4 February 2004

1. "Kurd rivals unite as they mourn bomb victims", suicide blasts in Iraq that claimed 67 lives have increased resolve to demand autonomy

2. "A good visit, but it's not all roses between US, Turkey", in December 2002, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid his first official visit to Washington and met US President George W. Bush.

3. "After many letdowns, can Iraq's Kurds depend on United States now?", no group in Iraq was more thrilled by the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq last year than the country's Kurds, who suffered severe repression under Saddam Hussein's rule.

4. "Bombing Freedom", Attacking the Kurds; Attacking Civilization

5. "Israeli company bids for Turkish tank contract", after winning a $668 million contract in 2002 to modernize 170 of Turkey's US-made M-60 tanks, Israel has once again become a contender to upgrade tanks that Turkey has been offered by the US Army.

6. "Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan participants sign finance agreements", participants in a project to build the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline signed financial agreements for the project on Tuesday, an Interfax correspondent reports from the signing ceremony.

7. "Cyprus Unification Talks Near, Annan Says", new talks on ending the 30-year division of Cyprus could resume soon under a plan pushed by the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday.

8. "A limited but important look at the Armenian genocide", The Burning Tigris; The Armenian Genocide and America's Response; By Peter Balakian.

1. - The Guardian - "Kurd rivals unite as they mourn bomb victims":

Suicide blasts in Iraq that claimed 67 lives have increased resolve to demand autonomy

IRBIL / 3 February 2004 / by Rory McCarthy

There was little doubt where the bomber stood. Blood stained the thin grey carpet to one side of the meeting hall in the Kurdistan Democratic party office and the blast had carved out small chunks of plaster from the wall nearby in an arc from the floor to the ceiling.

It was here on Sunday morning that the party's officials had lined up to greet the hundreds of guests arriving to celebrate the festival of sacrifice, Eid ul-Adha.

As staff began to clear the chunks of rubble and polystyrene from the floor yesterday, others slowly dug a handful of small, shiny ball bearings from the craters in the wall. The metal balls had been stuffed into the explosives the bomber wore round his chest.

Two men walked through the room spraying canister after canister of air freshener, but the sickly sweet fragrance did little to mask the smell of death.

The explosion here on Sunday morning and another identical suicide blast minutes later at a party hosted by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan on the other side of Irbil together claimed 67 lives, American officials said yesterday. At least 267 others were injured, many critically.

As workers began to clear the scenes of the two explosions, hundreds of people gathered at mosques across the Kurdish town of Irbil to mourn the victims of one of the worst acts of violence in Iraq since the war.

Many Kurds said the bombings would only intensify their long-held demands for autonomy within the new Iraq.

Ahmad Ali, the chief of the guards at the KDP office, held in his hand ball bearings wrapped in white paper. "There were thousands of guests and there was no way I could recognise any of them," he said.

One of the senior party officials had told him to stop searching the guests on account of the religious holiday. "We didn't like to upset the people. They were our guests. We should respect them," he said. "We were worried about a car bomb, but we never thought there would be a man carrying the bomb."

After the blast Mr Ali said he saw the bomber's head lying in a corner. "His skin was a little dark. He had no moustache, just a small beard."

Kurdish television said the two bombers were dressed as Islamic clerics, an account that will only add to suspicions among many here that the bombings were the work of Islamist radicals such as Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish militant group based in northern Iraq until the war.

On the stage at the back of the meeting hall yesterday was a shallow pool of blood and a table on which there were still two trays of sweets, the offerings prepared for Sunday's guests.

"The man who did this represents terror," said Jasim Mustafa Kadhar, 23, a guard who was standing at the entrance door of the hall when the bomb exploded. "He got in only because it was Eid and security was relaxed. Now no one in Irbil is celebrating for Eid."

Next door to the party office is the region's parliament building, a symbol of the autonomy the Kurds have already won after a decade free from the grip of Saddam Hussein. A few miles further on at the Al-Sawaf mosque yesterday the mourners spoke about how Sunday's bombings made their case for greater independence only more powerful.

At the side of the crowd stood Fathal Ahmed, 45, a technician in the Kurdish ministry of industry. He wore a dark suit and tie and was there to mourn the death of his brother, a KDP member who had been standing close to the bomber in the meeting hall on Sunday.

No conscience

"This was done by people with no conscience, people who have sold their souls to the devil," he said. Like nearly all Iraqis, and particularly the Kurds, he spoke of his relief at the fall of Saddam Hussein. But he also spoke of the cost of the violence that has ravaged this country since the war. "Everyone wanted to see Saddam out of their country, even executed," he said. "He made a tragedy in our country that has never happened anywhere else in the world. But we didn't want to see it happen with these results."

In the crowd in front of the yellow brick mosque were officials and followers from both the Kurdish parties.

For more than two decades the KDP and PUK have been rivals at the same time as they pressed for greater Kurdish autonomy. But both sides were supporters of America's war in Iraq and the two parties hold strong positions on the Iraqi governingcouncil. In recent weeks their two longtime leaders, Masood Barzani and Jalal Talibani, have begun a rapprochement that many expect will accelerate in the light of the bombings. The two sides are preparing to unite the two rival governments they run in the north.

"This will make our political efforts so strong," said Mr Ahmed. "As you see both the parties are here today at the mosque, standing together. I feel the parties will become so close after this. Despite what has happened I feel so optimistic about the future."

In Baghdad the governing council declared three days of nationwide mourning. In the weeks that follow the council is likely to hear even more forceful demands from the Kurds for guarantees over their autonomy. But there is also considerable pressure on the two leaders from many in the Kurdish community for much more than just autonomy inside Iraq. Many want the Kurds to take control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, an hour's drive south of Irbil, and others speak openly of their dream of a state of Kurdistan.

Chain of tragedies

"This was another in the continual chain of tragedies we have been suffering for such a long time," said Mohammad Saleh, a lawyer who stood in the crowd at the mosque.

"Now we must be insistent for our rights. We want federalism but of course our aim is more than that. We should be united with Kurds from other countries, just as Arabs talk of their Arab homeland."

"Look at our history," said his friend, Karwan Jalal, a teacher. "There have been a lot of enemies of the Kurds but they have survived and remained in their place and even in spite of Saddam's mass graves we are still here."

As the crowds filed from the mosque at the end of the afternoon, others gathered at sunset outside the gates of hospitals waiting for news of injured relatives and talking of the motives behind the blasts.

"The Kurds are trying to get their federalism and there are many who are against that," said Salim Mohammad, who stood outside the emergency hospital, opposite the devastated KDP office.

He stood in a crowd of Peshmerga, the Kurdish militia, waiting for news of a senior KDP official whose legs were badly broken in the blast. "We want peace, we wanted a united Iraq and we want federalism for the Kurds. Now you will see how strongly we will demand this."

2. - The Daily Star (Lebanon) - "A good visit, but it's not all roses between US, Turkey":

4 Februar 2004 / by Philip Robins

In December 2002, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid his first official visit to Washington and met US President George W. Bush. Both sides agreed at the time that it was a cordial and important event. Yet the confidential exchanges between the two leaders are still today the subject of disputation, having planted the seeds of a misunderstanding that would result in Turkey's eventual refusal to give the US the help it sought last spring in the war against Iraq.

Erdogan's second official visit to Washington took place last week. Again, there was no hint of equivocation on either side. Not for Erdogan the snub that former President George Bush reserved for the late King Hussein of Jordan when he ventured to the US after Jordan proved less than helpful during the 1990-91 Iraq-Kuwait crisis.

However, as in December 2002, should we avoid being taken in by the smiles and handshakes?
Observers of American politics would hold to the view that the Erdogan visit was a triumph. After all, he met Bush in the Oval Office; the two men took a couple of turns round the Rose Garden; the visit itself lasted two hours and included lunch. One almost expected an announcement that Bush had served Erdogan kebabs.

Of more tangible importance to this upbeat view were two developments that official news spinners organized prior to the meeting's start. First, was the announcement that the joint air base at Incirlik in southeast Turkey, inactive during the Iraqi war, was being used to rotate American troops serving in Iraq. The essence of the message was that Turkey had come through for the US. And by taking up the offer the Americans reaffirmed the continuing geopolitical importance of Turkey, especially as far as its military involvement in Iraq was concerned.

Second, was a speech by Vice-President Dick Cheney in which Turkey featured prominently. Cheney's message was not a new one, but one newly rediscovered. Islam was not incompatible with democracy, he argued, and Turkey was the most democratic of all the Muslim countries; therefore, the European Union should grant it membership. Implicit in such sentiments was that America's neoconservatives have, for the moment at least, given up on the emergence of a liberal democracy in Iraq that might act as a beacon for the Muslim world. In opposing a clash of civilizations, the US still needs Turkey, more than it recently appreciated.

If that had been the end of it, Erdogan's visit would have been chalked up as an unequivocal success. But other substantive subjects ­ the Kurdish issue, Cyprus and International Monetary Fund (IMF) financing ­ lurked in the shadows. It is doubtful that agreement was quite so fulsome on any of these topics.

On the Kurds, the Bush administration's foreign policymakers had thought ahead. An announcement that Kongra Gel, the latest incarnation of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), had in mid-January been added to the US list of terrorist organizations facilitated the smooth management of the Turkish media. The fact that the US has not until now disarmed the 5,000 or so PKK guerrillas in the mountains of Iraq, as the Turks have demanded, was defused as a point of controversy.

The overall issue of the future of Iraq was trickier to deal with, especially in the wake of increasingly unpleasant exchanges between Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish officials. Bush's standard protestations that the US wants a future Iraq that is "territorially intact" was the least that he could say, given Turkish concerns that the creation of an ethnic federation in Iraq could become the thin end of a Kurdish secessionist wedge.

Bush's further elaboration that US policy is for "a single country, a single entity with all the natural resources of the nation in the hands of the central government" seemed tailored to Turkish preoccupations. However, the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell that "We're looking for an appropriate model … so that we can satisfy all of the interests that exist," indicated that the US still has some way to go to elaborate such a policy, if indeed all such interests can be reconciled. In the coming weeks, Washington is likely to find that it will have to constantly repeat its words of reassurance to its serially insecure Turkish friends.

On Cyprus ­ a much lesser policy priority for the US than it is for Turkey ­ the exchanges in Washington are likely to have been awkward. The Bush administration reiterated its desire for a solution to the political problems of the island and encouraged Ankara to act toward this end before the May 1, 2004, ceremonial accession of Cyprus to EU membership.

However, the US administration appears to have fended off attempts by the Turks to bring it into the center of peace-making, both by eschewing a mediation role and by discouraging speculation that a Republican big hitter, such as former Secretary of State James Baker, might be dispatched as a special envoy. Ankara, the American message clearly stated, will have to come to terms with dealing with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his plan ­ and fast.

With the high politics out of the way, the Turkish-American exchanges focused on Turkey's large debt to the IMF, repayment of which is expected to commence later this year. The lingering sense of a Turkish economy not long out of crisis was a reminder that for all of Turkey's defiance of the US over the Iraq war, the bilateral relationship is hardly equal. Washington is likely to have heard out the Turks on the debt service issue and it would be surprising if the Bush administration were not to come to Turkey's assistance in the near future. However, this depends on Ankara's not causing further trouble for the US on issues of central importance such as Iraq and the Kurds.

* Philip Robins is a lecturer in politics and international relations at Oxford University and a fellow of St. Antony's College.

3. - Associated Press - "After many letdowns, can Iraq's Kurds depend on United States now?":

3 February 2004 / by George Gedda

No group in Iraq was more thrilled by the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq last year than the country's Kurds, who suffered severe repression under Saddam Hussein's rule.

Kurds can only hope that the American unfaithfulness to the Kurdish cause in the 1970s, '80s and '90s doesn't repeat itself.

"I am worried," says Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute, which looks after the interests of Kurdish minorities in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

Kurds constitute the world's largest population of stateless people. Besides Iraq, they can be found in Turkey, Iran and Syria.

