Author: Emil Lazarian

President: Azerbaijan’s patience on Nagorno-Karabakh limited
.c The Associated Press
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliev said Friday
that the ex-Soviet nation still hopes to settle the long-running
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through talks, but added that its patience
was running out and called for a military buildup.
“Our patience has limits,” Aliev said in a speech to youth
organizations in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. “I am absolutely
convinced that if we want to get our lands back on the basis of a fair
peace, we need to pay big attention to building up our military.”
Aliev previously has made similar statements while campaigning for the
ruling New Azerbaijan party in the run-up to the Nov. 6 parliamentary
elections. The statements are an apparent response to the
opposition’s claim that a change in government is necessary to win
back control over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed enclave that has been
under the control of Armenian separatists since the early 1990s.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan budgeted over US$300 million (euro248 million) for
defense this year and is set to double its defense spending next
year. In comparison, Armenia’s defense budget for next year is
equivalent to US$150 million (euro124 million).
Aliev on Friday pledged to make Azerbaijan’s defense budget equivalent
to the entire Armenian state budget, adding that it will help regain
control over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains high more than a decade
after a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year war that left
Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenian hands. Some 30,000 people were killed and
1 million displaced. The lack of a resolution of the enclave’s status
has impeded economic development in the region.
10/14/05 15:08 EDT

Noyan Tapan News Agency
Oct 14 2005
TURKISH LAWYER CONSIDERS PUNISHMENT IMPOSED ON HRANT DINK TO BE
INSUFFICIENT
ISTANBUL, OCTOBER 14, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The lawyer of
Mehmed Soykan, a party involved in the legal proceedings against
Hrant Dink, editor of the “Akos” Armenian newspaper of Istanbul,
submitted a claim to Turkish Cassation Court insisting that the
punishment of 6 months imposed on Hrant Dink and the delay of the
punishment contradicts the laws. As the “Marmara” daily informs
referring to the “Anatolu” agency, the lawyer insists that the court
had no right to impose a minimum punishment and to delay it. The
lawyer also reminded that another legal proceedings against Hrant
Dink continues in Urfa.
To recap, by the decision of the court Hrant Dink was convicted to 6
months’ imprisonment for “insulting the national originality of the
Turks.” At the same time, in consideration of defendant’s model
behaviour during the trial, the court delayed the punishment, which
means that Dink won’t be imprisoned unless he repeats what he has
done.
In an article published in early 2004 Dink applied to Armenians
calling up them to “give up hatred towards Turks, which poisons your
blood.”

SETTLEMENT REACHED IN GENOCIDE SUIT
By Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff Writer
Pasadena Star News, CA
Oct 14 2005
LOS ANGELES — A French insurance company has agreed to pay $17
million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by descendants of
Armenians killed in the early 20th century in what is now Turkey.
French insurance giant AXA also agreed to call the killings genocide,
an important term to Armenians trying to call attention to what they
say were organized murders of more than a million people between 1915
and the early 1920s.
“Anytime we’re able to bring attention to the genocide is significant,”
said Brian Kabateck, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys.
“Because the rest of the world needs to understand what happened and
the rest of the world needs to focus on an ultimate resolution of
the genocide, which is recognition by the United States government
and the Turkish government.”
Between 2,000 and 5,000 policies are believed to be covered by the
settlement, including many in Southern California’s large Armenian
community, although the final number has yet to be determined.
AXA was sued because it bought L’Union Des Assurances de Paris, the
company that sold policies to Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.
The $17 million AXA settlement will be presented to a federal judge
in Los Angeles next month for final approval. It is similar to one
reached last year in which New York Life agreed to pay $20 million
to resolve litigation arising from its failure to pay Armenian
policyholders’ relatives.
One key difference is that in its settlement AXA would follow the
French government’s lead in describing the events of 1915 to the
early 1920s as genocide.
Armenians estimate that 1.5 million died when Armenian civilians living
in the Ottoman Empire were forced from their homes or otherwise killed
during and after World War I. The United States government and Turkey
have not officially called the event a genocide, and Turkey argues
that the number is exaggerated.
“I am not belittling their ordeal during that relocation: many
perished, many terrible things happened, that’s true,” said Engin
Ansay, the Turkish consul general in Los Angeles. “But it was not a
government decision or any decision on the part of the authorities
to annihilate one whole nation.”
The case against AXA
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was brought on behalf of several lead plaintiffs living in the San
Fernando Valley. One was Anik Arabian, who brought her uncle’s life
insurance policy with her to America, but who died after the lawsuit
was filed in 2002.
Arabian was born in Greece, where her parents had landed after being
driven into the desert. Many of her family died in what is now Syria,
then a part of the Ottoman Empire.
“They were burying their kids with their bare hands, my grandfather and
grandmother they buried … six of them,” said son Vagram Topadzhikyan,
60, of Glendale.
Under the AXA settlement, money from an $11 million fund will be paid
to the closest relative of a policyholder on the company’s list.
Another $3 million will go to Armenian charitable organizations in
France, and another $3 million for administrative and legal fees.
“We believe that this settlement is in the best interest of AXA Group
and all of its stakeholders, and we are pleased to put this matter
behind us,” said AXA spokeswoman Joann Tizzano.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers were Kabateck, Mark Geragos and Vartkes
Yeghiayan, who are all of Armenian descent and also brought the case
against New York Life.
The AXA settlement sets aside the same amount for claims payment and
charity as the New York Life settlement. The only difference is the
amount earmarked for legal and administrative fees was halved in the
AXA case.
The deadline to file a claim in the New York Life settlement passed on
March 16, and the claims are being analyzed. The company had agreed
to pay on 2,400 policies, but claims were filed on 1,600 of them,
which means the amount that would have been paid on the remaining
claims will be added to the charity fund.
Some policies might have gone unclaimed because their holders were
unaware of the settlement, or because all the potential claimants died.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RECOGNITION FOR PINTER’S WORLD – SLIPPERY AND VERY, VERY ENGLISH
By Dalya Alberge
The Times, UK
Oct 14 2005
Highest honour for the man who made silence an art form
Harold Pinter outside his London home yesterday (KIERAN
DOHERTY/REUTERS)
HE HAS been showered with awards and is revered worldwide, but Harold
Pinter, one of Britain’s greatest playwrights, received the ultimate
accolade yesterday – the $1.3 million (£743,000) Nobel Prize for
Literature.
At the age of 75, he is following in the footsteps of Saul Bellow,
Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw, among winners of the world’s
most prestigious literary honour.
Pinter, who broke the mould of British theatre in the 1960s, turned
silence into an artform with brooding dramas.
His classics for screen and stage, including The Caretaker, The
Homecoming and The Servant, have stood the test of time, influencing
a generation of British dramatists and introduced a new word to the
English language, Pinteresque, to convey an atmospheric silence.
This month the Swedish Academy decision to give the Nobel Peace Prize
to Mohamed ElBaradei was seen as a slap in the face for the US.
Now it has awarded the Literature Prize to a radical and unrelenting
critic of America and its war in Iraq and of the Government of
Tony Blair. Pinter, who has never been afraid to speak his mind on
the political stage, has denounced the Prime Minister as “a hired
Christian thug” and President Bush as a “mass murderer”.
Pinter said yesterday that he was “overwhelmed” and, speaking to
reporters outside his London home, took the opportunity to attack
the Government over the Iraq war. “I have written 29 plays and I
think that’s really enough,” he said after a champagne celebration
with his wife Lady Antonia Fraser at their home. “I think the world
has had enough of my plays. I shall certainly be writing more poetry
and I’ll certainly remain deeply engaged in the question of political
structures in this world.” The writer has been recovering from cancer
of the oesophagus.
Leaning on a cane outside and sporting a bandaged head after a fall,
he continued: “I think the world is going down the drain if we’re
not very careful,” he said. “Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude
of Western democracies to the rest of the world.” He also hinted that
he would use the 45-minute acceptance speech to attack the war in Iraq.
“I intend to say whatever it is I think. I may well address the state
of the world.”
The academy said that it had singled out Pinter, “who, in his plays,
uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into
oppression’s closed rooms”.
Once again, the academy has opened the debate on the political nature
of a prize for literature. This year’s announcement was delayed
for a week after the 15 active academy members were reported to
have disagreed over whether to anoint Orhan Pamuk, the Turk who has
campaigned for recognition that Turkey committed genocide against
the Armenians after the First World War. A prize for him would have
angered Turkey, it was feared.
Part of the problem lies with the prize founder himself. Alfred Nobel,
who died in 1896, decreed in his will that the literature prize should
go to “the person who shall have produced . . . the most outstanding
work in an ideal direction”, a phrase that has confounded everyone
since.
News of Pinter’s win sent a flurry of excitement through the British
publishing and theatre worlds, if not Downing Street or the White
House. There was also a sense of relief that they knew his work. Year
after year, there has been a Pinteresque pause from publishers before
they ask, “Who?”, and confess to never having heard of the winner.
Some of Britain’s leading playwrights were among those leading the
applause yesterday.
The Oscar-winning writer Sir Tom Stoppard said: “With his earliest
work he stood alone in British theatre up against the bewilderment
and incomprehension of critics, the audience and writers, too.”
Sir David Hare, whose dramas include Stuff Happens, about the Iraq
war, said the academy had made a brilliant choice: “Not only has
Pinter written some of the outstanding plays of his time, he has
also blown fresh air into the musty attic of conventional English
literature by insisting that everything he does has a public and
political dimension.”
Pinter also follows in the footsteps of Sir V. S. Naipaul who, in
2001, became the first British author to win the prize since William
Golding in 1983.
Born the son of a Jewish tailor in East London in 1930, Pinter was a
rebel from an early age, declaring himself a conscientious objector
and refusing to do national service. He began his acting career in
provincial theatres. The Caretaker established him as a commercial
and critical success, making him one of Britain’s foremost dramatists.
LOUD APPLAUSE
“He had incredible tenacity as a director, expressed perhaps best
through his profound irritation at the old Royal Court’s squeaky
chairs, which blighted many a performance.”
Stephen Daldry, former artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre
“He’s very pedantic, famously so. Words don’t get changed, lines
don’t get changed. He really believes in the text.”
James Fox, who starred in Pinter’s classic, The Servant
“My two favourites are Landscape and Silence. I just thought, and
still do, they are the most beautiful poetic dramas, full of the pain
of lost memory.”
Ian Brown, artistic director of West Yorkshire Playhouse
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SEVAN-HRAZDAN CASCADE FIGURES RELEASED
International Water Power and Dam Construction, UK
Oct 14 2005
The Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade in Armenia generated 475MkWh of
hydroelectricity in the first nine months of this year, unchanged
as compared with the same period in 2004, according to the Interfax
news agency.
Full-year production this year is expected to reach 510MkWh, as
compared with 532.5MkWh in 2004.
Armenia’s public services commission is considering a request by the
International Energy Corporation (IEC) to acquire a US$24M loan from
Germany’s KfW bank for the modernisation of the Yerevan hydro electric
pant, which is part of the Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade.
The IEC, which is part of Russia’s Unified Energy Systems (UES), must
receive permission from the public services commission to receive
the loan under Armenia’s energy legislation.
The IEC was established in May 2003 to operate the Sevan-Hrazdan
Cascade. The Cascade, which has a total installed capacity of 556MW,
comprises six hydroelectric power plants built in the 1930-1962 period.
;storyCode=2031823
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WITH THE DEVELOPMENT GOAL OF ARMENIAN-UKRAINIAN TIES
National Assembly of RA, Armenia
Oct 14 2005
On October 13 RA NA President Artur Baghdasaryan received Oleksandr
Bozhko, the newly appointed Ambassador plenipotentiary and
extraordinary of the Republic of Ukraine to Armenia.
During the meeting the development issues of Armenian-Ukrainian
inter-parliamentary and interstate relations were discussed. Mr.
Bozhko expressed his gladness on the occasion of being re-appointed
an ambassador in Armenia and noted that the development of the
ties between two parliaments will be in the basis of his diplomacy
mission. By the Ambassador’s estimation the two countries have chosen
the way of Euro Integration and have a great impetus for mutual
promotion, especially the legislative experience of Armenia can
be useful for Ukraine on its way to become a member of World Trade
Organization. The Ukrainian experience will help Armenia in the sense
of the constitutional reforms. The cooperation was also mutually
highlighted in the sense of deepening the trade-economic ties. The
Ambassador presented the Parliament President the inter-political
situation of Ukraine.
During the meeting they touched upon the constitutional reforms of
Armenia, Mr. Bozhko highlighted the adoption of the reforms, as a
response, the NA President noted that the referendum day is already
fixed on November 27,and there are all preconditions that through
pan-democratic agreement Armenia will make a step forward on the
way of deepening the democracy and Euro-Integration. The Parliament
President highlighted the strengthening of the ties of the Supreme
Rada with the National Assembly and the cooperation at new level –
already at the inter-parliamentary level.
During the meeting they also touched upon other issues of mutual
interest.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SYNOPSIS BUYS SHARES OF HPL COMPANY
By Tamar Minasian
AZG Armenian Daily #185
14/10/2005
Synopsis, which functions in Armenia since last year, has recently
declared that it is going to buy the shares of HPL company paying $
13 million for them. 350 engineers and 150 students work at “Synopsis
Armenia.” HPL company was founded in 1995, in Armenia and was the first
branch among the foreign companies working in Armenia. Richard Goldman,
head of “Synopsis Armenia,” said that they created a very comfortable
atmosphere for the companies dealing with informational technologies.
Hovik Musaelian, executive head of “Synopsis Armenia,” said that it’s
quite a normal phenomenon when a leading company merges with another
one in the market of competition. He emphasized the importance of
this case for Armenia from the aspect of the regional developments.
Synopsis works out technologies that would avert drawbacks in
producing.
Today, the production period lasts 18-20 months. The new approaches
and the experience elaborated and accumulated by HPL will allow
shorten this period.
Rich Goldman hopes that this deal will make the work of “Synopsis”
more effective, as they will use the unique technologies of HPL and
the talented team of specialists. Brain Golden, deputy head of HPL,
expressed hope that Synopsis will become very competitive in the
world and create new jobs in Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

GEORGIAN SECTION OF BAKU-CEYHAN OIL PIPELINE OPENS
AZG Armenian Daily #185
14/10/2005
On October 12, the leaders of Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan
witnessed the opening of the Georgian section of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline.
According to Novosti agency, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia
emphasized that the pipeline is firstly of political importance. “The
importance of Georgia grows on the world map. Next year, we’ll have
a gas pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzrum) that will also contribute to
Georgia’s economic and energetic independence,” Saakashvili said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LEVITIN: RAO UES WILL FURTHER PROMOTE ENERGY GRIDS OF ARMENIA
Pan Armenian
14.10.2005 00:06 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The matter of RAO UES participation in development
of energy grids of Armenia was discussed in the course of meetings
of Co-Chair of the Armenian-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission for
Economic Cooperation, Russian Minister of Transport Igor Levitinwith
Armenian President and PM, Levitin reported at a Press briefing in
Yerevan today. He reported RAO UES is a participant of an energy
holding, operating in Armenia. RAO UES will continue dealing with
development of energy grids and generation of additional electric
power, he also confirmed. “As of Iran-Armenia gas pipeline, the matter
was also discussed and we understand Armenian party’s actions. I
consider these logical and correct in the situation that is available
between Gazprom and RAO UES and the Armenian party,” I. Levitin stated.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU ENVOY HOPES FOR “BREAKTHROUGH” IN ARMENIAN-TURKISH BORDER PROBLEM
ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Oct 13 2005
Yerevan, 13 October, ARMINFO: The opening of the borders with Armenia
does not only arise from Turkey’s economic interests but also from the
interests of the European Union [EU], the head of the EU delegation in
Armenia and Georgia, Torben Holtze, has told an Arminfo correspondent.
He said that Turkey also realizes the necessity of opening borders
with Armenia and the frequent statements by Turkish representatives
on a need for lifting the blockade of the borders show this. The
envoy expressed the hope that a “breakthrough” will be marked in the
opening of the Armenian-Turkish borders within the next six months.
“I think we shall soon eyewitness the opening of the Armenian-Turkish
borders despite the fact that this is a very complicated and even an
emotional issue,” Holtze said.
He pointed out that the EU is making every effort for the establishment
of the regional cooperation and is not only interested in the
opening of the Armenian-Turkish but also the Armenian-Azerbaijani
borders. Nevertheless, he said that for the time being, we cannot
say that the Armenian-Turkish borders are fully closed as flights
between Yerevan and Istanbul are regular and Turkish lorries deliver
goods to Armenia via Georgia or the other way round.