Month: October 2005

ARAM I TO BLESS CHURCH BUILDING IN LA CRESCENTA
By Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Oct 5 2005

LA CRESCENTA – Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian looks forward to the
day next spring when the La Crescenta church headquarters for the
Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America opens to
welcome the community.

But another momentous day for the archbishop and his prelacy will come
Saturday, when His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House
of Cilicia, will bless the under-construction facility as part of a
Southern California visit.

The church leader, who is based in Lebanon, arrives today in
Los Angeles. Over the next two weeks, he will speak to students,
churchgoers, officials, religious leaders and participants in a
University of Southern California symposium.

“The invitation is open to our faithful, and this is the message: Come
and be inspired by our pontiff, who will invite us to the knowledge
of light,” Mardirossian said.

On Saturday, Aram I will bless and consecrate a cross that will be
hoisted to the top of a prayer room at the future prelacy headquarters,
6252 Honolulu Ave., La Crescenta.

Converted from an office building, the building will have 12,000
square feet of space, including an assembly room, offices, a library
and the prayer room. A fountain will memorialize victims of the
Armenian genocide of 1915-23. Stone was imported from Armenia to
cover the walls.

Hollywood was an early destination for Armenian immigrants arriving
in Southern California, and the prelacy made its headquarters there.

But the Armenian community has moved in large part to the Glendale
area.

“Wherever our community moves, the church and the clergy should move
with the community, because the shepherd should be with the flock,”
Mardirossian said.

The prelacy oversees eight private schools in California, nine church
buildings and several congregations without their own church.

The Armenian church is divided into two administrations, both of
which share a common theology but are based in different places.

Aram I is based in Antelias, Lebanon. In June, His Holiness Karekin
II, who is based in Armenia, visited Southern California and blessed a
cathedral under construction in Burbank, headquarters of the Western
Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America, a separate entity
from the prelacy.

The Catholicosate of Cilicia was created after a 10th century
displacement of Armenians to Cilicia, in what is now Turkey. It moved
to Lebanon because of the 20th century genocide.

Armenians living outside Armenia in such countries as Iran and Syria
continue to be oriented to the Catholicosate of Cilicia.

“Both men are beloved figures,” said Raffi Hamparian, board member of
the Armenian National Committee of America. “Aram Catholicos carries
with him the title of moderator of the World Council of Churches,
which is an added mention of his role not only in the Armenian nation
but to the Christian faith worldwide.”

[email protected]

IF YOU GO: On Oct. 15, His Holiness Aram I will participate in a
symposium at the University of Southern California on the theme of
the Christian response to violence, with an emphasis on the Armenian
genocide. The symposium runs from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at USC’s
Davidson Conference Center, in the Embassy Room. Those interested
in going to the symposium should register through the prelacy at
(818) 248-7737.

THE PERSPECTIVES OF COOPERATION HIGHLIGHTED

National Assembly of RA, Armenia
Oct 5 2005

On October 4 Artur Baghdasaryan, RA NA Speaker received Simon Lunn,
NATO PA General Secretary, who is in Armenia within the framework of
holding the NATO PA and RA NA joint seminar “The Security in South
Caucasus.” Mher Shageldyan, Chairman of RA NA Standing Committee
on Defense, Internal Affairs and National Security participated at
the meeting.

During the meeting both sides highlighted the issues of RA NA
Cooperation and NATO PA. Mr. Lunn noted that the South Caucasus region
is one of the priorities of NATO PA and highlighted the active work
in the Inter-parliamentary Assembly, appraising the activity of the
Armenian delegation. During the meeting the possibilities of holding
international conferences against anti-terrorism and use of chemical
weapon in Armenia in 2006 were also discussed. Mr. Lunn expressed
the full assistance of NATO PA to those programmes.

RA NA Speaker Artur Baghdasaryan highlighted the assistance of NATO
PA in the regional cooperation, noting that the joint discussions
promote the overcoming of disagreements.

During the meeting other issues were also discussed.

TWO SESSIONS OF CIS INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY COMMISSIONS TO BE HELD IN YEREVAN

PRAVDA< Russia
Oct 5 2005

Two sessions of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly commissions
(Economy and Finance; Science and Education) would be held in Yerevan,
Armenia, on October 7. Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia
Artur Bagdasaryan made the statement at a briefing.

It should be noted, that Artur Bagdasaryan and the Secretary General
of the CIS IPA Mikhail Krotov would address the joint session.

Members of the commissions will also meet Armenia’s Minister of
Education and Science Sergo Yeritsyan and Minister of Finance and
Economy Vardan Khachatryan, REGNUM reported.

E.U. BID KEEPS TURKEY ON PATH OF REFORM
By Karl Vick

Washington Post
Oct 5 2005

Goal Is Distant, But Pressure Isn’t

ISTANBUL, Oct. 4 — Turks say they know the negotiations that formally
opened in Luxembourg a few moments after midnight Tuesday morning
may not end with Turkey actually joining the European Union.

“The biggest problem, to start with, is that we’re Muslims,” said
Rabia Yasar, 18, to the nods of fellow students on an Istanbul street.

But even as they downgrade their expectations, Turks still very
much want to join Europe, polls show. And keeping that possibility
alive nourishes a new climate of change that already has brought a
flurry of reforms to a country that had long been almost impervious
to foreign pressure.

“It’s historic,” said Cuneyt Ulsever, a columnist for Hurriyet, a
mainstream daily newspaper. “We all grew up with our father holding a
stick in his hand to make us do our homework. Without any imposition
from outside, Turkey would quickly lose contact with reform.”

Even with the start of membership negotiations early Tuesday, the
process of Turkey joining Europe is expected to take at least 10
years. In the past three years, Turkish lawmakers have voted to ban
torture, outlaw the death penalty, dissolve special security courts,
revise the criminal code and dilute the power of a military that
three times since 1960 has taken power from civilian governments.

All the changes came at the behest of the European Union, which
requires member states to conform to so-called European norms.

“E.U. membership is the means of realizing Turkey’s claim of being
a democratic, liberal, just and prosperous society,” Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday told his ruling Justice and Development
Party, which calls itself reformist.

In the past month, as the start date for talks loomed, critics
scheduled news conferences to show what work still needed to be done,
and Turkish officials scrambled to demonstrate that their country
really could change.

With the public encouragement of Erdogan, scholars gathered in Istanbul
for the first independent public examination here of the deaths of
1 million Armenians in eastern Turkey during the last days of the
Ottoman Empire. Police lines kept back ultranationalists who gathered
to protest that shattering of what was termed “Turkey’s last taboo.”

Less noticed was the launch of a government program that pays
households for sending their daughters to school. The move was aimed
at undoing traditions that impede women’s rights in the Anatolian
heartland.

“If there were only the European side of Turkey, it would be easy,”
said Ifgenia Minaoglu, in the Katia shop that for half a century has
made custom hats for the elite of Istanbul society, who have long
considered themselves continental.

Others worry that Europe will bring not only rights and prosperity
but also homogenization. “We’ve been living without the E.U. up to
now,” said Nadira Canan, her hair tucked under the head scarf that
many Turkish women believe Islam requires them to wear in public. “If
we’re going to lose the values of our culture, then we’re better off
not part of it.”

But the headlines of Monday’s front pages, just under news of
the E.U. cliffhanger in which Austria nearly blocked the start of
membership talks, told of changes already underway: life in prison for
a man who killed his 16-year-old daughter because she had been raped,
an “honor crime” that a year ago would have brought a lighter sentence;
the opening by a state official of a home in central Istanbul for
battered and homeless women.

“The speed of reform has increased tremendously,” said Meltem Muftuler
Bac, who studies Turkey and the E.U. at Istanbul’s Sabanci University.

On an inside page, Hurriyet on Tuesday discreetly displayed the front
page it had prepared in the event that Austria had prevailed in its
attempt to deny Turkey full E.U. membership. The mock-up featured
a giant photo of Adolf Hitler throwing a straight-arm salute. “The
Same Spirit,” the headline read.

At the same time, Turkish nationalists have also been energized
by the E.U. bid, turning out tens of thousands of protesters for a
weekend rally where Erdogan’s government was accused of selling out
the country’s sovereignty. Turks are raised to be deeply invested in
their state, and some analysts predict that mind-set is more likely
to derail union with Europe than the country’s size, poverty, Middle
Eastern borders or even religion.

“Whatever the state thinks, that’s what I think,” said Arsez
Degirmencioglu, 70, outside his clock shop in downtown Istanbul. “I
don’t have any individual thoughts.”

EUROPEAN ELITES CAN’T IGNORE THE VIEWS OF THEIR PEOPLES
Jonathan Freedland

The Guardian, UK
Oct 5 2005

Opening the door to Turkey was right, but EU expansion is bound to
fail if the dreamers ignore the majority

One of the least noticed political deaths of recent times was the
demise of Britain in Europe. Launched with great hoopla in 1999, at
a glossy event attended by Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy and the Tory
titans Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine – a gesture for which Clarke
may yet pay a high price – the organisation was quietly put to sleep
in August. Cause of death: the no votes in France and the Netherlands,
which sealed the fate of the European constitution.

“Campaign operations have ceased because there is no campaign,”
says a spokesman, still manning the phones in what used to be HQ.

Britain in Europe’s founding purpose was UK entry into the euro. At
the time, our national politics seemed to revolve around the issue.

The Conservative party drove itself crazy over it, as rival factions
subjected every utterance to almost theological scrutiny. Differences
over the euro were held to be the defining gulf that separated Blair
from Gordon Brown. The most eminent political commentators in the
land swore that an eventual referendum on the single currency would
be the most significant decision today’s generation of Britons would
ever face.

That all seems a long time ago now. At last week’s Labour party
conference, neither Blair nor Brown so much as mentioned it. On Monday
in Blackpool, Clarke referred to the euro – but only to say it was
“paranoid” to imagine he would ever try to lead Britain into it.

It is the deadest of dead letters.

The constitution briefly served as a surrogate goal for British
euro enthusiasts, but the French and Dutch killed that off too. To
complete the process, economic lethargy on the continent has erased
the europhiles’ longest-serving argument – that basket-case Britain
needs to learn from its successful neighbours – so that now Blair
lectures the other Europeans on what they might learn from us. When
the prime minister did address the theme last week, it was only to
diss the EU’s big beasts. “Not for us the malaise of France or the
angst of Germany,” he said, with acid in his voice.

On Monday, there came a moment when this downward trend seemed poised
to reach its logical conclusion. If Austria’s objections had been
heeded, and the union’s 25 member states had blocked talks aimed at
Turkish entry, the sense of gloom would have been all-consuming. With
Germany paralysed and government-less and France gazing at its own
navel, the defeat of the EU’s latest grand design – eastward expansion
beyond Christendom – would have marked 2005 as the year the wheels
finally came off the great Euro-train. That outcome was avoided
and that is surely welcome. Advocates of Turkish entry were right
to argue that the admission into the EU of a large Muslim democracy
would represent the best possible proof that there need be no clash of
civilisations: no longer will the jihadists be able to speak of the
Christian west pitted against the Muslim rest. Instead the EU, that
quintessentially western club, will count as one of its biggest members
– with a projected population of 80 million in 2015, the earliest
possible year of entry – a nation now ruled by an Islamist government.

So opening the door to Turkey was the right move. And it is just an
opening. If Turkey does not improve its appalling record on human
rights, the door should stay closed. Optimists say the country
has already passed eight key packages of constitutional reforms,
abolished the death penalty and changed its stance on Kurdish rights –
recently establishing Kurdish-language TV services. Pessimists say the
mentally-ill continue to be punished rather than treated, that last
week Ankara moved to outlaw the country’s leading gay rights movement
and that dissent is still criminalised: witness the prosecution of the
novelist Orhan Pamuk for daring to challenge Turkey’s state denial of
its 20th-century crimes against the Armenians. As for the Kurds, say
the worriers, let’s see what happens if Iraq breaks up and the north
of the country becomes independent Kurdistan. Then we’ll discover
how relaxed Turkey really is.

The optimists reckon the carrot of EU membership will persuade Turkey
to keep on changing. For Mark Leonard of the Centre for European
Reform this is where the EU’s bureaucratic style comes into its own.

Submit Turkey to a decade of Brussels “nit-picking” and Ankara
will have to clean up its act – not just passing liberal laws but
implementing them. “It won’t be good enough to do it for 10 minutes,”
says Leonard. “It’s got to be for 10 years.”

This is what Europhiles mean when they speak of the “soft power” of
the union, the capacity to draw countries towards democracy through
the magnetic pull of EU-style prosperity and stability. How much
better, and more effective, than the “hard power” of George Bush:
democracy delivered by bombs from the sky and boots on the ground.

Yet Europhiles should not be too smug too soon. Monday’s decision
may have averted a train wreck, but the course ahead is hardly smooth.

For one thing, to admit Turkey is to repeat the very behaviour
that has created the union’s crisis of legitimacy. Once again, the
governments and elites have pressed ahead with a step that their
peoples loudly oppose. Europe-wide polling shows a clear majority
against Turkish membership, with unambiguous opposition in Germany,
France and the Netherlands, rising to 80% in Austria. One can shake
one’s head at the xenophobia or even Islamophobia that might lurk
behind those numbers, but it won’t do any good. If this year’s
referendum defeats said anything, it was that Europeans were fed
up with their views being pushed aside by a political class that,
time after time, insists it knows best. To press ahead blithely with
Turkish admission, waving aside the concerns of these majorities,
would be to have learned nothing.

Instead, those who believe Turkey belongs in the EU will have to
spend the next decade making a case for it. That means explaining
how a country where income per head is a tenth of the UK’s – and
which will instantly become the EU’s poorest member – can fit into
a club dominated by wealthy, industrialised nations. And how the
poorest workers in the union will be able to withstand competition
from migrants ready to work for even lower wages.

There are answers to these questions. The Turkish economy is growing,
so that the gap between it and the rest of the EU should be narrower
by the time entry comes around. And there could be a transition period,
delaying the day when Turkish workers are able to offer their services
anywhere in the union.

Whatever the specifics, answers there will have to be. Because the old
European way of doing business – act first, worry about legitimacy
afterwards – is surely over. The people won’t put up with it any
longer. France and Austria, for example, have reserved the right
to refuse any further EU expansion in a referendum. In other words,
Turkish membership could be vetoed on the whim of Lille and Linz.

The European dreamers still have grand plans – eyeing the Balkans,
Georgia and the Ukraine as potential recruits – as if they have
replaced one driving goal with another. The obsession used to be ever
deeper, federalist integration; now it is ever wider expansion. But
if they pursue the new ambition the way they chased the last one,
with scant regard for the people they claim to represent, it will
meet the same fate: failure.

ISSUE OF REFUGEES IN AZERBAIJAN EXCLUDED FROM AGENDA OF PACE DISCUSSIONS

Today, Azerbaijan
Oct 5 2005

>>From the agenda of the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe (PACE) which started on 3 October 2005
debates on the report of refugees in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia
is excluded on the insistence of the Azerbaijani delegation.

A member of the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE, a Milli Mejlis deputy
Bahtiyar Aliyev told Trend about it.

According to him, the sittings of the committees commenced first. The
report of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population on the
problems of refugees in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia was heard.

“We voiced the protest on a number of the items of the report on the
state of refugees and internally displaced people in Azerbaijan.

The decision was taken to revise the issue with the rapporteur Boris
Shlevovitsch and then submit for discussion”.

Aliyev also underlined, the PACE Cabinet of Ministers adopted a
document recently. “It is a sort of a report on the OSCE Minsk Group
activities, which enables us to raise the issue in the subcommittee
being set up”. The PACE autumn session will last from 3 till 8 October.

URL:

TURKEY, EU GAIN TIME TO PONDER

Kathimerini, Greece
Oct 5 2005

Ankara should push forward with democratic reforms regardless of its
European goal

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is welcomed in Luxembourg
yesterday evening by his British counterpart Jack Straw after EU
member states decided to open accession talks with Ankara.

By Burak Bekdil – Kathimerini English Edition

Once again, Turkey and the European Union have put off their
deep-rooted problems – till the next act of the never-ending opera
buffe. Judging from the drama on stage, it’s hard to determine if
the Turks are becoming Europeans, or the Europeans becoming Turks.

Although parts of Turkey may now be cheering that their dreams have
come true, the truth may not warrant all the fanfare. It is not hard
to see that a great deal of china was broken in the runup to the
happy ending of the soap opera in Luxembourg.

No doubt there is progress, at least in “status.” So when things
go from worse to worst, it will be “back to square two,” instead of
“back to square one.”

While European ministers met on Sunday for the “last supper” before the
most critical date in Turkish-EU history, over 60,000 nationalist Turks
gathered in Ankara for what recalled Antonello Venditti’s famous 1970s
song, “Roma Capoccia” (Rome, the capital): Ankara, the capital! The
crowds sent a coarse message to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:
Turkey is governed in Ankara, not Brussels.

The timing of the rally may look absurd, but it is not. Ironically,
Turkish public support for EU membership has dropped by 16 percentage
points to 57 percent since the EU agreed to open entry talks with
Turkey last December.

It’s time to be realistic. What can come out of a coupling if
everyone’s talking of divorce during the engagement ceremony? Not
much, perhaps.

Since EU declarations have effectively become part of the acquis
communautaire, so will the counter-declaration that calls for a
2006 review of whether Turkey has opened its ports and airports to
Cypriot airplanes and vessels. That practically means the talks can
be suspended in 2006.

If the dispute over ports is by some miracle resolved (if, for example,
the EU were to say that granting access to the Cypriot fleet does
not mean recognition; or if sanctions against Turkish Cypriots are
removed) then other problematic areas will surface in 2007, or in 2008.

When over 50 percent of Europeans oppose eventual Turkish membership,
the bitter truth is that “otherness” still divides Turkey and the
Old Continent. Of course, this static picture could be reversed in
the next decade. Still, Turkey must keep contingency plans in the
likely case that its EU bid fails in the future.

Every day that adds to the “otherness” will further reduce the Turks’
EU appetite, especially when Europeans play too much with explosive
issues like Armenian genocide claims. The European Parliament’s call
for Turkey to recognize the deaths of Ottoman Armenians as genocide
was a major brick in a wall that could divide Turkey and Europe for
good. The wise course for Turkey is to keep up democratic reforms as
if it will join the club one day, but keeping in mind that it may not,
or may even join an entirely different club than the one it sees today.

In Europe, a cradle-to-grave social welfare system has been created
that is not economically sustainable. Most countries are unable to
create economic growth internally because it is drained away by the
overburdened welfare system. Consequently, EU states must export at a
furious rate. This is difficult because the more efficient economies,
such as the USA and China, can out-compete them in most situations.

Thus EU states must cater to totalitarian regimes in order to export.

Hence the many deals with these states to secure exports. For example,
EU heavyweights intend to provide China with sophisticated weapons
in return for exports. A different course, but no more edifying,
is being adopted in Africa.

Some states are still struggling with the competing ideologies that
arose after World War I. It seems the socialist nationalists are
currently on the rise over the nationalist socialists.

Germany is teetering on the edge. Gerhard Schroeder, for example,
has, for most of his career, characterized himself as a Marxist. His
coalition partners, the Greens, were a party built around one woman,
Petra Kelly, until she accepted large infusions of cash from the East
Germans and Soviets. Joschka Fischer’s radical communist past is full
of controversy, such as his alleged links with Baader-Meinhof, Libyan
intelligence, and the murders of OPEC personnel in Vienna in the 1970s.

Then there is the professed pacifism of many Europeans. In fact, the
Old Continent is disarming and stepping off the world stage. Germany
is reducing its armed forces almost to the levels of the post-WWI
Versailles Treaty – federal aircraft levels are going down to 300 of
all types.

Even Britain, which says it will stay in Iraq until the end, is in
fact disarming itself to the extent that it will only be a symbolic
force. London plans to be able to support only one army brigade outside
Britain by 2015. Its navy will consist of only 25 small surface warfare
ships plus two carriers, and the carriers may not be built. The UK is
also drastically reducing its submarine fleet. Even now, Britain has
only one naval vessel in the Indian Ocean. All aircraft that flew from
current aircraft carriers have been withdrawn, and new ones will not
come in until 2015. Even British commanding officers admit the navy
is incapable of combat operations without the presence of US ships.

While the French military looks good, it is a hollow force. In the
first Iraqi war the French were teamed with the US 82nd airborne
division in their sweep into the western desert. The 82nd advanced
faster than did the French division and was attacking from blue bird
buses while the French rode in tanks and armored personnel carriers.

France is the only European presence in China’s neighborhood, with
some small naval vessels.

With limited military capabilities at a time of global need to tackle
asymmetrical threats, most of Europe will look like etatist governments
that stay in power by feeding an increasingly unsupportable welfare
system. That is going to be the general picture Turkey will face when
time has come for membership.

What, in these circumstances, must Turkey do? Seek a bizarre alliance
northward or eastward? Forget the EU entirely? Align itself with
an increasingly anti-European United States? These are not really
feasible or pleasant options. Turkey should stay on track, but with
a good contingency plan in mind. It needs to democratize and reform
for its own sake, with or without the EU.

1,600 YEARS FOR 38 LETTERS
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Oct 5 2005

Language key to Armenian life

When Nicole Oganesian realized that her high-school Spanish kicked
in while she was trying to communicate with her great-grandmother –
but not the language of her ancestors – she knew it was time she
learned Armenian.

She saw her opportunity at the University of California, Los Angeles.

After five quarters, she was able to communicate in the language she
hadn’t learned growing up in an Armenian home.

“I felt a frustration – not being able to communicate with family
and grandparents,” said Oganesian, 26, a law student from Chino Hills.

“There was no reason for me not to know how. I almost felt a duty
to learn it. It just makes me feel like I can better interact, and
I felt like it just made me more in tune with the culture.”

Some 10 million Armenians worldwide this week are celebrating the
1,600th anniversary of their alphabet – which, along with their
Christian religion, serves as a key link to preserving their cultural
identity.

Armenians have long believed that their alphabet was destined for them
and came from a higher source, even ascribing its origin to mysticism.

Mesrop Mashtots, a cleric of the Armenian royal court, is said to have
dreamed the 38 letters in 405 A.D., writing them down when he awoke.

Mashtots, who was interested in translating the Bible into his native
tongue, is something of an icon for Armenians, with statues of him
erected throughout the homeland. Most Armenians-Americans today have
a poster or painting of the alphabet in their homes.

More than anything, Armenians believe that their language is the basis
of maintaining the culture – one that has been threatened over the
years by a genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire
in 1915 and by life in the Diaspora.

In an effort to keep their language, values and customs alive in
America, Armenians over the past 40 years have built about 20 schools
in the Los Angeles area that serve more than 3,000 students.

Greg Tufenkian and his sister – who grew up in a household with an
Armenian-speaking mother and an Armenian-American father who spoke
only English – attended Armenian school and now send their children
to Armenian school in an effort to preserve the language.

“I think we’re so lucky to have a language and an alphabet as a people,
since there are so many people whose languages aren’t even spoken
anymore,” said Tufenkian, a Glendale resident who sells commercial
real estate.

“It seems through history we’ve always been an underdog; yet we’ve
always been able to regroup, refocus, survive and go forward. So
preserving our language for the next generations is the least we can
do to preserve our culture.”

High-profile attorney Mark Geragos said he speaks enough Armenian to
ask for more water, say thank you and ask how are you. But he talks
to his two children about the Armenian Genocide and sends them to
Armenian events, summer camps and church – to keep the culture alive
in future generations.

“The rule of thumb is that identification with your culture dies out
in three generations, and I’m determined not to let that happen.”

Armenian-Americans have been criticized as insular and ethnocentric,
but determination to keep the language alive is a byproduct of
historical tragedy, said Ed Finegan, professor of linguistics and
law at the University of Southern California.

“Because of our history – when you experience a calamity like a
genocide or holocaust – you are so insecure and so paranoid that you
are constantly fighting a war of preservation,” said Vahe Berberian,
an Armenian writer, performer and artist.

Stepan Partamian, the popular host of a controversial Armenian
public-access program, argues that there’s not much to celebrate
when, like Americanized Spanish or Spanglish, what’s being created
in America is “Armenglish.”

“Why should we celebrate 1,600 years of the Armenian alphabet when
we don’t utilize it today?” he said. “Learning it will one day become
more of a novelty than a necessity.”

But language in fact must change and adapt in order to survive,
Finegan said.

“In order for a language to remain vital, it has to grow and adapt,
so borrowing English or words from other languages doesn’t affect
the heart of the language,” Finegan said.

Despite the effort to preserve the language, some Armenians are
resigned to the probability that it will one day die in America. They
point out that once-vibrant Armenian communities have evaporated in
India, Rome and Singapore.

There are two ways a language can die, Finegan said: Its people are
eliminated, or the speakers give it up for another language. But the
language can survive by being used for functions more immediate to
the culture – as at home, church or heritage events.

“The more it can be preserved there, the more likely it will be to
survive,” Finegan said.

Oganesian would definitely want her children to learn Armenian.

“I think it’s a connection to their heritage,” she said. “It’s always
a good idea to know how to speak more languages, and any way you can
give yourself more avenues by which to express yourself, the better
off you are.”

Naush Boghossian, (818) 713-3722

SCATTERED PEOPLE STRIVE TO PRESERVE TRADITION
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Oct 5 2005

In many ways, the behavior of Armenians in the Diaspora is most
similar to that of the Jews.

Without the language, you can’t maintain the culture in its
same richness, and you lose the sense of the literature and the
storytelling, said Caroline Allouche, who teaches Hebrew at a Jewish
nursery school in North Hollywood.

“If you go to a public school and learn English and English customs,
you’re going to lose what we teach them in private school: the
holidays, the values of the Jewish culture,” she said. “When you have
a background, you have to keep it. In America, it’s a melting pot,
and with so many different cultures it’s great to show we exist.”

But Koreans, for example, who have one grammar school in Los Angeles,
don’t find their identity in the world threatened.

Charles Kim, who serves on the board of directors of the Korean
Institute of Southern California, which operates the Korean Wilshire
Elementary School and 13 Saturday schools, said losing the language
is to be expected as new generations grow up in America.

Only one of his four children speaks Korean.

“They will become Americans. There’s a high probability my kids
may marry non-Koreans, and a few more generations and they’ll say
I’m one-eighth Korean,” Kim said. “Then I think they will play a
significant role in promoting different cultures. This is a country
where we can showcase all different cultures harmoniously.”

ASIM MOLLAZADE DISCUSSED PRE-ELECTION SITUATION WITH PACE PRESIDENT

Today, Azerbaijan
Oct 5 2005

Chairman of Democratic Reforms Party, deputy Asim Mollazade met with
President of Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe Rene Van
Der Linden yesterday.

APA was informed from the press service of Democratic Reforms Party.

The sides discussed the political situation in Byelorussia and
pre-election situation in Azerbaijan. Asim Mollazade informed the PACE
President about the latest processes ongoing in Byelorussia in detail.

He also informed Rene Van Der Linden about the pre-election situation
in Azerbaijan, authority-opposition relations, problems related
with the election process. PACE President stated that, he hopes the
elections scheduled to 6 November will be democratic.

“We are trying to send more observers from PACE, taking into
considerations the concerns and a number of requirements in
Azerbaijan. PACE will send a number of observers to Azerbaijan for
ensuring transparent, fair and democratic elections”.

The issues concerning the cooperation between the Azerbaijani and
Latvian delegations to PACE and cooperation between the parliaments
of these countries were discussed in Strasburg yesyerday. The sides
signed document on cooperation. It must be noted that, a meeting
will be held between Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations with the
participation of head of PACE subcommittee on Garabagh Lord Rassel
Johnston in Strasbourg today.

The discussions will focus on the issues concerning the resolution
of the conflict. The Azerbaijani delegation will be represented by
Asim Mollazade and Samad Seyidov.

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