Month: August 2008

BUSH HAS NO RIGHT TO LECTURE ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS. PEJNEWS-POSTED BY JOAN RUSSOW
Ramsey Clark

PEJ News
d&name=News&file=article&sid=7406& mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Aug 22 2008
Canada

A price the American people are paying for the failure of the
House of Representatives to impeach Bush, Cheney and their cabal
for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity —
the greatest assaults on peace and human rights of this century —
is the Bush Administration’s bellicose drum beat for war against a
widening circle of chosen enemies.

Imagine George Bush with the blood of a million Afghans and Iraqis
on his hands, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo hanging around
his neck, having trashed the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, lecturing China for
violating human rights at the World Olympics in Beijing, a hopeful
symbol of international cooperation through the peaceful competition
of athletes in friendship.

Imagine George Bush lecturing Russia on human rights after insisting
on putting U.S. (not NATO) Star War missile sites on the Russian
border in Poland and the Czech Republic despite the tragic lessons of
the Cold War, all told the greatest crime in history. Among its costs
are expenditures that could have provided food for all, vastly reduced
poverty on the planet, progressed toward quality universal health care,
education and housing for everyone. Instead it took more lives by
military violence on five continents and greater military expenditures
than World War II and released the genie of nuclear weapons to a
status beyond control. Can the planet survive another arms race? And
what was George Bush planning when he urged immediate admission of
Georgia to NATO just months before Georgia invaded South Ossetia?

Imagine George Bush who committed wars of aggression, the "Supreme
International Crime," against Afghanistan and Iraq, invading and
occupying both, judging Russia’s conduct as" unacceptable," and
demanding withdrawal of Russian forces because it sent troops into
Georgia to protect the population of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from
an invasion by Georgia that killed citizens and peace keepers alike,
destroyed property and had driven tens of thousands from their homes.

Nor was Georgia a stranger to Russia. It had been a part of Russia
since 1801 for nearly all the last two centuries. It had great power
within the USSR. Joseph Stalin was from Georgia, as were L. P. Beria,
longtime head of the NKVD and many others, Edward Shevardnadze, the
Soviet Union’s last Foreign Minister and the first President of the
Government of the independent Georgia that separated from the Soviet
Union in 1990.

George Bush took a keen interest in Georgia, which is on Russia’s
southern border, but on the opposite side of the planet from the
U.S., early in his Presidency and in Mikhail Saakashvili. Under
Bush’s direction the U.S. provided major military arms and training
for Georgia. It persuaded, or paid Georgia which had no interest
in Iraq to send 2000 troops to there, a number exceeded only by the
U.S. and U.K. It trained and supported the Georgian troops for duty
in Iraq. Saakashvili, a U.S. law school graduate, to quote the New
York Times "…positioned himself to become one of the world’s most
strident critics of the Kremlin" and with the strong support from
the U.S. he was elected President of Georgia.

The U.S. helped them militarize what had been a weak Georgian
state. The Pentagon helped overhaul Georgia’s military forces,
train its commanders and staff officers. U.S. marine strained
Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle. The forces were
equipped with Israeli and U.S. firearms, reconnaissance drones and
other sophisticated equipment, including anti aircraftweaponry. That
the U.S. trained and equipped Georgian forces fled in the face of
Russian forces should have told us something about the U.S. training
and equipping of foreign militaries.

All this U.S. support and manipulation was with the public goal,
urged by George Bush, of making remote Georgia, though a thousand
miles from Europe across the Black Sea and Russia, member of NATO
and placing Abkhazia and South Ossetia under Georgian control by force.

As in most matters in which George Bush takes aggressive action,
oil is a factor in some form. Georgia has made itself available for a
pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan then across Georgia
to the Black Sea, a major Bush goal, carrying oil from Azerbaijan
and former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, produced in large part
by U.S. oil companies, to Western markets by-passing Russia. Western
Europe shared this U.S. interest.

President Bush visited Georgia in 2005, the first U.S. President to
do so. Condoleeza Rice visited while National Security Advisor to
Bush and since. Saakashvili has been a frequent guest at the White
House and in the Washington corridors of power.

It is George Bush’s enticement and incitement of Georgia that created
the present crisis. We have not been told what has been paid Georgia
for it.

Suppose NATO had agreed to Georgia membership before Georgia invaded
South Ossetia, as the U.S. urged. NATO would have been bound by mutual
defense pact to defend Georgia as a Member. NATO, a Cold War creation,
which includes all the former colonial powers, should be abolished. The
U.S. persuaded NATO to share blame for its assaults that balkanized
Yugoslavia which was created to end centuries of violence in the
Balkans through unity. It tried to persuade NATO to join in its wars
of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. It nearly succeeded in Georgia.

The U.S. has a major military airbase in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet
Republic to Russia’s south and more than 1500 miles east of Georgia
which is used to bomb Afghanistan. The U.S. has surrounded Russia
with military bases from the Baltic states south across its western
border with Europe then east for more than 2500 miles to its borders
with Xinjiang Province in western China and Mongolia.

Now we can see the hypocrisy of the U.S. calling NATO into emergency
session to address the Georgia crisis with false claims made
repeatedly about the ceasefire and withdrawal terms negotiated by
President Sarkozy of France, only to back down from all its threats
and demands for action after fomenting international friction on false
pretenses. The world cannot be made safe for hypocrisy, or mendacity.

It is noteworthy that Georgia is within one hundred miles of
the border of Iran across Armenia. While George Bush vigorously
protests Russian confrontation with Georgian troops which invaded
South Ossetia, he has continued his threatening of Iran with a war
of aggression for its alleged but unproven efforts to achieve nuclear
weapons capability while he engages in a huge U.S. expenditure for new
nuclear weapons. The U.S. now has its largest Naval presence in the
Gulf region since the Gulf war, pointed toward Iran. The probability
that President Bush will cause Israel and the U.S. to attack Iranian
nuclear facilities plants during his remaining months in office remains
high. Such an attack would violate the Nuremberg Charter and Article 56
of Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Convention 1979, which protects
"Works and Installations Containing Dangerous Forces," including
nuclear facilities, from attack, because of the "consequent severe
losses among the civilian population" from the blast and radiation.

As Bush’s crimes grow, so does our responsibility to act. Please
bring your friends and family members into the impeachment movement
by sending them to ImpeachBush.org …

Ramsey Clark August 22, 2008

COMMENT: The Bush Regime must also be tried by the international
community; under Article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations,
the UN General Assembly has the power to set up an International
Tribunal. (Russow)

TURKEY, RUSSIA TO DISCUSS CAUCASUS BLOC

Reuters AlertNet
Aug 22 2008
UK

ANKARA, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ali Babacan
will meet his Russian counterpart next month to discuss creating an
alliance of Caucasus countries that would include Georgia and Russia,
a foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.

NATO-member Turkey has been alarmed by the conflict in neighbouring
Georgia, where Russian and Georgian troops went to war over control
of the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has proposed the so-called
Stability and Cooperation Platform, which would comprise Turkey,
Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The bloc, which is still in its infancy, would deal with bilateral
and security issues.

Turkish and Russian foreign ministry officials will meet next week to
prepare the ground for the talks between Babacan and Russia’s Sergei
Lavrov, the spokesman told Reuters.

Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union and is a key
U.S. strategic ally in the region, is an energy hub for Caspian and
Central Asian energy exports for Western export.

In recent years, Turkey has reached out beyond its traditional western
partners and has strengthened diplomatic and commercial ties with
Central Asia, Russia, Iran and Arab countries. (Reporting by Zerin
Elci; Editing by Jon Boyle)

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

.cfm?story_id=11986092

Friday August 22nd 2008
Europe

Turkey and the Caucasus
Waiting and watching

Aug 21st 2008 | ANKARA AND YEREVAN
The Economist
A large NATO country ponders a bigger role in the Caucasus

AT THE Hrazdan stadium in Yerevan, workers are furiously preparing for
a special visitor: Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul. Armenia’s
president, Serzh Sarkisian, has invited Mr Gul to a football World Cup
qualifier between Turkey and its traditional foe, Armenia, on
September 6th.

If he comes, Mr Gul may pave the way for a new era in the Caucasus.
Turkey is the only NATO member in the area, and after the war in
Georgia it would like a bigger role. It is the main outlet for
westbound Azeri oil and gas and it controls the Bosporus and
Dardanelles, through which Russia and other Black Sea countries ship
most of their trade. And it has vocal if small minorities from all
over the region, including Abkhaz and Ossetians.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been to Moscow
and Tbilisi to promote a "Caucasus Stability and Co-operation
Platform", a scheme that calls for new methods of crisis management
and conflict resolution. The Russians and Georgians made a show of
embracing the idea, as have Armenia and Azerbaijan, but few believe
that it will go anywhere. That is chiefly because Turkey does not have
formal ties with Armenia. In 1993 Turkey sealed its border (though not
its air links) with its tiny neighbour after Armenia occupied a chunk
of Azerbaijan in a war over Nagorno-Karabakh. But the war in Georgia
raises new questions over the wisdom of maintaining a frozen border.

Landlocked and poor, Armenia looks highly vulnerable. Most of its fuel
and much of its grain comes through Georgia’s Black Sea ports, which
have been paralysed by the war. Russia blew up a key rail bridge this
week, wrecking Georgia’s main rail network that also runs to Armenia
and Azerbaijan. This disrupted Azerbaijan’s oil exports, already hit
by an explosion earlier this month in the Turkish part of the pipeline
from Baku to Ceyhan, in Turkey.

"All of this should point in one direction," says a Western diplomat
in Yerevan: "peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan." Reconciliation
with Armenia would give Azerbaijan an alternative export route for its
oil and Armenia the promise of a new lifeline via Turkey. Some
Armenians gloat that Russia’s invasion of Georgia kyboshes the chances
of Azerbaijan ever retaking Nagorno-Karabakh by force, though others
say the two cases are quite different. Russia is not contiguous with
Nagorno-Karabakh, nor does it have "peacekeepers" or nationals there.

Even before the Georgian war, Turkey seemed to understand that
isolating Armenia is not making it give up the parts of Azerbaijan
that it occupies outside Nagorno-Karabakh. But talking to it might.
Indeed, that is what Turkish and Armenian diplomats have secretly done
for some months, until news of the talks leaked (probably from an
angry Azerbaijan).

Turkey’s ethnic and religious ties with its Azeri cousins have long
weighed heavily in its Caucasus policy. But there is a new worry that
a resolution calling the mass slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman
Turks in the 1915 genocide may be passed by America’s Congress after
this November’s American elections. This would wreck Turkey’s
relations with the United States. If Turkey and Armenia could only
become friendlier beforehand, the resolution might then be struck down
for good.

In exchange for better relations, Turkey wants Armenia to stop backing
a campaign by its diaspora for genocide recognition and allow a
commission of historians to establish "the truth". Mr Sarkisian has
hinted that he is open to this idea, triggering howls of treason from
the opposition. The biggest obstacle remains Azerbaijan and its allies
in the Turkish army. Mr Erdogan was expected to try to square
Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, in a visit to Baku this week.
Should he fail, Mr Gul may not attend the football match – and a chance
for reconciliation may be lost.

PRESS RELEASE
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Information Services
Address:  Vagharshapat, Republic of Armenia
Contact:  Rev. Fr. Ktrij Devejian
Tel:  +374-10-517163
Fax:  +374-10-517301
E-Mail:  [email protected]
Website: 
August 21, 2008

His Holiness Karekin II receives President
of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

On July 24, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Catholicos of All Armenians,
received Lluis Maria de Puig, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe (PACE).

His Holiness welcomed the visit of President Puig to the Mother See of Holy
Etchmiadzin and wished him success in his mission.  The PACE president
introduced His Holiness to the goals of his visit to Armenia and
specifically highlighted the role of the Armenian Catholicos in the
establishment of stability and peace in the region.

During their conversation, the discussion also focused on the current
political situation in the country, and the importance of easing the level
of public tension as part of ongoing developments.  The Catholicos of All
Armenians stressed that the representatives and followers of the authorities
and the opposition are all sons and daughters of the Armenian Church and
that the Church hierarchy is concerned with the welfare and life of every
Armenian, in the homeland and throughout the Diaspora.

The Catholicos and the PACE president also discussed the current status of
the Karabagh conflict, and His Holiness expressed his deep concern over the
aggressive and bellicose statements made by the authorities of Azerbaijan,
even at times by the spiritual leader of the Muslims of the Caucasus, which
have become increasingly alarming and more frequent.  Finally, the Pontiff
of the Armenians conveyed his amazement at the lack of international outrage
regarding the vandalism and obvious state policy of destruction directed at
Armenian cultural and spiritual monuments on the territory of Azerbaijan,
especially in light of the overwhelming evidence of the barbaric and
complete elimination of thousands of khatchkars (stone-crosses) in
Nakhijevan.

##

d_entertainment/the_tls/article4522162.ece

August 13, 2008

Russian bombs, Georgian fragments

A timely new book attempts the impossible: a history of the Caucasus
Donald Rayfield

It is a bold historian who writes a history of the Caucasus, as events
of the past week have made all too clear. The region may not be much
bigger than England and Wales, but its history involves three unrelated
indigenous groups of people – the Abkhaz and Circassians in the
north-west, the Chechens, Ingush and Dagestanis in the north-east, the
Kartvelians (Georgians, Mingrelians and Svans) in the south – and
representatives of many Eurasian groups (Iranian, Turkic, Armenian,
Semitic, Russian) who have settled there over the past 2,000 years.

Some forty mutually unintelligible languages, of which a handful are
established literary languages and several others have only a precarious
recent literary status, are spoken. Worse for anyone trying to present a
coherent narrative, these disparate peoples have very different
histories, and only two, the Georgians and Armenians (some would add the
Azeris), have a history of statehood consistent enough to be retold as
one would retell the history of a West European country. Worst of all,
the frequent ravages of invaders, from Arabs in the seventh century,
Mongols in the thirteenth, Iranians in the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries and Russians over the past 300 years, have not only destroyed
and driven out whole states and peoples, but burnt the records of their
very existence. Even the year of death and the place of burial of the
greatest of Caucasian monarchs, the Georgian Queen Tamar, is uncertain.
Historians of the Caucasus have on the one hand to have at their command
an immeasurable range of expertise, from archaeology to the folklore of
dozens of different languages, and on the other the imagination and
verve to bridge the gaps in chronology and in any other verifiable
sources. It is a task that would daunt even the teams that produce the
Cambridge Histories of, say, Russia or India.

Charles King, a specialist in Romanian, with a good reading knowledge of
Russian, but not of any Caucasian language, has crossed the Black Sea
and fearlessly attempted the impossible. The focus of his book is
similar to that of Susan Layton’s Conquest of the Caucasus (1995,
republished 2005), in that King sees the Caucasus through the eyes of
Russian conquistadors and imperial dreamers, as they romanticize and
demonize the lands they occupied (or, in the case of Georgia,
"liberated") when the grip of Ottoman and Iranian empires weakened. Thus
the different reactions of Caucasian nations to the conquests of the
early nineteenth century – complicity and acceptance by the Georgians,
relief by the Armenians and Ossetians, desperate surrender or flight by
the Circassians, resistance to the death by Chechens and Dagestanis –
are the best insight that King can offer into the diverse cultures that
were incorporated into the Russian Empire or wiped out by it.

Equally interesting is the anthropological and linguistic research,
mostly by German scholars working for the St Petersburg Academy, that
preceded, accompanied, or followed Russian military conquest and which
aroused a respect for, and bewilderment at, the complexity and
scientific importance of the now vulnerable belief systems and languages
encountered. A Collection of Materials for A Description of the
Locations and Peoples of the Caucasus, some eighty volumes published
between 1884 and 1915 in Tiflis, show the extraordinary wealth of
information that was gathered. (Unfortunately, there is no complete set
of this Collection in any library in the United Kingdom, and it does not
appear in King’s bibliography.) Like the British in India, Russians
began to feel a perverse admiration for the tribes (whether Pathans or
Chechens) that hated them as conquerors, and contempt for the nations
(whether Tamils or Armenians) that decided to integrate with them.
Today, of course, as the southern Caucasus has achieved some sort of
statehood and the north Caucasus has been crushed and demoralized,
Russians feel a paranoiac hatred for all "blacks" (or "persons of
Caucasian nationality").

If King’s narrative has a fault, it is over-simplification. His account
of the role of Islam in Chechnya and Dagestan ignores the fact that
pagan beliefs underlie all Caucasian codes of conduct, and that in the
highlands Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was like
Christianity in the tenth century (as the ruins of Byzantine churches in
Chechnya and Circassia show), used as a rallying flag and a means of
gaining support from outsiders. Once the Caucasus highlanders were left
in peace, they reverted to animism: this is demonstrated by the Georgian
words for "icon" and "deacon" acquiring the meaning of "pagan shrine"
and "shaman" among the Khevsur clans.

Nevertheless, King offers new perspectives: for instance, Western
romanticizing of the Caucasus as a region for new mountaineering
exploits and as a source for a real supply of the Circassian maidens of
Byron’s poems. This romanticizing underlies attitudes to the new states
of the southern Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, where a
hard-headed desire to have a route for oil and gas that cannot be cut
off by Putin and Medvedev is glossed as an aspiration to encourage
European Union-standard human rights and democracy. The discussion of
Georgia’s emergence from "failed state" status under a tired Edvard
Shevardnadze, mired in corruption, like the account of Azerbaijan under
its dynasty of ex-KGB Alievs, and of an Armenia run by violent
nationalists and thinly disguised Soviet-style Communists, is more than
competent. One would wish only for a little more cynicism: Mikeil
Saakashvili may have the suave exterior of a Columbia University lawyer,
but there are a lot of questions not posed, let alone answered here. The
initial connivance of the Russians at the Rose Revolution, which got rid
of the Ajarian warlord Aslan Abashidze as well as of Shevardnadze, two
figures particularly hated by Putin, is unmentioned, and the mysterious
sequence of murders and unexplained deaths of Saakashvili’s rivals and
opponents needs to be discussed as proof of the continuity of a
specifically Caucasian way of politics.

In a book dealing with "the ghost of freedom" one would expect a more
thorough exploration of the Caucasus’s little Kosovos, where ethnic
groups such as the Abkhaz and South Ossetians try to break away from a
newly independent Georgia only to find themselves international pariahs,
whose only refuge is a return to the Russian embrace. Here Putin’s
salami tactics for reincorporating lost Soviet territory meet with no
adequate or even intelligent response by the principal victims, for
instance the Georgians, or from the European Union and United States who
have already tied themselves into knots over the former Yugoslavia, and
can only wring their hands as they see Russia, with the help of its
heavily armed "peacekeepers", turning Abkhazia back into its own private
recreation zone. King ends with a vague hope that Europe’s "inexorable
march" towards liberal values can proceed in the Caucasus, but not much
of the evidence supports him. For over a thousand years the Georgians
and Armenians have appealed to Europe for support as fellow Christians,
as Europeans by culture, if not by geography, and after being strung
along by Crusaders, by Louis XIV, by various Popes, by Presidents
Wilson, Roosevelt and both Bushes, can still not believe that the answer
they get will always be a perfunctory apology that deeper interests of
state force the West to take sides with its major trading partners, not
its cultural and spiritual brothers. Ghost of freedom, indeed. Given the
present crisis, as Russia backs Ossetia’s separatists with bombs and
shells, our politicians’ vacillations and our diplomats’ complacency may
not be remedied in time, even if a group of experts were hurriedly
assembled to follow up Charles King’s reconnaissance and produce and
analyse in full the history of the Caucasus.

Charles King
THE GHOST OF FREEDOM
A history of the Caucasus

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Abovian Armenian Cultural Association
Address: Weesperstraat 91
2574 VS The Hague, The Netherlands
Telephone: +31704490209
Email: [email protected]
Website:
Contact: I. Drost

Press Release

Biurakn Hakhverdian with gold medal at Beijing Olympics 2008

The Hague, 21 August 2008 – Armenian-Dutch water polo player Biurakn
Hakhverdian, see:
lete/4/218024.shtml
playing under nr. 4 in Dutch water polo team got gold medal as The
Netherlands won the gold medal in the Women’s Water Polo competition beating
the United States 9-8.

On Monday, 25 August 2008, at 3.30 p.m. a public reception ceremony will
take place at the Olympisch Stadion (Olympic Stadium) in Amsterdam honouring
the entire Dutch Olympic athletes.

On Wednesday, 27 August 2008 Dutch Queen Beatrix will receive the medallists
in Palace Huis ten Bosch, followed by a roundtrip by open top buses in city
centre of The Hague. Finally an official reception honouring the medallists
will take place at the Ridderzaal in The Hague.

Holland is number 10 in the medal ranking of 2008 Olympics in Beijing with 7
gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze medals (up to present).

You can watch a short video of Olympics Medal Ceremony is to at: (QuickTime
plug-in is required)
3/080821BiurGold&bgcolor=black

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS RELEASE
August 21, 2008

American University of Armenia Corporation
300 Lakeside Drive, 5th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Telephone: (510) 987-9452
Fax: (510) 208-3576
Contact: Gaiane Khachatrian
E-mail: [email protected]

American University of Armenia Celebrates Establishment of Southern
California Office

The American University of Armenia (AUA) celebrated the opening of its
Southern California office on Sunday evening, August 17. The cocktail
party, attended by a number of board of trustees members, major donors and
friends of AUA, also served to welcome University President Dr. Haroutune
Armenian and his wife Sona to the Los Angeles area following their
relocation from the Baltimore, MD area. The event also introduced AUA’s new
Director of Development, Daniel Maljanian and Administrative Assistant to
the President, Marianna Achemian.

AUA, an American accredited graduate university located in Yerevan, Armenia,
offers degrees in engineering, health sciences, law, English, business
management, and political science. It is affiliated with the University of
California, with offices provided by UC in Oakland, in addition to the new
Pasadena offices provided by the AGBU at 2495 E. Mountain St. The new
office will enable AUA to engage more fully its Southern California
constituents and raise the Armenian community’s awareness of AUA’s
activities in Armenia. AUA seeks active support for its programs of higher
education and the sustainable development of Armenia and the Caucasus
region.

Dr. Mihran Agbabian, board of trustee member and AUA President Emeritus,
opened the evening’s program by recognizing his fellow trustees Gerald
Turpanjian, Sinan Sinanian and Edward Avedisian, who had traveled from
Boston to be in attendance, along with Board Secretary Dr. Theony Condos.
He then thanked the many AUA donors in attendance, and proceeded to
introduce Dr. Armenian, who now divides his time between his Yerevan and Los
Angeles area residences.

After showing a short video on the soon-to-be-completed Paramaz Avedisian
Building (PAB), Dr. Armenian thanked and introduced Edward Avedisian, who
commissioned and has overseen the construction of the PAB. The state of the
art building, which will enable AUA to more than double its teaching
capacity, will add 100,000 square feet to AUA’s existing facilities,
including classrooms, seminar rooms, laboratories and research areas. Mr.
Avedisian thanked the many people who had contributed to the building’s
design and construction, and informed the attendees that it is not too late
to consider the room naming opportunities that are still available for
donations of $20,000 and above.

Dr. Armenian also announced AUA’s upcoming seminars, which will be held in
Southern California, highlighting AUA’s involvement in Armenia’s rural
development, improvement of public health, and legal reform. More
information about these seminars will be provided in the coming months.

The program concluded with Dr. Armenian emphasizing the need for Armenia to
excel in order to make a lasting contribution to the region. He emphasized
that AUA, with its American accreditation and focus on academic excellence,
free inquiry, scholarship, leadership and service to society, is a key
participant in training the next generation of Armenia’s leaders. Dr.
Ruzanna Mkhitaryan, a 1997 graduate of AUA who was in attendance, stood up
at the end and expressed her gratitude for the education that she had
received and the hope that AUA had instilled in her during the darkest days
in Armenia’s recent history.

—————————————- —————-

The American University of Armenia Corporation (AUAC) is registered as a
non-profit educational organization in both Armenia and the United States
and is affiliated with the Regents of the University of California.
Receiving major support from the AGBU, AUA offers instruction leading to the
Masters Degree in eight graduate programs. For more information about AUA,
visit

‘Don’t do it’, U.S. told Georgia on eve of assault

Wojciech MoskwaWojciech Moskwa
Reuters North American News Service

Aug 21, 2008 10:39 EST

OSLO, Aug 21 (Reuters) – The United States warned Georgia against
trying to retake rebel South Ossetia by force, including on the very
eve of the Aug. 7 attack that drew a crushing response from Russia,
the U.S. envoy to NATO said on Thursday.

Ambassador Kurt Volker said Russia was looking for an excuse to flex
its military might and send troops into Georgia, as it duly did when
Georgian soldiers ventured into pro-Russian South Ossetia.

Asked if Washington was notified of Georgia’s intention to strike its
rebel province, Volker said: "The United States has consistently
counselled Georgia, over a long period of time, that there is no
military solution (in South Ossetia).

"Including the day before Georgian troops went into South Ossetia, we
said ‘don’t do it, don’t be drawn into a military conflict, it’s not
in your interest’," Volker told Norway’s Institute of International
Affairs.

"But the pressure on (Georgia) was too great and they felt they had to
act…and that gave Russia the excuse they were looking for to launch
a massive military operation with over 20,000 troops," he added.

Relations between Russia and the West have sunk to a new low over the
Georgia conflict, with NATO accusing Moscow of dragging its feet on a
promised withdrawal from Georgian territory. Russia said it had to
intervene to protect its citizens in South Ossetia.

Volker said Moscow had long exerted pressure on Georgia by placing
restrictions on trade and visas and through smaller-scale military
incidents, while it built up Russian forces stationed in South Ossetia
as peacekeepers.

"It’s easy to see the careful preparation and the deliberate pressure
put on Georgia, to which they responded unwisely," Volker said.

He said that international peacekeepers were needed in Georgia because
Russia was no longer credible in the role of sole keeper of peace in
the Black Sea state.

He said a force could be provided by the United Nations, the European
Union or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), a forum of which Russia, the United States and Georgia are
members.

"We need some kind of internationalisation of peacekeeping to have
credibility when it comes to maintaining Georgia’s territory,
integrity and sovereignty," Volker said.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Four Times Gold From Leiden!

Leidsch Dagblad (Dutch regional newspaper)
August 21, 2008

BEIJING – A rostrum full of women jumping up and down arm in arm with
exhausted faces and sweaty bodies: the water polo ladies celebrate their
gold medal with the inevitable company of Willem Alexander and Erica
Terpstra. Equally inevitable are the tunes from "We Are The Champions."

After a tribute in the packed, beer-stinking Holland House, Iefke van Belkum
and Biurakn Hakhverdian catch their breaths backstage. Not with a glass of
beer, but with coke. Diet. They look beaten. But the gold medal around their
necks dissolves the fatigue into a wave of euphoria. They talk about dreams
that come true; about dimes tipped on their sides; about luck and assertion.

"We knew beforehand that we had the ability to win against anyone," says
Hakhverdian from Leiden who plays for Polar Bears. "But we also knew that we
could lose just the same. It was a real toss-up."

Van Belkum, a ZVL-player (Swimming Foundation Leiden), nods. "A few weeks
ago we were fifth in the European Championships. And now we are Olympic
champions. Strange, really. But during the Europeans our minds were on the
Olympics. We continued to train very hard and committed ourselves. Of course
we wanted to win the Europeans, but at the end of the day everything
revolved around the Olympic Games."

PRESS RELEASE
Office of Assemblymember Paul Krekorian
Adrin Nazarian Chief of Staff
620 N. Brand Blvd. Suite 403
Glendale, CA 91203
(818) 240-6330
(818) 240-4632 fax
[email protected]

August 22, 2008

KREKORIAN BILL WILL ADVANCE THE FIGHT AGAINST HIV/AIDS

Bill would require health plans to cover HIV tests

SACRAMENTO – In an essential next step in the fight against AIDS, the
state Legislature passed legislation by Assemblymember Paul Krekorian
(D-Burbank) on Tuesday that will require health insurers to cover
routine HIV screening. Assembly Bill 1894 passed out of the Assembly
after concurrence in Senate amendments on a bipartisan vote of 47-29,
leaving the bill needing only the Governor’s signature to become law.

According to the California Office of AIDS, approximately 40,000 persons
in California who are infected with HIV are unaware of having the
disease. The lack of routine HIV testing results in a lack of treatment
to tens of thousands of people who need it, and puts many more people at
risk of infection.

Just two weeks ago, at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City,
the Centers for Disease Control reported that only 40 percent of the
population had ever received an HIV test, and that at least a quarter of
a million people in the U.S. are living with the virus unaware of their
positive status.

At a time when it is estimated that over 56,000 Americans will be
infected this year and nearly 1.1 million people are already living with
the virus, AB 1894 keeps California in the forefront in the global fight
against the AIDS epidemic.

On garnering the support of a majority of his colleagues and passing the
bill out of the Legislature, Assemblymember Krekorian proudly
proclaimed, "this important bill will create an environment in which
testing will be routine and more Californians will know their status,
get linked to care and have a better quality of life. Encouraging
testing will decrease the risks of transmission, and therefore save
lives."

AB 1894 is sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and is supported
by the Center for AIDS Research, Education, and Services (CARES), the
California Nurses Association, and the California Medical Association.

Assemblymember Paul Krekorian represents the cities of Burbank and
Glendale, and the Los Angeles communities of Atwater Village, Los Feliz,
North Hollywood, Silver Lake, Toluca Lake, Valley Glen, Valley Village
and Van Nuys.

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