Iraqi Kurds are eager for autonomy in the post-Saddam era so that they can protect themselves against the kind of disaster that occurred on Sunday when twin suicide bombings killed more than 100 people in the Kurdish city of Irbil. It was one of the deadliest postwar terrorist attacks in Iraq. The targets were the headquarters of Kurdish political parties generally supportive of U.S. policies.

After a long history of rejection, the former Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani once asked: "Have the Kurdish people committed such crimes that every nation in the world should be against them?"

At a minimum, Kurds want autonomy in a tripartite state that also would include Shiite and Sunni Muslim sectors. Just how much autonomy will be a matter of debate and discussion for years, and the United States will help shape the outcome.

The Bush administration believes Kurds are entitled to an entity within a unified Iraq, but one that is drawn according to geographic and administrative, not ethnic, lines.

Iraqi Kurd leaders agree, but no one doubts the powerful pro-independence grass roots sentiment in the Kurdish area.

"Nearly all Kurds favor independence," says William Eagleton, a former U.S. ambassador and Kurdish expert.

President Bush opposes independence. "The United States' ambition is for a peaceful country, a democratic Iraq that is territorially intact," Bush said last week with the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sitting at his side.

Erdogan is concerned that an independent Iraqi Kurd entity in neighboring Iraq would only incite the restive Turkish Kurd population.

Key unresolved issues are the boundary lines of an autonomous Kurdish entity and control over Kirkuk and its oil-rich environs. Is the oil Kurdish or Iraqi?

U.S. officials say serious discussions on the Kurds' fate over the long term probably will await the emergence of strong central government in Baghdad, one capable of engaging the Kurdish authorities as equals.

Kurds have ample reason to question whether America will keep their interests in mind.

They were displeased last October when the United States pressured the former colonial power, Turkey, to dispatch 10,000 troops to Iraq to join coalition forces.

Given their historic enmity for Turkey, the Kurds were aghast. The plan was dropped.

In 1991, with the encouragement of the first President Bush, the Kurds rose up against Saddam after Operation Desert Storm. But U.S. help never came and many Kurds were slaughtered.

Earlier, the Reagan administration generally had ignored Saddam's brutality, opting to side with him in the Iran-Iraq war, seeing the Iraqi leader as the lesser of evils. An estimated 180,000 Kurds were killed by Saddam's forces during that period.

In the 1970s, the United States called off CIA support for the Iraqi Kurds to help cement a peace deal between Iran and Iraq. This gave Baghdad a free hand to punish the Kurds, whom it regarded as heretics.

But for the 10 years prior to the invasion of Iraq last March, the United States and Britain kept Saddam's forces at bay by enforcing a no-fly zone over the Kurdish area. The Kurds used the respite to establish democracy and raise living standards.

Saddam, the Kurds' old nemesis, is now in American military custody. Still, experience has told them that peace and security are still a long way off.

4. - The New York Post - "Bombing Freedom":

Attacking the Kurds; Attacking Civilization

4 February 2004 / by Ralph Peters*

According to Ralph Peters, writing for The New York Post, the recent suicide bombing in Northern Iraq wasn't just an attack on the Kurds, but on civilization itself.

The bombings in northern Iraq on Sunday attacked more than the two main Kurdish political parties. The blasts, which killed more than 60 civilians and wounded hundreds, were targeted at tolerance, freedom and civilization.

A decade ago, a courageous thinker, Samuel P. Huntington, advanced the theory of a ''clash of civilizations.'' While Professor Huntington provoked a useful debate, the all-pervasive struggle of our time isn't between races or religions. It's between civilization and barbarism, between freedom and tyranny.

Freedom doesn't have a skin color. It doesn't pray to one exclusive god. It's a universal treasure that must be won and defended down the centuries.

The suicide bombers and terrorists who strike in Iraq or Afghanistan, in Indonesia or Israel or Manhattan, do not represent Islamic civilization. They represent the rejection of all civilized values.

Terrorists who pervert their religion to justify atrocities aren't waging holy war. Islam doesn't permit the slaughter of the innocent. And the Koran certainly doesn't advocate murdering fellow Muslims.

