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Press Review


“Hayots Ashkhar” says that Tuesday’s PACE resolution on Nagorno-Karabakh, which effectively accuses the Armenians of ethnic cleansing, is “on the whole positive.” The paper admits that most of the “anti-Armenian provisions” contained in the original version of the resolution were endorsed by the Strasbourg assembly. But the paper says the Armenian government is not to blame for what it believes was a result of pressure exerted on Armenia by foreign powers. The PACE resolution, authored by David Atkinson, will make it easier for Azerbaijan “to present the Karabakh issue in a distorted manner” in the international arena, it concludes.

Pro-opposition newspapers are even more pessimistic. “Nothing was changed in the [Atkinson] reports,” notes “Aravot.” “The document has retained in its initial, anti-Armenian content,” concedes “Haykakan Zhamanak,” pointing to its description of the Karabakh leadership as “separatist forces” and reference to “the de facto annexation” of Azerbaijani territories.

The resolution may not have a legal force, but it is “extremely important in the political and propaganda sense,” says “Azg.” The paper criticizes the Armenian members of the PACE for “doing nothing.”

“At last they have paid attention,” “Hayots Ashkhar” comments on the arrest of ultranationalist politician Armen Avetisian. “Some believe that efforts at criminal prosecution of the latter result not so much from his anti-Semitic manifestations as the gay lists trumpeted by the same individual. Those who think so wonder why his anti-Semitic and other kinds of speeches did not attract attention earlier.” The paper responds to this by revealing that Avetisian’s verbal attacks on the Jews “aroused the interest of Armenia’s National Security Service last autumn.”

“Aravot” says that Avetisian’s arrest was justified even if Armenian prosecutors did not act in good faith. “One can only wish that the prosecutor’s office was equally attentive to the dissemination of hatred and enmity toward not only Jews and Yezidis but other nations as well,” editorializes the paper. “Of course, psychologically it is hard to come to terms with the fact that the Turks and the Azeris are no worse than us. But in reality, the Karabakh war was not against the Azerbaijanis, but against those Azerbaijani regimes that were seeking to force the Karabakh people out of their historical lands. By the same token, our demands are addressed not to the Turkish people but to the government of Turkey that does not want to recognize the monstrous crimes of previous governments.”

(Vache Sarkisian)
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