Author: Toneyan Mark

Worldwide Faith News (press release)
Sept 16 2004

World Council of Churches – News Release
Contact: +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 [email protected]
For immediate release – 16/09/2004

PROMINENT WORLD CHRISTIAN LEADERS AND PEACE-MAKERS
AFFIRM THE POWER AND PROMISE OF PEACE

Broadcast quality video messages available, see below.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Orthodox
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, and the head of
the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop Wolfgang Huber are among
those supporting an International Day of Prayer for Peace called for
by the World Council of Churches (WCC) within its Decade to Overcome
Violence. The date set for observance is 21 September.

More than a dozen well-known Christian leaders and peace-makers
from all over the world are affirming churches’ and faith
communities’ work for peace and justice in a series of inspiring
two-minute video messages that will be made available at
on Monday 20 September (12:00
a.m. Geneva time).

This year, the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence is focusing on the
United States, under the theme “The power and promise of peace”. The
video messages thus also recognize and encourage the struggle of
US churches to witness to peace and justice, both domestically and
internationally.

Personalities joining the International Day of Prayer for Peace
through video messages are:

– Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Anglican
archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa

– Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

– Wolfgang Huber, chairman of the council of the Evangelical Church
in Germany

– Aram I, catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church (See of Cilicia)
a and WCC Central Committee moderator

– Hanan Mikhail Ashwari, Sydney Peace Prize winner and advocate for
Palestinian rights

– Keith Clements, general secretary of the Conference of European
Churches

– Mvume Dandala, general secretary of the All Africa Conference
of Churches

– Karen Hamilton, general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches

– Israel Batista, general secretary of the Latin American Council
of Churches

– Hildegard Goss Mayr, honorary president of the International
Fellowship of Reconciliation

– Ahn Jae Woong, general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia

– Bernice Powell Jackson, WCC president from North America

– Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr., president of the National Council of Churches
of Christ in the USA

Within the framework of its Decade to Overcome Violence, the WCC has
called on its member churches – which represent a membership estimated
at about 550 million Christians world-wide – to pray for peace on
21 September or on the Sundays preceding or following that day.
This WCC initiative links to the International Day of Peace declared
by the United Nations General Assembly, a world-wide effort intended
as a day of global cease-fire and non-violence, and as an opportunity
for education and raising public awareness.

The video messages in both webcast and broadcast quality
will be available as of Monday 20 (12:00 a.m. Geneva time) at

Liturgical resources for the International Day of Prayer for Peace
are already available at the same website.

See also our press release of 31 August, 2004 at
> press corner > International Day of Prayer for
Peace

Additional information: Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363
[email protected]

Sign up for WCC press releases at

Putin to attend two summits in Kazakhstan
By Viktoria Sokolova

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 15, 2004 Wednesday 12:26 AM Eastern Time

MOSCOW September 15 – Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in
Kazakhstan’s capital Astana for a working visit.

He will attend two summits, of heads of states of the Common Economic
Space (CES) on Wednesday and of CIS presidents on Thursday.

The leaders of the CES countries, or Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and
Belarus, will hold a separate meeting, after which their delegations
will join them.

The presidents will sign joint documents and will hold a news
conference.

A main item on the agenda is discussion of a list of 29 accords
prepared by a high level group and awaiting signing on a priority
basis, the Russian president’s aide Sergei Prikhodko told Itar-Tass.

“The implementation of these documents is called to lay necessary
conditions for deepening economic integration and staged progress
toward free movement of goods, services, capital and workforce in
the framework of the ‘four’,” Prikhodko said.

The presidents of the four CIS republics will sign an accord on
setting up a commission on tariffs and trade that will be a common
regulating body for the CES countries, he said.

The president wills make a joint statement after the summit.

Prikhodko said Putin would meet the Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents, Robert Kocharyan and Ilkham Aliyev, on Wednesday evening.

He is also likely to hold a separate meeting with Kazakhstan’s
President Nursultan Nazarbayev during his working visit.

STATEMENT OF THE FOREIGN MINISTRY OF AZERBAIJAN REPUBLIC
[September 14, 2004, 22:14:22]

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Sept 14 2004

Foreign ministry of the Azerbaijan Republic expresses deep regret
in connection with cancellation of the exercise Co-operative Best
Effort 2004, which was scheduled to begin on September 14-26, 2004, in
Azerbaijan in the frame of Partnership for Peace Program of the NATO.
The Republic of Azerbaijan considered these exercises in its territory
a landmark and important event on the way to integration to the
Euro-Atlantic space and had created every condition to conduct them.

