Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Erdogan: Allegations Regarding Armenian Genocide Are Totally Baseless
Turkish Press
5/18/2005
WARSAW (AA) – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on
Friday that the allegations regarding Armenian genocide were totally
baseless.
Prime Minister Erdogan, who is currently in Polish capital Warsaw to
attend the Council of Europe (COE) Third Summit of Heads of State &
Government, held a news conference at the Royal Castle of Warsaw.
Replying to a question about the allegations regarding so-called
Armenian genocide, Prime Minister Erdogan said, “we have expressed
our uneasiness clearly on numerous occasions. Those allegations
are totally baseless. We have already opened all our archives. Now,
Armenia and the other third countries should open their archives to
historians, jurists and scientists. Then, we, as politicians, can
evaluate the issue and make a decision. Turkey cannot accept such
baseless allegations. No one can achieve anything by keeping such
baseless allegations on top of agenda.” “Future should be based on
peace and affection instead of hatred and enmity,” he stressed.
Recalling that Turkey had recognized Armenia, Prime Minister
Erdogan said that it was Armenia which failed to develop diplomatic
relations. “Also, the COE considered Armenia the occupier on the Upper
Karabakh dispute. First, Armenia should withdraw from Upper Karabakh
instead of putting forward such baseless allegations,” he said.
When recalled that Belgian Senate would debate a resolution envisaging
consideration of rejection of so-called Armenian genocide a crime,
Prime Minister Erdogan told reporters, “I cannot understand an
unrelevant country’s making such a decision. If they accept the
resolution, Turkey will launch a new initiative by approving similar
resolutions against countries which had committed genocide in the
past.” Upon another question about the decision of the European Court
of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding Abdullah Ocalan, the head of terrorist
organization PKK, Prime Minister Erdogan said, “the decision will be
debated by the COE Committee of Ministers. Then, Turkish jurisdiction
will take a decision. Turkish people have already closed the file of
Ocalan in their conscience.”

Turkey’s Erdogan dismisses foreign ‘lobbying efforts’ on Armenian killings
AP Worldstream
May 17, 2005
Turkey’s prime minister said Tuesday that his country rejects
outsiders’ “lobbying efforts” on last century’s mass killing of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks, and said other countries should open
their archives on the period.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments at a summit of the 46-nation Council of
Europe came after Armenia’s president, speaking at the same gathering
Monday, underlined his country’s call for the killings to be recognized
as genocide.
Erdogan, whose country is under pressure to address the issue as it
prepares to open membership talks with the European Union, referred to
“the issue of the so-called genocide.”
“We say that we do not appreciate any lobbying efforts that do
not find their basis in documents,” he said, speaking through an
interpreter. “By taking action in other parliaments, this will not
have positive effects on the issue.”
Several countries, including Argentina, Canada, France and Russia,
have declared the killings a genocide, and there is strong pressure
from Armenians worldwide for the U.S. Congress to recognize the
killings as genocide as well.
Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the
Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923
in a deliberate campaign of genocide. Turkey says the death count is
inflated and insists that Armenians were killed or displaced in the
civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan recently sent a letter to Armenian President Robert Kocharian
inviting Armenia to set up a committee of historians to jointly
research the killings.
“We are opening up our military archives and we ask for Armenia to do
the same _ open their archives,” he said Tuesday. “If other countries
have pertinent information, let them open their archives.”

RA DEPUTY OMBUDSMAN RECEIVES CO- RAPPORTEURS OF PACE MONITORING
COMMITTEE
YEREVAN, May 16. /ARKA/. RA Deputy Ombudsman Rafik Mkhitaryan
received the Co- Rapporteurs of PACE Monitoring Committee Yerzhi
Yaskernia and George Columbier as well as the Committee Secretary Bony
Theofilova. As the Public Relations and Information Department of RA
Ombudsman Administration told ARKA News Agency, the participants of
the meeting discussed issues on protection of human rights and basic
freedoms in RA, the process of honoring the commitments to PACE and
establishment of democracy in Armenia. L.V.-0–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

IRAN AND ARMENIA AGREED ON CONSTRUCTION OF TWO ELECTRIC POWER STATIONS ON RIVER ARAKS
Pan Armenian News
16.05.2005 03:22
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Representatives of Iran and Armenia achieved
agreement on construction of two electric power stations on River Araks
at the common border of the two states. As the Iranian Company of Hydro
Resource Development informed, the appropriate decision was taken in
Tehran during the Seventh Sitting of the Joint Technical Committee
of Iran and Armenia held with the participation of Company’s Project
Assistant Naser Nemati and Armenian Deputy Energy Minister Karen
Sargsian. “As the common water border of Armenia and Iran stretches for
40 kilometers the parties decided to use the potential of the ricer”,
Nemati said. “In accord with the agreement the first plant with the
capacity of 130 Megawatt and an 18.3-kilometer tunnel will be built
at the Armenian territory while the second plant with the capacity
of 140 Megawatt and 17.5- kilometer tunnel will be built in Iran.
Presently the preparatory works are being carried out. By to date five
projects have been already approved and the essential consultations
on the soonest elimination of the problems available have been held”,
he added, Irna agency reports.

ARA ABRAHAMIAN CALLED TO DEVELOP ARMENIA-ISRAEL RELATIONS
Pan Armenian News
16.05.2005 06:11
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Chairman of the World Congress of Armenians
Ara Abrahamian called to develop the Armenian-Israeli relations,
ITAR-TASS reports. “Our Churches are bound by centuries-old history
however presently the bilateral relations are not satisfactory and need
development”, Ara Abrahamian stated noting that there is no Armenian
Embassy in Israel. “Armenia and Israel have a common part of history
and the affinity of cultural and national traditions can serve as a
basis for the development of bilateral relations”, he stressed. To
note, Ara Abrahamian served on the delegation to Israel headed by
Catholicos of All Armenian Garegin II. The Armenian delegation was
composed by Armenian Defense Minister Serge Sargsian, representatives
of the RA Foreign Ministry and RA Central Bank President Tigran
Sargsian. Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger accepted Armenian
Catholicos’s invitation to visit Armenia in the near future.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Close, but ‘not America’
By Joan Dupont
International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, MAY 17, 2005
CANNES — For the first time in decades, Canada has two films in
competition here. David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, directors of the
extreme, from a place – Toronto – known as tame, make imaginative
and, some say, weird films, investigations into dark zones. But these
offerings look like sheer entertainment.
Cronenberg’s U.S.-produced “A History of Violence” depicts an
American family living in a Garden of Eden that turns into a snake
pit, and stars Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, William Hurt, and Ed
Harris. Egoyan’s Canadian-produced “Where the Truth Lies,” shot in
London studios, is about a Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin-style comedy team
that breaks up mysteriously. The story, told from different points
of view over three time periods, stars Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and
Alison Lohman.
Their new films are adapted from American novels. “This was a world
where these men had access to whatever they desired,” Egoyan said. “I
wanted to show them as unbridled – drugs, sex, almost a narcoticized
feeling of sexuality, in scenes about power and control, shown from
different points of view.” He described his movie as a film noir.
Cronenberg said his film was not a realistic movie: “It’s about
creating another identity. We make choices. An identity isn’t given to
us, we create it. Everyday you wake up and assemble that person. It’s
possible to become somebody else.”
Both are champions of the competition and have been on the jury,
Cronenberg as president. He is excited to be back in competition, and
alongside Egoyan: “We’re close friends and support each other. We’re
comrades in arms rather than competitors.”
At the festival, their ventures are being looked upon as UFOs. The
trade magazines hail them as sleek and sexy, while the cinephile
press sniffs suspiciously, although “A History of Violence” was well
received Monday. Even if the films bear the imprint of the directors –
obsessions with truth, identity, violence and sexuality – both seem
to take place in a magnificently decorated but anonymous country,
and are also moral tales.
Since the 1970s, when French-language filmmakers such as Gilles Carle,
Jean-Pierre Le- febvre and Claude Jutra made their mark here, Cannes
has been supportive of Canadian cinema. These films spoke French
with a Canadian accent; they charmed, but were perceived abroad as
provincial. At home, this cinema is popular at the local box office.
Denys Arcand is an exception. His brilliant scripts and worldly
characters in films like “The Decline of the American Empire” and
“The Barbarian Invasions” speak a more universal language, win prizes
and are popular at movie houses. “The very first film I worked on,
a student film, went to Cannes at the Semaine de la Critique in
1962,” he said, referring to “Seul ou avec d’autres” (“Alone or With
Others”). “Most of my other films were screened at Cannes, and Cannes
has always been very good to me.”
Yet some Canadians, French- or English-speaking, feel they are
sometimes treated like poor relatives here, less glamorous and
important than their American cousins. Over the years, the Toronto
festival, which while noncompetitive is now ranked by many observers
as third after Cannes and Berlin, has changed that. The festival
boosts emerging directors from English-speaking Canada.
Piers Handling, who programmed at Toronto before becoming its director
10 years ago, has championed Cronenberg and Egoyan since the 1980s. “We
ran the first North American retrospective of David’s work in 1983,
when he was something of a pariah, a genre filmmaker on a scene where
Canadians looked for realism.” The festival also launched Egoyan with
“Next of Kin” in 1984. “Atom and David made the breakthrough for
Canadian art cinema,” Handling said. “Their new films became fixtures
at festivals.”
Handling finds “Where the Truth Lies” to be genuine Egoyan despite
the material. “There’s Atom’s interest in storytelling. Where does the
truth lie with characters who are chameleon-like? That’s part of Atom,
his obsessions. He’s an immigrant, born in Cairo of Armenian parents,
and he had to adapt a whole series of personas and masks.
“With both directors, their Canadianness is very much part of their
work. Look at Fritz Lang or Lubitsch, who came to America; did they
lose themselves or their talent? Yet French-Canadian films are truly
rooted in the land. Denys Arcand sets his films on the streets of
Montreal, the hospitals, the universities, whereas Atom and David
are like aliens traveling through their own cities.”
Robert Lantos, a Canadian whose career as a producer began with Gilles
Carle in 1976, was also behind Arcand, Cronenberg and Egoyan. He
will produce Cronenberg’s next film, “Painkillers,” and he produced
“Where the Truth Lies.” He finds it interesting that both directors
have chosen themes more accessible to bigger audiences.
In this film, Cronenberg says, his characters are mainstream. “Normally
I’m attracted to bizarre people, outcasts. This time, I thought it
would be interesting to see what happens when the characters start
out normal and slide into abnormality. In this film, the violence is
specifically American, but there is universal violence – the violence
in one person, the violence in movies.”
He observes that Marshall McLuhan felt he could comment on America
in a way that Americans couldn’t. “Canada is so close to America,
but it’s not America. Our movie is set in America with major American
actors, but not a foot was shot in America. Our cultures are very
different. We didn’t have a revolution or a civil war.”
Cronenberg added: “Violence is universal. We can’t eliminate it. Humans
are unique on earth as creatures that can imagine a world without
violence, where everybody is fed, and lives in peace. We can imagine
this, and not accomplish it.”

Pan Armenian News
KARABAKH DIPLOMACY CHARGED WITH TASK TO TRANSFORM ARMISTICE IN LASTING PEACE
13.05.2005 03:02
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ `One of the tasks the Karabakh diplomacy is charged with
is the transformation of the armistice into final and stable peace’, NKR
Deputy Foreign Minister Masis Mayilian stated on occasion of the 11-th
anniversary of the armistice established in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone
on May 12, 1994 under Russia’s mediation, De-Facto agency reports. In his
words, the cease-fire became the only considerable achievement in the
peaceful settlement process. According Masis Mayilian, `the maintenance of
the cease-fire in spite of separate cases of its violation is for most part
conditioned by the fact that all the three parties to conflict put
signatures to the agreement.’ Masis Mayilian expressed satisfaction with the
stabilization of the situation on the Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan armed
forces’ contact-line for the recent period. According to him, `considerable
role in this played the firm position of international mediators, who stated
on the inadmissibility of aggravating the situation, as well as the regular
monitoring of the demarcation line conducted by the OSCE Mission’.

Armenia’s ethnic minorities use state-allocated funds ineffectively – official
Arminfo
10 May 05
YEREVAN
The public organizations of Armenia’s ethnic minorities are using
ineffectively the Armenian government’s annual grants to the tune of
10m drams [22,000 dollars], the head of the religious and ethnic
minorities department under the Armenian government, Granush
Kharatyan, has told an Arminfo correspondent.
She said that the money is distributed via the coordinating council
for fighting corruption under the Armenian president. For its part,
the council transfers the money equally into the account of an
individual from each of these ethnic groups who distributes the money
in the community.
Meanwhile, Kharatyan noted that this method of money transfers had
been ineffective since all the grants are spent on peoples’ daily
living needs rather than on resolving major problems connected with
preserving and developing cultural and ethnic values via specific
projects.
In particular, she noted that the problem of preserving the languages
of many ethnic minorities in the republic. At the same time, she said
that this issue is to be solved by other means.
“It would have been more effective if this small grant was distributed
via a special commission which would allocate it to the ethnic
minorities’ projects,” Kharatyan noted.
The grant is distributed among 11 ethnic groups of Armenia, which
number 200 to 40,000 people.
Meanwhile, there are more than 50 ethnic groups in Armenia. Yezids are
considered to be the largest ethnic group among them and number 40,000
people. Most of them live in the countryside and are engaged in
farming.
The Russian community, 16,000 people, is the second largest and
includes Molokans. They mainly live in Yerevan, Abovyan, Vanadzor,
Gyumri and Charentsavan.
Part of the ethnic minorities devoted themselves to intellectual
activities. Others, mainly Molokans, live in the villages of
Lermontovo and Fioletovo and are engaged in farming.
There are also Assyrians and Greeks. According to official data,
ethnic minorities constitute 2.2 per cent of Armenia’s
population. There are about 60 public organizations set up by 11
ethnic minority groups.

TALENTED SCHOOLBOYS OF ARMENIA TO PARTICIPATE AT INTERNATIONAL ART
FESTIVAL IN MOSCOW
YEREVAN, MAY 12. ARMINFO. As ARMINFO was informed in Vladimir Spivakov
Foundation, 6 talented Armenian young musicians will participate at
the 2nd International festival “Moscow meets its friends” which will
take place in Moscow in the middle of May, 2005.
More than 1.100 children from Russia and 34 countries will participate
at the festival, organized by International Benevolent Foundation of
well-known Russian musician V. Spivakov. This action is included into
the World list of international festivals and held by the support of
UNESCO, UNISEF and Jeunesses Musicales International. It is dedicated
to the 60th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic war.
16-year-old pianist Tsovinar Suflyan, 12-year-old violoncellist Hakob
Atyan, 16-year-old dudukist Sargis Davtyan, 14-year-old flautist
Lusine Melik-Vrtanessyan, 10-year-old violinist Emmanuel Chgnavoryan
and vocalist Arsen Stepanyan will perform concerts on various Moscow
stages.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Senior Russian MP accuses Georgia of “blackmail” over bases
Interfax-AVN military news agency web site
12 May 05
MOSCOW
The chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs,
Konstantin Kosachev, described today’s statement by Georgian
parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze that Georgia is determined to
unilaterally declare Russian military bases on its territory closed on
15 May as “blackmail and unfriendly attitude to Russia”. [Russian
Interfax-AVN news agency said at 0858 today, quoting Burjanadze, that
“Georgia is ready to unilaterally declare the transfer of Russian
military bases to withdrawal procedure on 15 May”.]
“This is unquestionably blackmail and the expression of unfriendly
attitude towards Russia, and if this decision is made, it will strike
a discordant note with the negotiating process and the position that
Russia is assuming at the negotiations on the dates for the bases’
withdrawal,” Kosachev said at a news conference at the Interfax main
office today.
“Setting deadlines is impossible in any negotiations in principle:
when one of the parties sets these terms, it drives negotiations into
a deadlock,” he said.
Russia has made a number of concessions on the dates for the
withdrawal, Kosachev said. In particular, Russia “has revised the
original dates for the withdrawal to 4 from 11 years, and reconsidered
plans for the further settlement of units to be pulled out of
Georgia. Many of them will be transferred not to infrastructure built
from scratch, but to that which already exists in Russia and Armenia,”
he said.
“Ms Burjanadze’s statement puts Russia into a position in which it
would have either to agree with this demand and hastily withdraw the
troops, or not agree and face sanctions,” Kosachev said.