Category: News

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 7 2004
President to leave for France September 7
Baku, September 6, AssA-Irada
President Ilham Aliyev is expected to leave for France on September 7.
On the first day of the visit, Aliyev will meet with his French
counterpart Jacques Chirac to discuss issues pertaining to bilateral
relations and peace settlement of the Upper Garabagh conflict, the
French Embassy in Baku said.
Also discussed will be investments by French companies in Azerbaijan.
On September 9, a ceremony on presenting the goodwill ambassador
title to the President’s wife Mehriban Aliyeva will be held at the
UNESCO residence in Paris.
Commenting on President Aliyev’s visit, prominent political scholar
Rasim Musabayov said that before the forthcoming talks in Astana, the
President may clarify certain details in his meeting President Chirac.
“Presidents Chirac and Putin of Russia have leverage to influence
the Armenian leadership. The use of the French President’s political
potential may appear productive to President Aliyev, although such
meetings did not yield any results in the past”, Musabayov said.*

Detroit News
Sept 7 2004
GOP convention sees growth in minorities
Republicans claim count is up 70%
By Alison Bethel / News Washington Bureau Chief
NEW YORK — Minorities are more in evidence at the Republican National
Convention than ever before, showing that the party is making progress
— but still has miles to go — in reflecting America’s ethnic makeup.
Convention officials say the number of minorities in attendance is
up 70 percent from 2000, now representing about 17 percent of the
4,952 delegates. Of the 118 delegates from Michigan, 24 are listed
as minority members: 12 blacks, three Hispanics, two Chaldeans, two
Native Americans and one each of Lebanese, Native Hawaiian, Caribbean,
Asian and Armenian.
“The number of blacks — the number of first time blacks — I have seen
at the convention and at the hotel has just made me excited,” said
Mercedes Kinnee, a businesswoman and black delegate from Flint. “It
shows that Bush has really reached out.”
Thirty-year-old Andrew Wendt, a Hispanic candidate for state
representative in Saginaw and a delegate from that city, agreed.
“Today we were at the Michigan delegation breakfast and walking in was
(former black Republican congressman) J.C. Watts,” he said. “We see
it on television and everyone says, ‘The Republican Party should be
reaching out,’ and it has been reaching out. Seeing all these African
Americans and Hispanics running for office and being at this convention
is inspiring.”
Some have criticized the party for listing Lebanese and Chaldeans as
minority groups, But Michigan Republican Party spokesman Matt Davis
shoots back that the calculation of minorities is no different than
presidential candidate John Kerry’s Mozambique-born wife, Teresa
Heinz Kerry, referring to herself as African-American.
“Talk about a stretch,” he said, turning his attention back to
Michigan’s delegation. “It’s not just more diverse than it was, it’s
getting more diverse and that’s a testament to the way Republicans
are addressing the concerns of minorities.”
The non-partisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
in Washington reported this month that the 167 black delegates at
this year’s GOP convention represent a record 96.5 percent increase,
with the largest number of blacks coming from Michigan, Louisiana,
Maryland and New York. Hispanics represent the largest minority group
at the convention with 297 delegates this year.
But while those attending the convention tow the party line about
Bush’s impact on the lives of minorities, others wonder how meaningful
the increase really is, particularly when whites make up most of the
convention’s officers and speakers.
“A: Have they increased their numbers? Yeah. However, this is a top
down increase in the numbers. There has been no increase in black
support for the Republicans nor has there been any increase in the
number of African Americans in the primary process or the delegate
process,” said David Bositis, senior research associate at the
Joint Center.
“The leadership and the Bush campaign, for their own reasons mostly
having to do with appealing to white swing voters, have determined it
is more beneficial to have more minority voters,” Bositis added. The
Republican Party, he contends, increased the overall number of
delegates by 450 people this year. “This isn’t like they had to turn
away white people. They have as many, if not more, white people …
They purposely picked African Americans for reasons that are a
political calculation. But is the party any more diverse? No. It’s
no more diverse than last time.”
In the early decades of the 20th century, blacks voted overwhelmingly
for Republicans, the party of Lincoln. “The big change came (in 1968)
with Barry Goldwater and he effectively transformed the party,” said
Bositis. “He very much brought the South into the Republican party,
really for the first time, and the nature of the relationship between
African Americans and the Republican party changed. When it became
a white southern party it meant that African Americans were going to
have quite a different relationship with the party.”
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who spoke during prime time
Tuesday from the convention floor, said the Republican Party is making
efforts to bring its message to the minority community. The visibility
might not be there, he said, but the numbers are growing.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve walked into a room and people say,
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ The Republican Party has
to state the issue of why the party works for blacks. And it’s a
tough case to make because we’ve allowed another group (Democrats)
to define us for 40 years,” said Steele.
Adds Bishop Keith Butler, of Word of Faith Christian Center in
Southfield: “The GOP is going to the black community … This is the
first time really that I have seen it happen like this. There is an
old saying, ‘If you want to catch fish, you have to go to where the
fish are.’ “

California Courier Online, September 9, 2004
1 – Commentary
Sargsian/Agassi Match at US Open
Provides Publicity for Armenians
By Harut Sassounian
California Courier Publisher
**************************************************************************
2 – Mardirossian Wins $14 Million
Verdict for Family of Bus Driver
3 – Balakian Named Honorary Member
Of Armenia’s Writer’s Union
4 – Eighth Annual Celebrating Saroyan Announces
Speakers for Sept. 26 Program in Bay Area
5 – Armenian Genocide Survivors File Class
Action Lawsuit Against German Banks
6 – Edwards Named Stanford QB
************************************************************************
1 – Commentary
Sargsian/Agassi Match at US Open
Provides Publicity for Armenians
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
Last week, when I wrote in this column that a handful of outstanding
Armenian athletes could put Armenia on the map of the world, little did I
know that my wish would come true so quickly.
Sargis Sargsian from Armenia has become the sensation of the tennis world
in recent days by winning several marathon and nail-biting matches at the
US Open Tennis Tournament in New York City, including his victory over
Olympic gold medalist Nicolas Massu.
Wire services and newspapers around the world have covered Sargsian’s
tennis victories, repeatedly mentioning that he is from Armenia. The New
York Times featured him consecutively on Sept. 5 and 6.
To top it all, the CBS network happened to broadcast the Sargis
Sargsian-Andre Agassi match on Labor Day when millions of viewers were at
home watching the game on TV. The CBS commentators made repeated references
to Sargsian’s Armenian background, Andre Agassi’s friendship with Sargis
due to their common Armenian heritage, and the hospitality of the
Mansourian family that had hosted Sargis in their Connecticut home when he
first arrived in the United States a decade ago.
It was also pleasing to note that Andre Agassi openly referred to his
Armenian background during a network TV interview. This is a big
turn-around from the time almost 20 years ago when his father yelled at me
for asking Andre about his Armenian heritage during a press conference in
Los Angeles.
Armenia and Armenians got millions of dollars worth of free publicity
during the past few days, thanks to Andre Agassi and Sargis Sargsian. One
can imagine how much more publicity can be gained from the successful
participation of Armenian athletes in such high-profile sporting events,
should a fund be set up to support their training?
Wiesenthal Center Blasts Turkish Anti-Semitic Article
Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Director for
International Liaison, sent a letter to the Turkish Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul last month, expressing horror at an anti-Semitic article
published in the August 17th issue of the Turkish newspaper Vakit. The
writer, Abdurrahim Karakoc, had glorified Hitler and justified the
Holocaust.
Here are brief excerpts from that article:
“The Concentration camps which were set up in Germany during World War II
have been set up in Israel now. It is impossible not to admire the
forethought of Adolf Hitler who was presented to the public opinion as
‘racist, sadist, [and] monster’.”
Karakoc went on to say that Hitler “predicted what would happen these days.
He got rid of the Jews, because he knew that the conjurer Jews, who
perceive racism as a religion and take pleasure in splattering the world
with blood, would be a big trouble for the world.” Karakoc added: “We
should, in fact, be thankful to Hitler, as we are all thankful to Osama bin
Laden today.”
Dr. Samuels, in his letter, reminded Foreign Minister Gul that he and Rabbi
Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal Center’s Associate Dean, had met with him in
Ankara on January 12, 2004, during which they had thanked him for
condemning anti-Semitism.
In his letter, Dr. Samuels told Gul: “The content of the Vakit article …
not only appears to violate Turkish law, but its apologia for genocide and
incitement to anti-Semitism contravene the anti-racism provisions of the
European Union which Turkey aspires to join. They also negate conventions
of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe [OSCE], to which Turkey is a signatory.”
The Wiesenthal Center urged the Turkish Government to vigorously denounce
and “publicly condemn this article and to take disciplinary measures
against its author and the editors of Vakit.”
The Vakit article is not an aberration. As various polls have repeatedly
indicated, both the government and people of Turkey hold very strong
anti-Jewish views. Turkish newspapers from time to time publish blatantly
anti-Semitic articles. That is why we have regularly cautioned some
Jewish-American organizations not to join Turkish anti-Semites in lobbying
against the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
The Wiesenthal Center should be commended for not putting up with such
vicious anti-Jewish articles for the sake of Israel’s strategic interests
in the Middle East! In fact the Center issued a statement on June 17, 2004,
directly condemning the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for
accusing Israel of state terrorism.
Ironically, another Jewish organization, the American Jewish Congress,
honored Erdogan earlier this year with its “Profiles in Courage” Award. In
contrast to the Wiesenthal Center’s criticisms of both Vakit and Erdogan,
the American Jewish Congress has remained shamefully silent!
**************************************************************************
2 – Mardirossian Wins $14 Million
Verdict for Family of Bus Driver
By Blair Clarkson
Daily Journal Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES – The family of a 34-year-old driver who died after being
catapulted, seat and all, through the front window of her bus won a $13.7
million verdict Tuesday from the charter company that maintained
the vehicle.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Farrell found Inglewood-based Four
Winds Inc. liable for the April 2001 death of LaShaun Clemmons because of
“mismatched” and “inadequate” bolts that mechanics had used to attach her
seat to the floor of the bus, according to the victim’s lawyer.
“She didn’t recognize the defect,” said Garo Mardirossian of Los Angeles’
Mardirossian & Associates, “but the [Four Winds] mechanics should have.”
