Author: Antonian Lara

Armenian foreign minister, UN official discuss cooperation
Arminfo
18 Aug 04
YEREVAN
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan today met the chief
inspector in the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
Tahir Ali, who is in Armenia within the framework of his regional
visit.
Arminfo has learnt from the Armenian Foreign Ministry press service
that the main purpose of the inspection is to sum up results of the
work to improve the refugee situation in the region which has been
conducted since 1988, as well as to evaluate the activity of the UNHCR
office in Yerevan .
During the meeting, on behalf of the Armenian government, Oskanyan
spoke highly about the activity of the UNHCR in Armenia. He hoped that
in the future this organization would be actively involved in the
Armenian government’s programmes on refugees.
The sides discussed issues related to refugees’ speedy integration
into social and public life in Armenia. Tahir Ali will leave Yerevan
for Tbilisi and then Baku. He will submit a report on results of the
visit to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

FINE TO BE IMPOSED FOR DAMAGE CAUSED TO GREEN ZONES OF CAPITAL FROM
NOW ON
YEREVAN, August 16 (Noyan Tapan). From now on the Mayor’s Office or
the communal administrations will turn to the judicial instances on
each case of illegal tree felling or damage caused to the green zones
of the capital with a demand on compensation. Grigor Melkumian, senior
adviser of the Yerevan Mayor’s Office, said during the August 16 press
conference that the Licensing Expert Commission will determine the
amount of the damage. It was mentioned that 5-6 similar cases are
being examined now.

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Aug 18 2004
STEVEN MANN: CO-CHAIRS TRY TO BRING ELEMENTS OF REALISM INTO THE
DISCUSSIONS.
[August 18, 2004, 21:33:27]
The following is an exclusive interview given by US co-chair of the
Minsk group Ambassador Steven Mann to the Washington representative
of AzerTAj news agency Shafag Akifqizi.
– Mr. Mann, it has been 4 months since you have been appointed as a
Special Negotiator for Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Do you think this
assignment brought anything new to the Minsk group or peace process?
I think there is no magic to the mediators, myself included. By
participating in the process, we demonstrate strong interests of our
governments in promoting a solution. But the bottom line, as always,
is that, it is up to the governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia to
come through with the solution.
-The recent developments coming from the region are troublesome – the
so-called Nagorno-Karabakh republic holds elections, conducts
military trainings on the occupied Azerbaijani territories. What’s
your reaction to that?
The State Department has already answered your question. I’d just
like to stand with the statement of Mr. Ereli – `we don’t recognize
Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent country. Our position is to
support the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. We don’t believe
that these elections will have an impact on the Minsk process.’
-Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn’t seem to agree with you. They
are concerned, that Minsk co-chairs don’t react properly to some of
the developments going on in the region. They believe, that if
mediators don’t come up with clear position on issues like the
so-called elections or military training on the occupied territories
conducting by the separatists, the continuation of the whole
negotiation process may be jeopardized. Do you agree with that?
First of all, let me say that the Minsk group discussions at the
ministerial level are discussions, not negotiations. These
discussions are a serious effort among diplomatic professionals. And
we need to keep to that.
There are always going to be events in the region that are unpleasant
to one side or the other. This simply comes from the history of
conflicts. But a responsibility of all of us involved in the Minsk
process is to keep focused on the discussions themselves and the
development of the peaceful solution. Now, let me explain – why do we
do this? Why does Azerbaijan or Armenia do it? We don’t do these out
of any vague sense of courtesy or certain norms that we follow. All
of us are pursuing this out of our national interests. So, I think it
is a correct decision that president Aliyev has taken to participate
in the process and that is the decision based on Azerbaijan’s
national interests.
-Mr. Mann, you have stated that the US supports the territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan. Yet, your country never recognized Armenia
as an occupant. What is that holds you back?
Yes, of course. And I reaffirm that we support territorial integrity
of Azerbaijan. We have also made a point that the solution to the
Karabakh conflict must take into account wishes of all the people of
the area. As to your question, you shouldn’t forget what a mandate of
the Minsk group is. The Minsk group is not there to take sides. The
international community has recognized the conflict and decided to
support negotiations and mediate. The international community didn’t
give the Minsk group the mission to be a judge. That is not what our
instructions are from the international community. So, what we can do
is work as hard as we possibly can to look for those elements of
common ground between the two sides and try to bring elements of
realism into the discussions.
-Will the November elections in the US put the interest of your
country in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the background?
No, I don’t think so. The position of the US has been very consistent
year after year, administration after administration in this. The
elections in November are not going to affect the professional
diplomacy that we want to this conflict.
-As a Special Advisor on Caspian Basin Diplomacy, were you surprised
by the recent suspension of the construction on BTC pipeline?
Frankly, I was mildly surprised. We have been having discussions with
BTC Co and Georgian government for some months now. The officials of
new Georgian government had a lot of questions about the project.
But, we were surprised when we saw stop of work order This was the
subject of extensive discussion in president Saakashvili’s recent
visit to Washington. It has also been the subject of some real
productive work between Georgia and BTC Co. I’m feeling good about
where we have come out and, as you know, the construction has fully
resumed now on the Georgian section of the pipeline.
-Will the main export pipeline have a role to play in
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution?
Interestingly, I get asked this question in Armenia as well. The
answer is no, it will not. The issues are separate. Naturally, we all
wish that the conflict was settled, so that we could all have
region-wide cooperation. But the pipeline reflects not political, but
commercial realities in the region.
Washington, D.C.
August 17, 2004

GUERRILLAS OF THE RESISTANCE
The Spaniards who liberated Paris
Le Monde diplomatique
August 2004
The German governor of Paris surrendered to a Spanish soldier two
hours before he signed the capitulation of his forces in August
1944. Will this year’s celebrations remember the foreign Resistance
fighters?

By Denis Fernandez Recatala

France has not done much to acknowledge its debt to the many
foreigners who helped free the nation in 1944. No significant
monuments pay tribute to the thousands of Spaniards who fought the
German occupation forces. As France prepares to celebrate the 60th
anniversary of the liberation of Paris, it should gratefully honour
the men and women who fought beside the French and died for freedom.
After the 1936-39 civil war many Spaniards fled to France and later
joined the Resistance or the Free French forces. In the Reina Sofia
Museum in Madrid, just next to Picasso’s Guernica, there is another
Picasso, Monument to the Spaniards who died for France, a reminder of
their sacrifice. Spanish Republicans contributed substantially to
liberating France. In the south they have had some recognition; in all
more than 10,000 fought all over France, in Brittany and the
Cévennes(1) and around towns such as Poitiers, Bordeaux, Angoulême,
Avignon, Montélimar, Valence or Anneçy(2). An all-Spanish force
liberated Foix, joined at the last moment by one Maurice Bigeard(3), a
token French contribution to the victory.
Near the end of summer 1940 Charles Tillon, founder of the French
Irregulars and Partisans (FTP-F) group, contacted local members of the
Spanish Communist party (PCE) in Bordeaux. Foreign nationals were a
ready source of volunteers, since unlike French citizens they had not
been mobilised and the Germano-Soviet pact had not discouraged
them(4). Spanish communists also remembered French support for the
International Brigades. Meanwhile the PCE’s underground leadership was
trying to meet its French opposite number and contacted Lise London in
December. She and her husband, Artur London, were plausible
go-betweens, having fought in Spain in the International Brigades(5).
>From then on, the resistance by communists and sympathisers started
to take shape. The Spanish community had arrived in two waves, first
because of poverty after 1918, then because of defeat by Franco’s army
in 1939, and settled all over France. The French Communist party (PCF)
started the Immigrant Workers (MOI) movement in the 1930s. The MOI
played an important part in the Resistance, integrating most Spanish
communists. The others formed armed detachments under PCE command,
coordinating their attacks with the Special Organisation (OS) and then
with the FTP-F.
In and around Paris Conrado Miret-Must, under the name of Lucien, took
charge of MOI combatants from 1942 on. The liberation of France was a
long way off, but preparations were already underway, despite a
massive raid that decimated the Spanish activists that year. The
trial of what the authorities claimed were terrorists from the Spanish
National Union was a foretaste of the trial of the members of the
Manouchian group(6). In the Little Spain neighbourhood of Plaine Saint
Denis(7) arrests became frequent, much as in Paris, Brittany and the
suburbs of other cities. In all, 135 Spaniards, including six women,
appeared in court. In their buttonholes they wore tiny espadrilles
with the colours of the French and Spanish republics. When their
sentences were read out they sang the Marseillaise and the Himno de
Riego(8). The sentences seemed relatively light, but meant torture,
deportation and, for many, death.
After the raids, which dislocated his unit and led to the
disappearance of his comrades, Celestino Alfonso, a former tank
commander, joined the Manouchian group and met Michel Rajman. With the
other members of the Manouchian group Celestino was executed on 16
February 1944, only months before the liberation of Paris. In his
farewell letter he wrote: “I lay down my life for France.” For many
Spaniards the Resistance was the continuation of the civil war by
other means. For the communists it was a way of repaying their debt to
the International Brigades, originally set up by the Komintern(9).
Spanish activists from Paris took refuge in neighbouring departéments
till the storm passed, returning to the capital under the command of
Rogelio Puerto. On 6 June 1944, when Allied forces landed on the
Normandy beaches, José Baron, known as Robert, mobilised all available
combatants and they formed the battalions that took part in the Paris
insurrection in August. They were determined and ready for anything,
convinced that once France regained its freedom the fascist regime in
Spain would soon collapse.
History does not always work out as planned, but there are fortunate
coincidences. The overall commander of the Paris insurrection was
Henri Rol-Tanguy, who had been a political commissar in the 14th
