Armenian PM expresses wariness about sending military contingent to Iraq
AP Worldstream
Oct 15, 2004
Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markarian suggested the former
Soviet republic is reconsidering a promise to send troops to Iraq,
expressing fear that it could put his country in terrorists’ sights.
Armenia is considering sending about 50 military personnel to Iraq,
primarily bomb disposal experts, doctors and transport teams. They
would work under Polish command, and Armenian President Robert
Kocharian pledged the troops during a visit to Poland early last month.
But Markarian stressed that it was up to the Constitutional Court
and the parliament to make the decision on sending the troops.
“Let’s not forget that … there have been certain changes from the
conditions under which we gave preliminary approval” of the plan,
he said.
The government has sought to portray the decision to send troops to
Iraq as a way to boost ties with Europe, but critics worry that it
will endanger the 25,000-person Armenian community living in Iraq.
“We also have concerns on this count. It’s possible that as a result
Armenia could become of the targets of terrorists,” Markarian said.
Of the 12 former Soviet republics in the Commonwealth of Independent
States, four _ Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia _ have
sent troops to Iraq.

Moving up rapidly
By Andrew Blazier Staff Writer
Pasadena Star-News
*Monday, October 11, 2004* – PASADENA — *Tenrox* Inc. is moving fast.
And it’s just picking up speed.
With average revenue growth of more than 40 percent in each of the
last nine years, the Pasadena-based firm is quickly finding its place
among the region’s high-tech rising stars.
Last month, the software company was named to *Deloitte & Touche*
LLP’s Technology Fast 50 list, ranking 16th among Los Angeles’
fastest-growing tech companies. Deloitte, a Big Four accounting firm,
presents the yearly honor to L.A.-area companies that generate at
least $1 million in annual revenues and have been in operation for
more than five years.
Tenrox’s revenues have grown 423 percent since 1999, but the company
is moving on the ground, as well. Founded in Montreal in 1995, the
Tenrox moved its headquarters to Pasadena in November to be closer
to a growing number of West Coast customers.
“We didn’t have a West Coast presence at all, so we had few customers
here,’ said President and Chief Executive Rudolf Melik, who runs Tenrox
with his brother, Ludwig Melik, the firm’s vice president of sales.
Tenrox maintains a staff of 100 in Montreal. In order for the company
to continue its torrid growth, it had to be located near the bulk of
its clients, who generally are located in the United States.
“We needed to have our key executives in the U.S.,’ echoed Ludwig
Melik.
Nine years ago, the Armenian brothers emigrated to Canada from
their home country, Iran. When they co-founded Tenrox with two other
partners, they served as a pure consulting firm.
In 1999, the company changed directions, devloping products that
help medium-size companies manage their accounting systems with a
centralized electronic format. The Meliks say the business has received
a sharp increase in demand from firms complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002. Clients typically have between 100 and 200 workers.
That sweeping legislation was designed to reform management structures
and restore the public’s faith in corporate governance. But it has
created a wave of companies offering solutions to the problems caused
by increased regulation.
For the Meliks, the government’s demands have translated into surging
revenues. They say the software offers clients a broad range of
solutions to problems that include compliance with federal and state
labor laws, tracking project progress and speeding up reporting times.
The suite also aims to increase employees’ access to data such as
vacation time, individual schedules and benefit plans.
“Our product is mission-critical,’ Rudolf Melik said. “We don’t want
to miss a beat.’
Andrew Blazier can be reached at (626) 962-8811, Ext. 2477, or by
e-mail at [email protected] .

ReOrient’s Short Plays Explore Middle East
By KEN BULLOCK Special to the Planet (10-15-04)
Berkeley Daily Planet, CA
Oct 15 2004
ReOrient, in its sixth year of “exploring Middle Eastern culture and
identity as represented throughout the globe,” is a festival of short
plays staged by Golden Thread Productions that’s opening this weekend
at the Ashby Stage after a run at SF’s Noh Space.
ReOrient is becoming a Bay Area institution without losing that
sense of being a well-kept (maybe too well-kept) secret that delights
whoever discovers it, bringing them back every year. The excellent
second series of three plays is playing in alternation with the first
series, of five plays.
The first play, “Don’t Eat the Tomatoes” is by Fatma Durmush, a
Turkish woman poet and playwright, born in Cyprus, who writes in
English. This is a strangely humorous tale of a young couple setting
up housekeeping by a graveyard thronged with mothers whose sons were
killed in the terroristic war with the Kurds. Durmush’s play takes
stylized dreamlike turns that could be called Absurdist, for want of
a better term to describe an original poetic logic.
The mourning mothers become tomato plants, bear tomatoes (“In truth,
the more sorrow, the better they taste”) and find peace; the young
wife, pregnant and abandoned by her husband, markets this cemetery
crop and becomes a consumer; her errant husband, newly educated
(“To live without reason is worse than being a tomato!”) and weary
of cities, returns.
The situation of the Kurds in Turkey and the controversy around
Kurdish militant Abdullah Ocalan’s condemnation to death isn’t so well
known here. Torange Yeghiazarian (Golden Thread’s founder-artistic
director) has directed this play with the sense of a parable or fable,
underlining what’s in common with our own interminable War On Terror,
and its almost familial social and cultural resentments.
The second, “Compression of a Casualty,” by Brooklyn playwright Kevin
Doyle, plays the fatuous smiles and mannerisms of TV news anchors
announcing a death in Fallujah, then “moving on,” against the young
fallen GI trying to recapitulate his own life and death amid the
repetitions of teleprompter copy. Such a brief description misses the
true compression and offbeat pace of banal, brutal meta-language with
Laura Hope’s taut direction of three fine actors (Tiffany Harrison,
Patrick MacKellan, Zak Kilberg) that drive this piece.
“Dinner/Khnamakhos” by Lilly Thomassian–again with fine direction,
by Meredith Weiss Friedman–is the barely-controlled madness of
a dinner party in an Armenian home in Glendale to celebrate an
arranged marriage. No one can see or hear the bride-to-be (Sara Luna),
commenting on the crazy comic melodrama her family and the groom’s are
playing out around the table. The groom-to-be looks oddly familiar–and
he finally remembers where he’s seen her eyes before (as he stares at
her picture with the bride-to-be looking over his shoulder). A chamber
play out of one of Bunuel’s surreal movies, Sheri Bass, Maximilienne
Ewalt, Ann Marie Donahue and Lisa Tateosian (all from “Don’t Eat the
Tomatoes”) and David Fierro make a savage portrait of two families.
The first series features “Chocolate in Heat, Growing Up Arab in
America,” written and performed by Betty Shamieh; “Disheartened,”
by Melgis Bilgin, “Between the Eyes,” by MacArthur Award winner Naomi
Wallace; “Falling,” by William Borden (about the World Trade Center);
and “Taziyeh” (the name of the Shi’ite passion play of Hussain’s
martyrdom at Karbala) by Novid Parsi.
Golden Thread Productions’ ReOrient 2004 Sixth Annual Festival of
Short Plays Exploring the Middle East runs Oct. 15-24, Thurs.-Sat. 8
p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Series 2 will run Oct. 15, 17, 22, and 24
matinee. Series 1 will run Oct. 16, 17 matinee, 21 and 23. There will
be no show the evening of Oct. 24. The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave.,
986.9194,

Spitting triggers tension in Jerusalem’s Old City
By Michele Green
Ecumenical News International, Switzerland
Oct 15 2004
Jerusalem (ENI). Tensions in Jerusalem’s Old City have flared following
an incident in which a Jewish seminary student spat at an archbishop
during a procession from the city’s Armenian Quarter to the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre, a site commemorating Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.
Israeli police arrested the seminary student, but Christian clerics
living in the walled Old City say such assaults by ultra-Orthodox
Jews are a frequent occurrence.
“It happens maybe once a week,” Armenian Bishop Aris Shirvanian told
Ecumenical News International. “As soon as they notice a Christian
clergyman they spit. Those who are ‘respectful’ turn their backs to
us or the large cross that we may carry but the ones that are daring
either spit on the ground or on the person without any provocation
on our part.”
In the incident on Sunday, a cross was ripped from the archbishop’s
neck when a scuffle broke out after the Jewish seminary student spat
at the cleric. The seminary student later told police he had done it
because he saw the religious procession as idolatry. Police said the
man had been temporarily banned from visiting the Old City and that
he had been placed on bail pending an indictment.
Bishop Shirvanian said spitting against Christian clergyman had been
going on for years and that the assailants were religious Jews,
sometimes men but also women, teenagers and even children. “This
shows that it is a phenomenon that is prevailing in their religious
education and it should be corrected,” he said.
Daniel Rossing, director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian
relations, said his organization was collating accounts of spitting
incidents so they could approach rabbis and demand they teach their
congregants to stop such attacks.
“All people are created in the image of God and to spit on another
person is to spit on the image of God,” Rossing said. He said that
usually the assailants were ultra-Orthodox Jews and the victims were
“people wearing liturgical vestments or are wearing a manifest
Christian symbol such as a cross”. Rossing said he believed the
attacks were carried out due to intolerance towards Christians by
ultra-Orthodox Jews as well as to anger from religious persecution
in past centuries.
Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said few Christians file
complaints with police about such assaults and unless they did it
was impossible to arrest and prosecute the assailants.
“We can only act when we have been informed by a complainant. When
we do know about it we act immediately to arrest the person who did
it and bring them to justice,” Kleiman said.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in a 12 October editorial: “It
is intolerable that Christian citizens of Jerusalem suffer from the
shameful spitting at or near a crucifix. Similar behaviour toward Jews
anywhere in the world would immediately prompt vehement responses.”

New UN stamp promotes benefits of disarmament to children
UN News Centre
Oct 15 2004
15 October 2004 – Declaring that “the children of the world need
books, not guns,” United Nations Messenger of Peace and Oscar-winning
actor Michael Douglas today launched a new UN stamp that promotes
disarmament.
Designed by artist Michel Granger of France, the stamp highlights
the theme that children should be in school instead of facing wars
or gun-related violence.
The UN Postal Administration (UNPA) and the Department of Disarmament
Affairs worked together to develop the stamp, which costs 37 cents
and is available for purchase.
In a video message to mark the stamp’s launch in New York, Mr.
Douglas said “the proliferation of light weapons has cheated children
of the chance to go to school, to play in the fields and to be raised
within a secure environment protected by elders. It has allowed
children to be used as instruments of war.”
He added that “the individual and social investment in weapons – that
find their way into the hands of children – must be redirected. The
children of the world need books, not guns, education, not war.”
The disarmament stamp is Mr. Granger’s third design for UNPA; he
has also designed stamps about the issue of chemical weapons (1991)
and road safety concerns (2004).
Yesterday UNPA also launched eight commemorative stamps on the theme of
Human Rights (Education Decade 1995-2004). Yuri Gevorgian of Armenia
designed the stamps for this series.

CONFERENCE HELD IN THE FRAME OF SCAD PROGRAM
[October 15, 2004, 22:41:04]
Azer Tag, Azerbaijan
Oct 16 2004
A conference, “Role of the NGOs in combat against narcotics”, in the
frame of the 4th phase of the South Caucasus Anti-Drug (SCAD) program,
jointly realized by the European Union, UNDP and Azerbaijan Government,
was held at the “Europe” Hotel in Baku.
Goal of the action was to bring the problems of narcotics to the notice
of NGOs, determine the directions of cooperation of the governmental
and non-governmental organizations.
Speaking at the action, deputy prime minister of the Republic,
chairman of the relevant State Commission Ali Hasanov stated that
state constantly fights illegal circulation of narcotics and adheres
involvement of the NGOs to this work. He also spoke that at the
occupied areas, the Armenian aggressors plant narcotics and use the
uncontrolled zones for drug trafficking.
Also were speaking at the conference the head of social policy standing
commission of Azerbaijan Parliament Hadi Rajabli, first deputy
internal minister Zahid Dunyamaliyev, EU expert Patrick O’Gorman,
representatives of UNISEF, other international organizations in the
country, as well as embassies of USA, Great Britain, Germany and Italy.

Armenian prime minister hints Armenia may not send troops to Iraq as pledged
Associated Press
Oct 16 2004
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) Armenia’s prime minister suggested Friday the
Caucasus country might not send troops to Iraq, saying conditions
there have changed since they were promised.
Prime Minister Andranik Markarian stressed that it was up to the
Constitutional Court and the parliament to make the decision on sending
the troops even though Armenia’s president pledged the troops during
a visit to Poland last month.
The 50 troops Armenia is considering sending bomb disposal experts,
doctors and transport teams would work under Polish command in Iraq.
Poland commands a multinational security force in central Iraq of
about 6,000 troops, including more than 2,400 Polish soldiers.
”Let’s not forget that … there have been certain changes from the
conditions under which we gave preliminary approval,” Makarian said,
Armenia, a former Soviet republic has sought to portray the decision to
send troops to Iraq as a way to boost ties with Europe, but critics
worry that it will endanger the 25,000-person Armenian community
living in Iraq.
”We also have concerns on this count. It’s possible that as a result
Armenia could become of the targets of terrorists,” Markarian said.
Of the 12 former Soviet republics in the Commonwealth of Independent
States, four Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia have sent
troops to Iraq. The Commonwealth is a loose successor to the Soviet
Union.

Family of slain Minnesotan visits Armenia, appeals to possible witnesses
Associated Press
Oct 16 2004
YEREVAN, Armenia – Visiting the country where her son was killed,
the mother of an American man who was stabbed to death in Armenia
earlier this year made a plea Friday for anyone with information
about the unsolved slaying to come forward.
Maxine Haglund-Blommer said she and two other sons, James and John,
came to the former Soviet republic in part to acquaint themselves
with the places where Joshua Haglund lived and worked before his
killing. At a news conference, Haglund-Blommer gave an address where
possible witness can turn to aid in the investigation.
The body of Haglund, a 33-year-old from Shoreview, Minn., who was
teaching English in Armenia, was found May 17 by his landlady on the
street outside his apartment in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. No
one has been arrested in the killing.
Haglund-Blommer aid that the U.S. Ambassador and Armenia’s chief
prosecutor consider the investigation into his death a priority, and
that police have worked hard on the case, but added that it hasn’t
been enough to solve his slaying.
Haglund was gay, and his family has wondered if his killing was a
hate crime.
Before leaving for Armenia, Haglund’s brother James said he and other
members of the family believed the trip would be part of the healing
process. The family planned to spend 10 days in Yerevan meeting with
local court officials and Haglund’s friends and colleagues here.
At the time of his killing, Haglund had been planning to leave
Armenia for a trip through Iran before returning to Minnesota for
the summer. Before coming to Armenia, a Caucasus Mountain nation
that gained independence in the 1991 Soviet breakup, he had lived
for extended periods in Japan, India and Puerto Rico.
He graduated from Mounds View High School and the University of
Minnesota.

Foreign minister to attend CICA meeting in Almaty
People’s Daily Online, China
Oct 16 2004
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing will pay an official visit to
Armenia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan and attend the foreign ministers’
meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building
Measures in Asia (CICA) to be held from October 18 to 24 in Almaty.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue made the announcements
here Friday, saying that Li will make this tour at the invitation
of Kazakh State Secretary-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kasymzhomart
Kemelevich Tokayev, Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan
Oskanyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
ofTurkmenistan Rashid Meredov, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of
Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov.
CICA, a forum aimed at increasing security in Asia, was first proposed
by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev at the 47th UN general
assembly in 1992 and its 16 members include China, Russia, Egypt,
Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, India and Palestine.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF AZERBAIJAN HIS EXCELLENCY ILHAM HEYDAR OGLU ALIYEV
[October 16, 2004, 12:17:54]
Azer Tag, Azerbaijan
Oct 16 2004
Dear and highly esteemed President!
On behalf of deputies of Milli Majlis and on my personal behalf, I
cordially congratulate You on the anniversary of acting as the
President of the Azerbaijan Republic and on the occasion of 13th
anniversary of our state independence, I wish you new successes in
the grandiose work done by you in the name of further strengthening
and development of the independent Azerbaijan state which was left to
us by our national leader Heydar Aliyev.
Marking 13th anniversary of independence, we once again look back to
the way passed by our people for construction of a free, independent,
sovereign state, difficulties that it faced on this way, to the
successes achieved by it. The whole period of the newest history of
Azerbaijan is connected to the name of our national leader Heydar
Aliyev. Thanks to his ingenious administrative abilities and intense
work in 1969-1982, during his first management of the Republic, our
country experienced progress in all spheres of life – in economy,
science, culture, education. For the short period of time, Azerbaijan
has passed the way of development equal to century. The favorable
conditions created by our national leader have started potential
force of society, and therefore, in consciousness of our people there
was a true awakening national advantage. During this period, due to
foresight and wisdom of Heydar Aliyev, there was laid strong base for
the future state independence of Azerbaijan.
At the end of XX century, when our people regained independence, it
could keep this sacred gift only due to the genius and will of Heydar
Aliyev. In terrible June days 1993, when the destiny of our
statehood, when our freedom and independence have faced monstrous
danger, our national leader on call of the insisting people has come
back to power in the country, and it has rescued the Azerbaijan
Republic which was on the edge of war and destruction. Due to Heydar
Aliyev’s saving mission, our state got rid of threat to be erased
with the political map of world, has avoided of the destiny the
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic faced in the beginning of XX century,
has shown to all world that can keep the statehood.
The policy whom our national leader with great foresight and wisdom
carried out after the historical returning to authority, has caused
eternity, irreversibility and indestructibility of independence of
Azerbaijan. In our country, large-scale reforms are carried out, and
the democratic, legal, secular state is being constructed. Principles
of civil society and market economy have been established, and
supremacy of law, protection of human rights and citizen, freedom of
speech, views, and political pluralism provided.
New oil strategy and strategy of economic development has been
prepared, and signed more than 20 contracts on development of power
resources in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian. There was a
transition from economic recession to consecutive development. Our
country became the initiator and the participant of huge economic
projects, has turned to leading force of projects of restoration of
the historical Silk Road, laying of the main export pipeline
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and gas pipeline Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum.
Negotiations on peace settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorny
Karabakh conflict have begun on the basis of norms and principles of
international law, in particular, the major among them is the
principle of inviolability of borders and territorial integrity of
the states. For achievement of support of the fair cause of our
people necessary measures on global scale have been undertaken, our
country has taken a worthy place in the international community. The
Azerbaijan Republic became an equal member of many authoritative
international organizations, including the United Nations, OSCE, the
Council of Europe, and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic
Cooperation, the Organization of Islamic Conference, the
Commonwealths of Independent States, the Organizations of Economic
Cooperation, the initiator and the active participant of regional
structure GUUAM.
Meeting today the 13th anniversary of the state independence of the
Azerbaijan Republic, our people once again with feeling of gratitude
recollects invaluable merits of Heydar Aliyev who has devoted all
life to protection, strengthening and development of the Azerbaijan
state, and who is among the greatest persons of our history. His
six-ten years’ grandiose activity including in political treasury of
the world, has played an exclusive role in realization of dream of
independent statehood, which by centuries was desired by Azerbaijan
people.
Dear Mr. President!
One of the most significant events, which have occurred these days in
the political life of our country, is the anniversary of your
activity in the post of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. On
October 15 last year, our people has voted at presidential elections
for You, having acted thus for continuation of the political course
of Heydar Aliyev leading Azerbaijan to the happy future. This
historical event, which has put in pawn the beginning of a new stage
in democratic development of Azerbaijan, being logical continuation
of our way of development, has provided political continuity
representing at the present stage vital value for our state.
In spite of the fact that a year passed after presidential elections,
is very short term for history, scale and the importance of the work
done in our country under your management, allow to speak with full
confidence that in the near future the Azerbaijan Republic which has
reached progress on strong and indestructible basis, created by our
national leader Heydar Aliyev, will turn in the most powerful state
of region. The projects, which are carried out by you in the post of
the head of the state, allow continuing successfully reforms in
political, economic, social and cultural life of our country. It is
undertaken measures directed on social and economic development of
our regions, huge transnational economic projects in which our
country participates, including the project of laying the BTC MEP.
The big attention is given to industry, agriculture, and other
branches of economy. It is perceived with great approval rise of well
being of Azerbaijan people, opening of new workplaces, increase of
wages, allowances and pensions, care of science, literature, art,
sports are perceived.
Your foreign visits, fruitful negotiations held with heads of the
states, politicians promote further strengthening of positions of
Azerbaijan on global scale, guarantee support of our just cause,
peace settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh
conflict.
Dear Mr. President,
The work done by you in the name of continuation of the political
line of our national leader Heydar Aliyev, development of his ideas,
has brought to you national love. Our people love you and have
closely rallied around of you. We trust, that due to inherent in you
to political experience, hardness and resoluteness you and henceforth
will continue successfully a rate of our national leader Heydar
Aliyev, will achieve the decision of all problems facing to our
independent state.
Dear President,
On behalf of deputies of the Milli Majlis and on my personal behalf
once again I congratulate You on the anniversary of presidential
activity and on the occasion of 13th anniversary of the state
independence of the Azerbaijan Republic, I wish you robust health,
new successes in grandiose activity in the name of happy future of
our state and people.
With deep respect,
On behalf of the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic,
Murtuz Alaskarov,
Chairman of Milli Majlis
(The Congratulation was adopted at session of Milli Majlis of the
Azerbaijan Republic, October 15, 2004).