NATO

YEREVAN, ARMENIA We are at the brink of a pair of wars, civil and regional, and it is better to speak now. Armenia, that ancient civilization deprived by the tragedies of yore of its capacity for contemporary statecraft, needs immediately to put its house in democratic order. Finally responsible for its own record, it also has legitimate expectations of the international partnership. In this global and so contracted century of ours, where resources and rights often compete for precedence, domestic demeanor and foreign affairs form part of one and the same policy agenda....

YEREVAN, ARMENIA That an Armenian repatriate, American-born into a legacy of remembrance inherited from a line of survivors of genocide nearly a century ago, feels compelled to entitle his thoughts with a focus on Turkey– and not Armenia– reveals a larger problem, a gaping wound, and an imperative for closure long overdue on both sides of history’s tragic divide. The new Armenia, independent of its longstanding statelessness since 1991, is my everyday life, as are the yearnings of my fellow citizens for their daily dignity, true democracy, the rule of law, and an empowering end to sham elections and the corruption, arrogance and unaccountability of power....

After being pursued from Syria to Moscow, Abdullah Ocalan-leader of the PKK, the separatist guerrilla insurgency which seeks autonomy for Turkey’s large Kurdish minority-has fled to Italy. An Italian court has ruled that its country’s constitution prohibits Ocalan from being extradited to Turkey because he would most likely be executed. The State Department and much of the American media have criticized Italy for upholding its constitution while overlooking a far more important consideration: that Turkey has reacted more like a militant Mideast backwater than a NATO ally....

EVENT: Senior presidential adviser Jirair (Gerard) Libaridian resigned. SIGNIFICANCE: Libaridian’s departure comes at a time when Armenia has been mounting a relatively successful effort to build its international ties. ANALYSIS: On September 15, Jirair Libaridian announced that President Levon Ter-Petrosian had accepted his resignation as a senior foreign policy advisor, on purely personal grounds. Libaridian has been a key architect of Armenian foreign policy since independence, playing a central role in negotiations over Nagorno Karabakh and in warming relations with Turkey....