Author: Khondkarian Raffi

THE CENTRAL BANK OF ARMENIA AND UNDP JOIN EFFORTS TO DEVELOP

ArmenPress
June 7 2004

YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS: The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) and
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the first
e-payment system in Armenia. Mr. Tigran Sargsyan, Chairman of the
CBA and Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident
Representative, presented the initiative to the mass media and the
first online payment was made by plastic card.

The e-payment system is a joint initiative of the Armenian Card
(ArCa) Unified Payment System and UNDP. Through the system, online
payments for public utilities, including telephone, electricity, gas,
and water can be made using ArCa cards. The system can also be used to
buy top-ups for the ArmenTel mobile prepaid system and Arminco Internet
services. Plans are also underway to expand the system to allow ArCa
cardholders to shop online and benefit from other paid services.

The online payment system is based on the highest standards of
transaction security and user convenience. The long-term goal of the
system is to expand Armenia’s infrastructure for non-cash transactions
and create a reliable and user-friendly environment for e-Commerce.

In her comments, Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP
Resident Representative, noted: “It’s important to see this online
payment system as an important step in developing an information
society in Armenia. Modern Information and Communication Technologies
are essential for creating a modern economy in Armenia and ensuring
equal access to information for all citizens.”

Mr. Tigran Sargsyan, Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia,
reiterated the “significance of the e-payment system for the further
development of the banking system in Armenia, particularly the
establishment of e-banking.”

The Armenian Card was established by the CBA and ten commercial banks
in March 2000 with the aim of developing a new unified payment system
in Armenia. Today, 13 commercial banks are part of the ArCa system,
and more than 46,000 plastic cards of this type are in circulation.

Sacramento reflects on his legacy
By Dion Nissenbaum and Mark Gladstone

Posted on Sun, Jun. 06, 2004
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO – Tucked away in a little-visited corner of the state
Capitol, Ronald Reagan’s portrait hangs beside those of his fellow
former governors — though his is the only one protected by glass.

While Jerry Brown was derided as “Governor Moonbeam” and Gray Davis
was recalled by disenchanted voters, Reagan is the only California
governor whose official portrait was defaced, a reflection of the
visceral reactions he still draws.

But on Saturday in this city where Reagan’s career as an elected
official began 37 years ago, any criticism was mostly muffled by the
grief of tourists and local residents.

As word began to spread that the president had died, school groups,
guided tours and visitors from around the globe trudged up four flights
of carpeted stairs to stand below Reagan’s portrait and reflect on
his legacy.

“Guys would have jumped off Niagara Falls for him,” said William
Edward Sullivan, a 79-year-old retired Army major who met Reagan two
decades ago during a presidential stop at a militay base. “I really
think he was one of the best presidents we ever had.”

Throughout the afternoon, visitors passed by Reagan’s portrait and
gazed up at the lifelike depiction of the smiling former governor
standing in Capitol Park with the afternoon sun bouncing off the
swoop of his trademark hair.

“He was always a man of integrity,” said Jerry Hunter, a pastor
from Bradenton, Fla. “He gave America hope and built up the American
spirit.” In death, as in life, Reagan evoked mixed reactions.

“He wasn’t my favorite, but rest in peace, I guess,” said one tourist
who declined to give his name.

For many years, Reagan’s portrait greeted visitors entering the
west side of the Capitol. But it was defaced several times over the
years, with pranksters adding horns and a mustache, said tour guide
Anne Adrian.

After being restored, the painting was moved to the third floor, next
to the impressionistic portrait of former Gov. Jerry Brown and the more
traditional paintings of former Govs. Geore Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.

Blocks from the Capitol at the Old Governor’s Mansion, there was a
mix of sadness and relief that Reagan was no longer suffering from
the debilitating and draining effects of Alzheimer’s.

At midafternoon, the news was just sinking in for tour guides and
visitors. The U.S. flag still had not been lowered, 90 minutes after
the announcement that the state’s 33rd governor had died.

Reagan and his wife, Nancy, moved into the 127-year-old gingerbread
house after his landslide victory over Democratic Gov. Pat Brown
in 1966.

But they stayed only three months, partly because the house was along
a busy street across from a smelly gasoline station. Nor was it a
child-friendly neighborhood for their active young son, Ron Jr.,
who liked sliding down the home’s banister.

Despite their short stay, a tour guide said visitors always ask about
the Reagans, especially about why there is just one photo of Nancy
on display. The gift shop sells a Nancy Reagan Fashion Paper Doll
et. And the guide said a display of a larger set of Reagan photos
was planned even before Reagan’s death.

“It’s sad because he left such a legacy in the United States,” said
Ken Toczyski, 48, a Louisville, Ky., minister. Recalling an uncertain
America of the late 1970s, the minister said Reagan came in and said:
“I believe in America. I think the people of America are what make
us great, and I want to see that greatness restored.”

Visitors on Saturday said the events of Reagan’s presidency are seared
in their memories.

“I can’t believe he lived so long. I remember when he was elected and
when he was shot. I remember what I was doing. I was in grade school,
in sixth grade,” said Joe Pounds, 34, a chef from Brooklyn, N.Y.,
who grew up in Sacramento.

It wasn’t just everyday people who were recalling the Reagans. Senate
President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, who served in the
Assembly when Reagan was governor, remembered his biting humor, even
when he was a target. Burton recaled how Reagan once labeled him as
“the one man in Sacramento who has the most to fear from the squirrels
in Capitol Park.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger canceled a trip to Las Vegas planned for
Monday. Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger made the leap from Hollywood
films to Sacramento. And before Reagan died, Schwarzenegger said
there was another connection. “He has been a big idol of mine,” said
Schwarzenegger. “I’ve campaigned for him. I’ve gone out there handing
out leaflets, making phone calls on his behalf, and was very active
during the campaign to make sure he becomes the president. And this
was at the time when I was not even a citizen yet.”

Quick Guide: The OSCE

BBC News
June 2 2004

Flags of member nations at the OSCE HQ (Picture: OSCE)
Membership: 55 nations
Headquarters: Vienna, Austria
Budget: 185.7m euros (2003)
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE,
aims to prevent conflict and manage crises in Europe, the Caucasus
and central Asia.
The organisation is based in Vienna, Austria, but many of its 3,500
staff work in the field. The OSCE is particularly active in the
countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the republics of the
Caucasus.

The organisation’s mandate is broad. It aims to promote democracy and
human rights and to resolve regional conflicts. To this end it
encourages political, social and media reforms.

The OSCE has no peacekeeping contingents, but may call on the
resources of other international bodies, including the UN and Nato.

Background

The OSCE’s forerunner, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE), was set up in 1972 as a forum for dialogue between
nations. It brought Nato and Warsaw Pact countries to the meeting
table.

Moldova: OSCE monitors removal of Russian arms (OSCE/Neil Brennan)
In 1975 the CSCE produced the Helsinki Final Act. The signatories –
from East and West – promised to respect basic freedoms and human
rights and to recognise Europe’s post-war borders.

At the end of the Cold War, the CSCE became a fully-fledged
organisation and provided the framework for reducing conventional
armed forces in Europe.

The organisation adopted its present name in 1994 to reflect its more
permanent structure.

Members, decision-making

The OSCE has 55 member states. These are drawn mainly from Europe,
the Caucasus and Central Asia. The United States and Canada are
members of the OSCE.

All OSCE members have equal status within the body. Decisions are
reached by consensus, except in the case of “clear, gross and
uncorrected violations” of OSCE commitments by a member country.

Member states fund the running of the organisation and its missions.

Structure

Summit Conference: Leaders of member states meet once every two or
three years to map out the OSCE’s priorities
Ministerial Council: The OSCE’s main governing body meets annually,
except in a Summit Conference year; it comprises foreign affairs
ministers of member countries
Permanent Council: Undertakes the day-to-day running of OSCE
activities; comprises permanent representatives of member states who
meet once a week

Leaders

Chairman-in-office: The position is held by the foreign affairs
minister of a member state for a one-year term. The incumbent has
overall responsibility for the organisation.

Secretary-general: Responsible for managing OSCE operations, the
secretary-general is the representative of the chairman-in-office.

OSCE on the ground

Albania: A substantial OSCE presence aims to promote democracy, human
rights and media freedom.

Monitors on Georgia-Chechnya border (OSCE/Alexander Nitzsche) Armenia
and Azerbaijan: The OSCE is working for a political settlement between
Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region. It
has monitored elections in both states and maintains offices in their
capital cities.

Belarus: The OSCE has repeatedly clashed with President Alexander
Lukashenko after it condemned as fraudulent elections which he won in
2001. The OSCE office in Minsk undertakes projects related to the
body’s principles.

Bosnia: An OSCE mission aims to strengthen the legal system and
de-segregate the education system.

Central Asia: The OSCE maintains offices in the capitals of Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. The OSCE monitors
elections in the region. It has warned that a failure to develop
democracy will make Central Asia more vulnerable to extremism. The
OSCE has criticised human rights standards in Turkmenistan.

Chechnya: The organisation has urged a political solution to the
conflict and has expressed concerns about the climate of violence and
the lack of independent media in the republic. In 2002 Russia refused
to renew the mandate of the OSCE’s mission.

Elections in Kosovo: OSCE is committed to democracy-building
Croatia: An OSCE mission advises on democratisation and human rights.

Georgia: The OSCE urges a political resolution to the status of the
breakway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. OSCE
monitors are in place on the Georgia-Chechnya border.

Kosovo: As part of the UN Mission in Kosovo, a large OSCE presence is
involved in democracy-building and human rights monitoring. The OSCE
police school trained more than 6,000 officers for Kosovo’s new,
multi-ethnic police force.

Macedonia: Originally set up in 1992 to prevent the Balkan conflict
from spreading, the OSCE mission expanded following the 2001 conflict
between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces. The
organisation has trained a new multi-ethnic police force.

Moldova: The OSCE is working for a political settlement between
Moldova and the breakaway Trans-Dniestr region.

Macedonia: 2001 conflict prompted the OSCE to boost its presence
Serbia and Montenegro: The federation was admitted to the OSCE in
2000, eight years after the old Yugoslavia was suspended during the
war in Bosnia. An OSCE mission based in Belgrade has set the
promotion of democratisation, human rights and media freedom as its
priorities.

Ukraine: The OSCE runs projects on media freedom, military and legal
reform.

Tehran to Host Armenian Cultural Week

Mehr News Agency, Iran
May 31 2004

TEHRAN May 31 (MNA) — Armenian Cultural Week is due to open on June 24
at the Niavaran Artistic Creations Foundation in Tehran. According to
the public relation department of the foundation, paintings and cubic
works by prominent Armenian artists will be displayed.

Film screenings of “Pomegranates’ Color”, “Myth of Suran Castle”,
and “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” by prominent Armenian filmmaker
Sergei Parajanov, holding gatherings, and an exhibition of conceptual
artwork as well as three special workshops are among the main programs
being sponsored by the foundation.

A total of 40 paintings by renowned Armenian artists Samuel Khachikian,
David Petrosian and Nagiz Pashaian are also to be displayed at the
exhibition.

Additionally, during the week lectures on cinema, acting, and directing
will be conducted by Professor Yervan Qazanchian director of the
Armenian Theater Center.

The Irish Times
May 29, 2004

A hidden holocaust

The Turkish state has never had to answer for the genocide of its
Armenian minority nearly 100 years ago

By JOSEPH O’NEILL

The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide By Peter Balakian
Heinemann, 329pp. £ 18.99

That history is a form of advocacy is nowhere more clearly illustrated
than in the continuing controversies, and silences, surrounding the
destruction of the Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire. It is
not in dispute that over 100,000 Armenians died in the nationwide
massacres of 1894-96 and the Cilician massacres of 1909. Nor is
it disputed that mass deportations and killings carried out in 1915
under the Young Turk government – wartime measures undertaken to solve
finally the problem of an alien, potentially unreliable minority –
led to the Armenian population in Turkey falling from 1.5 million in
1914 to 100,000 in 1923. The contentious issue is the precise legal
and moral character of this apocalypse; specifically, whether the
Armenians fell prey to a deliberate attempt to exterminate them as
a race. Were they, in other words, the victims of genocide?

Even to state this question, in the view of Peter Balakian, is to risk
collusion in mass murder. The argument against genocide – kept alive
by “the Turkish government and a small group of its sympathizers”,
who characterise the fate of the Turkish Armenians as essentially
disastrous rather than genocidal – is, according to Balakian, so
plainly made in bad faith and so obviously meritless that it is
“morally wrong to privilege the deniers by according them space in
the . . . media”. For the avoidance of doubt and personal culpability,
then, I should perhaps make the following clear: even if you disregard
every shred of survivor testimony, the Armenian genocide in 1915 is
an open-and-shut case. The extraordinarily detailed contemporaneous
accounts of Western bystanders (diplomats, missionaries, businessmen
and other eyewitnesses) and the testimonies forthcoming at the Ottoman
courts martial in 1919, can leave no intellectually conscientious
person in any reasonable doubt that probably more than a million
(exact numbers are inevitably hard to compute) Armenians were
systematically and intentionally put to death as part of a scheme
of racial elimination. Why, though, has this crime not received
the general and profound acceptance afforded to, say the Jewish
holocaust? Why, for example, have successive American (and indeed
Israeli) administrations refused to acknowledge the genocide?

In The Burning Tigris, Balakian approaches these questions – and the
evidence of genocide – by chronicling the American response to the
lot of the Armenians. The story begins in the 1890s, when news of the
atrocities authorised by Sultan Abdul Hamid II began to filter back
from the many American missionaries posted in eastern Turkey. Thanks
to such remarkable women as Clara Barton (the first president of the
American Red Cross) and Julia Ward Howe (the famous suffragist and
abolitionist), the fate of the Armenians – an ancient Christian nation
threatened by the heinous Turk – became a burning public issue. Acting
to safeguard “the spirit of civilization, the sense of Christendom,
the heart of humanity” (Howe’s words), huge charitable sums were
donated by the American public. This effort, Balakian notes, marked
the beginning of the modern era of American international human rights
relief, in which specialised relief teams were sent to the site of the
disaster. For nearly three decades, American humanitarian sentiment
and the “starving Armenians” were practically synonymous.

Then comes the terrible meat of the book – the Turkish campaign to
wipe out the Armenians in 1915. By chance, a cadre of literate and
scrupulous Americans was on hand to see or hear about most of it,
and rose to the occasion. In particular, Henry Morgenthau, the US
ambassador in Istanbul, received a flood of dispatches from all
sectors of Turkey describing unimaginable horrors. Balakian most
effectively collates and summarises these, and the picture that
emerges – ravines filled with corpses, freight trains packed with
deportees, emaciated naked women and children filing into Aleppo,
deportees dying in typhus-stricken encampments in the Syrian desert
– is utterly clear and utterly damning. Morgenthau heroically did
his best to ameliorate matters, but Washington refused to act. Once
again, though, the American public reacted with enormous generosity.
After the war, public sentiment relating to the Armenians gradually
fizzled out. As US-Turkish relations improved, few chose to dwell
on what happened to the Armenians. To this day, the Turkish state
remains bitterly hostile to any recognition of the genocide and,
because of its importance as a NATO member and bulwark of moderate
secularism in the Muslim world, is allowed to get away with it.

The Burning Tigris is a scorching and essential book, but not always
circumspect. Little attempt is made to explain the sense of religious
and national imperilment that turned ordinary, peaceable Turks into
butchers of women and children. (“Nothing is so cruel as fear,” noted
the British vice-consul, Maj Doughty-Wylie, whose superb account
of the 1909 Adana inter-communal massacres Balakian heavily relies
on without making reference to those parts that mitigate Turkish
culpability.) This does not substantially detract, however, from
the overwhelming power of the case Balakian presents. We are left,
nonetheless, with at least two dismaying conclusions. First, that even
in questions of genocide our capacity for sympathy is closely related
to our self-interest; second, that advocacy such as Peter Balakian’s,
however brilliant, is only as effective as the fairness of the hearing
afforded it.

Joseph O’Neill is the author of two novels and, most recently,
Blood-Dark Track: A Family History

Meanwhile: An Arab battleground and playground
John Schidlovsky IHT

International Herald Tribune
May 26 2004

BEIRUT and playground

A traveler returning to this city for the first time in 29 years
feels an odd mix of nostalgia and disorientation. Lebanon’s civil
war ended 14 years ago, yet the scars remain highly visible, and the
causes apparently unresolved.

I first came to Beirut in July 1975 as a 27-year-old American
journalist intent on learning Arabic while soaking up the cosmopolitan
city’s sybaritic life-style. A job at the English-language Daily Star
newspaper covered my bills, including rent at a seaside apartment in
the heart of the city’s posh hotel district.

Within a few months, however, the hotel district had become the
site of fierce fighting between Christian Phalangist and leftist
Muslim militias. By the end of 1975, the Daily Star had suspended
publication, the war had spread to many areas of the city and I had
fled for the peace of Cairo. None of us guessed the war would last 15
years, take 100,000 lives and make Beirut a synonym for urban terror.

Now, leading a delegation of 13 U.S. news editors on a fact-finding
trip to Lebanon and Syria, I have returned to Beirut for the first
time. The city has been at peace since 1990 and is rebuilding its
downtown in a huge multi-million-dollar project spearheaded by Prime
Minister Rafiq Hariri. Beirut remains a dazzling city, perched between
the achingly blue Mediterranean and the snow-capped mountains to
the east, and it is tempting to imagine a scenario in which the city
regains its former allure as a dynamic regional center.

But Lebanon is a far different place than it was in 1975. A crushing
$35 billion public debt will hamper the economy for years. Foreign
investment is a shadow of what it used to be. Syria, which keeps
20,000 soldiers in the country, controls the country’s politics. On
a regional level the bloody conflict in Iraq and the deadlocked
Israeli-Palestinian issue provide little reason for optimism.

Between our meetings and appointments, I sneak away to revisit some
old haunts. My first stop is at my old apartment building, a four-story
structure that is still padlocked and pockmarked with the bullet holes
that I remember from 1975. A block away, the huge war-ravaged carcass
of the Holiday Inn casts its eerie shadow over the neighborhood. Both
of these damaged buildings – one tiny and anonymous, the other a
hulking symbol of a nation’s collective madness – may be renovated,
I’m told. If the price is right.

When Beirutis talk about war these days, it is about Iraq, not the
old civil war here. At the packed night clubs in the Monot district
and in the glittering new restaurants in Beirut’s rebuilt downtown,
the questions being debated are whether Lebanon’s experience provides
any lessons relevant to post-war Iraq.

Lebanon’s war ended with the 1990 Taif Agreement allocating political
power to the country’s various religious sects and communities. A ratio
of 50-50 in the country’s Parliament was fixed between Lebanons Muslims
and Christians, with proportions allocated for subgroups: Shiites,
Sunnis, Druze and Alawis, Maronites, Greek Orthodox and Catholics,
Armenian Orthodox and Catholics and others. In Iraq, the political
challenge is finding an appropriate system of sharing power among
rival Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.

Is Lebanon’s formula a workable model for peaceful coexistence? The
peace has held for 14 years but some thoughtful Lebanese wonder if
the country isn’t more divided than ever. “Sure it could,” said a
filmmaker in his 20s when asked if sectarian violence could erupt
again. “Nothing’s really changed from the civil war.”

Lebanon is a small country and suffers the fate of many small countries
in having its fate determined by external players – in this case,
Syria, Israel, the Palestinians. And of course the United States.

The U.S. Embassy is far out of town on top of a heavily-fortified
citadel, its diplomats rarely venturing out without armed escorts
– a grim reminder of the bombing in 1983 that destroyed the former
embassy site and the subsequent bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks.
At the beautiful campus of the American University of Beirut, the
school’s president, John Waterbury, describes U.S. relations with
the Arab world as the worst he’s seen in 40 years.

But Beirutis are nothing if not resourceful, and some are managing to
cash in on the chill in U.S.-Arab relations. Wealthy Arabs from the
Gulf are staying away from the United States because of the Iraq war
and traveling here instead, and many are investing in expensive real
estate along Beirut’s rebuilt waterfront. A new condominium tower –
built directly in front of my little old apartment building, now cast
into permanent shadow – offers units at more than $2 million per floor.

John Schidlovsky is director of the Washington-based International
Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced
International Studies.

Georgian PM criticizes Russian governor’s “foolish escapade” in Abkhazia

Kavkasia-Press news agency
26 May 04

Tbilisi, 26 May: Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania has commented on
[Russian] Krasnodar Territory governor Aleksandr Tkachev’s recent visit
to Sukhumi [capital of breakaway region of Abkhazia] and Tkachev’s
statements about the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

Zhvania said he did not regard this as a manifestation of the Kremlin’s
policy [Cossack delegation led by Tkachev visited Sukhumi on 22 May].

“This was a foolish and irresponsible escapade. This may only bring
us back to the ambiguous relations of the previous decade,” the prime
minister said.

“We have no desire to return to the past. We want to see a new,
pragmatic Russia. We want to respect Russia’s interests in the region
and we hope that our sovereign interests will also be respected,”
he noted.

“We will never understand these kinds of hysterical escapades. If
Georgia’s and Russia’s policies are defined by this sort of gestures
and by such people, the Caucasus will once again be divided by many
lines of confrontation, while we wish to turn the Caucasus into
an arena of cooperation. These people do not want to help Russia to
resolve its problems and to increase Russia’s international authority,”
Zhvania said.

EUROPEAN ARMENIAN FEDERATION
for Justice and Democracy
Avenue de la Renaissance 10
B – 1000 BRUXELLES
Tel./Fax : +32 (0) 2 732 70 27
E-mail : [email protected]
Web :

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
May 27th, 2004
Contact: Talline Tachdjian
Tel.: +32 (0)2 732 70 27

NORWEGIAN CITY OF KRAGERØ HONOURS BODIL BIØRN, UNSUNG HERO AND RELIEF WORKER
DURING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Brussels, Belgium – On the initiative of the Armenian community of
Aleppo, Syria, the Norwegian city of Kragerø (11000 inhabitants)
has erected a statue honoring Bodil Catharina Biørn, who spent 30
years of her life providing relief to the Armenians of Turkey before,
during and after the Armenian Genocide. The statue will be unveiled
on Saturday, May 29.

After studying nursing in Germany, Bodil Biørn, the daughter of
a wealthy ship owner, left her native Kragerø in 1905 to go to
Turkey. There, as part of benevolent evangelical missions, she provided
aid to the Christian populations, and especially to the Armenians,
who endured oppression under the Ottomans and who were regularly
victims of extortion.

Stationed in various regions of the Ottoman Empire (e.g., Van,
Cilicia), Bodil Biørn was in Mush in 1915 when the Genocide began. She
poured her energy into providing assistance to survivors there and
later in Armenia, during the First Republic (1918-1920).

After the Sovietization of Armenia, she continued her philathropical
work in the Armenian orphanages of Syria and Lebanon, where she
adopted an orphan she named Fridjof. She finally left the region to
return to her country in 1936.

The commemorative events in Kragerø are scheduled as follows:

o Saturday, May 29th

12.00 – Exhibition “The Ships Owner’s Daughter” in the Kragerø Museum
12.30 – Address by Jussi Flemming Biørn, son of Fridjof, “Bodil Catharina
Biørn, Philanthropist and Missionary”
14.00 – Unveiling of Bodil Biørn statue, in front of the town hall
16.30 – Showing of the movie « Ararat ».

o Sunday, May 30th

11.00 – Requiem service in memory of Bodil Biørn and the victims of the
Armenian Genocide.

“It is a moral duty for Armenians to pay homage to the many honorable,
just people, often women, often Scandinavians, who provided relief
to the victims of the barbarity committed by the Young Turks. With
this commemoration, Bodil Biørn finally emerges from anonymity and
takes her place beside Maria Jacobsen, Karen Jeppe, Alma Johansson or
Amalia Lange, her sisters in compassion,” declared Laurent Leylekian,
executive director of the European Armenian Federation.

“In these times of questioning about Europe’s borders, we are here to
testify that Europe is foremost a matter of values and identity. In
this regard, Norway, which is not a member of the Union is undeniably
part of our European family. This is not the case of Turkey, however,
which has a long and enduring record of fascism,” concluded Leylekian.

#####

DetNews.com, MI
May 25 2004

Pride in up-and-coming Islamic Center shows

Dearborn mosque’s debut will coincide with Arab-American museum
opening

By Shanteé Woodards / The Detroit News
Steve Perez / The Detroit News

DEARBORN — Metro Detroit’s significant Muslim population will soon
have a mosque befitting its size.

Once completed this fall, the Islamic Center of America — which will
be among the largest in the country — will have a 120,000-square-foot
complex that includes the mosque, the Muslim American Youth Academy,
an auditorium and library. Currently, the school is open, and the
other phases of the project will begin after the mosque is
operational.

But the mosque is one of the highlights of the $12 million project
because it will provide the Islamic Center’s 3,000 members with more
room to worship and have community activities. Its current facility
in Detroit – which the group has occupied for about 40 years – is too
cramped to meet all their needs.

Zana Macki said she feels as if she has watched the mosque being
built from the ground up, from the pillars up to the dome that was
added earlier this year. Macki, an Arab-American activist, said she
found it significant that the mosque is going to be near Armenian and
other Christian churches.

“(The new mosque) is very much needed. This is a steppingstone,” said
Macki, a Dearborn Heights resident. “Where else but in America can
you have the freedom to have different religions right next to each
other and practicing their religions freely … and not having any
fear of government?”

There are about 500,000 Arab-Americans living in Metro Detroit. About
30,000 Dearborn residents — about one-third of the city’s population
— are of Arab descent. Arab immigrants have brought the cultures of
more than 20 nations to the Detroit area.

The opening of the mosque will be coupled with that of the Arab
American National Museum, scheduled for October in Dearborn. The
36,000-square-foot museum is being modeled after the
Japanese-American National Museum in Los Angeles and will be the
first of its kind.

The Islamic Center’s existing mosque in Detroit began as the Islamic
Center of Detroit in 1963. Imam Mohammad Jawad Chirri founded the
17,000-square-foot facility after rallying the local Arab community
and his contacts throughout the Middle East.

The opening of the mosque will represent phase two of a construction
project that began in 1997 with the opening of the Muslim American
Youth Academy. The school, which is on the old YMCA site in Dearborn,
opened in time for the 1997-98 school year with 35 students. Now
about 170 students attend the school, which goes from kindergarten to
sixth grade.

When the decision was made to build the new mosque, members of the
group’s construction committee talked to many people in the community
and visited mosques in Cleveland, Toronto and Toledo to see what type
of facility would best fit their needs in Dearborn. They decided a
large-scale community center would be best because of the growing
membership at its existing mosque.

The mosque will feature a prayer area for more than 700 men and a
separate area upstairs for about 300 women. There will also be a
seating area for 1,000 people. It will have separate spaces where
members can drop off their children when they are attending events.

“We can’t profess to say how large the largest (facility) is,” said
Kassim Allie, the mosque’s administrator. “We don’t aim to be the
biggest. We are one of the oldest, and we believe our program is a
high-quality program, and I think we will improve them as we go
along.”

Because Metro Detroit has such a large Muslim population, mosques
often run out of room for religious and cultural events. It doesn’t
help that many of the facilities are buildings like storefronts and
stores that are later transformed into mosques.

Dearborn resident Suehaila Amen saw the inside of the mosque when it
was in its infancy. She is eager to see it complete.

“I know it’s going to be a beautiful thing,” said Amen, who is also
on the executive board of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. “This one is set up so more visitors and people will be
able to come to a more central location. We have such a large
community here that hopefully we’ll be able to do more things, like
carnivals and festivals, the way other churches do.”

You can reach Shantee’ Woodards at (734)462-2204 or
[email protected].

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
May 24, 2004, Monday

RUSSIA HAS NO INTENTION TO HASTILY WITHDRAW ITS TROOPS FROM GEORGIA
AND LIQUIDATE ITS MILITARY BASE IN TAJIKISTAN

Any “hasty withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia” is
out of the question, Russia’s Acting Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov
announced during his visit to Yerevan. “In this case the measures taken
during withdrawal of the Russian forces from Germany in early 1990s
won’t pass now,” Ivanov said at his meeting with Serzh Sarkisyan,
his Armenian counterpart. Besides, Sergei Ivanov flatly denied the
information of Moscow’s alleged plans to close the Russian military
base in Tajikistan and withdraw its troops from the republic.

Source: Vremya Novostei, May 21, 2004, p. 1