Author: Chalian Meline

ARMENIAN DEPUTY OF IRANIAN PARLIAMENT TO MAKE SPEECH DURING DIALOGUE OF RELIGIONS CONGRESS HELD IN ZAGREB

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Mar 13 2006

ZAGREB, MARCH 13, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. On the initiative of
the Center for Dialogue of Religions of the Islamic Communication and
Culture Organization of Iran and of the Cultural Attache of Iran to
Zagreb, the first congress on the Dialogue of Churches started its
work in Zagreb on March 10.

According to the Tehran “Alik” daily, Gevorg Vardanian, the Deputy of
the northern Iranian Armenians at the Islamic Parliament was a member
of the delegation invited from Iran to the congress as a representatice
of the Armenian Christians at the Parliament. The congress ended on
March 11. The theme of the Armenian Deputy’s speech was “Obstacles
of a Successful Dialogue.” He touched upon in his speech not only the
difficulties of a dialogue of religions but events of overcoming them
as well.

HOW SECURE IS NEW PIPELINE ACROSS CAUCASUS?
By Brooks Tigner, Brussels

DefenseNews.com
March 13 2006

How secure is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will
haul petrochemicals 1,760 kilometers from the Caspian Sea across the
Caucasian peninsula to Turkey?

Sufficiently, say members of the independent Caspian Development
Advisory Panel, which advises BP, the lead company on the project.

“There is very sophisticated sensor technology all along the
pipeline. It protects against intruders, sabotage and illegal siphoning
as well,” Stuart Eizenstat, former U.S. ambassador to the European
Union and one of the panel’s four members, told a February meeting
here, organized by the U.S. George Marshall Fund. “Any intrusion will
alert local security forces.”

But defense analysts and officials familiar with the challenge of
protecting the pipeline’s infrastructure are skeptical.

“Pipelines are a target of choice for terrorist and insurgent groups,”
said David Cooper, an independent defense consultant here.

“When you think of high-value targets, you think airports, harbors
and energy networks.”

The buried pipeline will soon enter operation, with the first oil
tanker to be loaded at its terminal port in Turkey by midyear.

Together with a sister project, the South Caucasus Pipeline, the two
networks will transport 1 million barrels of oil and 7 billion cubic
meters of Caspian Sea supplies each year.

“This will be a very important step forward toward security for the
region and diversification of international energy supplies,” said
Jan Leschly, the panel’s chair and founder of the Care Capital venture
firm. “It will offer many opportunities [for BP and other companies]
to promote stability in an unstable region via market mechanisms.”

The panel released its latest 24-page assessment of the project and
BP’s cooperation with BTC countries Feb. 14, entitled “Report on
2005 Activities.”

According to the report, the British energy group has worked
extensively with the three governments involved in the $3 billion
project – Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey – to help ensure their
security forces are properly trained to safeguard stability along
the BTC, while respecting human rights.

At the panel’s recommendation, BP has persuaded the Georgian and Azeri
governments to work with the U.S. security firm Equity International
to oversee the training. Turkey rebuffed the offer and is working with
the security forces of Northern Ireland to train its gendarmerie and
other personnel to be stationed along the country’s 1,070-kilometer
section of the meter-wide pipeline.

Regional Stability Questions The stability of the region through
which BP’s pipeline passes is out of its hands, however.

The Caucasus is larded with ethnic, religious, political and military
tensions between and within its constituent states. Turkey and Armenia
have no diplomatic relations, for example. Azerbaijan and Armenia have
been at low-level war with each other for 15 years over the disputed
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Meanwhile, Georgia has tense relations
with Moscow, which stations troops on its territory and does little
to discourage breakaway sentiment among Georgia’s northern provinces
adjacent to Russia.

Moreover, corruption is widespread in the three countries, according
to government monitoring groups. Among the 159 countries surveyed
for government transparency in 2005 by Berlin-based Transparency
International, Azerbaijan falls at position 137. As the Caspian panel
notes in its report, BP’s ability “to influence near-term challenges to
[the region’s] stability is limited.”

Asked if the panel has carried out its own risk-assessment of security
threats to the two pipelines, Leschly said it did not, relying instead
on the conclusions of independent reports commissioned by BP. One of
the groups that BP used was Foley Hoag, a U.S. law firm with offices
in Boston and Washington, which produced a report Jan. 31 on security
and aspects of the project. Defense News was unable to secure a copy
of the report by press time.

In addition to the pipeline’s sensor technology, the network will be
patrolled by armed personnel, including those on horseback. But even
these combined defenses leave security experts doubtful.

“We support the pipeline idea, of course: it’s good for Europe’s
security of supply, but the Caucasus is a very touch-and-go kind of
place,” said a European diplomat, who added that the region’s stability
needs to be tied more closely to the European Union’s so-called
European Neighborhood Policy of democratic and economic initiatives.

Cooper, a former NATO defense planner, warned that the pipelines
could be very expensive and complicated to protect if faced with
groups bent on inflicting damage to it.

“Pipelines are nearly possible to protect. But horseback patrols
and ground sensors? They need high-resolution earth observation at a
minimum,” he said. “Even with the best of technology, you’ve got to
have an entire organizational approach coordinated along the whole
thing to secure it.”

INCIDENT IN TSALKA: ONE DEAD AS OMBUDSMAN RULES OUT ETHNIC MOTIVE

The Messenger, Georgia
March 13 2006

A brawl which broke out in the multiethnic settlement of Tsalka on
March 9 left one person dead and two wounded. Gevorg Gevorkyan, 23,
died at the scene. The brawl participants and those suspected of
Gevorkyan’s murder have been detained, and the reason for the fight
has yet to be officially determined.

Rumor spread that the fight was the result of an ethnically motivated
confrontation between groups of Georgian and Armenian youths and
Gevorkyan’s death led to the formation of a mob outside the regional
police department on Friday, with participants demanding that one of
the murder suspects be lynched.

Meanwhile the Public Defender’s office issued a statement promising
to investigate the incident as a possible hate crime. On Saturday,
the Ombudsman ruled that the incident was the result of an act of
“ordinary hooliganism.” “Our representatives traveled there and looked
into the case. We can say that this dispute had nothing to do with
ethnic confrontation,” Ombudsman Sozar Subari announced on March 11.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has announced that the
situation has calmed down and that order has been restored.

COMPENSATION WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITY
Lena Badeyan

A1+
| 14:20:27 | 15-10-2005 | Politics |

Once member of temporary commission for examining the possibilities of
restoration and reimbursement of the deposits of the RA citizens Aghasy
Arshakyan submitted 3 proposals on behalf of National Unity party.

Despite the fact that the indexation proposed by the coalition is in
a way admissible for A. Arshakyan, he noted that in accord with this
program the deposits will be returned no sooner than in 120 years
while the package submitted by the National Unity provided for full
compensation in the course of 15 years.

The opposition MP realizes the political aims of the government,
which first of all are bound with the referendum on constitutional
amendments. “To all appearances, the coalition and the President
have come to consent that certain settlement of the matter will
create favorable conditions for the referendum. But they are
mistaken. The people are not too naïve not to make head or tail of
simple arithmetics. At the same time the authorities understand
that neglecting this issue would not contribute to the positive
outcome of the referendum. Our leadership want to enlist support of
the international financial organizations that “feed” our budget”,
he says. In his opinion, it is inadmissible to include the matter of
returning the deposits into the Strategic Program on Poverty Reduction,
since in this case deposits will be viewed as benefits.

Opposition deputy Manuk Gasparyan also sees a corruption risk in the
program. “Who will decide on the level of poverty? This problem will
become a source of bribery”, he said. He stated that the program
elaborated by the government refers to 5% of the depositors. “The
authorities are going to return $2 million instead of $8-12 billion”,
he noted.

However he sees a positive tendency as well. “From the economic
viewpoint I welcome this fact however it is senseless from the
political aspect”, he resumed.

–Boundary_(ID_duzetHhxF49w3Uxw170jnA)–

LEFT FOR LITHUANIA

A1+
| 16:04:36 | 17-10-2005 | Official |

Today the RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan left for Lithuania on
a two-day official visit.

During the visit the Minister will meet the President of the country
and the Foreign Minister.

On October 19 Vardan Oskanyan will leave for Brussels to joint the
delegation of Robert Kocharyan will visit the European structures on
an official visit.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
October 16, 2005 Sunday 10:29 AM Eastern Time

Armenian president’s protocol dept head dies in traffic accident

By Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN

Head of the Armenian president’s protocol department Mamikon Tonoyan,
32, died in a traffic accident on the northeastern outskirts of
Yerevan on Saturday, a source in the presidential administration told
Itar-Tass on Sunday.

His speeding car hit a barrier and slid onto a wrong lane. Tonoyan’s
wife was taken to a hospital with fractured bones.

Colgate Maroon News (subscription), NY
Oct 14 2005

Peter Balakian’s The Burning Tigris: The Horrors of Armenian Genocide
By Elsie Denton
Published: Friday, October 14, 2005

In the early years of World War I, another tragedy was taking place
far more quietly to the east. Between 1914 and 1916 over a million
Armenians were rounded up by Turkish officials and systematically
“deported” – in most cases this amounted to murder. Modern-day Turkey
currently disputes that the Armenian tragedy should be called
genocide, but there is little doubt in the international community
that the mass killings of Armenians were in fact systematic genocide.

In his book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s
Response, Colgate’s own Professor of English and University Studies,
Peter Balakian, brings to life both the horror of the Armenian
genocide and America’s humanitarian response to the crisis. Time and
again he uses powerful eyewitness accounts of the genocide, which,
though on a smaller scale, were no less horrendous than the
Holocaust.

On the governmental level, the response to this international tragedy
was meager. Most politicians, Woodrow Wilson included, found their
hands tied by diplomatic complexities. This does not mean that there
was no response to the crisis. As Balakian makes very clear over the
course of his book, the Armenian genocide was America’s first
international human-rights effort.

Thousands of people around the country on many levels of society
poured their hearts out to the Armenian people. They raised money for
relief work and food supplies and helped find homes for the thousands
of Armenians fleeing their homeland. “The Armenian genocide is
important,” said Balakian, “not only because it is one of the
earliest examples of modern genocide, but also because it is
America’s first international humanitarian aid movement. Americans
should know about that part of their history.”

The Burning Tigris recently gained recognition when it won the
prestigious Raphael Lemkin Prize, which is given out biannually to
the best scholarly book on the subject of genocide, mass killings and
gross human-rights violations. Despite the prestige conferred by the
prize, Balakian did not want it to overshadow the real issue: the
reality of terrible and continuing genocide throughout the world.
“Genocide is a real problem today and it is not going away. Nobody is
safe,” he said.

Genocides are not dark phantoms locked firmly in our turbulent past.
They are real and happening right now in many corners of the world
from the Balkans, Rwanda, and East Tambour to the current massacres
in the Darfur region of Sudan. “Genocide is a modern problem,” says
Balakian, “because before the modern era and the evolution of the
nation state, governments didn’t have the centralized bureaucracy or
the technology to systematically target and exterminate ethnic
minorities. It isn’t just that killing occurs that distinguishes
modern genocide, but how fast it occurs.”

The problem of genocide gets surprisingly little governmental
recognition. Many times the issue is simply ignored by those in
power, while people suffer and die. This can often be attributed to
two main causes: lack of recognition and information about the
existence of a genocide and sticky diplomatic maneuvering by the
governments involved.

For instance, the reality of the Armenian genocide is recognized by
all Western powers except for the US and UK. These two countries have
withheld official recognition of the massacres so that they could
maintain their military bases in Turkey.

Even if governments were at all prepared to take action against
genocide, there still remains the difficulty of realizing that
genocide is taking place. A government engaged in the massacre of its
people is unlikely to report its activities to the international
community. Also, many areas in the world are so torn by war and
strife that it is difficult to distinguish coordinated mass killings
from the background level of death and violence. An effective system
of detection needs to be created.

This system would need to be an impartial third party. Balakian
suggests the creation of “an international organization charged with
detection, prevention and intervention in instances of gross
violations of human rights. Not only must this type of organization
exist to prevent future massacres, but it must also have the power to
enforce its edicts in the form of an International Human Rights Army
not beholden to any one world power. Though Balakian maintained that
“we can’t reform or transform the human race,” we can still install
regulations and checks on their capacity to kill one another.

Such a coherent international effort to confront the issue of
genocide is long overdue, particularly with major powers like the US
and UK stalling on the issue. “The Bush administration has
continually refused to take action on what is happening in Darfur,
and refused to embrace the process of the international courts at the
Hague,” said Balakian. “It is then up to ordinary citizens to make a
difference, to take the power into their own hands and to fight for
human rights.”

Last year, a group of students at Swarthmore College did just that.
They started the Genocide Intervention fund to raise money to stop
the slaughter of innocent people in Darfur. The group has been
immensely successful. So far they have raised $250,000, which they
are preparing to donate to the African Union peacekeepers. Their
group may have started as a small group of Jewish and Armenian
students whose pasts were deeply affected by genocide, but it has
grown far larger than that. There are now over 100 colleges
participating in the fund and more are getting involved all the time.

Students interested in becoming involved in the Genocide Intervention
Fund can contact Balakian via email at [email protected] or
to go talk to him during his office hours. More Information is
avaibale at

Balakian teaches a course called Modern Genocide. It is about being
educated about what is going on and doing something about it. “The
study of history enables us to behave more ethically in the present.
That is why teaching about genocide is so valuable,” said Balakian.

AXA INDEMNISE LES DESCENDANTS DES RESCAPES DU GENOCIDE ARMENIEN

La Presse Canadienne
Canadian Press
Oct 14 2005

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Le groupe d’assurance francais AXA s’est engage a
verser 17 millions de dollars aux descendants de victimes du genocide
armenien qui avaient souscrit des polices d’assurance-vie avant 1915,
a-t-on appris jeudi auprès des avocats des plaignants.

Cet accord, intervenu dans le cadre d’une action intentee devant un
tribunal federal de Los Angeles, fait suite a l’action collective
engagee depuis plusieurs annees par les avocats americains d’origine
armenienne Yeghiayan et Associes, Geragos & Geragos et Kabateck
Brown Kellner.

Un accord similaire avait ete conclu en fevrier entre des descendants
de victimes et l’assureur americain New York Life, pour un montant
de 20 millions de dollars.

Au terme de cet accord, AXA s’engage a verser 11 millions de dollars
a un fonds mis en place pour dedommager les descendants de victimes
qui avaient souscrit avant 1915 des polices d’assurance avec des
compagnies aujourd’hui integrees dans le groupe. En outre, 3 millions
de dollars seront reverses a des organisations caritatives armeniennes
basees en France.

De sources proches des plaignants, on rappelle que la compagnie
d’assurance l’Union-Vie, devenue UAP puis rachete par AXA, ne
s’est jamais acquitte du reversement des primes des assurances vie
souscrites dans l’Empire Ottoman et dont les souscripteurs ont peri
lors du genocide armenien de 1915.

Au total, la Compagnie Union Vie etaient detentrices de 10.899 contrats
d’assurance vie dans l’Empire Ottoman. Le president d’Union-Vie, dans
une lettre transmise au ministère francais des Affaires etrangères,
en date du 11 avril 1922, a reconnu que le decès de ces souscripteurs
armeniens etait dû aux massacres perpetres par les Turcs et non par une
mort naturelle. Dans ce meme courrier, il indique qu’il pourrait etre
prejudiciable pour le prestige de la compagnie de ne pas s’acquitter
des primes d’assurances vies. Pour autant, aucune d’entre elles n’a
encore ete reglee.

En juillet dernier, le Comite de defense de la cause armenienne
(CDCA) et la Federation euro-armenienne avaient appele la communaute
armenienne et ses amis a s’associer a la petition adressee au president
du conseil de surveillance d’AXA, Claude Bebear, afin de lui exprimer
toute l’attention et l’interet qu’ils portaient a la juste solution
de ce procès.

–Boundary_(ID_rOG6GLH5T8NzTm6QUA7j2w)–

KOCHARIAN: REFORMS DRIVING FORCE OF COUNTRY DEVELOPMENT

Pan Armenian
13.10.2005 23:58 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today Armenian President Robert Kocharian met
with members of the Board of Directors of the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), reported the Press Service of
the Armenian leader. R.

Kocharian noted with satisfaction that the EBRD-Armenia relations
are converting to a more actual level. He specially noted EBRD active
work with the private sector. Reforms are implemented in Armenia with
confidence that they are the driving force of country’s development,
Kocharian stated. In his words, reforms resulted in a rather impressing
economic growth and the joint programs with the Bank have a certain
role in it. The parties also discussed possible directions of future
cooperation. R. Kocharian said he would like the EBRD to participate
in development of Armenia’s economy more actively.

BUSINESSMEN ARRESTED AMID COURT BATTLE WITH ARMENIAN CUSTOMS
By Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenialiberty.org, Armenia
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 13 2005

The two top executives of a coffee importing company who have alleged
high-level corruption within Armenian customs have been arrested on
charges of fraud and smuggling, their lawyer said on Thursday.

The arrest of Gagik Hakobian and his deputy Aram Ghazarian is the
latest twist in a long-running bitter dispute between their Royal
Armenia firm and the State Customs Committee (SCC). It began nearly
two years ago when they the company claimed to be penalized for its
refusal to cut illegal deals with corrupt customs officials.

Criminal proceedings against the Royal Armenia executives were launched
by the National Security Service (NSS), the Armenian successor to
the KGB secret police, last spring. The case is reportedly based on
a complaint filed by a U.S. citizen of Armenian descent who claims
that Royal Armenia owes him $164,000 for coffee supplies and has
failed to pay up. The man, identified as Vache Petrosian, has also
alleged that Hakobian and his associates forged financial statements
to understate the volume of their imports.

Hakobian’s lawyer, Ashot Sargsian, described the case as “weird.” “I
wonder why he went to the National Security Service,” Sargsian
told RFE/RL. “If one of the parties fails to honor its contractual
obligations, it must be taken to court.”

“I don’t know what National Security wants today. They themselves
probably don’t know,” he said.

The NSS refused to comment on the case on the grounds that the
investigation is still going on.

Speaking at a news conference last June, Hakobian charged that he is
being prosecuted in retaliation for its high-profile battle with the
customs chiefs. “We are dealing with a group of officials who set
unofficial rules, and if you don’t comply with those rules then you
must not operate,” he said.

The two-year dispute centers on the Customs Committee’s controversial
discretionary power to determine the market value of imported
commodities before levying a fixed 10 percent duty from them. Royal
Armenia, which imports, processes and sells coffee, said last year that
customs officials offered to grossly undervalue price of its imported
coffee beans in return for sharing in the resulting extra profits.

The Armenian customs has evaluated one kilogram of Indonesian raw
coffee imported by Royal Armenia at $1.8. The company insists that
its real purchasing price was only $1.24 per kilogram. The value of
the same sort of coffee brought in by other importers is set at $1.1
per kilogram or even less.

Customs officials say they trust invoices submitted by Royal Armenia’s
competitors but they have yet to clearly explain why they distrust
customs declarations issued by Hakobian’s company.

Royal Armenia says it has repeatedly demanded a written explanation
of the price evaluation policy from the customs but to no avail. It
asked Armenia’s Economic Court last month to force the SCC to provide
such a document and reconsider its controversial import duties. The
court is still considering the lawsuit

Customs administration is one of the most frequent sources of
complaints made by Armenian entrepreneurs. However, few of them go
public with their grievances for fear of government retribution.

Royal Armenia is the only private firm which is known to have publicly
clashed with the SCC in recent years.

Corruption among Armenian officials in charge of collecting taxes and
import duties is widespread. President Robert Kocharian personally
warned senior customs officials on two occasions this year to stop
harassing honest taxpayers and helping importers avoid taxes in return
for kickbacks.

Armenia’s controversial customs chief, Armen Avetisian, is believed to
be close to Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Incidentally, Avetisian
has held senior posts in the NSS in the past.