Category: News

NEW NGO SET UP TO ASSIST FARMERS
ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: A new non-governmental
organization, called The Green Path, has emerged with the help of the
Marketing Assistance program (MAP) of the US Department of
Agriculture Yerevan Office.
The new organization’s stated goal is to help establish companies
and farmers’ union engaged in production of ecologically clean and
competitive products, assist them in marketing and exporting food and
related products to increase incomes, create jobs, and raise the
standard of living for Armenians working in the agro-processing
sector.
Nune Sarukhanian, the chairwoman of the new organization, said it
has 50 skilled experts, sufficient financial resources and
partnership connections in the regions and will soon launch its
activity. She said donations came from several other organizations
and individuals.

Wayne hosts delegation of Azerbaijani women
By Sam Strike 02/10/2005
Wayne Suburban Newspapers, PA
Feb 10 2005
Eleven women, all specialists in women’s issues in the former Soviet
republic of Azerbaijan, visited the Women’s Resource Center in Wayne
last week as part of a two-and-a-half week program in the
Philadelphia area.
The group members are technically guests of the U.S. Department of
State through a program called Community Connections at the
International Visitors Council (IVC).
Participants apply and are selected by being emerging leaders in
various fields to meet their respective counterparts in the States
and to live in area homes and be exposed to a diversity of American
experiences.
They spoke through their accompanying translators at the center.
Volunteer coordinator for the center Trish Larsen said that the staff
“thought it was informative and interesting in that some of the
pressing issues in our countries are similar, but cultural issues
make them different too.”
Among the topics discussed were emotional and physical abuse, divorce
and the traditional roles of women in their country. The visitors
said that in Azerbaijan many girls are marrying young, and once in
marriages are very limited in their personal freedoms.
“It seems that they still have quite a fight… I thought they were
about 20 years behind us in some women’s rights,” Larsen said. “I did
feel unfortunately they have a lot of work to do.”
Most questions asked by the visitors were directed at Counseling and
Legal Services Coordinator Sherrie Myers and how she would handle
certain situations that have been brought to her by area women.
“I thought they were trying hard to figure out how we make this work
here,” Larsen said of the women. They were curious how the Women’s
Resource Center is funded.
“They seem to get a lot of volunteers through the universities but we
have more women who are in different stages of life,” she said.
Wayne residents Art and Marge Miller have been hosting people from
Azerbaijan and Russia through the IVC for 10 years.
“We learn a lot, about as much as the people who are visiting,” Art
said. “It gives us a perspective on their lives, and it’s interesting
to see the things we have that they don’t.”
The two women staying with them now, newspaper correspondent Zulfiyya
Aliyeva and program officer for the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees Naila Valikhanova, had never seen a garbage disposal
function before. It was fascinating to them, he said.
What fascinated the Millers was the women’s tales of the country’s
long-standing tension with neighboring Armenia.
“We feel free to pretty much talk about anything and they are too…
and they’re free to express their opinions and they do,” Art said.
The Millers, who have lived in the area since 1974, currently write
books together.
“When we first began hosting these visits we assumed they didn’t know
much about computers because that was a new thing to us, but we found
out both are very up to date with computers, and they e-mail back and
forth to their families,” Art said.
“Americans tend to think we know everything and others need to catch
up – it was a humbling experience,” he said.
Azerbaijan – a nation with a Turkic and majority-Muslim population –
regained its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. Despite a 1994 cease-fire, it has yet to resolve its conflict
with Armenia over the Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh enclave (largely
Armenian-populated), according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s
World Factbook. Azerbaijan has lost 16 percent of its territory and
must support some 800,000 refugees and internally displaced persons
as a result of the conflict. It borders the Caspian Sea in Southwest
Asia.
The women were not allowed to be interviewed by The Suburban as per
rules handed down from the U.S. Department of State.

RUSSIAN FM TO VISIT ARMENIA FEBRUARY 16
ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: Armenian foreign ministry press
office has confirmed today that Russian foreign minister Sergey
Lavrov will pay a two-day visit to Armenia on February 16 to discuss
the details of Russia’s Putn’s visit to Yerevan later this year. The
ministry said Lavrov’s visit is “the continuation of an intensively
unfolding dialogue between the two countries in an effort to deepen
cooperation between Armenian and Russian foreign ministries, as well
as various-level bilateral ties.”
This will be Lavrov’s first official visit to Armenia where he and
top Armenian officials are expected to discuss a wide array of issues
on of strategic bilateral partnership and interaction between Armenia
and Russia within different international organizations.”
The ministry also said a special focus in the talks will be on the
current pace of Nagorno Karabagh conflict regulation, as well as on
building an atmosphere of mutual understanding in the South Caucasus.

ARMENIAN OFFICIAL GOES ON BOOSTING TIES WITH NATO
ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: A senior member of the Armenian
parliament called today for intensifying ties with NATO to foil
Azerbaijan’s intentions to take the Nagorno Karabagh case to
NATO Parliamentary Assembly session. Speaking to journalists, Mher
Shahgeldian, the chairman of the parliament committee on defense and
national security issues, recalled, however, statements by senior
NATO officials that the alliance was not going to intervene in the
Armenian-Azeri conflict.
He said Armenia has to work harder to build up cooperation with NATO,
especially after a threat by Ziyafat Askerov, the head of Azerbaijani
delegation to NATO Parliamentary Assembly that Baku is going to raise
the Karabagh issue there.
According to Shahgeldian , NATO is becoming one of the components of
the regional security. “Armenia’s position in NATO PA differs from
that of Georgia and Azerbaijan, which have openly said they want to
joint it, while Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization,” he said.

ARMENIAN BUSINESSMAN DENIES REPORT IN TURKISH DAILY
ArmenPress
Feb 10 2005
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: Arsen Ghazarian, the chairman of
the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen, denied today a report by
a Turkish daily Zaman that said Ghazarian and Sarkis Asatrian, the
head of the Youth Party of Armenia, met Wednesday in Ankara with
Ankara Trade Chamber president Sinan Aygun.
Aygun was quoted by Zaman as saying that turning incidents of the
past into a blood feud will bring no benefit, but only disturb
people.
Speaking to Armenpress Arsen Ghazarian said no delegation visited
Turkey and never met with Aygun. “The report in Zaman is another
concoction of the Turkish press and it is not the first instance when
I have to deny its reports. This comes to prove one again that one
should not take seriously what Turkish newspapers write,” he said.

FOREIGN MINISTER OF AZERBAIJAN MEETS WITH TURKISH PRESIDENT IN ANKARA
Azer Tag, Azerbaijan
Feb 10 2005
[February 10, 2005, 21:30:16]
Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov, who arrived February
10 in Ankara at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Abdullah
Gul, was received on the same day by President of the country Ahmet
Necdet Sezer.
Minister E. Mammadyarov conveyed to the Turkish President greetings
and invitation to visit Baku from President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev,
and updated him on his official visit to Ankara.
For his part, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer asked the Minister pass
on his greetings to President Ilham Aliyev, and noted that social
and political processes taking place in Azerbaijan are in the focus
of his constant attention.
The meeting was also focused on a number of political, economic and
cultural issues including those related to the Armenia-Azerbaijan,
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipelines, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway,
as well as some regional and international problems.

