Month: October 2008

AS TALKS WITH AZERIS/TURKS FALTER, ARMENIA EXPANDS ACCESS TO GEORGIA/IRAN
By Harut Sassounian

AZG Armenian Daily
11/10/2008

Regional

The budding relationship between Armenia and Turkey, which started
with last month’s "football diplomacy" with much fanfare and high
expectations , is facing serious difficulties.

While no one expected a quick resolution of the long-standing issues
stemming from the Genocide and its persistent denial by Turkey,
few anticipated that the nascent rapprochement would falter so quickly.

After a very friendly and hopeful first meeting between the presidents
and foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey, occasioned by the
unprecedented soccer match between their national teams on September
6 in Yerevan, it appears that the Artsakh (Karabagh) conflict is the
main reason for the sudden rift.

To begin with, it was strange that the presidents of Armenia and
Turkey did not hold a follow-up meeting during their attendance of the
U.N. General Assembly sessions in New York in late September. When
Pres. Gul was asked by Turkish journalists why no meeting was
scheduled with the Armenian President, he first said he was not aware
that Pres. Sargsyan was coming to New York and then assured them
that they would run into each other during one of many diplomatic
receptions. Despite such optimistic talk, the two presidents never
meet. They may have been waiting for the outcome of discussions
between the foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey who
met on the last day of their stay in New York.

On September 28, two days after Pres. Sargsyan left New Yor k, he
told reporters that there were "no concrete results yet" from the
foreign ministers’ meeting and that he had not expected much from
their encounter.

On the same day, Pres. Gul confirmed that there had not been
any significant movement to merit the lifting of the blockade of
Armenia. Taking a tough stand , he told a Turkish group that "no
talks on border opening are possible before Armenia’s liberation of
Azerbaijani territories," according to the AzeriTaj news agency. Thus,
Pres. Gul was reverting to Turkey’s previous preconditions that had
been long rejected by the Armenian side. A senior aide to Azerbaijan’s
president, in his turn, confirmed this week that several serious
issues remain unresolved on the Artsakh issue.

Ankara and Baku assumed that since the Georgian-Russian conflict had
temporarily deprived Armenia of the opportunity to import more than
70% of its vital supplies from Georgia’s Black Sea ports, this was
the ideal time to force Yerevan into making serious concessions on
the Genocide issue and the Artsakh conflict.

Whether it was coincidence or not, several major initiatives announced
by Pres. Sargsyan last week had the effect of countering the hard-line
taken by Ankara and Baku in their recent negotiations with Armenia,
and dispelling the false impression that Yerevan is desperately
seeking to reopen the border with Turkey at any cost.

Pres. Sargsyan announced during his last week’s visit to Tbilisi that
he had reached an agreement with Pres. Saakashvili to jointly build
a modern highway that would considerably shorten the transport time
between the Georgian Port of Batumi and Yerevan.

In a nationally televised speech delivered for the first time in
the Armenian Parliament — akin to the State of the Union address
by American presidents before the U.S. Congress — Pres. Sargsyan
announced that a new railway would be constructed to link Iran with
Armenia, to facilitate and expand trade between the two countries. He
also said that Armenia would build a new nuclear power plant to ensure
that the country remains energy self-sufficient when its aging plant
is shut down. Finally, he stated that a Pan-Armenian Bank and an
investment fund would be established in Yerevan to finance these
projects. He said that these "large and daring initiatives" would
solve Armenia’s important strategic and economic problems.

Along with these major programs, Armenia just formed a new Diaspora
Ministry to streamline and strengthen its relations with millions of
Armenians living abroad. On September 24, during a major banquet in
New York, Pres. Sargsyan gave the 700 Armenian guests an uplifting
message of unity, urging them to join forces for the betterment of
Armenia and the Diaspora. He also thanked all those assisting in the
resolution of the Artsakh conflict, "the condemnation of the Armenian
Genocide, and the restoration of historical justice."

These new initiatives are bound to improve Armenia’s bargaining hand
and help negotiate with Turkey and Azerbaijan from a position of
strength. The expansion of Armenia’s alternate land routes through
Georgia and Iran would considerably diminish the utility of opening
the border with Turkey and circumvent more effectively the blockades
imposed by Ankara and Baku.

While Armenian officials do want to improve relations with all of
their neighbors, they are not so desperate as to make unacceptable
concessions on the Genocide and Artsakh issues.

VOICES OF CAUTION FROM HISTORIC PAST
By Edmond Y. Azadian

AZG Armenian Daily
11/10/2008

Armenia-Turkey

Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s visit to Armenia and the forthcoming
visit of President Serge Sargisian have triggered euphoria on both
sides of the border, more on the Turkish side than the Armenian.

It is as if the floodgates have been let loose in the Turkish press
to give historic significance to this turn of events.

By blockading Armenia and refusing to establish diplomatic relations,
Ankara’s intention was to bring Armenia to its knees. Although
that prospect never materialized, a resentment was built up in the
subconsciousness of the Armenia’s populace that all the hardships they
had been experiencing came because of the Karabagh conflict. Armenia
had won its first monumental victory in a thousand years and had
liberated a historic piece of her ancestral homeland, but it was never
able to digest its victory. Eventually, however, her tenacity paid off.

The lifting of the blockade by Turkey and the establishment of
diplomatic relations were conditioned by Ankara by certain compromises
which Armenia had to make: official recognition of Turkish Armenian
border (defined by The Treaty of Kars, 1923), renunciation of Genocide
claims and the return of captured territories to Azerbaijan, including
Nagorno Karabagh.

Ankara did not budge on these issues, knowing full well that they
were non-starters.

Turkey was very confident and comfortable, and it was left to Armenia
to make the first move.

Meanwhile, the Genocide issue was kept on the agenda of Yerevan’s
foreign policy, while Karabagh’s de facto independence was considered
a fait accompli.

But Russia’s resurgent assertiveness and its war against Georgia
shattered the entire set up of the Caucasus’ political landscape.

As was revealed in Paul Goble’s insightful analysis, Russia had more
influence on Turkey than previously assumed by pundits. Moscow’s
tit-for-tat policy of recognizing Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s
independence versus Kosovo placed under revision the entire map of
the Caucasus region. Armenia, being Russia’s closest ally, suddenly
gained prominence. Turkey moved in with its proposal for a Caucasus
peace and stability pact which could not be achieved without Armenia’s
participation.

Turkey’s move also intended to contain Iran in the region to please
the West and to corner a historic adversary since the Ottoman period.

Suddenly Turkey needed Armenia more than Armenia needed Turkey.

We cannot assume that Turkey’s preconditions are already shelved, but
they became negotiable. Eventually, Turkey had to come to terms with
Armenia to see any movement in its prospects to join the European
Union.

At this point, if nothing comes out of these developments the Turkish
public opinion will experience a crash course in history. The Turkish
media is exuberant with the turn of events and the Genocide issue
is once again on the forefront, despite Article 301 of Turkey’s
penal code.

In the past, an individual writer, namely Kemal Yalcin had dared to
apologize for the Genocide. Now we see prominent scholar and political
commentator Baskin Oran has come up with the suggestion that Turkey
must make amends for the pain it inflicted on the Armenians, and cease
espousing the cause of Ittihad and Terraki criminals. This chain of
apologies has extended all the way to the diplomats and statesmen who
have a say in Turkey’s foreign policy, like Tansu Ciller’s political
advisor, Vulkan Voural.

Fortunately, the Armenian media is more subdued, cautious and
analytical. We do not see the ecstasy that is witnessed on the Turkish
side of the border.

It was only a short while ago that Prime Minister Erdogan had
joined Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvilli to inaugurate the rail system, which intended to isolate
Armenia.

Turkey’s moves are not motivated by goodness of heart. They reflect
cold political calculations.

Already, the first president of the Third Republic and opposition
leader Levon Ter-Petrosian has cautioned that Turkey intends to pit
the diaspora against Armenia. Indeed, that is a recurring theme in
the Turkish media and Ankara’s political circles. The argument by
the Turks is that Armenia’s distressed population is concerned with
bread-and-butter issues and is eager to improve relations with Turkey,
while Diaspora Armenians, who have settled comfortably in affluent
Western societies, are fanning the flames of the Genocide issue.

Of course, there is some truth in that but not the whole truth,
because, the Diaspora Armenians are the survivors and descendents
of survivors of the Genocide. Except for Vaspouragan and Kars area
Armenians who fled to the Caucasus, the population of the present
day Armenia lived under the Tsarist rule and they were spared the
Ottoman Turkish genocidal policies. Also, for 70 years, the Soviet
authorities, in deference to the Turks, repressed any reference
to the Genocide. Finally, when the time comes for a settlement,
Armenia is the legal entity to negotiate the terms, always taking
into consideration the Diaspora concerns.

Historic precedents need to caution us against Turkish goodwill. Of
course, we need to improve relations with Turkey and resolve
long-standing problems. But with a realistic approach based on history.

My mother was from Adana in Cilicia and had a revealing story about
Turks; a blind Turkish beggar at the gate of the Armenian Church
survived through the charity dispensed by Armenian parishioners. The
beggar blessed the Armenians every time alms were placed in his
palm. Come the Adana massacres of 1909, the beggar was pleading his
fellow Turks to drop an Armenian in his lap so that he could deserve
the heavens by slitting the throat of his victim.

Of course, our legendary hero and military genius General Antranik
was more experienced than my mother. He never trusted Turks and for
that reason he resigned from the Dashnag party when the latter cozied
up to the Turks.

In 1895, Sultan Abdulhamid organized widescale massacres, murdering
some 300,000 Armenians. Armenagan party members in Van took up arms
when they found out the atrocities were closing in on their town
and they stopped the overwhelming Ottoman Army. The British consul
negotiated a truce and the Armenians were promised safe passage to
Iran. After they were disarmed, they were ambushed on their way and
800 freedom fighters were murdered.

In 1908, the Ittihadists brought about a revolution and adopted a
constitution. Armenian political parties gave up their arms and they
declared, "we are all Ottomans." A year later, 30,000 Armenians were
massacred in Adana. Armenians were not awakened and they were lulled
into believing that Turks had changed. Krikor Zohrab, a member of
the Ottoman Parliament was a close friend of Talaat, the mastermind
of the Armenian Genocide. One evening Talaat treated his good friend
Zohrab to dinner, only to arrest him the next morning and eventually
to have his skull crushed with a rock on his way to exile.

Armenian volunteers joined the Allies during World War I, and in the
aftermath of the war, they returned to Cilicia victoriously. Many
Turks joined Armenians to live peacefully in Cilicia. Some even
converted to Christianity, only to turn their guns against Armenians
when the Kemalist hordes invaded Cilicia, after shameful betrayal of
the French army.

The historic precedents are too numerous to cite.

This rare opportunity cannot be missed. Yet, we should not
underestimate the shrewdness of Turkish diplomacy. After all, they
ruled a huge empire for more than six centuries. They make their
political moves with cold-blooded calculation. We need to respond in
kind, something which we have failed to do in our history.

COURT MADE NO DECISION

A1+
[07:16 pm] 10 October, 2008

Arshak Petrossian, Justice of Court of General Jurisdiction of
Kentron and Nork-Marash districts, has made a rough breach of law on
October 10.

Today the Court resumed the hearing on the case of Gagik Jhangirian’s
attorneys against the case investigator Vahagn Harutiunian and
prosecutor Koryun Piloyan.

The accusation was to be dismissed under Article 300 because of the
lack of accomplices, say the advocates of former Deputy Prosecutor
General Gagik Jhnagirian.

They say the pre-trail body couldn’t produce irrefutable evidence
which would lead to Jhangirian’s custody under Article 300.

During the previous sitting the advocates had requested to provide
the material regarding secret witness Serob Serobian.

Today the advocates made inquires about the classified documents
submitted with the Court but the Justice rejected their petition and
retired to the consultation room to make a final decision. The Court
promised to publicise the decision at 1.00 October 14.

The court sitting has been adjourned.

HYDROCHLORIC ACID LEAKAGE

A1+
[01:33 pm] 10 October, 2008

Hydrochloric acid leakage was reported near the nuclear power station
of Armenia at 12.25, October 10.

The leakage of 200-250-litre hydrochloric acid was caused by a tank
truck overturn.

According to the tentative data the leakage didn’t cause any ecological
problems.

EDWARD NALBANDYAN: "NAGORNO KARABAKH STATUS PRINCIPLE KEY POINT IN THIS CONFLICT"

Panorama.am
20:09 10/10/2008

Today the Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, Edward
Nalbandyan, Elmar Aliev and Sergey Lavrov have had a meeting in the
frames of the CIS summit in Bishkek, reports the press service of
the Foreign Ministry of Armenia.

After the meeting, by the request of Armenian journalists, the
Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandyan has made comments on
the ongoing stage of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict and the
status of negotiations.

To a question that recently announcements are being made that
the principle key points of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict
are agreed on, the Foreign Minister said that during the meeting
they have discussed Nagorno Karabakh conflict and its regulation
in the frames of the recommendations made by the OSCE Minsk group
co-chairmen. "Regarding the point that the principle questions
of Nagorno Karabakh conflict are solved, I’d like to repeat once
more that the status of Nagorno Karabakh is its principle question
in this conflict, which should be solved by the people of Nagorno
Karabakh. And if they say that the principle questions are solved,
then we could conclude that this part of the conflict is solved,"
said the Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandyan.

"ARMENTEL" SIGNS CONTRACT WITH "TURKISH TELECOM"

Panorama.am
20:22 10/10/2008

Till the end of October "Armentel" company will sign a contract with
"Turkish telecom" on receiving internet services from Turkey, said
Neicho Velichkov the General Director of "Armentel" in a meeting with
the journalists, today.

He said that both Armenia and Turkey are authorized in their countries
to start cooperation and currently the conditions of the service are
being negotiated.

"It is important for us to be sure that secure internet connection
will be provided, and Turkey is one of those possibilities," said
the General Director.

"Armentel" company has another project to have mail address
beemail.am. Electronic post is prepared, they just need to get license
and verify their users.

THE ONLY MUSICAL LIBRARY IN CIS TO BE REPEAIRED

Panorama.am
20:32 10/10/2008

The only musical library of CIS countries located in Armenia will
be repaired. "Since 2006 the library is listed in a project to be
repaired. It was planned to start the repairing activities this year
but the project has been postponed. The library will be repaired in
the next year," said Gulo Nahatakyan, the director of Musical library
to Panorama.am.

"53 million AMD will be disposed to start the repairing activities
of the musical library in 2009, 39 million 166 thousands for the
regional library of Vayots Dzor, 49 million drams for regional library
of Tavush region," said Luiza Berbeyan, of the Ministry of Culture.

AZERI PARTY AGAIN FIRED AGAINST NAGORNO-KARABAKH ARMED FORCES’ POSITIONS

DeFacto Agency
2008-10-10 15:49:00
Armenia

STEPANAKERT, 10.10.08. DE FACTO. At night of October 9 the Azeri party
again violated cease-fire in a number of sectors of Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic and Azerbaijani armed forces’ contact line.

The Azeri party fired against NKR Defense Army’s positions situated in
the vicinity of the villages of Yusifjanlu and Karadagly, Karmiravan,
Seysulan and Jraberd, from small-bore infantry weapon, NKR MoD Press
Office reports. There are no victims from the NKR Armed Forces as a
result of cease-fire violation.

At that, Karabakh party controls situation along the contact line
and carries out preventive actions in case of necessity.

To remind, one more incident of cease-fire violation was registered at
night of October 7 – the Azeri party fired against Karabakh positions
in a number of sectors, from small-bore infantry weapon. Intensive
firing was registered in the direction of Karabakh positions situated
near the villages of Yusifjanlu, Levonarkh and Verin Tchajlu.

On October 8 OSCE mission carried out planned monitoring of
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri Armed Forces’ contact line in the vicinity
of the village of Karakhanbeyli, Fizuli region. The OSCE mission fixed
no cease-fire violation. However, the Azeri party failed to lead the
mission to its frontline, as a result of which the monitoring was
conducted from a farther distance.

THE WEEK IN BOOKS AN ‘ENGAGE’ WINS THE NOBEL, BETTING ON THE BOOKER, AND ISTANBUL GOES TO FRANKFURT
Dominique Guiou, John Dugdale and Maya Jaggi

guardian.co.uk
Saturday October 11 2008
UK

This year the Nobel prize for literature has been awarded to a real
French writer – a writer who started when he was very young and is
still going strong today. In 1963, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio did
the unthinkable by winning, while still an unknown novelist of 23, one
of France’s top literary prizes, the Renaudot, for his debut novel,
The Interrogation. He has not stopped writing since, with some 30
books to his name, including Desert (1980), which received a prize
from the French academy. The Interrogation was the work of a young
man but, 40 years later, it is still as pertinent as ever.

That is not to say that his work has not developed enormously
throughout his career. He has gone from being a rather "difficult"
young writer influenced heavily by the avant garde to a more accessible
author who has made his voice heard on numerous political and social
issues from pollution to exploitation. Le Clezio has also managed to
do something very rare in France: to be loved by both the public and
the critics. To please both, and to know how to impress both, is very
special. He is what we in France call an "engage", a humanist – and,
above all, a great writer.

Dominique Guiou, Le Figaro

Le Clezio was a surprise choice as winner of the Nobel – but,
fascinatingly, not to Ladbrokes. Evidently possessing an uncanny
ability to second-guess the secretive cabal of Swedish worthies who
pick the laureates, the bookies had made Le Clezio their 2-1 favourite,
ahead of far better-known figures such as Amos Oz, Philip Roth and
Haruki Murakami. Even though the Academy picking a fifth European
author in a row – following Doris Lessing in 2007, Orhan Pamuk in 2006,
Harold Pinter in 2005 and Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 – seemed unlikely.

The academy specialises in strange, windy citations, and true to form
hailed Le Clezio as "author of new departures, poetic adventure and
sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning
civilisation". That at least makes his work sound more exciting
than that of his immediate predecessors: Lessing was praised for
"subjecting a divided civilisation to scrutiny", Pamuk for disclosing
"the melancholic soul of his native city", Pinter "uncovered the
precipice under everyday prattle" and Jelinek revealed "the absurdity
of society’s cliches and their subjugating power".

Recent Nobel choices have provided bonanzas for their British
publishers – especially Harvill Secker who publish Coetzee, Grass,
Kertesz and Saramago. In the case of Le Clezio, however, they were
caught napping. The only English translation from the past five
years listed on Amazon is Wandering Star, from the small US publisher
Curbstone.

John Dugdale

An Indian or an Irishman will be named as this year’s Booker winner
on Tuesday, if the bookies are to be believed. William Hill makes
Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture 5-2 favourite, with Amitav
Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies at 7-2; while Ladbrokes reverses the order,
offering Ghosh at 2-1 with the remaining four authors at 4-1 or
5-1. Paddy Power has Ghosh at the remarkably short odds of 7-4 and
Barry at 3-1. Don’t take this, though, as any indication of the likely
outcome. Until the shortlist appeared and both were omitted, the
bookies had Salman Rushdie and Joseph O’Neill as frontrunners. Last
year’s winner, Anne Enright, was a 12-1 outsider, and no favourite
has won since Yann Martel in 2002.

JD

Alice Munro appeared at the New Yorker magazine’s recent festival in
Manhattan, drily revealing to her interviewer that when her first book
appeared the local paper’s report was headlined "Housewife Finds Time
to Write Stories", and that her father decided to take up writing late
in life on the assumption that "if Alice can do it there should be no
problem". Sticking to short fiction was not her original plan, Munro
said, but she now recognises she needs to know when a project will be
completed, and so is unsuited to working on anything more open-ended –
"you might die while writing a 500-page novel".

The Canadian writer talked of a period when she gave up writing two
years ago, worried that an author’s constant need to observe was
robbing her of experiencing life as "an ordinary person". Happily
she soon realised she "wasn’t very good" at this, managing only
"three months, maybe" of being ordinary.

JD

Istanbul’s bookshop windows are full of copies of Orhan Pamuk’s
first novel since his 2006 Nobel prize, with its retro photo of a
high-society family in a car tinted flamboyant pink. Artist manque
Pamuk designed his own cover for the book, Museum of Innocence,
a filmic melodrama of a 1970s love affair in which a man collects
objects touched by his beloved before her death. For the first time
in so long, a relaxed Pamuk says on his balcony, "the media are sweet
to me". About 100,000 copies were sold in 10 days.

A swift German translation was commissioned for next week’s Frankfurt
book fair, which Pamuk will open on Tuesday alongside the Turkish
president, Abdullah Gul, marking Turkey’s year as guest of honour. The
tag is "Turkey in all its colours" – a seemingly bland coinage by
Turkish publishers that is revolutionary for the culture ministry
that signed up to it. In the teeth of an official nationalist ideology
guarded by the military since the Kemalist republic’s birth in 1923,
stressing a unitary Turkish ethnicity, publishers led by Muge Gursoy
Sokmen of Metis are proclaiming Turkey’s diversity, with Kurdish,
Armenian and Jewish authors – mirrored in art exhibitions and music,
from ghazals to jazz. Pamuk feels he is representing a book culture
led by "westernisers" and pro-EU intellectuals against stifling,
insular nationalism.

President Gul, a former radical Islamist whose AK party favours EU
membership, has been lunching writers and artists. Several authors
bound for Frankfurt, including Pamuk, Elif Shafak and Perihan Magden,
have been prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code,
which prohibits "insulting Turkishness" – notably by mentioning the
Armenian massacres of 1915-17. Publishers say it is too early to
tell how the April amendments of 301 – sought by the president but
criticised by some as cosmetic – will bite.

Magden, "traumatised" by her trial and by "fascists and fanatical
Kemalists out in the streets", published a novel last year, Escape,
about a mother and daughter on the run, at a time when she had two
bodyguards. For her, the threat comes not from the AK party, but from
secular ultra-nationalists and a "military democracy". Headscarves
are an issue of a rising class threatening an army elite: "Girls who
were locked in their villages want to go to university and wear a
headscarf. It’s not a fundamentalist threat – I welcome it."

The lawyer who led the prosecution of Pamuk is among the 80-plus
people now charged in the bizarre Ergenekon case – an alleged
ultra-nationalist coup conspiracy involving death threats and
assassinations, including the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, editor of
the Turkish-Armenian paper Agos. In Dink’s office, where the walls
bear photographs of his funeral, when tens of thousands of Turkish
mourners marched under the banner "We are all Armenians", his lawyer,
Fethiye Cetin, says the "only way to overcome the trauma of the past
is to talk; being silent destroys everybody". Her 2004 memoir, My
Grandmother (out in Britain earlier this year), about the relative she
discovered had been Armenian, adopted by a Turkish officer after the
massacres, was a bestseller. She feels it left a "crack in official
state ideology in the minds of people". An estimated two million
Turks have at least one Armenian grandparent.

Murathan Mungan, a novelist and playwright who has Kurdish, Arab and
Bosnian grandparents, feels his plays were not taken into the state
theatre repertoire because he used Kurdish names. Mungan, who also
describes himself as the first openly gay author in Turkey, says his
fight is against "conservatives on the right and the left". Other
writers, including Shafak, seek to recover a language lost in the
1928 alphabet and language revolution which, in its drive to "purify"
Ottoman Turkish of Persian and Arabic words – perhaps two-thirds
of its vocabulary – sunders young Turkish readers from their own
literary heritage.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LIMITS URGED ON NEW ARRIVALS
By Maria Sacchetti, [email protected]

Boston Globe
October 10, 2008
United States

WATERTOWN – Mark Krikorian is everywhere, it seems, making the case
against immigration.

He has been on C-SPAN, testified before Congress, and this week he
held court before a group of fellow Armenians in Watertown, many of
them immigrants themselves.

He was not what they expected. He exudes a rumpled charm, with
thick eyeglasses and a mop of thinning gray hair. But Krikorian’s
authoritative voice is so reasoned, and his demeanor so amiable,
that it makes immigrant advocates leery.

Legal immigrants. Illegal immigrants. Krikorian wants fewer of both.

>From the podium Wednesday night at the Armenian Library and Museum
of America, Krikorian eyed the two dozen in the room. Some smiled,
including his mother. Others sat stone-faced, arms folded. He
quickly deadpanned that for a week his new book was number six on
the Washington Post best-seller list.

"For one week," he said with a smile. "I knew it would never happen
again so I framed it. "

They laughed.

For the next hour, he held their attention. Krikorian is executive
director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think
tank that issues reports outlining the costs of immigration to the
United States. This year, he is on a book tour to promote "The New
Case Against Immigration." The cover features an image of the Statue
of Liberty with her hand held up as if to say: Stop.

Krikorian’s premise: America has changed over the last century from
an agriculture-based society that welcomed millions of low-skilled
immigrants to a high-tech, service-based economy that demands higher
skills. Uneducated workers, he says, tap into healthcare and other
government-funded services and compete with American high school
dropouts for jobs.

His proposal: Sharply reduce immigration from the 1.5 million
immigrants who enter each year – which includes roughly 500,000 illegal
immigrants. He would reduce the 12 million illegal immigrants in the
country now by several million people. And he would allow 350,000 to
400,000 legal immigrants in a year, reducing the number of relatives
that US citizens can bring in and admitting a limited number of
high-skilled workers and refugees.

"In the conditions of the modern society, a person with low levels
of skill and education, no matter how many jobs he has, no matter how
hard he works, he cannot support a family . . . without support from
taxpayers," Krikorian told the group. "It just can’t happen."

Krikorian’s critics say his approach runs counter to the United States’
history as a nation of immigrants and would force families to live
apart from their relatives. The United States still needs immigrants
for low-wage jobs, they say, and it is impractical to suggest sending
illegal immigrants home.

"He’s the moderate face of a very hard-line movement," said Frank
Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a Washington-based
nonprofit organization that favors an immigration overhaul. "He talks
in soothing and academic tones about an agenda that I find extreme."

But B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown
University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration,
said Krikorian and the center are making an honest attempt to make
their case.

"I think that they are intelligent brokers for a point of view I
don’t quite share," he said in an e-mail. "At least, they are honest
about putting out a number that they think is preferable while their
opposition mostly mouths vague platitudes about not ‘restricting’
immigration as if ever-growing numbers or open borders is a viable
option."

Krikorian takes pains in his book to avoid blaming immigrants. He
is the grandson of Armenian immigrants and speaks the language
fluently. Now 47, he was born in Connecticut to parents from
Medford and Watertown. He grew up mainly in the Midwest but lived
in Massachusetts as a teenager and graduated from Winchester High
School. He was educated at Georgetown University and the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

He fell into the immigration debate because of his opposition to
bilingual education and eventually found work at the Federation for
American Immigration Reform, among other jobs. He went to work for
the Center for Immigration Studies in 1995.

After his talk, many in the crowd praised Krikorian.

"I would like to limit (immigration) if they aren’t educated, if they
are going to be a burden on government handouts," said Bette Ohanian
of Watertown, the daughter of Armenian immigrants.

Barbara Merguerian, a freelance writer, questioned why the number of
illegal immigrants had been allowed to swell.

"We’re a country of law and order," she said.

"I just can’t believe that the US government is unable to stop this
mass of immigrants to this country."

If Krikorian’s plan had been in place a century ago, some of the
people in the room might not have been allowed into the United States.

"I disagreed with him completely," said Bethel Bilezikian Charkoudian,
whose parents survived the Armenian genocide. "We’re living in a
world without borders."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress