Author: Kalantarian Kevo

RA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT HOVIK ABRAHAMYAN RECEIVES THE DELEGATION OF THE SWISS BUSINESSMEN

23.10.2012

On October 23 the RA National Assembly President Hovik Abrahamyan
received the delegation of the Swiss businessmen. Welcoming the
guests Hovik Abrahamyan expressed satisfaction in connection with
the businessmen~Rs visit to Armenia. In the NA President~Rs word,
during the recent years a political dialogue of high level had been
shaped between Armenia and Switzerland and unprecedented development
of relations had been registered.

Touching upon the tangible enlivening of bilateral relations
during the recent period Hovik Abrahamyan highlighted especially
the role of inter-parliamentary cooperation. Highly appreciating
the effective cooperation of Friendship Groups in the parliaments
of Armenia and Switzerland, the NA President expressed confidence
that using at utmost the opportunities of parliamentary diplomacy,
they would continue to make their contribution to the development
of bilateral and multilateral relations. It has been noted that
the Armenia-Switzerland Parliamentary Group carries out effective
activity also in the direction of reinforcement and development of
trade-economic ties. Nevertheless, as to Hovik Abrahamyan, the levels
of trade-economic cooperation and political relations are inadequate,
there exists big potential, and from this perspective the visit of
the delegation of the Swiss businessmen to Armenia is emphasized.

In the name of the delegation thanking for the warm reception Guy
Mettan, Chairman of the Switzerland-CIS Joint Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, and deputy of Geneva Cantonal Parliament has highlighted
the close relations that exist between the two countries. In his word,
the delegation~Rs visit to Armenia aims at further deepening of those
ties, especially further enlivening of cooperation in the economic and
cultural spheres. He also highlighted the activity of Friendship Groups
in the parliaments of Switzerland and Armenia, noting that gradually
the economic component is given a big place in it. Guy Mettan has
noted by opening of the Embassy of the Swiss Confederation to Armenia
a new phase has begun in bilateral relations: it is characterized by
establishing and strengthening especially economic and cultural ties.

In the establishment of friendship and mutual trust between the two
countries both sides the role of the Armenian community of Switzerland
was stressed. It was noted with satisfaction that Luc Barthassat,
member of Switzerland-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group, as well
as business representatives of Swiss Armenian communities were a part
of the delegation.

Luc Barthassat noted that they were impressed by their visit to
Armenia, productive meetings, from which they expect practical
results. He said that this time they would not miss the opportunity
to visit Nagorno Karabakh.

In connection with this, the NA President welcomed the visit of
Switzerland-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group paid recently to
Nagorno Karabakh, which was a good opportunity to get acquainted with
the situation on the spot and form an objective stance.

The members of the delegation and the Armenia-Switzerland Parliamentary
Friendship Group attending the meeting also presented their approaches
in terms of bilateral relationship.

YEREVAN APARTMENT PRICES FALL MORE THAN NINE PERCENT IN AUGUST – NEWSPAPER

news.am
October 23, 2012 | 07:48

YEREVAN. – In line with the official data made public by Armenia’s
State Committee of Real Estate Cadastre, 162 real estate units were
purchased in the country, and with mortgage loans, this August and a
total of 872 units were bought in the first eight months of the year,
Haykakan Zhamanak reports.

“This is noteworthy in the sense that 413,000 [such] deals were
registered in the first eight months of the year past. That is,
the number of such type of deals fell by approximately forty percent
[this year], as compared with last year. This shows that the mortgage
programs, which were widely advertised at the time, have failed
completely. And, in general, the [country’s] real estate market is
not stabilizing in anyway and it continues to fall rapidly.

In line with the official statistics on [Armenia’s] real estate market,
the apartment prices in [capital city] Yerevan have fallen by more
than nine percent in August of this year,” Haykakan Zhamanak writes.

“HELP YOUR BROTHER” INITIATIVE TO SEND HUMANITARIAN AID TO SYRIA OCTOBER 23

ARMENPRESS
OCTOBER 23, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS: “Help your Brother” initiative’s new
consignment is scheduled to be sent to Syria on October 23 by “Syrian
Airlines” flight. Lilit Galstyan, Chairperson of the Pan-National
Foundation informed Armenpress, ” one ton humanitarian burden is set
to be sent to Syria by “Syrian Airlines” flight this evening. The
remaining part will also be sent to Syrian people by the same flight”
. In the words of Galstyan the aid will be coordinated and later
on distributed by Syria-Armenian Emergency Relief Committee and
Armenian Church.

“Syrian Airlines” passenger aircraft flights are implemented
through Iran and Iraq air territories. Humanitarian baggage is more
convenient to be sent by this way thus avoiding extra expenses and
extra examination in the territory of Turkey.

ARMENIAN FM EXPRESSES DISSATISFACTION TO MEXICAN OFFICIALS

news.am
October 23, 2012 | 11:24

YEREVAN. – Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian’s Latin American
tour kicked off with a visit to Mexico on Monday.

In Mexico City, Nalbandian met with his Mexican colleague, Patricia
Espinosa, Armenian MFA press service informs.

Espinosa noted that her country sees Armenia as a friendly country and
wishes to expand interaction. In his turn, Armenia’s FM expressed a
conviction that his visit will assist in deepening cooperation. The
interlocutors reaffirmed their readiness to take steps toward
increasing cooperation and, in this connection, they made arrangement
on expanding the bilateral legal and contractual domain. They shared
the view that the opening of Armenia’s Embassy in Mexico will greatly
contribute to strengthening ties. Also, Nalbandian and Espinosa
exchanged views on economic cooperation and cultural exchange.

Armenia’s FM expressed bewilderment over the fact that the previous
Mexican parliament had adopted resolutions that misrepresents the
reality concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He stressed that
these resolutions are flagrantly contrary to the international
community’s stance, they harm the conflict settlement process and
the regional security, and adversely affect Armenian-Mexican relations.

Edward Nalbandian also stressed that he shares the Mexican human
rights advocates’ view that the erecting of a “Khojaly” monument in
Mexico City is an insult to the memory of genocide victims, and that
he agrees with the world reaction against the placing of the former
Azerbaijani president’s statue in the Mexican capital city. In her
turn, Patricia Espinosa noted that all this received a negative
reaction by the Mexican public.

Nalbandian briefed his Mexican counterpart on the Karabakh peace
process, and the Mexican FM reaffirmed her government’s full support
to the conflict’s solely peaceful resolution and on the basis of the
proposals offered by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

Expanding interaction within international organizations likewise
was in the agenda of Nalbandian’s and Espinosa’s talk.

Subsequently, Edward Nalbandian and Patricia Espinosa signed a
memorandum on holding political consultations between the Armenian
and Mexican MFAs.

On the same day, Nalbandian also met with members of the Mexican
Senate and noted that, even though this year marks the twentieth
anniversary of diplomatic ties between both countries, not everything
is carried out to develop relations. During their discussion of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the senators stressed that negotiations
are the only way to resolve this matter.

Separately, Edward Nalbandian delivered a lecture, on Armenia’s
foreign policy, at the Institute “Matias Romero” of Diplomatic Studies
(Diplomatic Academy of Mexico), and gave a news conference.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Director
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

“WE MUST INCULCATE MORAL AND SPIRITUAL VALUES IN THE MINDS AND HEARTS OF
PEOPLE”, Stated His Holiness Aram I in his message to the Catholic Bishops
Conference on New Evangelization in the Vatican

>From 7 to 28 October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI has been presiding over the
Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the
Christian Faith. In response to the invitation to the Catholicosate of
Cilicia, His Holiness Aram I sent an observer, Rev. Massis Zobouyan, who
read the message of His Holiness Aram I.

In his message, the Catholicos stated that evangelization as the inculcation
of moral and spiritual values, first among church people and then among
those outside the church, is the mission and vocation of the Church.
Fulfilling this vocation today is the challenge for all churches, and in the
face of globalization and the negative forces at work in all societies,
churches should find contextually relevant ways to transmit the Christian
Faith.

At the end of his message, His Holiness Aram I thanked Pope Benedict XVI for
the initiative and the invitation and he expressed his hope that Churches
would work together in fulfilling their essential vocation of
evangelization.

20 October 2012 Last updated at 14:01 GMT

A new wave of refugees in the city that was Smyrna
By Fergal Keane BBC News,
Izmir

[image: Government buildings in Izmir (then Smyrna) circa 1920]
Greeks had lived in Izmir (then Smyrna), for thousands of years

Thousands of Syrians who have fled from the fighting in their country are
living in refugee camps just inside Turkey. But some have gone further west
to the coastal city of Izmir – a place itself scarred by wanton killing and
destruction in World War I.

When a city is destroyed, what can we say of the buildings that rise in its
place?

Are they a completely new metropolis? Or must something of the spirit of
the old, no matter how fragmented, always haunt the present?

It is a question which must occur to any sentient traveller in the cities
of the eastern Mediterranean. where great civilisations have risen,
glittered brilliantly, then vanished into kingdoms of broken stone and dust.

But I do not think it has ever occurred to me with such poignancy as in
Izmir, the city the Greeks once called Smyrna, before their 3,000-year-old
living presence in Asia Minor was all but expunged.

I had not come here to reflect on the sorry story of international intrigue
and massacre which led to the death of Smyrna. I was following the story of
a different group of people fleeing a contemporary conflict whose own
cocktail of international intrigue and massacre has displaced more than
quarter of a million people.

But it was not possible to hear the stories of Syrian refugees without
thinking of what befell the substantial populations of Greeks and Armenians
in Smyrna in September 1922 in the aftermath of the World War I.

Ancient empires had collapsed. The Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Turks – who
between them had dominated central Europe and the near East – were
consigned to fast-receding memory.

The victorious British and French appointed themselves guardians of the
Middle Eastern territories of the defeated Ottomans and helped bequeath to
modern generations no end of troubles.

But it was the Greek invasion of the Ottoman lands of Asia Minor that set
in train the disaster of Smyrna.

With British support they invaded Anatolia in 1919 and marched inland.

There were massacres of Turks and these helped infuse a powerful
nationalist response.

When the Turkish army defeated the Greeks and descended on Smyrna, there
was wanton killing of tens of thousands – pillage and rape and the great
fire whose effect is measured now in absences.
[image: Greek people fleeing from Izmir (then Smyrna) by sea in 1922] Thousands
of Greeks living in Izmir (then Smyrna) fled during the fighting

Gone are the streets in which the voices of Greeks, Turks, Armenians,
Levantines and Jews mingled.

Lost is the rich mix of cultures that drew inspiration from the great
philosophical and religious traditions of West and East, that traded and
prayed and made music and told stories in the narrow lanes of the bazaar
and by the glittering water of the Aegean on summer evenings.

The crisis ended in 1923 with a treaty providing for the mass exchange of
populations across the region. Muslims were forced to go to Turkey by the
Greeks. Christians were forced to go west by the Turks. More than a million
and a half people were uprooted.

To the traveller wandering modern Izmir in search of the past, it is as if
the Greeks had never been here.
Pedestrians walking along Kordon Street in Izmir
Many of Izmir’s old buildings have disappeared

A handful of old buildings remain but there is a squat ordinariness about
the architecture of the place now – wonderfully friendly though its people
are, and golden though the light remains as as you walk the quayside in the
late evening.

I was watching the sunset in the company of a young Syrian man, who gave
his name as Mehmet.

He had fled his country three months ago. He had deserted the army and fled
west.

Last month he attempted to reach Greece, the first step on a journey he
hoped would take him to Germany or Britain where he might begin a new life.
But the smugglers had sent him to sea on a dangerous boat.
[image: A map of Turkey]

There were as many as 100 people on board, most of them women and children,
when it struck rocks and overturned.

“There was a boy I had befriended,” he told me, “a child of about 12 and
I’d told him that when we got to Europe, I would look after him.”

The boy drowned along with 60 other refugees.

As he tried to save his own life by swimming to shore, Mehmet remembered a
woman and her child both fighting to cling onto him.

He did not say what he did when this happened and I did not ask him. His
face was contorted with pain.

I asked him what he would do if he got to Europe.

“I would study guitar and then teach it,” he said.

Mehmet was a classical guitarist. His favourite pieces of music were the
Preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach.

But in the escape from Syria, he had left his guitar behind. The music in
him had been silenced.

But still, like all those numberless refugees before him in other wars, he
kept his eyes fixed on the sea, on the idea of another life that was surely
waiting if he could only cross the water.

ARMENIE
Buddha-Bar va ouvrir un hôtel à Erevan

Le groupe George V Eatertainment, connu pour ses établissements
Buddha-Bar, a annoncé mercredi l’ouverture début 2013 d’un premier
hôtel à Paris, qu’il veut classer cinq étoiles, dans un immeuble
appartenant à un groupe du Qatar. Le Buddha-Bar hôtel sera doté de 56
chambres dont 21 suites, « dans un hôtel particulier du 18ème siècle »
situé au 4 rue d’Anjou, au coeur du luxueux huitième arrondissement,
précise un communiqué.

L’affaire est soutenue par « un consortium d’investisseurs étrangers
en partenariat avec le groupe George V » Eatertainment, a précisé à
l’AFP le directeur et vice-président chargé du développement du
groupe, Franck Fortet. « L’un des partenaires est d’origine qatari »,
et il est « majoritaire dans la propriété du btiment », a-t-il
poursuivi.

L’établissement veut obtenir un classement « cinq étoiles », le
maximum, et promet « une expérience exceptionnelle du tourisme et de
l’art de vivre à la française, alliant charme et évasion des
influences asiatiques », selon le groupe. Doté d’un bar et d’un
restaurant, il doit ouvrir au premier trimestre 2013.

Fondé par Raymond Visan, à l’origine du Barfly et du Buddha-Bar au
milieu des années 1990 à Paris, le groupe George V Eatertainment a
ensuite essaimé dans le monde. Le groupe, qui ne communique pas son
chiffre d’affaires, compte aujourd’hui plus de trente établissements
dans le monde, dont onze Buddha-Bar à Paris, Londres, Budapest,
Caracas ou encore Mexico, deux Buddha-Bar hôtel, à Prague et Budapest,
ainsi que des Spa et restaurants. Il a fondé un label musical qui
édite notamment des compilations de la musique mixée ou jouée dans ses
bars.

Le groupe a d’autres projets en cours : après Paris, il va ouvrir « un
hôtel en Arménie », à Erevan, en prévoit un autre à Goa (Inde), et «
est en négociations » pour des implantations à Moscou,
Saint-Pétersbourg et Londres, a précisé M. Fortet. « Il y a une série
de négociations sur des resort (complexes de loisirs, ndlr) »,
notamment à Bali et en Egypte, a-t-il ajouté.

dimanche 21 octobre 2012,
Stéphane ©armenews.com

ARMENIENS GENEREUX
Le chemin des Bienfaiteurs Arméniens inauguré dans un parc à Erévan

Hier à Erévan, le maire d’Erévan Daron Markarian accompagné de la
ministre de la Diaspora Hranouch Hagopian, Berdj Sétrakian le
président du bureau mondial de l’Ugab ainsi que de nombreuses
personnalités d’Arménie et de la diaspora ont participé à inauguration
du chemin des Bienfaiteurs Arméniens, au parc Oragatsév. Sur cet
espace, figurent les statues des bienfaiteurs Arméniens Boghos Noubar,
Alexandre Mantachian (Mantachof), Alec Manooguian, Kaloust Gulbenkian,
Mikaël Aramiantz et Hovhannés Lazarian (Lazarov). Après l’inauguration
et les discours, une manifestation musicale laissa la place. Berdj
Sétrakian au nom de l’Ugab remercia les autorités arméniennes d’ériger
ainsi au c`ur d’Erévan un espace de mémoire et de reconnaissance dédié
aux bienfaiteurs de la nation arménienne qu’il jugea très importante
pour la diaspora.

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 21 octobre 2012,
Krikor Amirzayan ©armenews.com

Wicked Local, MA
Oct 20 2012

Author Shahkeh Setian at ALMA, Oct. 21

WATERTOWN

On Sunday, October 21, at 2:00 PM, author Shahkeh Setian will discuss
her book, “Humanity in the Midst of Inhumanity” at the Armenian
Library and Museum of America (ALMA) as part of her New England book
tour. Her book examines the 1915 Armenian Genocide with special
emphasis on Turkish Muslims who saved Armenian lives at the risk of
their own lives and that of their families as threatened by the
Ottoman government to any Muslim who protected Armenians.

She will ask for anyone in the audience who has similar stories to
submit them to her, not to include in a book, but rather to include in
a list of remembrance to be displayed at an appropriate location at a
later date. Dr. Setian earned a Doctorate in Education from UMASS
Amherst. She taught at Springfield College, Artsakh University, and
designed and taught a class at Cape Cod Community College entitled,
“The History of Genocide: Using the Armenian Genocide as a Case
Study”.

The Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA) is located at 65
Main Street in Watertown, MA. For directions and more information
about the program and current exhibits on display, visit

Glendale News Press, CA
Oct 20 2012

Christmas telethon slated for Sunday

October 19, 2012

It’s that time again. The 13th annual Armenian American Orphans
Christmas Fund will host its telethon fundraiser Sunday in an ongoing
effort to give thousands of orphans in Armenia a Christmas.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised over the years, with
money benefiting restoration and renovation projects in impoverished
regions of Armenia, as well as delivering holiday gifts to orphans.

Continuing with the tradition, a parade of local and state officials
are expected to make appearances at the telethon, including
Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake), L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca,
Glendale Mayor Frank Quintero and a number of local city council and
school board members.

The telethon will be aired by Armenian Media Group of America (AMGA)
television studios in Glendale from 4 p.m. to midnight Sunday. The
event will be simultaneously aired live on local cable channels 380
(AMGA), 381 (High Vision), 384 (AABC) and 386 (US Armenia), organizers
announced.

— Jason Wells, Times Community News