Author: Emil Lazarian

DEFENSE EXPENDITURE TO RISE IN LINE WITH GDP GROWTH IN ARMENIA
Panorama.am
15:30 06/11/06
Expenditures on defense will make up 3.5% of GDP annually, Serzh
Sargsyan, defense minister of Armenia told reporters today saying this
is an agreement reached with the Armenian government. In his words,
defense expenditures will grow in line with economy.
According to the draft state budget, defense expenditures will surpass
100.4 bln drams with 96.6 bln to military needs, 3.8 bln to other
costs, 26.9 mln on organization of alternative military service.
Sargsyan said 48% of expenditures will be used on salaries. He said
the average salary for officers will be 165,000 drams.
Speaking about increase in military expenditures of Azerbaijan,
Sargsyan said, “Of coarse, you cannot compare $1 bln with $300 million
but much can be accomplished even with that money if used purposefully
and efficiently.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SERZH SARGSYAN: GOVERNMENT TO APPROVE 90% SALE OF STOCK OF ARMENTEL
Panorama.am
14:53 06/11/06
The government will approve the deal on 90% sale of stock of ArmenTel
to Vimpelcom (trade mark Biline), Serzh Sargsyan, defense minister
of Armenia who is also co-chair of Russian-Armenian international
economic committee, said. In his words, the government will learn
about the details of the deal and the price for stock.
He also said he sees no danger that the Russian capital is increasing
in Armenia. “There had been no case when Russia would abuse its
economic power,” he said. He said neither Russian nor any foreign
companies imposed pressures on the Armenian economy.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS RELEASE
Humanist Broadcasting Foundation
Annelies de Korver
p.o. Box 135, 1200 AC HILVERSUM, the Netherlands
tel.: 00 31 35-6722035
email: [email protected]
web:
The Humanist Broadcasting Foundation is happy to tell you that Dorothée
Forma is awarded for her documentary The Story of my Name- an Armenian
History – at the Arpa International Film Festival in Hollywood.
Kind regards,
Cora van Dijk
Humanist Broadcasting Foundation
Tel 00 31 35 672 20 61
AMERICAN FILM AWARD FOR HUMANIST BROADCASTING FOUNDATION
Los Angeles, October 27, 2006
Dorothée Forma is awarded for The Story of my Name- an Armenian History – at
the Arpa International Film Festival in Hollywood.
>From the festival jury rapport:
The AFFMA film award is given to the filmmaker who best represents the
ideals of independent thought, artistic vision, cultural diversity and
social understanding.
This year, the AFFMA award is presented to Dorothée Forma, film producer for
the Humanist Broadcasting Foundation in The Netherlands.
Ms. Forma¹s documentary ³A Wall of Silence² screened at the 2nd Arpa
International Film Festival in 1999. That film paralleled the personal and
professional lives of Turkish historian Taner Akçam and Armenian historian
Vahakn Dadrian and their call for international recognition of the Armenian
Genocide.
This year, Arpa honors her for ³The story of My Name², a film documenting
Alex Peltekian¹s discovery of his cultural ancestry and his journey to his
grandfather¹s homeland.
³The Story of my Name² was produced with support of the Dutch Cultural
Broadcasting Fund
More Information:
Annelies de Korver, tel.: 00 31 35-6722035; [email protected]
p.o. Box 135, 1200 AC HILVERSUM, the Netherlands
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER VARDAN OSKANIAN COMMENTS ON TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER ABDULLAH GUL’S RECENT REMARKS
Panorama.am
16:44 04/11/06
“We remain amazed that a letter sent by President Kocharian to Prime
Minister Erdogan in April 2005 remains ignored, simply because the
Turkish authorities did not like the response contained therein,
and do not wish to broaden the scope of discussion beyond history.
President Kocharian clearly said to Prime Minister Erdogan that the
“suggestion to address the past cannot be effective if it deflects
from addressing the present and the future. In order to engage in
a useful dialog, we need to create the appropriate and conducive
political environment. It is the responsibility of governments to
develop bilateral relations and we do not have the right to delegate
that responsibility to historians. That is why we have proposed and
propose again that, without pre-conditions, we establish normal
relations between our two countries.” In that context, President
Kocharian said, “an intergovernmental commission can meet to discuss
any and all outstanding issues between our two nations, with the aim
of resolving them and coming to an understanding.”
Foreign Minister Gul’s recent comments to RadioLiberty, insisting that
the existence of flights between Armenia and Turkey, and of Armenian
citizens in Turkey, is evidence that ‘the borders are essentially open’
is disingenuous. First, the number of Armenians from Armenia living and
working in Turkey do not approach the numbers he claims. Second, open
borders assumes direct contacts between peoples, unobstructed relations
across the border and a functioning transport infrastructure. We
stand by our response which we consider to be a positive one and
we wonder whether the Turkish insistence on a historical commission
is genuine. After all, we have in fact agreed to discussions on all
issues, in the context of open borders.
Further, so long as Article 301 which criminalizes mere discussion
of the genocide topic remains on the books in Turkey, an invitation
to open dialogue cannot be taken seriously. Finally, outside Turkey,
scholars – Armenians, Turks and others – have studied these issues
and have reached their own independent conclusions. The most notable
among these is the May 2006 letter to Prime Minister Erdogan by the
International Assn of Genocide Scholars wherein they collectively and
unanimously affirmed the fact of the Genocide and called on the Turkish
government to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government.
In light of these complex realities, we can only repeat our readiness
to enter into dialogue and normal relations with our neighbor”.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIANS FIGHT GLENDALE OVER GRILL CHILL
Monterey County Herald, CA
San Jose Mercury News, USA
Nov 5 2006
GLENDALE (AP) – Armenians here are skewering the city’s ban on outdoor
restaurant grilling as an offense to the kebab culture, but efforts
to overturn it have stalled in the City Council.
This city is 40 percent Armenian and Armenian-American. The 85,000
Armenian residents comprise the largest such population in the
United States.
Last year, voters elected three Armenians to the five-member City
Council, partly on an agenda to remove the outdoor grilling ban. But
they have been unable to win the four votes needed for passage.
That annoys Armenians who say indoor gas grills simply can’t do
justice to their traditional cuisine.
Vrej Sarkissian says it takes more than salt, pepper, onions and olive
oil to make a decent kabob. He cooks the skewered meat on charcoal
outside his restaurant.
“People can always tell the difference,” said Sarkissian, owner of
Anoush Banquets & Catering. “They want the original flavor of home.”
“It’s what our culture is about,” said his brother, Sacco
Sarkissian. “It’s great, because they’re able to hold onto their
heritage. They haven’t been forced to Americanize.”
The ban may have a chilling effect on the city’s dining, City
Councilman Ara Najarian argued.
“Most Armenians are highly sophisticated, and they demand the best,”
he said. “It’s developed into a gourmet war between these folks. I
once saw a place serve a flaming rack of lamb.”
“I think we all know that burgers on the grill taste better than on
the frying pan,” Najarian said.
Mayor Dave Weaver, who opposes lifting the ban, accused his colleagues
of playing “the race card.”
“We’re portrayed as anti-Armenian, and that’s so far off the mark,”
he said. “We got a lot of complaints saying, ‘Why are you allowing
them to grill outdoors?”‘
“I’m philosophically opposed to commercial grilling outside,” he
said. “If we open the door, then anybody from Bob’s Big Boy to a
barbecue place can do it.”
“Would you like to smell other peoples’ food all day long?”
resident Nancy Campbell asked. “We were all OK stopping smoking in
a lot of public places.”
Vrej Sarkissian said he is considering moving his steel grill indoors
to comply with the law, although he estimates it will cost him about
$80,000.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to keep the flavor going,” he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE FOLLY OF JAILING GENOCIDE DENIERS
By Garin K. Hovannisian
Christian Science Monitor, MA
Nov 6 2006
Democracy’s test: Do we tolerate a view that it is thoroughly
repulsive?
LOS ANGELES – Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can
incarcerate you. Thus spake the National Assembly of France last month,
when it voted to fine deniers of Turkey’s 1915 genocide of Armenians up
to 45,000 euros or send them on a maximum yearlong holiday to prison.
The measure would join a series of European laws that have criminalized
denial of the Jewish Holocaust.
Although it has dim hope of clearing the Senate and President Jacques
Chirac, the bill reminds us that France’s Socialist Party – and many
European elites – believe truth is decreed, not discovered.
The news drove Armenian communities into raptures. In Armenia’s
capital, Yerevan, college students besieged the French Embassy in
ecstasy. In Los Angeles, their counterparts hurried to chat rooms
and blogs to register Hollywood’s admiration of Francois Hollande,
the bill’s chief advocate.
Hilda Tchoboian, president of the European Armenian Federation,
welcomed this “historic step,” noting that “the hydra of denial is
a tumor on freedom of expression,” which proved that you can mix
metaphors and talk nonsense in the span of five nouns.
A government that punishes lies…
Genocide denial might be a tumor on truth, memory, or even human
dignity, but it’s not even a pimple on the freedom of expression.
It’s an exercise – however false or disgusting – of that freedom,
which Ms. Tchoboian wants to ration.
A government that has the power to punish lies also has the power to
punish truth (consider Turkey’s law that punishes those who denigrate
“Turkishness”) and, really, to punish anything it pleases.
This was the terrible lesson of the 20th century, fleshed out in
millions upon millions of carcasses across Joseph Stalin’s gulags,
Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and
Mao Zedong’s torture chambers.
Indeed, this was the lesson of the Armenian genocide, which was
perpetrated by a regime that tried to build one people, one religion,
and – most important – one idea, “Ottomanization,” on the rubble of
human rights.
That lesson, sadly, is lost on some French parliamentarians and the
Armenian diaspora, whose notion of politics ends where the genocide
begins. “If we have to muscle their view to death then that’s just
what we’ll do!” the Armenians seem to say, not realizing that this
is precisely what the Young Turks said about them.
Facing charges of insulting Turkishness for acknowledging the Armenian
genocide, Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer and 2006 Nobel Laureate,
declared at his trial this year, “What I said is not an insult. It
is the truth. But what if it is wrong? Right or wrong, do people not
have the right to express their ideas peacefully?”
That’s the key clause: right or wrong. Genocide deniers insult us.
Yet in any decent society, their rights are the most vital, precisely
because they are the most difficult to respect. Here’s the test of
true democracy: Do we tolerate another’s view when it is thoroughly
repulsive? France has failed the test.
It is easier to shut deniers up than to make them stop believing. In
a perilous reversal of its intended effect, this law would give to
deniers two advantages they crave: exemption from the debate and the
position of the oppressed. The deniers will gain not only immunity
from our persistent challenges, but an underdog’s advantage in
“speaking truth to power” when power is against them. Denial isn’t
just a river in Egypt; it’s soon to be an underground fashion in Paris.
Censorship has long been the tool of people who are threatened by
the facts – who can’t win a debate on equal terms.
Censors have sought to gain through power what they lack in argument:
the truth. France has just exerted its power in Armenia’s name. And
Armenians rejoiced. But it will not strengthen our people and it
will not redeem the reality of the 1.5 million who were massacred
beginning in 1915.
Don’t silence deniers, expose them
Like that of the Holocaust, the cause of bringing greater recognition
to the Armenian genocide is best served through total freedom of
speech, in which historians can argue the deniers into silence. We
should long for a society where those who deny documented crimes
against humanity will not be fined or jailed, but worse, be exposed,
humiliated, and condemned to oblivion.
Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to
write it.” History is less kind to people who try to rewrite it.
In its most recent move, the French National Assembly has deprived
history of its final redemption. It has revealed to the world that
Armenians would rather stifle debate than win it once and for all.
~U Garin K. Hovannisian is the editor of UCLA’s journal of opinion
and culture, .
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

P.M. ERDOGAN ATTENDS “NEWS XCHANGE” MEETING IN ISTANBUL
Turkish Press
Nov 5 2006
ISTANBUL – “Despite several negative developments, Turkey achieved
important successes thanks to democratic reforms fulfilled in the
country,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during
“News Xchange” meeting in Istanbul which brought together executives
of news TV channels and news agencies as well as correspondents from
all over the world.
Stating that Turkey was located in the center of a large geography
extending from Europe to Asia and from Caucasus to Africa, Erdogan
noted that Turkey was affected by developments that took place in
Caucasus, Balkans, southern and Central Asia.
“Turkey has been exerting great efforts for peace and stability in
the region and the world,” he underlined.
Erdogan noted, “AKP (Justice & Development Party) government fulfilled
significant reforms during the last four years. We also achieved
important successes in Turkish economy and foreign policy.
Turkey has become one of the biggest 20 economies of the world.”
“There has been a sound and dynamic structure in Turkish economy.
Direct foreign investments in the country amounted to 9.7 billion
USD at the end of 2005,” he stressed.
Noting that Turkey has met necessary criterion to start full membership
talks with the EU, Erdogan stated, “Turkey showed that it has quality
and capacity to join the EU.”
Erdogan said, “one third of the constitution has been amended,
adjustment packages have been approved and several legal and
administrative arrangements have been made in regard to Turkey`s
EU process.”
Replying to a question of a correspondent from Yorki Media operating in
Armenia, Erdogan said that the incidents in 1915 were a displacement.
“We have opened our archives. Armenian President (Robert Kocharian)
should also open Armenia`s archives. Jurists and historians should work
on the matter and then politicians make a decision on it,” he stated.
Stating that when AKP came to the political power in the country,
the government started air transportation between Turkey and Yerevan,
Erdogan said that they also restored Armenian Orthodox Church on
Akdamar Island in Van Lake.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HAMMARBERG ON ARTICLE 301 OF TCK
Turkish Press
Nov 5 2006
ANKARA – Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for
Human Rights, said that he has got very good messages from Turkish
government officials that problems regarding the Article 301 of the
Turkish Penal Code (TCK) will be resolved soon.
Speaking to reporters before he proceeded from Ankara to Istanbul,
Hammarberg indicated that Turkey has taken significant steps in human
rights. However, he stated, there are still some deficiencies because
there are some problems in perception of the related regulation by
the authorities.
He said that an efficient mechanism should be set up in Turkey to
monitor human rights.
Hammarberg qualified the cases filed against novelists Orhan Pamuk
and Elif Safak as “unfortunate”, and said that the highest authorities
have told him that some mistakes are being made in implementation of
this article and they will be corrected soon.
According to Hammarberg, the problem regarding Article 301 can be
solved in three ways, including abolition and correction of this
article. The third way is to inform the law enforcers that the way
the article is interpreted is different from the interpretation of
the legislators, he stated.
-FRENCH RESOLUTION-
On the resolution adopted by the French parliament which criminalizes
denial of so-called Armenian genocide allegations, Hammarberg said
that the resolution has not yet been passed from the Senate, and
noted that he does not think it will be adopted by the Senate.
Defining the development as unfortunate, Hammarberg said that this
is not a constructive decision, but a provocative one.
Hammarberg indicated that this decision violates the freedom of
expression.
Commissioner Hammarberg will proceed to Istanbul tonight.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RA EX-PREMIER WELCOMES ARMENTEL PURCHASE BY VYMPELCOM
PanARMENIAN.Net
06.11.2006 13:17 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “In 1998, when we put the stocks for sale I
regretted there was no Russian companies among the aspirants,”
said RA Ex-Prime Minister, rector of the Russia-Armenian (Slavonic)
University, professor Armen Darbinian when commenting on the sale of
Armenian telecommunications company ArmenTel’s 90% stocks to Russian
VympelCom. In his words, the process of initial capital accumulation
and allocation of Russian actives was not over in Russia at that time.
“In 2001 an intense search for extra investment projects was launched
first of all among the Russian leading enterprises. Certainly, the
price of these actives has changed but today the Russian companies are
ready to pay for the possibility of expansion and this gratifies,”
the RAU rector said. “I welcome this bargain and I am glad that a
Russian company has become the owner of the Armenian telecommunication
operator. I know VympelCom as a serious company and wish it every
success at the Armenian market,” he resumed, RAU Spokesman Roman
Nadirian told PanARMENIAN.Net.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NKR PRESIDENT DEPARTED FOR US
PanARMENIAN.Net
06.11.2006 14:57 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ November 4 Nagorno Karabakh Republic President
Arkady Ghukasian departed for the United State to participate in the
preparatory works of the traditional marathon scheduled for November
23 in Los Angles, reported the NKR leader’s press office. During
the visit Arkady Ghukasian will meet with political, public and
religious figures. Head of the Karabakh Diocese of the Armenian
Apostolic Church, Archbishop Pargev Martirosian will also leave for
the U.S. mid November.