A US District Court has dismissed a case initiated at the prompting of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) that would have compelled the inclusion of alleged Armenian genocide denial materials in the Massachusetts education curriculum, the Armenian media reported. US District Court Chief Judge Mark Wolf on Wednesday ruled in favor of the Massachusetts Department of Education, allowing it to continue teaching “the facts of the Armenian genocide, and other crimes against humanity, in public schools across the Commonwealth as constitutionally protected government speech,” the Armenian Assembly of America said. “The Armenian Assembly appreciates the court's ruling in this matter. It sends a clear message to Turkey and its revisionist allies that history cannot be rewritten to further Ankara's state-sponsored denial campaign,” Assembly Board of Trustees Chairperson Hirair Hovnanian said. “The court's ruling preserves the teaching of accurate history, which is part of the official ‘Massachusetts Guide to Choosing and Using Curricular Materials on Genocide and Human Rights,' prepared in 1999. In 2005 the ATAA filed the suit against the Department of Education arguing that the commonwealth violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights by removing materials from the curriculum that deny the events of 1915,” the Public Radio of Armenia reported Thursday on its Web site.
Responding to remarks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a top Russian diplomat said Thursday that Russia would not collaborate with the United States on missile defense unless Washington scrapped plans to deploy elements of the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. “We cannot partner in the creation of objects whose goal is to oppose the strategic deterrent forces of the Russian Federation,” said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei A. Nesterenko. “No one will do something that harms himself.” “Only the United States’ rejection of plans to base in Europe the so-called third position area of the missile-defense shield could mark the beginning of a full-fledged dialogue on the question of cooperation and reaction to likely missile risk,” Mr. Nesterenko said. He added that Russia expected “it will be possible to find a common denominator.” In Senate testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Gates said that Russia might “partner with us and Poland and the Czech Republic in going forward with missile defense.” American policymakers have long sought common ground with Russia on missile defense, but Mr. Gates’s remarks were unusually specific, suggesting that one option might be a jointly operated facility on Russian territory. The remarks passed without notice in the United States but were picked up by major Russian newspapers like the daily Kommersant, which described the “sensational statement” in a front-page article in Thursday’s edition.
A Kremlin official says Russia is ready to expand cooperation with the United States in combating international terrorism. After the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., Moscow and Washington traded information on al-Qaida and other terrorist groups and worked jointly to prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Much of that cooperation ceased as Russia-U.S. ties worsened amid disputes over the Iraq war, missile defense and other issues. Anatoly Safonov, the Kremlin's envoy on the issue, said U.S.-Russian anti-terror cooperation has been hampered by what he called “double standards,” a reference to the Bush administration reluctance to call militants in Chechnya terrorists. He told a Thursday briefing that he hopes that President Barack Obama's visit in early July will boost joint anti-terror efforts. Obama has been trying to “reset” relations with Russia.
With NATO defense ministers having agreed to reduce the alliance's military presence in Kosovo from 14,000 to 10,000 troops by the year's end, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today urged that the reduction take place as an organized process. On the first day of an alliance defense ministers conference here, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced the force reduction today, noting that Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, has proposed moving toward a deterrent presence in Kosovo that will require fewer troops in the country. Gates said that any NATO drawdown in the country should be accomplished in an organized and coherent alliance process, and not by countries leaving unilaterally. "The irony is [that] two years ago, everybody was worried about us pulling out, and I came to these meetings and said our policy will be, 'In together, out together,'" the secretary said in an interview with reporters traveling with him. "Now I'm in the position of worrying that some of them will leave prematurely. So the same phrase still applies: In together, out together." Unilateral withdrawal leaves other nations exposed if there is too little time to plan, Gates said. "Just unilaterally just pulling up stakes is not the way you behave as a part of an alliance," he said. De Hoop Scheffer said NATO will remain in Kosovo and is committed to a safe and secure country. "We will remain for the security of the majority and minority alike," he said during a NATO news conference. NATO's North Atlantic Council must approve the proposal. There are further plans to draw the numbers down to 6,500 and then to 2,500, but this will happen only if conditions warrant it and only after the North Atlantic Council approves, NATO officials said.
Talks between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are slated for later this month to continue discussions on the latter’s name, the United Nations announced today. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Personal Envoy Matthew Nimetz initiated the meeting, which will be hosted by the UN in Geneva on 22 June, after which Mr. Nimetz will travel to the capitals, Skopje and Athens, in early July to meet with government officials. When the countries met in October, Mr. Nimetz presented a set of ideas to both sides for their consideration. The Envoy had previously proposed several alternatives, but the Governments remained far apart on reaching a satisfactory compromise name for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Interim Accord of 13 September 1995, which was brokered by the UN, details the difference between the two countries on the issue. It also obliges the two sides to continue negotiations under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General to try to reach agreement.
New York City plans to trap and kill up to 2,000 Canada Geese this summer in an attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to ditch in the Hudson River last winter. The hunt will take place on dozens of city properties located within five miles of Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Aviation officials have culled the bird flocks on airport property for years, but this will mark a major expansion of the effort into other parts of the city, including about 40 public parks. The roundup is being timed with the molting season, when the geese can't fly. It is scheduled to begin within a week. Airplane collisions with birds have more than doubled at 13 major U.S. airports since 2000, and New York's Kennedy airport and Sacramento International report the most incidents with serious damage, according to Federal Aviation Administration data released for the first time Friday. The FAA list of wildlife strikes, published on the Internet, details more than 89,000 incidents since 1990, including 28 cases since 2000 when a collision with a bird or other animal such as a deer on a runway was so severe that the aircraft was considered destroyed.
A high-ranking government official has said the opening of the Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary in İstanbul is not possible without a change in the Constitution because the opening of private religious schools has been banned in Turkey. State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek told Today's Zaman that the Turkish Constitution does prohibit the establishment of private religious schools. “The Turkish Constitution and related regulations do not make the opening of private religious schools possible. If you are going to introduce new rules regarding human rights and freedoms, you need to do it for all groups equally. How are you going to process the demands of the other groups if you open the Greek seminary?” Çiçek asked. Established in 1844 on the island of Heybeliada, Halki Seminary was closed in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control. It was the only school where Turkey's Greek minority educated clergy. The theological school once trained generations of Greek Orthodox leaders, including the current Patriarch Bartholomew, who is one of its 900 graduates. Regarding external pressures for a settlement to the issue, Turkey's chief negotiator for accession talks with the European Union, Egemen Bağış, had said that this is an internal matter, not a foreign policy issue. Bağış had reacted to a statement of the European Union's Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who tied the issue to the long-standing Cyprus problem. Evaluating the matter as a human rights issue, Bağış said they are looking for formulas to reopen the school and said the Cabinet will discuss it. During his historic visit to Turkey in April, US President Barack Obama also talked about the steps Turkey can take – such as reopening Halki Seminary -- to send a message to the world regarding Turkey's further steps forward in freedom of religion and expression issues. On the other hand, the Patriarchate rejected the government's formulas of putting the seminary under either the Ministry of Education or YÖK because the Patriarchate is an institution under the assurance of international law, as Article 40 of the Treaty of Lausanne states. The Patriarchate argued that Halki Seminary has never been a college or university, but only a minority school or religious institution as defined under the Treaty of Lausanne. The main request of the Greek Patriarchate is to open the seminary as a private school affiliated with the Ministry of Education, which would oversee its administration.