US embassy cable - 04YEREVAN444

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 YEREVAN 000444 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR INR/R/MR-STHIBEAULT, EUR/PPD-MLOGSDON AND 
SRUEDY, EUR/CACEN-ESIDEREAS, EUR, EUR/ACE, EUR/SNEC, 
EUR/SE 
 
E.O. 12958; N/A 
TAGS: KMDR, OPRC, PGOV, PREL, KPAO, AM 
SUBJECT: "A POLITICAL MURDER": ARMENIAN MEDIA REACTION 
TO THE INCIDENT IN BUDAPEST 
 
1.  SUMMARY: Armenian mass media widely covered the 
murder of Lieutenant Gurgen Markarian who was attending 
a NATO training course in Hungary.  Echoing the 
official press statements made by the Ministries of 
Defense and Foreign Affairs, almost all local media 
outlets connected this crime to the general policy of 
Azerbaijan's authorities towards Armenia.  END SUMMARY 
 
STATEMENT BY ARMENIA'S DEFENSE MINISTRY 
 
2. In an official statement, the Defense Ministry said 
it was "deeply shocked" by the officer's death and 
pledged to do "everything possible and impossible to 
subject the murderer arrested by the Hungarian 
authorities to deserved punishment."  The Defense 
Ministry added: "This atrocious murder is the direct 
consequence of Azerbaijan's policy aimed at kindling 
hatred towards the Armenian people."  "We hope that the 
international community will draw corresponding 
conclusions and will properly assess the situation," 
the Armenian Defense Ministry concluded. 
 
STATEMENT BY ARMENIA'S FOREIGN MINISTRY 
 
3. The Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that 
"this crime is the logical consequence of the anti- 
Armenian hysteria that has been unleashed by the Azeri 
authorities over the years and of the war-mongering 
militarist propaganda of recent months, which 
consistently infects all of Azeri society."  "It is 
evident that such state policy has crossed the bounds, 
and officials representing Azerbaijan abroad can commit 
cold-blooded murder."  "The Ministry expects that the 
international organizations will appropriately assess 
this crime and react.  At the same time, we demand that 
the Hungarian authorities punish the perpetrator to the 
maximum extent of the law." 
 
REACTIONS IN THE MEDIA 
 
4. In its article titled "The Relatives Demand that the 
Murderer Not Be Extradited to Azerbaijan," the 
government official Armenian language daily HAYASTANI 
HANRAPETUTIUN (02/23) said that Gurgen Margarian had 
plans for the future after his return - he was going to 
get married and go to the U.S. to study at a military 
academy for two years.  Another article in the same 
newspaper says: "Even though the deed of the Azeri 
officer-murderer was a surprise, it was not unexpected. 
The obstruction of the Armenian officers' participation 
in the planning conference for NATO's "Best Joint 
Effort-2004" in Baku and the forms of this obstruction 
had already indicated that there are some people in 
that country who are obsessed with killing Armenians. 
The Azeris seemed to have known what they were doing 
when they did not allow Armenians to go to Baku, they 
knew that there are some people there who would not be 
able to resist the temptation to smell blood.  On the 
eve of the conference, various parties and 
organizations had stated publicly more than once that 
they would physically assault any Armenian officers who 
might come to Baku.  Essentially, what was not done in 
Baku, was then done in Budapest." 
 
5. While commenting on the statement made by the Azeri 
Foreign Ministry expressing its regrets to the family 
of Gurgen Margarian, Centrist Armenian language daily 
AZG (02/23)wrote that "in the statement, the Ministry 
of Foreign Affairs indirectly justified Safarov's crime 
by noting that the murdered Armenian officer constantly 
humiliated the Azeri officer, whose relatives were 
killed in the Jebrayil (sp.) region during the Karabakh 
war." 
 
6. Opposition Armenian daily ARAVOT (02/23) commented 
on the reports published in the Azeri press, saying 
that "elements of emphasized cynicism can be seen in 
the reactions by the Azeri side.  According to the 
newspaper "Zerkalo," the speaker of the Azeri Ministry 
of Defense, Ramiz Melikov, confirmed the fact of the 
murder, but advised the Armenian side not to jump to 
conclusions.  "Nobody has the right to call the Azeri 
officer a murderer until he is proven guilty by an 
investigation and a court verdict," Melikov said and 
added that at the moment Safarov is being held in 
custody as a suspect.  The fact that the murderer did 
not put up any resistance during his arrest and did not 
deny his guilt says that this was not a usual murder." 
"Nevertheless, it can be assumed that, in all 
likelihood, NATO will refrain from calling this a 
political murder.  The alliance's attitude towards the 
Republic of Armenia was already made clear during the 
NATO conference in Baku." 
 
7. The pro-government Russian language newspaper NOVOYE 
VREMYA (02/23) wrote: "A 26-year-old Armenian officer, 
who was undergoing training under the most peaceful 
NATO program, was axed to death in Budapest...  The 
very combination of these words is already nonsense. 
What happened there is completely beyond comprehension, 
regardless of who committed this crime that was 
unprecedented in its cruelty.  This is how this would 
have been taken, if there had been no atrocities in 
Sumgait and Baku, and the long years of futile attempts 
to show to the civilized world what kind of medieval 
brutality the Armenian population of Azerbaijan had to 
face at that time."  "All of this has happened before. 
And it can happen again, unless the international 
community reacts strongly to what has happened.  The 
initial comments on what happened are nothing but 
examples of political correctness."  "From the first, 
the NATO leadership refrained from comments until 
further details of the incident were clarified.  In 
exactly the same way, very recently, it had refrained 
from calling things by their names when Armenian 
officers were not allowed to go to Baku to participate 
in the NATO planning conference."  "We do not want to 
draw parallels, but they are too obvious. In the past, 
because of the ideas of proletarian internationalism, 
the party leadership called the organized massacres in 
Sumgait "an action by criminal elements."  As a result, 
the virus of unpunished evil spread throughout the 
territory of the former USSR.      Sumgait has 
essentially happened again many times over, in many so- 
called "hot spots" of that enormous country, and we are 
reaping the consequences to this day." 
 
8. Dashnak-affiliated HAYOTS ASHKHAR newspaper (02/23) 
qualifies this crime as political and calls on 
international organizations as well as NATO to 
recognize it as such.  "This is simply a call to arms 
for Armenia and for the international organization, 
namely NATO, responsible for the implementation of the 
Partnership for Peace program. This factually 
automatically discredits the principle of "partnership 
for peace" and turns it into the principle of "murder 
for war," which is diametrically opposed to the spirit 
of the NATO program.  No matter how hard they try, the 
Hungarian authorities also cannot deny that the murder 
was clearly politically motivated.  NATO cannot deny 
that either."  "They cannot deny this for the simple 
reason that this was already characterized as such by 
the head of the press service of the Azeri Ministry of 
Defense, Ramiz Melikov, on Azeri state television.  He 
said that the Azeri officer who committed the crime was 
a resident of the region of Jebrayil, whose relatives 
were killed during the Karabakh war.  This means that 
the crime was committed not only by an officer who 
officially represented Azerbaijan under the Partnership 
for Peace program, but that the officer wanted to kill 
not a specific person (Gurgen Margarian), but a 
representative of a specific nation and specific 
country, an Armenian and an officer of the Armenian 
Armed Forces.  After all, what happened cannot be 
presented as the result of a mundane or personal 
dispute because the murderer tried to kill the other 
Armenian officer as well."  "We think that such cruel 
and insolent behavior by not only the Azeri officer, 
but also by other Azeri officials has to do with the 
fact that NATO recently failed to blame Azeri 
authorities for having prohibited the participation of 
Armenian officers at a Partnership for Peace conference 
in Baku."  "The Azeri authorities bear full 
responsibility for the cruel political murder in 
Budapest, where NATO may encourage Azerbaijan to commit 
new and crueler crimes by keeping silence or 
considering this a simple criminal act, i.e. by 
ignoring once again the obvious facts and allowing 
impunity." 
 
 
ORDWAY