Author: Antonian Lara

The US forces, like the Crusaders before them, are prisoners in their own fortresses
The Independent – United Kingdom
Apr 02, 2005
Robert Fisk

I drove Pat and Alice Carey up the coast of Lebanon this week to look
at some castles. Pat is a builder from County Wicklow, brave enough to
take a holiday with his wife in Beirut when all others are thinking of
running away. But I wanted to know what he thought of 12th-century
construction work.
How did he rate a Crusader keep? The most beautiful of Lebanon’s
castles is the smallest, a dinky-toy palisade on an outcrop of rock
near the village of Batroun. You have to climb a set of well-polished
steps – no hand-rails, for this is Lebanon – up the sheer side of
Mseilha castle and then clamber over doorsills into the dark, damp
interior.
So we padded around the battlements for half an hour. “Strongly made
or they wouldn’t be still here,” Pat remarked. “But you wouldn’t find
any company ready to put up the insurance. And in winter, it must have
been very, very cold.”
And after some minutes, he looked at me with some intensity. “It’s
like being in a prison,” he said.
And he was right. The only view of the outside world was through the
archers’ loopholes in the walls. Inside was darkness. The bright world
outside was cut off by the castle defences. I could just see the
splashing river to the south of the castle and, on the distant
horizon, a mountainside. That was all the defenders – Crusaders or
Mamlukes – would have seen. It was the only contact they had with the
land they were occupying.
Up at Tripoli is Lebanon’s biggest keep, the massive Castle of St
Gilles that still towers ominously over the port city with its
delicate minarets and mass of concrete hovels. Two shell holes –
remnants of Lebanon’s 1975- 1990 civil war – have been smashed into
the walls, but the interior of the castle is a world of its own; a
world, that is, of stables and eating halls and dungeons. It was empty
– the tourists have almost all fled Lebanon – and we felt the
oppressive isolation of this terrible place.
Pat knew his Crusader castles. “When you besieged them, the only way
to get inside was by pushing timber under the foundations and setting
fire to the wood. When they turned to ash, the walls came tumbling
down. The defenders didn’t throw boiling oil from the ramparts. They
threw sand on to the attackers. The sand would get inside their armour
and start to burn them until they were in too much pain to fight. But
it’s the same thing here in Tripoli as in the little castle. You can
hardly see the city through the arrow slits. It’s another – bigger –
prison.”
And so I sat on the cold stone floor and stared through a loophole
and, sure enough, I could see only a single minaret and a few square
metres of roadway. I was in darkness. Just as the Crusaders who built
this fortress must have been in darkness.
Indeed, Raymond de Saint-Gilles spent years besieging the city,
looking down in anger from his great fortress, built on the “Pilgrim’s
Mountain”, at the stout burghers of Tripoli who were constantly
re-supplied by boat from Egypt. Raymond himself died in the castle,
facing the city he dreamed of capturing but could not live to enter.
And of course, far to the east, in the ancient land of Mesopotamia,
there stand today equally stout if less aesthetic barricades around
another great occupying army. The castles of the Americans are made of
pre-stressed concrete and steel but they serve the same purpose and
doom those who built them to live in prisons.
>From the “Green Zone” in the centre of Baghdad, the US authorities
and their Iraqi satellites can see little of the city and country
they claim to govern. Sleeping around the gloomy republican palace of
Saddam Hussein, they can stare over the parapets or peek through the
machine-gun embrasures on the perimeter wall – but that is as much as
most will ever see of Iraq.
The Tigris river is almost as invisible as that stream sloshing past
the castle of Mseilha. The British embassy inside the “Green Zone”
flies its diplomats into Baghdad airport, airlifts them by helicopter
into the fortress – and there they sit until recalled to London.
Indeed, the Crusaders in Lebanon – men with thunderous names like
Tancred and Bohemond and Baldwin – used a system of control remarkably
similar to the US Marines and the 82nd Airborne. They positioned their
castles at a day’s ride – or a day’s sailing down the coast in the
case of Lebanon – from each other, venturing forth only to travel
between their keeps.
And then out of the east, from Syria and also from the Caliphate of
Baghdad and from Persia came the “hashashin”, the “Assassins” – the
Crusaders brought the word back to Europe – who turned the Shia faith
into an extremist doctrine, regarding assassination of their enemies
as a religious duty.
