Author: Maral Takmazian

CHAIRMAN OF WORLD ARMENIAN CONGRESS CONDEMNS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN
OTTOMAN TURKEY
YEREVAN, APRIL 23. ARMINFO. The Turkish propaganda aimed against
international recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey
has not brought any desirable results, says the message Chairman of
the World Armenia Congress, a Russian businessman Ara Abrahamyan on
the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
At present, the messages says that a tendency of application to the
problem by more and more countries is observed, which has become a
reason of its inclusion in the agenda of the negotiations for Turkey’s
admission to the EU. The omissions of the Turkish propagandist
machinery are more and more spoken of in Ankaram Abrahamyan
writes. When a persons confesses in his crime, hereby he softens his
guilt. We hope for the Turkish people to display will, confess and
condemn the violence, robbery and Genocide. We think the Turkish
people will sincere extend hand to the Armenian people and this hand
will not remained hanged up in air. For this goal, the World Armenian
Congress calls for cooperation all those who friendship and
good-neighborhood of states and peoples is dear to, Abrahamyan writes.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Los Angeles Times
April 20 2005
Marchers Remind World of 1915 Armenian Genocide
A grandmother is among those walking 215 miles to the Capitol to
honor 1.5 million people killed by the Turkish government.
By Mark Arax, Times Staff Writer
LOCKEFORD, Calif. – They had marched for 14 days and 175 miles through
the farm fields of California’s middle when they reached this quaint
little town on a bend of a river.
They passed through Lockeford on Friday the same way they had
passed through other towns along the way: a single line of 14 young
Armenians and one sturdy grandmother, walking in silence and carrying
a big, yellow banner that drew mostly puzzled looks from farmers and
field hands alike: “Turkey tell the Truth. Acknowledge the Armenian
Genocide.”
Their trek from Fresno to Sacramento to honor the 1.5 million Armenians
killed by Ottoman Turkey 90 years ago had reached the last stretch
of road that would take them to the steps of the state Capitol on
Thursday.
There, hundreds of Armenians from throughout California are scheduled
to gather with state leaders to commemorate the victims of what is
widely considered the 20th century’s first genocide.
Caspar Jivalagian, an 18-year-old from Pasadena, said he was marching
to expose a lie.
Unlike Germany and the Holocaust, he said, modern-day Turkey
continues to conduct a vigorous campaign of denial. And the U.S.
government, despite its own voluminous records of a planned and
systematic extermination of Armenians, has tried not to offend its
strategic ally, refusing to publicly call the massacres “genocide.”
“Turkey and my own government are telling me that everything I have
heard is a lie,” Jivalagian said.
His march – 19 days and 215 miles long – in no way re-creates the
march his great-grandparents took in the summer of 1915. They were
herded from their homes in what is now eastern Turkey and forced to
walk hundreds of miles without food or water to death camps in Syria.
That march, he said, drove the world’s oldest Christian nation
from its homeland of 2,500 years. That march, in the words of Henry
Morgenthau, U.S. ambassador to Turkey at the time, became a pretext
for a “cold-blooded, calculating” slaughter of a nation.
And yet each day of the trek, Jivalagian said, he has tried to imagine
the footsteps of his forebears.
“After you’ve been walking all day, you tend to zone out and forget
where you are,” he said. “You concentrate on the footsteps of the
person in front of you, and pretty soon you can almost feel like
you’re walking in the shoes of your ancestors.”
For Sanan Shirinian, a 16-year-old from La Crescenta, every tie to
that brutal past is gone. A snippet of story passed down from her
great-grandmother, who died three years ago, is all she has as a
memory. But to be young and Armenian, she said, is to grow up sensing
a deep cultural wound that has never been allowed to heal.
“The genocide is why I am even in America. It changed everything
about our lives,” she said. “So I can’t just sit back and watch denial
happen. I won’t say it has made us bitter, but it has caused an anger
in us that won’t go away.”
Each spring, the Armenian American community – an estimated 300,000
strong in Southern California – struggles to find a way to remind the
world of a crime that Holocaust scholars consider a precursor to the
annihilation of the Jews.
On the eve of invading Poland, scholars point out, Adolf Hitler told
his commanding officers not to worry about any backlash from world
opinion. The memory of such crimes didn’t even last 20 years. “Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler
is quoted as saying.
Today’s Turkish government, fearing Armenian claims for land and money,
argues that any atrocities were the unfortunate miscalculations of
World War I, not genocide.
But in recent months, as Turkey has continued to make its case for
membership in the European Union, some leading Turks have called on
their country to come clean about the past. Turkey’s most celebrated
novelist, Orhan Pamuk, told a Swiss audience last month that the
massacres of Armenians were, indeed, a historical fact.
This spring, owing to the symbolism of a 90th anniversary, the
Armenian American community has stepped up its fight for recognition,
leaders say.
Armenian groups are lobbying even harder than usual to persuade a
reluctant U.S. Congress to pass a resolution commemorating April 24
as a day of remembrance for the Armenian genocide. The Armenia Tree
Project is raising money to plant 90,000 trees in Armenia, a tiny,
mountainous country that represents but a sliver of the old homeland.
In Los Angeles, where Armenians protesting the genocide have
frequently staged demonstrations outside the Turkish consulate,
students at Armenian schools are wearing the same T-shirts the entire
month. They read “90 Years of Denial” on the front and “Remember the
Armenian Genocide” on the back.
And then there are the marchers who decided to unplug from their
computers, if not their cellphones, and take a walk up the Central
Valley.
For 18 days, through rain and sun, past alfalfa fields, dairy farms
and walnut groves, they have marched with blisters and sore ankles.
After logging 12 to 15 miles a day, they have found sleep in homes,
churches and community centers opened to them by strangers.
Whenever they thought of quitting, the 14 young men and women from
Los Angeles and Fresno simply looked to 63-year-old Zabel Ekmekjian,
who was marching right behind them.
She had come to the U.S. from Syria in 1978 with her husband and
four children.
She said her father was just a child when the Turks came to his village
and killed his parents and dozens of other family members. He survived
the march only to see one brother shot and two sisters stolen by a
Turkish family and converted to Islam.
“I am walking for recognition and for justice,” she said. “The kids
say I motivate them, but it is the other way around. I will go all
the way because of them.”
At times, the Armenian marchers have looked out of place. Some
townsfolk along the way have wondered: “Who were the Armenians?” “Why
would Turkey kill more than 1 million of them in 1915?” “Why did it
still matter?”
When they hit the town of Galt on the 16th day, a man and his son in
a red pickup met them at the side of the road.
“He reached out of the window with something in his hand,” said lead
marcher Serouj Aprahamian, 23, a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona. “It
was the Armenian flag. I asked him, ‘Are you Armenian?’ and he said,
‘No.’ And then he handed it over to me.
“It was such an unbelievable gesture, and I didn’t know what to say.
I said thanks and gave him one of our black beanies trimmed in the
red, blue and orange of the Armenian flag. I said, ‘This is a gift
from us to you.’ And he drove off.”
Three days shy of their destination, they kept walking.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Their families’ stories keep Armenia alive
Armenian-Americans in Rhode Island will mark the anniversary of the
1915 genocide with a candlelight march, a night of music and stories,
and a youth day.
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 17, 2005
BY ELIZABETH GUDRAIS
Journal Staff Writer
Atrocities. Great misfortune. Tragic events. To Armenians, they are
nothing more than euphemisms.
“Every time somebody denies that the genocide happened, it’s like
perpetrating the crime against the victims all over again,” says
Pauline Getzoyan, a Lincoln resident helping to organize the 90th
anniversary commemoration of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
Armenians remember their collective grief each April 24, with bigger
commemorations on 10-year anniversaries. This year will probably be
the last 10-year marker that includes firsthand survivors’ stories.
Getzoyan’s grandmother, Margaret DerManuelian, is already gone. She
died in 2002. So Getzoyan will tell her story. At the commemoration on
Saturday, Getzoyan will don her grandmother’s shawl, take up her
black-veined turquoise worry beads, and tell a story so horrific her
grandmother didn’t speak of it for years.
Getzoyan will recount how in 1915, DerManuelian, then a 6-year-old
living in the Ottoman sanjak, or district, of Palu, discovered her
father’s dead body, decapitated by Ottoman soldiers.
Next weekend’s events are about remembering, but they’re also about
getting recognition. Getzoyan, who is 43 and teaches fourth grade at
Central Elementary in Lincoln, co-organized a symposium at Rhode
Island College in March, to guide teachers in adding genocide
education to their curriculum. She is part of the Armenian National
Committee, which lobbies Congress and the president to recognize that
the word genocide applies to the Armenian killings of 1915. An
estimated 1.5 million Armenians perished at Ottoman hands.
Some countries, including France, Switzerland and Greece, have
officially recognized the Ottoman killing of Armenians in 1915 as
genocide. Turkey and the United States are not among those countries.
ARMENIANS REMEMBER April 24, 1915, as the day the genocide started. On
that day, more than 200 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders
were killed in Constantinople.
This year, April 24 falls on a Sunday. Many of Rhode Island’s
estimated 10,000 Armenian-Americans will go to New York City for
commemoration events in Times Square. Providence will have its own
event, at the North Burial Ground on North Main Street, at a monument
with the skull of an unidentified 12-year-old Armenian boy sealed
inside.
The skull, recovered from the Der-el-Zor desert in what is now Syria,
may seem a morbid symbol. But that’s the point. Ninety years later,
the genocide “still has the power to shock us,” says Adam Strom, a
scholar who will speak at the ceremony.
Strom, the principal writer and editor of Crimes Against Humanity and
Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians, a resource book for
teachers, is on staff at Facing History and Ourselves, a Brookline,
Mass.-based organization that creates teaching aids and provides
guidance on “questions of tolerance and social responsibility,” in
Strom’s words.
Strom believes recognizing the Armenian genocide is crucial to help
Armenians and to prevent future atrocities.
Acknowledgement is the first step in learning history’s lessons, he
says.
“How can you approach history so it doesn’t become a weapon in a new
war?” Strom says. “So often, history becomes a call for revenge.”
GREGORY CHOPOORIAN’S grandfather struggled with that very question.
His grandfather survived being forcibly marched through the Der-el-Zor
desert. What haunted him most, he would later tell his family, was the
sight of a man forced to watch his pregnant wife impaled on a
stake. Chopoorian, 42, of Cumberland, said his grandfather “would,
toward the end of his life, say, ‘What are we going to do? We can’t do
the same thing to them. We’ll be just like them.’ ”
Chopoorian, who works as an administrator at the Mansion Nursing Home
in Central Falls, has published articles on Armenian costumes, rugs
and material culture. As a consultant for Ararat, a 2002 film by
Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan, Chopoorian worked with the set
designer and costume designer to ensure accuracy.
For Saturday’s commemoration evening at Rhode Island College,
Chopoorian will narrate vignettes about the six provinces of historic
Armenia.
The borders of the modern Armenian state, a former Soviet republic,
were established by the USSR. While small, Armenia is larger than
Israel and Lebanon combined. But the area Armenians claim as their
historic homeland extends some 300 miles west from Mount Ararat into
modern-day Turkey.
The 16,854-foot peak was the landing site of Noah’s Ark, according to
the Christian tradition Armenians hold dear.
It grates on Armenians that Mount Ararat itself is in eastern Turkey,
close enough to the border to be visible from Armenia.
“Our sacred mountain has been stolen from us,” Chopoorian says,
holding up a calendar photo of Ararat looming white against a vivid
blue sky.
An exchange from Ararat, the movie, encapsulates the way the debate
plays out between modern-day Turks and Armenians.
“Lots of people died. It was World War I,” Elias Koteas’ character, an
actor with Turkish ancestry, tells Raffi, a young Armenian-American
man struggling to understand his heritage.
“Turkey wasn’t at war with Armenia,” Raffi replies, “just like Germany
wasn’t at war with the Jews.” Armenians “were Turkish citizens,” he
continues. “They had a right to protection.”
The film is about the Armenian genocide, but also about how we tell
history, and how each retelling is necessarily imperfect because it’s
based on one person’s understanding.
The Turkish minister of culture called the film “propaganda” and
accused Egoyan of distorting history. Miramax chairman Harvey
Weinstein, determined to distribute the film in the U.S., accused the
Turkish government of “denying history.”
A particularly venomous thread of discussion on one movie Web site
centers on an oft-quoted statement attributed to Adolf Hitler on the
eve of invading Poland: “Be merciless in exterminating Polish men,
women and children. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation
of the Armenians?”
Turks and their defenders dispute that Hitler ever said this.
Three years after Ararat’s release, postings still fly back and forth
on the Internet.
Armenians don’t hate Turks, Chopoorian insists. They understand the
Turkish government’s objection to connecting modern-day Turkey with
the deeds of the Ottoman Empire. They just want recognition.
“How can you destroy an entire nation of people and not deal with it?”
he asks.
It’s imperative that Armenians act while there are still survivors,
says Joyce Yeremian, chairwoman of the Armenian Martyrs’ Memorial
Committee of Rhode Island, which planned the commemoration events.
Once the survivors are gone, “it’s just history,” says Yeremian, 64, a
North Providence resident whose grandfather, 14 years old in 1915,
survived an attempt by Ottoman forces to drown him in the Euphrates.
NEW ENGLAND’S earliest Armenian immigrant community sprang up in
Worcester in the 1890s, when Armenians fled the persecution of Sultan
Abdul-Hamid II. They came to work in the mills and sent money home.
In 1915, many served as sponsors for relatives still in
Armenia. Providence’s Armenians settled on Smith Hill. St. Sahag &
St. Mesrob Armenian Apostolic Church was the community’s
centerpiece. Two more Armenian churches, Sts. Vartanantz on Broadway
and Euphrates Evangelical on Franklin Street, followed.
Today, the state’s 10,000 or so Armenian-Americans have spread out,
with enclaves in Cranston and North Providence. St. Sahag & St. Mesrob
“is no longer a community church,” says its pastor, the Rev. Simeon
Odabashian. “Everybody drives here. Nobody walks.”
But with its eight-sided tower, blue neon-lit cross and Armenian flag
— striped red, blue and orange — visible from Route 95, St. Sahag &
St. Mesrob is still a gathering place for Rhode Island’s Armenians.
Inside, the greeting parev, Armenian for hello, echoes as people
arrive for a meeting to plan commemoration events.
The events begin Tuesday, with Armenian Youth Day at the Egavian
Cultural Center, adjacent to St. Sahag & St. Mesrob Church at 70
Jefferson St. The 10th annual youth day will feature Armenian crafts
and cooking classes, and a chance to meet survivors of the genocide.
On Friday at 7, a candlelight march is planned from Sts. Vartanantz
Church, 402 Broadway, to the State House.
Saturday evening’s event at Rhode Island College’s Roberts Hall starts
at 7 and is free and open to the public. The Rhode Island Philharmonic
Youth Orchestra will play the music of composer Aram Khatchaturian.
Pauline Getzoyan will perform her Vignette of an Armenian
Mother. Gregory Chopoorian will tell about the six provinces,
accompanied by David Ayriyan on the kemancha, a traditional string
instrument. Armenian and English poems and a performance by the
Armenian Chorale of Rhode Island, directed by St. Sahag & St. Mesrob
Church music director Konstantin Petrossian, will round out the
evening.
The next afternoon, at 12:30 at the North Burial Ground, a civil
ceremony will include Adam Strom’s speech.
THERE IS a chilling sameness about the Armenians’ stories of genocide.
Men closed in churches and burned to death. Girls who ended up in
orphanages, or working as servants for Turkish families. Babies thrown
into the Tigris and the Euphrates rather than have them grabbed by
Ottoman soldiers.
Armenians will gather next weekend for the memory of Pauline
Getzoyan’s grandmother, and Joyce Yeremian’s grandfather, and Gregory
Chopoorian’s grandfather, and hundreds of thousands more who didn’t
survive.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

La Croix , France
13 avril 2005
Une épuration ethnique sous couvert de la guerre. LE GÉNOCIDE
ARMÉNIEN Ce soir, 20 h 45, Arte
PLOQUIN Jean-Christophe
En 1915, le mot “génocide” n’existait pas.
Le 24 mai de cette année-là, pour décrire le massacre de dizaines de
milliers d’Arméniens d’Anatolie déjà perpétré par le régime ottoman,
la France, la Grande-Bretagne et la Russie utilisent dans une
déclaration commune les termes de “crimes contre l’humanité” et
“contre la civilisation”. Depuis plusieurs semaines, à l’est de
l’Anatolie, des villages sont vidés de leur population arménienne.
Les hommes sont sommairement assassinés, les femmes, les enfants et
les vieillards sont déportés et contraints d’avancer dans une marche
meurtrière qui doit les amener à Alep puis à Deir-Ez-Zor, en Syrie.
À l’aide d’archives, émaillées du témoignage de deux survivants, le
documentaire de Laurence Jourdan fait peu à peu entrer dans
l’horreur. Durant plus de dix-huit mois, une entreprise systématique
de déracinement de la population arménienne se traduit en politique
d’extermination. Entre 1 million et 1,5 million d’Arméniens seront
tués; environ 600 000 ont survécu. Alors que la guerre fait rage en
Europe, le sort des Arméniens d’Anatolie n’est guère connu que de
quelques diplomates. Des consuls américains ou allemands, présents
dans plusieurs villes, perçoivent très vite que l’objectif réel du
gouvernement ottoman n’est pas de chasser les Arméniens des régions
proches du front russe, où ils sont accusés de jouer les cinquièmes
colonnes, mais d’homogénéiser l’Anatolie. Dans un contexte général de
montée des nationalismes, les Turcs se définissent de plus en plus
comme une ethnie, attachée à une religion, l’islam, et à un
territoire. Les Arméniens, dans leur logique, sont de trop. Neuf
décennies plus tard, le génocide des Arméniens reste un tabou dans
une Turquie dont les officiels continuent de nier la pluralité des
peuples qui l’habitent.
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE PLOQUIN
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1plus
| 12:50:24 | 13-04-2005 | Politics |
INDIVIDUAL PARTNERSHIP WITH NATO
`In the course of army formation and defense improvements we follow the
principle of gradual but firm improvements with the aim of creating till
2015 an army able to carry out the demands of the 21st century and to
provide the military security of the country’, said Arthur Aghabekyan, RA
Deputy Defense Minister during the seminar with the theme `Individual
Partnership Action Plan (IPAP), Armenia’.
General-lieutenant Aghabekyan mentioned that in the course of the defense
improvements that started in RA he finds Security Strategy processing and
its social realizing and approval extremely important. `The military
doctrine will clear out the tasks of the armed forces creating the main
frames for the military improvements’, he says.
`The Defense Ministry will carry out the defense improvements with four
principles – realism of improvements, graduality of improvements,
flexibility and analytics, and democracy’, said Aghabekyan in his speech.
In the joint seminar organized by the Defense Ministry and the Foreign
Ministry representatives of the Security Investigating European Center,
Ambassadors of USA and Germany to Armenia, and representatives of the above
mentioned Ministries took part.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1plus
| 12:36:19 | 08-04-2005 | Social |
AKHALQALAQ DOES NOT NEED HISTORY
The Akhalqalaq Museum of Regional Studies is the only one in the Akhalqalaq
region. With its unique exhibits it carries out a special role in the
Javakhq cultural life.
There are five parts in the Museum – friendship of nations, Javakhq history,
Javakhq ethnography, war glory, the Soviet period and that of intellectuals.
One of the unique exhibits of the Museum is the sun calendar. At the same
time it must be mentioned that because of ignorance and absence of financing
exhibits are disappearing from the Museum. During the 70s the copper cannons
of Paskevich’s time disappeared from the Museum.
Hakob Hambaryan, head of the Museum mentions that if there is a small
possibility of state care towards the Museum, they can not only protect what
is left, but find the lost exhibits and bring new ones to the Museum.
According to the agency “A-info”, the state of the Museum building is much
graver. It was built in 1830s and is now considered subject for
deconstructing, and it can be destroyed any time. Mels Mahtesyan, deputy
governor of the Akhalqalaq region mentions that the reconstructing of the
building is meaningless and the Museum needs a new building. The directors
of the Museum have no hope of getting help from the state. And the regional
deputy governor hoped that thee Javakhqians living in Moscow will try to
save the only museum of the Akhalqalaq region.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Karabakh peace talks to be held in London, Azeri foreign minister
Lider TV, Baku
1 Apr 05
[Presenter] The UN and other international organizations have been
informed of the latest truce violations [on the Armenian-Azerbaijani
contact line], Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has told
Lider TV. The minister said that a meeting with his Armenian
counterpart Vardan Oskanyan would be held in London on 15 April. He
said that next meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents
will depend on the results of the London talks.
[Passage omitted: reported details]
[Mammadyarov] A meeting will most probably be held in London on 15
April. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen, the Armenian foreign minister
and I will be there. Presumably there is no need for a one-to-one
meeting [between the foreign ministers] now. The talks will take place
within the framework of the Prague process.
[Correspondent, over video of Mammadyarov] The talks are aimed at
facilitating a meeting between the presidents. Their meeting will
depend on the results of our talks.
[Mammadyarov] We can say after the talks if there is a need for the
presidents’ meeting. If there is an issue left and needed to be
discussed by the presidents, then they will hold a meeting. But there
might be no point in holding a meeting after the statements issued in
Yerevan.
[Correspondent] Mammadyarov also condemned the frequent truce
violations on the front line. The minister said the UN and other
international organizations are aware of the situation.
Murad Salmanov, Mehman Mehdiyev, Alik Baxtiyaroglu, Lider TV.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Scandal, which is not spread the State Chancellery.
Newspaper `Akhali Taoba’
March 29, 2005
Why did the President Saakashvili’s Press officer apologize to
`Dashnakcutiun’?
Scandal, in the Press centre of President of Georgia, Michael
Saakashvili, is expected.The process is growing against the background
of confrontation between the Press Centre and the Advisor of
President.
This case was led to the present stage, as the advisors of President
Michael Saakashvili, political scientists Gogi Gachechiladze and Igor
Kveselava gave their views concerning the Armenian Genocide on the
territory of Turkey and the present situation in Javakheti region,
after what the offended Armenian Party `Dashnakcutiun’ made a
statement, accusing the adviser of president in awareness. That’s
strange that after that the Press Office of President apologizes to
`Dashnakcutiun’.To make the reason of scandal clear first of all we
introduce to you the comments made by the advisors of President.
Gogi Gachechiladze, political scientist, advisor of President:
-and what concerning this tragedy fact, as the Armenian genocide is, I
want to say, that there is truth in everybody’s life in which a man
doesn’t want to believe, because it’s unpleasant. In this tragedy the
hand of Russian Empire got involved and if the Armenian party
`Dashnakcutiun”s representatives don’t know that the peripetea of the
tragedy is too big and the negative role of Russian in provocation of
genocide, that’s their problem. And what about the statement made by
`Dashnakcutiun’, that they will always try defense the rights of
Armenian population in `Javakhk’ I remind that one of the oldest parts
of Georgia is called Javakheti and not `Javakhk’.
Igor Kveselava, political scientist, advisor of President:
I’m sure that in Armenian’s misfortune was involved another interested
government. It can’t be that this tragedy is related only with Turkey.
There is no difference in anti-georgian ideas between Migranyan and
`Dashnaks’. They should once and for all understand that there is no
`Javakhk’ in nature `that’s Javakheti and what claims can stake
Armenians to Georgia, that’s unclear to me’
Because of such opinion expressed by the advisor of President
concerning the Armenian tragedy, the Press Centre of `Dashnakcutiun’
by means of internet spreads such information, where it is said that:
Adviser’s lack of education doesn’t give us right to ignore the real
problems in Javakhk. ‘ Dashnakcutiun’ is ready to help the Georgian
government in defense the political and social rights of Armenian
population in Javakhk, and also in solving their social-economic
problems in case Georgian government intends to take such steps.
At that time the Press Centre of President unexpectedly states its
position in this way:
Giorgi Gachechiladze is not President’s advisor in the International
issues.
The Administration of the President of Georgia doesn’t share G.
Gachechiladze’s opinion concerning this issue. The friendly relations
between Georgia and Armenia are very important for us. We are sure
that no provocative statement or act will ever strain the
centuries-old relation with the brotherly Armenian population.
The apologies presented from the side of the Press Office of the
president to the separatist Dashnaks are not defensible. As a result
what do we have – in the person of G. Gachechiladze, the President has
taken on a provocateur?
G. Gachechiladze didn’t come across with the President
accidentally. He was one of those intelligents, who beforehand from
the Opera House declared that Michael Saakashvili deserves to be a
President. So, what does the Press Office of the President have to
apologize for? It is well known that one of the advisors of President
of Russia Vladimir Putin in the economic issues sharply criticizes his
president, but the President’s Press Office doesn’t spread the
information that the advisor President is a provocateur.
And what about the Council of Advisers of Saakashvili (consisting of
four person) ` they defense the President’s political course, and
naturally, there is no time for criticism. And it would be out of
place to speak about their provocative acts. While the external
enemies of M. Saakashvili accuse him in alliance with Armenian Lobby,
at the same time the Press office of President, encouraging Armenian
`Dashnaks’ declares that the President in the persons of Advisers in
Foreign Issues has provocateurs, how do we call it: a mistake, a
misunderstanding, indifference, improvidence or¦?That’s also unclear
why do the President’s Press office pays attention to protest made by
one of Armenian parties?
Their position is not the position of President Kocharyan and the
whole Armenia, isn’t it?So, what do we deal with? Information
concerning the text of the statement made by the president’s Press
Office which wasn’t have been approved by the president itself already
leaked out in the State Chancellery. And in the end, we contacted Soso
Tsintsadze, the Chairman of the Council of Advisers of Saakashvili,
who didn’t wish to answer the questions concerning the mentioned above
issue; he only said that we should be more careful in such issues.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NO VIOLATIONS OF CEASE-FIRE REGIME FIXED IN COURSE OF MONITORING OF
NKR AND AZERBAIJAN ARMED FORCES CONTACT-LINE
STEPANAKERT, MARCH 25, NOYAN TAPAN. On March 25, the OSCE
Mission held a regular monitoring of the Nagorno Karabakh and
Azerbaijan armed forces contact-line on the eastern section of the
village of Talish. From the positions of the NKR Defense Army,
the monitoring mission was led by Field Assistants of the OSCE
Chairman-in-Officeâ~@~Ys Personal Representative Miroslav Vymetal
(Czechia), Peter Kii (Great Britain) and Torsten Aren (Sweden).
According to the NKR FM Press Service, in the course of the monitoring
violations of the cease-fire regime were fixed. Unlike the Armenian
party, the Azerbaijani one did not lead the OSCE representatives to
its front borders as a result of which the visual contact between
the OSCE groups conducting the monitoring from opposite positions
was defective. From the Karabakh party, representatives of the
NKR Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense accompanied the OSCE
monitoring mission.
–Boundary_(ID_cWZTk/jvQd7MmNEpF2LU6A)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Russian Book center in Yerevan to promote friendship
ITAR-TASS News Agency
March 25, 2005 Friday
YEREVAN, March 25 — Wife of the Russian president Lyudmila Putin
and wife of the Armenian President Bella Kocharyan opened a Center
of Russian Book in Yerevan on Friday. The book center includes a
library, a video hall and a readers’ hall. The new center is hoped to
be one of the most interesting institutions of the Russian culture in
Armenia. Its task is to maintain and develop traditional Russo-Armenian
contacts in the cultural and spiritual fields.
Lyudmila Putin expressed the hope that the Russian Book Center in
Yerevan will become a place where people can familiarize themselves
with each other’s traditions and culture, learn each other better and
become close friends. “It will be another step towards peace on our
planet,” Lyudmila Putin declared at a meeting with representatives
of the Armenian intelligentsia at the centre’s opening ceremony.
‘Language is an instrument of communications between the people.
Contacts, exchange of opinions, feelings and emotions is one of the
greatest joys that life can give, and that is unthinkable without
language,” she said. Learning a language one learns to understand
the soul and character of the people whose language is studied,” she
said. “People who have once been to Armenia, Yerevan will have a piece
of that country living in their hearts forever,” Lyudmila Putin said.
The new book center is located in one of the most beautiful mansions in
the center of Yerevan that dates back to 1901. The building houses the
Armenian society for cultural contacts and cooperation with foreign
countries for more than 50 years.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress