catch the thief!”

Reverting to the above-mentioned fraud model so symptomatic for the Soviet-time Azerbaijan, one should note that Britannica has been published since 1768. Nizami is mentioned as a Persian poet there long before the formation of the Armenian lobby. As you may know, the Diaspora emerged as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Turkey during the massacre of 1895-1896 and 1915-1923, while the Armenian lobby, as the form of political self-expression of the Diaspora, was formed only in the second half of XX.

According to the same logic, also groundless are the general speculations in Azerbaijan that the modern Iranian authorities demonstrate an anti-Azeri policy in the issue of the national-ethnic identity of Nizami Gancevi. The facts affirming the Persian origin of Nizami and his belonging to the Persian history and culture can be found in multiple manuscripts written hundreds of years ago — long before the rule of Imam Khomeini or the formation of the Azeri SSR and its 60-year Academy of Sciences.

How do you think one should react to the raise of stakes in the anti-Armenian hysteria announced by the Azeri president?

In a principled, well-considered, consistent way. I urge my highly respected colleagues from the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia to start with making the speech of the Azeri president a subject for comprehensive discussion at an enlarged meeting of the presidium of the Academy, with national and foreign experts, government officials and foreign ambassadors and envoys involved.

http://www.regnum.ru/english/565316.html

[Gavur]

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan

ISSUE OF KEEPING OR GIVING CONTROLLED TERRITORIES MUST NOT BE MADE PRIORITY AT KARABAKH PEACE TALKS

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29. ARMINFO. The issue of keeping or giving the
controlled territories must not be made a priority at the Karabakh
peace talks, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan says in an
interview to Kentron TV channel.

Speaking about the possible reaction of Armenia's political forces
to the final settlement document, Oskanyan says that extremism may
lead the situation into a deadlock. The issue of territories is the
most painful and "hackneyed" issue but one must not forget that the
territories is a guarantee of security for the Armenian side. If to
keep the territories is made the key and final goal, this will lead the
negotiating process into a deadlock. The same is for Azerbaijan - the
process has been in a deadlock for years just because Azerbaijan has
made the territorial issue its priority and has refused to negotiate
on the status of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Today the situation
has changed. If the Armenian side needs to keep the territories for
ensuring the security of Nagorny Karabakh, they will be kept, if the
territories will have to be given to Azerbaijan for the problem to
be solved, they will be given, says Oskanyan.