Author: Emil Lazarian

JAN 10 ARMENIAN-RUSSIAN-GEORGIA MEETING TO DISCUSS KAVKAZ-POTI TRAIN FERRY ISSUES
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21. ARMINFO. An Armenian-Russian-Georgian meeting
will be held Jan 10 2005 to discuss the details of the contract to
exploit the Kavkaz-Poti train ferry which will directly connect the
Russian and Georgian railroads, says the spokesperson of Armenia’s
Transport and Communication Ministry Tamara Galechyan.
The sides will specify the schedule and scheme of the ferry
exploitation. The formerly announced date of the ferry operation,
Jan 5, is not true, says Galechyan.
Now the railroad operations Armenia-Georgia-Russia are carried out via
Ukraine who charges 40% of the transportation costs. The Port Kavkaz
train ferry was launched in May 2004 and can carry 500,000 tons of
cargo a year. But it has one serious problem – it can receive only
small ships because of its shallow coast.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

YEREVAN OFFICE OF VDI INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION OF IT SPHERE IS GOING TO
INCREASE TWICE AS MUCH VOLUME OF WORK
YEREVAN, December 21 (Noyan Tapan). The Yerevan office of the
Vested Development Inc (VDI) international corporation carried out
the elaboration of programs on system provisison, the reformation of
projects, the elaboration of the data protection bases of the companies
of corporative government and the management systems of documents and
business during the year of its activities. Lev Sevilyan, the Director
of the office, said during the ceremony of summing up of the results of
the activities of the Yerevan Office for a year and the presentation
of VDI that 35 Armenian specialists of the office participated in
the elaboration of 12 programs and projects implemented by VDI. He
mentioned that the activities of the office will be widened next year
and the number of employees will reach 50 till the end of 2005. The
company will carry out not only the elaboration of different systems
and programs, but it will be a subcontractor in the sphere of system
service. Lev Sevilyan mentioned that the specialists of the sphere of
programming taken to job often have secondary vocational education. In
the future thay are retrained at the centers of Moscow and Yerevan, as
well as perfect themselves during the implementation of joint programs
with the specialists of VDI. Artak Ohanian, the Director of Business
Development Department of VDI, in his turn, mentioned that the opening
of tbe office in Armenia is mainly conditioned by the professional
skills and knowledge of the Armenian specialists. At the same time,
he stressed that the shortage of skilled specialists is the main
problem of the sphere of information technologies in Armenia. Artak
Ohanian also said that at first VDI started operating in 1993, then the
central office was opened in Boston (the US) in 1997 due to skilled
specialists. Besides the central office the company has another
five offices – three in Russia, and by one in Ukraine and Armenia
(with a total of 350 specialists). The company cooperates with the
companies of 20 countries (the US, Canada, countries-members of the
European Union), in particular, in the sphere of high technologies,
finances, insurance, telecommunication, energy and information.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

COUNCIL OF ELDERS OF INTELLECTUALS FORUM CALLS ON NA TO ABANDON INITIATIVE TO
SEND MILITARY UNIT TO IRAQ AND TO BRING ITS AUTHORS TO JUSTICE
YEREVAN, December 21 (Noyan Tapan). The Council of Elders of Armenia’s
Intellectuals Forum calls on the National Assembly not only to abandon
the initiative to send a military unit to Iraq but also to find ” all
the authors, participants of this criminal initiative, deprive them of
their power levers and bring them to justice.” “It is to be regretted
and condemned that this provocative step was adopted with a clear
realization of its disastrous consequences for all the Armenians,”
the Forum’s December 20 address to the Armenian people reads. The
document authors qualify it as a next in turn “criminal attempt”
to retain power somehow and ensure one’s security. According to the
Council of Elders of the Intellectulas Forum, all the countries that
joined the statement to be included in the international coalition
forces in Iraq, except Armenia, had previously evacuated their citizens
and compatriots. The Council of Elders urges the political forces,
intellectuals and representatives of the public of Armenia, Artsakh
and the Diaspora to condemn “this plot and declare about the rejection
of every person who participated and supported it.” The authors of the
statement are convinced that by acting like that it will be possible
to prevent “the fatal sword hung over our compatriots.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TWO ARMENIAN JUDOISTS WIN SILVER AND BRONZE MEDALS IN TEHRAN
ArmenPress
Dec 21 2004
TEHRAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS; Two Armenian judoists, Levon Galstian
from Yerevan (73 kg weight category) and Karen Yeritsian, also from
Yerevan (60 kg) snatched silver and bronze medals respectively at an
international competition in Tehran. Three other Armenian athletes
occupied the fifth position.

U.N.: Almost a million refugees face hunger in 2005
by JONATHAN FOWLER; Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Worldstream
December 21, 2004 Tuesday 11:10 AM Eastern Time
GENEVA — Around a million refugees could face hunger and malnutrition
next year because of meager donations from governments of more
prosperous countries, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Several hundred thousand refugees are already struggling to survive
because aid agencies have had to drastically reduce rations to ensure
there is enough to go round, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N.
high commissioner for refugees.
“We are especially worried for refugees in Africa,” Redmond told
reporters.
In Zambia, handouts already have been halved in the past two months
and soon will be slashed again, putting 87,000 people at risk of
malnutrition.
“Already, we are hearing reports of refugee women resorting to
prostitution to support themselves and their children,” Redmond
added. “Field offices in Zambia also report there has been a marked
increase in children dropping out of school, presumably to help their
families find food.”
In Tanzania, rations were cut by a quarter in October. UNHCR and the
World Food Program found last month that malnutrition is rising among
some 400,000 refugees from Burundi and Congo who live in Tanzania’s
camps.
Malnutrition also threatens some 118,000 refugees in Ethiopia, and
another 224,000 in Kenya, Redmond said.
In conflict-ravaged Congo, WFP says that next month it will need to
make ration cuts of almost one third, Redmond noted.
“Africa is not the only continent facing a breakdown in the food
pipeline,” he said.
In January, 140,000 displaced a decade ago by conflict between Armenia
and Azerbaijan face a complete cut in rations – just two months after
handouts were halved.
Non-U.N. aid agencies also have sounded the alarm, but some have
chastised the United Nations for failing to respond fast enough
to crises.
On Monday, U.S.-based Refugees International said the world body was
moving too slowly to hand out food to people who fled the conflict
in Ivory Coast.
But the Rome-based WFP said Tuesday it can only provide food assistance
to refugees who have a registration and a ration card issued by UNCHR,
given the limited resources of the agency. The ration card is the
only document that makes a refugee eligible for U.N. food assistance.
“We need to be absolutely sure that who gets the food is in need of
it,” said Caroline Hurford, WFP spokeswoman. “Otherwise, what would
we tell our donors?”
Hurford said food supplies are already in the border zone. But many
Ivorians are going back to Ivory Coast to harvest their crop and then
returning to Liberia to look for extra food.
“The process of feeding is not always easy with flows of population
going back and forth,” she said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

UN report on Iran minorities’ rights “political” – Armenian representative
Baztab web site, Tehran
21 Dec 04
The representative of Armenians in northern Iran, Geork Vartaniyan,
has said that the UN pursues political aims in censuring Iran for
violating the rights of religious minorities.
Commenting on the UN General Assembly resolution against Iran, he said:
The UN discusses this issue every so often, it is nothing new and we
all know the UN stance towards Iran.
Vartaniyan added: There are some problems in our country, but we are
trying to resolve them through legal channels. Up to now either they
have been resolved or are being resolved, but they are not such major
problems requiring the attention of international organizations.
He said religious minorities face problems in other countries,
including Turkey, but their problems are not as aggrandized as ours
in Iran.
Vartaniyan said: As a religious minority, our situation is
comparatively better than those who live in European or other Asian
countries, therefore, the [resolution] has been issued with political
aims in mind.

A new era regarding the Armenian Question
Yeni Safak Newspaper
11/27/2004
Ali Bayramoglu ([email protected])
As the December 17th date (of EU deliberations on Turkey’s candidacy —
MG) gets closer, the attitudes regarding Turkey’s candidacy become
articulated, sharpened. Especially “Armenian diaspora” in France
has locked its entire energy to the “target of rejecting Turkey.”
All the way from the attempts in Marseilles by Dashnak groups attacking
Chirac physically to the declaration yesterday in Paris of an Armenian
organization that, not content with the recognition of the genocide,
demanding (for the first time) physical and material reparations in
relation to the events of 1915 as a precondition of Turkey’s membership
in the EU, the bar placed in front of Turkey keeps rising.
The actions, attitudes and timing of these groups make it evident
their intention is not to discuss but to punish.
The most significant glue of the identities of the Armenian diaspora,
that is, Armenians living outside of Turkey and Armenia (they make
up 5 million of the total Armenian population of 8 million) is the
1915 reference and “the fundamentalist struggle against Turkey,
therefore taking a stand against Turkey, even Turkish animosity,
as if there were a state of continuous war.”
Still, as we stated yesterday, Turkey’s getting closer to EU
membership has livened up Armenian politics and commenced the process
of differentiation among the Armenian communities.
Three different communities or actors of Armenian society with their
different experiences, different relations, and different communal
relations, are quickly getting politically differentiated from one
another.
Armenia, due to its societal-political interests and the geographical
conditions within which it is situated, is pursuing to develop gradual
relations with Turkey that takes as an index not the past but the
present and the future.
Likewise the Armenian community in Turkey, living with the Turks
and sharing the same destiny, problems and concerns with them, and
locked into the same target of elevating the quality of its societal
existence and life and rights, sails in the waters of the “present
time.” More importantly, it is escalating its democratic voice and
force through some of its natural leaders and representatives both
internationally and within the Armenian communities every passing day.
As for the diaspora that appears to be the strongest in terms of both
numbers and voice, the diaspora is becoming increasingly fragmented
within domestic Armenian politics. It has suddenly started to find
confronting it “Armenian voices” that it has not been used to hearing.
This situation and contradiction is evident: For the diaspora
Armenians, that which represents “the present and future time” is
their economic, social and emotional lives, the relations they have
in the countries they live. Many of them do not know Armenian, do not
care about Armenia, and for them being an Armenian and the Armenian
problem is an issue defined by history and the past that is located
in a chest and occasionally taken out.
And the past is basically treated in relation to the events of 1915.
For them, the Armenian identity is located on a one-dimensional image
of the “historical Turk.” This is a viewpoint that lives the past
as if it were the present, that makes the switch between the past
and the present totally nonexistent. At the meeting in Marseilles,
an Armenian explained the claim that the Turks knew everything about
the 1915 events with the following words:
“Your prime minister made everything public a few days ago.”
When we asked in disbelief which prime minister he was referring to,
he replied “Damad Ferit Pasha.”
The diaspora which has the “luxury” to live by freezing time, by
living the past Armenian identity in the chest as if it were today
is located, with its atemporal identities and hierachical problems,
right at the center of a definition of “patriarchy.”
This definition of the Turk and this exercise in reductionism express
a radical nationalism that feeds on the conception of the other.
What is important today is for the hegemony of the diaspora to become
contested.
For both Turkey and Armenia, this differentiation process opens novel
rational spaces within which to solve an ancient problem.
>>From the viewpoint of Turkey, relations established with Armenia
could enable the politics of today and tomorrow to triumph over the
reflexes of the past.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian speaker criticizes Russian counterpart’s remarks on ties
Aravot, Yerevan
21 Dec 04
Text of report by Anna Israelyan in Armenian newspaper Aravot on 21
December headlined “Replying to Gryzlov”
Yesterday 20 December the chairman of the Armenian National Assembly
Artur Bagdasaryan expressed his negative attitude to Russian State
Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov’s statement that Armenia is Russia’s
outpost in the South Caucasus.
“Certainly, I treat this statement badly,” Mr Bagdasaryan said. “First,
the Republic of Armenia is a sovereign state and cannot be an outpost
of any state. Second, the Armenian-Russian relations develop naturally
and the statement of the Azerbaijani president that Azerbaijan
is confused and does not know whether the peace talks should be
conducted with the outpost or its master should be considered just
in this context. For instance, today there is not an Azerbaijani
delegation in the Council of Europe, there is a Turkish-Azerbaijani
delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and
they jointly discuss and vote for all the issues,” Bagdasaryan added.
In fact, chairman of the National Assembly duplicated Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan, who replied to Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev’s statement: “For instance, we are not concerned about
warm Turkish-Azerbaijani relations”. But is it worthy to compare
the Armenian-Russian and the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations?
Artur Bagdasaryan replied: “No, we do not have an ethnic problem here.
Everybody understands that Russian-Armenian cooperation, including
military and political ones, has deeper roots than cooperation of
Russia with other states of the region. The Turkish-Azerbaijani
relations are qualitatively higher than the Armenian-Russian
ones. Anyway, the Armenian-Russian relations are unique due to
the dynamic of their development, and the Azerbaijani president’s
statement should be also considered in this context because the finger
was pointed not only at Armenia, but Russia as well. For this reason
we should be able to strengthen our sovereignty”.
Incidentally, the chairman of the National Assembly also joked that we
may thank Gryzlov for saying this, emphasizing that the word “thanks”
should be in quotation marks.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ALEXANDER GRIGORIAN STAGES “THE BEAST ON THE MOON” PLAY DEDICATED TO ARMENIAN
GENOCIDE VICTIMS IN MOSCOW
YEREVAN, December 20 (Noyan Tapan). The premiere of the “The beast
on the Moon” play staged by RA People’s Artist Alexander Grigorian,
the Artistic Director of the Yerevan Russian Dramatic Theater after
K. Stanislavsky, was held at the Art Theater after A. Chekov in
Moscow on November 20. According to Alexander Grigorian, American
playwright Ruchard Kalinoskie’s play is dedicated to the memory of the
Armenian Genocide victims. It tells about the two Armenian young men,
who survived the 1915 terror.
According to the Artistic Director, “The beast on the Moon” brought
great recognition to the author: the play was staged in about 50
theaters of the US, it was translated into several languages and
was awarded with the Osborne prize of the American Drama Critics
Association.
The playwright was present at the Moscow premiere of the play, he said:
“This play is a real story of the parents of my first wife.” Russian
People’s Artist Oleg Tobakov, the Artistic Director of the Moscow
Art Theater, mentioned that the Armenian Genocide, which had 1.5 mln
victims, isn’t of less importance for him than Holocost.
According to art critic Margarita Yakhontova, the play is topical
not only for the Armenians. According to him, Russian artists Sergei
Ugryumov and Janina Kolesnichenko’s brilliant play delighted the
Russian spectators.

KOCHARIAN PRAISES NAIRI MEDICAL CENTER
ArmenPress
Dec 20 2004
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS: President Kocharian attended today
inauguration of Nairi medical center that was privatized two years ago
and whose new owners say they have invested $3 million to renovate
the building constructed in 1967 and furnish it with state-of-the
art equipment.
Talking to reporters after strolling around the center, the president
praised the new owners for honoring all assumed commitments and
bringing the center in conformity with international standards.
Kocharian said the Nairi center case may serve as a best example of
how medical institutions should be privatized.
The center’s owners pledge another $ million investments in two
years. The center will have to render services also as part of a
government program of free medical services and has capacities to
service up to 5,000 people a year, but prices of some services will
be higher than in other clinics. The equipment was brought from
German Siemens.