Author: Khondkarian Raffi

RA FOREIGN MINISTER MET WITH HIS GEORGIAN COUNTERPART
ArmRadio.am
01.11.2006 15:00
November 1 RA Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, who is participating
in the 15th sitting of BSEC Council of Foreign Ministers, met with
his Georgian counterpart Gela Bezhuashvili.
The Foreign Ministers discussed Armenia-Georgia bilateral relations,
the impact of Russian-Georgian relations on the region and the
opportunities of reducing the tension.
Turning to the relations of the two countries with the EU, the
Ministers highly assessed the adoption of the Action Plans with South
Caucasian countries and expressed confidence that it will enable
Armenia and Georgia to deepen bilateral cooperation in the direction
of European integration.
The parties exchanged views on the peaceful settlement of the conflicts
existing in the region, and the opportunities of elimination of the
possible consequences of the GUAM initiative in the UN.

LITERARY CRITIC EDUARD TOPCHIAN’S MEMORIAL PLAQUE OPENED IN YEREVAN
Noyan Tapan
Oct 30 2006
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 30, NOYAN TAPAN. State-public figure, publicist,
literary critic Eduard Topchian’s memorial plaque opened on October 27
in the address of Kasian 3, Yerevan, where the literary critic lived
in 1960-1975. The author of the memorial plaque is architect Samvel
Burkhajian. In words of Levon Ananian, the Chairman of the Writers’
Union of Armenia (WUA), talent and humane merits are combined in few
people, E.Topchian was one of those few. He was the first secretary
of the WUA and headed it for 21 years. “E.Topchian headed the WUA in
a period of time when the Central Committee of the Communist Party
created problems in many issues. It was also a period when great
people like Avetik Isahakian, Derenik Demirchian, Nairi Zarian, Stepan
Zorian, Gurgen Mahari and others were in the political field, it was
not easy to work with them as each of them has his literary views,”
L.Ananian mentioned. According to prose-writer Perch Zeytuntsian’s
characteristic, E.Topchian managed to head the WUA wisely and keeping
balance. He was engaged in organization works of the WUA as much that
there was almost no time for creating. But, as P.Zeytuntsian mentioned,
E.Topchian was the first literary critic who presented analyses of
Franz Werfel’s and Levon Shant’s works to the Armenian reader.

NKR DEFENSE MINISTER SATISFIED WITH THE RESULTS OF MILITARY EXERCISES
ArmRadio.am
30.10.2006 16:10
NKR Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan is satisfied with the results of
the recurrent military exercises of NKR Defense Army, ArmInfo reports.
“Progress is evident, all the tasks presented to the participants
of the military exercises were accomplished. The exercises were
primarily directed at the improvement of Officers’ skills and rise
of the level of cooperation between different divisions. During
the military exercises we managed to raise also the level of field
preparedness of the staff,” NKR Defense Minister said.
“The process of the military exercises revealed the high level of
coordination of means and forces of military divisions in every stage,”
Seyran Ohanyan noted.

BENEFITS OF WAITING
Gunduz Aktan
Turkish Daily News
Oct 26 2006
Some time has passed since the French parliament passed the bill that
criminalizes denial of the Armenian “genocide.” Now that it has lost
its newsworthiness, we can better analyze the matter.
Passing such a law caused some problems for France, but we should not
exaggerate them too much. The criticisms directed against France were
all for needlessly limiting freedom of expression. Most EU citizens,
especially the French, believe the Armenian incidents in 1915
constitute genocide. All those who have anything to say first voice
their belief that the genocide actually occurred before criticizing
the bill. Maybe they get the right to raise such criticism only after
they present their credentials.
Most of the criticisms in Turkey are also for France limiting freedom
of expression. That’s why some argue that annulling Article 301 of the
Turkish Penal Code (TCK) would prove we respect freedom of expression
more than France and would provide a very wise response.
However, the problem goes beyond freedom of expression or academic
freedoms.
Genocide is the worst of crimes. Just like every other crime, law
defines it and the courts decide on it. Without a verdict, a person,
a group or a country cannot be accused of having committed genocide.
Moreover, it is impossible to refute a crime that has not been
proven first.
That’s exactly why a law passed by the French parliament in 2001 that
recognizes the Armenian “genocide” cannot be enforced. On the other
hand, the Gaysot Law (1990), which criminalizes denial of the Jewish
Holocaust, is enforceable because it is based on the Nuremberg court
sentences. Professor O. Duhamel, fervently praised former minister
Jack Lang as the only person who had the courage to voice this. How
unfortunate for France.
If the bill becomes law in its present form, the right of Turkey
and the families of Enver Pasha and Talat Pasha to defend themselves
against the charges are rescinded. This is a more severe human rights
violation than limiting freedom of speech.
After this injustice, the gestures of French President Jacques
Chirac and the French government, as if they share our concerns,
are sickening. The Armenian government has also resorted to similar
deception as if it has nothing to do with such initiatives. They place
the blame with the Armenian diaspora. Actually, while one tries to
protect its commercial interests, the other is working to ensure that
the Armenians who illegally work here are not repatriated. They are
after both material and moral benefits.
Armenians used Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia
(ASALA) terrorism to promote their genocide claims and largely
succeeded. Westerners saw the courage to resort to terrorism as proof
of Armenians having been victims of genocide. They ignored the carnage
of terrorism until it also harmed them.
This incited Armenians to threaten academics in the United States
who said there was no genocide. They pressured universities to
dismiss such academics. They prevented publishers from printing
anything that went against their thesis. Those that were published
were collected. Dissident voices were not permitted in the meeting
they held.
They walked through the corridors of the European Parliament,
brandishing guns in 1987 in order to ensure the resolution the European
Parliament was debating would support their thesis. They prevented
deputies from entering the meeting hall.
The threats by some Armenians made against one Armenian member of
the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Council (TARC) resulted in him
hiding his family at a secret location and blood clots that caused
him to undergo two surgeries.
Armenian lobbies that spend exorbitant amounts of money influenced
administrations and parliaments. The Armenian diaspora used their
votes for political blackmail. They bought hundreds of people and
made them write books full of lies. It was proven that the Talat Pasha
telegraph was false. What Henry Morgenthau wrote about Talat Pasha and
Enver Pasha is full of falsehoods, too. Lepsius, who never set foot in
Anatolia, talked about the incidents as if he were an eyewitness. The
Blue Book is only war propaganda. They have now started to bribe Turks.
There is no United Nations resolution on the matter, but they look us
in the eye and say there is. Our archives are open, but they say they
aren’t. They say the Teþkilatý Mahsusa (Ottoman intelligence services)
organized genocide. Professors Lewy and Ericson smash this theory. Yet
they still look the other way. The figures they quote are sheer lies
and the documents they cite are a sham.
What does this disgrace have to do with freedom of expression?
–Boundary_(ID_JzutrHi5StTR7PLqAm/TvQ )–

THE MORMONATOR: MITT ROMNEY’S BLINDING AMBITION. PLUS, THE INEXPLICABLE
OPPOSITION TO AN ARMENIAN-GENOCIDE MEMORIAL
The Phoenix, MA
Oct 25 2006
1.aspx
Political dynasties are as American as apple pie. Since the Civil War,
witness the marks made ‘ or still being made (for better or worse) ‘ by
the Tafts of Ohio, the Stevensons of Illinois, the Roosevelts of New
York, the Bayhs of Indiana, the Bushes of Connecticut and Texas, the
Clintons of Arkansas and New York, and the Kennedys of Massachusetts,
New York, and Rhode Island.
Now comes Mitt Romney, son of George, who as governor of Michigan in
1968 unsuccessfully sought to become the first Mormon elected president.
Son Mitt hopes to succeed where dad George failed. And Mitt, the
governor of Massachusetts, is not going to let anything stand in his
way. On the surface he is as smooth and as gentlemanly as his dad. But
in his heart Mitt is a sharpie, as cold as he is ambitious. Like George
Bush II, who saw his dad outflanked on the right by Reagan, and on the
left by Clinton, Mitt Romney is not going let the failings of his
paternity mess with his success. His will to power, whatever the price,
is straight out of Nietzsche. And his desire to do his dad one better,
whatever the cost, feels like pure Freud.
Armchair analysis aside, Mitt Romney’s dedication to his own success is
undebatable. With the help of Christy Mihos (a politically delicious
irony), he strong-armed Republican acting governor Jane Swift aside to
stake his claim to Beacon Hill. He shamelessly fudged his Utah residency
to get on the Massachusetts ballot. He cavalierly abandoned
Massachusetts’s voters after two years in order to launch his White
House run, and he held on to his office to use it as a convenient bully
pulpit. From that perch he morphed from a centrist to a right-winger,
flip-flopping on choice and suggesting ‘ with a straight face ‘ that the
sort of stem-cell research conducted at Children’s Hospital and Harvard
Medical School should be criminalized. Mitt Romney: what an hombre.
In his latest exercise in duplicity, Romney secretly lobbied an
influential member of the Mormon church’s innermost ruling council to
leverage resources in the service of his White House campaign. The
scandal of this is that Romney has long sought to wrap himself in the
mantle of Roman Catholic John Kennedy, who in his 1960 presidential run
stressed that he would not be an ideological slave to the pope. On the
eve of that election American Protestants ‘ especially the evangelicals
and fundamentalists whom Romney now courts so assiduously ‘ still feared
Rome’s potential influence on the American Caesar. (What a difference 50
or so years can make.)
The case for an Armenian memorial
The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, Mayor Thomas Menino, and the
Greenway Conservancy advisory board chaired by well-respected corporate
citizen Peter Meade all agree that a proposed monument commemorating the
deaths of at least 600,000 Armenians in the Turkish-prosecuted genocide
– the first historically recognized genocide – has no place in a park
named after Rose Kennedy, located on land cleared by the Big Dig near
the waterfront. We ask this simple and clearly inconvenient question:
why not? Are these Boston worthies afraid of offending local Muslim
sensibilities? Is their vision of the Rose Kennedy Greenway so sterile
and so suburban as to hold that history should not punctuate the reality
of this public space as it does so elegantly in the Public Garden and
along the Commonwealth Avenue Mall? Our advice is simple: set a limit.
Reserve space for a set number of monuments and memorials. Devise design
requirements. And set a high-minded example by approving this worthy
project. The august and historic Public Garden found a place for a
tasteful and quietly moving memorial to local victims of the 9/11
attacks. The Holocaust is memorialized near Faneuil Hall. The Irish
Potato Famine is remembered on Washington Street near Downtown Crossing.
The firemen who fell battling the blaze that almost destroyed the Hotel
Vendome, in 1972, are honored for their service on the nearby mall –
although approval for that modest shrine required a shameful battle.
The Armenian slaughter, together with Hitler’s holocaust, Pol Pot’s
massacre of his fellow Cambodians, and today’s carnage in the Sudan,
stand as sad testimonies to mankind’s capacity for inhumanity. We
memorialize tragic events such as these so that we may remember and
learn. Surely in these early days of the 21st century we have it in our
hearts to join in communion with our Armenian friends and neighbors, and
together say: never again.

OSCE MG CONSIDERS OSKANIAN-MAMMADYAROV MEETING “CONSTRUCTIVE”
PanARMENIAN.Net
25.10.20 06 16:18 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group called the meeting
of Armenian and Azeri FMs Vartan Oskanian and Elmar Mammadyarov
yesterday constructive.
“The two Ministers had a constructive meeting in a very frank and
ingenuous atmosphere,” says a statement of the Russian, French and
US mediators. According to it, the Armenian and Azeri FMs in Paris
discussed proposals on the Nagorno Karabakh status, presented by the
co-chairs at the Moscow meeting, reports RFE/RL.

ARMENIAN-BELARUSIAN COOPERATION PROMISING IN HIGH AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, JEWELRY MAKING AND AGRICULTURAL SECTORS
Noyan Tapan
Oct 23 2006
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, NOYAN TAPAN. The Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei
Sidorski, who is on an official visit to Armenia, was received on
October 23 by the Armenian President Robert Kocharian. R. Kocharian
expressed a satisfaction at the current dynamics of the relations
between the two countries, noting that the Belarusian prime
minister’s visit will contribute to the further development of the
cooperation. Speaking about his first impressions about Yerevan, Sergei
Sidorski said that the active construction work underway in the city
catches the eye, which bears evidence of Armenia’s economic progress.
Adressing the Armenian-Belarusian economic cooperation, the sides
noted that today the commodity turnover is not so large, although it
has a tendency to grow.
They indicated high and information technologies, jewelry making
and agriculture as promising sectors in terms of cooperation. The
interlocutors exchanged information about the economic policies of
Armenia and Belarus, and the current situation in various sectors of
the economy of each country.

THEATRICAL FIGURES MARK TIGRAN LEVONIAN’S 70th BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY
Noyan Tapan
Oct 24 2006
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, NOYAN TAPAN. The jubilee memorial event held
on October 23 at the Union of Theatrical Figures of Armenia was
dedicated to the 70th birthday anniversary of Tigran Levonian, a RA
People’s Artist, leading soloist and producer of the opera theater,
professor. In theatrical critic Haykaz Yeranosian’s words, the famous
artist was first on the stage with the part of Cavaradossi (Puccini
“Floria Tosca”) and charmed extremely pedantic Armenian spectators
and his partners. Then Levonian’s art became crystallized role by
role, became clear and joined famous singers’ voice. Having been
the leading tenor for many years, he personified with great success
the best parts of the national and world repertoire: Saro, Tirith,
Herman, Edgar, Don Carlos, Othello, etc. “The prominent singer was
gifted also with an actor’s exclusive talent: emotional inner world,
pleasant appearance, clear speech articulation and, added to all these,
astonishing diligence,” the speaker of the day emphasized. With all
these, however, a keen producer lived in T.Levonian’s deep essence what
is proved by about a dozen and a half of performances which he staged
at the Al.Spendiarian National Opera and Ballet State Academic Theater.
“Basis of Levonian’s producer work is music. Starting point of
the stage actions created by him and interpretation of characters
is music,” H.Yeranosian emphasized. Performances of Donizetti’s
“Poliuto” and Tigranian’s “Anush” operas were among the greatest
creative achievements of the artist.

RESIDENTS MAY APPEAR IN THE STREET
Armenouhy Minasyan
A1+
[02:03 pm] 24 October, 2006
Over hundred homeless families of Gyumri may be deprived of their
temporary dwelling places on the eve of winter. At present the families
live in country district behind the Shirak Hotel.
Under the court decision, the residents’ cottages, belonging to
Shirakshin organization, have been put into action to pay back the
715 million debt of the organization which was found insolvent by
the court.
The action was scheduled on October 11 but it was cancelled because
of the claimant’s absence.
The freelance experts claim that each cottage in the disputable area
costs 2 million 100 thousand AMD. Five people live in 400-square-meter
cottages, thus in case each family pays 500 thousand AMD, and they
may become the owners of the cottages. But none of the families can
afford to buy the shabby cottages.
Fearing the possibility of appearing in the streets, the residents
appealed to higher institutions, even the Municipality of Shirak marz.
The last hope is that in case there are no buyers in the actions the
price of the cottages will decrease 20 percent, and the residents
will be able to but the cottages themselves.

ARMENIA IS READY TO MEDIATE RUSSIA – GEORGIA CONLICT
Lragir.am
Oct 23 2006
The Armenian government is ready to assist in the settlement of the
Russian-Georgian conflict if Russia and Georgia wish that, stated
Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan October 23 in Yerevan during the
news conference with his Belarusian counterpart.
“This is the problem of Georgia and Armenia, and the interference
of Armenia or Belarus is not expedient,” said Andranik Margaryan,
the news agency ARKA reports. The prime minister of Armenia added
that if Georgia and Russia want Armenia to assist in settling the
existing problems, the Armenian government is always ready. “However,
we have not been invited yet,” stated Andranik Margaryan.