The Azerbaijan-NATO cooperation links have successfully developed
in the last years and as a result, the Republic of Azerbaijan as
one of the active partners of NATO had presented the management of
the Organization the Operation Plan on Individual Partnership in May
current year.

As a military aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan Republic,
the country, where the exercises were to conduct, 20 percent of
the territories are still under occupation and over one million of
Azerbaijanis are refugees and IDPs.

Leadership of this country holds a sharp and non-constructive position
in the carried out peace negotiations. In this case, for Azerbaijan,
participation of the Armenian militaries in the exercises in the
territory of the country was impossible.

The Azerbaijan side once again states its adherence to the principles
of the Euro-Atlantic values and deepening its partnership with the
Northern Atlantic Alliance and expresses hope that the years-old
successful and effective partnership relations between NATO and the
Republic of Azerbaijan will develop dynamically in the years coming.

By the World Forgot: Realpolitik and the Armenian Genocide
By Nir Eisikovits

Commentary

In The National Interest
September 1, 2004

Between 1915 and 1916, through a campaign of slaughter and deportation,
the nationalist ‘Young Turk’ government of the Ottoman Empire
killed over 1 Million Armenians. To this day, Turkey refuses to
accept responsibility for this genocide, claiming that the number of
casualties was far smaller and that most had been killed in fighting
between the parties rather than in one-sided massacres. It seems
that Turkish genocide-deniers are now receiving assistance from an
unexpected source. In a recent article, the Israeli daily Haaretz
reported that several Jewish groups in Washington have been involved
in blocking attempts to procure Congressional recognition of the
atrocities.

This involvement was much more proactive last year than it is now, but,
to quote the article, “a central activist in a Jewish organization
involved in this matter clarified that if necessary, he would not
hesitate to again exert pressure to ensure the resolution is not
passed and the Turks remain satisfied.” Surprising? Not really. Israel
has systematically refrained from recognizing the extermination
of Armenians. Senior officials, including former foreign minister
Shimon Peres, have spoken of a “tragedy,” which “cannot be compared to
genocide.” The position taken by Israel and some Jewish organizations
is animated by two considerations. One has to do with the uniqueness
of the Holocaust. The other is pure realpolitik. Let us examine these
in turn.

Recognizing the Armenian genocide, so the first argument goes, could
eclipse the singular magnitude of the crimes perpetrated against
the Jews during World War II.[1] This claim is both morally warped
and empirically unfounded. It is morally warped, because we Jews do
not have a monopoly on pain. Our catastrophes are not in a separate
category; we do not feel any more agony for the obliteration of our
families than others do. When Armenians are pricked, they bleed;
when they are poisoned they die.[2] If human suffering is essentially
democratic, Jews cannot, simultaneously, attack those who deny the
Holocaust and assist others who deny the Armenian genocide. The concern
for the legacy of the Holocaust is empirically unfounded, because
other cases of genocide have been recognized without the Holocaust
being forgotten or sidelined. The massacres by the Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia and the Tutsi by the Hutu in Rwanda are now universally
acknowledged. Such recognition has not eclipsed the discussion of
Nazi atrocities. It has, rather, served as a reminder that human
cruelty is as much a reality now as it was in 1915 and 1939.

As for realpolitik, Israel sees Turkey as an all-important
strategic ally in the Middle East – a moderate democratic Muslim
state in a region where both moderation and democracy are in
short supply. Thus, keeping the Turks happy is taken to be an
essential Israeli interest. Two observations are in order. First,
the appeasement of Turkey does not seem to be working. Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently accused Israel of “state terrorism”
and compared its policies towards Palestinians to the actions of the
Spanish Inquisition against Jews. Turkey is said to have rolled back
planned contracts to purchase military equipment from Israel and is
now reconsidering a planned deal to transport 15 Million cubes of
water annually to the water-poor Jewish State. Apparently we have
sold our moral integrity in vain. Second, realism in international
affairs, with all its merits, must be subordinate to a nation’s most
basic principles rather than dictate them. In the case of Israel, the
most deep-seated of those principles is that the state was founded as
a barrier against genocide, as a safe-haven for Jews the world over
to protect them from future persecution. The refusal to recognize
other cases of genocide undermines this fundamental tenet. It provides
invaluable ammunition to those who claim that history is written by the
victors. If that position takes hold, no group, including the Jews,
would ever be safe from hounding, and Israel would have undermined
the main reason for its own existence.

On August 22, 1939, days before the Nazis invaded Poland, Hitler
addressed his military chiefs in Obersalzburg. “The aim of war is not
to reach definite lines,” he told them “but to annihilate the enemy
physically. It is by this means that we shall obtain the vital living
space that we need.” He then went on to ask them a rhetorical question:
“Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?” The Israeli
government, for one, does not. History, it would seem, has a cruel
sense of humor.

Nir Eisikovits, an Israeli attorney, is completing his Ph.D. in legal
and political philosophy at Boston University.

NOTES

[1] In early 2002, after Israeli ambassador to Georgia and Armenia
Rivka Cohen rejected any comparison between the Holocaust and the
Armenian Genocide, Israel’s foreign ministry released a statement
including the following text: ” …Israel asserted that the Holocaust
was a singular event in human history and was a premeditated crime
against the Jewish people. Israel recognizes the tragedy of the
Armenians and the plight of the Armenian people. However, the events
cannot be compared to genocide. This does not in any way diminish
the magnitude of the tragedy.”

[2] W. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1.

ARMENIAN MP, ARTASHES GEGHAMYAN, CALLES ARMENIAN PRESIDENT TO DISSOLVE
PARLIAMENT AND BECOME GUARANTOR OF NEW FAIR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 11. ARMINFO. Friday, an Armenian MP, Artashes
Geghamyan, called Armenian President Robert Kocharyan to dissolve the
parliament and become a guarantor of new fair parliamentary elections
in the country.

Speaking at an assembly of the National Unity party’s activists,
Geghamyan said that such a step would justify the president’s “previous
sins.” He also urged the former ruling party of Armenia, the Armenian
Pan National Movement (APNM), not to “bomb” the opposition with its
biting sarcasm, but to join it for restoration of the Constitutional
order in Armenia.

In his speech, Geghamyan also touched upon a possible departure of
Armenian militaries to Iraq. Of course, we must combat terrorism,
but Armenia has no moral right to send its experts to other country
struggling against terrorism when terrorism prospers inside it
and the killers of the Georgian citizen Poghos Poghosyan and the
organizers of the terrorist act in the Parliament have not been
punished so far. Artashes Geghyamyan touched upon the failure of
Armenian sportsmen at the Olympic Games in the Athens, the heavy
socio-economic situation in the country, the inevitability of the
Karabakh clan’s exile from Armenia, his vacation in the Spanish
Valensia and others things. However, during 2-hour sitting of the
party’s activists, no one remembered the tragic events in Beslan,
which took the lives of 300 hundreds of people, including 9 Armenians.

Syria, Lebanon, and the Government of 14
By Walid Choucair

Al-Hayat
2004/09/11

Leaks, which are rampant in Lebanese media and political circles,
of the names that might be included in the next Lebanese government,
indicate only one thing: the confusion with which Lebanese President
Emile Lahoud’s team and the Syrian leadership are lost in. This
leadership is looking after the details of Lebanese situation, more
than at any other time, after it cornered itself with limited choices.

No matter what was said to justify these leaks’ tactical goals, some of
them are pathetic, and condemned, because they indicate fleeing from
insecurity caused by the mistakes, which accompanied the Lebanese
presidential elections, on the internal and external levels; from
insistence on extending Lahoud’s term, to the United Nations Security
Council Resolution (UNSC) 1559. It indicates that limiting the damage,
which Lebanon and Syria fell into, is done with old “working tools”
that are not related to “the new mentality,” which we hear about,
and with the call for “turning the page, and beginning reconciliation”
– Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s advice to Lahoud.

The available choices to exit the fleeing forward policy are possible,
despite their scarcity. However, missing the opportunity of forming
a new government to launch these choices would be a mistake over
and above the previous errors, which would accomplish nothing other
than increasing the burdens. If the Syrian leadership and its allies
are talking about a “positive shock” that Lebanon needs to return
cohesiveness to Syria’s “first line of defense,” it does not come
without a new policy that is radically different from the previous one.

One of those who care about the Lebanese situation (not a politician)
raised a question about what prevents Damascus from moving in the
direction of a government of Lebanese leaders, which strengthens
its chances of facing the situation that is likely to aggravate on
internal and external levels, opens the way in front the “possibility”
of saving Lebanon economically, and reducing the pressure of an
international-American attack on both. A government that seeks true
national reconciliation suggests solutions to the Lebanese-Syrian
relations, and comforts Damascus, because these leaders are its
strategic allies.

Away from pompous and boring slogans, the idea’s owner held the
answer in his mind: Rafiq Al Hariri as Prime Minister, with former PM
Omar Karami and Fouad Al Siniora (or Tammam Salam) representing the
Sunnis. The Shiites will be represented by: former Speaker Hussein
Al Husseini, Ali Osseiran, and an independent close to Hezbollah. The
Maronites will be represented by: Suleiman Franjieh and Naseeb Lahoud
(or Elie Ferzli), Walid Jumblatt representing the Druze, Elias Skaff
representing the Catholics, and Sebouh Hovnanian representing the
Armenians.

Some politicians’ reaction was disapproval; because they thought that
neither Lahoud nor Hariri nor the Syrians would approve of such a
composition; and such a selection is “too good to be true.” Perhaps the
major reason to find such a selection strange is the belief of those
who heard about it that it is impossible for Damascus to allow this
level of Lebanese administration for the Lebanese situation. However,
looking closely at the names shows that more than their two-thirds
are “guaranteed’ for Syria, without bearing the burden of interfering
in details.

Is it hard to convince Lahoud and Hariri of this composition? As
long as Damascus convinced the former of “national reconciliation”
and the latter of extension, it can convince them that it is required
for the upcoming government to be a “trusteeship council.” Is not it
enough that Lahoud got the extension?

Is it difficult to convince Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir and
the head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Walid Jumblatt? It
would not be easy, and would require serious negotiations on the
part of Damascus with both of them to convince; especially Sfeir,
that such a government will be assigned the mission of “correcting
the mistake,” not backing down on the extension.

Certainly, Syria’s conviction with such a composition requires not
considering the UNSC resolution a victory!

French Speaker says Karabakh conflict “serious threat” to Caucasus stability

Trend news agency
8 Sep 04

Baku, 8 September, Trend correspondent S. Agayeva: “France is sparing
no effort to settle the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and to resolve
this problem peacefully,” French Senate Speaker Christian Poncelet
said on 8 September addressing a ceremony of opening an exhibition
of Azerbaijani artists in the Senate’s museum within the framework
of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Paris.

Poncelet said that the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict posed a serious
threat to stability in the Caucasus and the region. He added that
the Senate supported the intensification of meetings between the
Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian speakers initiated by the Senate.

In turn, Aliyev said that France had always supported Azerbaijan in
all issues and hoped that support of this kind would be rendered in
the future as well.

Another Marathon, Another Victory
By CHRIS BROUSSARD

New York Times
Published: September 5, 2004

Sargis Sargsian covered his eyes and rolled flat onto his back. If he
had stayed in that position and taken a nap, no one at the National
Tennis Center would have blamed him.

A true ironman, Sargsian had just completed two of the longest
consecutive rounds of tennis played at the United States Open. Two
days after winning a second-round match that lasted 5 hours 9 minutes,
Sargsian, an Armenian, outlasted Paul-Henri Mathieu of France, 4-6,
4-6, 6-4, 6-2, 7-6 (4), in a 4-hour-44-minute marathon last night.

“It’s like you’re in a different world when you win these matches,”
Sargsian said. “Like right now, I’m talking, I feel like it’s not
me talking. It’s just the words coming out of my mouth. It’s a weird
feeling.”

The victory moved Sargsian, 31, into the Round of 16 in a Grand Slam
event for only the second time. In eight trips to the United States
Open, this is the deepest he has advanced.

The unseeded Sargsian will meet a good buddy, sixth-seeded Andre
Agassi, in the next round. Sargsian and Agassi often train together
in Las Vegas, and Agassi helped Sargsian recover after his five-hour
match on Thursday.

“He’s like a big brother to me,” Sargsian said.

Agassi, a straight-sets winner over Jiri Novak, has beaten Sargsian
five times and will have many advantages in their face-off, the most
prominent one being rest. While Agassi has been on the court for 5
hours 6 minutes through the first three rounds, Sargsian has toiled
for 12 hours 5 minutes.

“It’s like a dream to play against such a legend on such a court
in such a big tournament,” Sargsian said of meeting Agassi for the
first time in a Grand Slam event. “Hopefully, I play good. Hopefully,
we have a good match. Hopefully, he doesn’t kill me.”

Sargsian’s second-round victory over 10th-seeded Nicolas Massu was
the second-longest match in United States Open history, falling 17
minutes shy of matching the record set when Stefan Edberg defeated
Michael Chang in the 1992 semifinals. After that one, Sargsian thought
things would get easier, or at least shorter.

“I didn’t think it would be a match like this,” he said. “It’s hard
to beat Massu’s match. We probably did today.”

Asked how he has managed to stay on his feet, Sargsian first credited
his serve, then realized there was no easy explanation.

“I’ve been serving good,” he said. “It prevents me from running side
to side a lot. I don’t know how I did it.”

Sargsian admitted to being sore and tight entering the match, and
he certainly looked it as Mathieu, 22, took the first two sets. But
finding a second wind somewhere, Sargsian rallied to win the next
two sets. Then things really got interesting.

Sargsian took command by breaking Mathieu’s serve to go ahead, 3-2,
but he was broken moments later. Both men visibly exhausted, they
played even through 10 games, tied at 5-5. The next game, with Mathieu
serving, seemingly went on forever, as the two played to eight deuces
before Mathieu eventually prevailed.

Sargsian, physically and mentally spent, thought he was finished.

“After losing that game, I wasn’t very confident, to be honest,”
he said. “But I told myself just to keep fighting.”

Fight he did, and after falling behind by 30-0, he managed to take
the set, then the tie breaker and the match.

Sargsian’s berth in the fourth round is even more surprising than his
career record suggests. Struggling for much of this season, he entered
the Open having won back-to-back matches only once this season. His
experiences on hardcourts had been awful, with first-round exits in
four of his last five events on the surface.

But Sargsian, who has advanced to the third round four times at the
United States Open, said he was always rejuvenated by this tournament.

“In this tournament, I always played unbelievable for some reason
– the last four, five years,” he said. “This year is a perfect
example. I’ve had a pretty horrendous year. I’ve really struggled. But
coming here, just the atmosphere in the city, which is my favorite
city in the world, and this tournament and my fans. I don’t know,
it just clicked. I just started playing good.”

And long.

Nagorno-Karabakh confirms adherence to peace settlement with Azerbaijan

Interfax
Sept 2 2004

STEPANAKERT. Sept 2 (Interfax) – Arkady Gukasian, leader of the
unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, has reconfirmed his
adherence to the peace settlement with Azerbaijan.

“Mediating efforts by the OSCE Minsk Group cochairmen can bring
positive results if the administration of Azerbaijan displays
goodwill and a sincere wish to resolve the Karabakh problem on
mutually acceptable terms,” says a Thursday statement of Gukasian on
the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the unrecognized republic.

“Nobody can take away from us the freedom and independence for which
we paid such a big price,” the statement runs. “The command-and-
staff exercises our army had this August clearly showed to the
adversaries of Nagorno-Karabakh that the army is ready for combat
and can accomplish the most difficult missions in the provision of
security of Nagorno-Karabakh and the people.”

Olympic gold medallist Massu eliminated in historic marathon
by Greg Heakes

Agence France Presse — English
September 3, 2004 Friday 3:30 AM GMT

NEW YORK Sept 2 — Olympic double gold medallist Nicolas Massu was
eliminated from the US Open on Thursday in a historic five-set marathon
with Sargis Sargsian of Armenia.

Sargsian fired 20 aces and won 184 of 337 points to beat Massu 6-7
(6/8), 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (8/6), 6-4.

The match lasted five hours, nine minutes and is second longest on
record behind the 1992 men’s semi-final where Stefan Edberg beat
Michael Chang in five hours and 26 minutes.

The previous second-longest match was also in 1992 when Ivan Lendl
beat Boris Becker in five hours, one minute in the round of 16.

“So many things happened in that match,” Sargsian said. “It is just
amazing to come through.

“I wouldn’t put it on top of my list but it is in the top three. Now
I am just go to take my vitamins, get a massage and pray for rain.”

He has one day to rest before his third round match against France’s
Paul-Henri Mathieu.

Sargsian won the war of attrition but he paid for it as after four
hours on the court both players started to suffer from leg cramps.

“I couldn’t feel my legs,” Sargsian said of the end of the match.

Sargsian’s family and friends would have had to stay up to 4 a.m.
Armenian time to watch the entire match.

Massu came into the US Open after the best week of his career, having
won gold medals in singles and doubles at the Athens Games.

The Chilean lost his composure on several occasions, breaking his
racket in the first set.

He argued several times with chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, and vowed
to never play in front of Ramos again.

“I lost because of my mistake. But this umpire have not to umpire
anymore,” Massu said. “He is unbelievable. He is never going to umpire
me again.”