Author: Vorskanian Yeghisabet

FRENCH ARMENIANS CONDEMN DESECRATING OF MEMORIAL TO VICTIMS OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN LYON

AZG Armenian Daily
20/04/2006

The Coordination Board of the France based Armenian Organizations
strictly condemned the act of desecration of the memorial to the
Victims of the Armenian Genocide in Lyon that was due to be unveiled
on April 24.

Earlier, by the order of the Turkish government, the Turkish consulate
in Lyon tried to hinder the construction of the memorial. On April 17,
the Turkish vandals wrote statements denying the genocide and praising
the Turks on the columns of the memorial.

“By taking such steps the Turkish nationalists living in France join
the neo-Nazi scoundrels that desecrate the Holocaust memorials,”
the statements of the France based Armenian organizations reads. The
organizations demand that the French political and the judiciary powers
should response this act with strictness, “as such vandalism cases
violate not only the rights of the Armenian community but also those
of all the French citizens and the republic, as well as violate such
values as memory, truth and justice.” The authors of the statement
demand that the vandals should undergo criminal prosecution.

ARDSHININVESTBANK TO REPLENISH ITS AUTHORIZED CAPITAL BY ABOUT 10 MLN DOLLARS

Noyan Tapan
Apr 18 2006

YEREVAN, APRIL 18, NOYAN TAPAN. The shareholders of Ardshininvestbank
made a decision to allocate the undistributed profit of 4.5 bln
drams (about 10 mln USD) for replenishment of the bank’s authorized
capital. Chairman of Ardshininvestbank Board Aram Andreasian stated at
the April 18 press conference that as a result of it, the bank will
take first place in the banking system of the Republic of Armenia in
terms of the amount of its authorized capital. The bank’s authorized
capital currently makes 3 bln 20 mln drams, while its overall capital
– about 20 mln dollars. According to A. Andreasian, although thanks
to the policy of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA), there are no
“unhealthy” bank in the RA banking system, their capitals ans assets
continue to be small. It was noted that the banking system of the
country is undergoing a dynamic development.

IT IS ENVISAGED TO TRANSFORM ARDSHININVESTBANK INTO OPEN JOINT STOCK COMPANY

Noyan Tapan
Apr 18 2006

YEREVAN, APRIL 18, NOYAN TAPAN. It is envisaged to transform
Ardshininvestbank CJSC (closed joint stock company) into an open joint
stock company (OJSC) in the future. Chairman of Ardshininvestbank
Board Aram Andreasian stated at the April 18 press conference
that the bank management also intends to attract an institutional
investor. According to him, by the results of the first quarter of this
year, Ardshininvestbank took first place in the RA banking system by
the amount of its undistributed profit, which made about 4.9 bln drams
(about 10.9 mln USD). The bank was in second place by the amount of its
assets, capital and credit invetsments, which made 53.1 bln drams, 9.4
bln drams and 22.8 bln drams respectively. There was an unprecedented
growth in the number of ArCa and MasterCard plastic cards issued by
the bank in the first quarter of 2006 (15 thousand cards). It was
noted that this year the bank will continue participating in a number
of international programs. Particularly, Ardshininvestbank plans to
take part in the mortgage crediting market development program, which
is being implemented by KfW Bank (Germany). A. Andreasian assured
that this market will develop in Armenia and mortgage crediting will
become accessible for many sections of the country’s population.

ASSEMBLY POSITION ON GENOCIDE DENIAL CASE REINFORCED BY SIXTH CIRCUIT COURT RULING

ArmrRadio.am
18.04.2006 11:53

A recent US Sixth Circuit Court decision virtually echoed the language
used by the Armenian Assembly in its amicus curiae (“friend of the
court”) brief in the Massachusetts Genocide Denial Case, when it
ruled that a state, has in effect, broad discretion in determining
the appropriate framework on policy issues of public interest.

Ruling that the state of Tennessee can put on its license plates any
message it chooses, the Court said that the tags are “government
speech” and “not a public forum,” and that nothing in the First
Amendment prohibits it.

It went on to say: “Although this exercise of government one-sidedness
with respect to a very contentious political issue may be ill-advised,
we are unable to conclude that the Tennessee statute contravenes the
First Amendment,” Judge John M. Rogers said in his ruling.

To remind, last month, the Assembly filed an amicus brief in response
to a lawsuit brought by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations
(ATAA) and others who are attempting to rewrite history with respect
to the Armenian Genocide. The brief states in part: “There is no
First Amendment basis for objecting to the government’s choice in a
curricular guide simply because it expresses a viewpoint with which
the plaintiffs disagree. Indeed, the fundamental flaw in plaintiffs
suit, and the reason why it must be dismissed, is that the Curricular
Guide is government speech and there is no First Amendment basis for
objecting when the government chooses to speak.”

Top Manager Jailed for Heading Wrong Company

Created: 12.04.2006 14:20 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:01 MSK

MosNews.Com

Becoming an executive vice president of a major Russian oil company may
seem an attractive career move for any ambitious man, but in Russia the
consequences of such appointment may prove harmful. Vasily Aleksanyan was
arrested just week after becoming the top manager of the embattled oil
company Yukos and, as the man himself said shortly before his detention,
this was done after repeated warnings from law enforcers to stay away from
the wrong company.

Aleksanyan’s arrest was sanctioned by the Basmanny district court of Moscow
(which deals with most cases connected with the embattled Yukos company) on
April 7, less than one week after being appointed executive vice president
by Chief Executive Officer Steven Theede on April 1. The appointment was
unanimously ratified by the Board of Directors on April 4.

The authorities reacted quickly. On April 5 Aleksanyan’s apartment and
country house were searched and he himself was questioned by prosecutors. On
Thursday he was arrested after the move was approved by the court.

Prosecutors accuse Aleskanyan of embezzlement and money laundering. If found
guilty he may face 10 to 15 years in jail.

Under Russian law a person may be detained pending trial only after a court
of law sanctions the move.

This bought Aleksanyan some time during which he talked to journalists about
the developments in his case. Several hours before he was detained, he told
the Kommersant newspaper that he had been under surveillance and the agents
engaged in it were not even disguising themselves, but acting quite openly,
which could be seen as an act of intimidation.

He also said that law enforcers had warned him to “stay away” from Yukos.
“In an interview on March 22, the investigator told me to stay away from
this company and she said so quite openly, in the presence of my lawyer.
After I said I was not going to leave Yukos, she smiled and said it was the
first time she had seen a man who was voluntary asking to be put in jail,”
the newspaper quoted Aleksanyan as saying. “Before that, the investigators
had said I should worry about my child and about my health. They said that
my health was already not strong”.

In an official statement released the day after Aleksanyan’s detention,
prosecutors said they feared he would flee the country, and that he had
attempted to do so already. However, over the past two years Aleksanyan has
headed the legal department in Yukos, and he always turned up for
questioning at the same time as he was working in the defense team of former
Yukos CEO and key shareholder Mikhail Khodorkovsky as well as Vasily
Shakhnovsky, the head of the managing company Yukos-Moscow.

Aleksanyan denied any wrongdoing and went on a hunger strike in protest at
his detention. “Starting today I am on a hunger strike, and will only drink
water until I am released,” he has been quoted as saying by his lawyer,
Gevorg Dangyan. Dangyan has filed an appeal over his client’s arrest, saying
that it was illegal and unfounded. “None of the documents showed that I had
committed a crime and all the accusations were absolutely unsubstantiated,”
he said.

Prison authorities reacted to Aleksanyan’s hunger strike by putting him in a
punishment cell.

Gevorg Dangyan said that his client had been in the punishment cell since
April 8 for refusing to undergo a medical check-up to be carried out by the
detention centre doctors. The lawyer again said that Aleksanyan had been
refusing food and had only been drinking water.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Mr Amsterdam, who has been expelled from
Russia, said that Western nations must share the blame for what is happening
to the Yukos managers.

“I condemn the arrest in the strongest possible terms. Western nations have
no right to wring their hands over this latest assault on the rule of law
because it is they who have tacitly legitimized it. It is the Western banks
who made a pact with the devil to force Yukos into bankruptcy and then be
first in line for the spoils,” Amsterdam told the Australian edition
Tax-News.com.

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 14 2006

Union of liberation movements addresses local offices of
international organizations and Hungarian courts

Source: «Trend»
Author: S. Ilhamgyzy

14.04.2006

Union of liberation movements addressed local offices of UNO, OSCE,
EC, Hungarian government and legal instances, Trend reports with
reference to the Union officials.

The address states the negative reaction the sentence issued by
Budapest municipal court on Azeri military officer Ramil Safarov
received in our country; this sentence causes doubt in justice in
Hungary that is a member of European family. It also gives the notion
of R.Safarov’s psychological state in the moment of the crime, and
says Armenians had occupied his homeland and murdered all relatives.
It stresses that Hungarian court’s sentence issued on R.Safarov may
result in distrust between Azeri and Hungarian nations and calls to
fix this injustice.

ARMENIAN INTELLECTUALS’ DELEGATION TO PARTICIPATE IN MOSCOW IN EVENTS DEDICATED TO 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF CIS

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Apr 13 2006

YEREVAN, APRIL 13, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. On the occasion
of the 15th anniversary of the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS), a forum of creative and scietific intellectuals will be held
in Moscow on April 13-16. Alexander Grigorian, the Artistic Head of
the Russian Dramatic Theater after K.Stanislavski, Anelka Grigorian,
the Director of the History Museum of Armenia, Henrik Igitian, the
Director of the Children’s Aesthetic Center, and David Muradian, the
Secretary of the Writers’ Union will participate in that authoritative
forum from Armenia. As Noyan Tapan was informed by the Press Service of
the RA Ministry of Culture and Youth Issues, Inga and Anush Arshakians
will participate in the joint variety concert dedicated to the 15th
anniversary of the CIS.

LEGAL STATUS TO REFUGEES

Lragir.am
14 April 06

The PACE called Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia for granting refugees
in these countries a status that complies with the international law,
informs the news agency ARKA, referring to Russian sources.

In his report Parliamentarian Boris Cilevic invited Armenia, Georgia
and Azerbaijan to grant a legal status to the refugees living in
these countries. It is stated in the report that the status must be
based on the humanitarian law and be equal to the status of refugees
of Chechnya. The author of the report thinks the situation of the
displaced persons and refugees hampers economic, social and political
development in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Boris Cilevic mentions that the efforts of countries for the settlement
of some conflicts, particularly the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh
produced no results, border incidents persist, the fate of the missing
is unknown.

In the report Nagorno Karabakh is said to have the highest number of
refugees. According to the statistics provided by the UN, 235 235
refugees were counted in Armenia, in Georgia – 237 069 in Abkhazia
and 12 131 in South Ossetia. After the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh
there are 578 545 displaced persons in Azerbaijan.

The PACE invited the countries of the EU to render financial support
to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan to settle the problems of refugees
and the displaced persons.

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

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

Armenian version:

HIS HOLINESS ARAM I RECEIVES
THE FOREIGN MINISTER OF ARMENIA

His Holiness Aram I received the foreign minister of Armenia, Vartan
Oskanian, in his office in Antelias on April 10.

The Ambassador of Armenia to Lebanon, Vahan Der Ghevontian, also attended
the meeting in addition to members of the National Central Committee,
Yervant Pamboukian and Hagop Ateshian.

The two sides discussed over an hour about issues related to mutual
relations between Armenia and the Diaspora and the upcoming Third
Armenia-Diaspora Conference.

##
View photo here: tm
*****
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the history and
mission of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of the
Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.

THE PARTIES DO NOT “TRUST” THEIR ARCHIVES

A1+
[12:41 pm] 13 April, 2006

Most of the Armenian parties and public organizations may lose their
historical background. If anybody attempts to revive today’s political
and public life with the help of archive material in a few decades
he may do nothing but merely enumerate only a few parties and public
organizations.

Out of two hundred parties existing in the country today only
the Republican Party of Armenia gave its archives to the RA
National Archives. The two other Coalition parties, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and the Country of Law
(Orinats Yerkir) alongside with other Parliamentary parties having
a more or less influential position in the political sphere (with
the exception of Democratic Fraction) keep their documents and
papers with themselves. The Armenian National Movement and the
Union for National Self – Determination and a number of patriotic
unions trusted their archives to the Public – Political Documents
Department of the Archives. On this score the Communist Party is an
exception as the Party Archives has been its Department for 68 years,
and all the Party substructures were to give their documents to the
above-mentioned archives; the latter includes more than 100 000 papers.

Today no one can make the parties give their archives.

According to the RA law “on parties” those papers are the property
of the parties and it is within their right to decide what to do with
them. A question arises on this score; how is the Archives Department
replenished? “To put it in a simple way, if you are acquainted with
the chairman of the party or have some deals with him he willingly
gives their archives. But the chairmen of certain parties do not view
the matter with comprehensive approach and do not realize the value of
the documents. They don’t understand that the place of those papers
is the archives. Finally it is a state institution and not a private
one and while keeping their papers in the archives they have a chance
to pass them to the following generations,” says the Vice-director
of the National Archives Avag Haroutyunyan. He also mentions that
they cannot always persuade the parties to give their archives;
in such case the last word is after the Party Chairman.

“Each document of the republic must be given to the Archives if you
don’t want it to get lost and want to pass it to the next generations,”
claims Avag Haroutyunyan. He states that there are multiple cases when
the important documents of a certain party got lost. By the way, “in
the period of Soviet Union many anti-communist papers were kept in the
Archives which testify to the fact that it is a non-party institution.”

By the way, in contrast with the Soviet years, when mainly the
communists could get acquainted with the contents of the papers
kept in the Archives, nowadays everybody has such a right lest the
documents contains “military, state secrets.”