Author: Babajanian Karo

Andranik Karapetyan sets records at European Weightlifting Championships

September 22, 2012 – 18:40 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian weightlifter Andranik Karapetyan (77 kg)
broke his own Youth World Record in the snatch set at the European
Youth Championships held in Constanta, Romania, Aug 26-Sept 2. He
repeated it in the total setting it to 331kg scoring 3 gold medals and
setting 2 new records.

Russia’s Artem Lefler ended the competition with a bronze medal in the
snatch, silver in the clean and jerk and in the total beating the
Kazakh lifter Galymbek Zhubatkanov, silver medalist in the snatch and
bronze in the total.

The Clean and Jerk Bronze Medal went to Bastian Andres Lopez Farias
(CHI), iwf.net reported.

Unique exhibition of children’s paintings in Prague marks 21st
anniversary of Armenia’s independence

18:32 22/09/2012 » Society

The 21st anniversary of Armenia’s independence was marked not only in
Armenia, but also beyond its boundaries. An exhibition of children’s
paintings dedicated to Armenian Independence Day was opened in the
Czech capital, Prague, on September 21.

Also, the Prague Hotel hosted a reception attended by Czech lawmakers
and members of government, cultural figures, businessmen, journalists,
members of local Armenian community as well as guests from Armenia,
Armenian Foreign Ministry press service reported.

Source: Panorama.am

Armenian NA speaker briefs European parliament heads on Safarov pardon

September 22, 2012 – 18:21 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian Parliament speaker Hovik Abrahamyan
delivered a speech on September 21 at European Conference of
Presidents of Parliaments held under the auspices of PACE.

In his speech he attached great importance to extradition and pardon
of Azerbaijani murderer Ramil Safarov, voicing concerns over policy of
intolerance and racism pursued in the territory of the Council of
Europe.

`An unprecedented incident was recorded recently, with Azerbaijani
assassin Safarov extradited to Azerbaijan, pardoned and given a hero’s
welcome in his homeland.

Justification of such crimes began developing with a new scale, even
following the whole civilized world’s condemnation of the occurrence.

Manifestations of racism and xenophobia may set a precedent, with
absence of effective struggle against them posing a threat to Europe,’
Armenian National assembly speaker said.

Gagik Jhangiryan: All candidacies laughable, except Levon Ter-Petrosyan

10:47 22/09/2012 » Daily press

Speaking to 168 Zham daily, Armenian National Congress (HAK) member
Gagik Jhangiryan commented on rumors that Jhangiryan or HAK
coordinator, Levon Zurabyan, could run for president. `I treat my own
nomination as well as the nomination of Levon Zurabyan and other
candidates with humor.’

Asked if it is possible that HAK will back some candidate nominated by
another party, Jhangiryan said, `I think all candidacies are
laughable, except Levon Ter-Petrosyan, our founding chairman, a public
and political figure, a good scholar, person and friend.’

Source: Panorama.am

U.S. Dissatisfied with Budapest and Baku

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 13:25:04 – 21/09/2012

Philip Gordon, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and
Eurasia, told RFE/RL that official Washington is still concerned and
disappointed with Budapest’s decision to extradite Ramil Safarov.

Gordon added that Washington is worried about the decision of the
Azeri government to pardon Safarov and promote him in rank.

According to him, the U.S. is shocked by the glorification of the
murderer which Gordon assessed as `real provocation for the region’.

Azerbaijan Business Center
Sept 21 2012

Azerbaijan accuses OSCE mediators of delaying settlement of
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Azerbaijan has accused the mediators from the
OSCE Minsk Group of delaying the issue of settlement of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno Garabagh conflict.

Today in Baku Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has stated that by
reproaching Azerbaijan in creation of additional difficulties in the
conflict settlement, the OSCE Minsk Group’s co-chairs want to justify
their own unsuccessful activity.

“It is possible that the MG co-chairs also abuse the situation,
because both the co-chairs and Armenia regarded very negatively the
question of Ramil Safarov. They also express the opinion that
everything will become more complicated. Before `Safarov question”
appeared in agenda there was no development and Armenians held a
negative position. The co-chairs were dealing with delaying time –
went forth and back in vain, but, in truth, no serious work has been
done by them,” Azimov stated.

However, according to Azimov, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov will hold a meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs
within the framework of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly in
New York.

“Besides, a meeting of Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia may
also become possible, but there is not confirmation of this yet,”
Azimov said.

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Sept 22 2012

Canada honors Turkish diplomat with monument

OTTOWA – Hürriyet Daily News

Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu stood alongside his Canadian
counterpart on Sept. 20 to dedicate a memorial to a Turkish military
attaché, three decades after he was gunned down by Armenian militants
in Ottawa. The memorial to Col. Atilla Altıkat is `a monument
condemning terrorism,’ he said, adding that stood in memory to terror
victims.

`On behalf of the Turkish nation, I would like to thank you for your
perseverance throughout the years,’ said DavutoÄ?lu, referring to
Altıkat’s wife and children.

The Syrian crisis is likely to be the focus of plenary and bilateral
meetings in New York, but there are few expectations that the U.S.
will move forward on the Syrian issue due to November’s presidential
election.

Turkey has repeatedly complained that it is not receiving enough
international assistance for Syrian refugees and has pushed for the
creation of a foreign-protected `safe zone’ inside Syria to try to
help civilians on the other side of the border, but it has failed to
receive support from international actors on the plans.

ErdoÄ?an had been due to travel to New York between Sept. 22 and 25 and
to give a speech at the U.N. Assembly, where he was expected to push
the U.N. to recognize Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.

The prime minister took the decision to cancel his trip to New York
after a meeting with his party deputes and secretary general on Sept.
20.

President Abdullah Gül had earlier been scheduled to attend the U.N.
Assembly but canceled due to a chronic ear infection.

September/22/2012

Belleville News Democrat, IL
Sept 21 2012

Armenian food stars at Lincoln Place festival in Granite City

Published: September 21, 2012
TERI MADDOX – News-Democrat

Norma Asadorian sees cooking as a way to honor her Armenian ancestors.

Her recipes for dishes such as cheese boereg, stuffed cabbage, herisah
and lamb shish kebabs came from her grandparents, Ansen and Parantzem
Haroian, who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s.

Norma and her husband, Eddie, who’s also of Armenian descent, still
eat meals heavy on traditional Armenian crops, such as apricots,
pomegranates, walnuts, almonds, wheat and rice, as well as yogurt,
lamb and fresh herbs.

“That’s why (Armenians) live so long,” said Norma, whose mother is 90
and still going strong. “The foods that we eat are healthy and
natural. And (our ancestors) walked everywhere in the mountains, so
they got lots of exercise.”

Norma and her mother, Varsenig “Vee” Throne, live in a Granite City
neighborhood known as Lincoln Place. It became a melting pot in the
late 1800s and early 1900s, when many immigrants from Eastern and
Southern Europe got jobs in local industries.

Norma is making more than a dozen Armenian dishes to sell at the 10th
annual Lincoln Place Heritage Festival on Saturday at Lincoln Place
Community Center.

The festival also will feature home-cooked food from Macedonia,
Bulgaria and Mexico, as well as mountain dulcimer music, singing,
Scottish folk dancing and children’s activities.

“The festival focuses on the cultures of the major ethnic groups that
settled here,” said Norma, who is founder and president of Lincoln
Place Heritage Association.

On a recent weekday, Norma demonstrated how to prepare three Armenian
favorites: grape leaf dolma, rice pilaf and pakhlava.

Grape leaf dolma, like many Armenian dishes, involves stuffing. Norma
rolled grape leaves around a mixture of ground beef (substituted for
lamb), cracked wheat, rice, onions and spices.

She then placed the cigar-shaped rolls in a pan, held them in place
with a small plate and poured on beef broth before simmering for 45
minutes.

“A lot of people like to add tomato sauce, but tomatoes are not
indigenous to Armenia,” Norma said. “They came from the Western
Hemisphere in 1492 after Columbus’ voyage to America.”

Pakhlava is one of the most labor-intensive Armenian dishes. Vee
emphasized that it’s different from Greek baklava, which has honey
poured on it.

Norma placed 24 paper-thin layers of phyllo dough in a baking pan one
at a time, brushing melted butter in between. Her filling consisted of
ground walnuts, sugar and butter.

Vee remembers when her mother and other Armenian women in the
neighborhood made phyllo dough from scratch. Today, she and Norma buy
it pre-made.

“It’s very laborious,” Vee said. “I still have the board and the dowel
that my father made for my mother. I remember how she would flap (the
dough) over.”

Many Eastern and Southern Europeans immigrated to the United States in
the early 1900s because of religious, racial and political
persecution, war, famine and poverty.

Norma’s grandfather immigrated in 1909. He returned to Armenia eight
years later to find a wife and courted Parantzem for only a couple
weeks before bringing her back to Granite City.

The immigrant neighborhood was populated mostly by Armenians,
Macedonians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Croatians and Mexicans, along
with smaller concentrations of other ethnic groups. They adopted the
name Lincoln Place.

“They all admired Abraham Lincoln because he came from nothing and
made a name for himself, just like them,” Norma said. “He represented
the values they admired, such as hard work, opportunity and the
ability to make a better life for themselves and their children,
especially through education.”

Norma is a retired history teacher. She was working on her master’s
degree at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2001, when she
helped form Lincoln Place Heritage Association.

Norma and her classmates conducted about 50 interviews with Lincoln
Place immigrants and descendants as a way to preserve their history.

One of the things that impressed the college students was the
immigrants’ bravery and determination in the face of adversity.

“The Christian Armenians, in particular, were experiencing a genocide
carried out by the Muslim Turks,” Norma said. “From 1915 to 1917, a
million and a half were killed.”

At a glance

What: 10th annual Lincoln Place Heritage Festival

Where: Lincoln Place Community Center, 822 Niedringhaus Ave. in Granite City

When: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday

Admission: Free

Food: Available for purchase (no alcohol)

Information: 618-451-2611

Interfax, Russia
Sept 20 2012

Georgian prosecutors searching for those who ordered Tbilisi prison abuses

TBILISI. Sept 20

The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office continues analyzing a theory
that the latest acts of abuse against inmates in Tbilisi’s prison
could have been ordered by third persons, who are interested in
discrediting the country’s leadership.

On Wednesday evening, the Chief Prosecutor’s Office released a video
of an interrogation of Gldani prison employee David Akobia, who
recorded video footage showing prisoners apparently being abused by
guards.

Akobia was detained at a checkpoint on the Georgian-Armenian border.

According to Akobia, he received a wireless button video camera from
the Gldani prison’s security inspector Boris Parulava, who asked him
to video the arrival of new inmates in exchange for a solid reward.
Akobia said that he had given the video tape to Parulava.

“After it, I was supposed to travel to Armenia on September 18 or
September 19 and then go to Ukraine to meet with our former officer
Vladimir Bedukadze and receive the money from him,” he said.

However, Akobia’s testimony does not coincide with the statement made
by former prison guard Vladimir Bedukadze, who fled to Belgium.

According to Bedukadze, he filmed this video on his own using a video
camera provided by the prison’s chief.

“These acts of violence were filmed especially for Interior Minister
Bacho Akhalaya,” Bedukadze said in televised remarks on Wednesday.

Georgia’s pro-opposition television stations Maestro and TV-9
broadcast video footage showing prisoners apparently being mistreated
by guards at the Gldani prison. The incident sparked mass protests all
over Georgia.

Ottawa Citizen, Canada
September 21, 2012 Friday
Final Edition

Olive branch in a foreign land; Turkish-Armenian relations examined in
tribute to slain Altikat

by Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen

It was a glorious day to mark a murder.

Skies were sunny, the breeze was light, the tents were festive and
white, the sod so freshly laid. Then, with the pressing of manly
fingers and the pounding of a fist or two, the last square of wood was
secured and this most curious monument officially complete.

Making formal the city’s worst kept secret, Foreign Affairs Minister
John Baird and his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, unveiled a
massive memorial to fallen diplomats just off the Sir John A.
Macdonald Parkway on Thursday afternoon.

The spot, at Island Park Drive, is only steps from where Turkish
military attaché, Col. Atilla Altikat, was gunned down on his way to
work as he stopped at a traffic light on the morning of Aug. 27, 1982.
It was the worst attack on a diplomat on Canadian soil and, to this
day, the assassination has gone unsolved.

The 30-minute event was attended by Altikat’s wife and two children
(then four and 17) as well as members of the family of Glyn Berry, a
Canadian diplomat killed by a roadside bomb while serving in
Afghanistan in 2006.

Both Baird and Davutoglu noted the eerie timing of the unveiling,
coming only days after an American ambassador, Christopher Stevens,
was among several killed in an attack on the embassy in Libya.

“The attack at Benghazi,” Baird told a crowd of 100 or so, “is another
tragic reminder that the dangers of serving in volatile regions of the
world are all too real.”

The minister recalled how his father drove him by this spot many times
on the way to a summer job, jarring the memory of the slaying, and how
his grandfather fought fascism and communism during the Second World
War.

“The great struggle of our generation is international terrorism, and
that all began for Canada right here, over 30 years ago.”

An Armenian extremist group claimed responsibility for the shooting –
part of a global campaign that year – but no one was ever arrested.

There was much speculation before the unveiling about whether the
wording on the plaque would only aggravate tensions between the
Canadian communities of Turks and Armenians.

But the short description did not mention Armenia, only Altikat and
other fallen diplomats around the world. The two politicians made only
passing references.

“While the Turkish diplomats have been targets of extremist Armenian
groups in the past, we know very well that terrorism is a broad
international threat that cannot be associated with any ethnic,
religious or political groups,” said Da-vutoglu.

“The right to life and security are sacred.”

He addressed Altikat’s family in Turkish, to a round of applause,
ending his re-marks by speaking to Col.

Altikat directly.

“You should know that your sacrifice is not in vain. You will remain
in the collective memory of our great nations, as fresh as the first
day you were fallen.”

It was, in the end, a brief, respectful affair, despite the honking
geese flying over-head and the honking of horns from disrupted
com-muter traffic.

A smattering of public figures were in attendance, including MPs Paul
Dewar and Royal Galipeau, NCC chair-man Russell Mills and Chief of the
Defence Staff Gen.

Walt Natynczyk.

Many local members of the Canadian-Turkish com-munity were there,
including Ozay Mehmet, from the Council of Turkish Canadians, which
has pushed for the memorial for about a decade.

There has been a suggestion that Canada agreed to put up the monument
to rebalance relations with Turkey after Parliament formally
recognized (in 2004 and 2006) the Armenian genocide of 1915, a
historic sore point between the two groups for a century.

“Some can argue in those terms,” said Mehmet. “I don’t. A human life
cannot be rebalanced.”

He lamented the Canadian government’s decision to “side” with the
Armenians, as it ignores the suffering of Turks in the breakup of the
Ottoman Empire.

“History belongs to historians, not parliamentarians. We reject that
kind of approach.”

He believes, in any case, that old-world disputes need to be left
behind and that together – peace-loving Turks and Armenians – need to
move forward as Canadians first.

“This monument to me is an olive branch,” he said, calling it an
opportunity for further reconciliation between the two groups.

The monument is a half globe, mostly composed of specially-treated
hardwood. It has about 1,100 pieces, each one representing a fall-en
diplomat around the world.

A gift from Turkey, it was built there, disassembled and shipped here
in crates. According to designers, the open face of the globe
represents the “gateway to eternity,” while the plated faces of each
piece are the “gateway of time.” A single prism is a tribute to
Altikat.