Anyone who doubts the relevance of these “foreign fighters” to
present- day Iraq should read the history of ancient Tripoli by that
redoubtable Lebanese-Armenian historian Nina Jidejian, which covers
the period of the Assassins and was published at the height of the
Lebanese civil war.
“It was believed that the terrorists partook of hashish to induce
ecstatic visions of paradise before setting out to perform their
sacred duty and to face martyrdom…” she writes. “The arrival of the
Crusaders had added to … latent discontent and created a favourable
terrain for their activities.” Ouch.
One of the Assassins’ first victims was the Count of Montferrat,
leader of the Third Crusade who had besieged Acre in 1191 – “Saint
Jean d’Acre” to the Christians – and who met his death at the hands of
men sent by the Persian “terrorist” leader, Hassan-i Sabbah. The
Assassins treated Saladin’s Muslim army with equal scorn – they made
two attempts to murder him – and within 100 years had set up their own
castles around Tripoli. They established a “mother fortress” from
which – and here I quote a 13th- century Arab geographer – “the
Assassins chosen are sent out thence to all countries and lands to
slay kings and great men”.
And so it is not so hard, in the dank hallways of the Castle of St
Gilles to see the folly of America’s occupation of Iraq. Cut off from
the people they rule, squeezed into their fortresses, under constant
attack from “foreign fighters”, the Crusaders’ dreams were destroyed.
Sitting behind that loophole in the castle at Tripoli, I could even
see new meaning in Osama bin Laden’s constant reference to the
Americans as “the Crusader armies”. The Crusades, too, were founded on
a neo-conservative theology. The knights were going to protect the
Christians of the Holy Land; they were going to “liberate” Jerusalem –
“Mission Accomplished” – and ended up taking the spoils of the Levant,
creating petty kingdoms which they claimed to control, living
fearfully behind their stone defences. Their Arab opponents of the
time did indeed possess a weapon of mass destruction for the
Crusaders. It was called Islam.
“You can see why the Crusaders couldn’t last here,” Pat said as we
walked out of the huge gateway of the Castle of Saint Gilles. “I
wonder if they even knew who they were fighting.”
I just resisted asking him if he’d come along on my next trip to
Baghdad, so I could hear part two of the builder’s wisdom.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Times Online, UK
Books
April 02, 2005
Ottoman of his time
By Jason Goodwin
In Turkey his novels, chronicling the country’s upheavals, have made him as
famous as a footballer. But Orhan Pamuk says it’s time to stop speaking for
the nation and tell his own stories
Remember angst? Germans produced it, where the French had anomie; and we all
know melancholy and tristesse. Now Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s leading novelist,
and in Istanbul the chronicler of the inescapable decline of the great
Ottoman metropolis and the disintegration of the Pamuk family within it, has
given us hüzün. It’s hüzün when wealth ebbs away; when the lovely wooden
mansions of the pashas burn to the ground; when Pamuk’s mother sits up late,
smoking and half-watching the TV, waiting for her erring husband to get
home. Even love is doomed, for old-fashioned reasons: Pamuk wants to become
an artist, and a nice girl won’t marry one in 1960s Istanbul. In Istanbul
Pamuk writes: `I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same
house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul’s fate is my fate: I am attached to
this city because it has made me who I am.’
What with this and that and a cartoon portrait of the author which recently
appeared in The Guardian, I half expected to find Pamuk the jowly
personification of Balkan gloom when I met him in New York last week. Not
without cause, perhaps: last month, Pamuk made an off-the-cuff
acknowledgement of Turkey’s responsibility for the death of a million
Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. His remarks provoked
outrage in his native land, where he is famous like a footballer. Though his
novels revel in clever postmodern games and tread unerringly on ground Pamuk
shares with writers such as Borges and García Márquez, his 2001 novel My
Name Is Red became the fastest selling book in Turkish history; elsewhere it
also cemented his reputation as a master storyteller. It was followed in
2003 by Snow, a political thriller and love story of fierce imaginative
scope: if ever you find yourself justifying secular values to a religious
assassin, the dialogue has been written by Pamuk. His books, he says as we
order lunch, have been translated into 36 languages. He isn’t boasting: it’s
just that he has to get things right.
Pamuk is a tall, lightly built man of 53. He speaks English fluently, and is
neatly dressed in a white shirt and a black corduroy jacket; in his
gold-rimmed spectacles he resembles a sort of Turkish Harry Potter. As for
that portrait: `The Guardian people told me it was their policy to make
authors look ugly.’ He pauses, laughs. `I’ll sue them!’
`I’ve written 240 pages a year, for the past 30 years,’ he reminds me more
than once. He would know the exact average: with all his charm, Pamuk is a
precise and hard-driven craftsman, clamped to his desk 11 hours a day,
re-reading pitilessly, cutting `like a ruthless Hollywood producer. For me
being a fiction writer is imposing self-torture.’ To get period details
correct he reads old newspapers; for his English translations he goes over
the text with his translator line by line. Outside dialogue, there’s no
slang in his prose. `I use the Turkish of my mother and my grandmother.’ He
writes with a fountain pen.
>From our table we watch a tug foaming against the current, while across the
water the city stands silhouetted in the spring sunshine. A patrol boat
idles for a moment near the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, and then speeds
off towards Pier 47. `New York,’ says Pamuk, `is my second city.’
In 1985 he followed his wife there for her PhD in Ottoman history. (They
were divorced four years ago, but back in Istanbul Pamuk still regularly
drops round for meals with her and their 15-year-old daughter.) They stayed
in New York for three years, at a time when his international reputation was
beginning to grow. `I was 33. It was flattering.’ At Columbia he found
students of Turkish studying his own first novel, while The White Castle, a
story about a 17th-century Muslim master and Christian slave who swap
places, had just been published in translation.
`My first time I was enchanted, bewitched by NY; but I can’t say I liked it.
I was happy because my marriage was happy. This library – two million books,
a cubicle.’ He wrote The Black Book there, but New York never opened out to
him like Istanbul. `I was an outsider. In Istanbul I know what’s happening
behind the windows, but here it was all blank – except the novels of Saul
Bellow and Paul Auster.’
He is, by his own admission, a very bookish man. When he talks about his
craft his head sinks forward in an attitude of earnest concentration and his
speech is fast. Between the ages of seven and 22 he wanted to be an artist,
until everyone persuaded him that Istanbul in the 1960s and 1970s was too
poor and provincial a place for a serious artist to make a living. Yet being
a novelist, he thinks, repeats the same `essential gesture of being alone in
a room and attempting to legitimise your fantasies’.
The opening chapter of Istanbul describes the sense he possessed as a child
of there being another Pamuk living somewhere in the city; another him,
unknown and unseen. Years later he discovered his father’s secret love-nest
to be a copy of his parents’ room at home, down to the bridge books
teetering on the bedside table. Doubles inhabit almost all his fictions: he
calls them `two sides of the same psychic focus, persona, and never
symmetrical’. He finds himself increasingly drawn to explore the role of
those westernised elites which, like his own, mediate between the local
cultural tradition of the people and the expectations of the wider world,
and are to some extent alienated from both. `A subject I love is that of the
true believer who has doubts, and the true atheist who has secret beliefs,’
he says. `I imply that no one can be completely one thing. If you think you
are a perfect Muslim or modernist, you have a problem.’
He admits to seeing something in his `second city’ which shadows Istanbul.
`It’s that the streets are crowded – a sense that so much is going on. This
is a cultural and economic capital, and it’s so complex. We are the edge of
the water – Istanbul is so open to its water.’ He suspects that the cities
share a certain energy – `though it’s my joke that we only have this energy
on the streets in Istanbul because there’s no subway’. The prevailing mood
of the two cities could not be less similar.
The end-of-empire melancholy, the particular resignation of his home city,
shares nothing with New York. `Istanbul – tristesse! New York – success!’ He
won’t be writing a New York novel. It’s just a place to work, a set of
books, closed doors, beautiful views. A refuge.
Before we leave the restaurant, Pamuk does a quick sketch in my copy of
Istanbul of the skyline framed in the windows overlooking the East River. I
ask him if he’s going back to work and he says no, today’s a holiday for
him, he’s going to buy himself a pair of shoes at Macy’s. One of his black
brogues is peeling from the toe. It’s a beautiful day, the first day of the
New York spring, and we agree to walk uptown, over the Brooklyn Bridge and
up on to Broadway. I can tell from the easy way he swings through the crowds
that he enjoys the exercise as much as the colour of downtown Manhattan.
Turkey’s prospective entry into the EU he sees in terms of stories: in this
case, the stories that a nation tells itself. The collapse of the Ottoman
Empire after the First World War was a trauma for the Turks, prompting a
retreat into inwardness and isolation. At some level, as Istanbul suggests,
the Turks learnt to derive a gloomy satisfaction from their own abrupt
demotion from power status to insignificance, a certain pride in their
collective recognition of the h üzün of end-of-empire.
While happy to lend his support to Turkey’s entry into the EU, Pamuk, who
has been a vociferous supporter of human rights and the rights of minorities
in Turkey, no longer feels the same need to speak out. Death threats and a
potential court prosecution followed his well-publicised reference to the
Armenian massacres. But he acknowledges that Turkey has travelled a long way
towards creating a more open, pluralistic society. There’s also the issue of
what he owes to himself as a writer. If the Turks need a new story as part
of their move into the European mainstream, it’s not his job, he thinks, to
find them one.
The process of adaptation will be as hard as writing, but `with freedom of
speech, with the spirit of creativity, they will invent a new past’. The
Turkey of his childhood had become `scared of its own imagination’. But the
situation has moved on already, with encouraging signs everywhere of colour
returning: his Istanbul describes a city that his own daughter might find it
hard to recognise. `In 20 years she will read this book and say: Daddy, you
are such a sad man!’ `The child inside will come out,’ he predicts.
`Imagination can serve the country better than suppression. Xenophobia and
nationalism will fade away as Turks grow proud of that imagination.’ Ottoman
history needn’t be a catalogue of martial glories: an unexpected prod in the
right direction has come from Israel. `They said: `You Turks treated the
Jews well.’ Sometimes these things get forgotten.’
But he no longer feels he must speak for Turkey, in his fiction at least. `I
have another five or seven novels I want to write,’ he says. `I’m not
looking at literature as representing a country or a culture but as
representing myself. I have to catch my demons rather than catch Turkey’s
demons. I think that the country is becoming a more bourgeois civil society
so I think my demons will be, in the end, more representative.’
A quarter of a billion people, he observes, speak Turkish. `The structure of
Turkish is that the verb is at the end; so that what will happen is a
surprise.’
Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk is published by Faber & Faber, £16.99 (offer,
£13.59).

OSCE says Akayev should resign; warns new leaders against infighting
AP Worldstream
Mar 31, 2005
STEVE GUTTERMAN

The head of a key European security organization called on ousted
Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev to resign and urged the Central Asian
nation’s new leadership on Thursday to avoid dangerous infighting
before a new election.
The current chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe said Akayev should cooperate with efforts to secure his
resignation and that the “cooperation should be effective and as short
as possible,” in order to ease persistent uncertainty in Kyrgyzstan.
In the third visit by a high-level OSCE official to Kyrgyzstan since
the upheaval that led Akayev to flee to Russia, current chairman
Dimitrij Rupel said the 55-nation organization backs the new
parliament’s effort to hold talks to win Akayev’s resignation.
“The OSCE supports negotiations; excluding President Akayev from this
volatile period would be dangerous,” he said. But he stressed that the
OSCE recognizes the new leadership as legitimate and legal.
Akayev fled to Russia after opposition protesters stormed his
headquarters a week ago and took power in the ex-Soviet republic. He
has said is prepared to resign if he receives guarantees of security
and immunity from prosecution.
He urged the new Kyrgyz leaders to work together and avoid infighting
that could lead to new unrest as competition begins before a June 26
presidential election.
“I have urged against _ and this is perhaps the most serious challenge
_ against taking the elections to the street,” Rupel said. “I would
say that competition in the group is worrying; something that should
concern us all,” he said.
Rupel cut short a visit to Armenia to come to Kyrgyzstan to meet with
acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva,
parliament speaker Omurbek Tekebayev and Felix Kulov, who resigned as
law enforcement coordinator Wednesday.
Kulov’s resignation was interpreted by some as sign he could be
planning a presidential bid against Bakiyev, who has announced plans
to run. Bakiyev said Wednesday that it would be dangerous for Akayev
to return in the near future; Kulov indicated he should come back to
resign.
Rupel said the legal status of Kulov, who was imprisoned under Akayev
and released a week ago during the power seizure, should be cleared up
in time for him to run in the election if he chooses. He said Kulov
gave him the impression in their meeting that he would run.
Rupel, who is Slovenia’s foreign minister, said that until recently
the new Kyrgyz leaders been united largely by their criticism of
Akayev’s regime.
Now, he said, their differences should be “recognized and channeled”
toward a good elections process and should not lead to “exclusion.”
He also expressed concern about disorder on the nation’s borders,
although he did not go into details, and about persistent power
struggles in provinces outside the capital, where he said he was told
that in some cases two or more people were claiming regional and local
leadership.
The OSCE has struggled to keep up with the fast-moving situation in
Kyrgyzstan. One top envoy arrived before Akayev’s ouster to seek a
settlement between the government and opposition and a second came
last week during a conflict between two parliaments over legitimacy.

MOSCOW HOUSE IN YEREVAN
A1+
31-03-2005
The Armenian government allowed the Yerevan City Administration to
conclude an agreement on building up the territories adjacent to the
Yerevan Wine factory. The 3500 area will be used for the construction
of the Moscow House in Argishti Street.
To note, the Moscow authorities have already marked out corresponding
territory for the construction of the Yerevan House.
PENSIONS RAISED
The Armenian government decreed on raising the basic pensions with
1000 drams, thus fixing the sum on 4000 instead of former 3000.
FUNDS ALLOCATED
13 million 502 thousand AMD was assigned to the Ministry of Culture
and Youth for the publication of literature dedicated to the 90-th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the 1600-th anniversary of
the Armenian alphabet.

DATABASE ABOUT ARMENIAN HOTELS CREATED
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS: Armenian trade and economic
development ministry has centralized information about 400 Armenian
hotels and inns in a single database. Arthur Zakarian, head of tourism
development department ofthe ministry, said information will also be
collected about private mansions whose owners rent them to tourists.
He said overall Armenian hotels can accommodate 25,000 visitors,
2,500 of which in first class hotels. Zakarian said his department has
not yet received applications from hotel owners, which are necessary
to classify hotels.
He said the deadline is until June and those who fail to do so
andwill continue to advertise themselves as being 3, 4 or 5 start
hotels, will be subjected to penalties.
He said hotel business continues to be a lucrative investment and 4
new hotels are expected to open this year.

SwissInfo, Suisse
Mardi 29 Mars 2005
Micheline Calmy-Rey en Turquie: rencontre avec le président
ANKARA – La conseillère fédérale Micheline Calmy-Rey entame une
visite de trois jours en Turquie. A son arrivée, en début
d’après-midi, elle sera reçue par le président turc Ahmet Necdet
Sezer et par le ministre des affaires étrangères Abdullah Gül.
Les deux ministres doivent faire «un large tour d’horizon» des sujets
qui touchent les deux pays, comme «les droits de l’Homme, la question
des minorités ou les relations économiques» entre les deux pays,
selon le conseiller diplomatique de Mme Calmy-Rey, Roberto
Balzaretti. La dernière rencontre entre les chefs de la diplomatie
suisse et turc remonte à 2001.
Des questions «régionales et globales» figurent aussi au menu des
entretiens, selon le Département fédéral des affaires étrangères
(DFAE). Mme Calmy-Rey et M. Gül devraient notamment évoquer la crise
en Irak, pays voisin de la Turquie, et le conflit au Proche-Orient.
Les deux ministres des affaires étrangères doivent en outre aborder
l’avenir européen de la Turquie. Si Ankara rejoint l’Union européenne
(UE), l’économie helvétique bénéficiera d’un marché élargi, avait
indiqué en décembre dernier la conseillère fédérale.
Enfin, la cheffe du DFAE pourrait soulever la question du génocide
arménien, sujet de discorde entre les deux pays qui avait causé
l’annulation d’un voyage de Mme Calmy-Rey en Turquie, prévu en
septembre 2003.
Micheline Calmy-Rey se rendra mercredi dans le sud-est kurde du pays,
à Diyarbakir, avant de rejoindre la capitale économique, Istanbul.

VARDAN OSKANYAN: WAR BETWEEN ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN WILL BE THE THIRD
AND MAYBE THE LAST MISTAKE OF AZERBAIJAN
YEREVAN, MARCH 29. ARMINFO. The negotiation process for peaceful
settlement of Karabakh conflict is at rather complicated stage – on
the one hand, Azerbaijan confirms its readiness to continue the
negotiation process, on the other hand, it speculates with it at
international structures and advances its positions on the
contact-line of the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies. Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan says today in the course of parliamentary
hearings on settlement of Karabakh conflict.
We are concerned over the behavior of the Azerbaijani party, but we
are not afraid of it as we are ready to respond to Azerbaijan’s
probable initiative of unleashing a new war, which will be its third
and maybe the last mistake, Oskanyan says. In his words, the Armenian
party has shared its concern with the Minsk Group mediators and this
issue will be discussed during their next meeting. Oskanyan says that
despite some common approaches, the sides are far in their positions
on settlement of the conflict and the mediators are unlikely to make
their positions closer in the course of their forthcoming meeting.
One should hope for the Azerbaijani party will come to the meeting in
a constructive mood, the minister says. Commenting on the stage by
stage settlement-scheme (return of the territories outside Nagorny
Karabakh to Azerbaijan with further negotiations for status of
Karabakh), he says that if Ilham Aliyev is awakened at 3 o’clock at
night, he will sign this document. This settlement-scheme can be
discussed and implemented at any time, Oskanyan says. In response to
the question on possible compromises the minister says that he cannot
calculate them all. He only notes that the Armenian side cannot yield
Karabakh to Azerbaijan, it cannot allow that Karabakh becomes an
enclave as well as it cannot endanger the security of the people
residing in Karabakh.

Gateway 2 Russia, Russia
March 29 2005
Russian minister says CIS countries themselves need to decide on
integration
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that the countries of
the post-Soviet space should decide on their desire for integration.
“We do not want to drag anyone into anything, we want to understand
their interests. If they are interested, let us work,” Lavrov said at
the presentation of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ International
Economic and Political Studies Institute’s Integration Problems
Centre in Moscow on Monday [28 March].
“I think we will be stronger if we are together,” Lavrov said. “But
we will be stronger not as a Russia that boasts its strength, but as
respected states with respect for each other,” Lavrov said.
“I would include GUUAM [Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan,
Moldova] in the essence of these processes,” he said. Lavrov said
that those who think integration will begin after all the minor
issues between CIS countries are resolved are wrong. “Integration
will begin only if each of us decides whether we need it,” Lavrov
said.
He said there is a mistaken opinion in CIS countries that only Russia
is interested in the integration process. “Maybe some aspects of
flirting with the West are connected to this,” Lavrov said.
He noted that when President Vladimir Putin recently called the CIS a
mechanism for “civilized divorce”, “he did not mean that this was its
only purpose and there were not any others”. “He was simply comparing
the reasons for setting up the CIS and the EU and a ‘civilized
divorce’ certainly does not rule out integration but makes it
possible to intensify it,” Lavrov said.
He said the countries of the post-Soviet space should “respect each
other and work on equitable terms and on conditions of market
relations”. “I think there will be mutual benefit,” Lavrov said.
Talking about Russian-Ukrainian relations, Lavrov noted that several
issues related to the Black Sea fleet’s stay in the Crimea remain,
regardless of the fact that a base agreement on this has been signed.
“There is a base agreement, but there is no definite agreement that
states we can replace our ships there,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov also noted that Moscow deems unilateral concessions by Russia
as unacceptable in the process of integration. “I think that
integration is not only in the interest of peoples but also of
states,” the minister said.
“Individually or by joining organizations that have been set up
before us we will not achieve a respected place in the new world,”
Lavrov thought.
In his view, the establishment of the Union State of Russia and
Belarus, the functioning of the EAEC [Eurasian Economic Community]
and the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization comprising
Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and
Kyrgyzstan],”speaks of the necessity of integration”.

FORMER GOVERNOR GEORGE DEUKMEJIAN ENDORSES SENATOR CHUCK POOCHIGIAN
FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL IN 2006
LOS ANGELES, MARCH 24, NOYAN TAPAN. In a letter to California
voters, former Governor George Deukmejian has officially endorsed
Sen. Chuck Poochigian in his bid to be California’s next Attorney
General. “Chuck Poochigian, one of the most decent men I know, is
extraordinarily well qualified to become California’s next Attorney
General,” said Deukmejian, who served as California’s Attorney
General from 1979-1983. “His list of legislative accomplishments
in the area of crime prevention is long,” Deukmejian said. “Chuck
successfully passed laws to increase protections for victims of crime,
to increase DNA training which will lead to the prosecution of more
crimes, and to increase law enforcement in the rural communities of the
state.” Deukmejian also commended Poochigian’s ability to work with the
majority party. “Chuck Poochigian is so respected by all members of the
California Legislature that he is able to introduce strong legislation
across a broad range of issues and work it all the way into law,”
Deukmejian said. “As Governor and Attorney General, George Deukmejian
made public safety his number one priority,” Poochigian said. “Over
the years, his passion for protecting the safety of California’s
citizens, his commitment to public service, his intelligence and
his integrity have taught me a great deal about leadership. I am
very honored to have his endorsement.” Poochigian is serving in his
second term in the State Senate. He previously served four years in
the State Assembly. Poochigian worked for both Deukmejian and former
Gov. Pete Wilson, serving as Wilson’s Appointments Secretary.

Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th St., NW, Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet:
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2005
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918
SUPPORT GROWS FOR CONGRESSIONAL LETTER CALLING ON
PRES. BUSH TO PROPERLY COMMEMORATE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
— Over 90 Representatives Co-Sign Letter as
Community Continues Nationwide Advocacy campaign
WASHINGTON, DC ~V Bipartisan efforts to urge President Bush to keep
his 2000 campaign pledge to properly characterize the Armenian
Genocide as “genocide” continued to grow this week, with over 90
U.S. Representatives having cosigned a Congressional letter to the
White House, reported the Armenian National Committee of America
(ANCA).
Initiated by Congressional Armenian Caucus Co-Chairs Frank Pallone
(D-NJ) and Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), the letter calls on President
Bush to join House members “in reaffirming the United States record
on the Armenian Genocide” in his annual April 24th commemorative
statement. “By properly recognizing the terrible atrocities
committed against the Armenian people as ‘genocide’ in your
statement, you will honor the many Americans who helped launch the
unprecedented U.S. diplomatic, political and humanitarian campaign
to end the carnage and protect the survivors.”
Members of Congress joining Representatives Pallone and Knollenberg
as co-signers of the letter, as of Friday, March 25th, include:
Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Tom Allen (D-ME),
Robert Andrews (D-NJ), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Charles Bass (R-NH),
Melissa Bean (D-IL), Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Howard Berman (D-CA),
Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Sanford Bishop (D-GA), Tim Bishop (D-NY),
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Mary Bono (R-CA), Jeb Bradley (R-NH), Ken
Calvert (R-CA), Lois Capps (D-CA), Michael Capuano (D-MA), Benjamin
Cardin (D-MD), Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Jim
Costa (D-CA), Jerry Costello (D-IL), Joseph Crowley (D-NY), Susan
Davis (D-CA), William Delahunt (D-MA), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), David
Dreier (R-CA), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Bob Filner (D-CA), Mark Foley
(R-FL), Barney Frank (D-MA), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Scott
Garrett (R-NJ), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Rush
Holt (D-NJ), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Steve Israel (D-NY), Stephanie
Tubbs Jones (D-OH), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Sue Kelly (R-NY), Dale
Kildee (D-MI), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH),
James Langevin (D-RI), John Larson (D-CT), Sander Levin (D-MI),
John Lewis (D-GA), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA),
Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Edward Markey (D-MA),
Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Jim McDermott
(D-WA), James McGovern (D-MA), Michael McNulty (D-NY), Martin
Meehan (D-MA), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Candice Miller (R-MI),
George Miller (D-CA), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Eleanor Holmes
Norton (D-DC), Devin Nunes (R-CA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Collin
Peterson (D-MN), George Radanovich (R-CA), Steven Rothman (D-NJ),
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Edward Royce (R-CA), Linda Sanchez
(D-CA), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), H. James Saxton (R-NJ), Adam Schiff
(D-CA), Joe Schwarz (R-MI), E. Clay Shaw (R-FL), Christopher Shays
(R-CT), Brad Sherman (D-CA), John Shimkus (R-IL), Christopher Smith
(R-NJ), Mark Souder (R-IN), John Sweeney (R-NY), Edolphus Towns (D-
NY), Mark Udall (D-CO), Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD), Peter
Visclosky (D-IN), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Diane Watson (D-CA), Henry
Waxman (D-CA), Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Joe Wilson (R-SC), and Lynn
Woolsey (D-CA).
Over the past weeks, in statements on the House floor, a number of
House Members have already spoken out about the importance clear
and unambiguous U.S. reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide,
including Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Frank Pallone and Reps. Michael
Bilirakis, Barney Frank, Patrick Kennedy, James Langevin, and
George Radanovich.
Support for the letter is expected to grow considerably, as the
Armenian American community continues its grassroots campaign to
urge legislators to become signatories. The ANCA launched a WebFax
campaign last week, which, in addition to calling on House Members
to cosign this letter, urges activists to appeal directly to
President Bush on this key issue.
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