Yet the bombers in Irbil attacked during celebrations of the Muslim festival of Eid. Doubtless, they convinced themselves with a few twists of logic that they were doing a blessed deed - the human beast can rationalize anything.

But consider the act: The bombers used the generous traditions of the Eid holiday to penetrate celebrations open to all - and the killers reportedly entered dressed as mullahs.

Imagine if Christian extremists dressed as priests exploded suicide bombs on Easter Sunday - to drive us back to 13th-century intolerance.

These bombers didn't sacrifice their lives for their faith. They blasphemed horrendously against it. Even if their organization proves to have secular aims, the killers insulted not only the faith of the majority of Iraqis - Sunni or Shi'a - but the fundamental values of civilization.

Why strike the Kurdish parties, the PUK and KDP? Because they learned to cooperate. Because they made the long, terribly difficult journey to democratic values and tolerance. Because their leaders have done their best to build bridges to other Iraqi factions on the Governing Council and beyond. Because they cooperate with Americans.

And, above all, because they have not engaged in official pogroms and vengeful massacres of the Sunni Arabs who stole their homes, shattered their lives and denied them the most elementary human rights.

The Kurds have shamed their neighbors by proving that Middle Eastern societies don't need tyrants to control them, that the average man - and woman - can build a nation from the bottom up and that Islam is a religion that can look forward to a brighter future, instead of merely clinging to the past. Despite oppression, long-standing poverty and generations of factionalism of their own, the Kurds proved that the cradle of civilization can still provide a model of contemporary civilization.

It wasn't growing Kurdish power that inspired the bombings. It was the Kurdish willingness to share power, to observe human rights and to listen to the voices of the people instead of silencing them with terror and bullets.

Of course, the suicide bombers had more complex goals than simply punishing the Kurds. The attackers - who killed a number of promising Kurdish leaders - hoped to provoke the Kurds into retaliating against local Arabs and other minorities. The terrorists do not want an Iraq in which the force of reason and the power of ballots prove stronger than the fist and the bomb.

A range of terrorist groups, Iraqi and foreign, are trying frantically to keep Iraq divided between traditionally hostile factions. Above all, the terrorists hope to ''prove'' that Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds, Shi'a Arabs and minority Christians can't cooperate to build an equitable, prosperous democracy.

In a profound way, the Kurds are like Americans: They're being attacked for their successes, not their failures. Like America, the ''Kurdistan'' that soulless diplomats still insist doesn't exist provides a model of justice and fairness - of simple human decency - that enrages tyrants and religious fanatics.

The Kurds represent civilization. Their attackers are barbarians in the crudest sense. When those bombs went off in Kurdistan, they wounded men and women everywhere who believe that every human society should have a chance at freedom and that no religion condemns its faithful to oppression and mindless bigotry.
It was fashionable - briefly - after 9/11 for foreign leaders to say "We are all Americans today." On Sunday, when those bombs went off, we all became Kurds.

* Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."

5. - Jerusalem Post - "Israeli company bids for Turkish tank contract":

3 February 2004 / by Metehan Demir

After winning a $668 million contract in 2002 to modernize 170 of Turkey's US-made M-60 tanks, Israel has once again become a contender to upgrade tanks that Turkey has been offered by the US Army.

During Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to the US last week in an effort to restore damaged ties between Ankara and Washington over Turkish parliament's decision last year not to allow the deployment of 60,000 American troops in Turkey during the Iraq War, the Pentagon came up with a surprise offer to give 250 M1A1 Abrams tanks to Turkey under a surplus arms program.

Turkey's Channel D television reported that although Turkey favored the gesture, Turkish defense officials placed a condition on the offer saying that the engines of the tanks must be converted from classic turbine to diesel.

Under pressure from Israeli companies, the US recommended Turkey cooperate with Israel to change the engines.

Following this development, last week TAAS-Israel Industries, which has been gradually upgrading the 170 aging M-60 tanks since 2002, submitted an offer to Turkey to modernize the 250 M1A1 tanks, including changing the engines.

The upgrade of each tank's engines from turbine to diesel is expected cost Turkey up to $2 million.
Turkish companies such as Hema and Nurol strongly object to any Israeli involvement in the project and condemned the decision to award the earlier contract to an Israeli firm.

They say Turkish firms have the capability to carry out the desired changes, including the engine modifications.

Israel has won a number of major military contracts from Turkey. In the late 1990s, IAI won a deal to upgrade 54 F-4 and 48 F-5 fighter jets worth nearly $800m., and IMI-TAAS won a $110m. tender to equip Turkish Army helicopters with electronic warfare systems.

6. - Interfax - "Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan participants sign finance agreements":

BAKU / 4 February 2004

Participants in a project to build the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline signed financial agreements for the project on Tuesday, an Interfax correspondent reports from the signing ceremony.

In particular an agreement was confirmed between BTC Co. shareholders and the governments of participating countries, signed by the governments of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia and BTC Co and the project's creditors. This agreement states that the rights and responsibilities of BTC Co. are distributed among the project's creditors and may be used as collateral.

The Azerbaijani government, BTC Co. and creditors also signed an agreement providing state guarantees from Azerbaijan for the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic - SOCAR's obligations as part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project.

BTC Co. shareholders and creditors also signed a direct agreement establishing rights and responsibilities and regulating the provision of collateral for credits.

Creditors also signed an agreement regulating relations between themselves.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who participated in the signing ceremony, said that the signing of these documents is an important stage in the development of the project. "This project will help our close relations with Turkey and Georgia to become even stronger. I hope that in the near future we will be holding a ceremony to mark the launch of the pipeline," he said.

In turn, U.S. State Department special envoy to the Caspian region Stephen Mann said that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project plays a key role in East-West energy projects. He said that this project may serve as an example for other projects and that today's events provide an answer to those that said that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project was merely political.

The total amount of funds attracted for the project, including interest, will amount to $2.6 billion, with a total project cost of $3.6 billion, the source said. Direct construction costs will amount to $2.95 billion, of which 30% will be invested by shareholders and 70% will be received as credits. Other expenditure includes the acquisition of 10 million barrels of oil to fill the pipeline - about $250 million - and servicing of credits.

The future pipeline will stretch 1,767 kilometers (443 km through Azerbaijan, 248 km through Georgia and 1,076 km through Turkey) and will have a capacity of 50 million tonnes of oil per annum

Participants in the BTC project are: British Petroleum (30.1%), SOCAR (25%), Unocal (8.9%), Statoil (8.71%), TPAO (6.53%), ENI (5%), Itochu (3.4%), ConocoPhillips (2.5%), Inpex (2.5%), TotalFinaElf (5%), and Amerada Hess (2.36%).

The project organizers are targeting four groups of creditors: shareholders in the project, who are expected to provide 30% of the costs; the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation, which will both provide credits and credit guarantees; export-credit agencies, which will provide credit guarantees; and commercial banks.

7. - AP - "Cyprus Unification Talks Near, Annan Says":

WASHINGTON / 4 January 2004

New talks on ending the 30-year division of Cyprus could resume soon under a plan pushed by the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday.

Annan said he has spoken with all interested parties except Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash about reviving negotiations. "Everyone seems ready to resume, and I hope to be able to invite them to a meeting shortly," he said.

Annan spoke to reporters after meeting at the White House with President Bush, who he said was supportive of Annan's plan to find a way to reunite the eastern Mediterranean island.

Cyprus has been split into a southern region controlled by Greek Cypriots and a Turkish-occupied north since Turkey invaded in 1974. It said the invasion was necessary to protect ethnic Turks in Cyprus because of an abortive coup by colonels trying to unify the majority Greek island with Greece.

Annan's proposal provides for reuniting Cyprus as a single state, with Greek and Turkish Cypriot federal regions linked through a weak central government. Denktash has rejected the plan.

"We urge all parties, our friends on Cyprus and in Greece and Turkey as well, to agree to finalize a settlement, allow the secretary-general to resolve outstanding issues and submit a settlement to referenda by a date certain," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "We believe such a settlement will bring greater security and prosperity to all people on Cyprus and Turkey and in Greece, as they deepen their integration into Europe."

Cyprus is scheduled to join the European Union in May. EU leaders have said failure to reunify the island before then would restrict the benefits of union membership to southern Cyprus and could hurt Turkey's chance of joining the European Union itself. Long a candidate for membership, talks on its membership are scheduled to begin around the end of this year.

The United States considered it encouraging that during their recent meetings in Washington, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul expressed "a genuine willingness" to resolve the Cyprus issue, State Department (website) spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell offered on Tuesday to help Annan get the parties talking again through "conversations, phone calls, intervention letters, whatever is appropriate," Boucher said.

A breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there.

8. - The Boston Globe - "A limited but important look at the Armenian genocide":

"The Burning Tigris; The Armenian Genocide and America's Response"; By Peter Balakian; HarperCollins; 475 pp. illustrated, $26.95

4 February 2004 / by John Shattuck*

During the course of the 20th century, 175 million civilians were murdered by their own governments -- four times the total number of soldiers killed in all the century's international wars combined. "The souls of this monstrous pile of dead have created," in the words of noted genocide scholar R. J. Rummel, "a new land, a new nation, among us." This land of genocide and political murder would rank sixth in population among the nations of the world by the end of "the bloodiest century in history."

The cradle of modern genocide is in Turkey. As Peter Balakian graphically documents in "The Burning Tigris," more than a million Armenians were slaughtered in the crumbling Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1916 under the direction of nationalist Turkish leaders. The Armenian genocide was a product of tensions between an Islamic majority and a Christian minority, resentment by Turks of the Armenians' economic success, and the willingness of cynical leaders to fan the flames of religious and ethnic difference to advance their own political cause. What happened to the Armenians in Turkey was a harbinger of the Holocaust and of the waves of modern mass murder that have swept the world ever since.

The truth about the Armenian genocide was long suppressed. Although well known at the time not only in Turkey but also in the United States and Europe, the officially planned extermination became the subject of an eight-decade campaign of denial by the Turkish government. The United States and the European powers grew complicit, eager to exploit the newly discovered oil resources of the Middle East after World War I. The final victim of the Armenian genocide was truth itself. As Balakian points out in a brief epilogue to his book, the cost of this historical amnesia was enormous. "In August 1939, Hitler, too, invoked the erosion of memory when he said to his military advisers, eight days before the Nazis invaded Poland -- `Who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?' "

It matters whether the truth about genocide is recorded and publicized. It also matters whether the world intervenes and whether those who organize it are held accountable. These lessons are reflected in "The Burning Tigris," which, despite its chaotic organization and confusing chronology, tells a story of multiplying horror and betrayal.

For a time, the world paid attention. Over a period of three decades leading up to the genocide of 1915-16, the growing intolerance, repression, and massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire drew international protest, particularly from Americans and their government.

A cadre of American religious leaders, intellectuals, suffragettes, abolitionists, and politicians took up the Armenian cause, sending more than $100 million through the American Committee on Near East Relief.

By 1915, the fate of the Armenians had become intertwined with the question of what role the United States should play in World War I. After the war, Woodrow Wilson belatedly took up the Armenian cause, advocating recognition of a new Armenian state. That same year, the Allies even successfully pushed the Turkish government to initiate trials of those responsible for the genocide.

But these initial responses proved to be short-lived. The politics of oil and fear of Bolshevism soon stifled the voices of human rights advocacy, even turning some American champions of justice for the Armenians into supporters of the Turkish campaign of genocide denial.

"The Burning Tigris" has major weaknesses, including its cursory explanation of what drove the Turkish government to exterminate the Armenians and its limited account of how Turkey managed for so long to block all efforts to tell the truth. Nevertheless, by reintroducing the voices of Americans who spoke up for the Armenians a century ago, Balakian honors the international human rights tradition in the United States, pointing toward the need for international laws and institutions that are now so discredited by Washington. As one of these voices, early feminist writer and champion of the Armenian cause Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in 1903, "National crimes demand international law, to restrain, prohibit, punish, best of all, to prevent."

* John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor from 1993 to 1998, is the author of "Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars & America's Response" (Harvard University, 2003) and CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.