Georgia Straight, Canada
Feb 10 2005
Classical Spin: Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos
By alexander varty
Publish Date: 10-Feb-2005
Chants, Hymns and Dances (ECM New Series)
As gurus go, Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff was not a bad one. Even if
he did like his acolytes to keep him in baronial splendour, his
open-ended belief system–which included elements of Christian,
Buddhist, and Sufi thought as well as a kind of sceptical
humanism–remains a useful guide to navigating the world.
The Greek-Armenian mystic, who died in 1949, viewed music and
movement as powerful conduits for the divine presence, and his
students were required to embrace a variety of “sacred gymnastics”
aimed at calming the mind and strengthening the body. These gestures
were often accompanied by melodies created by Gurdjieff and arranged
for piano by his musically gifted student Thomas de Hartmann. Chants,
Hymns and Dances includes 11 of these short works, sensitively
performed by cellist Anja Lechner and pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos,
in addition to five similarly flavoured pieces written by the latter.
In hindsight, it’s easy to see Gurdjieff’s music as a precursor of
the contemporary school known as sacred minimalism. Like Arvo Pärt
and John Tavener, the most acclaimed exponents of that relatively new
genre, Gurdjieff sought to express spiritual ecstasy in a musical
marriage of East and West. As interpreted by Lechner and
Tsabropoulos, his tunes are haunting and timeless; the pianist’s own
compositions are also dark without being dour and contemplative
without being catatonia-inducing. Music does have magical powers to
unlock deep feeling, and there’s proof of that in every note on this
lovely CD.
–Boundary_(ID_6YbzjdpbNE4128uxB/rW0g)–

Lebanon’s Eligible Voters are 59% Muslims, 40.8% Christians, 0.2% Jews
NaharNet.com, Lebanon (LebaneseLobby.org)
Feb 10 2005
Naharnet.com
The interior ministry posted the final lists of eligible voters with
official departments responsible for Lebanon’s 26 electoral districts
on Thursday, showing a drastic Muslim majority over Christian
communities.
The figures, as reported by An Nahar, show that Lebanon nowadays has
a total of 3,029,138 eligible voters–51.4% females and 48.6% males.
Muslims make up 59%, Christians 40.8% and Jews 0.2%.
The lists also show that 26.5% of the voters are Sunni Muslims, 26.2%
Shiites, 22.1% Maronites, 7% Greek Orthodox, 5.6% Druze, 5.2%
Catholics and 3% Armenian Orthodox. Other sectarian denominations
account for the rest at less than 1% each.
With more than three million are eligible to vote, Lebanon’s overall
population would probably stand at more than five million.

Family’s tale illuminates old tragedy
By CAROLYN FEIBEL, STAFF WRITER
NorthJersey.com, NJ
Feb 10 2005
Penal Code 306 really makes his blood boil.
Peter Balakian, a poet and historian who grew up in Bergen County,
understands you’ve probably never heard of 306, a Turkish law enacted
last September. That’s one reason he’s trekking cross-country to
promote his book on the genocide of more than 1 million Armenians in
Turkey 90 years ago.
Penal Code 306 punishes people who speak about the genocide with up
to 10 years in prison. If Germany passed a similar law about the
Holocaust, there would rightly be a global outcry, Balakian said. On
306, there’s been hardly a peep.
In a way, Balakian said, that’s not surprising. The slaughter and
expulsion of Armenian Christians from 1915 to 1923 – the “forgotten
genocide” – has long been denied by the Turkish government. But
historians agree it was a well-documented tragedy that ushered in a
new type of state-sponsored mass killing.
Balakian, 53, teaches poetry and genocide studies at Colgate
University in New York. He grew up in Teaneck and then Tenafly, part
of North Jersey’s Armenian community. Although his grandmother was a
genocide survivor, he knew little about her story when he was a
child. His 1997 memoir, “Black Dog of Fate,” chronicles languid
Sundays spent eating cheese pastries and lamb kebabs out on the
patio. While family members celebrated Armenian foods and Armenian
painters, it was harder for them to talk about the genocide.
To fill in the gaps, Balakian began researching his own family’s
trauma. His grandmother lost her first husband in a massacre, endured
a death march with two young daughters and eventually secured their
passage to New Jersey, where she married an Armenian man working in
Paterson’s silk mills.
“She was almost a widow bride,” Balakian said. “Out of the mouth of
death.”
While promoting the memoir, Balakian realized that Americans from all
cultures have forgotten their own historical connection to the
Armenian genocide. Starting in the 1890s, he said, Turkish
persecution of Armenians was the charitable cause in the United
States, drawing in celebrities, rich industrialists, writers,
suffragists and politicians.
Balakian’s new book, “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and
America’s Response,” aims to resurrect that forgotten history.
“It was America’s first international human rights movement, and
nothing has ever topped it in longevity or intensity,” Balakian said.
“It’s the first harnessing of a civilian response and
non-governmental organizations and philanthropy.”
Key leaders included Julia Ward Howe, a suffragist and author of “The
Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Clara Barton, head of the American
Red Cross. The movement attracted writers (Ezra Pound, Henry James),
politicians (Theodore Roosevelt), wealthy philanthropists (John D.
Rockefeller and Henry Ford). Thousands of high schools, churches,
synagogues, Kiwanis Clubs and Rotary Clubs collected donations to
save “the starving Armenians.”
The movement raised $110 million for relief – equivalent to $1.3
billion today – for food and medical supplies for refugee camps and
schools for Armenian orphans. Donations also helped Armenians
resettle in Europe and America.
Many settled in North Jersey. Bergen County now has a thriving
community of more than 8,300 Armenian-Americans, almost 1 percent of
the population.
Balakian said the movement drew on the same utopian, spiritual
energies that fueled abolition, civil rights and feminism – but it
has largely faded from accounts of American history.
“There’s been a big misunderstanding of this, that Americans didn’t
understand this, and didn’t care,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
Balakian recounts in the book how the word “genocide” and the phrase
“crimes against humanity” were first coined in response to the
Armenian slaughter. But he said the grass-roots movement could not
persuade the U.S. government to intervene.
“My book is the story of American gridlock,” he said. “We have the
people petitioning for real intervention and real justice and we have
the State Department refusing to take political action.”
Balakian believes the book could help to reawaken Americans to the
roots of their human rights activities.
“It set in motion the traditions we now have for international human
rights work and activism, such as Amnesty [International], the
engagements with the Balkans … and the Holocaust Museum. All owe
something to a process that started back then in the period of the
1890s to 1920s.”

Aftershocks of Ukraine and Georgia are stirring up rallies in Central Asia.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Democracy rising in ex-Soviet states
February 10, 2005
MOSCOW – The peaceful street revolts that recently brought democratic
change to Georgia and Ukraine could spawn copy-cat upheavals against
authoritarian regimes across the former Soviet Union, experts say.
Waving orange scarves and banners – the colors of Ukraine’s revolution
– dozens of Uzbeks demonstrated in the capital Tashkent last week
over the demolition of their homes to make way for border fencing.
According to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the protest
compelled the autocratic government of Islam Karimov, widely condemned
for human rights abuses, to pay compensation.
In Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, hundreds of pro-democracy activists
rallied on Saturday to demand that upcoming parliamentary elections
be free and fair.
>> From Kyrgyzstan on the Chinese border to Moldova, where Europe’s
only ruling Communist Party faces elections next month, opposition
parties are eagerly studying Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” and Ukraine’s
“Orange Revolution,” which led to the triumph of pro-democracy
forces. Opposition groups are even selecting symbols for their banners
when the moment arrives – tulips for the Kyrgyz opposition, grapes
for Moldova’s anticommunists.
“The recent events in Ukraine have made people everywhere understand
that taking to the streets gets the authorities’ attention,” says
Tatiana Poloskova, deputy director of the independent Institute of
Modern Diaspora, which studies Russian minorities in former Soviet
countries.
Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili and newly inaugurated Ukrainian
President Viktor Yushchenko were clearly addressing their former
Soviet colleagues last month when they hailed their revolts as the
leading edge of “a new wave of liberation that will lead to the final
victory of freedom and democracy on the continent of Europe.”
The prospect has sent shudders through the Kremlin, still smarting from
the “loss” of pro-Moscow regimes in Georgia and Ukraine, and reeling
in the face of its own grass-roots revolt by pensioners protesting
cuts in social services. For Russia, where authoritarian methods have
been taking root under President Vladimir Putin (news – web sites),
the prospect of pro-democracy rebellions sweeping the former Soviet
Union seems to threaten the underpinnings of domestic stability. The
pro-Western bent of the new regimes in Ukraine and Georgia may also
threaten the economic ties Russia has built with post-Soviet regimes
from Armenia to Uzbekistan.
First in line could be Kyrgyzstan, where any official attempt
to rig parliamentary elections slated for Feb. 27 could trigger
Ukrainian popular action. Strongman Askar Akayev, who’s ruled the tiny
central Asian state for the past 15 years, has already faced street
demonstrations over a failed attempt to ban his chief opponent from
the parliamentary race. Mr. Akayev has pledged to step down in October,
and appears to be grooming his daughter, Bermet, to succeed him. After
a recent Moscow visit with Vladimir Putin, Akayev warned that if the
opposition takes to the streets, “it would lead to civil war.”
But some Russian experts see a “Tulip Revolution” in the near
future for Kyrgyzstan, which hosts both Russian and US military
bases. “Akayev is lost,” says Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the
Carnegie Center in Moscow. “The opposition is strong, well-organized,
and has international as well as domestic backing.”
The Kremlin may fear that political ferment in Kyrgyzstan could spread
to more important allies in central Asia. The long-time leader of
oil-rich Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has fixed elections
and changed the Constitution to extend his rule, last month dissolved
the leading opposition party after it sent a delegation to Ukraine
to study the Orange Revolution. He also moved to close down a local
institute funded by global financier George Soros, who has backed
pro-democracy movements in Ukraine and elsewhere.
In Uzbekistan, which also hosts a key US military base, President
Karimov, a former Soviet politburo member, has ruled with an iron fist
since the demise of the USSR. Karimov recently jeered publicly at those
“who are dying to see that the way the elites in Georgia and Ukraine
changed becomes a model to be emulated in other countries.” He warned
bluntly: “We have the necessary force for that.”
Some experts argue that, while velvet revolution may be possible in
semi-authoritarian Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, it is a very distant
prospect in Uzbekistan because democracy and civil society are barely
developed there. Last week’s protests in Tashkent, though based on
a narrow economic issue, hint that instability may lie just beneath
the regime’s tough and orderly surface.
Uzbekistan’s gas-rich neighbor, Turkmenistan, is run by a North
Korean-style dictatorship that permits no dissent of any kind. “In
absolutely authoritarian regimes like [Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan]
the threat of ‘Orange Revolution’ is just used by the leaders to
crack down harder,” says Masha Lipman, an expert with the Carnegie
Center in Moscow. “There is no chance for the opposition to actually
organize anything, much less a revolution.”
That paradox may help to explain why Georgians were able to rally
successfully against the lethargic regime of Eduard Shevardnadze, when
it attempted to rig the 2003 parliamentary polls, while protesters
in neighboring Azerbaijan were put down when the much more efficient
dictatorship of Gaidar Aliyev imposed the succession of his son,
Ilham, through fraudulent elections just a month earlier.
Ukrainians were able to successfully mobilize against vote-rigging late
last year in part because Ukraine had relatively free institutions,
including a parliament and Supreme Court that the president was not
able to control. In next-door Belarus, which US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice (news – web sites) has labeled “the last outpost
of tyranny in Europe,” dictator Alexander Lukashenko has crushed the
opposition and banished nongovernmental organizations, and looks set
to be handily reelected in showpiece elections later this year.
But an upsurge looks increasingly likely in ex-Soviet Moldova, where
Communist President Vladimir Voronin has lost Moscow support. He faces
a strong challenge in next month’s parliamentary elections from the
pro-Western Christian Democrats, who reportedly are sporting orange
scarves and flags in the capital.
“The Kremlin suddenly finds itself severely challenged to change its
strategies, both at home and in former Soviet countries,” says Sergei
Kazyonnov, an expert with the independent Institute for National
Security and Strategic Research in Moscow. “It can go on depending
on political manipulations and under-the-carpet deals with local
elites. But it is already becoming obvious that there are just too many
different realities here, and an unworkable multiplicity of carpets.”