Author: Emil Lazarian

Khatami arrives in Yerevan
IRNA, Iran
Sept 8 2004
Yerevan, Sept 8, IRNA — President Mohammad Khatami arrived here
Wednesday morning on the first leg of a tri-country regional tour.
On hand to welcome him on his arrival at Yerevan int`l airport was
Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markaryan.
Khatami is to be given an official state welcome in the next few
hours by Armenian officials headed by the country`s President Robert
Kocharian.
Khatami`s official visit to Armenia is taking place in return for
an official visit made by President Kocharian to Iran in 2001.
The visit, it is believed, could open new phases of cooperation
between the two countries.
He will also be visiting Belarus and Tajikistan.
Heading a high-ranking delegation, Khatami`s one-week regional tour
is on the official invitation of his counterparts Robert Kocharian,
Aleksandr Lukashenko and Emomali Rakhmonov of Armenia, Belarus and
Tajikistan, respectively.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, Energy Minister Habibollah Bitaraf,
Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Safdar Hosseini and
Commerce Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari are accompanying President
Khatami in this regional tour.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OSCE monitors Armenian-Azeri contact line
Mediamax news agency
7 Sep 04
Yerevan, 7 September: An OSCE mission carried out routine monitoring
today on the contact line between the armed forces of the Nagornyy
Karabakh Republic [NKR] and Azerbaijan, in the east of Martuni
[Xocavand] District of the NKR.
A Mediamax special correspondent reported from Stepanakert [Xankandi]
that the monitoring had gone in line with the schedule and no
cease-fire violations had been registered.
>>From the positions of the NKR Defence Army, monitoring was carried
out by field assistants to the personal representative of the OSCE
chairmen-in-office [Andrzej Kasprzyk].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Xinhua News Agency – French
7 septembre 2004 mardi 5:01 PM EST
Tête-à-tête à Paris entre les présidents azerbaïdjanais et français
PARIS
Le président de l’Azerbaïdjan Ilham Aliev, arrivé mardi après-midi à
Paris pour une visite de travail de deux jours en France, a été reçu
pendant plus d’une heure par le president français Jacques Chirac au
palais de l’Elysée, a annoncé le service de presse de la présidence.
Mais ce service de presse n’a donné aucune indication sur la teneur
de leur entretien qui s’est déroulé en tête-à-tête.
La France est le troisième partenaire commercial de cette ancienne
république soviétique du Caucase riche en pétrole et à population en
majorité musulmane. Elle co-préside avec les Etats- Unis et la Russie
le “Groupe de Minsk” qui tente depuis dix ans de régler le conflit
qui oppose l’Azerbaïdjan à l’Arménie voisine à propos du
Nagorny-Karabakh, un conflit qui déstabilise une région stratégique
par laquelle transite le pétrole de la mer Caspienne, selon la
presentation du site internet du Quai d’Orsay.
Selon l’Elysée, M. Aliev doit d’ailleurs rencontrer à Paris le
co-président français du groupe de Minsk, l’ambassadeur Henry
Jacolin, afin de préparer la rencontre à la mi-septembre des trois
co-présidents avec les présidents arménien et azerbaïdjanais.
Le président d’Azerbaïdjan est accompagné de son épouse Mehriban, qui
doit être nommée jeudi ambassadeur de bonne volonté de l’Unesco,
l’organe culturel des Nations unies, dont le siège est à Paris.

MEETING WITH THE NKR PRESIDENT
Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
7 Sept 04
On September 4 NKR president Arkady Ghukassian met with Armenian
benefactors from America Karapet, Saro and Narek Harutyunian. During
the warm talk in which Prime Minister Anoushavan Danielian and the
head of the Agency for Migration, Refugees and Resettlement Serge
Amirkhanian also took part, the guests informed the president on the
programs implemented in Nagorni Karabakh on their means. These are
the building of the boarding school in Gandzassar, the Art Center of
Shoushi, and restoration of the new village Knaravan in Karvachar.
According to Karapet Harutyunian, the school building and 15 houses
have been built in the village already. The benefactors plan to finance
the construction of another 30 houses, as well as the buildings of
the municipality, the surgery and the cultural center. They also plan
to implement programs of developing such branches of agriculture as
beekeeping and cattle breeding. Highly appreciating the contribution
of the family Harutyunian to the post-war restoration of Artsakh,
Arkady Ghukassian also pointed out the importance of further promotion
of the relationships between NKR and the Armenian Diaspora as one
of the conditions of further development of Nagorni Karabakh. At
the meeting were present the president of the Armenian union of
public organizations “Yerkir” Sevak Artsruni and Australian Armenian
entrepreneur Hakob Abulakian.
AA.
07-09-2004
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

100 years and counting her accomplishments
By Monica Deady / CNC Staff Writer
Daily News Tribune, MA
Sept 7 2004
WATERTOWN — After just celebrating her 100th birthday, Norma Karaian
doesn’t talk much anymore. But she doesn’t have to. All that she has
accomplished since she was born on Sept. 6, 1904, stands for itself.
Dressed in a yellow jacket and skirt, sitting regally in a living room
chair, Karaian adds a few thoughts to the story of her life that her
daughter, Marilyn Hollisian, tells.
“I am very happy,” Karaian said, repeatedly kissing Hollisian on the
cheek as she spoke.
Hollisian told the story of a woman who was born in Providence,
R.I., the youngest of five children, who was going to be a teacher,
but instead decided to become a lawyer, the first female Armenian
lawyer in Massachusetts.
“She knew right from the beginning that that’s what she wanted to do,”
said Hollisian, acting principal of the Lowell School.
In 1925, Karaian graduated from Boston University Law School at age
20, as one of 12 women and 200 men. She waited until she was 21 to
take the bar exam, Hollisian said.
By 1927, she had secured a job as a real estate attorney and often
did freelance legal work or pro bono work for friends.
Karaian was a mother to three children, and was widowed when her
husband, Leo, died in 1947, 10 years after they were married, but
Hollisian said her mother was always on top of things, never allowing
them to watch television, making sure they did their homework and
taking them on vacations in the summer in a 1951 Chevrolet stick shift.
She remembers her mother taking public transportation to work in
downtown Boston every day, saying it makes her think her mother is
“physically strong.” Hollisian said her mom attributes her long
life to what she calls “good family stock” and eating healthy food,
as well as a flexible and adaptable attitude.
“She just doesn’t let things bother her,” Hollisian said.
Karaian worked as the head of real estate, her specialty, at the
Boston firm Gaston Snow, where she worked until they went bankrupt.
She was 88, Hollisian said, when she stopped working.
George Dallas, who worked with Karaian at the firm, said he remembers
her telling stories about how her mother and brother escaped from
Armenia during the genocide, and how she always took an interest in
teaching the young lawyers who cycled through the office.
“I think the wealth of her life experience and her gumption are just
wonderful examples, because I’m sure when she started out practices and
the discrimination against women lawyers and women in the workplace was
formidable and she rose about all that, found her niche and practiced
law,” Dallas said.
As Hollisian shows all of her mother’s awards, Karaian reads from
a small book from the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers,
of which she was president from 1954 to 1955.
“She reads without glasses,” Hollisian whispered, shaking her head
in marvel.
Karaian has won several awards and honors in her lifetime, including
an honor from the Armenian Law Society, recognition from the Boston Bar
Association and the Massachusetts Bar Association and a 1993-94 Leading
Women’s Award from the Patriots Trails Council of the Girls Scouts.
In addition, the Watertown Book Award is given annually by Jelalian
family in Karaian’s name to a graduating Watertown high school Armenian
student who is interested in law.
Hollisian said she still takes her mother to have her nails and
hair done.
“She was always impeccably dressed and impeccable about herself,”
Hollisian said. “She was a real pioneer. Before her time. A role
model for so many different women.”
Monica Deady can be reached at [email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Polish president grateful to Armenia for Iraqi multinational troops offer
PAP news agency
6 Sep 04
Warsaw, 6 September: After meeting Armenian President Robert Kocharian,
who is in Warsaw on an official visit, [Polish] President Aleksander
Kwasniewski has said that Poland is grateful for his declaration to
send Armenian troops to the multinational division which is under
the Polish command in Iraq.
“We appreciate this fact; we know that these are very difficult,
yet inevitable, decisions to make at the time when joint effort and
solidarity are needed to combat terrorism,” the president said at a
press conference.
[Passage omitted].
According to Kwasniewski, Polish-Armenian relations are “in a great
shape”. He added that a “basis for a treaty” had been established
that would enable a closer cooperation, especially an economic one.
Today, the agreements that were signed in the presence of the two
presidents included ones about cooperation in defence and combating
organized crime.
According to the president of Armenia, Poland’s EU entry “is giving
a new dimension to our cooperation”. Armenia wants to take advantage
of Poland’s experiences in the economic transformation and adoption
of laws to EU norms.
[Passage omitted].

Traitor deprived of citizenship
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 6 2004
Baku, September 3, AssA-Irada
Alikram Humbatov, who was released from life imprisonment by a
presidential decree on Friday, has been deprived of Azerbaijani
citizenship.
Humbatov, who was not military trained and managed to receive the
rank of colonel within a short period thanks to his foreign supporters
and former defense minister Rahim Gaziyev, is noted with his handing
over the positions of the Azerbaijani military units in Garabagh to
Armenians and committing crimes against local residents. Humbatov,
who was collaborating with special service bodies of foreign countries,
which were against Azerbaijan’s independence and, who declared himself
the president of the self-proclaimed “Talish Mughan Republic” in
the summer of 1993, was sentenced to life imprisonment after Heydar
Aliyev came to power. Gaziyev played “a great role” in carrying out
Humbatov’s separatist actions.*

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
September 05, 2004, Sunday
Rock CDs
By James Delingpole
Kasabian Kasabian (RCA, pounds 12.99). Leicester’s Kasabian think
they’re the new guardians of British rock ‘n’ roll. ‘The Stones,
Zeppelin, the Pistols, the Gallaghers, we’re in that line,’ says
their singer Tom, and the damnedest thing is he might just be right:
not since Oasis can I recall a debut of quite such magnificent verve
and swagger.
They’re not as tight or clever as Franz Ferdinand, but then that’s
not their point: Kasabian (named after Charles Manson’s female getaway
driver – her surname means ‘butcher’ in Armenian) represent the bummed,
druggy, louche end of rock. It’s impossible to play them without
wanting to load up on drink and drugs and spend all night dancing,
which is what apparently goes on quite a lot on the 600-acre farm
where they live, record and throw free festivals.
They’ve got the cocky slouchiness and shuffling dance beat of the Happy
Mondays, the psychedelic languor of the Stone Roses, the attitude of
Oasis, the anthemic danciness of Stereo MCs. Who would have imagined
that the early 1990s would have made a comeback quite so soon and so
brilliantly reinvented? Truly Kasabian are the hound’s testicles.
The Libertines The Libertines (Rough Trade, pounds 13.99). In a
survey last year of the greatest British pop bands, the Guardian
decided The Libertines were even better than Radiohead and put them
at number one. I’m not sure I’d go quite so far – can I ever imagine
myself going: ‘God, I just have to put on a Libertines record right
this second, or I’ll die’?
No – but their second album does give you a good idea what the fuss
is all about. It’s excruciatingly honest – detailing the break-up of
the fraught, intense, almost marital relationship between frontmen
Carl Barat and heroin-addicted Pete Doherty. It has the throwaway
assurance of a band that knows it’s great and original and doesn’t
need to prove anything to anyone, and a sweet, eccentric, ramshackle
English charm. As produced by Mick Jones it sounds a bit sludgy and
home-made, but the heartfelt lyrics are compulsive and the debonairly
punkish melodies do grow on you.
Skinnyman Council Estate of the Mind (Low Life, pounds 13.99). You
wouldn’t guess it from his authentically black-sounding patois, but the
much-praised north London rapper Skinnyman is in fact white. His tunes
and samples aren’t bad but is he the British Eminem? Not lyrically
deft enough and way too earnest. Another Streets? Not funny enough.

Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
September 5, 2004 Sunday
DVD Review
by KAY SCHMIDT
DRAMA
Ararat
Imagine (MA)
In short: Focuses on the Armenian genocide, still denied by Turkey.
The players: Arsinee Khanjian, Christopher Plummer, Charles Aznavour,
Elias Koteas.
Verdict: A history lesson that is too wide-ranging to be involving.
AN ambitious, complex and informative film from Atom Egoyan (The
Sweet Hereafter), a Canadian of Armenian extraction. His deeply
personal mission is to draw attention to his heritage — the 1915
massacre of up to a million Armenians, which went mostly unnoticed
during World War I. He does so through several strands connecting
past and present, including a film within the film based on the
alleged atrocities.

In the Caucasus, another crisis threatens
Neal Ascherson IHT
International Herald Tribune, France
Sept 6 2004
Abkhazia
LONDON — While President Vladimir Putin of Russia struggles to deal
with the fallout from the school siege that killed hundreds last
week in Beslan, across the border, Georgia’s new president, Mikhail
Saakashvili, faces simmering conflicts that may flare up dangerously
if they are mishandled.
The most daunting of them all concerns Abkhazia, a fertile and
beautiful coastal strip between the Caucasus mountains and the Black
Sea whose existence the outside world has all but forgotten.
Since he took power in a bloodless revolution last November,
Saakashvili, 38, has successfully tackled large-scale corruption and
set Georgia on a course toward Western-style democracy. But he has
run into trouble as he tries to “reintegrate” Adzharia, South Ossetia
and Abkhazia, regions that either refused to join independent Georgia
in the 1990s or tried to break away more recently.
In May, Saakashvili overthrew the secessionist regime of Aslan
Abashidze in Adzharia, the Georgian province bordering Turkey. But
this summer he failed to re-establish Georgian authority over South
Ossetia. Troops were sent in, but there was armed resistance from the
Ossetians, leading to more than a dozen deaths and furious protests
from Russia.
The fiasco in South Ossetia has damaged prospects for any settlement
with Abkhazia, the most difficult territorial problem facing
Saakashvili. Abkhazia fought a ferocious war of independence against
Georgian forces in 1993 and 1994, in which atrocities were committed
by both sides. More than 200,000 Georgian civilians fled Abkhazia
and survive as homeless refugees in Georgia.
The Georgians maintain that Abkhaz identity is little more than
a fiction that Russia supports in order to undermine Georgia’s
own independence. The Abkhazians retort that they had never been
an integral part of Georgia, and that they went to war only when
independent Georgia threatened to annex them after the fall of the
Soviet Union.
During the Soviet period, massive settlement of Georgians in Abkhazia
had reduced the Abkhazians to a minority in their own country. On the
eve of the 1993-1994 war, ethnic Abkhazians numbered only 100,000 out
of a population of 500,000. (There were also about 100,000 Armenians,
most of whom supported the cause of Abkhazian independence.)
But independence brought no happy end for Abkhazia. With the best
vacation beaches on the Black Sea, it might have become prosperous.
Instead, it became an unrecognized microstate, blockaded by the
outside world. Road, rail and air links were cut off. Ten years later,
Abkhazia’s government is disillusioned and defensive. There is an
elected Parliament, but democratic reformers have to struggle against
a culture of authoritarian rule and spreading corruption.
Recently Russian tourists have returned to the beaches and a flow
of imports fills the shops. If they apply for Russian passports,
Abkhazians can now travel abroad. But even today, about a third of
buildings in Sukhumi, the capital, remain gutted by war.
Peacekeepers from the Confederation of Independent States – Russian
troops, in other words – occupy the region bordering Georgia, while a
small United Nations force observes the cease-fire zone. But 10 years
of meandering peace talks between Abkhazia and Georgia have produced
no solution.
Observers hoped that Saakashvili’s democratic “revolution” might reduce
tension between Abkhazia and Georgia. But when I visited Abkhazia early
this year, I found that Saakashvili was regarded there as an erratic
Georgian nationalist determined to crush Abkhaz independence. Recently,
Georgian patrol boats fired on a Turkish vessel off the Abkhaz coast,
and Saakashvili has hinted that Russian cruise ships might be prevented
from entering Abkhaz ports.
Saakashvili’s use of force in South Ossetia confirmed the worst
Abkhazian suspicions about him. And yet he is trapped by his own
rhetoric on Abkhazia. He has to do something about it or lose the
confidence of his followers.
On Oct. 3, there will be presidential elections in Abkhazia. The ailing
president, Vladislav Ardzinba, who led the independence war, favors
Raul Khajimba, currently prime minister, as his successor. So does
Putin, it seems; Khajimba, like Putin, has a KGB background. But if
Khajimba wins, he won’t necessarily push Abkhazia toward integration
with Russia. Many Abkhazians are almost as worried about Russian
absorption as they are about Georgian threats.
A deal between Georgia and Abkhazia may still be possible.
Saakashvili’s enormous popularity means that, in theory, he could
afford a compromise: some sort of fudged confederation in which
Abkhazia could associate with
Georgia and yet retain “sovereignty.”
But Saakashvili and the new Abkhaz president will face two obstacles.
One is how to let the refugees return without overbalancing
Abkhazia’s demography. The other is gaining Russian approval. That
is even harder. As American influence in the region grows, with
huge U.S. investments in Caspian oil and trans-Caucasus pipelines,
Russia’s instinct is to hold on to any lever in its grasp – including
the military presence in Abkhazia that gives Moscow a decisive grip
on Georgian policies.
In the end, it is not Georgians or Abkhazians who will solve this
dangerous standoff. Only a global agreement between Russia and the
United States on the future of the Caucasus will end Abkhazia’s
isolation and bring Georgia and Abkhazia to a lasting settlement.
Neal Ascherson, who reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union
for The Observer, is the author of “Black Sea” and, most recently,
“Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress