Author: Hambardsumian Paul

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: nian.htm

BISHOP NAREG CONVEYS THE GREETINGS OF HIS HOLINESS ARAM I
TO PRESIDENT DR. BASHAR AL-ASAD

The representative of His Holiness Aram I, Bishop Nareg Alemezian
(Ecumenical Officer), joined the delegation of the World Council of Churches
(WCC) that recently visited Damascus led WCC General Secretary Dr. Sam
Kobia.

The purpose of the delegation’s visit was to hold ecumenical and
governmental meetings and meet with Iraqi refugees who have fled to Syria.

On April 21, the delegation paid a visit to the President of Syria, His
Excellency Dr. Bashar al-Asad. Bishop Nareg conveyed to the President the
greetings of His Holiness Aram I. He reminded the attendants that Syria
became the first haven for the survivors of the Armenian Genocide who were
warmly welcomed by both the Muslim and Christian Arabs of the country.
President Asad praised the Armenians of Syria and their contribution to the
country’s social, religious and economic spheres of life.

The delegation also met with the Patriarch of Orthodox Greeks His Holiness
Iknadyos IV, The Mufti of Syria Dr. Ahmad Hasoun, the Patriarch of Catholic
Greeks His Holiness Gregorios III, the managers of the Sheikh Kaftaro
Islamic Center, religious officials from the Oumayyad Mosque, the pastors of
the Evangelical Church of Damascus, Iraqi refugees and Assyrian Orthodox
Patriarch Zakka Iwas I in the order mentioned.

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View the photo here:
tos/Photos253.htm#3
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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.

"ATLAS OF SHAME" ON TORTURES IN MODERN TURKEY PUBLISHED

PanARMENIAN.Net
24.04.2008 17:59 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish Human Rights Association has prepared
"Atlas of shame", a book of torture with studies by nine professors
and doctors. The study took five years and photos of more than 10
thousand people who were tortured were scanned.

Torture atlas prepared by Turkish Human Rights Association revealed
that one million people have been tortured since September 12, 1980.

Turkish Human Rights Association revealed that more than one
million people have been tortured since the military coup in
1980. Scientists have carried out studies for five years and have
proven the embarrassing methods of torture with the torture atlas of
236 pages. The book tells about torture methods, torture diagnosis and
way of examination with photos and drawings, Sabah newspaper reports.

MEMORY OF VICTIMS OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN OSMANIAN TURKEY HONORED IN ARMENIA

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
April 25 2008

YEREVAN, 25.04.08. DE FACTO. On April 24 the RA President Serge
Sargsian, RA PM Tigran Sargsian, Chairman of RA Constitutional Court
Gagik Harutyunian and other officials laid wreaths at Tsitsernakaberd –
the Memorial to the victims of Armenian Genocide. The Catholicos of
All Armenians Garegin II held a funeral service.

On April 24 thousands of common citizens of Armenia and Diaspora came
to the Memorial and put flowers to the Eternal Fire paying tribute
to the memory of victims of Armenian Genocide.

To note, a traditional torch procession devoted to the 93d anniversary
of Armenian Genocide was held in Yerevan on April 23. The action’s
participants gathered on the Yerevan Freedom Square and then headed
for the Memorial to the victims of Armenian Genocide. The action had
been initiated by ARF Dashnaktsutyun Youth Union and Nikol Aghbalian
Student Union.

ARMENIAN-CAPTURED AZERBAIJANI SOLDIER YAGUB MUKHTAROV HANDOVERED TO AZERBAIJAN

Azeri Press Agency
April 23 2008
Azerbaijan

Gazakh. Aykhan Huseynov-APA. Azerbaijani soldier Yagub Allahverdi
oglu Mukhtarov captured by the Armenian armed forces was handed over
to Azerbaijan on Wednesday.

APA regional bureau reports the handover has been carried out in
the Balajafarli village of Gazakh Region, Azerbaijan through the
intermediary of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Yagub
Mukhtarov was captured on March 9, 2008 in the direction of Tovuz
Region, Azerbaijan.

EGOYAN’S `ADORATION’ TO COMPETE AT CANNES
Jenny Barchfield

Toronto Star, Canada
April 23 2008

PARIS-Atom Egoyan’s Adoration will compete next month at this year’s
streamlined Cannes Film Festival, as will Clint Eastwood’s Changeling
and Wim Wenders’ Palermo Shooting.

Adoration, starring Toronto actors Scott Speedman and Rachel Blanchard,
is about a young man obsessed with the idea that he is the spawn
of two historical figures and is Egoyan’s first feature length film
since Where The Truth Lies, which also screened at Cannes.

His 1994 film Exotica won the International Critics’ Prize at the
festival and his 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter won the Grand Jury
Prize.

Eastwood and Steven Soderbergh will headline the competition this year
at the pared down version of Cannes, which features fewer big-name
directors and more emerging voices from across the globe, organizers
said Wednesday.

Eastwood will show Changeling, a mystery set in 1920s Los Angeles and
starring Angelina Jolie as the mother of a kidnapped child. Soderbergh,
the director of the lighthearted series that began with Ocean’s Eleven,
gets serious with his four-hour-long marathon, Che, about Argentine
revolutionary Ernesto Guevara.

Organizers did not say which films would open and close the festival,
which runs May 14-25. Organizers said they would announce the movies
that snag the coveted slots later.

In a much-anticipated premiere, Harrison Ford dons his khakis for the
latest instalment of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series. Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull also stars Australian
actress Cate Blanchett, and will be screened out of competition.

Festival head Thierry Fremaux said he was thrilled Spielberg had
chosen to premiere the movie at Cannes.

"It’s amazing," he said. "A big portion of festival-goers and
journalists grew up with Steven Spielberg’s first movies."

Woody Allen’s Spanish-set Vicky Cristina Barcelona will play out of
competition, as will Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s Maradona, a
documentary about Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona. Kusturica
has won the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize, twice, in 1985 and 1995.

Organizers said the 61st edition of the French Riviera festival
will mark a shift in the spirit of the event, known for its mix of
Hollywood blockbusters and small art-house films.

They said they had pared down the offerings in the main competition
from 22 last year to 20 this year and nixed some of the sideline
events to put the spotlight back on cinema.

This year, smaller productions by lesser-known directors appear to
have the upper hand over blockbusters. Organizers explained that
many of the festival’s favourite star directors – like Britain’s
Stephen Frears (The Queen) and Spain’s Pedro Almodovar (Volver) –
are currently working on new movies.

The main competition lineup includes movies by art-house directors from
Belgium, Turkey, China, France, Argentina, Brazil and Italy. Eight of
the directors have never appeared in Cannes’ main competition before.

Brazilian director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) is showing
Linha de Passe, the story of brothers trying to scrape their way out
of poverty. Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel makes her debut at Cannes
with La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Woman without a Head), which explores
the psychology of a woman disturbed after she hits and kills a dog
with her car.

Award-winning Chinese director Jia Zhangke, whose Still Life took
the top prize at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, continues to explore
how economic expansion affects China’s legions of poor. 24 City is
about the relocation of an aircraft factory and its workers in the
southwestern Chinese city Chengdu.

American screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) makes his
directorial debut with Synechdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour
Hoffman.

Germany’s Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or for his melancholic 1984
movie Paris, Texas, will screen The Palermo Shooting, a drama with
a multilingual, multinational cast.

Palme d’Or laureates Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who took top honours
at the 1999 and 2005 festivals, are back with Le Silence de Lorna
(Lorna’s Silence). Known for their harrowing portraits of those on
the margins of society, the Belgian brothers tell the story of the
marriage between a drug addict and an illegal immigrant.

In a festival first, an animated documentary has been selected for
the main competition. Israeli writer-director Ari Folman’s Waltz with
Bashir grapples with the 1982 massacre of Palestinians by Christian
militia members in Lebanon.

Sean Penn, the American actor-director, leads the jury, which also
includes actress Natalie Portman. The Palme d’Or and other awards
will be announced May 25.

Though festival regular Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) is not
presenting a new movie, the 1994 Palme d’Or laureate will give a
master class on moviemaking to students and film buffs.

DESPITE POTHOLES, A RELATIVELY SMOOTH ROAD FOR US-AZERBAIJAN MILITARY COOPERATION
Rovshan Ismayilov

EurasiaNet, NY
April 23 2008

Military cooperation between the United States and Azerbaijan
appears to be developing at a strong pace. A recent US delegation,
though, expressed concerns about the country’s sluggish realization
of agreements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well
as on Baku’s relatively high level of military spending.

At an April 17 press conference in Baku, Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt,
III, a member of the US delegation led by Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense Daniel Fata, confirmed those concerns. "The issue is not
only that the Azerbaijani army meets NATO standards," Gen. Wyatt
said. "It is necessary that [the] military equipment and military
education would also meet [NATO] standards."

Azerbaijan has yet to finalize a military doctrine, one of the
requirements for its NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan, a
cornerstone of the alliance’s cooperation with post-Soviet states.

The American mission, in Baku from April 14-17 for routine military
consultations, also expressed unease with Azerbaijan’s plans to
increase defense spending in 2008 from $1.3 billion to $2 billion. The
total gives the country the largest military budget in the South
Caucasus by a wide margin — a development that has sparked jitters
in Armenia, which sees the buildup as a sign that Azerbaijan may be
pondering an attempt to retake the Nagorno-Karabakh territory by force.

Commenting on the issue, Gen. Wyatt noted that while the budget
increase "probably [is] connected with economic growth and increased
revenues," Azerbaijan "itself should answer whether the country’s
defense area needs $2 billion, while there are other areas like
education, healthcare, and social policy which also need" support.

Baku experts believe the government is using the increased military
spending to put pressure on Armenia over the stalled Karabakh peace
process. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Some aspects of Azerbaijan’s military buildup are attracting
considerable interest from the US military. One such project involves
Zeynalabdin Taghiyev airport — a military facility 40 kilometers to
the north of Baku — that is being modernized as part of Azerbaijan’s
IPAP program. A well-informed Defense Ministry source told EurasiaNet
that the Pentagon has implemented some upgrades there already, and
has now expressed interest in using the airdrome for NATO operations
in Afghanistan. "[P]articularly for re-fueling and the technical
maintenance of aircraft," the source said.

No official comments were released about plans for the Gabala
radar station — proposed by Russia as part of a jointly operated
missile defense system with the United States — though the topic was
discussed. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. American
officials reportedly passed on proposals made by Russian President
Vladimir Putin to US President George W. Bush during their recent
meeting in Sochi.

Cooperation in other strategic locations has made faster progress. As
part of a Caspian Sea surveillance program with the United States,
two radar stations have been set up on the Absheron Peninsula (in the
villages of Gobustan and Turkan), one on the border with Russia (Yalama
village) and one in Azerbaijan’s Neftchala region, near the Iranian
border. A mobile radar system has also been set up by the Pentagon
and NATO in the region of Xizi, roughly 80 kilometers from Baku.

According to the Defense Ministry source, the stations now have full
coverage of Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea, as well as of
radio-electronic signals in southern Russia and northern Iran.

The unsettled legal status of territorial claims to the Caspian Sea
was another topic for discussion, the source added.

Azerbaijani officials, for their part, prefer to stick to the big
picture. "[Azerbaijan’s] cooperation with NATO is at its highest
level," Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told journalists on April
15. "We are already at the second stage of IPAP, which is important
for us in order to implement deeper reforms and build closer ties with
NATO." The second phase of Azerbaijan’s IPAP program began on March 15.

Azerbaijan will receive about $21 million from NATO for reforms
connected with the second stage of IPAP. The US State Department will
allocate $900,000 for short-term military training and courses in US
military academies. Azerbaijan will receive $3 million in US foreign
military assistance in 2009.

Diplomats will join the next round of US-Azerbaijani military talks,
scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, in July.

Despite the development of military ties with the US and NATO,
Baku underlines that it has a go-slow approach to integration
with the alliance. In a March 21 interview with the Russian news
agency Interfax, President Ilham Aliyev stressed that the question
of membership is not on the agenda. "The present standard of our
cooperation with NATO suits us," Aliyev said. "It is hard to tell
what is going to happen later, how international developments are
going to unfold, what processes are going to take place in our region."

But that judgment does not appear to dilute the US commitment to
military support for Azerbaijan. The assistance, said Gen. Wyatt,
will go on. "[T]ransformation," he said, "is a long process."

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance correspondent based
in Baku.

HAYPOST AND MICROSOFT COMPANIES SIGN AGREEMENT ON COOPERATION

Noyan Tapan
April 22, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 22, NOYAN TAPAN. An agreement on cooperation was signed
between Microsoft and HayPost companies on April 22. According to
the director of HayPost Hans Boon, serious reforms of continuous
character have been made in the sector in the past year, one
evidence of which is this agreement, whose purpose is to use advanced
technologies of Microsoft and in this way to raise the productivity of
resources. H. Boon said that there will be no reduction of the staff
as a result of use of new technologies: the employees will undergo
training to become acquainted with the new system.

In the words of the head of Microsoft’s Armenian Office Grigor
Barseghian, the agreement was signed for 3 years. Modern systems will
be introduced in HayPost, and the expenses will pay off in a year.

RARE JEWELLER ENDANGERED

First Post
,features, rare-jeweller-endangered-by-credit-crunch
April 22 2008
UK

Ralph Esmerian could lose the family jewels over an ill-fated venture
into Hollywood

Not even diamonds as big as the Ritz can save Ralph Esmerian from
the jaws of Wall Street now. A fourth generation rare jewels dealer
whose Armenian family fled from Paris in 1940, Esmerian enjoyed a
life of wealth, taste and art collecting in the old money enclave of
Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

That all ended when he ventured into the brash new world of 21st
century finance and Hollywood glamour. First, he borrowed $57m from
Merrill Lynch for what he describes as "estate planning purposes". As
collateral, he pledged his ‘Special Collection’.

This is not any old second-hand jewellery, but rather pieces for the
connoisseur, stuff you might find in the treasure chests at the Tower
of London. It includes the diamond brooch given to Empress Eugenie,
wife of Napoleon III, and later acquired by Mrs Astor, queen of 1950s
New York society. Esmerian is – for the moment – the owner of a Van
Cleef and Arpels brooch ‘encrusted’ with diamonds and a Rene Lalique
Art Nouveau bracelet, both of which are worth at least half-a-million.

And then he borrowed another $120m from his new friends at Merrill
Lynch. This time the money was for buying the showy Fred Leighton
jewellery shops on Madison Avenue and in the Bellagio casino in
Las Vegas.

Getting into the spirit of the age, Esmerian, 68, ventured from the
genteel parlours of Fifth Avenue to dress the stars in his bedazzling
gems for their red carpet appearances. Cameron Diaz, Mira Sorvino
(left) and Sarah Jessica Parker have all strutted in Special Collection
diamonds, emeralds, rubies and gold. Dolly Parton of the big boobs
and American vernacular was draped for the Oscars in jewels from the
Fred Leighton shelves and boasted: "These cost $1,200,000!"

With the money flowing in, Esmerian decided it was time to establish
a presence on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The shop opened last
September but, as he said, "That was in the good old cowboy days
when all this was fun." The name of the man he hired to run his
retail empire should have sounded an alarm: it was Peter Bacanovic,
the star-stroking Merrill Lynch broker who went to jail with his
friend Martha Stewart for diddling the stock market. Even Merrill
Lynch raised an eyebrow at that.

Shortly after his shop opened, the ‘sub-prime’ credit crunch began to
take its terrible toll, and sales of top-end jewels tumbled. Esmerian
could no longer make his $1.5m monthly payments and had to take back
his Folk Art masterpieces from museums, and sell them. With Merrill
Lynch doing even worse – it lost $30bn dollars on dodgy loans and
fired 2,900 employees – Esmerian discovered that the smiles of Wall
Street turn crocodile when debts go bad. They called in the jewels.

Problems came to a head when Merrill Lynch tried to cash in the
jewels at a Christie’s auction in New York. "It’s a fire sale
presentation!" complained Esmerian. "These are pieces that deserve
respect. It’s like a magnificent Fifth Avenue Mansion being offered
for the price of a Third Avenue condo."

Old money is snobbish, new money ruthless. But ruthless wins. The
only way Esmerian could avoid the indignity of his family jewels going
on the block was by declaring bankruptcy. So now a judge will decide
who gets the diamonds and who gets the gold.

SWEDEN WAS INFORMED OF EXTERMINATION OF ARMENIANS IN 1915 BUT PREFERRED NOT TO INTERVENE

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.04.2008 16:11 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A recently conducted study at the Uppsala University
has revealed highly interesting information in the Swedish Archives,
which once again confirm the researchers’ view of the events
in the Ottoman Turkey during the First World War: the Christian
minorities, the Armenians in particular, were subjected to genocide,
reports.

The survey conducted by Vahagn Avedian, Editor of Armenica.org
and Master Degree Student at Uppsala University, covers the period
between 1915 and 1923 and includes, among others, reports which the
Swedish Ambassador, Cosswa Anckarsvard, and the Swedish Military
Attache, Einar af Wirsen, both stationed in Constantinople, sent
to the Foreign Department (found in the National Archive) and the
General Staff Headquarters (found in the War Archive) in Stockholm,
respectively. In total, about eighty documents were found with
direct relevance to the so-called Armenian Question, of which some
are over-explicit in their message: the Turkish Government conducted
a systematic extermination of the Armenian Nation.

On July 6, 1915, Ambassador Anckarsvard, writing to the Swedish
Foreign Minister, Knut Wallenberg, concludes: "Mr. Minister, The
persecutions of the Armenians have reached hair-raising proportions
and all points to the fact that the Young Turks want to seize the
opportunity, since due to different reasons there are no effective
external pressure to be feared, to once and for all put an end to the
Armenian question. The means for this are quite simple and consist
of the extermination [utrotandet] of the Armenian nation."

Major Wirsen’s reports to the General Staff concur with Anckarsvard’s
analysis. In 1942 Wirsen published his memoirs, entitled "Memories from
Peace and War", reflecting upon his time as Swedish Military Attache
in the Balkans and Turkey. In a chapter entitled "The Murder of a
Nation", Wirsen renders his observations of the Armenian massacres:
"Officially, these [deportations] had the goal to move the entire
Armenian population to the steppe regions of Northern Mesopotamia
and Syria, but in reality they aimed to exterminate [utrota] the
Armenians, whereby the pure Turkish element in Asia Minor would
achieve a dominating position."

The mentioned quotations are a fraction of the information presented
in the study. In addition to the mentioned archives of the Foreign
Ministry and the General Staff, the reports from the Swedish
missionaries and the Swedish newspapers were also included in the
study and concur with the same view.

Presently, Sweden, as all other states, chose to secure its national
interests rather than standing out from the rest by advocating
Armenia’s right and the question of punishing the perpetrators of
the Armenian Genocide. The present-day Swedish Government does not
seem to be willing to become involved in the question either. Just
last fall, the Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, during an interpellation
in the Swedish Parliament, refrained from officially recognizing the
1915 genocide, partly by referring to "the need of additional research
about what really transpired in the Ottoman Empire."

TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION TO TSITSERNAKABERD

armradio.am
22.04.2008 17:56

On April 23 the Youth and Nikol Aghbalyan Student Unions of the ARF
Dashnaktsutyun will organize a traditional torchlight procession to
the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Tsitsernakaberd. The procession
will start at 20:00 from the Liberty Square.

President of the Nikol Aghbalyan Student Union Vahe Sargsyan
told a press conference today that applications to participate
have been submitted form different youth NGOs, Student Councils
of higher educational establishments, young clergymen. The number
of participants is expected to exceed last year’s 15 thousand. 300
torches and 10 thousand candles will be distributed to them. Vahe
Sargsyan noted that participants of the procession will take the
Armenian tricolor and the party flag of ARF and the flags of the
states that have recognized the Armenian Genocide.

According to Vahe Sargsyan, burning of the Turkish flag is not
envisaged.

"We do not plan to burn the Turkish flag and do not spread hatred,
it was the initiative of the participants," he said.

As a sign of remembrance of the of the Armenian Genocide victims and
support of the Hay Dat struggle, the ARF Youth Union asks everyone
to light a candle on window seals during the procession.