ArmenPress
Aug 9 2004
NKR PRESIDENT SAYS STATUS OF NAGORNO KARABAKH ALREADY DECIDED BY THE
PEOPLE OF KARABAKH
STEPANAKERT, AUGUST 9, ARMENPRESS: President of the Republic of
Nagorno Karabakh (NKR) Arkadi Ghukassian described the yesterday’s
elections of local self-government bodies as expression of democracy
and an opportunity for NKR citizens to elect its leadership. “Such
political actions create preconditions for international recognition
of Nagorno Karabakh,” he said.
Referring to Council of Europe General Secretary Walter Schmidt’s
statement on municipality elections in NKR, Ghukassian said it is
somewhat odd. “Today we do not discuss the status of Nagorno Karabakh
because it is already decided by its people. We are electing leaders
of our cities and villages and alternative for elections is
totalitarianism. It is strange that European political actors come up
with a statement against democratic values,” NKR president said.

ArmenPress
Aug 9 2004
AZERI CENTRAL ELECTORAL COMMITTEE ISSUED A STATEMENT ON MUNICIPALITY
ELECTIONS IN NAGORNO KARABAKH
BAKU, AUGUST 9, ARMENPRESS: Azeri Central Electoral Committee
(CEC) issued a statement in relation to municipality elections in
Nagorno Karabakh which says in particular, “the August 9 illegal
municipality elections in unrecognized Nagorno Karabakh which run
contrary to international legal norms, Azerbaijani constitution and
legislation will affect negatively on the process of peaceful
regulation of the conflict. Azeri CEC considers the elections which
are against Azeri sovereignty and territorial integrity as illegal
and does not recognize them. Lawful municipality elections can be
held in Nagorno Karabakh region of Azerbaijan only after the occupied
land is vacated, territorial integrity of Azerbaijan restored and the
refugees returned to their places of living based on Azerbaijani
Constitution.” the statement says.

ArmenPress
Aug 9 2004
200 COMMUNITIES ELECTED THEIR LEADERS, NO STEPANAKERT MAYOR YET
STEPANAKERT, AUGUST 9, ARMENPRESS: Despite of complaints by
international structures and Azerbaijan, 200 communities elected
their community heads in August 8 municipality elections in Nagorno
Karabakh. Stepanakert, however, presented a surprise with a need for
a second turn. Two candidates with the most votes, Pavel Najarian and
Eduard Aghabekian, will participate in the second turn. The first
candidate is supported by pro-government Democratic Artsakh Union and
the second is supported by opposition. Observers say the second
candidate has more chances of winning, though he was by 8 percent
behind his competitor in the first turn. The chairman of Central
Electoral Committee Sergei Davidian says that elections were more
organized as compared to the previous one.

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
August 9, 2004, Monday
GEORGIANS ATTACK TURKS
SOURCE: Novye Izvestia, August 4, 2004, p. 4
by Oleg Kasimov
UNSOLVED PROBLEM OF ABKHAZIA GENERATES FRICTION IN THE
GEORGIAN-TURKISH RELATIONS
Relations between Georgia and Turkey plummeted last Saturday because
of the incident off the coast of Abkhazia. Boat of the Georgian coast
guard opened fire at the Turkish dry cargo ship that crossed the
Georgian territorial waters and was bound for Sukhumi. The ship was
damaged but not detained. Abkhazian State Security Minister Mikhail
Tarba said that the Abkhazian will sink every Georgian ship in their
territorial waters. The minister even mentioned the use of aviation
whenever necessary.
Shortly before that Abkhazian leaders terminated negotiations with
Tbilisi. The statement to this effect was made the day following the
end of military exercise run by the self-proclaimed republic where
15,000 men including reservists were involved. Tbilisi appraised the
exercise as an element of preparations for an all-out war on Georgia.
The situation being what it is, official Ankara did not respond to
the attack on the Turkish ship. This was only logical. These days,
Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan are building a military-political
axis as a counterweight to another geopolitical construction – the
Russian-Armenian-Iranian triangle. With Washington’s support, Ankara
is rapidly building the Baku – Tbilisi – Dheijkhan pipeline that will
bring Caspian oil to the world market via Georgia and Turkey.
Moreover, Turkey has been providing military aid to Georgia. A
platoon of Georgian peacekeepers has been in Kosovo as a subunit of
the Turkish contingent since 1999.
The unsolved problem of Abkhazia generates friction in the relations
between Tbilisi and Ankara. Turkey recognizes territorial integrity
of Georgia and frowns on Abkhazia’s attempts to cede. In the
meantime, Turkish ships regularly violate the Georgian sea border and
bring food and goods to Abkhazia, something Georgia inevitably calls
smuggled goods. Georgian secret services even compiled a list of 19
ships making regular runs to Abkhazia and sent it to Ankara. Turkey
did not respond. Experts believe that Ankara’s position on the
subject of Abkhazia is influenced to a considerable extent by the
Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey. The diaspora numbers about 400,000
people, descendants from the makhadzhirs (this is how the Ottoman
Empire called the Abkhazians who fled there during the Caucasus War
in the 19th century). Most of them became Moslems in Turkey.
In the early 1990’s, the authorities of Abkhazia appealed to these
men to come home promising living quarters and free education. The
decision to build two mosques, in Gudauta and Sukhumi, was made then.
The process of repatriation was quite rapid at first: hundreds
families returned to Abkhazia. The number of Moslems in Abkhazia
soared. According to the latest opinion polls, 49.3% residents of
Abkhazia call themselves Christians and 28.7% Moslems. Ankara is
closely watching the situation in Abkhazia nowadays, emphasizing its
concern for the makhadzhir families that returned to Abkhazia. It is
with Ankara’s silent consent that Turkish ships regularly bring fuel
and food to the region. Ankara is financing schools in Abkhazia where
students are taught in the Turkish language. Turkish ambassador to
Georgia visited Abkhazia this June. “Ankara is not disinterested in
the processes taking place in Abkhazia,” he said.
It goes without saying that in its confrontation with the authorities
of Georgia Sukhumi counts on the Abkhazian lobby in Turkey that is
trying to wield its clout with regard to the policy of official
Ankara. Last October, former finance minister of Turkey Zekiriat
Emizel visited Sukhumi (Emizel is an Abkhazian himself). He promised
leaders of Abkhazia to use his political clout to have official
Ankara and general public to turn to the Abkhazian problems.
Translated by A. Ignatkin

Federal Information and News Dispatch, Inc.
The Washington Daybook
August 10, 2004
ORGANIZATION: The National Press Club holds a news conference to
discuss the Armenian economy and the Millennium Challenge Account.
TIME: 2 p.m.
LOCATION: National Press Club, 14th and F Streets NW, Zenger Room,
Washington, D.C.
CONTACT: Peter Hickman, 301-530-1210 or 202-662-7540; e-mail,
[email protected]
PARTICIPANTS: Vahram Nercissiantz, chief economic adviser to the
president of Armenia
TYPE: News conference
LN-ORG: NATIONAL PRESS CLUB (91%);

Associated Press Worldstream
August 8, 2004 Sunday
Nagorno-Karabakh holds municipal elections
YEREVAN, Armenia
The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave held local elections on Sunday, ignoring
the Council of Europe’s advice to call off the municipal balloting.
“Free and fair elections are the only mechanism to form a legitimate
government in Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Sergei Davidian, chairman of
the enclave’s Central Election Commission.
The 45-nation Council of Europe, however, had voiced regret over the
elections in the enclave, which has broken off from Azerbaijan, with
Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer saying “one-sided actions are
counterproductive.”
More than 85,000 residents are registered to vote in Sunday’s
balloting to choose community leaders, members of the Council of
Elders and also the mayor of the regional capital, Stepanakert.
Preliminary results are expected Monday.
Davidian said he was confident the election would proceed fairly,
adding that international experts were closely following the results.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s Union of Journalists, citing the results of an
earlier survey, predicted that 72 percent of registered voters would
cast ballots.
Armenian-backed forces won control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely
ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, in a 1988-94 war that killed
some 30,000 people and drove a million from their homes.
Despite a cease-fire, Armenian-backed forces and Azerbaijani troops
continue to face off across a demilitarized zone, and shooting
occasionally erupts. On Sunday, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Foreign Ministry
announced that a 21-year-old Azerbaijan soldier, identified as Anat
Samyedov, was detained on Friday during an alleged attempt to cross
the border.
Nagorno-Karabakh said it had informed the International Committee of
the Red Cross and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in
Europe about the detention, adding that it was willing to return the
soldier to Azerbaijan if it received such a request.

Agence France Presse
8 août 2004
Elections municipales et locales au Nagorny Karabakh
EREVAN, 8 aout
Les habitants de la republique auto-proclamee du Nagorny Karabakh ont
vote dimanche pour des elections municipales et locales pour la
troisieme fois depuis 1991, un scrutin qui a suscite des critiques du
Conseil de l’Europe et de l’Azerbaiedjan qui revendique toujours son
autorite sur l’enclave.
“Les elections se sont deroulees dans le calme sur tout le territoire
du Nagorny Karabakh, et la situation est egalement restee calme aux
frontieres avec l’Azerbaiedjan”, a declare dimanche soir par
telephone a l’AFP l’un des responsables de la Commission electorale,
le “vice-ministre” des Affaires etrangeres Massis Maielian.
La participation devrait depasser 60% des inscrits, selon des donnees
preliminaires citees par ce responsable.
Ce scrutin devait permettre de designer le maire de la “capitale”
Stepanakert et les autres responsables des pouvoirs locaux.
Enclave a population majoritairement armenienne en Azerbaiedjan, le
Nagorny Karabakh a ete le theatre d’un conflit sanglant au debut des
annees 90 au moment de la desintegration de l’Union sovietique. Il
reste depuis un cessez-le-feu en 1994 sous le controle des Armeniens,
qui l’avaient emporte sur le terrain.
Les quelque 87.000 electeurs ont a leur disposition 260 bureaux de
vote dans les huit regions du Nagorny Karabakh.
Le scrutin a ete critique par le ministere azerbaiedjanais des
Affaires etrangeres et par le Conseil de l’Europe. Repondant a ce
dernier, le “ministere des Affaires etrangeres” du Nagorny Karabakh a
declare que “la tenue d’elections pour former les organes du pouvoir
a tous les niveaux constitue un pas tres important vers la creation
de la societe civile”.
“Le developpement et le renforcement des processus democratiques au
Nagorny Karabakh et dans tous les pays voisins permettront a coup sur
d’instaurer une paix durable et la stabilite dans la region”, ajoute
la declaration du “ministere”.

Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
August 8, 2004 Sunday, Home Final Edition
FICTION THE LAST DAY OF THE WAR;
HISTORICAL NOVEL AVOIDS USUAL PITFALLS
by Margaret Quamme, FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Judith Claire Mitchell’s assured first novel, The Last Day of the War
, neatly masters the historical novel’s biggest challenge: It breaks
through a potentially overwhelming tangle of events to focus on the
actions of a few well-defined characters and uses them to illuminate
a broader scene.
The novel wears its thorough research lightly, Mitchell never larding
The Last Day with details that don’t contribute to characters or
plot.
As World War I draws to a close, and after the official cessation of
hostilities, two young Americans become entangled in a Paris-based
plot to take revenge against the Turks, who massacred the Armenians
in 1915.
Nineteen-year-old Yael Weiss, a young woman with suffragette
leanings, meets U.S. intelligence officer Dub Hagopian, of Armenian
descent, in a St. Louis library.
There he has been scheduled to pick up weapons for Erinyes, the
secret vengeance organization run by the “old and maimed lion” Aram
Kazarian, who has had four fingers lopped off by the Turks.
Attracted to Dub and bored with St. Louis, Yael signs up with the Red
Cross in order to follow him to Europe, changing her name to Yale
White and listing her age as the required 25 and her religion as
Methodist.
On the boat to Europe, she is assigned alphabetically to room with
impetuous, ginger-haired Mary Brennan White, who is “thin as broth,
but hardly as dull” and flaunts her failed relationship with a
married man.
The two come into conflict with supervising matron Amo Winston, a
repressed former beauty cream saleswoman, who is constantly
“unsquinching” her eyes to avoid wrinkles; and with the unctuous Rev.
Alban Bliss, “an imposing man, large in the manner of President Taft,
his pink face composed mostly of cheeks and chins, his chest and
belly straining the buttons on his uniform, his roly-poly thighs
testing the inner seams of his jodhpurs.”
Their lives are later complicated by Dub’s thuggish friend Raffi,
whose life dream is “to be a full-time professional vengeance
seeker,” and by Raffi’s sister Ramela, who has barely survived the
Turkish atrocities, and whom Dub has promised to marry if she will
stop cutting and burning herself.
The scope of The Last Day is rare in a first novel. Each of the
characters is fully developed, and their interactions are thoroughly
believable. So is the world in which they live: It shapes the
characters just as they, in some small way, shape it.
Equally rare is Mitchell’s finely tuned pacing. Allotting each scene
enough time to unfold fully, but never bogging down the narrative in
incidents that don’t advance the action, she builds to a conclusion
as satisfying as it is unpredictable.
From: Baghdasarian

The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico)
August 2, 2004 Monday
‘THROUGH STRENGTH, YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR DESTINY’
by JEFF TOLLEFSON
Raffi Papazian once spent a year and a half doing double duty, or
close to it, almost 1,000 feet under the Nevada desert.
Each day, he took the same ride down a mine shaft to work on the same
nuclear test, dubbed Ledoux after a small town in New Mexico. He was
six years into his career at the Nevada Test Site and 30 years into
his life as an American citizen.
Given his childhood experiences in Egypt and Lebanon, a career in the
United States’ nuclear-weapons program must have seemed a bit
surreal. But somehow it all made sense.
His grandparents fled to Egypt to escape the Turkish slaughter of
Armenians in 1915. He was born in Egypt at a time when Christians
were under persecution there, and he remembers sitting on the balcony
of his boyhood home worrying and waiting for his father to come home.
The family left for Lebanon in 1966, when Raffi was 10. They waited
four years for a ticket into the United States, during which time
Raffi and his sister went to an English-speaking school.
“Believe it or not, that left a tremendous impression on me,” he
said. “When I left college, I always wanted to work in the national
defense industry, because I wanted to make sure my kids never had
that feeling. … That might sound hokey to you, but it’s not.”
Papazian is a mechanical engineer who worked his way up through the
ranks at Los Alamos National Laboratory, substituting post-graduate
studies with under-the-ground experience designing nuclear tests. His
job was to ensure the physicists got what they needed when the ground
shook.
The lab detonated Ledoux in 1990, on the tail end of nuclear testing.
Two years later, the testing moratorium went into effect, and things
changed at the Nevada Test Site. All three of the major
nuclear-weapons laboratories still have operations there, and
Papazian is among a small group of Los Alamos employees who make the
commute each week.
Papazian’s work on the nuclear-weapons program might have made sense
to him, but he says his two daughters have had their doubts. Over the
years, Papazian has spent a lot of time explaining what the lab does,
and why, and how he feels about it.
“At some level, if you look at history, wars have been minimized by
nuclear weapons,” he said. “I’m one of the people who believes
there’s a lot of validity in being strong. Through strength, you can
control your destiny.”

Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA)
August 3, 2004, Tuesday
Blessing of grapes set for Inland church;
TRADITION: The event at the Armenian Apostolic Church of Riverside
observes the Virgin Mary.
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
The Armenian Apostolic Church of Riverside will hold its annual
church picnic and traditional blessing of the grape service
beginning at 11:30 a.m. Aug. 15 at La Sierra Park, 5215 La Sierra,
Riverside.
The blessing of grapes is part of the Orthodox Christian Feast of
the Assumption of St. Mary, an observance of the death, burial,
resurrection and transfer to heaven of the Virgin Mary, the mother
of Jesus.
“Grapes are blessed during the Feast of the Assumption of St. Mary
to symbolize a number of values that are important to life and
living,” the Rev. Dr. Stepanos Dingilian, pastor of the church,
said in an e-mail.
Wine comes from grapes and symbolizes the blood shed by Christ, he
said.
“This ‘blood’ in turn signifies that no achievement that raises
the
standard of human civilization is possible without wholehearted
dedication, total commitment and unselfish perseverance,” he said.
Grapes grow in clusters, illustrating that people need family and
community to grow spiritually and mentally and to live a meaningful
life, he said.
The blessing of the grapes is observed on the Feast of St. Mary,
Dingilian said.
For information, call (951) 684-1722, (951) 522-5172 or (909)
883-1066.