Author: Hambardsumian Paul

BATUMI, AKHALKALAKI RESIDENTS AGAINST RUSSIAN MILITARY BASES CLOSURE
2005-03-31
TBILISI, March 31 (RIA Novosti) – On Thursday actions of protest were
held in the cities of Batumi (Adzharia) and Akhalkalaki (on the
Georgian-Armenian border) against Georgia’s demand to withdraw the
Russian military bases from them.
The press center of the Supreme Council of the Adzharian autonomy
reports: up to 300 protesters from the Georgian People’s Patriotic
Front staged in Batumi a procession with posters demanding an end to
the anti-Russian policy.
“The peoples of Georgia and Russia are brothers forever. Nobody can
stand in the way of their friendship. The Georgian leaders should stop
campaigning for the bases’ withdrawal,” chairman of the Georgian
People’s Patriotic Front Zurab Gotsiridze told RIA Novosti on the
phone.
A similar action took place in the Samtskhe-Dzhavakhetia region and
Akhalkalaki. Local Armenians (about 400) gathered outside the House of
Culture demanding that the Russian bases’ withdrawal campaign be
stopped, journalists were told at the regional governor’s
administration.
Presently, two Russian bases – in Batumi and Akhalkalaki – are
remaining in the Georgian territory. In addition, the Russian group of
troops in Transcaucasia is headquartered in Tbilisi. The strength of
the Russian group in Georgia is about 3,000.
Georgia and Russia are holding intensive talks on the bases’
withdrawal. In the beginning of March, Georgian parliamentarians
passed the resolution On the Russian Military Bases in the Territory
of Georgia, which reads, “The military bases of the Russian Federation
are to be withdrawn from Georgia. Such is the will of the government
and the people of Georgia.”
This resolution sets the deadline for coming to an agreement – before
May 15, 2005. If no agreement is reached before May 15, the government
of Georgia is to take tough sanctions with regard to the activities of
Russian servicemen in Georgia, the resolution insists

AZERBAIJAN’S POLICY ON SETTLEMENT OF KARABAKH PROBLEM IS IN ITS
RESOLUTION BY FORCE, SHAVARSH KOCHARIAN THINKS
YEREVAN, MARCH 30. ARMINFO. Now the policy of Azerbaijan concerning
the settlement of the Karabakh conflict is in its resolution by
force. Leader of opposition National-Democratic Party Shavarsh
Kocharian stated during the parliamentary hearings regarding Karabakh
problem.
The PACE Resolution on Nagorny Karabakh became a signal for resumption
of military operation, and the Azerbaijani oil is the pre-condition
for it, the parliamentarian thinks. To withstand the aggression of
Azerbaijan Armenia and Karabakh must implement structural reforms,
create pre-conditions for economic development and integration into
European structures. “Breaking the cease-fire regime Azerbaijan
solicits the international structures to press down on Armenia”,
Shavarsh Kocharian said. “Today the international community lays
conditions before Armenia on that to guarantee unsteady regime of
cease-fire is impossible, if the occupied territories are not
returned”, the deputy thinks, adding that the Armenian side will not
return the territories under any circumstances.
In his turn, Head of the faction of the Republican party Galoust
Sahakian stated that the Armenia side compromised as far back as 1994
signing the Bishkek treaty on cease-fire. “As a result of signing of
this agreement the northern districts of Nagorny Karabakh were
remained under the occupation of Azerbaijan”, he said. The deputy also
stressed that in the process of settlement of the Karabakh problem
Armenia is not an extraneous observer: “Any problem concerning Nagorny
Karabakh is a problem for the whole Armenian people”, he said.

`NATIONAL GALLERY’ MUSICAL FESTIVAL
Azg/arm
31 March 05
“National Gallery” musical festival organized by the State
Philharmonic Orchestra and National Gallery of Armenia will be held at
the National Gallery from April 6 to 18. People’s Artist of Armenia,
Svetlana Navasardian, the string quartet after Komitas, “Serenade”
chamber orchestra, “Hover” choir and the students of Vladimir
Spivakov’s fund will take part at the festival.
The opening ceremony will take place on April 6 at the Hall of Frescos
of the national Gallery. Suchlike festivals are usual for many
countries of the world – Russia, France, Germany, Austria.
Fresh ways of presenting traditional music pulls in the audience,
authors of the project, Garik Nazarian and Mariam Shahinian,
think. The spectators will enjoy 7 wonderful classic compositions in
beautiful Technicolor surroundings.
Arias from Mozart’s famous operas will open the “National Gallery”
festival. The organizers are sure that spectators will be fascinated
by the combination of tunes and colors.
Though the National Gallery was not designed as a concert hall, it has
good acoustics.
The Hayastan Pan-Armenian Fund and Yerevan Cognac Factory sponsor the
festival.
By Azganush Barsumian

CONCESSIONS CANNOT BE AVOIDED
A1+
29-03-2005
Â«We should have courage to say that the Nagorno Karabakh problem can be
settled by means of mutual concessions and talks with the participation
of all the conflicting partiesÂ», this opinion prevailed during today’s
NA hearings on the Karabakh issue.
The NA Speaker, Foreign Minister and Albert Bazeyan, who made a
contribution to the Artsakh liberation struggle, adhered to the opinion.
Vardan Oskanyan did not explain what he means by Â«concessionsÂ».
Â«Concession should occur during the negotiations. One thing I can say
for certain, we will not cede Karabakh and jeopardize security of its
populationÂ», he said.
THREAT TO THREAT
‘We are concerned but not afraid of Azerbaijan’s militaristic threats.
We are ready to repulse and probably the third attempt of the Azeris
will be the last oneâ€, Armenian Foreign Minster Vardan Oskanyan stated
today. He also said that the Azeris try to advance their positions at
the NKR border. In this situation conflicts can become more frequent.
Â«We are concerned over the latest statement by Aliyev, who does not
admit concessions in the settlement of the problem. This approach will
lead to no good. The Karabakh problem does not have a military
resolutionÂ», Vardan Oskanyan stated.
PROPAGANDA LOSES
Today political forces of Armenia assure that Armenia has yielded the
information battle to Azerbaijan. In the words of opposition deputy
Stepan Zakaryan, even the murder of Gurgen Margaryan in Budapest was not
presented properly to the international community. Â«If the propaganda
were correct, Russian would be that the Azerbaijani, who slashed to
death a sleeping man is analogous to a Chechen soldier and Americans
would see that the Azerbaijani is like those who killed captives in
IraqÂ». Upon completion of the hearings a collection which will contain
statements and opinions will be issued.

Turks seek a fresh look at past
By Nicholas Birch
Washington Times, DC
March 26 2005
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
ISTANBUL — A hidden Armenian minority, after living in the shadows
for decades, is coming forward to tell stories of a 1915 massacre in
books and newspapers, and prompting Turkey to re-examine its past.
A group of senior politicians from Turkey’s governing and main
opposition parties last week called for the events of 90 years ago to
be “researched under United Nations arbitration.”
“If there is a need to settle accounts with history, we are
ready,” they said.
Next month, Armenians all over the world will mark the 90th
anniversary of the massacres — an event that successive governments
in Turkey have denied took place.
Fethiye Cetin was a student when she discovered her grandmother
Seher’s secret.
Seher, a pillar of a typical Turkish family, had been born an
Armenian named Heranush, and was 9 years old when the massacres
started in 1915.
She cowered in the churchyard as men from her village were slain
and thrown into the river.
Forced with other women and children onto the road to Syria, she
was abducted and handed over to a police corporal. He raised her as
his own child.
Such tales are common in Turkey’s eastern provinces. Locals
called people like the grandmother “those the sword left behind.”
What makes her story unusual is that the granddaughter made it
into a book.
“She had hidden the things she told me for over 60 years,” said
Miss Cetin, a lawyer who works from a small office in Istanbul. “I
felt they needed to be given a voice.”
But she also wanted to help move the debate away from barren
disputes over terminology and statistics: 300,000 killed? 800,000
killed? 1 million killed? Genocide? Ethnic cleansing? An unfortunate
side effect of civil war?
Such arguments, she said, “hide the lives and deaths of
individuals and do nothing to encourage people to listen.”
Turks certainly have been listening to her. Published in
November, “My Grandmother” is already into its fifth edition.
Miss Cetin has lost count of the number of phone calls and
letters she has received, of support, or from people with similar
stories to tell.
“When books like this come out, even people with very different
family histories begin to realize they aren’t the only ones to
question what they have been taught,” she said.
Miss Cetin first published a summary of her grandmother’s history
in an Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper in 2000. The article was
ignored. “I could not have published my book back then,” she said.
In January, an Istanbul gallery hit the headlines with an
exhibition of 500 postcards showing Turkish Armenians between 1900
and 1914.
“The history taught in schools is told as if only Turks had ever
lived in Anatolia, no one else,” curator Osman Koker told reporters.
“That is deeply unhealthy.”

Putin arrives in Armenia’s Echmiadzin
ITAR-TASS News Agency
March 25, 2005 Friday
ECHMIADZIN, March 25 — Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in
Echmiadzin on Friday. Echmiadzin is the administrative and spiritual
center of the Armenian Church that is located in Vagarshapat, 18
kilometers away from Yerevan.
Putin will meet with Armenian Catholicos Garegin II in Echmiadzin. He
will also visit the Catholicate and the Echmiadzin Cathedral.

PRESS RELEASE
ARMENIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF CANADA
3401 Olivar-Asselin
Montréal, Québec
H4J 1L5
Tél. (514) 334-1299 Fax (514) 334-6853
March 25, 2005
Contacts: Shant Karabajak 514-334-1299
Roupen Kouyoumdjian 514-336-7095
Aris Babikian 416-497-8972
For immediate release:
Cultural Genocide event deemed great success by the Armenian National
Committee of Canada
Montr̩al РThe Armenian National Committee of Canada, the largest
and most influential grass roots Canadian-Armenian political
interest group, has organized a series of events in memory of the
90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The events are
aimed at the general public and are intended to show the material
and cultural damage caused by the uprooting and destruction of the
Armenians from their homeland of four thousand year.
The first of these events was scheduled for Wednesday, the 23rd of
March at the National Press Club in Ottawa, an exhibit and reception
depicting the tragic and continuous state sponsored destruction
of Armenian architectural treasures in Eastern Anatolia (Turkey of
today). At the same time, it was an opportunity for the A.N.C.C. to
thank all the members of the House of Commons and Senators for making
the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Canada possible.
Professor Samvel Karapetyan’s research found a wide audience of
Ministers, Members of Parliament, Senators and foreign dignitaries,
among which were the Honourable Stephen Harper, Leader of the
Official Opposition, Mr. Stockwell Day, Foreign Affairs critic of
the Conservative Party of Canada, M. Gilles Duceppe, Leader of the
Bloc Quebecois, Honourable Sen. Raymond Setlakwe, Mr. Lui Temelkovski,
President of the Canada-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship group, as well
as 80 Membres of Parliament and Senators, 20 Embassies presented by
their Ambassadors or representatives. Also notable was Mme Madeleine
Dalphond-Guiral, the Member of Parliament whose efforts lead to the
recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Canadian House of Commons
in April 2004.
Dr. Girair Basmadjian, President of the Armenian National Committee
of Canada said during the event that “it is very sad that traces of
thousands of years of Armenian civilization are being systematically
wiped out from its cradle”. He latter asked “what can be worse than
the uprooting of an entire nation from its homeland? The annihilation
of its traces from that homeland.”
Present at the event was Prof. Vahakn Dadrian, one of the
world’s foremost experts on the Armenian Genocide, who thanked the
parliamentarians for their commitment to truth and historical justice,
despite undue pressures.
-30-
–Boundary_(ID_WG7rf5/ymc5YlqDJAboZAg)–

SERGE SARGSIAN: IT IS DIFFICULT TO RULE OUT THAT TENSION IN
KARABAKH WILL DEVELOP INTO SOMETHING MORE SERIOUS
YEREVAN, MARCH 23. ARMINFO. It is difficult to rule our that the
tension on the contact line of Karabakh and Azerbaijani armies will
develop into something more serious, Minister of Defence of Armenia
Serge Sargsian told journalists, Thursday.
According to him, Azerbaijan violates the cease0fire regime not for
the first time – it does it very often, as it tries to improve its
positions on the contact line. “It is obvious for any man, who knows
the Karabakh conflict in details, that only Azerbaijan is interested
in violation of the cease-fire regime, as in its times Armenian party
had opportunities to consolidate its grip on more favorable positions,
and we did it as far back as 1994”, Serge Sargsian declared. He added
that the statements of the Ministry of Defence of Azerbaijan on the
violation of the cease-fire regime by the Armenian party are all
open lie. Commenting on the statements of the Defence Minister of
Azerbaijan Safar Abiyev and President Ilham Aliyev on the possible
settlement of the Karabakh conflict by force, the minister mentioned
“pilaw is not handed out during the war, and it would be very useful
for Abiyev to recall his past”.

The Messenger, Georgia
March 24 2005
Georgia launches new ferry service to Russia
But questions remain over what will become of Abkhaz rail link
By M. Alkhazashvili
Poti Port (above) launched a new ferry
to Russia on Wednesday; Russia and
others still hope that a larger transit
link can be renewed via Abkhazia
The opening of the Georgian-Russian ferry between the ports of Poti
and Kavkaz on Wednesday, March 23, represents a new building block in
cooperation between the two countries’ transportation systems but is
overshadowed by the lack of certainty on reopening the Abkhaz rail
route.
The ferry crossing, which had been agreed to in January by the
Minister of Economic Development Aleksi Aleksishivli and the Russian
Minister of Transportation Igor Levitin, will operate every three
days according to its preliminary schedule.
The roll-on-roll-off (RO-RO) ferry is the fourth ferry route
operating out of Georgia – others go to Bulgaria, Romania, and
Ukraine – and will be able to carry 24 railway freight cars on each
trip.
While significant, railway officials say it cannot make up for the
loss of the Abkhaz section of the railway line in terms of shipping
goods in and out of Georgia. Restoration of the rail line is one of
the main issues upon which Abkhaz de facto president Sergei Baghapsh
has staked relations with Tbilisi. “Georgiaa-Abkhaz negotiations
should be started first with the operation of the railway,” he said
last week after returning from meetings in Moscow.
While Georgia is not against the reopening of the rail link –
shipping officials in fact are eager for it – the country is
unwilling to accept an unfavorable agreement as to how this should
happen. An agreement regarding the operation of the railway via
Abkhazia was signed during a Shevardnadze-Putin meeting held in Sochi
in 2002. At the time the Georgian government laid out its stance that
the reopening of the railway is conditionally tied to the secure and
protected return of Georgian refugees to Abkhazia, first of all to
Gali. In addition, Tbilisi demanded that former railway workers be
given their jobs back. While talks have proceeded over the
restoration of the railway and Russian officials have helped open a
line connecting Abkhazia with Russia, Tbilisi has been frustrated in
its efforts to return IDPs to the region.
Armenia is also interested in the restoration of the railway via
Abkhazia, seeing it as a desperately needed outlet to the Russian and
European economies. During meetings with Georgian counterparts over
recent months, the Armenian side has continually raised the issue of
the restoration of the railway. Their argument is simple: blockades
with both Azerbaijan and Turkey have reduced its ability to trade
beyond Georgia and Iran to a trickle.
The question facing Georgia, however, is whether the restored railway
will help settle the conflict and speed the restoration of its
territorial integrity. Many in the government fear that without
proper controls, the operation of the railway will economically
strengthen only separatist Abkhazia and have few benefits for
Tbilisi.
Another concern is that a working Abkhaz railway would only increase
Russia’s influence on the separatist regime. The demographic ‘vacuum’
created by exiling Georgians from Abkhazia could be filled by Russian
workers; in addition Tbilisi would resist legitimizing Russian
tourist and business activities in the region if there are no
mechanisms for Georgians to do the same. While increasing Russian
influence in the region is an understandable fear, increasing Abkhaz
economic condition would only improve negotiations as the region is
destitute.
Questions that remain are where to establish custom check points and
border controls; Tbilisi has constantly refused to establish custom
checkpoints inside its own territory on borders with separatists
states. In addition, funds must be allocated to rebuild and operate
the railway which is missing several bridges and entire lengths of
track in some places.
Disagreements over the Abkhaz railway was a catalyst of the region’s
war; it would now be ideal, though difficult, if its restoration were
a building block in ending the conflict.

Easter, the ‘Light of Christ’, from Jerusalem to the Jordan
by Hana Mouasher
AsiaNews.it, Italy
March 22 2005
Amman (AsiaNews) – For Easter, the ‘Light of Jesus’ comes directly
from Jerusalem. Paschal tradition in this predominantly Muslim country
demands in fact that candles be lighted on the eve of Easter Sunday
with a lighted candle brought by the archbishop who celebrated mass
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Brought to the shores of the Jordan river, the lighted candle is used
to light other candles that are taken across the country.
This year, Jordanian Christians have to wait till May 1, Easter
Sunday according to the old Julian calendar. The country’s Council of
Churches, which joins Copts, Catholics, Greek and Armenian Orthodox,
and Protestants, decided that Christmas would be celebrated according
to the Gregorian calendar and Easter according to the Julian calendar;
hence, Lent has just started.
Fasting is widely observed; Catholics abstain from food especially
on Fridays when they go to church to pray and take part in the Via
Crucis. People also abstain from eating meat and turn to traditional
dishes based on vegetables and grains cooked in olive oil.
Palm Sunday is celebrated with enthusiasm. The faithful arrive in
church with palm branches decorated in a multitude of flowers. During
mass, the priest leads a large procession of people around the church,
following the large cross carried by a group of church boys, with
everyone joining in the prayers and hymns. A great bundle of olive
tree branches are blessed and sprayed with holy water and distributed
at the end.
Then begins the final week of Lent when Palm Sunday rejoicing is
replaced by a more sombre mood.
On Good Thursday, evening mass is jam-packed-twelve people chosen
for the ritual washing of the feet. Churches stay open all night for
worshippers who come to pray before the open tabernacle.
On Good Friday, worshippers pass around a statue of the dead Jesus
lying on a wooden bed. With a train of flowers following the statue
is laid before the altar, blessed, ready to be kissed by all those
present.
On the afternoon of Good Saturday, confession impels people to come
to church in great numbers. When midnight mass begins churches are
crowded-many faithful forced to stand in churchyards and streets;
others following the liturgy from giant TV screens set up in parish
halls.
Lights remained dimmed until church bells ring; then they are turned
up. Candles are lit and blessed and passed around with people greeting
each other with “the Light of Christ”.
Holy Week is also a time when families boil and colour eggs for Easter
Day, a statutory holiday in Jordan.
On Easter, churches are again jammed with worshippers. Afterwards,
people break their fast, offer and eat Kaak and Maamoul, a popular
sweet usually made at home using special dough stuffed with date
paste or walnuts.
Kaak is doughnut-shaped with ragged edges resembling the crown of
thorns that Jesus wore on the Cross. Maamoul is a small, round piece
of dough that represents the sponge which was dipped in vinegar and
offered to the Lord when He asked for water whilst on the cross.
Jordan has a population of 5.6 million people, 92 per cent Sunni
Muslim, 6 per cent Christian and 2 per cent Shiite Muslim.