Author: Kafian Jirair

AZERBAIJAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: CONSTITUTION REFERENDUM IN NAGORNO KARABAKH IS AIMED AT DAMAGING PEACE PROCESS

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Dec 2 2006

Azerbaijan Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov made statement that
Armenia’s plans to hold a constitutional referendum on December 10
in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, which he described as an integral part
of Azerbaijan, violates international law and principles, and damages
ongoing peace process.

The declaration reads that the referendum and its results will have
no legal effects, Armenia will not be able to deceive international
community about ethnic cleansing and aggression realized in the
occupied territories by Armenians.

Official Baku considers that, any constitutional document of the
self-regulation of Nagorno Karabakh population can be realized only
through democratic peace process. Azerbaijan will never recognize
Armenian’s illegal acts based on "fait accompli" contradicting attempts
to achieve peace and stability in the region.

Stanford Daily, CA
Stanford Univ.
Dec 1 2006

Armenians commemorate `88 quake

Speaker event, photo gallery seek to learn from disaster
December 1, 2006
By Maneesha Limaye

Engineering Prof. Anne Kiremidjian stressed the importance of stable
construction, reliable building materials and architectural expertise
in averting humanitarian tragedies after natural disasters in a
Pigott Hall speech last night.

The event, sponsored by a broad coalition of campus groups including
the Armenian Students Association (ASA), Blume Earthquake Engineering
Center, Sanksriti, Six Degrees and Engineers for a Sustainable World,
was half of a two-part event entitled `Mitigating Natural Disasters:
Lessons from the Armenian Earthquake.’

`The range of groups that had a role in organizing this event
reflects the impact natural disasters can have on all segments of
society around the globe, making the message we wanted to send all
the more powerful,’ said senior Seepan Parseghian, ASA president.

The discussion was combined with a two-day photo exhibit to honor the
victims of the 1988 Armenian earthquake and to understand its
consequences in light of recent natural disasters in New Orleans in
2005 and the Indian Coast the year before.

The photo exhibit’s aim was to provide visual images of the poverty
and damage caused by the earthquake. Raffi Mardirosian, ASA member
and organizer of the gallery, was pleased with the exhibit’s turnout
and impact.

`I think it went well,’ he said. `A lot of people were able to see
that people have nothing in Armenia. The pictures really show the
infrastructure damage and the state of ruin.’

While the photo exhibit attracted a more general audience, the
speaker event was targeted toward engineers, emphasizing their
importance as potential contributors to future earthquake security
policies.

`Non-traditional security threats like natural disasters are costing
the global community an increasing number of lives, and engineers
have a crucial role in preventing this trend from worsening,
especially in developing nations, where the engineering expertise
offered at institutions like Stanford is not available for the local
populations to use,’ Parseghian said.

Kiremidjian, a faculty member at the Blume Earthquake Engineering
Center, emphasized the importance of infrastructure stability and
discussed the economic, social and political contexts surrounding the
Armenian earthquake.

`It is important to understand where a country is located and its
political setting when an earthquake occurs,’ said Kiremidjian.

Eighteen years ago, Armenia, a member of the now-defunct USSR, was
struck with an earthquake that leveled its northern regions, causing
thousands of causalities and displacing many more refugees.

Kiremidjian estimated that 40 percent of Armenia was affected.
Twenty-five thousand people were killed, 514,000 were left without
shelter and 1,198 buildings were destroyed in just one city of
Leninakan, Armenia. By contrast, an earthquake of the same magnitude
struck San Francisco, Calif., the following year and killed 64
people.

`It was a truly devastating event,’ Kiremidjian said. `I would rank
it as one of the worst disasters around the world.’

The damage, she explained, was a direct consequence of civil
engineering.

`In addition to poor design, the quality of the concrete used in
Armenian buildings was poor,’ she said. `Supervision during
construction was nonexistent. It was a combination of all the worst
possible conditions.’

Despite great strides in understanding of earthquakes and safety
precautions for engineering structures since then, Kirmidjian said
earthquakes – along with other natural hazards – continue to result
in enormous human casualties.

`It is important to recognize the potential of earthquakes, to
understand their consequences and to not be complacent, but to work
towards better policies that will make the necessary changes,’
Kiremidjian said.

An audience dominated by engineering students praised the event.

`It was a very touching presentation,’ said Ting Lin, a graduate
student in engineering. `It raises the awareness and shifts the focus
away from local concerns and towards international ones.’

`It was really informative,’ said Heather Bischel, another graduate
student in engineering. `I haven’t been to any of the ASA’s
presentations before, but I was interested in the topic. I liked how
she approached it from a human aspect. She truly has a passion for
the people there.’

/1/armeniansCommemorate88Quake

The Moscow Times, Russia
Dec 1 2006

The Duduk Master

Djivan Gasparian, whose music has been featured on Peter Gabriel
albums and in Hollywood blockbusters, plays at the Kremlin Palace.

By Svetlana Graudt
Published: December 1, 2006

When I met Djivan Gasparian in his suite at the Peking Hotel in
central Moscow, the 78-year-old musician was shaving with a cordless
razor. He told me to call him Uncle Djivan and offered me a seat on
the sofa. Dressed in a warm sweater and fighting a slight cold, the
soft-spoken Gasparian was meeting journalists ahead of his concert
next Monday with the Russian National Orchestra in the Kremlin
Palace.

Gasparian is a master of the duduk, an oboe-like instrument that has
been played in Armenia for at least 1,200 years and has lately
appeared in a number of Hollywood movie soundtracks.

Although he has performed snippets of music with some of the world’s
leading orchestras, Monday’s concert will be his first full-length
performance, featuring a variety of duduk compositions. These will
include excerpts from the soundtracks to "Day Watch," "The Last
Temptation of Christ" and "Gladiator," as well as reworked Deep
Purple songs and popular Armenian and Russian melodies.

"I want to play so everyone will like it," he said. "The duduk sounds
very beautiful with a symphony orchestra. It is like brother and
sister with bassoon, oboe, strings. It adds beauty to an orchestra."

The musician, who was born in a village outside Yerevan, credits his
father, an illiterate bricklayer, for introducing him to music.

"My father was a good singer, but he wasn’t professional. He sang
just like a National Opera singer and told stories about love and so
on. He sang both male and female parts. He had a very beatiful voice
and he built the most beautiful buildings in Yerevan that are still
standing."

When Gasparian was 7 years old, he heard a three-piece band playing
accompaniment to a silent film. That was how he first heard the
duduk.

"As they say, it was love at first sight. It went straight to my
heart," he recalled.

Gasparian approached the band’s duduk player and asked him for his
instrument. After some pleading, the man gave it to him, and
Gasparian spent the next winter learning to play it. The next year,
Gasparian met the man again and so impressed him with his playing
that the man gave him another duduk.

In 1948, Gasparian joined an amateur ensemble that eventually took
him to a music festival in Moscow. After the final concert, he was
given a Pobeda wristwatch on behalf of Stalin, who was in the
audience.

"I took the watch and all of Armenia knew that Djivan got a watch
from Stalin. I didn’t realize [its importance] — I was just a
teenager — or else I would have kept the watch."

Later, he joined various professional song and dance emsembles and
took first prizes in competitions in the Soviet Union and around the
world.

Twenty years ago, Gasparian moved to the United States. He is now a
familiar face in Hollywood, where he records film music and
collaborates with musicians like Peter Gabriel, Michael Brook, Brian
Eno, Sting and Queen guitarist Brian May, all of whom he considers
his friends. Gasparian said he seldom goes back to his native
Armenia, though he does give the occasional concert there.

A fully self-taught player, he doesn’t practice much before concerts.

"For my instrument, the first thing you need is soul. I almost don’t
need to practice. I am a good improviser. I quickly pick up any
traditional music played on national instruments, be they from Japan,
Italy, Germany."

The duduk, called the dziranapogh in Armenian, is made from wild
apricot wood and has nine finger holes, including one for the thumb.
Its present name has been around since the 1920s and is thought to be
derived from the Russian dudka, or pipe. It has a range of one
octave.

Initially, the duduk was seldom heard outside of Armenian circles.
Gasparian has taken it almost singlehandedly to stages around the
world, where he performs with jazz and rock musicians. He has even
formed a duduk quartet, which includes bass, tenor, soprano and alto
duduks.

"I never thought I would become what I am now. It just happened this
way. I simply play well. Nothing else. I know that when I play,
people have shivers going down their spine. I get them myself. When I
do something new and I really like it, I get shivers, too."

Djivan Gasparian and the Russian National Orchestra play Mon. at 7
p.m. at the Kremlin Palace. Metro Alexandrovsky Sad. Tel. 928-5232.

SECRET PRISONS FUNCTIONING IN 10 EU STATES
By Petros Keshishian

AZG Armenian Daily
01/12/2006

Most of the EU states authorities have known that CIA airplanes
are landing on their territory and secret prisons functioning, but
this was carefully concealed form the public, states a report by a
special commission of the European Parliament. Parts of the report
were published on Tuesday. France Presse reports that Claudio Fava,
head of the commission, stated that the most of the Governments have
actively or passively cooperated with the CIA.

According to Mr. Fava, the heads of the European states have well known
about the prisons were people suspected in terrorism are illegally
kept. He added that only the authorities of Spain and Germany were
willing to cooperate with the commission.

In the report of the commission is said that CIS secret prisons are
functioning in Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Spain,
Italy, Poland, Portugal and Sweden, as well as Bosnia, Macedonia and
Turkey, which are not EU members. It is also said that CIA airplanes
have landed in the European states at least 1245 times. The airplanes
were transporting illegal prisoners – terrorism suspects.

Evidence of about 130 people – EU officials, special service employees
and reporters, were collected during the 6 month long activity of
the commission. Since 2005 rights protection organizations have
been declaring that existence of such "air prisons" and illegal
places of the execution is a severe violation of the terms of the
International Law.

IN 2007 RA TO EXTEND INTERSTATE CREDIT TO NKR IN THE AMOUNT OF 19, 5 MILLIARDS DRAMS

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Nov 30 2006

In 2007 Armenia will extend interstate credit in the amount of 19
milliards 402 millions drams, which makes 4, 4% of Armenia’s state
budget, Head of the Permanent Commission on the NKR Parliament’s
Financial and Budget Issues Benik Bakhshiyan told KarabakhOpen.

Speaking of the outcomes of Armenia – NKR Interparliamentary
Cooperation Commission’s sitting, Benik Bakhshiyan noted top priority
had been given to the issues referring to economic cooperation.

According to the Karabakh MP, taking into consideration the fact
that during the war Karabakh’s economy had sustained considerable
casualties, the Karabakh delegation stated necessity to increase
the amount of interstate credit extended by RA to Karabakh. In his
words, RA MPs showed understanding to the reasons; however, they
added currently Armenia could not afford increasing the interstate
credit’s amount.

Armenia Fund, Inc.
111 North Jackson St. Ste. 205
Glendale, CA 91206
Tel: 818-243-6222
Fax: 818-243-7222
Url:

PRESS RELEASE
Contact ~ Sarkis Kotanjian
[email protected]

UCLA vs. USC: Collegiate Rivalry Boosts Telethon Fundraising

Los Angeles, CA – During Armenia Fund’s 9th international Telethon 2006,
the rivalry between UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans, ironically helped fuel
fundraising efforts during the last hours of the program. Celebrity
attorney Mark Geragos challenged Bruins and Trojans during the program,
ahead of this Saturday’s game, to beat each other in the total amount
pledged for Armenia Fund. Immediately following the on air live
challenge, the studio was flooded with phone calls from students
pledging anywhere from $20 to $500.

The rivalry between the two campuses was even evident at the studio.
Hundreds of volunteers answering phone calls also happened to be UCLA
and USC students. Even phone bankers were pledging amounts on their
behalf and paying on the spot. UCLA Bruins had high hopes of surpassing
their Trojan brothers and sisters, except when one USC alumnus called in
and paid $10,000 with a confirmed credit card and challenged UCLA
students to beat the amount.

Although the telethon is over, the challenge continues ahead of this
Saturday’s football game. Armenia Fund would like to express its sincere
gratitude to the students of UCLA, USC and other local campuses for not
only bringing their sharp collegiate differences during the telethon,
but also volunteering their time for a worthy cause.

Armenia Fund continues to accept donations via its online secure portal
at The challenge continues ahead of this Saturday’s
game. Armenia Fund will announce final results on Monday.

Armenia Fund, Inc., is a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation
established in 1994 to facilitate large-scale humanitarian and
infrastructure development assistance to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.
Since 1991, Armenia Fund has rendered more than $160 million in
development aid to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Armenia Fund, Inc. is
the U.S. Western Region affiliate of "Hayastan" All-Armenian Fund. Tax
ID# 95-4485698

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT TO DISCUSS XENOPHOBIA PROBLEM WITH POLICE AND POLITICAL PARTIES SOON

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Nov 28 2006

YEREVAN, November 28. /ARKA/. Russian President Vladimir Putin
intends to convene a meeting with law enforcement authorities and
the leaders of country’s twelve political parties soon to discuss
xenophobia-related problems, Russian Duma’s Speaker Boris Grizlov said
Thursday as met his Armenian counterpart Tigran Torosyan in Moscow,
Armenian National Assembly press office reports.

Grizlov admitted that crimes against strangers had become dangerously
commonplace in Russia.

He pointed out the jurors’ recent acquittal of the murderers in St.
Petersburg saying it had prompted serious discussions.

Armenian speaker, in his turn, said Russia is a large country where
numerous incidents happen. He doesn’t think these crimes are motivated
by anti-Armenian sentiments. Each of these cases must be considered
separately and wrongdoers must be tracked down and prosecuted to the
full extent of then law.

SOVA Russian analytic center’s figures show that the biggest number
of racism-grounded attacks, especially deadly, against Caucasianshas
been recorded between 2004 and 2006.

Of them, seven homicides have been recorded over a period between
January and May 2006, nine homicides in 2005 and 14 murders in 2004.

POPE VISIT LEAVES CHRISTIAN TURKISH VILLAGE COLD
by Burak Akinci

Agence France Presse — English
November 26, 2006 Sunday 2:31 AM GMT

Pope Benedict XVI’s planned visit to Muslim Turkey this week has
the world abuzz, but in Tokacli, the country’s only entirely Greek
Orthodox Christian village, most people couldn’t care less.

"So he’s coming, is he? What do you know…" commented an incredulous
native who said he works for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in
Istanbul, some 1,100 km (700 miles) away, but refused to give his name.

"After what he said about the Muslims, it would have been better for
him to stay away. I’m surprised he decided to come," said the owner
of the only cafe in Tokacli, 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Antakya.

The thirtyish shopowner smoked up his establishment as he tried
to light the stove, explaining that he too would rather not give
his name, "because I don’t want people to think I’m against peace"
among Christians.

Turkey’s Christian community is no more than 200,000-strong in a
country of 70 million, most of them Greek Orthodox or Gregorian
Armenian.

Tokacli has a population of 350 in winter and more than 2,000 in the
summer, when native sons seeking their fortunes abroad — mostly in
Western Europe — return for the holidays.

They have restored the old homes where they come to live for one month
a year, although some of the modern rebuilding appears to have cost
the village part of its original charm.

Tokacli is attached to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, as
Antakya used to be called, and where St. Peter founded the first
Christian church and where the word "Christian" first originated to
describe the followers of Jesus.

The Patriarch of Antioch himself, however, has been a resident of
Damascus since the 14th century and the people of Tokacli, like many
people in Hatay province, three-quarters surrounded by Syria, speak
Arabic among themselves.

Gathered at the cafe on a recent evening, most of them after a day
working their olive groves — the economic mainstay of the community
— the men of the village made favorable comparisons of the late pope
John Paul II, who visited Turkey in 1979, to Benedict XVI.

Respected community leader Josef Naseh, 53, an archaeologist who runs
a profitable real estate business in Antakya and heads an NGO to defend
community rights, brandished a photo to prove he was the first head of
an Orthodox civic organisation to have an audience with John Paul II,
back in 2003.

"The pope (Benedict XVI) is coming basically to attend mass with the
Greek Orthodox in Istanbul — it is the only reason for his visit," he
said. "If it had been John Paul II, things would have been different."

"He was different," Naseh sighed.

The mukhtar — the village headman — was more enthusiastic about
the papal visit.

"It was a good decision to come to our country — his visit will
contribute to bringing religions together," said Mikail Kar, a brawny
man in his fifties, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Kar said he returned to his native village only last year to be elected
headman after 28 years in Norway; his "modern mukhtar" aspect shows
as he drives rather than walks the narrow alleys of his village to
meet his constituents.

"The pope is welcome," he said. "But we would have liked to see him
here on our lands as well, where Muslims, Christians and Jews have
always lived in peace, without any problems."

No one remembers the last time there was a religion-related incident
in the village, even as Christian clergymen elsewhere in Turkey
became recent targets of Muslim extremists, like Italian Catholic
priest Andrea Santoro, shot dead by a teenager in February outside
his church in Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast.

After the Santoro killing, followed by at least two more attacks
against Christian clergymen, the Turkish authorities put two bodyguards
on duty to guard Tokacli’s Priest Musa.

But it only lasted a month, because, Kar said confidently, "in any
case, no one ever expected anything to happen here."

ONLY PUTIN CAN CONVEY IMPULSE TO KOCHARIAN-ALIYEV TALKS

PanARMENIAN.Net
28.11.2006 13:25 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ There is minimal probability for the meeting of
the Armenian and Azeri Presidents to end in signing of a document,
Azeri political scientist Rasim Musabekov believes. In his words,
"there is no hint for agreeing upon the language of such a document
by the FMs." "To the contrary, the statements of I.

Aliyev and R. Kocharian on the eve of the Minsk meeting are not
optimistic, as they evidence that it will be hard to bring the
positions of the parties to a common point," he remarked. "Thus, it
would be good if upon completion of the meeting the Presidents come out
together in order to join journalists and state that the talks were
productive. While statements that it was managed to make positions
of the parties over disputed elements closer and that the two FMs
are later commissioned to hold an additional round of talks, taking
into account the progress made during the meeting of state leaders –
this should be considered success," Musabekov said. He also remarked
that "though Belarus President Lukashenko hosts the CIS Summit, while
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is the Chair of the Council of
CIS Heads at present, only Russian President Vladimir Putin is capable
to convey certain impulse to Aliyev-Kocharian talks." "Another point
is whether he would like to do it and to whose benefit he will direct
his influence and what he will demand in exchange," the political
scientist stated, reports Day.az.

The meeting of the Armenian and Azeri Presidents within the settlement
process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict will be held in Minsk within
the Summit of the CIS Heads November 28.

Hudson Reporter, NJ
Nov 26 2006

Marching for genocide awareness
Weehawken native walks coast to coast in ‘Journey for Humanity’

By Jim Hague 11/26/2006

Weehawken native Edward Majian was finally able to put his feet up
and rest a week ago Wednesday, something he has not done much since
late June.

Back then, he and five other college students of Armenian descent
began a journey from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. – on foot.

"I figured I went through five pairs of sneakers, walking 3,300
miles," said Majian, who completed the five-month long "Journey for
Humanity" to draw attention to the murders of 400,000 innocent
residents of Darfur in Sudan, as well as other genocidal events in
history, some of which have occurred in Armenia.

"We walked about 28 to 30 miles a day," he said. "I think it was very
rewarding, making a difference with people who don’t know who you are
and don’t know about genocide."

Genocide is defined as "The deliberate and systematic extermination
of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." The most famous
genocide was the Holocaust, but there are often smaller genocides
going on in foreign lands that the average American remains unaware
of.

Majian, who is a student of political science and social justice at
St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, took the semester off so he could
march with members of the United Armenian Students (UAS).

"My girlfriend became involved with the organization, and when I
heard of the march, I wanted to be a part of it as well," Majian
said.

There was a symbolic meaning to the students’ march.

"Walking and marching is used as a method to kill in the genocide,"
he said. "In Armenia, people were made to walk in blistering heat.
They were death marches. If they couldn’t walk, they were killed on
the site."

There was a historic inspiration as well.

"In modern times, some of the greatest freedoms were achieved with
marches," Majian said. "Mahatma Gandhi had the Salt March. Dr. Martin
Luther King had the Freedom March to Washington. It proves that
humanity does, indeed, have choices. It’s very sobering."

Majian said that he was amazed that most of the people he encountered
during his march had no idea what genocide means.

"I was struck by their honesty," Majian said. "Some would say, ‘I
need to know. Explain it to me.’ They had to find out that genocide
is not a distant thing, that it is still happening today. Once they
realized what it was, people reached into their pockets and donated."

Still happening today

Majian and his five comrades went to several colleges along the way
to make presentations, including a stop at St. Peter’s College in
Jersey City, where the marchers were warmly greeted.

"The Social Justice Department at St. Peter’s has been a tremendous
help," Majian said. "They are the reason why I decided to dedicate my
life to such causes."

Along the way, the marchers met with members of the United States
Senate and Congress to discuss legislation that would recognize
genocide.

"There were times that it became frustrating, because I felt that
people didn’t care," Majian said. "How could people not care about
hundreds of thousands of people being killed? But after a while, I
realized that it was a very effective method and we were able to pass
on the word."

Majian added, "We felt that if we didn’t do something, then nothing
would get done. No one is taking the time to teach genocide as a
problem in society."

A week ago Wednesday, the six weary travelers completed the final
stretch of their tour, marching to Washington, D.C. to meet with U.S.
Congressmen Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.) to
facilitate genocide awareness being addressed on the Congressional
floor.

"We walked the last two miles to the Capitol building," Majian said.
"The project was presented on the House floor. If we didn’t do what
we did, chances are that it would never have been addressed in
Washington."

Majian said that even though their journey is completed, the project
is far from being history and they still need financial support.

"It’s a misconception that we don’t need funding, because we’re still
about $30,000 in debt," Majian said.

Majian said that a documentary about the journey is in the works, as
is a possible book deal.

"Some countries act like these genocides never happened. But we have
to make sure that they are recognized."

To learn more about the "Journey for Humanity," log onto
, through which one donate to the cause.