Author: Emil Lazarian

Press Release
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon
Armenian version:
HIS HOLINESS ARAM I MEETS WITH THE SPIRITUAL HEAD
OF THE SYRIAN CHURCH
His Holiness Aram I met with the spiritual leader of the Syrian Church,
Patriarch Zakka Iwas I in the Syrian Monastery in Atshaneh on June 15.
Patriarch Zakka was visiting Lebanon on a personal one-day trip.
Bishop Nareg Alemezian, Ecumenical Officer of the Catholicosate, and Bishop
George Saliba, Primate of the Syrians of Lebanon, also attended the meeting.
The two spiritual leaders discussed the proceedings of the last meeting,
held in Antelias, of the executive committee of the Oriental Orthodox
Churches in the Middle East. They also discussed the upcoming meeting
between the three spiritual leaders of these churches (Pope Shnouda III,
Patriarch Zakka I and His Holiness Aram I) in November, as well as the
ecumenical gathering organized by the Russian Church in Moscow at the
beginning of July. The Catholicos has been invited to attend this meeting.
After the meeting, His Holiness had lunch with Patriarch Zakka.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU SLAMS TURKEY IN DRAFT PROGRESS REPORT -PAPER
Reuters, UK
June 18 2006
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The EU criticises the Turkish military’s role
in politics, a lack of reform and minority rights and relations
with Cyprus in the draft of a progress report due later this year,
a newspaper reported on Sunday.
The European Union is due to publish a progress report on
Ankara’s entry bid in October or November, a year after the start
of negotiations, which turned frosty on Friday when Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan said he would sooner see talks suspended than make
concessions over Cyprus.
Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper cited EU sources on Sunday as saying the
first draft criticised Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cyprus,
as the EU demands, before the bloc lifts trade restrictions on Turkish
Cypriots in breakaway northern Cyprus.
The paper said the draft also notes a slowdown in political reform,
the military’s continuing influence over political institutions and
calls for more work for judicial independence and rights for women
and minorities.
It says conditions in the poor, mainly Kurdish southeast, where
security forces are fighting separatist guerrillas, have deteriorated
and criticises relations with traditional enemies and neighbours
Greece and Armenia.
The European Commission’s enlargement spokeswoman, Krisztina Nagy,
said the report was still a long way off. “I don’t think a consolidated
draft report exists at this stage. In any case it is much too early
to speculate on its content,” she said.
The newspaper said the draft would be amended, but the sources did
not expect many fundamental changes.
“This is standard EU criticism of Turkey,” said an official in Brussels
who asked not to be named. “It was present in last year’s report and
it is likely to be in this year’s report.”
EU leaders at a summit in Brussels on Friday replied to Erdogan’s
Cyprus comments by calling on Turkey to let shipping from the tiny
Mediterranean island use Turkish ports this year.
Last week Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was quoted
as saying membership talks should be frozen if Turkey does not open
its ports this year.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has said Turkey, which is not
expected to join the wealthy bloc until 2015 at the earliest, could
be heading for a “train crash” in its accession process and has urged
Ankara to step up reforms.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ALIYEV: “UN RESOLUTIONS ON OCCUPATION OF AZERBAIJANI LANDS MUST BE IMPLEMENTED”
Today, Azerbaijan
June 18 2006
“Azerbaijan is working on strengthening of railway system between
Europe and Asia,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in
his address at 2nd summit of Conference on Interaction and
Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in Kazakhstan.
He stated that one of the priorities of the region is to set up Great
Silk Way communication. He also said that official Baku is ready to
deal with its part of the work on North-South Transport Corridor.
Mr. Aliyev also touched on threats to the region countries and drew
the attention to international terrorism. Stressing the importance
of combining the efforts of all the countries against international
terrorism, Mr. Aliyev said that Azerbaijan has been suffering terrorism
and Armenian terror acts against Azerbaijan claimed thousands of
people.
He said that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands and accused
international organizations and great powers of double standards in
approaching the occupation fact.
“Over one million Azerbaijan were ejected from their motherland. The
world closes eyes to this fact.”
He also mentioned four UN resolutions on the occupation of Azerbaijani
lands by Armenia and urged to implement them, APA reports.
URL:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

‘WE HAVE TO STAY IN IRAQ,’ SOROS SAYS
George Rush and Joanna Molloy Star Talk
Monterey County Herald, CA
June 18 2006
Billionaire George Soros spent a fortune trying to pry President
Bush out of the White House. But the Democratic Midas agrees with
the president that we can’t pull out of Iraq now.
