Author: Hambardsumian Paul

TALKING ART OF YEREVAN

Azg/arm
16 March 05

“I think all the monuments of Yerevan need to be
renovated. Specialistsâ=80=99 groups should be created for that. They
will study the monuments and definethe ways of their renovation. We
shouldn’t waste time, otherwise, one beautiful day the monument to
Martiros Sarian created by Tokmajian will be colored, while the horse
of Kochar’s Vartan Mamikonian will become a zebra,” Mekhak Izmirian,
head of the Yerevan History Museum, said. He has been studying the
monuments of Yerevan and accumulate information about a thousand of
“blossomed” stones.

“Almost all the monuments in our city are covered with dust of the
years, paint, droppings of the birds, cracks that appeared after the
snow, the rain, the sun and the wind. The vandals have spoiled many of
the monuments covering them with nasty inscriptions. Especially when
the spring comes, the children or even the youth are sitting on the
big monuments,” Mekhak Izmirian said and added that such phenomenon is
caused by the lack of culture and awareness. “Maybe many of them
wouldn’t destroy the monuments if they knew to whom orto which event
the monument is dedicated to. I think the best way out is to make name
boards and place it beside the monuments. This will not coast much,”
Izmirian said.

He told that sometimes the pupils or even the teachers do not know
whose monument is set up in the yard of the school. Meanwhile, there
are rather interesting monuments in the yards of the schools.

Izmirian told also about the forgotten monuments, columns and
monuments-springs. The latter can be set in each yard, we can fail to
notice them due to our indifference. It is interesting but such
fountains are registered anywhere. The Yerevan History Museum is
going to publish books on the monuments of Yerevan to secure the
awareness of the people about their own city.

Izmirian also brought the example of the arts of father and son
Bejanians. If the father Hovhannes Bejanian created the monument of
the water selling boy and each resident of Yerevan is proud of that,
Bejanian junior created the monument to Arno Babajanian. The monuments
are so different.

By Susana Margarian

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
March 14 2005

POLISH TV HAS SHOWN DOCUMENTARY ABOUT AZERBAIJAN
[March 14, 2005, 22:15:51]

As stated from the embassy of Azerbaijan in Warsaw, on threshold of
the official visit of President Ilham Aliyev to Poland, the popular
channel of this country “TVN-24” on March 13 has shown a documentary
titled `Azerbaijan – on the way to the European Union’. The film crew
has visited Baku in February current year. The film begins with
extensive interview of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. The
Head of Azerbaijan State in detail speaks about the successes reached
by the Country within independence, harmonious development of
economy, the successes achieved from the point of view of integration
into the Euro-Atlantic structures, about oil strategy of Azerbaijan
which basis has been founded by national leader Heydar Aliyev.

The documentary also includes interview of the president of State Oil
Company Natig Aliyev, minister of culture of Polad Bulbuloglu, the
ambassador of Poland in Azerbaijan Martin Navrot, and also political
analysts, ordinary citizens.

Director of film A. Rogala gives the Polish spectators also
information on problems which Azerbaijan has faced – first of all
about aggression of Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which till
today has not found solution, heavy plight of the Azerbaijani
refugees and IDPs, unemployment and other social difficulties.

Film is remembered by the rigid realism and objectivity. Within the
next few days, “TVN-24” will cast another documentary `Polish traces
in Azerbaijan’, narrating on the Polish-Azerbaijan relations.

I-Newswire.com (press release)
March 11 2005

COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION CONCLUDES
SIXTY-SIXTH SESSION

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination today
concluded its sixty-sixth session and issued its concluding
observations on reports presented by the Lao People~Rs Democratic
Republic, France, Luxembourg, Australia, Ireland, Bahrain and
Azerbaijan on how those countries implement the provisions of the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination.

i-Newswire, 2005-03-12 – The Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination today concluded its sixty-sixth session and issued its
concluding observations on reports presented by the Lao People~Rs
Democratic Republic, France, Luxembourg, Australia, Ireland, Bahrain
and Azerbaijan on how those countries implement the provisions of the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination.

On the reports of the Lao People~Rs Democratic Republic, the Committee
commended the efforts of the State party to reduce poverty,
particularly in rural areas and among ethnic groups. It noted with
concern that no clear definition of racial discrimination existed in
domestic legislation and that the Convention was not incorporated
into domestic legislation. It recommended that the State party
describe in its next periodic report the scope of a policy of
resettling members of ethic groups from the mountains and highland
plateaux to the plains, the ethnic groups concerned, and the impact
of these policies on their lifestyles.

Concerning the reports of France, the Committee took note with
satisfaction of the many legislative measures designed to reinforce
efforts to combat racial discrimination. It expressed its concern
about the de facto inequality affecting immigrants and population
groups of immigrant origin vis-à-vis other nationals, in the field of
employment and education, despite the State party~Rs substantial
efforts in this area. It recommended that the State party take the
necessary preventive measures to halt racist incidents involving
members of the security forces.

With regards to the reports of Luxembourg, the Committee noted with
satisfaction school curricula promoting interculturalism, the setting
up of some classes in the mother tongue of immigrant children and the
introduction of intercultural mediators in schools. While noting the
State party~Rs efforts to tighten up its laws and strengthen its
institutions combating racial discrimination, the Committee said that
racist and xenophobic incidents, in particular against Arabs and
Muslims, and discriminatory attitudes towards ethnic groups were
still encountered in the country. It encouraged the State party to
include within training a specific focus on the problems of racism
and discrimination.

On the reports of Australia, the Committee noted with satisfaction
that serious acts of racial hatred or incitement to racial hatred
were criminal offences in most AustralianStates and Territories. The
Committee expressed its concern about the abolition of the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the main policy-making body in
Aboriginal affairs. It recommended that the State party increase its
efforts to eliminate prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians,
and to ensure that enforcement of counter-terrorism legislation did
not disproportionately impact on specific ethnic groups and people of
other national origins.

With regards to the reports of Ireland, the Committee welcomed the
enactment of a comprehensive legislative framework on
anti-discrimination and welcomed the decision by the State party to
include a question of ethnicity in the next consensus in 2006. It
regretted that the State party had not yet incorporated the
Convention into domestic legal order, particularly in light of the
fact that the State party had incorporated other international
instruments into domestic law. It encouraged the State party to
review its security procedures and practices at entry points with a
view to ensuring that they were carried out in a non-discriminatory
manner.

Concerning the reports of Bahrain, the Committee welcomed the
meaningful political, legal and economic reforms on which the State
party had embarked. The Committee regretted that there was no
national human rights institution in Bahrain and was concerned over
the lack of integrationist multi-racial organizations and movements
in the State party. It encouraged the State party to maintain a
dialogue with all civil society organizations, including those
critical of its policies.

And with regards to the reports of Azerbaijan, the Committee noted
with satisfaction the enactment of new legislation containing
anti-discrimination provisions. It was concerned that, according to
reports, incidents of racial discrimination against Armenians occur
and that a majority of the Armenians residing in Azerbaijan prefer to
conceal their ethnic identity in order to avoid being discriminated
against. Among other things, the Committee recommended that the
State party adopt measures to promote intercultural understanding and
education between ethnic groups.

The Committee also issued decisions on the situations in the Sudan (
concerning Darfur ), New Zealand and Suriname.

On the Sudan, the Committee said that taking into consideration its
regular practices, as well as its obligation to inform, under its
early-warning and urgent-action procedure, of any warning signals
that a situation may deteriorate still further, it recommended to the
Secretary-General, and through him, the Security Council, the
deployment, without further delay, of a sufficiently enlarged African
Union force in Darfur with a Security Council mandate to protect the
civilian population against war crimes, crimes against humanity, and
the risk of genocide.

Concerning New Zealand, the Committee expressed its appreciation at
having had the opportunity to engage in a constructive dialogue with
the State party. Bearing in mind the complexity of the issues
involved, the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 appeared to
the Committee, on balance, to contain discriminatory aspects against
the Maori, in particular in its extinguishment of the possibility of
establishing Maori customary title over the foreshore and seabed and
its failure to provide a guaranteed right of redress, notwithstanding
the State party~Rs obligations under articles 5 and 6 of the
Convention.

And with regards to Suriname, which was reviewed under the follow-up
procedure, the Committee noted that under the draft Mining Act in the
State party, indigenous and tribal peoples would be required to
accept mining activities on their lands following agreement on
compensation with the concession holders, and that, if agreement
could not be reached, the matter would be settled by the executive,
and not the judiciary. It recommended that indigenous and tribal
peoples should be granted the right of appeal to the courts, or any
independent body specially created for that purpose, in order to
uphold their traditional rights and their right to be consulted
before concessions are granted and to be fairly compensated for any
damage.

The Committee also adopted a declaration on the prevention of
genocide which was prepared by Committee Expert Agha Shahi following
a thematic discussion on the subject during the session. Among other
things, the declaration expressed the Committee~Rs resolve to
strengthen and refine its anti-racial discrimination early warning
and urgent action, as well as follow-up procedures in all situations
with indications of possible violent conflict and genocide.

The Committee agreed to continue its general debate on
multiculturalism at its next session to analyse the ways in which it
had been addressing this issue when adopting its decisions and
recommendations and to improve its work in this regard.

The Committee~Rs sixty-seventh session will be held at the Palais des
Nations in Geneva from 1 to 19 August 2005, when the Experts will
review the reports of Nigeria, Barbados, Georgia, Venezuela, Zambia,
Turkmenistan, Iceland, Tanzania and Lithuania. Under its review
procedures, the Committee will review the situation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the Seychelles, Saint Lucia, Malawi and Mozambique.

Concluding Observations on Country Reports Considered this Session

Lao People~Rs Democratic Republic

After considering the sixth to fifteenth periodic reports of the Lao
People~Rs Democratic Republic, the Committee commended the efforts of
the State party to reduce poverty, particularly in rural areas and
among ethnic groups. The Committee noted with satisfaction that the
State party had adopted penal measures in 2004 to combat trafficking
in persons and was pleased to learn that the Convention had been
translated into Lao. The Committee also welcomed the programme of
cooperation undertaken by the State party and the United Nations
Development Programme relating to the ratification and implementation
of international human rights instruments.

The Committee noted with concern that no clear definition of racial
discrimination existed in domestic legislation and that the
Convention was not incorporated into domestic legislation. It also
regretted that there was no national human rights institution in the
country. The Committee noted the absence of legislative provisions
criminalizing acts of violence and incitement to violence on racial
grounds and recommended that the State party conduct studies with a
view to assessing and evaluating in concrete terms the extent to
which racial discrimination existed in the country and to ascertain
its principal causes. While noting that the State party had adopted
a policy of resettling members of ethic groups from the mountains and
highland plateaux to the plains, the Committee recommended that the
State party describe in its next periodic report the scope of the
resettlement policies being implemented, the ethnic groups concerned,
and the impact of these policies on the lifestyles of these groups
and on the enjoyment of their economic, social and cultural rights.

The Committee also remained concerned by persistent allegations of
conflict between the Government and certain members of the Hmong
minority who took refuge in forest and mountainous areas of the Lao
People~Rs Democratic Republic after 1975 and strongly encouraged the
State party to authorize United Nations agencies to provide emergency
humanitarian assistance to this group. The Committee was also
concerned about reports of violence that had been perpetrated against
members of this group, in particular allegations that soldiers had
brutalized and killed a group of five Hmong children in May 2004.

France

Following its review of the fifteenth and sixteenth periodic reports
of France, the Committee took note with satisfaction of the many
legislative measures designed to reinforce efforts to combat racial
discrimination, and in particular the Act of 16 November 2001
concerning measures to combat discrimination; the Social
Modernization Act of 17 January 2002; the Act of 9 March 2004 on the
adaptation of the system of justice to developments in the area of
crime; and the Act of 30 December 2004 setting up a High Authority
against Discrimination and for Equality. The Committee also welcomed
the provision in the Act of 10 December 2003 widening the scope of
refugee protection to include those persecuted by non-State actors
and the fact that, since the adoption of its ruling of 1 June 2002,
the Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation had allowed the
practice of discrimination testing as a form of evidence in the area
of racial discrimination, and encouraged the State party to promote
more frequent recourse to it.

The Committee expressed its concern about the de facto inequality
affecting immigrants and population groups of immigrant origin
vis-à-vis other nationals, in the field of employment and education,
despite the State party~Rs substantial efforts in this area. Despite
the State party~Rs efforts, the Committee remained concerned about the
situation of non-citizens and asylum-seekers in holding centres and
areas, as well as delays in processing applications from refugees for
family reunification. Among other things, the Committee recommended
to the State party that it should strengthen the supervision of
police personnel responsible for the reception and day-to-day
monitoring of holding centres for non-citizens and asylum-seekers.
The Committee shared the concerns expressed by the delegation
relating to the increase in racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic acts
and encouraged the State party to apply more effectively the existing
provisions designed to combat such acts.

The Committee also recommended that the State party take the
necessary preventive measures to halt racist incidents involving
members of the security forces. It encouraged the State party to
criminalize attempts to deny war crimes and crimes against humanity
as defined in the statute of the International Criminal Court, and
not only those committed during the Second World War. Moreover, the
Committee recommended that the State party should take all
appropriate steps to ensure that local population groups in overseas
departments who did not have full command of French benefited from
the services of translator/interpreters, especially in their contacts
with the system of justice.

Luxembourg

After reviewing the tenth to thirteenth periodic reports of
Luxembourg, the Committee noted with appreciation the information
provided by the delegation on the implementation of a national plan
of action on the follow-up to the World Conference against Racism,
Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The
Committee welcomed the entry into force of the Act of 8 June 2004 on
freedom of expression in the media, which called for a code of ethics
to govern the pursuit of journalistic activity. The Committee also
noted with satisfaction school curricula promoting interculturalism,
the setting up of some classes in the mother tongue of immigrant
children and the introduction of intercultural mediators in schools.

While noting the State party~Rs efforts to tighten up its laws and
strengthen its institutions combating racial discrimination, the
Committee said that racist and xenophobic incidents, in particular
against Arabs and Muslims, and discriminatory attitudes towards
ethnic groups were still encountered in the country. The Committee
encouraged the State party to combat racist and xenophobic propaganda
found on Internet sites and suggested that the State party ratify the
Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime and its Additional
Protocol concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist and
xenophobic nature committed through computer systems. While
recognizing the steps taken by the State party to combat racial
discrimination, the Committee noted with concern that certain
vulnerable groups, such as non-nationals, refugees and
asylum-seekers, were not afforded sufficient protection.

The Committee expressed its concern that a number of non-nationals
were illegally employed in Luxembourg, and might, thus, be exposed to
abuse by their employers. The Committee encouraged the State party
to take concrete steps to prevent and provide redress for the serious
problems faced by non-citizen workers in this regard, ensuring that
employers that employed illegal workers were sanctioned. The
Committee also encouraged the State party to include within training
a specific focus on the problems of racism and discrimination, and to
ensure that all officials who come into contact with minority groups
receive training of this type.

Australia

After considering the thirteenth and fourteenth periodic reports of
Australia, the Committee noted with satisfaction that serious acts of
racial hatred or incitement to racial hatred were criminal offences
in most AustralianStates and Territories. The Committee noted with
satisfaction that significant progress had been achieved in the
enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by the indigenous
peoples. It welcomed the commitment of all Australian governments to
work together on this issue through the Council of Australian
Governments, as well as the adoption of a national strategy on
indigenous family violence. The Committee also noted with great
interest the diversionary and preventative programmes aimed at
reducing the number of indigenous juveniles entering the criminal
justice system, as well as the development of culturally sensitive
procedures and practices among the police and the judiciary.

The Committee expressed its concern about the abolition of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the main
policy-making body in Aboriginal affairs which consisted of elected
indigenous representatives. The Committee also noted with concern
reports that prejudice against Arabs and Muslims in Australia had
increased and that the enforcement of counter-terrorism legislation
may have an indirect discriminatory effect against Arab and Muslim
Australians. It recommended that the State party increase its
efforts to eliminate such prejudice, and ensure that enforcement of
counter-terrorism legislation does not disproportionately impact on
specific ethnic groups and people of other national origins. The
Committee noted with concern the persistence of diverging perceptions
between governmental authorities and indigenous peoples and others on
the compatibility of the 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act with
the Convention and further recommended that the State party reopen
discussions with indigenous peoples with a view to discussing
possible amendments to the Native Title Act and finding solutions
acceptable to all.

The Committee remained concerned about the striking
over-representation of indigenous people in prisons, as well as the
percentage of indigenous deaths in custody. The Committee expressed
concern about the mandatory detention of illegal migrants, including
asylum-seekers, in particular when such detention affected women,
children, unaccompanied minors, and those who were considered to be
stateless. It also expressed its concern that many persons had been
in such administrative detention for over three years. The Committee
recommended that the State party review the mandatory, automatic and
indeterminate character of the detention of illegal migrants.

Ireland

After considering the initial and second periodic reports of Ireland,
the Committee commended the State party for the recent adoption of
the first National Action Plan against Racism, and the extensive
consultations with civil society organizations during the drafting of
this plan and noted with appreciation the establishment of several
independent institutions with competence in the field of human rights
and racial discrimination, namely the Irish Human Rights Commission,
the Equality Authority and the National Consultative Committee on
Racism and Interculturalism. The Committee welcomed the enactment of
a comprehensive legislative framework on anti-discrimination and
welcomed the decision by the State party to include a question of
ethnicity in the next consensus in 2006. It encouraged the State
party to include in its next periodic report detailed information on
the population, including non-citizens.

The Committee regretted that the State party had not yet incorporated
the Convention into domestic legal order, particularly in light of
the fact that the State party had incorporated other international
instruments into domestic law. The Committee encouraged the State
party to continue to combat prejudice and xenophobic stereotyping,
especially in the media, and to fight prejudice and discriminatory
attitudes. In this context, the Committee recommended that the State
party introduce in its criminal law a provision that committing an
offence with a racist motivation or aim constituted aggravating
circumstance allowing for a more severe punishment. The Committee
was concerned about reported instances of exploitation of foreign
workers by some employers and of violations of labour regulations
prohibiting discrimination and encouraged the State party to ensure
full practical implementation of legislation prohibiting
discrimination in employment and in the labour market. The Committee
also regretted the absence of special detention facilities for asylum
seekers whose request for asylum had been rejected and for
undocumented migrants awaiting deportation and noted the reported
occurrence of instances of discriminatory treatment against foreign
nationals entering Ireland during security checks at airports. It
encouraged the State party to review its security procedures and
practices at entry points with a view to ensuring that they were
carried out in a non-discriminatory manner.

The Committee also expressed concern about allegations of
discriminatory behaviour by the police towards members of minority
groups and regretted that data on complaints of racial discrimination
against the police had not been provided in the report. While noting
the efforts made so far by the State party with regard to the
situation of members of the Traveller community in the field of
health, housing, employment and education, the Committee remained
concerned about the effectiveness of policies and measures in these
areas. In this context, it recommended that the State party
intensify its efforts to fully implement the recommendations of the
Task Force on the Traveller community, and that all necessary
measures be urgently taken to improve access by Travellers to all
levels of education, their employment rates, as well as their access
to health services and to accommodation suitable to their lifestyle.

Bahrain

Following its consideration of the sixth and seventh periodic reports
of Bahrain, the Committee welcomed the meaningful political, legal
and economic reforms on which the State party had embarked, and noted
in particular the adoption of the National Action Charter in 2001,
the promulgation of the amended Constitution and the creation of the
Constitutional Court in 2002, as well as the establishment of a new
bi-cameral parliament with an elected chamber of deputies. The
Committee appreciated the establishment of Trade Unions in 2002 for
the first time in Bahrain, as well as of cultural associations
composed of foreigners. The Committee also welcomed the organization
of several training programmes addressed to the judiciary and law
enforcement officials on the promotion and protection of human rights
in the field of racial discrimination.

The Committee regretted that the State party had not provided
specific data on the ethnic composition of the population, and
recalled that such information was necessary to assess the practical
implementation of the Convention. The Committee took note of the
abolition of the Human Rights Committee which was designed to provide
advice to the head of State and to the executive authorities on a
wide range of human rights issues, including those matters relating
specifically to the Convention. Furthermore, the Committee regretted
that there was no national human rights institution in Bahrain. The
Committee was also concerned over the lack of integrationist
multiracial organizations and movements in the State party and in
particular over the banning of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
It encouraged the State party to maintain a dialogue with all civil
society organizations, including those critical of its policies.

The Committee noted with concern the reported disparate treatment and
discrimination faced by members of some groups, including in
particular the Shi~Ra that may be distinguishable by virtue of their
tribal or national origin, descent, culture and language. The
Committee was especially concerned about apparent disparate
opportunities that were afforded to such groups. The Committee also
regretted that no statistics were provided on cases where the
relevant provisions of domestic legislation concerning racial
discrimination were applied and recommended that the State party
consider whether the lack of formal complaints may be the result of
the victims~R lack of awareness of their rights, lack of confidence in
the police and judicial authorities, or the authorities~R lack of
attention, sensitivity, or commitment to cases of racial
discrimination.

Azerbaijan

After reviewing the third and fourth periodic reports of Azerbaijan,
the Committee noted with satisfaction the enactment of new
legislation containing anti-discrimination provisions, including the
Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure and welcomed the
establishment of the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner of the
Republic of Azerbaijan, pursuant to the Constitutional Act on the
Ombudsman, adopted in December 2001. The Committee also welcomed the
State party~Rs ratification of the Framework Convention for the
Protection of National Minorities in 2000, the European Convention
for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 2002
and the European Social Charter in 2004.

The Committee was concerned that, according to reports, incidents of
racial discrimination against Armenians occur and that a majority of
the Armenians residing in Azerbaijan prefer to conceal their ethnic
identity in order to avoid being discriminated against. While
welcoming the information provided by the delegation on
counter-trafficking measures taken by the State party, the Committee
expressed its concern that human trafficking, including of foreign
women, men and children remained a serious problem in the State
party, which was a country of origin and a transit point. The
Committee expressed its concern that asylum-seekers, refugees,
stateless persons, displaced persons and long-term residents residing
in Azerbaijan experienced discrimination in the areas of employment,
education, housing and health. The Committee requested the State
party to ensure that its asylum procedures did not discriminate in
purpose or effect between asylum seekers on the basis of race, colour
or ethnic or national origin.

Among other things, the Committee recommended that the State party
adopt measures to promote intercultural understanding and education
between ethnic groups. The Committee also encouraged the State party
to expand and strengthen existing efforts regarding human rights
education and requested the State party to pay particular attention
to the specific training of law enforcement officials in this regard.
It also noted the lack of sufficient information on efforts taken by
the State party to involve non-governmental organizations in the
preparation of the periodic report and encouraged the State party to
consult with civil society working in the area of combating racial
discrimination in the elaboration of its next periodic report.

Decisions

Decision on Situation in Darfur

The Committee, taking into consideration its regular practices, as
well as its obligation to inform, under its early-warning and
urgent-action procedure, of any warning signals that a situation may
deteriorate still further, referring to its decision adopted at its
last session on Darfur, and recalling its declaration on the
Prevention on Genocide of 11 March 2005, recommended to the
Secretary-General, and through him, the Security Council, the
deployment, without further delay, of a sufficiently enlarged African
Union force in Darfur with a Security Council mandate to protect the
civilian population, including those in camps, displaced persons and
refugees returning to their homes in Darfur, against war crimes,
crimes against humanity, and the risk of genocide.

Decision on Situation in New Zealand

In a decision on New Zealand, the Committee noted its review of the
compatibility of the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 with
the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the light of information
received both from the Government of New Zealand and a number of
Maori non-governmental organizations and taking into account its
General Recommendation No. XXIII on indigenous peoples. The
Committee expressed its appreciation at having had the opportunity to
engage in a constructive dialogue with the State party and the State
party~Rs written and oral responses to its requests for information
related to the legislation, including those submitted on 17 February
and 9 March 2005. Bearing in mind the complexity of the issues
involved, the legislation appeared to the Committee, on balance, to
contain discriminatory aspects against the Maori, in particular in
its extinguishment of the possibility of establishing Maori customary
title over the foreshore and seabed and its failure to provide a
guaranteed right of redress, notwithstanding the State party~Rs
obligations under articles 5 and 6 of the Convention.

The Committee acknowledged with appreciation the State party~Rs
tradition of negotiation with the Maori on all matters concerning
them and urged the State party, in a spirit of goodwill and in
accordance with the ideals of the Waitangi Treaty, to resume a
dialogue with the Maori community with regard to the legislation in
order to seek ways of lessening its discriminatory effects, including
where necessary through legislative amendment. Moreover, the
Committee requested the State party to monitor closely the
implementation of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, its impact on the
Maori population and the developing State of race relations in New
Zealand and to take steps to minimize any negative effects,
especially by way of a flexible application of the legislation and by
broadening the scope of redress available to the Maori.

Suriname

After having reviewed the country situation in Suriname in private
session under its follow-up procedure, the Committee noted that,
under the draft Mining Act in the State party, indigenous and tribal
peoples would be required to accept mining activities on their lands
following agreement on compensation with the concession holders, and
that, if agreement could not be reached, the matter would be settled
by the executive, and not the judiciary. The Committee expressed its
concern that indigenous and tribal peoples could not as such seek
recognition of their traditional rights before the courts because
they were not recognized legally as juridical persons. It
recommended that indigenous and tribal peoples should be granted the
right of appeal to the courts, or any independent body specially
created for that purpose, in order to uphold their traditional rights
and their right to be consulted before concessions are granted and to
be fairly compensated for any damage. Moreover, the Committee
recommended to the State party that it ensure the compliance of the
revised draft Mining Act with the International Convention, as well
as with the Committee~Rs recommendations issued in March 2004.

Declaration on Prevention of Genocide

On the closing day of the session, the Committee adopted a
declaration on the prevention of genocide which was prepared by
Committee Expert Agha Shahi following a thematic discussion on the
subject during the session. The main elements of the declaration are
as follows:

The Committee welcomed the appointment of a Special Adviser to the
Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide with the mandate to
sound early warning and make appropriate recommendations for
prevention to the Security Council through the Secretary-General to
enable the international community to take timely action to prevent
genocide from occurring, and declared its determination to provide
the Special Adviser with relevant information on laws, policies and
practices that may indicate systematic discrimination. Moreover, as
suggested by the Special Adviser, the Committee intended to develop a
set of indicators related to genocide, including the cultural and
historic roots of genocide.

The Committee expressed its resolve to strengthen and refine its
anti-racial discrimination early warning and urgent action, as well
as follow-up procedures in all situations where indications of
possible violent conflict and genocide prevail and in such cases it
would consider in-country visits to obtain first-hand information.
The Committee considered it of vital importance that stronger
interaction is established between the United Nations human rights
treaty bodies and the Security Council and agreed with the findings
of the High-Level Panel in the current Threats, Challenges and Change
that developed countries had a particular responsibility to do more
to transform their armies into units suitable for deployment to peace
operations, among other things.

The Committee also considered it imperative to dispel the climate of
impunity that was hospitable to war crimes and crimes against
humanity by referral of perpetrators of these crimes to the
International Criminal Court at an early stage of indications of
genocide. It also urged the international community to look at the
need for a comprehensive understanding of the dimensions of genocide,
including in the context of situations of economic globalization
adversely affecting indigenous and disadvantaged communities.

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–Boundary_(ID_MfOoB3mU7F7m/uQj1i0Qzw)–

Jews Without Borders
by Daniel Lazare

The Nation
review | Posted March 9, 2005

Although revered in certain circles as something close to holy writ, Edward
W. Said’s famous 1978 study Orientalism is rife with contradictions that
over the years have become more and more difficult to ignore. It hops
disconcertingly between Orientalism as an academic pursuit, as a mental
attitude and as a system of colonial oppression. At times it suggests that
Orientalism began in the eighteenth century with the rise of modern European
imperialism; elsewhere it implies that Orientalism settled like a miasma on
the Western mind as far back as the ancient Greeks. We are left with the
impression that Europe has been unalterably bigoted whenever it has gazed
eastward, although why that is not equally the case whenever it has looked
to the south, the west or, for that matter, the north is never clarified.

In Said’s hands, Orientalism becomes a metaphysical force, over and above
history, politics and other such mundane factors–“always and everywhere the
same,” as Valerie Kennedy puts it in her valuable study Edward Said: A
Critical Introduction (2000). Orientalism is also frequently tendentious
(not least when accusing others of the same tendency) and solipsistic. If
Western culture is “hegemonic both in and outside Europe,” Said explains at
one point, it is because a “major component in European culture is…the
idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the
non-European peoples and cultures.” Europe is superior because it thinks
it’s superior, in other words, which begs the question of why other cultures
that also think of themselves as superior, most notably Islam, have fallen
further and further behind.

ADVERTISEMENTStill, a badly made argument can be just as provocative as a
well-made one, which may be why Said’s Orientalism has engendered a raft of
spinoff investigations in such fields as postcolonial and subaltern studies,
anthropology and history. Now another front seems to be opening up with
regard to Jewish Orientalism, an area especially ripe for investigation
since Jews have never been fully comfortable in either the Oriental or
Occidental camp. Indeed, as the perennial odd man out, their role, for
better or worse, has been to disrupt the binary worldview of everyone from
the Crusaders and jihadis to the imperialists and their Third World
opponents, and now Said and his legion of followers.

Just how disruptive can be seen from Tom Reiss’s lively new book, The
Orientalist, a study of the interwar journalist Lev Nussimbaum, best
remembered–to the degree he is remembered at all–as the author of a
picturesque 1937 novel called Ali and Nino. In Nussimbaum, Reiss has chosen
as his subject one of the most bizarre figures in twentieth-century letters,
which is saying a great deal. Born in 1905 to a millionaire father and a
left-wing mother who committed suicide for unknown reasons when he was still
a child, Nussimbaum grew up in the booming oil city of Baku at a time when
it was poised precariously among Russians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, not
to mention czarists, nationalists and revolutionary socialists of various
stripes.

“Surrounded by teachers, servants, playthings,” he would later write, but
with no children his own age, he lived a cosseted existence until the
Russian Civil War put an end to his idyll in 1918. Fleeing across the desert
by camel, he and his father got as far as Persia, then headed back when Baku
appeared to be safely in the hands of the Whites. When control passed to the
Reds, they fled again, this time west toward the Black Sea port of Batum,
where they boarded a ship bound for Constantinople, now Istanbul. There the
young Russian-Jewish refugee declared himself a fervent czarist despite the
fact that the recently deposed Nicholas II had headed what would be the
world’s most anti-Semitic government until the rise of Nazi Germany some
sixteen years later. Sailing on to Italy, Nussimbaum arrived in time to see
Mussolini’s Black Shirts taking to the streets and was deeply moved.

“A strange feeling came over me,” he recounted. “I felt…welded into unity
with these people, about whom I knew nothing but that they were called
fascists and were against the Bolshevists…. It was the first time I had
the feeling that I wasn’t alone.” Attending a Russian-language Gymnasium in
Berlin in 1922, Nussimbaum adopted another creed. Fascinated with the Muslim
culture he had witnessed firsthand in Baku as a boy, he changed his name to
Essad Bey and converted to Islam in the presence of the imam of the Turkish
embassy. Born an Ashkenazi Jew, he now billed himself as a Muslim aristocrat
of mixed Turkish and Persian descent, a relative, no less, of the Emir of
Bukhara. A prolific writer with a vivid prose style, Nussimbaum also
developed a thriving journalistic career as an expert on Soviet Central Asia
and the Muslim East. He dashed off books and articles with alarming ease on
everything from the Baku oil industry to biographies of Lenin, Stalin,
Mohammed, Nicholas II and the Iranian strongman Reza Shah Pahlavi (father of
the shah overthrown in 1979). He was “a Weimar media star,” Reiss writes, “a
professional ‘Man of the Caucasus.'” Friends and rivals were left guessing
as to whether he was a genuine Turk, a member of some other exotic Asian
nationality or, as a growing number of German rightists and Turkish
nationalists suspected, merely another “Jewish falsifier.” “Who is this
Essad Bey?” demanded Leon Trotsky, writing from exile to his son in 1932. He
was not the only one who wanted to know.

Yet Nussimbaum sailed blithely on. He was happy purveying tales of the
mysterious East at a time when Central European readers had never been
hungrier for stories of whirling dervishes and hidden mountain kingdoms. His
writing satisfied a desire for the primitive, the instinctive and the
exotic, themes that the Nazis would also play upon and amplify. The novel
Ali and Nino, which he published in Vienna in 1937 under the pseudonym
Kurban Said, was the culmination of his efforts, a Caspian Romeo and Juliet
featuring a Muslim hero who is as wise as Mohammed, as lusty as Tarzan and
as brutal as Horst Wessel. Ali and Nino should have been a hit with
Nussimbaum’s German-speaking readership, given the political sensibilities
of the day. But doors were closing on Jewish writers no matter how
fascistically inclined, and the book fell from sight.

Jews Without Borders
(page 2 of 4)

Because the details of Nussimbaum’s life are so sketchy, Reiss has chosen to
pad The Orientalist with material on the history of Russian radicalism, the
rise of the German Freikorps, the 1922 assassination of Walther Rathenau and
a good deal else besides. Some of it is well done, but much of it is
embarrassingly simplistic. In general, Reiss has absorbed all too well the
political line of The New Yorker, where he published a lengthy article on
Nussimbaum in 1999. This is the ideology of the golden mean über alles, the
belief that moderation and reason are one and the same, that the truth lies
always in the middle, and that extremists of the left and right are brothers
under the skin. As a result, The Orientalist fairly oozes with the sort of
old-fashioned anti-Bolshevism that has Red Army soldiers all but eating
babies for breakfast. Because left and right are conjoined in Reiss’s mind,
he is not concerned with the question of which, specifically, is responsible
for what. Indeed, he holds them equally culpable for the horrors of the
twentieth century, although he seems to regard the left as a bit more equal
than the right. By undermining prospects for liberal reform, he claims, the
radicals who assassinated Czar Alexander II in 1881 “indirectly caused the
deaths of tens of millions who would perish in the famines and gulags of the
next century.” Thanks to its ruthlessness, the Cheka served as the model for
Hitler’s Gestapo. The only force rivaling the Bolshies in terms of sheer
bloodthirstiness, he adds, were the Mongols, although Reiss does not seem to
hold Lenin responsible for the rise of Genghis Khan.

The idea that the Soviets paved the way and that Hitler was merely reacting
to the horrors of Bolshevism was the subject of the famous Historikerstreit
(historians’ war) of the 1980s, in which Jürgen Habermas accused such
right-wing historians as Ernst Nolte of trying to shift the blame from the
Nazis to the Communists–but this is placing Reiss in more serious
intellectual company than he probably deserves. The Orientalist does better
once the scene shifts to Weimar Germany, where Nussimbaum, following his
conversion to Islam, plunged deeper and deeper into right-wing politics. In
1931 he associated himself with the German-Russian League Against
Bolshevism, a group whose members for the most part either were Nazis or
soon would be. He joined another far-right group, known as the Social
Monarchist Party, which dreamed of the day when the kaiser would return to
head a German workers’ state. He hooked up with the Young Russian movement
of Alexander Kazem-Bek, an exile group that was also heading in a fascist
direction. (Kazem-Bek called himself Glava, or leader, and by the late 1930s
his followers were sporting blue shirts, organizing rallies and punctuating
his three-hour speeches with cries of “Glava! Glava!”) Nussimbaum’s works
were so highly regarded on the far right that Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry
included them in its recommended reading list of “excellent books for German
minds” following the Nazi takeover in 1933. But then, two years later, the
Nazis woke up to the fact that “Essad Bey” was actually Lev Nussimbaum, and
his books were banned.

ADVERTISEMENTReiss argues that Jewish Orientalists were better than their
Christian equivalents because they revered the East and were not out to
misappropriate it for their own imperialist purposes. In fact, as someone
who seemed to care little about the East except as a backdrop for his own
imagination, Nussimbaum pretty much fits the standard Orientalist model as
Edward Said described it. On the other hand, if he appropriated the Orient
for his own purposes, he has been appropriated right back by the Orient,
where Ali and Nino, according to Reiss, has emerged as the national novel of
“liberated” Azerbaijan since the fall of the Soviets in 1991 (although its
champions, he says, refuse to believe its author was a Jew). Appropriation
is a game played by both sides.

Nussimbaum is interesting as a case study, but is he really worth an entire
book? Ultimately, the answer depends on our assessment of his literary
worth. Reiss, who has clearly put an enormous amount of labor into this
volume, writes that Nussimbaum’s dozen-plus works of nonfiction are still
“readable” after all these years, while Ali and Nino remains “his one
enduring masterpiece.” In an afterword to a recent edition by Anchor Books,
Paul Theroux goes even further, comparing Ali and Nino to Madame Bovary,
Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote and Ulysses–“novels so full of
information that they seem to define a people.”

This makes Nussimbaum seem very important indeed. But is such lofty praise
warranted? Not by a long shot. Overwrought and melodramatic, Ali and Nino is
a minor bit of exotica that in ordinary times would be no more than a
curiosity but, after September 11, is deeply repellent. Imagine a young
Osama bin Laden crossed with Rudolph Valentino, and you’ll get an idea of
the kind of hero–and values–the novel celebrates. Nussimbaum presents Ali,
an Azeri khan, or chieftain, as a noble son of the desert: brutal,
passionate and imbued with an Al Qaeda-like contempt for Western ways. Thus
a chemistry textbook, in his view, is “foolish stuff, invented by
barbarians, to create the impression that they are civilized.” Women have
“no more sense than an egg has hairs,” while European law is contemptible
because it does not accord with the Koran. In Baku’s Muslim quarter,
Nussimbaum writes,

People shrug their shoulders and do justice in their own way. In the
afternoon the plaintiffs come to the mosque where wise old men sit in a
circle and pass sentence according to the laws of Sharia, the law of Allah:
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Sometimes at night shrouded
figures slip through the alleys. A dagger strikes like lightning, a little
cry, and justice is done. Blood-feuds are running from house to house.
Sometimes a sack is carried through the alleys when the night is darkest. A
muffled groaning, a soft splash in the sea, and the sack disappears. The
next day a man sits on the floor of his room, his robe torn, his eyes full
of tears. He has fulfilled the law of Allah: death to the adulteress.

How murdering an adulteress reflects the principle of equity connoted by “an
eye for an eye” is not explained, but then, Nussimbaum is above such prosaic
matters. When Ali stabs a Christian acquaintance merely because he has taken
his beloved Nino out for a ride, he narrates the act with sadistic glee: “I
know where the deadly spot is. But I want to hear the enemy’s pitiful voice
just once more…. My muscles are taut. Just above the heart my dagger
becomes one with the enemy’s body. He writhes, again, and yet again.”
Observes a companion: “Beautifully done, Ali Khan. I’ll admire you forever.”
When Ali’s friend advises him to finish Nino off as well since she has
dishonored herself, he magnanimously refuses. His friends, meanwhile, dream
of an Azerbaijan purged of Armenians, and when the Turkish Army briefly
occupies Baku, Ali contentedly observes the city’s Russian population
timidly slinking by in his presence: “For the first time in my life I was
really at home in my own country.”

Jews Without Borders
(page 3 of 4)

Happiness here is the ability to make others feel humiliated and afraid. One
searches Ali and Nino in vain for a note of disapproval, some indication of
critical distance, a hint that the author does not like all that he surveys,
but it is soon evident that Nussimbaum operates in an irony-free
environment. He is not so much a novelist as a fantasist, and Ali is not so
much a fictional character as an exercise in wish fulfillment. Forced to
flee Baku under ignominious circumstances while still in his early teens,
Nussimbaum clearly wishes that he could have been a handsome desert prince,
galloping his noble steed along narrow mountain trails, making love to the
beautiful Nino (in real life, Nussimbaum often found women to be sexually
repellent), machine-gunning Bolsheviks and dying heroically at his post.
Banned by the Nazis, hemmed in by growing anti-Semitism, he transferred his
animus to the Soviets, who in his view–and apparently Reiss’s–were the
cause of it all. Sick and impoverished, Nussimbaum died in Italy in 1942.
The Anchor Books edition of Ali and Nino, noting only that the author left
Berlin after Hitler took power, makes it appear that he was an anti-Nazi
refugee. In truth, he was fervently rooting for the Axis right to the end.
“Oh,” he wrote a few months before his death, “the victory will be such a
thrilling experience!”

Rather than presenting a progressive alternative to Western stereotypes of
the Arab and Muslim world, as Reiss implies, Jewish Orientalism was a
complex, ambiguous affair, hence disturbing to both East and West. As Ivan
Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar indicate in their new compendium,
Orientalism and the Jews, all sides in the great debate over “the Jewish
question” have used such labels for their own purposes. Anti-Semites have
argued that Jews are displaced Orientals because they wanted them out of the
Christian West, while some Zionists have agreed because they wanted them out
as well. Other Zionists rejected any such Oriental tag because they believed
that the purpose of a Jewish state was not to adapt to prevailing
circumstances in the Middle East but to Europeanize them. John Efron, a
professor at the University of California, Berkeley, describes how both
Christian anti-Semitism and the stifling Jewish Orthodoxy of his day led the
nineteenth-century German-Jewish scholar Abraham Geiger to celebrate the
Islamic tolerance that had allowed Jews to flourish in Muslim Spain. The
historian Heinrich Graetz, Efron goes on, similarly observed that under the
Arabs, “the sons of Judah were free to raise their heads and did not need to
look out with fear and humiliation. Unhindered, they were allowed to develop
their powers in the midst of a free, simple, and talented people.”

ADVERTISEMENTIgnaz Goldziher, who lived a generation or two later than
Geiger or Graetz (he died in 1921), was even more extreme in his
identification with the Orient, which he hoped to use as a cudgel against
both Christians and Jews. After a visit to Damascus in 1890, he wrote, “I
truly entered in those weeks into the spirit of Islam to such an extent that
ultimately I became inwardly convinced that I myself was Muslim and
judiciously discovered that this was the only religion which, even in its
doctrinal and official formulation, can satisfy philosophical minds.” Pace
Edward Said, Goldziher did not believe that “the Orient and everything in it
was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the
West.” On the contrary, he believed the Muslim East was superior to anything
the West had to offer, which is why he hoped to make use of it “to elevate
Judaism to a similar rational level.”

If Goldziher did not choose the Nussimbaumian solution of outright
conversion, he stopped just short. Like Geiger, he regarded Islam as the
continuation of the healthy mainstream of Abrahamic monotheism, from which
Eastern European Talmudism had deviated. Jacob Israel De Haan, who was born
in the Netherlands in 1881, took a different route, although in some
respects to the same end. As Michael Berkowitz tells it in another
contribution to Orientalism and the Jews, the multitalented De Haan was many
things to many people. To Dutch readers, he was famous as a poet and
pioneering advocate of gay rights, but also notorious as an outspoken
advocate of man-boy love, a stance that got him kicked off the Dutch Social
Democratic newspaper Het Volk, where he was responsible for the children’s
column. Among certain Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews, he was a saintly figure,
revered for both his piety and his efforts to defend the Haredi community in
Palestine against the impending Zionist state.

Nowadays we don’t think of the ultra-Orthodox as particularly friendly to
homosexuality, much less man-boy love. Yet Berkowitz, who teaches modern
Jewish history at University College, London, astutely argues that while De
Haan devoted quatrain after quatrain to the beautiful Arab boys he
encountered in Palestine following his move there in 1919, his poems were
imbued not just with erotic yearning but with “ambivalence and restraint”
that the rabbinate might have found reminiscent of biblical love poetry.
“What do I see when I see you?” De Haan asks in one poem:

Everything but you.
I hear the faraway melody.
Of the heartbreaking song.

Jews Without Borders
(page 4 of 4)

As David laments in a similar vein about his adultery with Bathsheba in
Psalm 51: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”
Moreover, Berkowitz contends that the ultra-Orthodox attitude toward
homosexuality is not as uniformly hostile as one might think. Rather than
consistently attack homosexuality, he says, the rabbinate often treated it
as “a minor transgression.” He notes that there are “prominent homosexual
and homoerotic motifs in Jewish mysticism and poetry,” that at least one
rabbinic authority stresses “the imperative of exclusive male bonding in
mystical community-building” and that it should be remembered that “the
world of the Haredim is a closed circle of men, which is in great part
obsessed with controlling and directing the sexual energy of its community.”
As is often the case, no community is more sexually charged than one devoted
to sexual asceticism, which is why a poet who mingles the mystical and the
erotic and who writes about subterranean passions that other members of the
community might also feel (even if they cannot bring themselves to admit it)
could play such an important and valued role.

What united all these concerns for De Haan was his characteristically
idiosyncratic concept of Jewish Orientalism. Whereas Goldziher saw Eastern
European Orthodoxy as degenerate, De Haan saw the Haredim as a natural part
of the Palestinian landscape, where he hoped they would continue to coexist
peacefully with the Arab community. This was at a time when the main body of
Jewish Orthodoxy still rejected Zionism as a deeply heretical effort to
“hurry” the coming of the Messiah by abandoning the Diaspora and returning
to the Holy Land before God had given his express approval. In embracing
Orthodoxy and rejecting Zionism, De Haan “reconceived the Orient,” to quote
Berkowitz, “as an enclave for pious Jews, under the tutelage of British
colonialism, and in close communion with Palestine’s Arabs”–a dangerous
stance in a period when Jewish nationalists were just beginning to flex
their muscles.

ADVERTISEMENTIn 1924 De Haan was assassinated. Although suspicions have long
settled on the far-right Revisionist Zionist movement of Vladimir
Jabotinsky, Berkowitz argues that the hit was ordered by the top echelons of
the mainstream Zionist movement for a variety of reasons: because De Haan
had entered into negotiations with the Arab elite; because, as a
correspondent for leading Dutch and British newspapers, he had published
numerous stories that were embarrassing to the Zionist establishment; and
because he was about to expose improprieties involving Zionist land
purchases, including a plot to murder a local Jew who had refused to
cooperate in an important real estate deal. The movement itself has never
admitted complicity, and Walter Laqueur’s all but official History of
Zionism (1972) omits any mention of the assassination.

With De Haan out of the way, the majority of Orthodox Jews made their peace
with Zionism, Jewish-Arab relations went into free fall and the Zionist
regime that emerged after 1948 was hostile not just to the Palestinians but
to Jews from the Middle East and North Africa as well. As Amnon
Raz-Krakotzkin, a historian at Ben-Gurion University, points out in another
essay in Orientalism and the Jews, a series of articles in the newspaper
Ha’aretz in 1949 summed up the dominant attitude toward the new wave of
Jewish immigrants from Arab lands:

We are dealing with people whose primitivism is at a peak, whose level of
knowledge is visibly one of absolute ignorance, and worse, who have little
talent for understanding anything intellectual. Generally, they are also
slightly better than the general level of the Arabs, Negroes, and Berbers in
the same regions.

De Haan’s Orientalism did not provide a way out for the Jews of Palestine
since, among other things, it made no allowance for the Arabs’ legitimate
aspirations for independence from the British. But Zionist Occidentalism has
not provided a way out either. Rather than siding with the East or the West,
perhaps the real aim should be to rise above both.

–Boundary_(ID_gT2mtnjKGuvgRXQ5n8YtYA)–

TurkishPress.com

Bad News From The E.U.

Published: 3/9/2005

BY TAMER KORKMAZ

ZAMAN- France has already planted a ~Qreferendum mine~R along Turkey~Rs path to
the European Union. Ankara didn~Rt even raise a word of protest.

A package of constitutional changes accepted by the French Parliament and
approved by President Jacques Chirac last week aims to block Turkey~Rs
European Union membership. The decision announces that new members will not
be admitted into the Union without the French public~Rs consent after 2007.
It~Rs obvious that the resolution aims to block Turkey~Rs path. [Turkey is
currently the only EU candidate projected to join after 2007]

Even if Turkey successfully completes full membership talks in the next
decade, the fate of Turkey~Rs membership will be decided by the French
people.

The ~Qreferendum barricade~R idea belongs to Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the
French government and the person most likely to succeed Chirac after
France~Rs next elections scheduled for 2007. Backed by his party, Sarkozy has
used the issue of Turkey~Rs EU membership as a weapon against Chirac. And at
last, he was able to make the French Parliament accept these constitutional
changes.

Sarkozy is offering ~Qprivileged partnership~R to Turkey, and 90 percent of
his party members support this scheme.

Sarkozy stands united with the German rightists who are expected to come to
power in the next German elections. In other words, the bloc against Turkey
within the EU will be fortified by the year 2007. Meanwhile, the French
public is being ~Qstuffed~R with Armenian ~Qgenocide~R claims.

At the same time, the Cyprus issue is also at hand. However, there is no
trace of a solution on the horizon. A few days ago, Greek Cypriot Justice
Minister Doros Theodoru made a significant confession. ~QOur efforts to date
have been aimed at preventing a solution,~R he said. ~QWe~Rll try to avoid
negotiations till Oct. 3. Then we~Rll pursue a solution within the framework
of EU law.~R

The Greek Cypriots~R strategy aims at forcing Turkey to recognize the Greek
Cypriot Republic. They~Rll block a solution until Oct. 3, and then Ankara
will have to recognize them in order to continue its EU membership
negotiations.

Greek Cypriots are the ones trying to prevent a solution, but Turkey has to
pay the price!

How will the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) sign the protocol
which grants recognition to the Greek Cypriots, when the Greek Cypriots have
officially announced that they have no intention of compromising?

On top of all this, just when the EU Troika was arriving in Istanbul this
weekend, female demonstrators were being beaten up by the Turkish police.
Europeans who oppose Turkey~Rs membership will certainly use this to their
advantage.

Turkish Press

Armenian Leaders Look to Future
By DAVID ZHOU, Contributing Writer

The Harvard Crimson
Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Analyzing the current economic situation in Armenia with an emphasis
on future growth strategies, government officials from Armenia
and executive board members of an Armenian diaspora organization
participated in an all-day summit at the Kennedy School of Government
yesterday.Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School
Michael E. Porter also spoke at the event, entitled â~@~The Global
Summit on the Future of Armenia.â~@~] The Foreign Minister of Armenia,
Vartan Oskanian, was scheduled to speak, but did not attend after
contracting pneumonia, according to Belfer Center Communications
Officer Sharon R. Wilke.

Vahram Nercissiantz, the chief economic advisor to Armenian President
Robert Kocharian, spoke with The Crimson after the summit to discuss
a number of the countryâ~@~Ys important political and economic
issues. Three board members from Armenia 2020â~@~Tan organization that
studies development in Armeniaâ~@~Talso participated in an interview.

â~@~[The summit] presents a visionary review and analysis of the
Armenian political and economic transition,â~@~] Nercissiantz said.
â~@~Lots of analytical work was done on what are policy options
and strategic directions.â~@~]

The summit, which touched on domestic issues that confront todayâ~@~Ys
Armenian leaders, was hosted by the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs. The event was co-sponsored by Armenia 2020
and the Armenian General Benevolent Union, which sets up programs to
promote Armenian culture.

The press conference following the summit also focused on tensions
with Turkey, which Nercissiantz said stem in large part from the
Turkish governmentâ~@~Ys continuing refusal to recognize the genocide
perpetrated against Armenians after the First World War.

â~@~We have a rage for that genocide which is still with us,â~@~]
Nercissiantz said. â~@~The Turks have a responsibility to face
their own history.â~@~]

Noubar B. Afeyan, an Armenia 2020 executive board member, said that
Turkeyâ~@~Ys economic sanctions are â~@~because of Armenian pressure
for recognition of the genocide.â~@~]

Nercissiantz said fears of another genocide prompted the conflict
with Azerbaijan, a neighboring nation that has been involved in a
dispute over territory with Armenia.

â~@~This fits into the pattern of an ideology which has existed
in the region called Pan-Turkism,â~@~] he said. â~@~It is very
similar to Nazi ideology where they wish to eliminate all non-Turkish
elements.â~@~]

Nercissiantz said that genuine peace between the three countries
depends on the development of liberal democracy because â~@~citizens
never vote to eliminate an element of their society.â~@~]

While Turkey is widely hailed as a triumph of democracy in the region,
Nercissiantz said, the government must do more to protect minority
rights.

Armenia has been moving toward both a liberalized political system
and economy, he said. The country has enjoyed high rates of growth
throughout the 1990s and joined the World Trade Organization in 2003.

The countryâ~@~Ys economy collapsed along with the former Soviet
Union, has been playing catch-up ever since, and is now approximately
back to its 1989 level, said Andrew Lazarian, another executive
board member of Armenia 2020.

â~@~Our approach has been growth with equity, assist a good business
environment and invest in people,â~@~] Nercissiantz said. â~@~We
do have considerable progress, but we have a long way to go.â~@~]

–Boundary_(ID_nlfyU+X06DWeUoo74XjVGA)–

The Gazette (Montreal)
March 4, 2005 Friday
Final Edition

Checkmate: Machine defeats man: Chess grand master takes on Deep
Blue. Stylish documentary raises questions about Garry Kasparov’s
1997 loss to IBM supercomputer

by JOHN GRIFFIN, The Gazette

A knowledge of chess is useful but not essential to the enjoyment of
Vikram Jayanti’s stylish new NFB and Alliance Atlantis documentary
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.

In 1997, Garry Kasparov took on an IBM computer named Deep Blue in a
chess tournament and lost, in an event that has been described as “a
blow against mankind.”

How did it happen? A year earlier, the man considered the greatest
grand master in recorded history had accepted a “scientific”
challenge by IBM to play against one of its computers, and wiped the
floor with it.

The “half-Jewish, half-Armenian” Russian graciously offered a
rematch. Little did he know IBM would throw almost limitless
resources at constructing a 11/2-tonne supercomputer dubbed Deep Blue
specifically configured to deal with the mind-blowing numbers
involved in the game.

It was dubbed the “brute force” approach to combating the nimbleness
of the human brain and it attracted wide international public
interest in the six-game/nine-day New York smackdown.

Game Over combines actual tournament footage and memories of those
involved with a return visit to what Kasparov calls “the scene of the
crime.”

In his mind, no more or less paranoid than others playing a devilish
game at levels unimaginable to mere mortals, IBM cheated on the
match. Specifically, in the second game, Deep Blue made a move too
human to have come from a programmed digital brain.

Kasparov is convinced a human interfered with the process in one of a
number of rooms locked and off-limits to the Russian and his team.
The film cites the unwillingness of the IBM mob to share any
information about Deep Blue – “Garry thought it was about science and
research, and played right into their hands.”

It is also noted after Kasparov had a meltdown to lose the last game
and the tournament, IBM wonks immediately dismantled the machine
they’d worked a year on constructing.

“It’s like going to the moon, looking around and coming home with
nothing to show for it,” someone says about the shelving of such an
intensive project.

Still, things might have worked out for the company in the long run.
Its shares jumped 15 per cent after the win, and a giant considered
an also-ran in the computer business became a player.

As for Kasparov, he recovered enough to continue his extraordinary
career, but Game Over makes clear something has been lost. And it’s
more than a game.

“Human beings are weak in everything but intelligence,” the grand
master explains. “Now something comes along that says ‘I might be
smarter’ – and it’s a machine.”

[email protected]

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

Rating 3 1/2

Playing at: AMC cinema.

Parents’ guide: required viewing for chess nuts, some language.

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:

THE CATHOLICOSATE OF CILICIA PARTICIPATES
IN THE WCC ECUMENICAL OFFICERS’ MEETING

The meeting of the Ecumenical Officers of the World Council of Churches was
held in council’s headquarters in Geneva on 23-25 February. Bishop Nareg
Alemezian, Ecumenical Officer of the Catholicosate of Cilicia participated
in the meeting and was elected as a member of the meeting’s executive
committee.

Rev. Hovagim Manougian represented the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzine during
the meeting.

Around 50 religious and secular representatives from various churches the
Middle East, Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa and Asia
participated in the meeting. The participants discussed issues concerning
Ecumenical movement on local, regional and international levels.

Bishop Nareg Alemezian spoke during the meeting about the urgent situation
prevailing currently in the Middle East and specially Lebanon, and the
exemplary role of the Armenian Church.

##

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.

ROBERT KOCHARIAN AND VLADIMIR RUSHAILO DISCUSS PROCESS OF REFORMS
REALIZED IN CIS STRUCTURES

YEREVAN, March 3 (Noyan Tapan). The process of the reforms realized
in CIS structures was the pivotal theme of Robert Kocharian’s March 3
meeting with Vladimir Roushailo, CIS Executive Committee Chairman,
Executive Secretary. According to the RA President’s Press Service,
Vladimir Roushailo also gave to PresidentKochaaarian information on
organization of the summits planned by the CIS countries this year and
issues connected with them.

EUbusiness

Caucasus countries move toward closer alignment with EU

03/03/2005

By Ahto Lobjakas

The European Commission has adopted detailed “country reports” describing
progress toward reform in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The reports are
an important step as the three states move toward closer alignment with the
EU. The so-called neighbourhood action plans outline specific reforms the EU
expects of the countries and details the advantages the bloc will offer in
return.
(RFE/RL) — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan have taken another important
step on the road toward closer alignment with the EU.
On 2 March, the European Commission adopted “country reports” on the three
south Caucasus states, as well as Lebanon and Egypt. The reports are a
detailed overview of the countries’ progress toward adopting EU values such
as rule of law, democracy, and a market economy.
Francoise Le Bail, a Commission spokeswoman, said the decision marks the
completion of the first phase the EU’s Neighborhood Policy — the bloc’s
program to reach out to countries on its rim.
Le Bail said that the completion puts the states on the way to obtaining
their own EU neighbourhood action plan. The action plans detail obligations
on both sides for increased cooperation.
“These are measures within the framework of the neighborhood policy, which
is a policy directed at countries to the east of the enlarged European
Union, as well as the Mediterranean countries,” Le Bail said. “We have
already adopted a certain number of ‘country reports’ and ‘action plans’ for
some countries, we’re therefore now completing this action with the ‘country
reports’ on five countries. And it is on the these ‘country reports’ that
the ‘action plans — containing concrete measures for cooperation between
these countries and the EU — will be based.”
The EU neighborhood policy is directed at a ring of countries stretching
from Morocco to Ukraine and Moldova. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were
initially excluded from the policy, but were taken on board largely as a
result of the “Rose revolution” in Georgia that took place in November 2003.
The three south Caucasus countries, together with Lebanon and Egypt, should
have their “action plans” by the end of the year. So far, Israel, Ukraine
and Jordan have already signed theirs, with Morocco, Moldova, the
Palestinian Authority and Tunisia about to do so.
The Commission has in recent months repeatedly stressed the neighborhood
policy does not carry with it an EU commitment to eventually admit any of
the beneficiary countries. The clarifications have been partly sparked by
pressure from Ukraine to be put on a fast track to EU membership.
Another Commission official who asked not to be named explained on 2 March
that the action plans consist of what he called two “baskets.”
The first basket contains conditions set by the EU — that is, reforms aimed
at strengthening the rule of law, democracy and respect for human rights, as
well as certain foreign policy commitments, such as non-proliferation and
counter-terrorism measures. These, the official said, are all specific
measures which the EU will closely measure.
The other “basket” contains the EU offer. This could involve participation
in EU programs, policies and agencies, approximation of national law with EU
legislation to make cooperation and trade easier, and opportunities for
people-to-people contacts.
The further countries go with reforms, the greater the degree of cooperation
the EU will offer.
EU officials say that once the three-year action plans have successfully run
their course, new and more extensive cooperation agreements may be offered.
The neighbourhood policy could lead to a near-complete integration in the
EU’s single market.
On 1 March, RFE/RL spoke with Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili.
She welcomed the Commission’s decision regarding her country, but indicated
it had been a long time coming. “[We react] very positively,” Zurabishvili
said. “We’ve been looking forward to that, already for some time since our
versions of the country reports were transmitted to the EU already in the
fall of last year, so we’ve been waiting for quite some time.”
Georgia is seen by the EU as the most advanced nation in the region. It
hosts the only full European Commission mission. There is a smaller
“regional mission” in Yerevan, which reports to the one in Tbilisi. A
similar small-scale mission will be launched this year in Baku.
Georgia’s country report is the least critical, with relatively few problems
identified when in comes to political reforms. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan
are criticized for deficient legislation, breaches of fundamental freedoms
and a general lack of willingness to reform.
The reports note widespread Russian influence on decision-making in both
Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The EU has no immediate plans to become directly involved in helping resolve
the region’s so-called frozen conflicts. However, it is currently
considering setting up a border monitoring mission in Georgia and has
contributed funds to the economic rehabilitation of areas affected by
conflict.
Commission officials say they are confident Russia will not react negatively
to EU moves to engage the South Caucasus, though they admit security
cooperation in the ex-Soviet space is one of the most sensitive issues in
EU-Russia attempts to agree a framework for their strategic partnership.
Officials in Brussels say the EU has made it very clear the bloc is not
intent on weakening Russian influence in the region and encourages
governments in the South Caucasus to pursue good relations with Moscow.

European Neighbourhood Policy: Georgia

European Neighbourhood Policy: Armenia

European Neighbourhood Policy: Azerbaijan

European Neighbourhood Policy – further information

Copyright (c) 2005. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.