International Brigade in Spain. This eased contacts between insurgents
from the two countries. Military experience from 1936-39 combined well
with the invention of guerrilla tactics both in the maquis and in
cities.
With the prospect of Paris being liberated the Spanish anarchists came
to the fore. In 1939 the French authorities had interned the defeated
Republican army in camps in southeast France. Every morning gendarmes
visited the barracks encouraging internees to join the Foreign
Legion. Several thousand accepted the offer, seeing it as a way of
continuing the fight against fascism. They were sent to French
dependencies in North Africa or further south to Chad or Cameroon.
Those who went south joined the Free French in 1940, linking with the
force formed by General Leclerc(10). The others had to wait till the
Allied landings in Algeria in November 1942. But all – at least those
who survived – were among the first Allied troops to enter Paris on 24
August 1944.
Paris was fighting, but it needed help. A truce had been signed on 20
August by representatives of General de Gaulle and Choltitz (the
commander of the German garrison) providing for the peaceful
withdrawal of occupation forces. But the next day the Resistance
decided to break the truce, afraid that the Germans would use it to
their strategic advantage. Rol-Tanguy sent Commander Gallois to meet
the approaching Allied forces. Gallois convinced Leclerc to speed up
his 2nd armoured division’s advance on Paris. Leclerc sent the 9th
armoured company, led by Captain Raymond Dronne, ahead of the main
force: all its men were Spanish anarchists who spoke Castilian. In his
memoirs(11) Dronne writes of their courage; Leclerc thought highly of
them.
The first detachments of the 9th company entered the south of Paris at
8.41pm though the Porte d’Italie. A tank called Guadalajara after a
Republican victory in 1937(12) led the way. Forty minutes later, the
tanks and half-tracks halted on Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in the
centre. A crowd surrounded the 120 Spaniards and their 22 vehicles,
greeting them as liberators. “Were they American?” people asked,
surprised to hear them speaking Spanish. Their tanks were named after
civil war battles – Ebro, Teruel, Belchite, Madrid – and also called
Don Quijote, and Durruti, after the anarchist leader.
Their arrival ended the siege of the town hall, where Resistance
forces had been holding out against German attacks for five
days. Inside the building the Spanish troops set up a gun, El abuelo
(grandfather). As night fell everyone waited for reinforcements. Amado
Granelli, a lieutenant in the 9th company, met members of the National
Resistance Council, led by Georges Bidault. Meanwhile Leclerc, with
the rest of the 2nd armoured division, raced towards Paris, reaching
it the following morning.
In the days after, fighting increased in intensity. According to
Tillon, the Spaniards – the partisans who joined the French Forces of
the Interior (FFI) – were excellent street fighters. But he
exaggerated their contribution to the liberation of Paris. In the
preface to a book on the Manouchian group in 1946, he estimated their
number at 4,000 and used the same figure in Les FTP(13). Manuel Tunon
de Lara, a Spanish historian, is more cautious.
Once the fighting in Paris was over Rogelio Puerto led his Spanish
detachments – from the FTP, UNE and PCE – to the Reuilly
barracks. There Boris Holban, the MOI leader, merged a motley force of
combatants into a single battalion called Liberté. They included
Italians, Poles, Armenians and even escaped Russian prisoners of
war. The Spanish contingent, about 500, was the largest. They had
fought all over Paris, on Place de la Concorde, outside the National
Assembly, around the Arc de Triomphe, inside the Hotel Majestic that
housed the Gestapo headquarters, on Place Saint Michel and Place de la
République. Several dozen were killed, including José Baron, who had
supervised the regrouping of the guerrillas earlier that year.
The 9th company carried on with the 2nd armoured division towards
Germany. It took part in the liberation of Strasbourg, where
Lieutenant- Colonel Putz, a former International Brigade volunteer,
fell fighting alongside Spanish Republicans. The company ended the war
at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps. Sadly only
a few Spaniards survived to scale the dictator’s mountain retreat.
In 1941 thousands of Spanish volunteers had set out from Chad
determined to help overthrow the Nazi regime, which had supported the
fascist forces that had conquered Spain. They had a single objective:
to carry the fight against fascism back into Spain, but this time with
the support of the Allies. Their hopes were betrayed and Franco stayed
in power until 1975. France, for which they laid down their lives,
forgot them.

Denis Fernandez Recatala is a journalist and writer, author of Matière
(Le Temps des Cerises, Paris, 2002)
NOTES

(1) See Hervé Mauran, Un Maquis de républicains espagnols en Cévennes,
Lacour, Nimes, 1995.
(2) See Eduardo Pons Prades, Los Republicanos españoles en la segunda
guerra mundial, La Esfera de los libros, Madrid, 2003; and Memoria del
olvido. La Contribucion de los Republicanos españoles a la Resistencia
y a la Libération de Francia, 1939-1945, FACEEF, Paris, 1996.
(3) General Bigeard made his name in Vietnam and in Algeria, where he
was accused of torturing National Liberation Front militants.
(4) The non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939 between Germany and the
Soviet Union drove a wedge between the communists and the rest of the
left in Britain and France.
(5) London’s activism made him a target for Nazi repression (he was
deported to Buchenwald), then persecution under Stalin. He narrowly
escaped a death sentence during the 1952 show trials in Prague,
alongside Rudolf Slansky and other former members of the government.
(6) An FTP-MOI group led by the Armenian activist, Missak Manouchian,
was executed on 16 February 1944 with 21 comrades. Louis Aragon
dedicated a poem to them, L’Affiche rouge. The title refers to the
bill Nazi authorities posted all over occupied France denouncing
attacks by an army of criminals.
(7) A working-class district north of Paris. See also Natacha Lillo,
La petite Espagne de la Plaine-Saint-Denis, 1900-1980, Autrement,
Paris, 2004.
(8) The national anthem of the Spanish Republic, proclaimed on 14
April 1931.
(9) Russian name for the Communist International, founded in 1919,
disbanded in 1943.
(10) Philippe Leclerc (1902-1947) was military governor of
Cameroon. He assembled a column of Free French forces which set out
from Chad to join British forces under General Montgomery at Tripoli
in January 1943. He took part in the Normandy landings with the 2nd
armoured division and entered Paris on 24 August 1944.
(11) Carnets de Route, two volumes, Editions France-Empire, Paris,
1984 and 1985.
(12) The battle of Guadalajara was the only major Republican victory
during the civil war. Italian units fought on both sides, the
Garibaldi battalion on the Republican side and regular army units and
fascist militia on the other. A popular song, Guadalajara no es
Abisinia, celebrated the event, contrasting it to Italy’s invasion of
Abyssinia in 1935-36.
(13) Les FTP, Julliard, Paris, 1966.

Translated by Harry Forster

The Moscow Times
Wednesday, August 18, 2004. Page 4.
VDNKh Fountain Is Losing Its Luster
By Yana Valueva
Special to The Moscow Times
Vladimir Filonov / MT
The first signs of major decay in the 400-square-meter fountain appeared
when water leaks reached over 150 cubic meters a day.
Urgent repairs are needed to prevent the Fountain of People’s Friendship —
the giant, golden Soviet-era attraction at the center of the All-Russia
Exhibition Center, or VVTs — from crumbling to pieces, VVTs’s technical
director said.
The steel and iron-reinforced concrete fountain, which turned 50 on Aug. 1,
now appears eaten away with rust.
Alexander Yegorov, VVTs’s technical director, said a complete overhaul at an
estimated cost of 450 million rubles ($15 million) is urgently needed.
The first signs of major decay in the 400-square-meter fountain appeared
four years ago, when water leaks reached over 150 cubic meters per day,
Yegorov said.
The fountain’s eight pumps, which were designed to project 1,000 liters of
water per second from 800 jets to heights of 22 meters, do not work
properly, and some of the giant gold-plated sculptures depicting women
holding sheaves of wheat are starting to tilt, he said.
Yegorov said city authorities last allotted money for repairs — 1 million
rubles — in 2000. Apart from this modest help, VVTs, which is 70 percent
owned by the federal government and 30 percent by the city government, has
financed all repairs and annual renovations from its own funds.
VVTs, a sprawling shopping and entertainment center with numerous pavilions
and attractions scattered around its grounds, is better known to most Moscow
residents by its former name, VDNKh, or the Exhibition of the People’s
Economic Achievements. VDNKh was a popular destination in Soviet times, with
dozens of stalls displaying ornate shrines to Soviet industry as well as
many luxury goods only available to the bureaucratic elite.
Alexei Zhirov, a spokesman for VVTs, said the Fountain of People’s
Friendship has been on the list of federally protected monuments since 1992.
But despite its protected status, repeated appeals to the Culture Ministry
for cash to carry out restoration work have been unsuccessful.
Leonarda Orembo, deputy head of City Hall’s department for preserving
architectural monuments, said she is fully aware that the fountain needs an
overhaul.
“It’s an ownership problem,” Orembo said. “The city is ready to allocate
money for the repairs, but it needs guarantees.”
The fountain, which has at its center an enormous wheat sheaf in a red
granite bowl, is surrounded by sculptured figures of young women in the
national costumes of the 16 former republics of the Soviet Union, including
Finnish Karelia.
Vladimir Filonov / MT
Sculptures are made of bronze and overlaid with gold.
The sculptures are made of bronze overlaid with thin gold plating, and the
central sheaf is made of gold-plated copper.
About 10 million people visit at the fountain and the VVTs’s other
attractions every year, Yegorov said.
Several smaller fountains in front of VVTs’s pavilions, however, have been
switched off for years.
Hopes for restoration of the fountains could receive a boost from Moscow’s
bid to host the World Expo in 2015. Mayor Yury Luzhkov has set up a special
commission to examine restorations and new construction at VVTs as part of
the city’s bid.
Plans for VVTs include a new 40,000-square-meter pavilion and the
restoration of pavilions of the former Soviet republics located around the
Fountain of People’s Friendship. Pavilions for Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia
and Ukraine have already been restored and reopened.
But whether the Fountain of People’s Friendship will be restored as part of
the World Expo bid is unclear.

NEXT MEETING OF ARMENIAN AND AZERBAIJANI FOREIGN MINISTERS FIXED FOR
LATE AUGUST IN PRAGUE
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16. ARMINFO. The next meeting of Armenian and
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers, Vardan Oskanyan and Elmar Mamedyarov,
is fixed for the late August in Prague, Press Secretary of the
Armenian Foreign Ministry Hamlet Gasparyan told ARMINFO.
However, he said, that the exact date of the meeting has not been
determined yet. It should be noted that the meetings of the ministers
are held on the initiative of OSCE Minsk Group on settlement of the
Karabakh conflict. The forthcoming meeting will become the forth in
succession.

LANCASTER NEW ERA (LANCASTER, PA.)
August 13, 2004, Friday
Name game: What’s in a name?
by Pam Hagen
FAMILY AND FRIENDS are well aware of my addiction to family research,
so the topic inevitably comes up at social gatherings. One frequent
topic of conversation is the origin of their last name, or surname.
Many people know the origin of their surname. If you are lucky, your
surname reveals important information about your immigrant ancestors,
such as their ethnicity (Gonzales), country or area of origin
(England, Hill), occupation (Shoemaker, Carpenter), even personality
characteristics (Stern) or a physical description (Short). If you are
not so lucky and have a very ethnic name, the real challenge may be
sorting out the many possible spellings and which one was the
original.
What’s in a name? More specifically, what’s in your name?
Surnames were first used between the 12th and 16th centuries in
Europe. In the past 600 years, many names have changed, some a little
and others radically. Is a BIRD by any other name still a BIRD?
Perhaps not.
Some American BIRDs may have started as FOGEL (German for “bird”) or
L’OISEAU (French for “bird”) before immigrating to English-speaking
countries where their surnames were eventually translated. Some
FOGELs became VOGELs along the way. Then there are the BIRD, BYRD,
BIRT, BORDT and, of course, the LOISEAU and FOGEL families who never
changed their names. Does that make Larry Bird, former Boston Celtic,
Larry Loiseau? Probably not.
A side note about the capitalization of SURNAMES: Genealogists do
this to prevent confusion of the first name with the last name.
Consider “Henry James.” If we didn’t know better, this could be a
first and middle name and no surname. Or perhaps someone omitted a
comma, so it should read “Henry, James.” To make it clear to future
researchers (and ourselves), we write Henry JAMES. Writing last names
in all capital letters also makes surnames easier to find when
scanning a family tree or genealogical history.
You may already know the ethnicity of your surname but not the exact
country. What appears to be a German name may have its origins
outside of modern-day Germany. For example, my dear mother-in-law
Weiss insisted her parents immigrated from somewhere in Germany.
After I located her father’s immigration and naturalization papers, I
had to break the news to her that her parents were, in fact, German
Lutherans who lived outside Warsaw, Poland. For almost 80 years,
because of faulty oral family tradition, she believed her parents
immigrated from Germany. It’s been 15 years, and she still doesn’t
believe they were Polish!
Tracing the original spelling of some ethnic names can be a real
challenge. Some of our European ancestors had names difficult to
understand and even more difficult to spell. Many could not speak
English and some were illiterate, making it impossible for them to
communicate the correct spelling of their surname to English-speaking
listeners. Many names were immediately misspelled and forever changed
by English-speaking record keepers. One of our family names is
PFERSCHING. The oddest spelling I have found is FOERSING, and the
most familiar is PERSHING. But they are all the same family. Never
discredit a spelling just because it isn’t the way the name is
spelled today.
Sometimes the immigrant Anglicized the spelling himself after too
many frustrating experiences. For example, SCHMITT became SMITH. And
finally, some immigrants completely changed their name. I had a
first-generation American-born Armenian friend in college by the name
of MILLER. MILLER? That’s an Armenian name? She patiently explained
that her name translated from Armenian into English meant “miller.”
Pity her future family historian!
Soundex is helpful in figuring out these misspellings. Soundex is a
system that drops out the vowels in a surname and uses only the
consonants, grouping together consonants that are often confused with
each other.
Many database search engines use this system, including the Social
Security Death Index. I would never have found my husband’s
PFERSCHING ancestor in the census index if it weren’t for Soundex,
which came up with FOERSING.
Pamela Hagen is a research assistant at the Lancaster County
Historical Society. Send your questions about how to trace your
family’s history to “It’s All Relative,” Lancaster County Historical
Society, 230 N. President Ave., Lancaster, PA 17603. The columnists
will not be able to answer each letter personally. Process-related
questions will be answered in a future column. For additional
information on genealogy or the historical society’s research
services, consult their Web site at

LAW-GOVERNED STATE OUT OF QUESTION: RUZAN KHACHATRYAN
YEREVAN, AUGUST 12. ARMINFO. “The results of trials of opposition
representatives once more convinced us that a law-governed state in
Armenia out of the question. The RA Court of Appeal, which considered
Vardan Zurnachyan’s claim, and the Court of Cassation, which
considered Artak Gabrielyan’s claim, demonstrated their full
dependence on the ruling regime,” Ruzan Khachatryan, Press Secretary
of the “Justice” bloc told ARMINFO.
“From April to August, trials were held in Armenia, which proved the
undemocratic and antinational essence of the ruling regime. The
criminal charge trumped up against the Justice’ bloc is a singular
phenomenon. An opposition bloc, which was second after mass
falsifications, as well as hundreds of thousands of our supporters, is
prosecuted. This is the face of the present-day law-governed Armenian
state,” Khachatryan said.

Associated Press Worldstream
August 10, 2004 Tuesday 9:51 AM Eastern Time
Syria becoming haven for Iraq’s Christian minority
by BASSEM MROUE; Associated Press Writer
DAMASCUS, Syria
A banner draped across a wall of a Damascus church commemorated a
long-ago massacre in neighboring Iraq, while hundreds of worshippers
praying below worried about more recent violence that is driving
Iraqi Christians from their homeland.
“We offer these prayers for the souls of those who were killed in our
brotherly Iraq,” said a Syrian priest before reading the names of
seven people killed Aug. 1 when suspected Islamic militants set off a
series of explosions at five churches in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad
and the northern city of Mosul. In addition to the seven dead, dozens
were wounded in the first major assault on Iraq’s Christian minority
since Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown in April 2003.
Even before the church bombings, Christians reporting harassment by
Islamic fundamentalists had begun streaming out of Iraq, many to
neighboring Syria. Syria’s relaxed visa rules for Arabs and its
geographical and cultural proximity to Iraq have attracted thousands
of Iraqis, Muslim as well as Christian, seeking to escape chaos at
home. A disproportionate number of the refugees, though, have been
Christian.
Benjamin Chamoun showed a reporter a handwritten death threat signed
the “Islamic Resistance Group” he said he had received for working as
a driver at a U.S. military base. He quit three months ago, but at
first didn’t consider leaving his homeland. Then came the church
bombings.
“There is nothing worse than attacking churches,” added Chamoun, who
is a member of the Chaldean-Assyrian church, the major Christian sect
in Iraq.
“We, as Christians, are not persecuted by Muslims. Our problem is
with Muslim extremists,” said the 35-year-old Chamoun as he sat in a
lounge furnished with six plastic chairs and a table in an apartment
in the Jaramana area on the outskirts of Damascus. Jaramana has
become an Iraqi Christian neighborhood.
Chamoun, who fled with his wife, two daughters and son, hopes to
emigrate to Australia. If he doesn’t get a visa, he said he will try
find a job in Syria and wait for the situation to improve back home.
Under Saddam, even in the later years when the Iraqi leader attempted
to rally support by waving the Islamic banner, Christians were free
to practice their religion and lived relatively peacefully among the
Muslim majority. Some, like former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, even
rose to prominence.
History has seen other periods of sectarian tension and violence in
Iraq. The Sunday Iraqis in Syria were praying for those killed in the
church bombings fell a day after Martyrs Day, one of the most
important days on the Chaldean-Assyrian calendar. It marks the 1933
massacre by the Iraqi government of Christians demanding more rights.
Chaldean-Assyrians say some 3,000 people, including women and
children, were killed then in Simele, a town in northern Iraq.
“Aug. 7 will remain a symbol of honor for our people and their
national identity,” read a banner still hanging Aug. 8 during Sunday
services at the Chaldean-Assyrian Abraham Church in Damascus.
Islamic extremism has been on the rise in Iraq in the chaos since
Saddam’s fall. Some trace this to the arrival of foreign Muslim
militants drawn to Iraq by the chance to attack Americans.
Iraqi Christians in Syria speak of Muslim extremists back home
forcing even Christian women to wear Islamic veils or having their
liquor shops burned – Islam frowns on alcohol.
The Iraqi Embassy in Damascus and the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees do not have exact figures of how many Iraq
Christians have entered the country, but say the number of Iraqis in
general is estimated at about 250,000.
“We have seen that Iraqis from all sections of the Iraqi society have
been approaching our office,” said Ajmal Khybari, senior officer at
UNHCR office in Damascus. “But in the past two or three months we
have seen an increase of Iraqi Christians approaching our office, a
total of 20 percent of Iraqis approaching our office.”
Christians make up just 3 percent of Iraq’s total population of about
25 million. The major groups include Chaldean-Assyrians and
Armenians.
Some of the Iraqi Christians who have approached the U.N. refugee
agency in Syria “are complaining that they are being harassed by
various groups, mainly extremists groups,” Khybari said.
In one sign of how many Iraqi Christians are in Syria, an Iraqi
church leader traveled to Damascus to mark Martyrs Day.
“We are against the immigration of Christians,” Archbishop Touma
Iramia Gewargis, head of the Archbishopric of Ninewa and Duhuk in
Iraq, said during his visit. “We were against it in the past and are
in the present and future. We want to protect our nation because we
are first-class citizens in Iraq.”

Armenia’s trade turnover with Russia down in 2004
Arminfo
6 Aug 04

YEREVAN
Armenia’s trade turnover with Russia fell by 25.1 per cent in the
first half of 2004 and totalled 111.9m dollars, Armenian Trade and
Economic Development Minister Karen Chshmarityan told a news
conference today.
Exports fell by 7.8 per cent and reached 37.2m dollars, while the
import of Russian goods fell by 31.5 per cent and totalled 74.6m
dollars, Chshmarityan said.
At the same time, in the reported period the unfavourable balance of
trade between Armenia and Russia fell from 68.5m dollars to 37.4m
dollars, he said. Following the six-month results, after Belgium,
Russia is Armenia’s second trade partner, he said.