Author: Emil Lazarian

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.

AZERI-TURKS OPEN FIRE ON PEACEFUL RESIDENT
Panorama.am
13:35 04/11/06
Azerbaijan has rudely violated the cease-fire regime yesterday
shooting a peaceful resident of a borderline village. Colonel
S. Shahsuvaryan, press secretary of the Armenian defense ministry,
said Maxim Poghosyan, 28, was shot by an Azeri sniper on November 3
at 13:50 on Aigepar Movses road. Poghosyan is transported to medical
unit of Berd.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MASS BURIAL OF POSSIBLE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS DISCOVERED IN TURKEY
PanARMENIAN.Net
04.11.2006 16:18 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish Gendarmerie has instructed local villagers of
a southeastern region to keep silence about a mass grave, discovered
on October 17, that might contain remains of Armenian Genocide
victims. According to a Kurdish newspaper published in Turkish
Ulkede Ozgur Gundem, villagers from Xirabebaba (Kuru) were digging
a grave for one of their relatives when they came across to a cave
full of skulls and bones of reportedly 40 people. The Xirabebaba
residents assumed they had uncovered a mass grave of 300 Armenian
villagers massacred during the Genocide of 1915. They informed Akarsu
Gendarmerie headquarters, the local military unit, about the discovered
remains. Turkish army officers, according to the Kurdish newspaper,
instructed the villagers to block the cave entrance and make no mention
of the remains buried in it. The officers said an investigation would
take place. The newspaper reported on the developments and the Turkish
military’s attempt to hide the news. Journalists, who had arrived to
obtain more information, were denied access to the cave.
As the mass burial made news, local Gendarmerie made another visit
to the villagers. The latter were pressed to report the name of
the person who leaked the mass burial discovery to the press. The
villagers were warned not to show anyone directions to the cave.
The victims of the mass grave, according to Sodertorn University
History Professor David Gaunt, are most likely the 150 Armenian and
120 Assyrian males from the nearby town of Dara (now Oguz) killed on
June 14, 1915, reports Asbarez.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LEFT OUT IN THE COLD – ‘LIBERATION MOVEMENTS: A NOVEL’ BY OLEN STEINHAUER
By Paula L. Woods
The Los Angeles Times
Calendar Live
Nov 4 2006
Beginning with 2003’s “The Bridge of Sighs,” Olen Steinhauer has
followed detectives from the People’s Militia as they’ve investigated
three decades’ worth of murders in a fictional Eastern Bloc country.
In the process, readers have been privy to the frustrations, betrayals
and backstabbing they’ve endured (and sometimes instigated). These
men include “Bridge’s” idealistic rookie Emil Brod’s investigation
of a songwriter’s murder, a doomed detective-novelist caught up in
1950s Soviet repression (“The Confession”) and devious Brano Sev,
who does double duty as a spy for the country’s KGB-like Ministry of
State Security (“36 Yalta Boulevard”). Brano has always cast a pall
over the series, and his actions have driven the stories into morally
ambiguous territory, earning Steinhauer favorable comparisons with
Graham Greene, John le Carre and Alan Furst. Yet his novels retain
enough elements of classic detective mysteries so that he can, more
or less, keep a foot in both camps.
Now comes “Liberation Movements,” which expands Steinhauer’s literary
landscape in a number of important ways. He juxtaposes two very
different locales and stories – that of Peter, a hapless student caught
trying to escape Czechoslovakia during the failed 1968 reform movement,
and the story of the explosion of a hijacked commercial airliner bound
for Istanbul, Turkey, in 1975. As if the dual story lines and locations
weren’t difficult enough to juggle, readers familiar with the series
will find that one of the militia squad’s members, Libarid Terzian,
is on that flight en route to an Interpol conference. The Armenian’s
presence on the plane raises intriguing questions: Is he a secret
sympathizer with the Army of the Liberation of Armenia, who hijack
the plane? Is it a coincidence that he encounters Zrinka Martrich,
who may or may not be a militiawoman but certainly seems to know more
about him than she should?
Seeking answers, Emil Brod, now head of the People’s Militia, sends
Brano Sev and his new partner, 29-year-old Gavra Noukas, to Istanbul
to investigate. Even though the case is not in their jurisdiction,
the two men decide that, since the hijackers boarded in their capital,
the best way to honor their comrade Terzian’s memory and fulfill their
duty is to reconstruct the hijackers’ last days in their homeland
and turn the information over to Turkish officials.
The combination of old spymaster and younger detective energizes a
series whose characters, on the job for almost 30 years, one feared
could be getting a little long in the tooth. Part of the charge comes
from the pair’s very different personalities – Brano is a cold,
calculating mentor while Gavra is a passionate man who is “always
falling victim to that word Brano enjoyed harping on – sentimentality.
” ‘It is,’ Brano had told him numerous times, ‘the demise of all good
operatives, resulting in the most fatalities. But you’re young. You
just don’t understand yet.’ ” Another young addition to the militia
and integral part of the team is Katja Drdova, 24 and the only woman
in the unit. Driven by a tragedy in her early life, Katja is obsessed
with being successful and painfully aware of “the condescension from
[her] workmates.” She too is mentored and manipulated by Brano in ways
too intricate to reveal here but diabolical and effective nonetheless.
“Liberation Movements” also goes beyond the tighter point of view
of the previous novels to give readers five different perspectives,
three of them from the militia plus the young woman Zrinka, who plays
a pivotal, if incredible, role in the action. But Steinhauer saves
some of the most unsettling chapters for Ludvik Mas, a ruthless yet
memorable character whose tradecraft and surprising connections to
the events of 1968 as well as to Brano, Katja and even Zrinka are
doled out in deliciously suspenseful doses.
Beyond the expanded relationships of these principal characters,
Steinhauer does a good job of evoking Istanbul’s bars and bazaars,
hotels and churches, which form the backdrop for the team’s search for
the men who set the hijacking in motion. He also provides just enough
background information on the genocide of a multitude of Armenians by
the Turkish militia in 1915 to understand why the crimes still feel
so personal to these young terrorists more than 60 years later –
and why they could spur the real-life assassination of two Turkish
consuls by an Armenian American in Santa Barbara in 1975.
And the echoes Steinhauer creates between the motives of terrorist
groups like the fictional Army of the Liberation of Armenia, the
real-life Red Army Faction and others of that day (and, by extension,
those of our own) are unexpectedly chilling. Perhaps it is, as one
character says, that “[t]he political, in fact, is really only the
personal dressed up in more flamboyant clothes.”
With its plots and counterplots, secret identities and tradecraft taken
straight from the Soviet playbook of the day, “Liberation Movements”
is an entertaining, if sometimes implausible, read that should put
Steinhauer squarely in the front of the pack of today’s espionage
writers. And with complex, engaging characters like Gavra and Katja
carrying on the work of Emil, Libarid, Brano and the older hands,
it is an exhilarating and enjoyable ride.
Paula L. Woods is the author of the Charlotte Justice mystery series,
including “Strange Bedfellows.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

INTERSTATE BANK FINANCES CREDIT PROGRAMS OF ABOUT 110 MILLION DOLLARS IN ARMENIA
Noyan Tapan
Nov 04 2006
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN. The Interstate Bank has implemented
tens of projects in Armenia by providing credits of a total of 110
mln dollars.
Tigran Sargsian, Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA),
current Chairman of the Interstate Bank, said this at the press
conference to summarize the results of the Interstate Bank’s sitting
in Yerevan on November 3. Chairman of the RF Central Bank Sergei
Ignatyev and Chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Bank Anvar Saydenov
also participated in the press conference. According to T. Sargsian,
the projects implemented by the Interstate Bank in Armenia are related
to such spheres as energy, chemical industry, Yerevan inner city
transport. The bank’s loans carried 9-12% interest rates. “Armenia is
actively cooperating with the Interstate Bank,” he noted, adding that
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have also implemented projects with this
bank. He said that issues related to the Interstate Bank’s activities,
credit policy and its cooperation with the Eurasian Development
Bank were on the aganda of the Yerevan sitting of the Interstate
Bank Board. S. Ignatyev did not rule out the possibility of a merger
between the Interstate Bank and the Eurasian Development Bank (wose
founders are Russia and Kazakhstan). In his words, the Interstate Bank
does not have yet a financial opportunity to assist with projects
on formation of new financial infrastructures in CIS countries. The
Interstate Bank was founded in 1993 based on an agreement signed by
the leaders of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Moldova,
Russia, Tadjikistan, Turmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. The bank’s
authorized capital makes 20 million rubles (about 7.22 mln USD),
with Armenia’s share amounting to 300 thousand rubles (1.8%).
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress