Author: Jidarian Alex

SITUATION IS STABLE

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
06 March 05

Measles is spreading among the population of NKR. The epidemiologist
of the Republic Center for Hygiene and Epidemiological Control Karine
Balayan stated that currently the situation can be considered stable.
10-15 cases of measles are recorded daily. In the majority of
cases people above 14 are infected. Only a few cases of infection of
one-year-old babies were reported. People who were vaccinated in time
are chiefly safe from infection. According to Karine Balayan, there
were no fatal cases and complications. The illness is more spread in
the capital. By the way, the virus of measles is resistant to cold
therefore often happening in winter and in the beginning of spring.
K. Balayan mentioned that in the upcoming days the data will be
summed up and only then it will be possible to state whether measles
is receding or not.

LAURA GRIGORIAN.
06-03-2005

PRESS OFFICE
Armenian Holy Apostolic Church Canadian Diocese
Contact: Deacon Hagop Arslanian, Assistant to the Primate
615 Stuart Avenue, Outremont Quebec H2V 3H2
Tel; 514-276-9479, Fax; 514-276-9960
Email; [email protected]
Website;

The Canadian Primate presents world renowned Soprano Isabel
Bayrakdarian with the St. Sahag-St. Mesrob highest Insignia of the
Armenian Church

On Sunday, February 27, 2005 during the Divine Liturgy in Holy Trinity
Armenian Apostolic Church of Toronto at 920 Progress Avenue, His
Eminence Bishop Bagrat Galstanian, Primate presented Mrs. Isabel
Bayrakdarian with the Pontifical Encyclical of His Holiness Karekin II
Catholicos of all Armenians and the St. Sahag-St. Mesrop the highest
Insignia of the Armenian Church “in appreciation of her contribution
to the Armenian Church Sacred Music”.

The Holy Trinity Armenian Church was filled with the faithful of the
community. Toronto Armenians had the opportunity to witness this
momentous occasion and express their good wishes for her many
accomplishments and extend their congratulations upon receiving these
richly deserved awards. Rev. Arch. Fr. Zareh Zargarian accompanied by
choir of Holy Trinity Armenian Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy.
The church choir was honored to have Isabel Bayrakdarian, join them in
the singing of the Holy Mass.

Isabel Bayrakdarian is an exemplary member of the Armenian Holy
Apostolic Church who through her name and voice recognition has
introduced the music of our Church and the Armenia people to a wider
listening audience. She is a young soprano who gained international
prominence with her astonishing voice. Her biography includes singing
with leading orchestras and has played various roles in Operas
including Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Zerlina in Don Giovani
and Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare in the spring of 2002. Her success as
Catherine in the world premiere of William Bolcom’s A View from the
Bridge at the Lyric Opera of Chicago prompted the theatre to invite
her as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia in 2001 and as Susanna in Le
Nozze di Figaro for the fall of 2003.

In 2000 she made her debut at Milan’s La Scala in Bernstein’s West
Side Story, her Paris debut at the Theatre Des Champs-Elysees as
Cleopatra in Adolf Hasse’s Marc-Antonio e Cleopatra under Rene Jacobs,
and her Carnegie Hall debut in Marilyn Horne’s Birthday Gala. Her
other European engagements have taken to Karlsrhe, Montpellier, and
Dresden.

The first prize in the Placido Domingo Opera 2000 Competition is her
more resent award. Previously she is the winner of the Metropolitan
Opera National Council Award, the 2000 Leonie Rysanek Award from the
George London Foundation, the Marilyn Horne Foundation Award and the
Canada Council grant, among many others.

In addition to her operatic engagements, Mrs. Bayraktarian has
appeared in recital with Placido Domingo in Los Angeles and at a Gala
for the National Arts Centre with artists Yo-Yo Ma and Pinches No.5
for CBC Television, for which she earned a Gemini nomination. Canada’s
CTV Network has featured her in a full documentary.

In 2002 she performed at the Paris Opera (the Bastille) the San
Francisco Opera and made her debut at New York’s Metropolitan
Opera. She recorded her treasured CD of Armenian Church hymns called
“Luys Light”

PanArmenian News
March 2 2005

AZERI DEPUTY SAYS PACE RESOLUTION DOES NOT MEET AZERBAIJAN’S
INTERESTS

02.03.2005 15:43

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ When addressing the Milli Mejlis yesterday’s
sitting deputy Gudrat Gasanguliyev stated that the resolution of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Nagorno Karabakh
does not meet the state interests of Azerbaijan. The deputy noted
that the resolution is much more favoring the interests of Armenians,
since `the statement that the seized territories cannot be returned
to Azerbaijan by force is not correct’. The Milli Mejlis deputy
supported the adoption of the resolution on returning of the
deposits. According to him, the issue should be considered during the
spring session.

The Journal of the Turkish Weekly
2005-03-02 11:41:57

Turkish FM: 40,000 Armenians Work in Istanbul

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul says 40,000 Armenians from
Armenia live and works in Istanbul, Turkish city. Gul gives an
interview to Turkish daily Hurriyet.

`Most of these Armenians work for technical companies. An NGO made a
research on these people and says these people’s relations with Turks
are perfect. Interestingly the Armenian workers in Istanbul has no
very close relations with Turkish Armenians” Gul added.

Apart from Istanbul thousands of Armenians work in Turkish
cities. Turkey has no diplomatic relations with Armenia, however there
is an air link between Turkey and Armenia and Armenian citizens has no
problem in visiting Turkey.

Armenia does not recognise Turkey’s national borders and call Eastern
Turkey ‘Western Armenia’. Armenian forces still occupy 20 percent of
Azerbaijani territories. Armenia also has problems with neigbouring
Georgia.

Turks and Armenians
2005-03-02 11:41:57

Macedonian Press Agency, Greece
March 1 2005

THE ACTING GOV’T SPOKESMAN ON THE HOLY LIGHT CEREMONY IN JERUSALEM
Athens, 1 March 2005 (16:20 UTC+2)

Acting government spokesman Vangelis Antonaros was asked to comment
on the information according to which, the Orthodox Armenians want
to be the ones to get the Holy Light from the Holy Sepulchre.

Mr. Antonaros stated that he has no information on the issue and
stressed that he is certain that what was observed for many years
will continue to be observed.

German Christian Democrats Abuses the Armenian Issue to Prevent Turkey’s EU Bid

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Feb 28 2005

Christian Democrats Submits ‘Armenian Motion’ to Parliament

Jan Soykok (JTW), 28 February 2005 – Germany’s Christian Democrats
(CDU) who oppose Turkey’s European Union (EU) membership have once
again brought the so-called Armenian ‘genocide’ allegation to the
top of the agenda in Germany.

CDU presented a parliamentary motion, which demands a review of
Turkey’s role in the killing of Armenians about 100 years ago though
there was no state called ‘Turkey’ in these years.

The German government pressure to increase freedom of expression
regarding the so-called Armenian ‘genocide’is expected to be included
in the motion.

Experts noted that the Christian Democrats Party, which is against
Turkey’s full membership to EU, aims to impede Turkey’s bid.

Spokesman for the party’s foreign relations, Friedbert Pflueger claimed
that the word “genocide” is not used intentionally and that they aim
to make Turkey face up to its past.

Members of the CDU who stand affirmation on Turkey’s privileged
membership claim they have aimed to return to normal diplomatic
relations between Turkey and Armenia.

“FUL OF PREJUDICES”

Turkish Ambassador to Germany Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik said that the
motion is full of “prejudices, mistakes, serious misinformation, and
one-sided expectations”. The European Court of Justice had recently
overruled a similar initiative. An Armenian foundation in Europe
began a legal action claiming “Turkey’s membership is contradicting
EU Laws while refusing acceptance of the genocide.” However the
Court had responded as “The genocide claim is political, it is not
legally binding” and had awarded the expenses of the trial to the
plaintiffs, the Armenian foundation and the two French citizens. The
court remarked during its overruling of the case, that the matter is
a political issue and consequently not legally binding and it stands
as a precedent for any future legal action.

CDU strongly opposes Turkey’s EU bid while the government parties
support Turkey’s membership. The CDU makes co-operation with all
anti-Turkish groups in Europe including the radical Armenian lobbying
groups. The CDU’s anti-Turkish stance disturbs the Turkish community
in Germany because the racist attacks against the Turkish and Muslims
communities in the country have risen. Many CDU politicians claimed
that Europe was a Christian civilasation and there was no room for
Turkey in Europe.

The discriminative policies in germany had caused racist massacres
and genocide in 1940s Germany and it is feared that the CDU policies
could nourish the racist movements in the country. Davut Sahiner,
Turkish expert on diasporas in Germany says “the CDU plays with fire.
They abuse all the problems which can prevent Turkey’s membership.
However they are not sincere. They now use the Armenian issue.
However it will help neither Armenians nor the Germans. Anti-Turkish
CDU policies will undermine the social balances in Germany and will
encourage the racist movements. Similarly the problems between Turkish
and Armenian states will be deepened and the isolation of Armenia
will be worsened. No side will benefit but the selfish politicians.”

They say ‘incident’. To me it’s genocide

When its finest novelist attacked Turkey’s bloody past, he became a
hero for Armenians and Turks alike, says Nouritza Matossiann

Nouritza Matossiann
Sunday February 27 2005
The Observer

There is a Turkish saying: ‘A sword won’t cut without inspiration from
the pen.’

Orhan Pamuk, wielder of Turkey’s finest pen, has spoken and cut a
swath through his country’s conscience. His most recent novel Snow was
set in Kars and peppered with references to the Armenian culture of
that formerly Armenian city. Brilliant novelist, translated in 20
languages, winner of international prizes, he has become a hate
figure.

His crime was one sentence in an interview with the Swiss newspaper
Tagesanzeiger this month. ‘Thirty thousand Kurds and a million
Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and
the nationalists hate me for that.’ All hell broke loose. The press
attacked him for dishonouring the Turkish state and incitement to
racial violence. He has been called a liar, ‘a miserable creature’ and
a ‘black writer’ in the daily Hurriyet. Professor Hikmet Ozdemir, head
of the Armenian studies department at the Turkish Union of Historians,
rejected his statement as a ‘great lie’.

A lone voice, Halil Berktay, professor at Sabanci University,
supported Pamuk: ‘In 1915-16 about 800,000 or one million Armenians
were killed for sure.’

Mehmet Üçok, an attorney, filed charges at the Kayseri
public prosecutor’s office. Another charge was filed by Kayseri Bar
Association attorney Orhan Pekmezci: ‘Pamuk has made groundless claims
against the Turkish identity, the Turkish military and Turkey as a
whole. He should be punished for violating Articles 159 and 312 of the
Turkish penal code. He made a statement provoking the people to hatred
and animosity through the media, which is defined as a crime in
Article 312.’

I find this ironic. My mother’s family was deported from the historic
Armenian city of Kayseri, leaving their murdered menfolk behind.

I was recently in Istanbul lecturing on my biography of
Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky, the basis for the
controversial genocide movie Ararat. Official permission for my talk
required me not to utter the word ‘genocide’ to refer to the Ottoman
empire’s systematic deportations, tortures and killings of two million
Armenians which Gorky witnessed. I might refer to those
‘incidents’. The crime has never been acknowledged by successive
Turkish governments, Britain or the United States.

Recent discussions of Turkey’s possible entry into the EU were
dominated by France and other countries demanding that Turkey first
admit the Armenian genocide. What if Britain had a law forbidding
criticism of its history, identity, or the armed forces? Turkey has
far to go to reach the legal standards of EU members, with their
humane and non-discriminatory laws aiming at standards of truth and
reason. So much hatred. So much anger. What does Turkey have to hide?

‘Pamuk has always defended freedom of speech and thought, the rights
of minorities,’ writes Hrant Dink, owner of the Armenian
Turkish-language weekly Agos . ‘For 90 years we Armenians have been
abused, insulted and discriminated against. We cannot enter certain
professions, we Turkified our names. We have learnt to survive and
endure without protest. Maybe it is time that the Turkish people also
learnt tolerance and endurance from us.’

In London, a thinly veiled propaganda exercise at the Royal Academy
trumpets Turkish empires, making far-reaching claims about the origins
of the ‘Turkic peoples’. Echoes of master-race ideology. Pamuk himself
writes in the Academy journal: ‘Turks gripped by romantic myths of
nationalism are keen to establish that we come from Mongolia or
central Asia… scholars have come no closer to offering definitive or
convincing evidence to link us with a particular time and place.’

In the show the contributions of other nationals in the Ottoman empire
– Armenians, Greeks and Jews – are not credited. Yet their handiwork
is everywhere, in architecture, pottery, carpets, manuscripts.

Britain colludes in this travesty for the sake of oil interests in
Azerbaijan, Turkey’s closest ally.

Akin Birdal, vice-president of the International Federation of Human
Rights Leagues, emphasises: ‘No matter we have come to the 90th year
of “incidents” Orhan Pamuk talked about, these will of course be
discussed on domestic and international platforms. The aggressions
carried out against Pamuk are those which have been carried out
against thought. Pamuk is not alone.’ Pamuk has cut the Gordian
knot. He has become the hero of every right-thinking person in Turkey
and every Armenian worldwide.

* Nouritza Matossian is author of ‘Black Angel, A Life of Arshile
Gorky’.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

Laramine Boomerang, WY
Feb 26 2005

Keeping the country secure

By Micah Sturr
Boomerang Staff Writer

William Webster has a more intimate understand than most of how the
government can keep the country secure. The former federal judge, FBI
and CIA director spoke to an assembly at the University of Wyoming on
Friday about `protecting our homeland.’

Webster spoke as a part of the Milward Simpson Distinguished Lecture
Series in UW’s Department of Political Science and focused on the
lessons he learned professionally and his ideas about future
challenges for the intelligence community in curbing terrorism.

`It was my view that the way to attack the problem was to get there
before the bomb went off rather than simply follow through and arrest
the people responsible. Well, how do you do that? It’s a very simple
answer, not necessarily easy to do, but have better intelligence –
know what is being planned so you are in a better position to
interdict it,’ Webster said.

In 1984 as the director of the FBI, Webster added terrorism to
foreign counter intelligence, white-collar crime and organized crime
as major threats to the country. Webster served as FBI director from
1978-1987.

By getting to terrorists before the bomb went off, the FBI was able
to eliminate Armenian terrorism against Turks in the United States,
Webster said. (Armenian action against Turks stems from the attempted
genocide of Armenians by Turkey in 1915.)

`That is still an issue in the United States but it is no longer a
terrorist issue. By getting in ahead of the curve we were able to
head off a number of planned events to the extent that those who
planned them gave up the idea, considered that they were penetrated
and we had no more trouble with them for 20 years,’ Webster said.

Despite this victory and successes in suppressing terrorism of
American Serbs and Croats directed at one another and potential
terrorism by anti-government militia groups, the Sept. 11th attacks
forced the intelligence community to change the way anti-terrorism
operations are conducted, Webster said.

`We had to live with that atmosphere of `need to know’ and not `need
to share.’ The Patriot Act changed that,’ Webster said. `Most of the
changes that occurred with the Patriot Act were much needed.’

Sharing information between agencies is essential, Webster said, as
was updating the way warrants can be issued. Issuing a warrant for a
terrorist’s cell phone is inefficient when the terrorist can simply
get a new cell phone. The Patriot Act allows a surveillance warrant
to be issued for the person.

When he was director of the CIA, 1987-1991, Webster said the former
model for old Europe, specifically France, Italy and Greece, was to
act as sanctuary countries to protect their own citizens. Internal as
well as international terrorism has forced a shift in that approach.

`The principle was – you leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. It
doesn’t work that way,’ Webster said.

`The advantage that the terrorist has, it is a victory on the cheap
over larger institutions and organizations, because he can pick his
method, he can pick his place, he can pick his time, and many of them
have demonstrated extraordinary patience in carrying out their
activities,’ Webster said.

More than the natural advantages terrorists have, technology and
globalization have redefined the way terrorism can operate and
changed the parameters of security, Webster said.

`Your part of the solution is cooperation with the authorities and
making sure that everybody does what their supposed to do without
unnecessary complaints,’ Webster said.

Webster said he is proud of the American people in the wake of the
9/11 attacks given their willingness to preserve shared values.

`We do not want to turn ourselves into the people we are
confronting,’ Webster said. `We have to preserve our values, but we
must also preserve our order.’

After the hour-long speech before a crowd of more than 100 in the
Wyoming Union’s Yellowstone Ballroom, Webster joined former Wyoming
Sen. Alan Simpson and Professor Emeritus and former UW Vice President
Peter Simpson for questions from the audience.

Azeri ruling party thanks US congressman for support on massacre issue

Turan news agency
23 Feb 05

BAKU

The ruling New Azerbaijan Party has sent an address to the UN, the
OSCE, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] and
the US Congress on the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the
genocide of Azerbaijanis in the Nagornyy Karabakh town of Xocali on 26
February 1992.

The address contained “factual evidence” of the Armenian occupiers’
genocide against the civilian population of Xocali, the party said in
its press release. The move was taken as part of the campaign aimed at
securing the world community’s recognition of the genocide and ethnic
cleansing committed by the Armenians in Karabakh.

At the same time, the New Azerbaijan Party has sent a letter of
appreciation to US Congressman Dan Burton who has called on the
Congress to recognize the Xocali genocide.

A regional Hai Dat office to be founded in Middle East

23.02.2005 18:02

YEREVAN (YERKIR) – To ensure the sustainability of works and to meet
the challenges the Hai Dat faces on the eve of the 90th anniversary of
the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF)
Bureau has decided to establish a regional Hai Dat office in the
Middle East.

A banquet to raise funds for the new office will be held on February
26 in Paris. Cilicia Catholicos Aram I will chair the banquet also to
be attendedby Archbishop Vache Hovsepian, representative of the
Catholicos of All Armenians, Garegin II.

Reports and projects to promote the above-mentioned efforts will also
be presented at the banquet.

Public figures, artists and politicians from Armenia, Russian, Europe
and Middle East have been invited to attend the banquet.