Author: Baghdasarian Karlen

The Associated Press State & Local Wire
October 18, 2007 Thursday 2:14 AM GMT

On U.S. tour, Armenian Church leader visits Louisiana

By DOUG SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer

The leader of the 7-million member Armenian Orthodox Church visited a
Louisiana church on Wednesday, greeting new parishioners but making
no reference to the political dispute on Capitol Hill over his
country’s bloody past.

Karekin II spoke to Baton Rouge parishioners without raising the
question of whether Congress should declare that Turks committed
genocide in the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in World War I.
Armenians have urged the U.S. House to approve such a resolution;
Turkey, an important American ally, vehemently denies the killings
amount to a genocide.

The church patriarch avoided the topic of the House vote, saying "We
are happy that the Armenian people have shaken off the difficulties
and heavy burden of genocide."

Karekin II has said he supports passage of the measure, and in
previous appearances in his monthlong tour has thanked the House
Foreign Relations Committee for approving it. His remarks Wednesday
were in Armenian, translated into English later by an aide.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday the prospects of a House vote on
Armenian genocide were uncertain, after several members pulled their
support over fears of souring U.S.-Turkish relations.

Baton Rouge was Karekin II’s latest stop in a U.S. tour that included
a stop at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 10 the day the House panel
approved the resolution declaring the killings a genocide. The
church’s top official in the U.S., Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, said
the timing was a coincidence.

"This is a pastoral journey that was planned about a year ago,"
Barsamian said.

On Tuesday, Karekin II was in New Orleans, where he helped paint a
Habitat for Humanity house being built for a musician whose home was
destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

Much of his speech to Baton Rouge’s St. Garabed Armenian Church was
focused on faith, and on thanking the American people for welcoming
Armenians after they were driven out of their homeland.

"I’m sure my people will always be thankful to this nation," he said.

The Armenian Orthodox Church has roughly 1.5 members in the U.S., but
only about 200 in Louisiana, most of them in New Orleans and Baton
Rouge. St. Garabed, which opened several years ago, is its only
church in the state.

Parishioners said they were thrilled to get a visit from their
patriarch.

"Oh, my goodness," said Kaygee Montafian, a board member of the
church. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing."

Karekin II, head of the Armenian church since 1999, had an appearance
scheduled in Dallas on Thursday. His tour, to end on Nov. 1, includes
stops in Houston, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit.

On the Net:
From: Baghdasarian

PELOSI: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VOTE IN DOUBT
By Anne Flaherty

Associated Press
Oct 17 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday the
prospects of a vote on Armenian genocide were uncertain, after several
members pulled their support amid fears it would cripple U.S. relations
with Turkey.

"Whether it will come up or not, or what the action will be, remains
to be seen," Pelosi told reporters.

The House proposal, which would label as genocide the killing of
Armenians a century ago by Ottoman Turks, has inflamed U.S. tensions
with Turkey, which says the death toll has been inflated and was the
result of civil unrest, not genocide. Support for the nonbinding
resolution deteriorated this week after Turkey recalled its
U.S. ambassador to Ankara and several lawmakers spoke out against it.

A member of NATO, Turkey also is considered a rare Muslim ally to
the United States in its war on terrorism. A U.S.-run air base there
has facilitated the flow of most cargo to American troops fighting
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat considered influential on
military affairs, said his party’s leadership miscalculated support
for the resolution. He predicted that such a vote would easily fail.

"If it came to the floor today, it would not pass," with some 55 to 60
Democrats opposing the measure, Murtha told reporters. As of Thursday,
House Democrats will hold a 233-200 majority.

Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to hold off on a vote at least until she
gets a better idea of how many House members will support it – a task
assumed behind the scenes by the resolution’s primary co-sponsors,
including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

"While a few members have withdrawn their support for the resolution,
the truth is on our side, and support for the resolution remains high,"
Schiff said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. "As with almost all
legislation in Congress, there are many members who are not listed
as co-sponsors of the resolution but support the measure."

In a White House news conference on Wednesday, Bush warned lawmakers
against further inflaming U.S. relations with Turkey. On the same day,
Turkey’s parliament approved a possible offensive in northern Iraq
against Kurdish rebels known as the PKK; Bush said he opposes such
military action.

With all the pressing responsibilities facing the nation, "one thing
Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of
the Ottoman Empire," Bush said.

Said Murtha: "We don’t have the number of allies we used to have.

We’ve lost so much credibility worldwide."

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said there have been two to
three battalions of Turkish forces just across the border in Iraq,
in a valley south of the mountains where the PKK is known to operate.

That presence, he said, goes back to the late 1990s, and has been
widely known by the U.S. and the Iraqis. A battalion is generally
about 800 soldiers.

Morrell said the Turkish troops are limited to information gathering,
and are largely confined to their base with only limited travel.

Their movements, he said, are coordinated with the U.S. and the Iraqis.
From: Baghdasarian

PUTIN: CIS UNLIKELY TO TAKE SHAPE OF EUROPEAN UNION

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.10.2007 18:00 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "The CIS is unlikely to acquire the shape of the
European Union," Russian President Vladimir Putin said during in live
Internet conference.

"As to the EurAsEC, which unites 6 states, we have already made the
initial moves. I mean the agreement on formation of customs alliance,"
he said.
From: Baghdasarian

NEW EVIDENCE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REVEALED

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.10.2007 20:52 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In the result of the consistent work during last
years new photos and documents on the Armenian Genocide were revealed
from different countries’ state archives and private collections by
various researchers dealing with the issues of the Armenian Genocide,
reported the press office of the Museum-Institute of Armenian Genocide.

Photos made by Austrian military man Victor Pitchman are of great
interest. Victor Pitchman was born in Vienna in 1881. He was in Turkey
from 1914 till the end of the World War First. First he served in
Turkish then in Austrian and German armies. He built Turkish mountain
firing in Erzerum and drew war map of the South Western Asia for the
German main headquarter.

Being in Erzerum he witnessed Armenian slaughters carried out by the
Ottoman government. There are deportation views of the Armenians in
photos made by Pitchman near Erzerum. Artem Ohandjanyan, doctor of
historical sciences, a resident of Austria provided these photos with
the photo collection of the AGMI.

New photos were revealed also in the state achieves of the Deutsche
Bank and they were contributed to the AGMI. Meanwhile the museum
collection was enriched with dozens of unprinted memoirs recorded by
the survivors of the genocide.

Reminiscence "War and Peace memories" by Eric af Wirsen, military
attache of the Swedish Embassy to the Ottoman Empire, contains
exclusive facts on the Armenian Genocide. One of its chapters is
titled as "Slaughter of one nation" where the author describes one
of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. The author witnessed the
mass graves of the Armenians in the vicinity of Euphrates as well
as he had direct contacts with foreign diplomats, who witnessed the
massacre. Mr. Wirsen writes, "Slaughters were carried out in such
ways that humanity has never seen since the middle ages".

Wirsen was informed by different consuls that the Turkish gendarmes
entered houses of foreign diplomats, and without any words they shot
their servants of Armenian origin. Eric af Wirsen notices that it
is difficult to release the Germans from the responsibility as they
did nothing to prevent the bloodshed. Mr. Wirsen also states that
some German officers gave back the medals and rewards granted by the
Ottoman government with the following reason they cannot accept any
honors from a government carrying out such cruelties. "I join to the
words of general fon Lossov who tete-a-tete told me that slaughters of
the Armenians were the most terrible brutalities in the world history",
wrote Wirsen.

As a primary source this work is important and valuable as first it
was written by a representative of Sweden, a neutral state during
the war, where Ambassador Morgenthau’s evidences are affirmed for
many times. Concluding the above-mentioned chapter, Wirsen wrote,
"I constantly recollect cynic expression of Talaat’s face when he
said there is no "Armenian problem" anymore".
From: Baghdasarian

A CASE OF WARTIME SABOTAGE?

Baltimore Sun
Thomas Sowell
Oct 17 2007

With all the problems facing this country, both in Iraq and at home,
why is Congress spending time trying to pass a resolution condemning
the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago?

Make no mistake about it, that massacre of hundreds of thousands –
perhaps a million or more – Armenians was one of the worst atrocities
in all of history.

As with the later Holocaust against the Jews, it was not considered
sufficient to kill innocent victims. They were first put through
soul-scarring dehumanization in whatever sadistic ways occurred to
those who carried out these atrocities.

Historians need to make us aware of such things.

But why are politicians suddenly trying to pass congressional
resolutions about these events, long after all those involved are
dead and after the Ottoman Empire in which all these things happened
no longer exists?

The short answer is irresponsible politics.

People of Armenian ancestry in the United States and around the world
are justifiably outraged at what happened in the Ottoman Empire – and
at subsequent governments in Turkey that have refused to acknowledge
or accept historical responsibility for the mass atrocities that took
place on their soil.

But the sudden interest of congressional Democrats in this issue goes
beyond trying to pick up some votes. They want a resolution to condemn
what happened as "genocide" – a word that provokes instant anger
among today’s Turks, since genocide means a deliberate government
policy aimed at exterminating a whole people, as distinguished from
horrors growing out of a widespread breakdown of law and order in
the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

These are issues of historical facts and semantics best left to
scholars rather than politicians.

If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution
accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the
latest in a series of congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct
of that war.

Large numbers of American troops and vast amounts of military
equipment go to Iraq through Turkey, one of the few nations in the
Islamic Middle East that has long been an American ally.

Turkey has also thus far refrained from retaliating against guerrilla
attacks from the Kurdish regions of Iraq onto Turkish soil. But the
Turks could retaliate big time if they chose.

There are more Turkish troops on the border of Iraq than there are
American troops within Iraq.

Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington to show
its displeasure over Congress’ raising this issue. The Turks may or
may not stop at that.

In this touchy situation, why stir up a hornet’s nest over something in
the past that neither we nor anybody else can do anything about today?

Japan has yet to acknowledge its atrocities from World War II. Yet
the Congress of the United States does not try to make worldwide
pariahs of today’s Japanese, most of whom were not even born when
those atrocities occurred.

Even fewer, if any, Turks who took part in attacks on Armenians during
World War I are likely to still be alive.

Too many Democrats in Congress have gotten into the habit of treating
the Iraq war as President Bush’s war – and therefore fair game for
political tactics making it harder for him to conduct that war.

In a rare but revealing slip, Democratic Rep. James E. Clyburn of
South Carolina said that an American victory in Iraq "would be a real
big problem for us" in the 2008 elections.

Unwilling to take responsibility for ending the war by cutting off
the money to fight it, as many of their supporters want them to,
congressional Democrats have instead tried to sabotage the prospects of
victory by seeking to micromanage the deployment of troops, delaying
the passing of appropriations – and now this genocide resolution that
is the latest, and perhaps lowest, of these tactics.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His column appears Wednesdays in The Sun. His e-mail
is [email protected].
From: Baghdasarian

POLITICAL FIGURES ALSO EXPRESS ALARM ABOUT POSSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS DUE TO OPERATION OF TEGHUT MINE

Noyan Tapan
Oct 17 2007

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 17, NOYAN TAPAN. With the operation of the Teghut
mine, Armenia will irrecoverably lose the dense natural forests,
which are situated on mountanous slopes, cover an area of nearly
700 ha and have formed over centuries, together with their rich
biodiversity, member of the RA National Assembly "Orinats Yerkir
Party" faction Gurgen Sargsian expressed an alarm at the October 17
press conference. According to him, in addition to deforestation,
the operation of the mine will cause damage to the forests growing
nearby. The deputy explained that in case of operating the mine by
the open method proposed by Armenian Copper Program (ACP) company,
dust rich in active subsatnces will spead to the nearby forests.

Pollution and destruction of the important water formation systems
there is also inevitable.

G. Sargsian said that their aim is to get a positive solution to this
problems from the environmental point of view, for which all possible
means will be used.

Economist Razmik Terterian said that the draft on operation of the
Teghut mine contradicts the Constitution of the RA, the Land Code,
the Water Code, the Forest Code, the Code on Earth’s Interior and a
number of laws.

According to the draft, the economic damage will make 2.5 bln drams
(about 7.1 mln USD), but in reality, as the speaker underlined,
this damage will be several dozen times as much. By R. Terterian’s
estimates, Armenian Cooper Program will receive a net profit of 2
billion dollars as a result of operating the mine over a period of
15 years.
From: Baghdasarian

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MUST BE RECOGNIZED

UConn Daily Campus , CT
Oct 16 2007

On Oct. 10, the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a
bill that condemns the Ottoman Empire for the genocide of Christian
Armenians during World War I. The bill has now moved to the House
for deliberation.

The approval has caused a flurry of controversy, because the Ottoman
Empire directly evolved into the modern nation of Turkey, because
Turkey is a pivotal economic and military partner of the United States
and because Turkey has categorically refused to admit that a genocide
ever occurred. If the House passes the measure, Turkey has warned,
"military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again."

Turkey’s military aid to the Iraqi effort is not insignificant. Seventy
percent of U.S. air cargo bound for Iraq passes through a major
U.S. Air Force base in Turkey. Recognition of the genocide might have
practical implications for our troops in Iraq. Nevertheless, for a
nation which professes to love liberty and justice, the magnitude of
the killings outweighs base pragmatism.

The Armenian genocide is one of the most underappreciated atrocities
in recent history. Theodore Roosevelt called it "the greatest crime
of the [First World] War," and the best official estimates on the
death toll hover around 1.5 million. As the genocide occurred it was
recognized as an "administrative holocaust," a conscious attempt to
eliminate an entire race, by both Allied scholars and the Ottomans’
own German allies.

In spite of all evidence, the genocide has received disturbingly little
official recognition. Turkey continues to insist that the killings were
not orchestrated and were wartime necessities justified by Armenians’
Allied sympathies. The genocide has been officially recognized by
only 22 countries with the U.K., the U.S. and Germany suspiciously
absent from that list.

Yet to America’s credit, 40 of the 50 states have officially recognized
the genocide. Connecticut is among the 40, with a proclamation by
Governor John G. Rowland designating April 24, 2001 as "A Day of
Remembrance for the Armenian genocide." The federal government ought
to follow the states’ lead on this matter.

While House Democrats have moved to recognize the Genocide, a push
to drop the issue has come from the Bush Administration. Condoleezza
Rice has called passage of the bill "problematic," while Bush has said
that passage of the bill "would do great harm to our relations with
a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror." In return, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has noted that there is never what one could call
a "good time" to highlight the genocidal behavior of a major strategic
ally. Unfortunately for the Bush Administration, justice does not wait
for a "good time." The Armenian genocide ought to be recognized now.

ge/paper340/news/2007/10/16/Commentary/Armenian.Ge nocide.Must.Be.Recognized-3035020.shtml
From: Baghdasarian

RA DEFENCE MINISTER TO PAY OFFICIAL VISIT TO BELARUS ON OCTOBER 18-21

Noyan Tapan
Oct 16, 2007

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 16, NOYAN TAPAN. A delegation led by RA Defence
Minister Mikayel Haroutiunian will pay an official visit to Belarus on
October 18-21, at the invitation of the Belarusian Defence Minister. As
Noyan Tapan was informed by the RA Defence Ministry, the 2008 military
cooperation plan will be signed during the visit.
From: Baghdasarian

Labeling genocide won’t halt it

Armenians were murdered, but the current Turkish regime shouldn’t be
faulted for what happened more than 90 years ago.

Niall Ferguson

Los Angeles Times
October 15, 2007

Last Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee condemned mass
murder in the Middle East. Quite right, you may say — except that
this mass murder took place more than 90 years ago.

The committee approved a resolution, which could go to the House floor
this week, calling on the president "to ensure that the foreign policy
of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and
sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic
cleansing and genocide . . . relating to the Armenian genocide."

Now, let’s be clear about three things: First, what genocide means;
second, whether or not the Armenians suffered one; third, whether or
not it was smart for a U.S. congressional panel to say so.

The term "genocide" is a neologism dating back to 1944, coined by
Raphael Lemkin to describe what the Nazis had done to the Jews of
Europe. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide sets out a clear definition: Genocide covers
"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such":

* Killing members of the group;

* Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

* Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

* Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

* Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

On this basis, did the Armenians suffer a genocide? For my latest
book, "The War of the World," I reviewed the available evidence,
including not just the reports of Western diplomats and missionaries
but also, crucially, those of representatives of Turkey’s ally,
Austria-Hungary. It’s damning.

For example, according to Joseph Pomiankowski, the Austrian military
plenipotentiary in Constantinople, the Turks had undertaken the
"eradication of the Armenian nation in Asia Minor" (he used the terms
Ausrottung and Vernichtung, which will be familiar to students of the
Holocaust). There is also contemporary Turkish testimony that
corroborates such reports.

Armenian males of military age were rounded up and shot. Women and
children were herded onto trains, driven into the desert and left to
die. The number of Armenians who were killed or died prematurely may
have exceeded 1 million, a huge proportion of a prewar population that
numbered, at the very most, 2.4 million, but was probably closer to
1.8 million. With good reason, the American consul in Izmir declared
that the fate of the Armenians "surpasse[d] in deliberate . . . horror
and in extent anything that has hitherto happened in the history of
the world."

It is absurd, then, that Turkish politicians and some academics (not
all of them Turks) insist that the issue is somehow open to debate,
though there is certainly room for more research to be done in the
Turkish archives. And it is deplorable that writers in Turkey can
still be prosecuted for describing the fate of the Armenians as
genocide.

Yet I remain far from convinced that anything has been gained by last
week’s resolution. Indeed, something may well have been lost.

Relations between the U.S. and Turkey were once good. The heirs of
Kemal Ataturk were staunch allies during the Cold War. Today, Turkey
allows essential supplies to Iraq — around 70% of all the air cargo
that goes to U.S. forces — to pass through Turkish airspace.
Moreover, the regime in Ankara currently offers the best available
evidence that Islam and democracy can coexist.

Now consider this: For years, a campaign of terrorism has been waged
against Turkey by separatists from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or
PKK. The Turks are currently preparing to launch cross-border strikes
on PKK bases in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. To say the least,
this will not be helpful at a time when Iraq teeters on the brink of
bloody fragmentation.

Does gratuitously bringing up the Armenian genocide increase or
decrease our leverage in Ankara? The angry responses of Turkey’s
president and prime minister provide the answer. On Thursday,
President Abdullah Gul called the resolution an "attempt to sacrifice
big issues for minor domestic political games" — an allusion to the
far-from-negligible Armenian American lobby, which has long pressed
for a resolution like this.

The absurdity is that the genocide of 1915 was not perpetrated by
today’s Turkish Republic, established in 1923, but by the Ottoman
Empire, which collapsed at the end of World War I. You might as well
blame the United States for the deportation of Acadians from Nova
Scotia during the French and Indian Wars.

"If we hope to stop future genocides, we need to admit to those
horrific acts of the past," argued Rep. Brad Sherman, a California
Democrat and a sponsor of the resolution. Really? My sense is that all
the resolutions in the world about past genocides will do precisely
nothing to stop the next one.

And if — let’s just suppose — the next genocide happens in Iraq, and
the United States finds itself impotent to prevent it, the blame will
lie as much with this posturing and irresponsible Congress as with
anyone.

[email protected]

Sou rce: la-oe-ferguson15oct15,1,6320587.column?ctrack=3&am p;cset=true
From: Baghdasarian

The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Netherlands
Oct 14 2007

An Israeli View of Turkish-American Relations
Oct 14th, 2007 by Marc Schulman

The following excerpts are from a paper authored by Gallia
Lindenstrauss for the Institute of National Strategic Studies at Tel
Aviv University:

At first glance, there is no substantive connection between the
recognition of the Armenian genocide and the situation in northern
Iraq. However, the action by the Foreign Affairs Committee and the
expectation of full House approval in November has strengthened the
perception of the Turks that they have less to lose in terms of
Turkish-U.S. relations if they do act in Iraq. Given that Turkey is
more determined to do so and less likely to heed to American warnings
not to intervene, it is possible that the U.S. will decide to
minimize the negative consequences of Turkish intervention by
providing at least partial cooperation. The publication of reports
about secret plans for such cooperation suggests that the possibility
has already been extensively discussed by the two sides,
notwithstanding American concerns about stability in the
Kurdish-controlled autonomous area in the north of Iraq and about a
hostile reaction on the part of the Kurds, who have been the most
loyal American allies in Iraq. Indeed, these concerns suggest that if
the Turks do intervene, the Americans may also have to undertake more
aggressive actions. Given American failures in Iraq up till now, it
is doubtful whether the Administration can permit another failure in
the form of unilateral Turkish intervention seemingly in defiance of
the U.S. [My emphasis]

Such intervention would have negative consequences that could by
neutralized, at least with respect to Turkish-U.S. relations, if the
Americans actually cooperated. By contrast, Turkey is unwilling to
compromise on the Armenian genocide issue and the Administration
cannot impose its will on Congress. It is therefore difficult to see
how the damage to bilateral relations of the likely forthcoming
Congressional resolution can be limited.

Turkish policy indicates that while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdo?an and President Gül are acting to promote domestic reforms that
run counter to the Kemalist legacy (e.g., abolishing the ban on the
wearing of religiously-inspired headscarves in universities), in
foreign affairs they act in conformity with the hard-line Turkish
tradition. That is reflected in the intention to intervene militarily
in northern Iraq and in the ongoing campaign to confront anyone
supporting the Armenian position on the issue of genocide. It is
true, of course, that close ties with the United States are also a
traditionally important component of Turkish foreign policy, but it
is increasingly difficult today for Turks to reconcile the
contradiction between their interests and those of the U.S. Since the
American invasion of Iraq, Turkish public opinion has also become
more and more anti-American, and that influences decision makers to
adopt uncompromising positions regarding the Kurdish issue and ignore
American attitudes.

Although Turkish-American relations appear to be headed toward a
crisis, both sides remain aware of the importance of those ties and
therefore try to deal with the challenges they face. For example, the
Americans are concerned that Turkey might block a main supply line to
Iraq across the Turkish-Iraqi border or prevent U.S. aircraft from
operating out of Inçirlik air base. And while the Turks could act
unilaterally in Iraq, cooperating with the United States might
enhance international legitimacy for such an action and soften the
negative consequences for Turkey’s (already poor) chances of being
accepted into the European Union; indeed, Turkey would probably
prefer that the U.S. itself act aggressively against the PKK so that
Turkey would not have to. But despite the common desire not to harm
bilateral strategic relations, there is a clash between Turkish and
American interests that may very well further convulse the already
complicated reality in Iraq.

aeli-view-of-turkish-american-relations/
From: Baghdasarian