Author: Chakrian Hovsep

MORE TIME TO DISCUSS, TRANSFORM JERUSALEM

Institute for Middle East Understanding
html
Feb 28 2008
CA

Hasan Afif El-Hasan, The Palestine Chronicle, Feb 28, 2008 This
article was originally published by The Palestine Chronicle and is
republished with permission.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated recently that the status
of Jerusalem will not be negotiated with the Palestinians at this time.

Right wing Israelis are against conceding any part of the Old City
or any suburb of Jerusalem municipality to the Palestinians. The
ultra-orthodox right wing party in Olmert’s government threatens
to leave the governing coalition if the question of Jerusalem comes
up for discussion with the Palestinians and that is why Olmert will
not discuss it now. This has been the same rationale that successive
Israeli governments have always cited whenever they were pressed to
stop settlement expansion. And if Israel says no negotiations on the
future of Jerusalem, the Palestinians cannot do anything about it.

The Palestinians’ concession to keep Jerusalem out of the Oslo
interim agreement in 1993 gave Israel the time to alter its status
quo prior to any possible permanent status talks. Israel since Oslo
has expanded the boundaries of the City, confiscated more Arab lands
and constructed new settlements. Schemes have been devised to take
over private Arab and Church properties inside and outside the Old
City, and large settlements have been built on its outskirts. Some of
these are Har Homa (Jabal Ghaneim), Gilo, Piscat Ze’ev, Atarot, Ramot
settlement. Jewish settlers evicted Palestinian residents from their
quarters in the Old City and took over St. John’s Hospice and other
church and Islamic endowment (wakf) properties. The Israeli government
dug Hasmonean Tunnel under al-Aqsa Mosque compound endangering the
structure of the Islamic shrine.

The area of East Jerusalem has been isolated by Jewish only settlements
from Ramallah in the north by Givat Ze’ev, from Bethlehem in the
south by Gush Etzion and from the east to the Dead Sea by Ma’ale
Adumim. Jewish settlements have been established in the Old City
and in the surrounding Arab neighborhoods of Silwan, Ras el-Amoud,
Wadi el-Joz and Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinian enclaves are divided so
that people traveling from one to the other have to go through areas
controlled by Israel.

When the subject of Jerusalem came up during the 2000 Camp David
summit, Mayor Ehud Olmert led a mass march of some 350,000 protesters
against the plan to divide the city. Today, a group of Kadima
members, headed by Otniel Schneller, is demanding adhering to the
party’s agenda, which calls for Jerusalem’s unity under Israel. US
neoconservatives and the Israeli right are partners in the Greater
Israel project which calls among other things for the absorption of
East Jerusalem and the rest of occupied territories, excluding the
Arab population centers, into a Jewish state.

Zalman Shoval, head of the foreign affairs department of Likud party,
said before the Annapolis conference was convened, that the issue of
Jerusalem should "not be on the table in any way". Sixty-one members
of the Israeli parliament signed a petition against a proposal to
give the Palestinians sovereignty over Shoufat refugee camp out
side the Old City. The Prime Minister floated the idea of giving
back the overcrowded Shoufat refugee camp to be the capital of
the future Palestinian state. Two months after the conclusion of
Annapolis conference, Ehud Olmert backed away from this position
and told his coalition partners that the issue of Jerusalem would
not even be discussed in the foreseeable future. According to the
news media, Olmert told the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas that Israel would continue to expand the settlements throughout
the expanded East Jerusalem municipality. Palestinians’ aspirations
to have Jerusalem as their future capital are being undermined by
Israel’s deliberate attempts to alter the status quo in the occupied
land including the Old City.

The Old City constitutes only a small geographic area of the expanded
municipality of East Jerusalem, but its holiness distinguishes it
from the rest of Jerusalem. The 420-acre of walled real estate that
is the City has been playing a distinctive role in the beliefs of the
world-wide adherents to the three monolithic religions. It is where
three world religions meet and compete over the interpretation of
the divine. The City is home of the Dome of the Rock, al-Aqsa Mosque,
Mosque of the Ascension, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Convent
of Deir al-Sultan, Church of St. Anne, Church of St. James, Church
of St. Mark and the Western (or Wailing) Wall. The Palestinians want
Jerusalem to be their capital, and since Israel occupied East Jerusalem
40 years ago, all Israeli governments maintained that Jerusalem
must be "the eternal indivisible" capital of Israel. To this effect,
Israel exercised its power as an occupying force in control of the
city to create facts on the ground by expanding the Jewish quarter
and planting settlers in the other sectors of the Old City.

Since 1967, changes taking place in the Old City spearheaded by
organizations acting as settlers’ front with authority from the Israeli
governments. In the face of the Israeli colonization and absorption
since then, the City has been transformed from a Palestinian city to
Palestinian enclaves within a Jewish city. The Palestinian enclaves
are continuously shrinking and they are increasingly cut off from
other Palestinian areas outside the wall.

Michael Dumper, a specialist on the Palestinian issue identified three
major categories of settler groups operating in Jerusalem, that have
been supported by the government financially and logistically.

The first category is "active in attempts to settle Jews in Muslim
quarters". The second category includes groups that locate, acquire
and renovate Palestinians’ real estate. The third category known as
"the Temple Mount group, is active in supporting the messianic vision
of reconstructing the Jewish temple on al-Aqsa site". The groups
receive money from the ministry of housing, expressly given to buy
properties in the Palestinian Muslim and Christian quarters and the
surrounding parts of East Jerusalem. They also receive large funds
from American millionaires such as Irving Moscowitz.

The settler groups are the proxies of the State of Israel in a policy
to acquire property and extend the Jewish character in the Old City.

The Jewish quarter has been enlarged by administration fiat to include
Harat el-Magharbi and Armenian properties. Existing structures were
erased gradually and the area has been overtaken by settlers. Settler
movements such as Gush Emunim and Tehiya, that have been given free
hand to encircle Hebron, Nablus and Jerusalem with settlements,
have been active in asserting Israel’s control over the Old City by
building a strong Jewish presence in the Palestinian quarters. In 1968,
the Ministry of Finance ordered the expropriation of the whole area
that extends between the walls in the southeast to the Tareeq Bab
al-Silsileh in the west, and from the Western Wall in the north to
the Armenian Quarter in the south. The confiscated property included
more than 600 Palestinian buildings, according to Dumper.

Settler supporters have been appointed in key state ministries and
agencies, and settler groups sat on inter-ministerial committees
that set policies and plan strategies for implementing them. They
carried out overt and covert operations that made serious inroads
which impacted the lives of the Palestinians living in the Muslim
and Christian quarters including some dramatic events such as the
massacre in Haram ash-Sharif in 1990 and the opening of the Hasmonean
Tunnel in 1996. The Israeli-Lands Administration and the Custodian’s
Office helped many settler organizations, home grown and foreign,
to locate and acquire non-Jewish properties, evict the Palestinian
tenants, renovate the properties and settle only Jewish families in
the reconstructed units.

Acquiring and leasing Islamic endowment and church-owned land in
the Old City and in its suburbs has been a major part of the Israeli
agenda to Judaize the holy City and its surroundings. As the mayor
of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003, Ehud Olmert was very aggressive in
implementing plans to strengthen Jewish domination over the whole
city. He appointed the leader from the Ateret militant settler group,
Shmuel Evyatar, as his advisor on issues related to the Christian
communities in Jerusalem. The appointment was perceived as part of
a campaign to acquire Church properties because Evayatar had been
active in taking over such Church owned properties. Two years before
this appointment and on the eve of 1990 Good Friday, Evyatar and 150
members of his militant group occupied a Jerusalem property known as
St. John’s Hospice that belonged to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate
which is located in the Christian Quarter, very close to the Holy
Sepulcher Church. The take over was condemned by the Christian Churches
but it was defended and encouraged by the Israeli government.

The present fundamentalist Jewish mayor of Jerusalem Uri Lupliansky
declared recently that he was going to Judaize East Jerusalem even
more by confiscating land and expanding the Jewish only settlements.

Lupliansky was referring to the expanded Jerusalem municipality that
includes 5% of the West Bank as well as the Old City. According
to Haaretz, Lupliansky vowed that he would turn Jerusalem into an
"illegal outpost". Israel has succeeded in creating the concept of
legal and illegal settlements just to circumvent the international
law that considers all settlements illegal. Israel uses what it calls
the illegal outposts for bargaining purposes. Even President Bush
bought into this scheme and called for dismantling the so called
"illegal settlements". According to the Israeli news media, Housing
Minister Zeev Boim declared in February that, "bids will go out soon
to build 1,100 apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem.", 350 settler
units would be built in the Har Homa settlement and 750 in Pisgat Zeev,
north of Jerusalem.

For the Palestinians, Jerusalem especially the Old City is the center
of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fate of the peace negotiations for
them and the destiny of Jerusalem is the same. While Israel calls for
postponing the subject of East Jerusalem, actions to Judaize it never
stopped. The Israeli operatives have been working hard to colonize
the City as well as the rest of the occupied lands. If Israel is not
ready to discuss Jerusalem after forty years of occupation, it will
never be ready in the future. More time before discussing Jerusalem
is more time to transform the City’s character and with that, the
hope for withdrawal to the 1967 borders becomes increasingly unlikely.

-Born in Nablus, Palestine, Hasan Afif El-Hasan,Ph.D, is a political
analyst. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

IMPRUDENT JOURNALISM, OR WHAT ANKARA, APPO, ASHOT AND OTHER HAVE IN COMMON

Noyan Tapan
Feb 28, 2008

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, NOYAN TAPAN. In response to the editorial
of February 21, 2008 of the USA Armenian Life Magazine periodical,
Armen K. Hovhannisian has come up with the "Imprudent journalism or
what Ankara,Appo, Ashot and others have in common" article, which we
present completely:

In his editorial of February 21, 2008, Appo Jabarian of USA
Armenian Life Magazine criticized Raffi Hovannisian, Armenia’s
first Foreign Minister and current member of the National Assembly
(Parliament). Jabarian also considered it both ethical and professional
to ridicule Raffi’s father Richard, son Garin, and the "Hovannisian
household."

We know that Jabarian strongly inferred that Hrant Dink was an agent
of the Turkish government. But what charge does he bring against
Hovannisian?

Jabarian is not quite bold enough to utter the words himself. So
he quotes.

He quotes Hayots Ashkharh, the Armenian tabloid assigned to conduct
the government’s official propaganda. He quotes an unidentified,
but immediately identifiable, "Armenian activist." He quotes one
Ashot Grigoryan from Slovakia.

They claim, in one way or another, that Raffi Hovannisian has committed
"treason!" That, supposedly, was Hrant Dink’s crime, too.

The crime here?

In an August 2007 letter to Turkey’s president Abdullah Gul,
Hovannisian’s use of the term "Great Armenian Dispossession"
instead of the term "Armenian Genocide" is condemned as "highly
insulting." Jabarian views Great Armenian Dispossession as "more
acceptable to the Turks." In other words, Hovannisian was "pandering"
to the "enemy."

Here is Hovannisian’s "pandering": In an article published in European
print media on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide, Hovannisian wrote:

"The Armenian Genocide and its final act turned ninety last week. The
lessons, risks, and dangers flowing from the Genocide and its
contemporary continuation are all the more poignant because the
Armenian case was not only the physical murder of most individuals
making up the nation, but also the violent interruption and forcible
expropriation of its millennial homeland and way of life. Can the heirs
to Turkish perpetration translate self-interest into seeking atonement,
and can the descendants of the great Armenian dispossession agree
to move on? Will we, or our children, ever see the light, let alone
reflect back from the heights, of the post-Genocide world?"

Hovannisian used that same phrase (the Great Armenian Dispossession)
in his writings in the Wall Street Journal:

"The Young Turk leaders of the Ottoman Empire, for example, were
responsible for the great Armenian dispossession of 1915, which
included all the components of the crime of genocide, the destruction
of the historic Armenian homelands, and the murderous finality for
millions of human lives."

There’s more. In The Middle East Times and in United Press
International in 2006, Hovannisian wrote:

"The catastrophic dispossession of the Armenian homeland by the
rulers of the Ottoman Empire; the subsequent Bolshevik-Turkish
pact partitioning Armenia and effectively tendering Karabagh,
Nakhichevan and other integral parts of the Armenian patrimony to
Soviet Azerbaijan."

Do these sound like treason?

The Young Turks did not merely claim the lives of several million
people.

Though its consequences continue, the massive killing of Armenians is
finished. But it was not only the wholesale massacre of a people. The
usurpation of the homeland was no less egregious and persists to
this very day, making modern Turkey complicit in the crimes of the
Young Turks.

Jabarian relieves himself of some high and mighty rhetoric, accusing
Hovannisian of "ruining the work we have done for years and decades."

We?

There may be occasional interest in Jabarian’s opinions, despite his
complicity in the silencing of Hovannisian’s own activities. Surely,
if Jabarian was so eager to "expose" Hovannisian’s letter to Gul,
which has been publicly available and accessible since it was written
six months ago, he would have also come across other newsworthy events
and reports, including "Armenian Cultural Resolutions in the Council
of Europe" and "Raffi Hovannisian at the Council of Europe."

On January 25, 2008, in Strasbourg, Hovannisian authored and introduced
a motion, cosponsored by 25 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe. The motion begins with the following words:

"The genocide of the Armenian people, resulted not only in the death
and dispossession of more than two million human beings but also in
the decimation of the Armenian patrimony, its ways of life, and its
foundational contributions to western culture and world civilization."

This, not in a letter to Gul, but on the highest international platform
on his own initiative, suppressed by the Armenian media, including
the Hayots Ashkharh of which Jabarian seems to be so fond. Ignored,
too, by Jabarian’s own newspaper.

There is much work "we" have done. Some of us advocate for
the recognition of history in the most influential chambers of
international politics.

Others seem to bask in yellow journalism and personalized campaigns
of character assassination.

Raffi Hovannisian didn’t leave the United States for Armenia because
Armenia had a better political system. He moved to the homeland to
participate in transforming the system from what it is not to what
it should be. The greatest contribution an Armenian can make to his
homeland is to love it while acknowledging its flaws and helping to
change it for the better.

In spite of the fear and envy of some in official circles in Armenia
and the scorn of the likes of Appo Jabarian, Raffi Hovannisian will
be back in Strasbourg next month to keep pushing for the recognition
and reversal of the Great Armenian Dispossession.

Reference of Noyan Tapan: Armen K. Hovhannisian is the brother of
RaffiHovhannisian and a specialist of international law.

Appo Jabarian is the years-old editor of the famous "USA Armenian Life
Magazine" periodical published inArmenianand English in Los Angeles.

Ashot Grigorian is the Chairman of the forum of the Armenian community
of Slovakia and the Armenian Unions of Europe, due to the lobbyist
efforts of whom the parliament of Slovakia recognized the Armenian
Genocide in 2004.

PRIME MINISTRY INSPECTORS TO INVESTIGATE DINK MURDER

Today’s Zaman
Feb 27 2008
Turkey

A delegation from the Prime Ministry arrived yesterday in the northern
city of Trabzon to carry out an investigation into the murder of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink was gunned down outside his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007 by
an ultra-nationalist teenager from Trabzon. In addition to the young
man, 18 other suspects are facing trial for having plotted to have
Dink murdered.

However, serious allegations of police negligence ahead of the murder
as well as of a cover-up during the investigation have been brought
against officials by individuals involved as co-plaintiffs in the case.

Prime Ministry Chief Inspector Mehmet Akýn and inspectors Ayþegul
Genc and Tuðce Tumer have already started working on the case.

Allegations include that the police were in the know about the plot
but did not take the necessary precautions to save Dink’s life. One of
the 19 suspects is a former police informant who gathered intelligence
for the Trabzon police.

Co-plaintiffs, rights groups and Dink’s family say that the murder
has not been properly investigated. The co-plaintiff lawyers say some
of the evidence has been hidden or destroyed.

–Boundary_(ID_34q3JAt/c5xv6bXlgc2jOQ) —

CEC SECRETARY REFUTED THE STATEMENTS OF TER-PETROSIAN’S REPRESENTATIVES, ACCORDING TO WHICH THEY PRESENTED ABOUT 300 COMPLAINTS, BUT THE COMMISSION CONSIDERED ONLY 2 OF THEM

Mediamax
February 27, 2008

Yerevan /Mediamax/. Secretary of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC)
Abram Bakhchugalian stated in Yerevan today that the vote recount,
held in 135 polling stations, did not influence on the final results
of the elections.

Mediamax reports that Abram Bakhchugalian said today that when on
February 24 CEC publicized the final results of the presidential
elections, it acted within the framework of law.

According to him, by 14:00 of February 24, the data of all the
protocols from 1923 polling stations were included in the central
server of CEC, and "there was no point in delaying the given process".

CEC Secretary refuted the statements of the proxies of presidential
candidate Levon Ter-Petrosian, according to which they presented 300
complaints, however the Commission considered only 2 of them.

Abram Bakhchugalian informed that after the elections, the Commission
received 170 complaints, 135 of which were considered, and 24 are in
the process of consideration.

The CEC Secretary informed that on the eve the Commission received a
letter from the representatives of Levon Ter-Petrosian with the request
to nullify the results of the elections, which will be considered in
the course of the nearest 5 days.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION POLLING STATIONS SET UP FOR RUSSIAN CITIZENS IN ARMENIA

ARKA
Feb 26, 2008

YEREVAN, February 26. /ARKA/. Several polling stations have been set
up on the territory of Armenia to give a voting opportunity in the
Russian presidential election to the Russian citizens who live in
Armenia or stay in Armenia temporarily. Russian citizens in Lori and
Shirak regions will have a chance to vote at N5020 polling station
in the General Consulate of the Russian federation in Giumry at
Marmarashen Highway 1, the Press Service of the Russian Federation
to Armenia reported.

Citizens of the Russian Federation who live or stay in other Armenian
regions and in the city of Yerevan will be able to vote at N5015
polling station in the Russian Embassy to Armenia (Grigor Lusavorich
st. 13a).

The polling stations are to be open on March the 2nd, from 08:00am
to 08:00pm local time.

Aravot, Armenia
Feb. 21, 2008

Taking reality into account

by Editor-in-Chief Aram Abrahamyan

The figures made public by [Armenia’s] Central Electoral Commission
yesterday [20 February] hardly reflect thereal choice of our people.
But even those official figures should make all the participants in
the election think again,especially four main candidates and their
teams. The authorities had built their propaganda on the thesis
that[opposition presidential candidate and former President Levon]
Ter-Petrosyan was not the key candidate of the oppositionand that he
would be the fourth or the fifth in the election.

[Passage omitted: Domestic and foreign organizations were asked to
carry out opinion polls to back this thesis]

This propaganda and the sociological mistake was based on the wrong
calculation in terms of political science thatTer-Petrosyan’s
electorate is a "furious" and marginal crowd, which cannot be too
large. That is why the state propagators would call him "the leader
of the Armenian Pan-National Movement [APNM]". They should stopusing
that label if they are smart enough, otherwise they should admit that
there are more than 350,000 APNM members in Armenia, which, I think,
is unpleasant for them. In terms of science and journalism, it is
more correct to call him"the leader of the opposition; 350,000 is a
significant figure in Armenia (I think this number was even
greater)and I think that so many people have voted [for Levon
Ter-Petrosyan] not because they love Levon or the APNM very muchbut
because they hoped to get rid of these authorities. Being a serious
person, [president-elect] Serzh Sargsyan should take this fact into
account and not listen to palace lackeys and criminal oligarchs who
say "boss, everyone iscrazy about you".

[Passage omitted: Similarly, Ter-Petrosyan should not listen to those
of his people who say that everybody is readyto stand for him because
at least half of the 850,000 votes that Sargsyan has received are
real.]

[Levon Ter-Petrosyan was the founder of the Armenian Pan-National
Movement which once was the governing party. It is now led by Ararat
Zurabyan. Armenia has a population of 3,200,000.]

The Armenian Communities of the Northeastern Mediterranean
(Musa Dagh-Kessab-Dort-Yol)

University of California, Los Angeles
February 29-March 1, 2008
Sponsored by the
Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History
University of California, Los Angeles

Co-Sponsored by the UCLA
G.E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies,
Center for European and Eurasian Studies,
Department of History,
International Institute,
and the
Mousa Ler Association of California,
Kessab Educational Association of Los Angeles,
Compatriotic Union of Chork-Marzban/Dort-Yol

————————– ———————————————-
Fri day, February 29, 2008, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

Friday Evening Session Only in Armenian: Western
Diocese of the Armenian Church, 3325 N. Glenoaks
Boulevard, Burbank, California 91504
(From Golden State 5 Freeway, BuenaVista Exit,
east to Glenoaks, left-north two blocks)

Opening
Richard G. Hovannisian, University of California, Los Angeles

The Armenian Communities of the Antioch Region: From Beylan to Latakia
Hagop Tcholakian, Karen Jeppe Jemaran, Aleppo

The Management of Catastrophes by the People of Kessab, 1909-1947
Seda Isabelle Mavian, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

The Armenians of Musa Dagh/Musaler and Their Oral Tradition:
Synchronic and Diachronic Transformations
Verjiné Svazlian, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Yerevan

Saturday, March 1, 2008, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

Sessions in English: UCLA Broad Art Center 2160E (Formerly Dickson Auditorium)

Morning Sessions: 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Introduction: Armenians in the Northeastern Mediterranean
Richard G. Hovannisian, University of California, Los Angeles

Musa Dagh, Kessab, Dort-Yol
Views from Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives
Ruth Thomasian, Project SAVE Archives, Watertown, Massachusetts

The Self-Defense of Chork-Marzban/Dort-Yol, 1896-1921
Minas Kojayan, AGBU Manoogian-Demirjian High School, Canoga Park

Dort-Yol and the Armenian Genocide
Aram Arkun, Editor, Ararat

Musa Dagh in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
Vahram Shemmassian, California State University, Northridge

INTERMISSION

Even Paradise Isn’t Perfect: Memories of Kessab
Susan Pattie, University College London

Kessab as a Diasporan Community
Hagop Tcholakian, Karen Jeppe Jemaran, Aleppo

The Armenian Dialects of Musa Dagh and Kessab
Hagop Panossian, Mousaler Association of California
Hrair Atikian, Kessab Educational Association of Los Angeles

LUNCH RECESS: 1:15-2:15 p.m.

Afternoon Sessions: 2:15-5:00 p.m.

The Oral Tradition of Musa Dagh/Musaler
Sona Zeitlian, Independent Researcher, Los Angeles

Hollywood, Ankara, Washington: The Unmaking of "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh"
Ara Soghomonian, University of California, Los Angeles

Armenians and Alawites during the Alexandretta Crisis
Keith David Watenpaugh, University of California, Davis

INTERMISSION

Culture and Personality: The Case of Anjar
Herant Katchadourian, Stanford University

The Sole Armenian Village Left in Turkey:
Vakef of Musa Dagh (Samandagh) since 1939
Vahram Shemmassian, California State University, Northridge
Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Photographic Exhibit by
Richard and Anne Elizabeth Elbrecht, Davis, California

Open to the Public * No Admission Charge *
Parking Structure 3, Entrance from Hilgard Avenue
near Sunset Boulevard ($8.00 daily fee).
Further information: Prof. Richard Hovannisian [email protected]

New York Times
February 27, 2008
Drug-Resistant TB Rates Soar in Former Soviet Regions
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in parts of the former Soviet Union
have reached the highest rates ever recorded globally, the World
Health Organization said Tuesday. The rates could soar even higher,
spreading the potentially fatal disease elsewhere, a top W.H.O.
official said, releasing findings from the largest global survey of
the problem.

The highest rate was in Baku, Azerbaijan, where 22.3 percent of new
tuberculosis cases were resistant to the standard anti-TB drug regimen
during the survey period, from 2002 to 2006. That exceeded the
previous high of 14.2 percent, in Kazakhstan.

Drug-resistant TB is widespread in the Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang
regions of China, where the rates are about 7.25 percent, the W.H.O.
said.

The survey, the first in four years, shows that earlier predictions
were correct and that governments have lost control of tuberculosis in
many areas. The reason, health officials say, is that countries have
not invested enough to build, equip and staff laboratories to detect
the disease. The countries also have not made sure there are enough
standard drugs and have not monitored patients to ensure they complete
a full course of therapy.

Inadequate therapy can lead to the development of strains of the
tuberculosis bacterium that are resistant to two or more drugs, a
condition known as MDR-TB.

Drug-resistant TB, like drug-sensitive TB, can be transmitted from an
infected individual to a noninfected person in droplets through
coughing, sneezing and other activities. Patients can continue to
suffer fevers; coughing, often bringing up blood-tinged sputum; weight
loss; and other chronic health problems and they can die if the
resistant bacteria are not identified.

If the resistant form is detected, two years may be needed to treat
with drugs that are 100 times as expensive as the first-line regimen,
said the health agency, a unit of the United Nations. Technically
difficult surgery may also be required.

The survey also found alarmingly high rates in Moldova (19.4 percent),
Donetsk in Ukraine (16 percent), Tomsk, an oblast in Russia (15
percent), and Tashkent in Uzbekistan (14.8 percent).

Those levels surpassed the highest levels that nearly all experts had
once thought were possible, Dr. Mario C. Raviglione, who directs the
health organization’s tuberculosis program, said in an interview.

"We are seeing levels of multidrug-resistant TB that we never expected
– 20 percent is a very high level," Dr. Raviglione said. His program,
the Global Plan to Stop TB, is a road map for reducing by half TB
prevalence and deaths by 2015 compared with 1990 levels.

When the W.H.O. started a drug surveillance project in 1994, he said,
"the general thinking was that multidrug-resistant TB would never be a
real problem, since it was felt to be confined to immunosuppressed
patients."

A decade ago when the W.H.O. first received reports of 9 to 10 percent
rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in some areas, many
scientists thought the figure was inaccurate.

Experts also said that higher rates were impossible, Dr. Raviglione
said, but "it is possible; it tells you they are really doing
something wrong in places where this form of TB is spreading."

About one in 20 new cases of tuberculosis in the world is resistant to
first-line drugs, or 450,000 of the nine million new tuberculosis
cases that are detected each year, according to the W.H.O. survey,
which involved 90,000 patients in 81 countries.

In the United States, the prevalence of drug-resistant TB fell to 1
percent between 1997 and 2006, from 2.4 percent in 1993, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1995, the
prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis among foreign-born cases has
been about 1.5 percent, about three times as high as in American-born
patients with TB.

"In sub-Saharan Africa, H.I.V. and AIDS are dramatically fueling the
spread of TB," the W.H.O. said. TB patients in Latvia and Donetsk who
were H.I.V.-infected were almost twice as likely to have a
drug-resistant strain of TB as TB patients who were not
H.I.V.-infected.

The W.H.O. says there is a shortfall of $2.5 billion of the estimated
$4.8 billion needed this year for overall TB control in low- and
middle-income countries.

For the first time, the survey included analysis of extensively
drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, a form of the respiratory
disease that is virtually untreatable because the causative bacteria
are resistant to virtually all the most effective anti-TB drugs.

XDR-TB has been reported in 45 countries, but because few countries
have the laboratories to detect it, the data were limited.

The true extent of the problem remains unknown in some pockets of the
world because only six countries in Africa, the region with the
world’s highest incidence of TB, could provide drug-resistance data
for the report, Dr. Raviglione said. Other countries in the region
could not conduct surveys because they lack the laboratory equipment
and trained personnel needed to identify drug-resistant TB.

Outbreaks of drug resistance are probably going undetected, said
Abigail Wright, the principal author of the W.H.O. report.

Although the report highlights the extent of drug resistance, Dr.
Raviglione said there were successes in which governments invested in
control measures. He cited the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia
as "the model" because they were the "hot spots" 13 years ago for
drug-resistant tuberculosis. Today, he said, after a sustained
investment and assault on multidrug-resistant TB, rates in these two
countries are stabilizing and rates of new tuberculosis are falling.

LEVON TER-PETROSIAN WOULD NEVER AGAIN GAIN SO MANY VOTES IF WE HAD PROPER POLITICAL SYSTEM
By Rouzan Poghosian

AZG Armenian Daily
26/02/2008

Post-election

The phenomenon that a person who had left the political field for
already ten years woke up one morning and managed to take the second
place after having run in the presidential elections testifies to
the fact that "our society is pregnant with opposition," Aleksander
Iskandarian, political expert said at "Hayeli" press club. And our
society will remain in this state of mind unless a proper political
system is created in the country. The recent elections are peculiar
first of all because of Levon Ter-Petrosian’s appearance. His
unexpected appearance imparted the home political situation with
strong dynamics. The All Armenian Movement would hardly ever get
so many votes, if they participated in the elections as a separate
political force. "It’s not his personality or the political force
he represents that we deal with. In few months he managed to gather
around himself the people who were deeply disappointed with the
current authorities and achieve astonishing results by the end of
the elections," Iskandarian said. By the way, before the elections,
Iskandarian forecasted that the main competition in the elections
will be unfolded between Serge Sargian and Levon Ter-Petrosian,
while the rest of the candidates will play no essential part.

Stepan Safarian, member of "Heritage" party also dwelt on the
electoral and post-electoral developments. He added that Armenia
lacks not only a political system, but also an electoral one. He
agreed with Iskandarian about the thought that the success of an
occasional person in the elections is conditioned by the lack of
the political system in Armenia. "I think that the current events
in Yerevan are of certain risk, as the elections held by means of
goast voting is a resource of risk itself," Safarian said. He said
that the evaluations of the international observers are not definite
and do not reflect the real situation. The political experts gave
no reply to the question how long will people continue dancing and
singing at the Freedom Square. Safarian said that a part of the people
in the square are quite decisive and have no intention to quit their
positions. In response to our comment that Levon Ter-Petrosian and his
team stage the scenario of the 1988, but as compared with that year,
today they have no other goal than to seize the power, and they are
going to deceive the people they lead already tomorrow, Safarian agreed
that in 1988 people were united by the idea of Armenia’s and Artsakh’s
independence, but added that he believes that today the people will not
be deceived. (But the people are already being deceived, aren’t they?)

Suffering from the nostalgia of power, the All Armenian Movement
struggles with the scenario of 1988, by means of installing tents
in the square, organizing rallies, demonstrations, processions,
sitting strikes.

Probably, today someone ready to go on hunger strike will appear in
the stage and put forward the demand to shut down the Metsamor NPP
and "Nairit." They still haven’t called for people to go on working
strike, and will never do, as all of the factories and institutions
were closed when the All Armenian Movement came to power.

May there be no war in Artsakh, as none of them will go to fight in
the first lines of the battles. We, the students to went on a strike
in 1988, will not forget how "the poet of the century" Vano Siradehian
would shout in the Theatre Square that they would be the first to join
the fighting detachments, if a war unfolded in Artsakh. But, instead…

SIX EMPLOYEES OF FOREIGN MINISTRY JOIN MOVEMENT LED BY LEVON TER-PETROSIAN

Noyan Tapan
Feb 25, 2008

YEREVAN, FEBRUARYY 25, NOYAN TAPAN. Six high-ranking employees of the
RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs: the head of the MFA press service
Vladimir Karapetian, the head of the MFA Unit of International
Organizations Varsenik Karapetian, the 3rd secretary of the South
America Unit Elen Petrosian, the head of the U.S. and Canada Unit
Karine Antikian, and the heads of another two departments’ units Marta
Aivazian and Arakel Semirjanian – joined the movement led by the first
Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosian on February 24. L. Ter-Petrosian
announced it at the rally held in Freedom Square on the same day.

In his words, the indicated persons issued a statement, in which
they condemned the February 19 elections, considering them unfair
and rigged.

According to L. Ter-Petrosian, the foreign minister Vartan Oskanian
will redeem his sins committed in 10 years if he joins the struggle
against the authorities.