“Unfortunately, many countries have a national narrative that condemns
them to keep on defending a cause that is really indefensible,”
the Open Society founder said Monday at the Core Club party for his
book “The Age of Fallibility.” “The Turks can’t admit the massacre of
Armenians, for example. We have been better in the past at recognizing
our sins. I’m afraid that we have to recognize that was a terrible
mistake.
“I can’t expect President Bush to do that,” Soros allowed. “That
would be out of keeping for anybody. What’s worse, I think we
actually have to stay in Iraq for a while. If we left, we would have
a conflagration. We are sitting on a civil war. Therefore, American
soldiers have to continue giving their lives to a bad cause.”
Soros said Bush was right to invade Afghanistan, because that “was
where Bin Laden was located.” He also conceded that, since pre-war
Iraq was “a magnet for general terrorists,” the U.S. occupation may
“have deflected a terrorist attack” here. But Soros argued that,
thanks to Bush’s policies, “The danger of a terrorist attack is
greater since 9/11. We may actually be growing terrorist cells.”
P.S. Soros was downright courtly toward the Bushies compared with
Sen. John Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, who snarled Tuesday at White
House adviser Karl Rove for accusing Kerry and fellow Vietnam vet
Rep. John Murtha of “cutting and running” from the war.
“The closest Karl Rove ever came to combat was these last months
spent worrying his cellmates might rough him up in prison,” said
Wade. “This porcine political operative can’t cut and run from the
truth any longer. When it came to Iraq, this administration chose to
cut and run from sound intelligence and good diplomacy…. In November,
Americans will cut and run from this Republican Congress.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA TO LAUNCH A THROUGH RAILWAY SERVICE TO GEORGIAN PORT
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
June 16, 2006 Friday 06:50 PM EST
A ceremony of opening a through railway service to the Georgian port
city of Batumi will be held in the Armenian capital Yerevan Saturday.
“Under an agreement between Georgia and Armenia, a passenger train
will begin cruising between Yerevan and Batumi as of June 17,” an
official at the Georgian Economic Development Ministry said.
The route will be serviced in turns by Georgian and Armenian railway
organizations. Trains consisting of six coaches will depart from
Yerevan on odd-numbered days of the month and from Batumil, on
even-numbered days.
A through passenger service between Yerevan and Batumi was non-existent
even during the Soviet era, when several Yerevan-to-Batumi coaches
were included in the trains bound for the Georgian capital Tbilisi,
where they were reattached to the trains bound for Batumi.
In the post-Soviet years, the route was non-existent either.
Nor will the trains bypass Tbilisi this time, too, since the only
railway route is via the Georgian capital.
Armenian Transport Minister, Georgian Economic Development Minister
as well as top railway officials from both countries will take part
in the gala ceremony in Yerevan.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RUSSIA TO DO ITS UTMOST TO INVESTIGATE CRIMES AGAINST ARMENIANS
by Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
June 16, 2006 Friday
The Russian authorities will do their utmost to investigate and prevent
all manifestations of violence and murders of Armenians in Russia,
visiting Russian presidential envoy in the Southern Federal District,
Dmitry Kozak, said at a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Andranik
Margarian.
He pointed out, though, that such incidents involving Armenians were
not ethnically motivated ones.
Russia, including the Southern Federal District, is a favorable
environment for the Armenian Diaspora. Its representatives actively
participate in the country’s politics and economy.
Margarian expressed the confidence that the Russian authorities and the
heads of regional legislatures would take serious steps to find those
guilty, bring them to justice and prevent such crimes in the future.
Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian pointed out that attacks
on the Armenian citizens in Russia “are seen in Armenia as casual.”
“Armenia is ready to pool efforts with Russia to prevent such incidents
in the future,” he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RUSSIAN BUSINESSES EXPAND PRESENCE IN ARMENIA – KOCHARIAN
by Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
June 16, 2006 Friday
Russian businesses have been expanding presence in Armenia,
President Robert Kocharian said, as he received Russian presidential
representative in the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak, who
is in Armenia on a working visit.
“Economic ties have been growing stronger and Russian businesses are
ever more present in the Armenian economy,” Kocharian said.
Effective transport links between the two countries will be crucial
to wider trading and economic cooperation, he said.
The theme of transport was high on the agenda of Dmitry Kozak’s talks
with Prime Minister Andranik Migranian.
The Armenian prime minister said the regular operation of the railway
ferry the Caucasus-Poti and resumption of railway traffic through
Abkhazia would provide major support for Russian-Armenian economic
cooperation.
As he visited the Russian military base in Armenia, Kozak thanked the
Armenian leadership for creating a favorable environment for Russian
military personnel.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AN ORGY OF INHUMANITY
by Joanna Bourke
New Statesman
June 19, 2006
On the evening of Sunday 30 October 1938, six million Americans sitting
around their wireless sets heard some terrifying news: humanity
was on the brink of annihilation. According to the CBS broadcast,
the vanguard of an invading army had landed in the farmlands of New
Jersey and was moving steadily across the continent.
More than one million Americans panicked. Friends and relatives were
telephoned and warned of the impending calamity. Bread, blankets
and babies were thrown into cars, which then sped westwards. Other
listeners were too stunned to move. Women and men fainted; children
and dogs howled. As one student admitted shortly afterwards: “I didn’t
have any idea exactly what I was fleeing from, and that made me all
the more afraid.” America was not being attacked by the Germans or
the Japanese. The invading hordes came from the planet Mars.
It was a hoax, of course, and the millions of terrified listeners
were furious at being fooled. They accused CBS of causing them
“grievous bodily or mental injury” and demanded compensation for their
pain. Orson Welles, the young broadcaster and actor responsible for
the radio play, was forced to issue an abject apology.
Welles’s play was an adaptation of H G Wells’s 1898 novel War of the
Worlds. He had simply modernised the story by moving the action to
the 1930s. No wonder listeners found it convincing. In that uncertain
decade, many Americans easily believed that aliens could destroy the
world as they knew it. Wasn’t there talk of an approaching world war?
Unemployment was rocketing. Only a few months earlier President
Roosevelt had warned: “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear
itself.” Welles’s radio adaptation of War of the Worlds scored a
direct hit on a seam of political alarm underpinning American culture
in the 1930s.
Niall Ferguson’s new book, The War of the World, also seeks to tap
into an underlying sense of apprehension. Why was the 20th century
marked by massacres, genocides and war on an unprecedented scale,
and how could the carnage have been avoided? Today, weapons of mass
destruction seem to be proliferating. Confidence in the ability of
politicians to exercise restraint has waned. Faith in human reason
is fading. What is going to prevent the 21st century descending into
worldwide war?
Ferguson provides a potted account of the way the west was torn apart
by tumultuous storms of hatred. As the west declined, the east was
on the rise, driven by economic robustness. Although Ferguson admits
that it is not difficult to imagine a future in which west and east
clash in war, he remains cautiously optimistic about the chances of
21st-century nation states avoiding full-scale conflict. He argues
that the unrivalled superiority of the US in the 1990s was a force
for good. Uncontested American supremacy enabled violence elsewhere in
the world to be contained. As a result, global warfare is now at its
lowest level since the late 1950s. Ferguson seems to believe in the
ability of strong nations (the US and, in the future, perhaps China)
to control the passions of more volatile ones.
Although Ferguson’s story is daunting in its detail (the book has
to be propped up against a table to be read comfortably), it does
not claim to be a history of the entire century. The focus is on the
years between 1904, when Japan became the first Asian power in modern
times to defeat a European power, and 1953, the year the Korean war
ended. Ferguson is most assured when dealing with the terrible years
between 1914 and 1918. It is important, he tells us, to remember that
the years before 1914 were relatively peaceful. In Europe, at least,
there were only 21 major wars in the hundred years up to this point.
In that context, the inability of many British elites to forecast the
start of hostilities in 1914 is understandable, especially when tied
to their (misplaced) confidence in Britain’s imperial might. Surely,
these elites believed, the world’s largest empire possessed sufficient
power to avert a global crisis.
They were proved wrong. Rather than preventing war, empires fuelled
them. To carry out the dirty task of slaughter, all major powers
were dependent on recruits, conscripts and forced labour drawn from
territories far from their national heartlands. In the end, the war
ground to a halt largely as a result of a dramatic slump in the morale
of German soldiers, who began surrendering in droves. By that stage,
however, a generation had been slaughtered.
Although the Great War casts a long shadow over the 20th century,
Ferguson acknowledges that the war which followed was even more
decisive. The Second World War propelled the notion of “total war”
to horrifying heights. Civi-lians became the victims-of-choice. While
only 5 per cent of deaths in the 1914-18 conflict were civilian,
in the 1939-45 war that figure was 66 per cent. Many more civilians
than military personnel were killed in Belgium, China, France,
Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia. Innocence was butchered.
According to Ferguson, peace brought only a “tainted victory”.
Western powers had allied themselves with Stalin, a “despot who
was every bit as brutal a tyrant as Hitler”. Unrestrained submarine
warfare and the terror-bombing of Dresden, Hamburg and Hiroshima (to
name just a few) had contaminated British and American honour. It is
alleged that when Winston Churchill heard the news about the death
sentences passed on the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, he turned to his
chief of staff and commented: “Nuremberg shows that it’s supremely
important to win. You and I would be in a pretty pickle if we had not.”
The two world wars had reduced humanity to rubble; the Holocaust
had stripped even that rubble of meaning. It was followed by the
threat of nuclear annihilation. Humanity had fashioned a world of
suffering which dwarfed anything that went before. How could this
have happened? The subtitle to Ferguson’s book provides his answer:
the 20th century was an “age of hatred”. Throughout the world,
people turned on their neighbours with ferocity. De-humanisation
became common: the suddenness with which people could be cast as
“aliens” was alarming. During the Armenian genocide of 1912-13,
the Turks coined a description for the Armenians: “dog food”. When
Japanese soldiers entered Nanking in 1938, the 20,000 Chinese women
they raped were considered less than human. As one soldier explained:
“We felt no shame about it. No guilt.” Through the classi- fication
of the enemy as inhuman, they all became fair game.
This orgy of inhumanity is thoroughly probed by Ferguson. And when
he sticks to history, it is a credible account, even if it doesn’t
tell us much that is new. The problem is that he seems to have been
seduced by evolutionary psychology. He gives much analytical weight
to the concept of “hatred”, yet never really tells us what it is.
Instead, he relies on the vague idea that hatred is one of humanity’s
innate instincts. The “twin urge to rape and murder remains repressed
in a civilised society”, he argues, but it wreaks havoc when unleashed
upon the world. Economic volatility is one important trigger.
Ferguson’s thesis is most disturbingly addressed in the context of
sexualised violence. He suggests that the destructive instinct is
intrinsically tied to the sexual impulse. Sexual violence directed
against enemies was inspired by “erotic, albeit sadistic, fantasies
as much as by ‘eliminationist’ racism”, he asserts. Bloodlust and rape
went together. This just isn’t good enough. The simple logic and aura
of scientific certitude represented by the appeal to instincts mask
the fact that “instincts” don’t actually explain anything.
At best, all Ferguson is doing is sticking a label on complex
historical processes. To assume an inherent connection between hate and
love does nothing to clarify why some genocides (hate) have involved
rape (which Ferguson bizarrely wants to put in the “eros” category)
while others have not. Neither the “repression” of hatred nor its
“eruption” explains anything in historical terms. It is unclear, for
instance, how the “volatile ambivalence” of “aversion and attraction”
can help us understand the history of violence “which has for so long
characterised relations between white Americans and African Americans”.
By emphasising the primordial connection with our primate ancestors,
Ferguson reduces the complexity of human society and fails to account
for individual motivations or cultural trends in violence. It
is an unfortunate lapse. Ferguson should leave psychology to the
psychologists and stick to what he is really good at: writing history.
Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck, University of
London, and the author of “Fear: a cultural history” (Virago, 2006).
She is currently writing a book about rapists.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DECODING OF THE BLACK BOXES OF THE CRASHED A-320 COMPLETED
ArmRadio.am
19.06.2006 14:32
Decoding of the parameter recorder of the crashed A-320 was completed
at the Interstate Aviation Committee. In the result it was confirmed
that “the plane did not crash in the air.” The fuel would suffice
to safely complete the flight. At the last minute of the flight the
autopilot was tuned off.
The Committee undertook the complex analysis of the means of objective
control recording, durimg which it is planned to “hold modellling of
the flight on the A-320 flight simulator.
In the result of analysis and investigation conclusions will be
drawn about the reason of the air-crash and instructions will be
given regarding the security of the flight. The Interstate aviation
Committee did not inform when the conclusion will be ready.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AMBASSADOR ASHOT HOVAKIMYAN TO REPLACE JIVAN TABIBYAN
ArmRadio.am
19.06.2006 15:32
According to RA President Robert Kocharyan’s decree of June 17, Jivan
Tabibyan was dismissed from the position of RA Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. RA
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Austria
Ashot Hovakimyan (seat in Vienna) was appointed to the position.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress