Category: News

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:
ARAM I IS INVITED TO GIVE A SPEECH DURING THE INTER PARLIAMENTARY
CONFERENCE OF ORTHODOX CHURCHES
Antelias, Lebanon – His Holiness Aram I held a meeting with the council
responsible for the preparation of the inter parliamentary conference
of Orthodox countries. The council is headed by Costas Mikdalis from
Greece and Alexy Valery from Russia. Representatives from the Greek
and Russian embassies of Lebanon are also members of the council.
The delegation visited His Holiness in order to officially invite him
to the conference. The Catholicos met with the delegation for over
an hour, discussing various issues related to the conference. Issues
related to Orthodox countries in general and Europe in particular
were also discussed during the meeting.
The inter parliamentary conference of Orthodox Churches will be held on
17-19 April 2005 in Athens. His Holiness will give a speech entitled
“Nation and Church”. Representatives of the European Parliament and
European community will also speak during the conference.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates
of the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about
the history and the 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.

New website on Upper Garabagh conflict
AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Feb 10 2005
A new website on the Upper Garabagh conflict ()
has been set up. Jahid Ismayiloghlu, Editor-in-Chief of the website,
says that the site, released in honour of Azerbaijan’s National
Hero Chingiz Mustafayev, provides opinions from different experts,
as well as information, articles and books about the conflict.
The webpage, which is available in Russian and English, also includes
regular information about Azerbaijan’s historical heroes.
The goal of the website is to incorporate major websites and convey
the realities of Azerbaijan to the world community, Ismayiloghlu
said. He added that particular attention must be paid to creating
similar websites in Azerbaijan.

OMBUDSMAN TO WORK IN NAGORNO KARABAKH
Azg/arm
11 Feb 05
The parliament of NKR held the first sitting of this year. Deputies
adopted amendments to a number of laws, as well as adopted some
new ones. In particular, the law “On Ombudsman” was adopted in the
second reading.
The decree of NKR president “On Prolonging Military Situation” caused
some disputes among the lawmakers. Artur Mosiyan, head of Defense,
Security, and Law Enforcement Committee at NKR Parliament, member
of ARF Dashnaktsiutiun faction, spoke against this decree, saying
that the military regime is an artificial one, in fact. Taking into
account the military-political situation in the region, the majority
of the parliament voted for preserving the military regime in NKR
The Parliament also adopted the Regulation of NKR TV and Radio Company.
Mavrik Ghukasian, NKR Public Prosecutor, represented the work of
the Prosecutorâ~@~Ys Office in the course of 2004. According to
him, a huge work was done in this sphere to protect human rights,
the rights and the interest of NKR citizens, as well as the rights
of the republic. They also revealed the reasons for many violations
of law and secured all the conditions for legal work.
By Kim Gabrielian in Stepanakert
–Boundary_(ID_55syokxst3Pfy0uPi7lNLw)–

NATO does not intend to get involved in Karabakh conflict
The Messenger, Georgia
Feb 11 2005
According to the Azeri newspaper Novoye Vremia, NATO Deputy Assistant
Secretary General Patrick Hardouin stated at a press conference
this week that NATO is interested in the stability and security of
the South Caucasus. He spoke during a NATO two-day seminar in Baku
“Security of the South Caucasus and NATO’s role.”
According to him, stability in the region must be based on economic
growth, macroeconomic stability and democracy. “Despite certain
achievements in this sphere, lots of unsolved issues remain in the
region,” stated Hardouin, noting that such issues as the development of
free trade and macroeconomic stability were discussed at the seminar
as well.
They also discussed the issue of energy security, particularly the
issue of the security of the oil pipeline Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan. The
paper reports that NATO is interested in the secure operation of the
transport corridors in the South Caucasus.
Hardouin stressed that the conflicts in the South Caucasus negatively
influence on the stability and security in the region. “NATO does
not intend to be engaged in these conflicts, he said, adding however
that Brussels “is ready to support all attempts to achieve a fair
settlement of these conflicts.”
According to Hardouin, NATO follows the consensus principle when
making decisions regarding joint operations. The paper notes that
NATO supports the termination of nuclear programs in Iran.
Hardouin also told journalists that the opening of the office for
the special representative of the NATO General Secretary in South
Caucasus and Central Asia will take place in Tbilisi. He said that
the special representative will work in Tbilisi and will periodically
visit the region’s countries.

Azeri Speaker chides Russian official’s Karabakh remarks
ANS TV, Baku
10 Feb 05
[Presenter] Azerbaijani Speaker Murtuz Alasgarov has described as
rubbish a statement by the deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma,
Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, on Nagornyy Karabakh’s incorporation into
the CIS.
[Alasgarov, speaking to microphone] He does not understand that the
CIS is not a state but an international organization. It is the
international organization that unite states. The territory of a
sovereign state cannot be incorporated into the CIS. He simply does
not understand this.
[Correspondent] Is Azerbaijan going to take a step in this regard?
[Alasgarov] I think, the Foreign Ministry should issue a statement.

Azeri soldier wounded in ceasefire breach
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Feb 11 2005
Baku, February 10, AssA-Irada
Samir Bakirov, a soldier in the Azerbaijan Army, was wounded after
Armenian military units fired at the positions of the Azerbaijani
military units located in Shikhlar settlement of the Aghdam District
on Wednesday night. The health condition of the hospitalized soldier is
satisfactory, a source from the Ministry of Defence told AssA-Irada.*
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Garabagh conflict to be mulled during Putin’s visit to Armenia
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Feb 11 2005
Baku, February 10, AssA-Irada — The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over
Upper Garabagh will be discussed during the planned official visit by
Russian President Vladimir Putin to Armenia. Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to visit Yerevan on February 17 to discuss
preparations for Putin’s visit.
Lavrov will meet with the Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian,
Minister for Defence Serzh Sarkisian, Parliament Speaker Artur
Bagtasarian and Prime Minister Andranik Markarian, the Armenian
“Panarmenian” news agency reports.*
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Tablet , UK
Feb 11 2005
Lead Book Review – 12 February 2005
The encounters that cause sparks to fly
Holy Fire
Victoria Clark
Macmillan, £20
Tablet bookshop price £18.
My wife was recently asked by the accident and emergency department
of a London hospital to complete a form requiring her – in addition to
the usual enquiries about ethnicity, religion, blood group and so on –
to state her “cultural identity”. In the end she entered “Anglican”,
even though she had given the same answer to the question on religion.
The best passages in Victoria Clark’s very clever book suggest that
the NHS bureaucrat behind that form may have been on to something:
there is a dimension to our sense of identity which certainly includes
religion – or the lack of it – but encompasses all sorts of other
factors too. And if Ms Clark is right it is a thoroughly destructive
force. There is little in Holy Fire about religion as a source of
goodness, holiness or moral order; instead, poisoned by politics,
race and history – and poisoning them in return – religion in this
book is a sectarian battle standard.
Her story begins with a brawl between two clerics in one of
Christianity’s most sacred places. Within the Basilica of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem is a tiny chapel known as the “edicule”,
built over the spot St Helena identified as Christ’s tomb. On Easter
Saturday the “Holy Fire” is said to appear miraculously within it,
and candles lit from this wondrous confirmation of Christ’s divinity
are, by ancient tradition, passed among the faithful by Jerusalem’s
Greek Orthodox Patriarch and one of the church’s Armenian Orthodox
priests. In Easter 2002 the Armenian priest decided to “hurry the
miracle along a little” with the aid of a cigarette lighter. The
Patriarch intervened, and the two came to blows. A couple of Orthodox
monks piled in to help their leader and the Israeli police had to
storm the chapel to restore order.
The incident inspires Ms Clark’s investigation of the centuries-old
war between the Christian denominations for control of the Holy
Places. Some of the stories are very funny: the Ethiopian Orthodox nuns
and monks of the Holy Sepulchre have been reduced to living in a squat
on the church’s roof, and jealously guard their territory from the
Egyptian Copts next door; when an elderly Coptic monk started taking
his afternoon snooze in a chair by the Ethiopians’ gate they suspected
him of annexation by stealth, and Israeli police were again called
to stop things turning violent. Some of the stories are dreadful:
the Holy Fire ceremony of 1834 ended with a stampede, mass suffocation
and a massacre by panicky Ottoman troops; a British observer described
the church walls “spattered with the blood and brains of those who had
been felled, like oxen, with the butt-ends of the soldiers’ bayonets”.
Holy Fire unfolds against the background of the current Palestinian
intifada, and Ms Clark moves skilfully between contemporary anecdote
and big-picture history, using the Holy Sepulchre’s story as a focus
for exploring the broader issue of Christianity’s involvement in the
Holy Land. For the most part her points are subtly made, and she allows
her characters to reveal themselves. Fr Athanasius, a Franciscan from
Texas, tells her: “What we have in that church [the Holy Sepulchre],
is not three different takes on Christianity – Orthodoxy, Catholicism
and Oriental Orthodoxy. That would be complex enough, but it’s worse
than that. The territory the church occupies and all its contents are
divided six ways on mostly tribal lines except for us Franciscans –
we’re multinational. Otherwise you’ve got Greeks, Armenians, Egyptians,
Ethiopians and Syrians.”
Explaining the “status quo” agreement which froze the
interdenominational rivalries where they were in 1852 and still
applies today, he says: “It’s important to realise that there are
three different sets of rights governing everything inside the church
and everything that happens there: rights of property, rights of use
and rights of cleaning. Having the right to clean something doesn’t
pre-suppose a right to use it, and the right to use it doesn’t
necessarily entail ownership, because ownership can be shared.”
Every so often the author’s voice intrudes when she asks her
interlocutors whether this kind of talk has very much to do with
the teaching of what she terms the “man-God” the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre is supposed to celebrate. It is gently done in the book,
but this tale encompasses centuries of petty rivalry, greed, venality,
corruption and violence in the name of Christianity.
There is a bigger point behind all this, but when Ms Clark finally
steps outside the brilliant artifice of her narrative to make it
directly it is disappointingly crude. During one of her highly
effective vignettes – a meal at which two old friends, one Jewish
and one Palestinian Christian, confront the damage done to their
relationship by the intifada – she lets us know what she really thinks:
“They are waiting for me to speak but I am suddenly overwhelmed by
the thought of Arabs and Jews dying in their hundreds and thousands
on account of mistakes made and crimes committed by a succession of
Christian powers over hundreds of years.”
So there you have it; we Christians have infected Jerusalem with what
Edward Lear called its “squabblepoison”, and we are responsible for the
world’s most intractable political problem. I found myself scribbling
“Up to a point, Lord Copper” in the margin, and this statement a couple
of paragraphs later is even more questionable. Listing the Christian
enthusiasts who contributed to the foundation of the State of Israel,
Ms Clark writes: “I suspect that if the Earl of Shaftesbury, Arthur
Balfour, Lloyd George and President Truman had not been so versed in
the Old Testament and therefore so susceptible to Jewish emotionalism
about a God-given homeland, so willing to dream the Jewish dream,
an Israel would eventually have come into being, especially given
the Nazi Holocaust, but it would not have been here.”
This huge historical assumption jars – and is at odds with the subtlety
which characterises the rest of the book. Holy Fire successfully
demonstrates that nothing relating to Jerusalem is ever simple; and
I suspect that the author has a sense that she may have overstepped
the mark here, because she plunges immediately back into the West
Jerusalem restaurant where her two friends are finishing up their
meal. But from this point the book goes downhill: the material on
Christian Zionists is perfectly respectable, but it feels familiar –
and Christian fundamentalism is too easy a target.
In her introduction, Victoria Clark writes: “My argument is that
fourth-century Byzantine Orthodoxy and twenty-first-century American
Christian Zionism are two ends of a single long continuum in the
eyes of many non-Christians. Three years on from 11 September 2001
it seems more urgent than ever that we in the traditionally Christian
West begin to see ourselves as others see us.”
I am not quite sure she makes the case she states in the first of those
sentences – but the aspiration expressed in the second is triumphantly
realised; and this is a humbling book for any Christian to read.
Edward Stourton
–Boundary_(ID_agim4QQjaupCj6zoqF6P4g)–

Turkish Daily News
Feb 11 2005
Gül assures Azerbaijan on Armenia policy
Friday, February 11, 2005
‘Turkey’s policy on this matter is clear. The people of Azerbaijan do
not need to worry,’ says Gül relating to the closed Turkish-Armenian
border gate
ANKARA – Turkish Daily News
Turkey gave assurances to Caucasus ally Azerbaijan that its border
gate with Armenia would remain closed unless Armenia ends occupation
of the Azeri territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has displaced
hundreds of thousands of Azeris.
“The border gate is closed at the moment. The continuing occupation
and the fact that almost a million Azeris are currently displaced
constitute a big obstacle for any change in Turkish policy,” Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gül told a joint news conference after talks with
visiting Azeri counterpart Elmar Mammedyarov.
Turkey closed its border gate with Armenia and severed diplomatic
ties with Yerevan in the last decade in protest of the Armenian
occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Ankara says normalization in ties is
related to Armenian troop withdrawal from the occupied territory, in
addition to Yerevan’s official acceptance of the current borders with
Turkey and stopping its support of Armenian lobby efforts to get
international recognition for an alleged Armenian genocide during the
late Ottoman Empire.
Yet, European Union aspirant Turkey has been facing pressure from
Europe to revise its Armenia policy and to open the closed gate with
landlocked Yerevan, something that has alarmed Azerbaijan.
“Turkey’s policy on this matter is clear. The people of Azerbaijan
do not need to worry,” Gül said, indicating that bilateral ties with
Armenia will return to normal when the occupation ends as a result of
peace talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
Mammedyarov’s talks in Ankara come weeks before he meets Armenian
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian in Prague on the dispute.
He and Gül also discussed bilateral economic ties. Turkey and
Azerbaijan are partners in a multi-billion dollar project, called the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, to transport Azeri crude oil to western
markets through Georgia and finally to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of
Ceyhan.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is expected to become operational
soon, with the first delivery of oil scheduled for mid-2005. Gül said
he was confident that the project would be completed on time.
The energy cooperation is set to expand further when a natural gas
pipeline linking Azerbaijan’s Shahdeniz gas fields to Turkey’s
eastern province of Erzurum starts operating. Mammedyarov said the
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline could become operational in 2006 or
2007 and added that Turkey could import some of the natural gas from
this pipeline to European countries.
Seeking Azeri support to end KKTC isolation:
Gül also sought Baku’s backing for efforts to bring into force
international pledges to end the isolation of Turkish Cypriots.
Gül reportedly told Mammedyarov that Azerbaijan would become a
model that other countries could follow if it takes steps towards
ending the isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
(KKTC).
Mammedyarov said in response that his government would work on the
issue and encourage Azeri companies to do business in Turkish Cyprus.
Mammedyarov was received by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer later in
the day.
–Boundary_(ID_6aDtGlUlJ5EnicMYumOvBA)–

Kivanç Galip ÖVER: CDU doesn’t question taboos
Friday, February 11, 2005
Turkish Daily News
Feb 11 2005
A sentence was removed from the school books in Brandenburg, and
a great row took place. The entire of Germany discusses the matter
because the sentence was claiming that Turks had tried systematically
to annihilate Armenians.
According to the German press, Turkey pressed, used diplomacy
skillfully and succeeded. Nowadays the opposition party CDU (Christian
Democratic Union) is trying to drive the coalition party SDP (Social
Democratic Party) into a corner. Sven Petke, a senior official in CDU,
is demanding the sentence to be put back in the school text books.
The statements made by the provincial officials of Brandenburg are
far from being satisfactory to CDU it is a matter with a great detail,
and there is no point speaking about it in details. The most striking
point in the details is the attitude of CDU. The party will soon come
to power in Germany. The time will soon come for the agreement and
disagreements between Berlin and Ankara to affect more that one region.
Even it can be said that the axis of Berlin-Ankara will pave a way
to significant echoes and results. However Berlin’s approach -it is
obvious that this approach is under the influence of internal politics-
does not give much hope regarding the matter. CDU’s attitude shows that
it behaves according to its prejudices about Turkey. The approach of
CDU basically stresses the religion, the culture and the history of
Europe. In fact Turkey doesn’t oppose to the religion, the culture
and the history of Europe.
It is true that Europe is a continent which has an overwhelming
Christian population, whose culture is under a great influence of
the religion, and which lived through problems with Turks. There is
no point in discussing that here.
CDU opposes the idea that Turkey is to be admitted in the near
future or to be admitted before being ready for it. Turkey believes
that it will be ready to be admitted, and it makes efforts for it.
Here too there is no point in discussing that issue here.
However when it comes to Turkey’s identity, social structure, its
mentality, its preferences and its history, the problem appears. CDU
sadly attaches more importance to its idea about Turkey than the
real Turkey.
The politicians in CDU are nervous about the change in the school
text books in Brandenburg. Yet none of them ask themselves this
question: “Or if the events we believe in were not lived?”
The politicians in CDU have to survey this and other allegations in
detail. Because when they come to power, their decisions will be
very crucial.
CDU’s priority must be keeping Turkey “chained” to Europe’s
institutional structure. That is to say, Turkey -in any case- will
be in Europe’s future. If the party has this preference, then it has
to obey the obligations of it.
–Boundary_(ID_8urMs49FYpfnAUyOhvR3pg)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress