Author: Emil Lazarian

NKR DM REFUTES AZERI REPORTS ON VIOLATION OF CEASE FIRE

YEREVAN, MARCH 16. ARMINFO. NKR Defence Ministry refutes pointblank
the Azeri media report that there has been an exchange of fire near
Agdam.

This is misinformation and an attempt to charge Nagorny Karabakh
republic with violating the cease fire regime. But it was Azerbaijan
who was responsible for the Mar 7 and Mar 9 incidents on the NKR-Azeri
contact line. The NKR DM also refutes the TURAN report of a Tuesday
skirmish also near Agdam.

Press Secretary of Armenia’s Defence Minister Seyran Shahsuvaryan says
that there was no exchange of fire on the contact line of Ijevan
(Armenia) and Gazakh (Azerbaijan) Mar evening – as reported by
Day.az. There was no fire on either Armenian or Azeri sides. This is
one more provocation, he says noting that Azerbaijan does not miss a
chance to remind of the section and to allege some skirmishes.

Armenia eager to help U.S. stop alleged smuggling

.c The Associated Press

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) – Armenian government authorities are prepared
to do whatever they can to help the United States investigate alleged
weapons smuggling, a presidential spokesman said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, U.S. authorities charged 18 people, including several
Armenians, in an alleged scheme to smuggle grenade launchers,
shoulder-fired missiles and other Russian military weapons into the
United States.

The arrests resulted from a yearlong investigation in which an FBI
informant posed as an arms buyer who claimed to have ties to al-Qaida.

The case took investigators to Armenia and neighboring Georgia as well
as South Africa, and featured photographs, apparently taken somewhere
in Armenia, showing weapons including anti-tank missiles, a Russian
missile launcher and an anti-tank rifle, law enforcement officials in
the United States said.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian’s spokesman, Viktor Sogomonyan,
said Armenian law enforcement authorities have no concrete information
about weapons smuggling from Armenia and “are interested in
investigating and bringing to justice members of this criminal
group.”

According to a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in
Manhattan, an informant met two of the defendants, Artur Solomonyan
and Christiaan Dewet Spies, on several occasions in New York to
discuss the weapons deals.

Solomonyan, who faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted, is an
Armenian citizen living in New York and Los Angeles. Armenia’s
National Security Service said Wednesday that he has been wanted by
police in Armenia since 2001 on suspicion of avoiding military
service.

03/16/05 16:46 EST

MEETING OF THE DELEGATIONS OF THE CATHOLICOSATE OF ALL ARMENIANS AND THE
CATHOLICOSATE OF THE GREAT HOUSE OF CILICIA

Azg/arm
17 March 05

Under the auspices of His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and
Catholicos of All Armenians, and His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of
the Great House of Cilicia, a meeting of delegations of the
Catholicosate of All Armenians and the Catholicosate of the Great
House of Cilicia took place on March 4-5 in the Mother See of Holy
Etchmiadzin with the goal of the prosperity of the sacred mission of
the Armenian Church and the further strengthening of internal
solidarity. The purpose of the meeting was the preparation of a draft
agenda with the theme of “The Imperative for the Renewal of the
Armenian Church”.

The delegation members representing the Catholicosate of All Armenians
were:

His Eminence Archbishop Khajag Barsamian (Chairman)

His Grace Bishop Mikael Ajapahian (Secretary)

Mr. Rafael Papayan

Mr. James Kalustian

The delegation members representing the Catholicosate of the Great
House of Cilicia were:

His Eminence Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan (Chairman)

His Grace Bishop Nareg Alemezian (Secretary)

Mr. Yervand Pamboukian

Mr. Arsen Danielian

Rev. Fr. Vahram Melikian recorded the minutes of the meetings.

On Friday, March 4, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and
Catholicos of All Armenians, received the two delegations in the
Mother See. His Holiness gave his Pontifical blessing to the members
of the delegations andspoke of his and Catholicos Aram I’s
expectations of the meeting. ArchbishopOshagan Choloyan conveyed the
warm greetings of love of His Holiness Aram I and the filial respect
of the participants to His Holiness Karekin II.

Following the Lord’s Prayer and a reading from the Holy Bible (1
Corinthians 12:12-26), the meeting commenced, the result of which was
the preparation of the draft agenda.

Consisting of nine agenda items, it includes the primary spheres of
the identity, life and witness of the Armenian Church:

1. The canonical condition of the Armenian Church – ecclesiological,
administrative and canonical refinement.

2. Christian and Armenian education, evangelical mission and
preservation of spiritual and cultural values.

3. Liturgical and ritual life.

4. Preparation of clergy and reactivation of monastic life.

5. Ecumenical and Inter-religious relations.

6. Positions on modern social and moral issues.

7. Relations between Church and State; relations between Church and
Social Institutions.

8. Pursuit of the rights of the Armenian people.

9. Use of modern technologies.

Each aforementioned topic was discussed in detail as an initial step
for the further overall analysis and adoption of appropriate
measures. The meetings were conducted in a warm atmosphere of
Christian love, for the vigorous accomplishment of the multifaceted
mission of the Armenian Church in the Homeland and the Diaspora.

At the end of the meeting it was decided that the draft agenda will be
presented to His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians; and
His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, for
their consideration and filially petitioning them for the commission’s
work to proceed.

Warped advice blights American intervention
By Anatol Lieven

FT
March 16 2005 20:11

In Armenia in the late 1990s, I visited a very brave former Soviet
Armenian dissident. He had spent years in Soviet prison and his walls
were festooned with awards from western organisations devoted to
supporting democracy and human rights. Indeed, I have no reason to
doubt the sincerity of his commitment to Armenian democracy. But what
I mainly remember is his territorial vision. He believed that Armenia
should seek the annexation of the whole of eastern Turkey on the basis
of ancient historical and ethnic ties.

As many examples have made clear since the Soviet Union’s collapse,
the Soviet dissident movement had two starkly different faces, often
combined in the same person. Both were about freedom but very
different kinds of freedom. The first was about freedom for the
individual; the second, freedom for a particular nation.

Natan Sharansky, the Israeli government minister, has gained
considerable influence over George W. Bush thanks to his heroic past
as a Soviet dissident.

Mr Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy is one of the few works on
the Middle East that Mr Bush has read. According to Mr Bush himself,
Mr Sharansky has been a key inspiration for the US president’s
rhetoric of spreading democracy and freedom.

Tragically, however, Mr Sharansky’s record in Israel, and Mr Bush’s
apparent indifference to this record, demonstrate the almost Orwellian
contradictions in the US approach to the Muslim world. They also go to
the heart of European doubts about both the practicality and sincerity
of US progressive agendas in the Middle East. The grounds for such
doubts are especially worth recalling at present, given the short-term
exuberance produced by developments such as the Iraqi elections and
anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon. Mr Bush was first attracted to
Mr Sharansky by his noble record of resistance to Soviet tyranny,
which earned him years in Soviet jails. Today, however, Mr Sharansky
is a leader of the Soviet immigrant-based Yisrael Ba’aliyah party,
which takes a hard line on Palestinian demands and security issues,
and has supported the expansion of settlements.

In his book, Mr Sharansky writes that peace depends on the spread of
democracy and this should be driven by a coalition of all “free
nations” of the world. In his words: “The free world should not wait
for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform. We must be prepared to
move forward over their objections . . . we can live in a world where
no regime that attempts to crush dissent will be tolerated.”

Mr Sharansky’s demand for greater democracy is, of course, focused
foremost on the Palestinians. He said in February that he would be
prepared to give the Palestinians “all the rights in the world” once
they fully adopted democracy. The problem is that Mr Sharansky has
never said what land he would be willing to concede, even to a fully
democratic Palestinian state. His record in office, however, has
reflected utter contempt for the lives, property and well-being of
Palestinians, as well as for their opinions, whether democratically
expressed or not.

As Israel’s minister of Jerusalem affairs, Mr Sharansky decided last
June to interpret a 1950 law in such a way as to allow the Israeli
government without legal process to confiscate Palestinian land around
Jerusalem – a decision that has now been struck down by Israel’s
attorney general on the grounds that it is legally indefensible,
contrary to “the rules of customary international law” and bound to
encourage violence.

In writing of the need to bring democracy to the Arab world, Mr
Sharansky makes repeated parallels with America’s propagation of its
democratic message to the subject peoples of the Soviet Union and
eastern Europe. But the peoples of eastern Europe, the Baltic states
and the Caucasus had good reason to identify America and democracy not
only with personal freedom but with national liberation from Soviet
domination. Ask many ordinary Arabs which superpower today is playing
a role in the Middle East analogous to that of the Soviet Union in
eastern Europe and what answer would you get?

The parallel with eastern Europe therefore, far from being
encouraging, actually suggests the greatest problem faced by
proponents of westernising reform in the Middle East today: namely,
the immense difficulty they have in mobilising nationalism in support
of their programme.

Of course, were it possible for the US to act in the Muslim world as
it has done in eastern Europe, and to spread freedom and development,
this would indeed be a wonderful boon for the region and the
world. But none of this can possibly happen as long as the US is
identified both by Muslims and by Europeans with agendas such as Mr
Sharansky’s. If Mr Bush really wants to play a progressive role in the
region, he badly needs other sources of advice and inspiration.

* Natan Sharansky (with Ron Dermer), The Case for Democracy: The Power
of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (Public Affairs)

The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington DC; his latest book is America Right
or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (OUP/HarperCollins)

Talks with Armenia constructive – Georgian premier

Noyan Tapan news agency
12 Mar 05

Yerevan, 12 March: Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli, who
has paid a two-day working visit to Armenia, left for Georgia on 12
March. Asked by journalists at Zvartnots airport, Noghaideli pointed
out that the bilateral negotiations were constructive.

He said that at present, relations between the two countries are at a
level when not only current problems, but also programmes for the next
three-five years can be discussed. The Georgian prime minister thinks
that with this aim, the intergovernmental commission will soon hold a
meeting in Yerevan. Beginning from the next week, the two countries’
delegations will start working meetings, during which they will touch
on the issues that were discussed, including cooperation in the sphere
of energy.

Noghaideli said that this is the first meeting when representatives
of the Armenian Energy Ministry had no complaints about the Georgian
side. “As far as I remember, when I was a deputy and then finance
minister, the Armenian side had complaints during our meetings. We
can discuss not only the problems we had last year, but also the
tasks of further cooperation,” he said.

The Georgian prime minister pointed out that the commodity turnover
between the two countries had doubled over the last year, which,
however, cannot be called satisfactory for the time being. Although
the issue of railway tariffs was not discussed these days, the current
tariffs are nevertheless quite normal for the commodity turnover,
the prime minister thinks.

Noghaideli also assured the journalists that nothing is threatening
Armenian cultural-historical monuments in Georgia.

It must be noted that Noghaideli visited the Holy See of Echmiadzin
and met Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II before his departure.

Azeri TV reports more Armenian truce violations

ANS TV, Baku
12 Mar 05

[Presenter] The Armenian armed forces fired at Azerbaijani positions
in Tartar and Agdam Districts today.

[Passage omitted: The same districts were shelled yesterday as well]

[Correspondent] Quoting local residents, our reporter in the ANS
Karabakh bureau reports that the fire from machine guns and assault
rifles intensified between 0600 and 0700 [0200 and 0300 gmt] this
morning. No casualties are reported. From 1345 to 1415 [from 0945
to 1045 gmt] today, Tartar’s village of Qapanli came under fire from
SPK grenade launchers.

[Passage omitted: minor details]

billingsgazette.com
March 11, 2005
Last modified March 11, 2005 – 8:28 am

Tie to illegal degrees doesn’t block school licensing
By MEAD GRUVER
Associated Press

CHEYENNE — Wyoming licensed a Laramie-based online school last year even as
its owner helped direct a Hawaii online school that was offering illegal
medical degrees and was later shut down by a judge.

The owner of American Central University, Adalat Khan, was the Malaysian
regional director for American University of Hawaii, a fact that Wyoming
education officials concede they overlooked in the documents Khan provided
on his background.

As a result, nearly eight months into an ultimately successful lawsuit filed
by Hawaii’s Office of Consumer Protection to get American University of
Hawaii shut down, the Wyoming officials offered no objection when the
Wyoming Board of Education unanimously licensed American Central in April.

And American Central has been an Education Department headache ever since.

For not having even one qualified instructor in Wyoming, the agency prepared
last fall to pull the school’s license — only to have the process bog down
while state attorneys deliberate how to do that.

“The whole thing is in legal turmoil,” said Phil Kautz, the department’s
private school licensing manager, of American Central’s status now.

Khan and an employee of the school in Laramie, Marcia Edwards, declined to
comment.

Khan runs a school in Perak, Malaysia, called the Mina Management Institute.
For a time, American Central and American University of Hawaii were listed
next to each other on the Mina Management Institute Web site as
“distinguished partners” of the institute.

Hawaii’s Office of Consumer Protection sued American University of Hawaii in
August 2003, alleging it illegally offered medical degrees. A judge ordered
the school shut down in January.

Because Wyoming requires private schools to disclose whether any of their
officials has ever had a license suspended, revoked or not renewed,
Education Department officials say Khan may have been required to tell them
he worked for American University of Hawaii.

Khan was certainly required to open up about his work with American
University of Hawaii after the judge closed the school in January, according
to Fred Hansen, the department’s finance director and another of its private
school licensing officials.

“He should have disclosed,” he said.

But while Khan didn’t mention American University of Hawaii in the
department’s licensing forms, he did say he was the school’s Malaysian
regional director in the third sentence of a career summary he provided to
the department.

“I’m not sure we caught that sentence,” Hansen said.

Khan also provided a copy of his 1999 doctorate in business administration
from American University of Hawaii. Although Hansen knew American University
of Hawaii was unaccredited, that was not enough of a stain on Khan’s record
to prevent licensing.

The nonaccreditation may have seemed relatively insignificant compared with
the charges that the school offered illegal degrees.

The medical degree was offered through Yerevan State Medical University in
Armenia. In Hawaii, it’s illegal for a school that’s unrecognized by the
American Medical Association to offer medical degrees.

The lawsuit also accused American University of Hawaii of two other
violations of Hawaii law: offering law degrees despite no American Bar
Association accreditation and not maintaining enrollment of 25 students in
Hawaii.

District Judge Shackley F. Raffetto not only ordered American University of
Hawaii to quit doing business and shut down its Web site, he ordered it to
pay the state $500,000.

“It was such an easy case because the promotional materials and documents
spoke for themselves,” said Jeffrey Brunton, a Hawaii Office of Consumer
Protection attorney.

He said it was one of the larger schools of its kind in Hawaii, enrolling
and graduating thousands of students, mainly from other countries.

The school’s Web site shut down last month. It briefly resurfaced with an
address in Clinton, Miss., but as of Thursday wasn’t active.

Hansen said he would bring up Khan’s work with American University of Hawaii
at the Wyoming Board of Education’s next meeting, in Saratoga in May, and
said it could be grounds for pulling American Central’s license.

Department spokeswoman Deborah Hinckley said the department wants to require
accreditation for all Wyoming schools. Lawmakers in January briefly
discussed requiring accreditation but set the issue aside for study over the
interim.

2005 The Sports Network

Romania

Iordanescu steps down as Romania coach
11/19 12:51:00 ET

Bucharest, Romania (Sports Network) – Anghel Iordanescu resigned as
coach of Romania Friday following Wednesday’s disappointing 1-1 World
Cup qualifying draw with Armenia.

The point was the first for Armenia in five matches, but Romania was
decimated by injuries and suspensions. Romania is still in position
to qualify for Germany 2006 as they have 10 points from five matches.

“I respect Romanian football fans and because I respect them, I
decided to quit,” said Iordanescu, 54. “I stepped down in order to
allow a better atmosphere around the national team, because without
a good atmosphere, you cannot achieve something great.”

Iordanescu previously coached Romania from 1993-98, leading the
squad to the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 1994 and the finals
of EURO 1996.

IN LATE APRIL U.S. EMBASSY IN ARMENIA TO CELEBRATES NEW HOME

YEREVAN, MARCH 10. ARMINFO. In later April early May U.S. Embassy
in Armenia will move to a new building. A resource in the diplomatic
mission of the United States to Armenia informed ARMINFO.

According to the resource, the construction works in the new building
of the embassy on the avenue after Admiral Isakov is coming to the
end. The whole staff of the embassy will move to the new building.

It should be noted that the new building of the U.S. Embassy in
yerevan is one of the largest buildings of the American diplomatic
mission all over the world.

Analysis: Georgia Parliament Ups Ante On Russian Bases
By Liz Fuller

RFERL
10 March 05

Deputies in Georgia’s parilament voted unanimously on 10 March to
call on the government to effectively blockade the bases if the two
countries do not agree on their removal by mid-May.

Under an agreement signed at the OSCE Istanbul Summit in November
1999, Russia undertook to close by 1 July 2000 its military bases in
Vaziani, near Tbilisi, and Gudauta, Abkhazia, and to begin talks with
the Georgian leadership in 2000 on the timeframe for closing its two
remaining bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki. Russia complied with first
of those commitments, and embarked as required on talks on shutting
down the latter two bases.

But in the course of those talks, Russian officials have consistently
argued that a lengthy time period is required to build housing in
Russia for the troops to be withdrawn from Georgia. (That argument is
specious insofar as many of the personnel at the base in Akhalkalaki
are in fact ethnic Armenians who are citizens of Georgia.) Initially,
Russian officials said they needed 15 years to close the bases, then
14; that figure was revised downward to 11, and then eight years,
according to Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli on 9 March.

After the Georgian and Russian sides failed during Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Tbilisi last month to make any
progress toward solving either the deadlock over the bases or any
of the problems bedeviling bilateral relations, it was agreed to
establish working groups to seek to narrow the disagreements and
report on 1 May to the countries’ two presidents. Those working groups
will focus on six issues, including the proposed framework treaty
on friendship and cooperation and the timeframe for the closure of
the two bases.”If Russia rejects or refuses to met that deadline,
the Georgian parliament would declare the bases illegal and measures
would be taken to prevent them from functioning: Georgia would,
for example, decline to issue visas to Russian military personnel.”

Despite that agreement, Givi Targamadze, chairman of the Georgian
parliament’s Defense and Security Committee, announced within days of
Lavrov’s departure that the two remaining Russian bases should close by
1 January 2006 at the latest. On 25 February, parliament speaker Nino
Burdjanadze suggested that the Georgian leadership might declare the
Russian bases illegal if an agreement is not reached soon on a date
for their closure. Then on 7 March, parliament deputy Giga Bokeria
unveiled a draft bill that would require Russia to agree formally by
15 May to close the two remaining bases by 1 January 2006. If Russia
rejects or refuses to met that deadline, the Georgian parliament would
declare the bases illegal and measures would be taken to prevent them
from functioning: Georgia would, for example, decline to issue visas
to Russian military personnel.

Bokeria’s draft bill appeared to take the Georgian leadership by
surprise. ITAR-TASS on 8 March quoted parliament speaker Burdjanadze as
telling the independent television station Rustavi-2 that parliament
should not adopt such a bill until after the expiry of the two months
agreed by Moscow and Tbilisi to try and reach a compromise. President
Mikheil Saakashvili also implicitly cautioned the parliament against
adopting the bill. He reaffirmed on 8 March Georgia’s “crystal-clear”
position that the bases should be closed, but proposed waiting to
see whether it is possible to reach an agreement with Russia within
the two month period, as did Prime Minister Noghaideli. Parliament
was scheduled to debate the draft bill on 9 March, but postponed the
debate until 10 March at Burdjanadze’s request.

On 8 March, a senior Russian military official condemned the planned
debate as an attempt at blackmail, and on 9 March the Russian Foreign
Ministry warned that the debate would make it more difficult for the
two sides to reach the hoped-for compromise agreement. “The Russian
side will shortly submit its proposals aimed at finding solutions to
existing problems,” the Foreign Ministry statement continued.

In what have may have been a deliberate leak intended to defuse
mounting tensions, on 10 March, izvestiya.ru quoted an unnamed Russian
Defense Ministry official as saying that Russia does not want to keep
the bases in Georgia forever, but their personnel will be redeployed
to the Caucasus to serve in a new mountain rifle division which will
be formed only three or four years from now. While that time frame
might appeal to the Georgian leadership — in that the bases would
theoretically have been closed prior to the expiry of Saakashvili’s
first presidential term — it may not be enough to mollify the
parliament. And that anonymous statement represents a clear retreat
from earlier Russian arguments in favor of simply renaming one or
both bases an “anti-terrorism center.”

Meanwhile, the Georgian State Employment Agency is already addressing
the problem of providing employment for the Armenians who currently
account for up to one third of the personnel at the Akhalkalaki base,
and who are already expressing unease at the prospects of losing
their livelihood in a region with few employment opportunities. The
Georgian daily “Rezonansi” on 10 March quoted the agency’s chairman,
Levan Peradze, as saying that a job-creation program is in the works,
and he suggested some of the personnel in question may find jobs
in private security services. And Goga Khachidze, who was recently
named governor of the Djavakheti region where the Akhalkalaki base
is located, pledged the same day that the Georgian leadership will
do everything possible to ensure that its closure “is painless”
for the local Armenian population.

As the Georgian authorities have failed consistently to deliver on
earlier promises to improve conditions in the remote, mountainous
and impoverished region, the Armenians are understandably skeptical.
David Rstakian, leader of the Virk party that represents the local
Armenian community, was quoted by Caucasus Press on 10 March as
saying, “The Armenians of Javakheti will do all they can to prevent
the Russian troops from leaving Akhalkalaki. If Russia refuses to
pull out its troops, it may need our help.”

That help, he implied, would be willingly offered