Month: October 2005

TRANSPORT PROBLEMS REMAIN MAIN HURDLE TO BOOSTING TRADE WITH RUSSIA

Armenpress
Oct 13 2005

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 13, ARMENPRESS: Armenian defense minister Serzh
Sarkisian, who is also the Armenian cochairmen of the Russian-Armenian
commission on economic cooperation, said yesterday transport
problems were the main hurdle for drastic boosting of trade with
Russia. Addressing a recurrent meeting of the commission in Yerevan
Sarkisian said trade between the two countries in the first half of
this year was up 30 percent.

His Russian counterpart, transport minister Igor Levitin, said
Russian-Armenian trade-economic partnership was exemplary for other
CIS member countries. Vahagn Movsisian, the director of the Armenian
Development Agency, cited several figures, saying that inflation in
the first half of the year was 7 percent, GDP growth upped 15 percent,
a 5 percent higher from a year ago.

Levitin also said they were going to look into what should be done to
give a boost to a ferryboat line running from Georgian port of Poti
to Russian port of Kavkaz, but he blamed its inefficient operation
on small volumes of goods the ferryboat takes aboard.

Armenian prime minister Andranik Margarian met today the Russian
minister to discuss ways for enhancing bilateral trade. The government
press office said the two sides expressed satisfaction with growing
trade that constituted $120 million in the first six months of this
year. Margarian was reported to reaffirm Armenian government’s
readiness to help restore railway communication across Georgia’s
breakaway region of Abkhazia.

SETTLEMENT IN GENOCIDE LAWSUIT
Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News
Oct 13 2005

AXA agrees to pay Armenian claims

A French insurance company has agreed to pay $17 million to settle
a class action lawsuit filed by descendants of Armenians killed in
the early 20th century in what is now Turkey.

French insurance giant AXA also agreed to call the killings genocide,
an important term to Armenians trying to call attention to what they
say were organized murders of more than a million people between 1915
and the early 1920s.

“Anytime we’re able to bring attention to the genocide is significant,”
said Brian Kabateck, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys.

“Because the rest of the world needs to understand what happened and
the rest of the world needs to focus on an ultimate resolution of
the genocide, which is recognition by the United States government
and the Turkish government.”

Between 2,000 and 5,000 policies are believed to be covered by the
settlement, including many in Southern California’s large Armenian
community, although the final number has yet to be determined.

AXA was sued because it bought L’Union Des Assurances de Paris, the
company that sold policies to Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.

The $17 million AXA settlement will be presented to a federal judge
in Los Angeles next month for final approval. It is similar to one
reached last year in which New York Life agreed to pay $20 million
to resolve litigation arising from its failure to pay Armenian
policyholders’ relatives.

One key difference is that in its settlement AXA would follow the
French government’s lead in describing the events of 1915 to the
early 1920s as genocide.

Armenians estimate that 1.5 million died when Armenian civilians living
in the Ottoman Empire were forced from their homes or otherwise killed
during and after World War I. The United States government and Turkey
have not officially called the event a genocide, and Turkey argues
that the number is exaggerated.

“I am not belittling their ordeal during that relocation: many
perished, many terrible things happened, that’s true,” said Engin
Ansay, the Turkish consul general in Los Angeles. “But it was not a
government decision or any decision on the part of the authorities
to annihilate one whole nation.”

The case against AXA was brought on behalf of several lead plaintiffs
living in the San Fernando Valley. One was Anik Arabian, who brought
her uncle’s life insurance policy with her to America, but who died
after the lawsuit was filed in 2002.

Arabian was born in Greece, where her parents had landed after being
driven into the desert. Many of her family died in what is now Syria,
then a part of the Ottoman Empire.

“They were burying their kids with their bare hands, my grandfather and
grandmother they buried … six of them,” said son Vagram Topadzhikyan,
60, of Glendale.

Under the AXA settlement, money from an $11 million fund will be paid
to the closest relative of a policyholder on the company’s list.

Another $3 million will go to Armenian charitable organizations in
France, and another $3 million for administrative and legal fees.

“We believe that this settlement is in the best interest of AXA Group
and all of its stakeholders, and we are pleased to put this matter
behind us,” said AXA spokeswoman Joann Tizzano.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers were Kabateck, Mark Geragos and Vartkes
Yeghiayan, who are all of Armenian descent and also brought the case
against New York Life.

The AXA settlement sets aside the same amount for claims payment and
charity as the New York Life settlement. The only difference is the
amount earmarked for legal and administrative fees was halved in the
AXA case.

The deadline to file a claim in the New York Life settlement passed on
March 16, and the claims are being analyzed. The company had agreed
to pay on 2,400 policies, but claims were filed on 1,600 of them,
which means the amount that would have been paid on the remaining
claims will be added to the charity fund.

Some policies might have gone unclaimed because their holders were
unaware of the settlement, or because all the potential claimants died.

ARMENIA HEIRS WIN $17M AXA PAYOUT

BBC News, UK
Oct 13 2005

Armenia wants Turkey to admit the killings were “genocide” The
descendants of Armenians who died in mass killings by Ottoman Turks
have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit against French insurance
giant Axa.

The case, filed in California, accused Axa of failing to pay death
benefits on policies bought by Armenians who died.

Under the deal, the firm will pay $17m (£9.7m) to Armenian charitable
groups.

Armenians say 1.5m of their people were killed or deported under
Ottoman Turkish rule in 1915. Turkey denies there was a systematic
massacre.

Under the terms of the settlement, announced in Los Angeles, Axa will
donate at least $3m to selected French-based Armenian charities.

Another $11m has been earmarked for the heirs of policyholders with
subsidiaries of Axa that operated in the Ottoman Turkish Empire
before 1915.

‘Ultimate goal’

In the chaos that followed the killings, many were unable to obtain
their insurance proceeds, lawyers for the claimants said.

The Axa settlement is expected to be approved by California’s
District Court in November. The US state is home to the world’s
largest population of Armenians outside their own country.

Axa has not yet commented on the deal, which will be administered
in France.

The Axa case was the second of its kind to be brought in US courts.

Earlier, New York Life Insurance Company agreed to pay $20m (£11.4m)
to descendants of Armenian policyholders who died in 1915.

Lawyer Mark Geragos said the settlements were “important building
blocks… [towards]our ultimate goal, which is for Turkey and the US
to officially acknowledge the genocide”.

Turkey says up to 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died
during civil strife in eastern Turkey during World War I, but angrily
rejects the allegation of a planned “genocide” of Armenians.

–Boundary_(ID_BmmWnaCRFJRDAL5XU13Lmg)–

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES TO ADDRESS ECUMENICAL CHALLENGES AT US SYMPOSIUM

Christian Today, UK
Oct 13 2005

A symposium jointly sponsored by the Armenian Apostolic Church of
America, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA,
and the World Council of Churches (WCC), will be held on 22 October
at the Interchurch Centre in New York.

Photo: WCC moderator Catholicos Aram I speaks during the 24-27 August
2004 WCC executive committee meeting in Seoul, South Korea, while
WCC general secretary Kobia looks on. (WCC/Alexander Belopopsky)

A symposium jointly sponsored by the Armenian Apostolic Church of
America, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA,
and the World Council of Churches (WCC), will be held on 22 October
at the Interchurch Centre in New York with the theme, “Challenges
facing the ecumenical movement in the 21st Century.”

The symposium has been planned in honour of Catholicos Aram I, head
of the Armenian Apostolic Church (See of Cilicia) and moderator of
the WCC central committee, who will be visiting the United States in
last October.

WCC general secretary Rev Dr Samuel Kobia will be featured as keynote
speaker and Amam I will be offering closing reflections.

A pontifical divine liturgy will be celebrated by Aram I at St
Bartholomew’s Church on Sunday, 23 October at 13:30pm. A banquet will
be followed at the Pierre Hotel to commemorate the 75th anniversary
of the Armenian Apostolic seminary in Antelias, Lebanon.

Aram I was one of the founding members of the Middle East Council of
Churches in 1974. He attended the WCC assemblies in Nairobi, Vancouver,
Canberra, and Harare as a delegate and was elected to the WCC’s Faith
and Order Commission in 1975.

Soon after, he was elected as a member of the central committee. Then
at the 1991 Assembly in Canberra, he was elected moderator of the WCC.

Other speakers will include Rev. Dr Wesley Granberg-Michaelson,
general secretary of the Reformed Church of America; Rev. Dr Diane
Kessler, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches;
Bishop Thomas Hoyt, president of the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the USA; Rev. Dr Robert Edgar, general secretary of the
National Council of Churches, Dr Anthony Kireopoulos, deputy general
secretary of the National Council of Churches, Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky,
moderator of the US Conference for the WCC and ecumenical officer,
Orthodox Church in America, Rev. Deborah DeWinter, programme executive
for the United States office of the WCC; and a representative from
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Archbishop Oshagan, prelate for the Eastern United States of America
of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, will deliver the welcome
speech.

COMPENSATION FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS

Sofia News Agency, Bulgaria
Oct 13 2005

Heirs of thousands of Armenian genocide victims have reached a deal
with French insurance company Axa for compensating the deaths of
their insured relatives during the mass murders of 1915. They had
brought a case against Axa for not paying the due premiums on the
life insurance policies purchased by Armenians before the beginning
of the genocide. Axa agreed to pay USD 17 M to Armenian charity
organizations. The case was held in the state of California.

SAAKASHVILI: AZERBAIJAN, TURKEY IMPORTANT PARTNERS FOR GEORGIA

Journal of Turkish Weekly
Oct 13 2005

TBILISI – Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Wednesday
at a ceremony marking the opening of the Georgian section of the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that Azerbaijan and Turkey were
important partners for Georgia. Saakashvili welcomed his Azerbaijani
and Turkish counterparts at the ceremony in Tblisi.

“We are glad that Azerbaijan is developing very well,” the Georgian
leader said. “It is becoming a rich country with a developed
infrastructure and economy.”

He said Georgia was ready to provide whatever support Azerbaijan
needed.

He also said Turkey had always supported Georgia in hard times and
remained a close partner. “We are one region with a common economy,”
he said.

Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia have good relations in almost all areas
including defence and economic integration. All three countries see
the NATO, the European Union and the United States as important actors
in security and stability of the region.

Dr. Nilgun Gulcan from Ankara-based ISRO said “Turkey-Georgia and
Azerbaijan-Georgia relations are simply perfect. The missing part of
the regional integration is Armenia. However we cannot blame Georgia or
Turkey for that.” According to Dr. Gulcan Armenia has thorny relations
with almost all neigbouring countries except Iran. “Armenia prefers
Russia and Iran in the region. Armenia also has problematic relations
with the EU, US and Israel. The Armenian Diaspora in Europe and US
has secured the Armenian interests till now. However the Armenian
policies contradict with the Western interests. So this balance of
power cannot last any more” Gulcan added.

The only Russian military base in the region is in Armenia. Armenia
does not recognise Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s national borders and
the Armenian separatism in Georgia causes doubts in Tblisi about
Yerevan’s policies.

SWEDISH ACADEMY SET TO ANNOUNCE 2005 NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE
By Matt Moore

The Associated Press
10/13/05 03:37 EDT

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – A Syrian poet and a Turkish writer facing
prison appeared to be the favorites of Nobel watchers to win the
2005 Nobel Prize in literature as the world of publishing and writing
waited for the Swedish Academy to announce this year’s winner.

On Thursday, Syrian poet Adonis, whose real name is Ali Ahmad Said,
who fled Lebanon in the 1980s and now lives in Paris, was the best
guess among Nobel watchers, nearly all of whom have no connection to
the academy.

Even online betting Web site Ladbrokes gave him the best odds, 7-4,
just ahead of Americans Joyce Carol Oates (7-1) and Philip Roth,
and Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer (both 9-1).

But the secretive academy, which has not even said if it has picked
a winner, was keeping mum ahead of its 1 p.m. (1100 GMT) announcement
even as some pundits wondered if it would honor a nonfiction writer,
something it last did in 1953 when former British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill won for his historical writings.

Other nonfiction writers mentioned ahead of the prize announcement
include Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski or Belarus’ Svetlana
Alexievich.

Fiction writers, however, remained the top choices, including Turkey’s
Orhan Pamuk, who faces prison after he was charged with insulting
Turkish identity for supporting Armenian claims that they were the
victims of genocide under the Ottoman Turks in 1915.

Other contenders include South Korean poet Ko Un, Canadian author
Margaret Atwood, the Czech Republic’s Milan Kundera, Belgian poet Hugo
Claus, Italian poet Claudio Magris and Indonesian novelist Pramoedya
Ananta Toer.

Others, however, said the academy could look inward, citing Transtromer
and Danish poet Inger Christiansen.

Margaretha Fahlgren, a literary professor at Uppsala University,
said Transtromer, a perennial favorite, would bring the prize back
home to Sweden. The last time Swedes won was in 1974 when Eyvind
Johnson and Harry Martinson shared the prize.

“I believe the prize will be for work of imaginative literature,
of fiction,” Fahlgren told The Associated Press.

Whatever the academy decides, it will likely have two immediate
consequences: increased book sales and controversy.

Last year’s winner, Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek, drew such
ire that a member of the academy publicly blasted his colleagues for
picking her.

Knut Ahnlund, 82, who has not played an active role in the academy
since 1996, resigned Tuesday after he wrote in a signed newspaper
article that picking Jelinek had caused “irreparable damage” to the
award’s reputation.

The academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III to advance the Swedish
language and its literature, has handed out the literature prize since
1901. Its current members, who serve for life, include several writers
as well as linguists, literary scholars, historians and a lawyer.

If a candidate receives more than half of the votes, the winner is
picked and announced on a Thursday in October.

On the Net:

PRESSURE GROUP INDIGNANT OVER OSCE RAPPORTEUR’S STATEMENT

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Oct 13-19 2005

The statement made by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly rapporteur on
the Garabagh conflict Goran Lennmarker in Yerevan is ‘far from reality’
and shows his pro-Armenian position, the hard-line Garabagh Liberation
Organization said.

During his visit to Armenia, Lennmarker said both sides to the conflict
should make concessions and recommended to forget ‘who Upper Garabagh
belonged to earlier’. “Lennmarker’s trying to divert attention from
the fact Upper Garabagh is an integral part of Azerbaijan serves the
interests of aggressor Armenia.

We demand the OSCE Baku office to invalidate his status”, the GLO
said in a statement.

POINT OF NO RETURN?

Turkish Daily News
Oct 13 2005

TDN editorial by Yusuf KANLI

Turkey’s chief negotiator in the European Union accession process,
State Minister Ali Babacan, proudly declared on Wednesday that Turkey
has reached a point of no return in its bid for EU membership.

At a time when a leading writer and newspaper editor could face
charges — even sentenced — for “insulting the Turkish identity” by
expressing opinions that might not be shared by the majority people
in this country, it is of course difficult to say that Turkey has
reached a point of no return in its well over 200-year effort to
integrate with the West.

I could not finish any of the novels by Orhan Pamuk. I tried hard,
but I just couldn’t. Perhaps I do not have the minimal intellect
required to understand what he was trying to say, but still, if many
people in this country and abroad love reading his works, I feel
proud that we have a writer of his calibre.

As someone who possibly believes “there is no good or bad advertising,”
he might even have intentionally mentioned in that controversial
newspaper interview that although many Kurds and Armenians had
been killed in this country nobody was talking about it, except
himself. I might not understand his prose, at least thus far, but I am
confident that he knew what reactions his words would stir up in this
country. If he was testing the limits of freedom of expression here,
I must confess it was a clever ploy and he successfully demonstrated
that we have not yet reached the “point of no return” in that sphere.

Pamuk will appear in court on Dec. 16, and we shall see whether
he will face a similar sentence to that meted out to Hrant Dink —
the Armenian-Turkish editor of the bi-lingual Agos weekly newspaper
published in Istanbul — on Oct. 7 only four days after the official
start of the accession talks process on the grounds that he insulted
Turks and “Turkishness.”

Of course, as we keep stressing at every opportunity, legislating
reform is one thing, but implementing that reform is something
else altogether. If the ruling party has sufficient parliamentary
strength, it can even change the Constitution in a very short period
of time. However, when it comes to the implementation of those reforms
and the human factor enters onto the scene, no country can wave a
magic wand to transform the mindset of its people overnight.

Time is needed, and intense efforts are required to achieve the mindset
revolution required to bring into force the required legislation.

The basis of democracy is an awareness that there may be truths other
than your own. Democracy is not just confined to a number of seats in
Parliament. Unless an awareness that governments elected to office
with a majority are primarily entitled to safeguard the minority
views cannot be nurtured, then that regime cannot be a democracy,
but an elected dictatorship.

But simply by witnessing some bad examples, however, we should not give
up. The EU perspective of this country — even if it may not take us
to membership of the bloc one day — is a must in order to sustain
reforms for a better governed, more democratic and more prosperous
Turkey. When all 35 chapters of the accession talk’s process are
completed successfully, we fully agree with Babacan that we will have
a much different Turkey than the one we have today.

The Pamuk and Dink cases will all be forgotten as nasty developments
that happened during the transformation period of Turkey while a new
era of understanding, brotherhood, nationhood and citizenship emerged.

On Wednesday, an Ankara prosecutor further boosted our belief in
the “reform absorption capacity” of this country and nation when
he decided to reject an official demand by the governor’s office in
Ankara to ban gay and lesbian associations.

Yes, unlike many Muslim countries, homosexuality has never been
illegal or criminalized in Turkey, but there is no legislation to
protect gay men and lesbians from discrimination or hostility.

The decision of the prosecutor that the American Psychiatric
Association did not rate homosexuality as a disorder and the words
“gay” and “lesbian” were widely used in daily life and scientific
research, was therefore a landmark move for individual and civil
liberties here.

Have we reached the “point of no return,” as Babacan proudly declared
on Wednesday? I am afraid not. A lot has been done but we still have
a long way to go before we can make such a bold statement.

LET THEIR BE SUCH CASES SO ALL IS EXPOSED
Opinion by Semih ÝDÝZ

Turkish Daily News
Oct 13 2005

Anti-EU forces that are using the legal system to hound people like
Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink may believe they are doing a great service
to the country. They don’t realize, however, that they are doing the
opposite. All they are doing in the end is blemishing the good name
of their country. Whether they have the capacity to understand this
is another question, of course.

Looked at from another, and somewhat perverse, perspective, what they
are doing could actually be considered as being beneficial for the
country, albeit inadvertently. They are exposing an outmoded system of
thought for what it is and forcing progressive Turks to rally around
principles like respect for freedom of thought.

Take the case of Dink, who received a suspended six-month prison
sentence for allegedly insulting Turkey. His paper Agos, one of
Turkey’s few Armenian newspapers, has become something of a shrine
for Turkish intellectuals. A large group of them visited Dink this
week to express their support for him and to condemn, through their
show of solidarity, the process under which he and those like him
can be convicted.

Of course, such cases are bad for Turkey’s EU prospects, as one after
another of my diplomat friends from Europe like to point out.

That goes without saying. But it is also a fact that the change in
mood that has come with this EU perspective — especially now that
membership talks are to start — is helping to separate the good from
the bad and the ugly in the country.

Both Pamuk and Dink know that there is little chance of them actually
being incarcerated at this stage. Even Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul
thinks as much. Instead, they stand to become folk heroes of another
kind, which we have always had in this country.

Take, for example, Atilla Ilhan, the renowned poet and playwright
who died at the ripe age of 80 on Monday.

Apart from his literary genius, which touched the hearts of millions of
Turks from different generations, his claim to fame included being sent
to prison as a young lad of 16 and being banned — on the orders of
the minister for education — from enrolling in any school in Turkey
after serving his sentence. What is it that enables a system to do
this? In Ilhan’s case it was that he had sent a poem by Turkey’s
“outlawed poet laureate” — the determined and unrepentant Marxist
Nazim Hikmet — to his girlfriend. Ilhan was sent to prison and banned
from school for this all those decades ago.

So Pamuk and Dink join a long list of “literati” who have trodden
this path, and under much worse circumstances. This is a list that
includes names such as Kemal Tahir, Fakir Baykurt, Sabahattin Ali
and, of course, the great Yasar Kemal. In fact, being hounded by the
system has always been a seal of approval for Turkish intellectuals,
be they writers, musicians, philosophers or otherwise.

It is the tradition of these great intellectuals that Turkey has
as a cultural reservoir that it can tap into in order to show the
country’s best face to the world. Many Turks are engaged in doing
just that. There is a great explosion in the arts in Turkey today,
and much of it is not going unnoticed.

But there also appears to be those who are embedded in the system
who insist on showing the country’s ugly, instead of delightful,
face to the world. They do so in the name of a nationalism that has
little to do with true patriotism. So, in a perverse way, one says,
“Let there be cases like Pamuk and Dink’s so that all is exposed.”

Provided, of course, that no one gets hurt — which certainly was
not always the case in the past.

–Boundary_(ID_Hxsj9Zy5fbyB28rQDCQ5Ug)–