The lawyer for Four Winds, Gerald Malanga, declined to comment on the
decision.
Clemmons, a South Los Angeles resident and the mother of two teenage sons,
was driving the empty bus south on Interstate 5 near Valencia when she hit
an icy patch and lost control, Mardirossian said.
Clemmons struck a car parked in the median lane, plowed into the center
median itself and was launched, still strapped into her seat, through the
right front windshield.
She slid across five lanes and was run over by a tractor-trailer, which
killed her instantly, according to Mardirossian’s trial brief.
Mardirossian claimed the seat was moved from its factory-installed position
at an unknown point and reattached with improper bolts, turning a moderate
accident into a fatal one.
He alleged that Four Winds mechanics were negligent for failing to notice
or replace the improper bolts.
“The accident itself was survivable,” Mardirossian said. “But once she was
ejected from the vehicle, all bets were off.”
Clemmons originally was employed by Four Winds and leased the bus from the
firm. In 2000, Clemmons purchased the bus from Four Winds and became an
independent charter driver.
However, Four Winds remained responsible for maintaining the bus and
performing vehicle inspections, according to the brief.
The bulk of the verdict, $12 million, was awarded to Clemmons’ two sons,
Tayarie Baker, 15, and Antonio Baker Jr., 16, who live with their
grandmother. The father, Antonio Baker Sr., who is in prison, received
$400,000, Mardirossian said.
“She was the glue that held that family together,” he said.
Mardirossian, a prominent plaintiffs’ attorney, won a $9.4 million
settlement in 2002 from a Tustin-based Ford dealership for a similar
accident. A Newport Beach family was tossed from their Explorer sport
utility vehicle in a rollover on Interstate 15.
Mardirossian argued that the dealership failed to make proper repairs on
Catherine and Agop Gozukara’s SUV, which veered out of control and flipped
over a concrete barrier, according to news reports.
A jury ruled that the 1994 Explorer had a design defect that could cause
rollovers but said that the defect didn’t cause the Gozukaras’ accident,
diluting the impact of the ruling, according to reports.
The family also won a $5.5 million settlement from the state Department of
Transportation and a highway construction firm.
All five passengers sustained serious injuries, including Catherine
Gozukara, 40, who was pregnant. She became a paraplegic.
**************************************************************************
3 – Balakian Named Honorary Member
Of Armenia’s Writer’s Union
YEREVAN (Noyan Tapan) – Author Peter Balakian visited Armenia recently at
the invitation of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) and the
Writers’ Union of Armenia. It was the writer’s second visit to the
homeland.
During an Aug. 10 meeting with journalists and the AGBU leadership,
Balakian said he first visited Armenia in 1987.
“It was a journey that has changed my life, I would never started writing
so, if there wasn’t this visit.” Hailing the writer, Levon Ananian,
Chairman of the Writers’ Union of Armenia, stressed that regardless of the
loss of the Armenian language, Balakian remained an Armenian, he had
researched his roots and presented the tragedy of the beginning of the
century, the Armenian Genocide, to the world community. “The study of the
Genocide topic made my art more common to all mankind,” said Balakian. He
also said that his book “Sad Days of the World” translated by Artem
Harutiunian will be published this year.
Levon Ananian confered the rank of the honored member of the Writers’ Union
of Armenia to Peter Balakian.
Balakian is the author of eight books. His book, entitled “Burning
Tigris,” received several American prizes, was released in 2004, and the
earlier “Black Dog of Fate” book was awarded with “The New York Times”
Prize as the best book of the year.
**************************************************************************
4 – Eighth Annual Celebrating Saroyan Announces
Speakers for Sept. 26 Program in Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – The Eighth Annual Celebrating Saroyan event is coming up on
Sept. 26, and interest is high, expectations at a peak. What will they do
next and who will be the speakers?
Expect the unexpected.
Popular Saroyan speaker and writer of, ” My Real Work is Being” David
Calonne, Ph.D., will be speaking about one of his favorite authors, William
Saroyan. The complex, colorful, provocative title is, “Saroyan on
Creativity: Genius, Madness and Inspiration.
A French counterpart arriving in San Francisco from Paris to also speak
about Saroyan is Hagop Papazian, Ph.D. His thesis was received on the
subject of Saroyan and covered “The Human Comedy,” the short story and the
autobiography. His equally provocative Title is “Writing: A Saroyanesque
Engagement.”
The American Conservatory Theater will again be part of the program
presenting a scene from a Saroyan play never produced in America.
The afternoon promises to be an enlightening experience full of Saroyan
with avenues yet to be explored. Those who cherish and delight in the
varied, heightened, arabesque Saroyan life will leave filled with threads
of hope, anguish, delight and above all, the feeling that William Saroyan
and his loud antics and jovial nature, words of insight and despair will be
an integral part of the 21st century.
The program will be held in the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public
Library, Koret Auditorium, lower level. The library is in the Civic Center
located on Grove at Larkin.
The Sept. 26 program starts at 2 p.m. and the doors open at 1:30. Seating
is limited and open. The program is free to the public.
The program will open with Cory Shakarian who has been with the San
Francisco Giants for seven years, introducing Jacqueline Papazian Kazarian,
Executive Director of the William Saroyan Literary Foundation,
International. This year’s program will be dedicated to the memory of Aram
Jack Kevorkian who was a keynote speaker at the Fourth Celebrating Saroyan
event. For more information, visit the website , or
call (415) 307-4418.
The co-sponsors of this event are numerous and include the nation’s oldest
public forum, The Commonwealth Club of California.
**************************************************************************
5- Armenian Genocide Survivors File Class
Action Lawsuit Against German Banks
LOS ANGELES – A class action lawsuit was filed Aug. 31, in a Los Angeles
Federal Court against two German Banks, giant Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) and
Allianz acquired Dresdner Bank. Armenian Genocide survivors and their
heirs, the Plaintiffs, charge both banks, the Defendants, of several acts
of wrongdoing and demand recovery of assets. Dresdner Bank was acquired by
Allianz (NYSE: AZ) in 2001.
Deutsche Bank was Adolf Hitler’s lead banker. Documents released by bank
historian Manfred Pohl, who made them public in February 1999, revealed for
the first time how Deutsche Bank financed much of the construction of the
Auschwitz concentration camp. The documents provide evidence of the secret
SS-controlled accounts used to transfer funds stolen from Jews who had been
deported or sent to death camps during World War II. The Armenian Genocide
occurred during World War I, in 1915 – when reigning Turks of the Ottoman
Empire mass-murdered over 2.1 million Armenians in present day Turkey.
Five families filed as Lead Plaintiffs, and since the case is a class
action lawsuit, it was filed on behalf of Armenians who: 1) made deposits
with the Banks, 2) who were killed in the Armenian Genocide and 3) whose
heirs were not repaid deposits on their accounts.
In addition to the demand of asset recovery, plaintiffs are seeking
compensation for unpaid wages and other damages stemming from the use of
plaintiffs’ ancestors and other Armenians as slave and forced laborers
during the time of the Genocide.
Plaintiffs have information supporting wrongdoings by Deutsche Bank and
Dresdner Bank of engaging in the following acts during the Armenian
Genocide and World War I:
1 – Knowingly trading with Young Turks in goods made by slave labor
2 – Acting as the secret banks of Young Turks, aiding and abating in
looting, and functioning as conduit for looted assets – laundering for
profit from goods from Armenians
3 – Directly owning / controlling the Berlin – Baghdad Railway that used
slave labor
4 – Taking 100,000 Armenians by rail to the death camps and charging them
for this trip to death
Attorney for the plaintiffs, Vartkes Yeghiayan of Los Angeles says,
“Europeans nicknamed the Ottomans and reigning Turks as the “Sick Man of
Europe” during World War I. Turks lacked governmental organization;
therefore, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank stepped in to help them
organize, aid and abate in looting—profiting from the innocent. They
haven’t cleared their names in history by settling with Jewish Holocaust
survivors. The Armenian Diaspora will not waiver either.”
In June 2004, Armenian survivors and heirs settled with US giant insurer,
New York Life Insurance Company for $20 million dollars, recovering funds
for unpaid life insurance policies.
Demirjian, et al. v. Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, (Case No. CV04-7248),
a class action law suit in Federal Court was filed on August 31, 2004,
seeking payment for recovery of account deposits, as well as punitive
damages for unpaid wages and other reparations.
The attorney representing plaintiffs, Vartkes Yeghiayan of Yeghiayan and
Associates, recovered unpaid life insurance benefits for over 2,000
Armenian policyholders and their heirs in settling Marootian et al. v. New
York Life Insurance Company, on Aug. 31, 2004. He is an expert in Armenian
asset recovery and Genocide losses.
**************************************************************************
6 – Edwards Named Stanford QB
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Sophomore Trent Edwards will be the starting
quarterback for the Stanford Cardinals football team this season.
He is the grandson of the late Ben Suren Morjig(ian) of Castro Valley.
Morjig, then the vice-chairman of the Pacific Association of the Amateur
Athletic Union, was one of the early backers of the Western Armenian Summer
Games, along with Richard Demirjian, President of the Western Armenian
Athletic Association.
Edwards attended most of the Armenian Olympics up until the time of his
freshman year in Stanford University, according to Demirjian.
**************************************************************************
********************************************************
The California Courier On-Line is a service provided by the California
Courier. Subscriptions or changes of address should not be transmitted
through this service. Information in that regard should be telephoned
to (818) 409-0949; faxed to: (818) 409-9207, or e-mailed to:
[email protected]. Letters to the editor concerning issues
addressed in the Courier may be e-mailed, provided it is signed by
the author. Phone and/or E-mail address is also required to verify
authorship.

ARMENIAN PUBLIC HEALTH ALLIANCE UNDERSCORES ADOPTION OF ANTI-SMOKING LAW
ArmenPress
Sept 7 2004
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS: Reporters of several Armenian
newspapers and one TV station, namely- Respublika Armenia, Aravot,
Golos Armenii, The New Yerevan Times and H2 TV station were named as
winners of a competition for a wide coverage of anti-smoking campaign,
announced by the Armenian Public Health Alliance. Prizes were handed
over to the winners today.
the Armenian Public Health Alliance has been a functioning organization
for the second year now and has been implementing anti-smoking campaign
for the last 9 months aiming to raise public awareness about the
dangers of smoking.
The group also fought for Armenia’s signing of the Anti-Smoking
Frame Convention which was open for it by June 29. The alliance
members voiced their disappointment that Armenia did not join
the convention. The alliance has sent the Convention to Armenian
Constitutional Court which ruled that it does not run counter to the
Armenian Constitution and may be therefore signed.
Currently, an anti-smoking legislative package is under circulation
which will be presented to the discussions of the National Assembly
commissions on September 10. The alliance thinks that this law also
will be a step forward in fighting against smoking.

ASBAREZ ONLINE
TOP STORIES
09/07/2004
TO ACCESS PREVIOUS ASBAREZ ONLINE EDITIONS PLEASE VISIT OUR
WEBSITE AT <;HTTP:// 1) Poland, Armenia Strengthen Ties 2) Armenian Caucus Co-Chairs Commend Karabagh on 13th Anniversary of Independence 3) Khatami, Iranian Delegation to Arrive in Armenia 1) Poland, Armenia Strengthen Ties WARSAW (Deutsche Presse-Agentur)--The presidents of Poland and Armenia vowed Monday to continue bilateral cooperation aimed at fostering western-oriented economic and political development in the former Soviet Caucusus republic. Following talks with President Robert Kocharian, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski termed bilateral political relations with Armenia "excellent." Asked whether Armenia's membership of the European Union could one day become a reality, Kwasniewski said though he is unable to "prophesize" about the prospect, he offered that EU member Poland share with Armenia its almost 15 years experience in transitioning from communism to a market economy, and dictatorship to democracy. Kocharian noted that the most important task the South Caucasus faces is achieving "predictable progress" to carry out political and economic reforms necessary to attract business and investment from EU countries. Both leaders also expressed hope that a solution would be found to the long-standing dispute between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over the territory of Mountainous Karabagh Republic. The Armenian leader vowed to send 50 soldiers including medical personnel to join the Polish-led multi-national contingent stationed in south-central Iraq. The contingent is unlikely to be deployed before the end of this year. Kwasniewski confirmed that bilateral Polish-Armenian agreements on fighting international organized crime, as well as military, economic, and industrial cooperation were finalized Monday in Warsaw. The Armenian president met with Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka and the leaders of the upper and lower houses of the Polish Parliament later on Monday. 2) Armenian Caucus Co-Chairs Commend Karabagh on 13th Anniversary of Independence WASHINGTON, DC--On the occasion of the 13th anniversary of Mountainous Karabagh Republic's independence, US Reps. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), co-chairmen of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, commended the people of Karabagh. In a letter to President Arkady Ghoukasian, Knollenberg and Pallone wrote, "Despite all the difficulties, today Nagorno Karabagh is a proud state committed to the values of democracy, respect for human rights, and an open civil society." "Today, as we extend our congratulations to the people and the authorities of Nagorno Karabagh on the 13th anniversary of the Proclamation of the NKR, we welcome your determination and efforts in strengthening Karabagh's democratic institutions and market economy. "Karabagh has proven to be a capable, reliable, and serious partner of the international community," the lawmakers continued. "Peace and stability in the South Caucasus are not possible without a contribution from Nagorno Karabagh. We assure you of our strong commitment to Karabagh's security and development," the letter concluded. 3) Khatami, Iranian Delegation to Arrive in Armenia YEREVAN (Armenpress)--Iran's president Mohammad Khatami is due to arrive in Armenia on September 8 for a two-day official visit, at the invitation of his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharian. His delegation will include Iran's foreign minister, Economic Affairs and Finance, as well as Commerce ministers, government officials, and journalists. Kocharian and Khatami will first meet face-to-face, then hold expanded talks with other officials. The meetings are expected to produce bilateral agreeemnts. Khatami will address members of the Armenia's National Assembly and will meet with the prime minister of Armenia, and Catholicos Karekin II. Students and professors of Yerevan State University will also host Khatami. The Iranian delegation will visit the Armenian Genocide Monument and Yerevan's Blue Mosque. Before departing for Iran, Khatami will also meet with Iranian citizens working in Armenia. Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, the fifth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was elected to office in May 1977. All subscription inquiries and changes must be made through the proper carrier and not Asbarez Online. ASBAREZ ONLINE does not transmit address changes and subscription requests. (c) 2004 ASBAREZ ONLINE. All Rights Reserved. ASBAREZ provides this news service to ARMENIAN NEWS NETWORK members for academic research or personal use only and may not be reproduced in or through mass media outlets.

Armenian president signs up in condolences book in Russian embassy
By Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 7, 2004 Tuesday
YEREVAN, September 7 — Armenian President Robert Kocharyan signed
up in the book of condolences at the Russian embassy in Yerevan on
Tuesday. Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan also visited
the embassy.
The embassy thanked the Armenian administration, political parties
and public organizations, diplomatic missions accredited in Yerevan,
average people, students and schoolchildren for condolences,
solidarity, moral and material support to the people of Russia in
connection with the terrorist act in Beslan, North Ossetia.

Armenian Union of Russia condemns Beslan terrorist act
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 7, 2004 Tuesday
MOSCOW, September 7 — The Armenian Union of Russia has condemned
the organizers and perpetrators of the barbaric act of international
terrorism against helpless children and their parents in Beslan,
North Ossetia.
“We reject terrorism as a method of solving any kinds of problems. We
regard it as barbarity and savagery,” says a Tuesday statement of
the Union.
The Union presented condolences to families of the Beslan victims
and expressed the readiness to help.

ARMENIA READY TO TAKE IN COUNTRY FELLOWS FROM BESLAN FOR RECOVERY
ArmenPress
Sept 7 2004
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS: After visiting the Russian embassy in
Yerevan to express his sadness and solidarity with Russia over Beslan
school hostage tragedy, Armenian prime minister Andranik Margarian said
to reporters that his Republican Party and the government condemn any
manifestation of terrorism. “What happened in Beslan caused pain to all
of us and our goal is to combine efforts to fight that evil,” he said.
The Armenian prime minister said after the collapse of the former
Soviet Union many CIS states appeared to be unable to recover security
capacities in order to ensure their citizens’ safety. He said the
Armenian health ministry has already sent a batch of humanitarian
assistance to Beslan and added that some Armenian building companies
would like to participate in reconstruction projects there. “Armenia
is ready to accept ethnic Armenians who suffered in the hostage taking
to help them recover here,” he said.

Mind the Gap
Turkey is everyone’s idea of a “successful” modern Muslim state
A new novel will make you think twice
The Atlantic Monthly
October 2004
Books
“A Bit On The Side,” by William Trevor (Viking)
“Snow,” by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf)
By Christopher Hitchens
Well before the fall of 2001 a search was in progress, on the part
of Western readers and critics, for a novelist in the Muslim world
who could act the part of dragoman, an interpretive guide to the
East. In part this was and remains a quest for reassurance. The hope
was (and is) that an apparently “answering” voice, attuned to irony
and rationality and to the quotidian rather than the supernatural,
would pick up the signals sent by self-critical Americans and Europeans
and remit them in an intelligible form. Hence the popularity of the
Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, who seemed in his Cairo café-society mode to
be potentially “one of us”-even more so when he had the misfortune
to be stabbed in the neck by a demented fundamentalist. There was
a much lesser vogue for spikier secular writers, such as the late
Abdelrahman Munif, author of the Cities of Salt quintet, and the late
Israeli Arab Emil Habibi, whose novel Saeed the Pessoptimist is the
favorite narrative of many Palestinians (and who also had the grace
to win Israel’s national prize for the best writing in Hebrew). In
some ways those two were not quite “Muslim” enough for the purposes
of authenticity.
Orhan Pamuk, a thoughtful native of Istanbul who lived for three
years in New York, has for some time been in contention for the post
of mutual or reciprocal fictional interpreter. Turkey is, physically
and historically, the “bridge” between East and West, and I have
yet to read a Western newspaper report from the country that fails
to employ that cheering metaphor. (I cannot be certain how many
“Eastern” articles and broadcasts are similarly affirmative.) With
his previous novel, My Name Is Red, Pamuk himself became a kind of
register of this position, dwelling on the interpenetration of Islamic
and Western styles and doing so in a “postmodern” fashion that laid
due emphasis on texts, figures, and representations. After 9/11 he
was the natural choice for The New York Review of Books, to which
he contributed a decent if unoriginal essay that expressed horror
at the atrocities while admonishing Westerners not to overlook the
wretched of the earth. In Turkey he spoke up for Kurdish rights and
once refused a state literary award. Some of his fellow secularists,
however, felt that he was too ready to “balance” his views with
criticism of the Kemalist and military forces that act as guarantors
of Turkey’s secularism.
In a Bush speech to the new membership of NATO, delivered in Istanbul
last June, one of the President’s handlers was astute enough to insert
a quotation from Pamuk, to the effect that the finest view of the
city was not from its European or its Asian shores but from-yes-the
“bridge that unites them.” The important thing, as the President went
on to intone from Pamuk, “is not the clash of parties, civilizations,
cultures, East and West.” No; what is important is to recognize
“that other peoples in other continents and civilizations” are
“exactly like you.” De te fabula narratur.
Human beings are of course essentially the same, if not exactly
identical. But somehow this evolutionary fact does not prevent
clashes of varying intensity from being the norm rather than the
exception. “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest,” Albert
Einstein is supposed to have said. This already questionable call
to amnesia translates badly in cultures that regard Einstein himself
as a Satanic imp spawned from the hideous loins of Jewish degeneration.
In his new novel Pamuk gives us every reason to suppose that he is far
more ambivalent about this facile “bridge-building” stuff than he has
so far let on. The plot is complex yet susceptible of summary. Narrated
by Pamuk, with the advantages of both foresight and hindsight, it
shows an anomic young Turk named Kerim Alakusoglu, a poet with a bad
case of literary sterility and sexual drought, as he negotiates a
moment of personal and political crisis in the city of Kars, on the
Turkish-Armenian frontier. Disliking his given name, the man prefers
to go under the acronym formed by his initials: “Ka.” Having taken
part in the violent and futile Marxist-Leninist student movement that
was eventually obliterated by the military coup of 1980, and having
followed so many of his ex-comrades into exile in Germany, Ka is a
burned-out case. Pretending to seek a journalistic assignment in this
remote town, which has recently witnessed an epidemic of suicide
by young girls thwarted in their desire to take the Muslim veil,
he is in fact magnetized by the possibility of seeing Ipek, the lost
flame of his youth. As he arrives, a blizzard isolates the city and
almost buries it in snow-for which the Turkish word is kar. One might
therefore deploy a cliché and say that the action is frozen in time.
When frozen in the present, the mise-en-scène discloses a community
of miserably underemployed people, caught among a ramshackle state
machine, a nascent Islamism, and the claims of competing nationalist
minorities. A troupe of quasi-Brechtian traveling players is in town,
and it enacts a “play within a play,” in which the bitter violence
of the region is translated with shocking effect directly onto the
stage. Drawn into the social and religious conflict, Ka seems to
alternate between visions of “snow” in its macrocosmic form-the chilly
and hostile masses-and its microcosmic: the individual beauty and
uniqueness of each flake. Along the scrutinized axes that every flake
manifests he rediscovers his vocation and inspiration as a poet and
arranges a cycle of verses. This collection is lost when, on his return
to Frankfurt, he is shot down in a street of the red-light district.
In terms of characterization the novel is disappointing,
precisely because its figures lack the crystalline integrity of
individuals. Ipek, for example, appears on almost every page yet
is barely allowed any quality other than her allegedly wondrous
beauty. The protagonists speak their lines as Islamists, secularists,
conformists, and opportunists. And the author leaves no room for doubt
that he finds the Islamists the most persuasive and courageous. This is
true in spite of the utter nonsense that he makes them spout. A couple
of Muslim boys corner Ka and demand that he answer this question,
about a dead girl he never met:
Now we’d like to know if you could do us both a favor. The thing is,
we can both accept that Teslime might have been driven to the sin of
suicide by the pressures from her parents and the state. It’s very
painful; Fazil can’t stop thinking that the girl he loved committed
the sin of suicide. But if Teslime was a secret atheist like the one
in the story, if she was one of those unlucky souls who don’t even
know that they are atheists, or if she committed suicide because she
was an atheist, for Fazil this is a catastrophe: It means he was in
love with an atheist.
I should caution the potential reader that a great deal of the
dialogue is as lengthy and stilted as that, even if in this
instance the self-imposed predicaments of the pious, along with
their awful self-pitying solipsism, are captured fairly well. So is
the superiority/inferiority complex of many provincial Turks-almost
masochistic when it comes to detailing their own woes, yet intensely
resentful of any “outside” sympathy. Most faithfully rendered, however,
is the pervading sense that secularism has been, or is being, rapidly
nullified by diminishing returns. The acting troupe is run by a vain
old Kemalist mountebank named Sunay Zaim, who once fancied himself
an Atatürk look-alike, and his equally decrepit and posturing lady
friend. The army and the police use torture as a matter of course to
hang on to power.
Their few civilian supporters are represented as diseased old
ex-Stalinists whose leader-one Z. Demirkol, not further named-could
have leapt from the pages of Soviet agitprop. These forces take
advantage of the snowstorm to mount a coup in Kars and impose
their own arbitrary will, though it is never explained why they do
this or how they can hope to get away with it. In contrast, the
Muslim fanatics are generally presented in a favorable or lenient
light. A shadowy “insurgent” leader, incongruously named “Blue,”
is a man of bravery and charm, who may or may not have played a
heroic role in the fighting in Chechnya and Bosnia. (Among these
and many other contemporary references, the Taliban and al-Qaeda
are never mentioned.) The girls who immolate themselves for the
right to wear head-covering are shown as if they had been pushed
by the pitiless state, or by their gruesome menfolk, to the limits
of endurance. They are, in other words, veiled quasi-feminists. The
militant boys of their age are tormented souls seeking the good life
in the spiritual sense. The Islamist ranks have their share of fools
and knaves, but these tend to be ex-leftists who have switched sides
in an ingratiating manner. Ka himself is boiling with guilt, about
the “European” character that he has acquired in exile in Frankfurt,
and about the realization that the Istanbul bourgeoisie, from which
he originates, generally welcomes military coups without asking too
many questions. The posturing Sunay at least phrases this well.
No one who’s even slightly westernized can breathe free in this
country unless they have a secular army protecting them, and no one
needs this protection more than intellectuals who think they’re better
than everyone else and look down on other people. If it weren’t for
the army, the fanatics would be turning their rusty knives on the
lot of them and their painted women and chopping them all into little
pieces. But what do these upstarts do in return? They cling to their
little European ways and turn up their affected little noses at the
very soldiers who guarantee their freedom.
A continuous theme of the novel, indeed, is the rancor felt by the
local inhabitants against anyone who has bettered himself-let alone
herself-by emigrating to an undifferentiated “Europe” or by aping
European manners and attitudes. A secondary version of this bitterness,
familiar to those who study small-town versus big-city attitudes the
world over, is the suspicion of those left behind that they are somehow
not good enough. But this mutates into the more consoling belief
that they are despised by the urbane. Only one character-unnamed-has
the nerve to point out that if free visas were distributed, every
hypocrite in town would leave right away and Kars would be deserted.
As for the past tense in which Kars is also frozen, I have to rely on
a certain amount of guesswork. Although Ka’s acronym could ostensibly
have been drawn from any pair of consonant/vowel first and last names,
I presume from Pamuk’s demonstrated interest in codes and texts that
K and A were chosen deliberately. There seem to be two possibilities
here: one is “Kemal Atatürk,” the military founder of modern secular
Turkey; the other is “Kurdistan and Armenia,” standing in for the
national subtexts of the tale.
Pamuk supplies no reason for his selection, but the setting of Kars
means that he might intend elements of both of the above. The city
was lost by Ottoman Turkey to Russia in 1878, regained in 1918, and
then briefly lost again to an alliance of Bolsheviks and Armenians
until, in late 1920, it became the scene of a Turkish nationalist
victory that fixed the boundary between Turkey and then-Soviet
Armenia that endures to the present day. (This event was among the
many negations of Woodrow Wilson’s postwar diplomacy, which had
“awarded” the region to the Armenians.) From Kars, also in 1920,
the legendary Turkish Communist leader Mustafa Suphi set out along
the frontier region, dotted with magically evocative place-names like
Erzurum and Trebizond, and was murdered with twelve of his comrades
by right-wing “Young Turks.” This killing was immortalized by Nazim
Hikmet in a poem that is still canonical in Turkey. (Hikmet himself,
the nation’s unofficial laureate, was to spend decades in jail and in
exile because of his Communist loyalties.) The outright victor in all
those discrepant struggles was Mustafa Kemal, who had helped defeat two
“Christian” invasions of Turkish soil in his capacity as a soldier,
and who went on to assume absolute political power and to supervise
and direct the only lasting secular revolution that a Muslim society
has ever undergone. His later change of name to Kemal Atatürk was only
part of his driving will to “Westernize” Turkey, Latinize its script,
abolish male and female religious headgear, adopt surnames, and in
general erase the Islamic caliphate that today’s fundamentalists hope
to restore.
Pamuk is at his best in depicting the layers of the past that are
still on view in Kars-in particular the Armenian houses and churches
and schools whose ghostly reminder of a scattered and desecrated
civilization is enhanced in its eeriness by the veil of snow. Nor
does he omit the sullen and disaffected Kurdish population. The price
of Kemalism was the imposition of a uniform national identity on
Turkey, where ethnic and religious variety was heavily repressed,
and where the standard-issue unsmiling bust of Atatürk-pervasive
in Pamuk’s account of the scenery and most often described as the
target of terrorism or vandalism-became the symbol of military rule.
(Atatürk was a lifelong admirer of the French Revolution, but Turkey,
as was once said of Prussia, is not so much a country that has an
army as an army that has a country.) In these circumstances it takes
a certain amount of courage for any Turkish citizen to challenge the
authorized version of modern statehood.
However, courage is an element that this novel lacks. Some important
Turkish scholarship has recently attempted an honest admission of the
Armenian genocide and a critique of the official rationalizations for
it. The principal author in this respect is Taner Akcam, who, as Pamuk
is certainly aware, was initially forced to publish his findings as
one of those despised leftist exiles in Germany-whereas from reading
Snow one might easily conclude that all the Armenians of Anatolia
had decided for some reason to pick up and depart en masse, leaving
their ancestral properties for tourists to gawk at. As for the Kurds,
Pamuk tends to represent them as rather primitive objects of sympathy.
Ka’s poetic rebirth involves him, and us, in a comparable fatalism and
passivity. Early in the story he is quite baldly described as feeling
a predetermined poem coming on, and is prevented from completion of
the closing lines only by a sudden knock at the door. I managed to
assimilate the implied allusion to Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. But about
fifty pages later, when another poem was successfully delivered from
Ka’s subconscious, I was confronted with a full-out deadpan account of
the person from Porlock who had interrupted Coleridge at the critical
moment. Pamuk’s literalism and pedantry are probably his greatest
enemies as a writer of fiction; he doesn’t trust the reader until he
has hit him over the head with dialogue and explanation of the most
didactic kind. Throughout the remainder of the novel, though, we are
invited to believe in the miraculous rather than the mundane: Ka quite
simply sits himself down at odd moments and sets out near faultless
poems (never quoted) on whatever paper is handy. The necessary cliché
about “automatic writing” is eventually employed, somewhat heavily,
to account for this. But I was inevitably put in mind of the Koran,
or “recitation,” by which the Prophet Muhammad came to be the supposed
medium of the divine.
Ka is presented to us as a man who has assumed or affected his atheism
as a kind of protective epidermis. His unbelief is of a piece with his
attempt to deaden his emotions and decrease his vulnerability. His
psyche is on a knife edge, and he is always ready to be overwhelmed
by the last person he has spoken to. Yet he can watch an educator
being shot in cold blood by a Muslim zealot and feel nothing. Only
when in the company of beaming Dervishes and Sufis-those Islamic
sects that survived Atatürk’s dissolution of clerical power-does he
become moist and trusting and openhearted. Yet “rising up inside him
was that feeling he had always known as a child and as a young man at
moments of extraordinary happiness: a prospect of future misery and
hopelessness.” Like the Danish prince who had a version of the same
difficulty, Ka finds a form of cathartic relief in helping to produce
the violent stage play that expresses his own fears and dreads. Pamuk
drops in many loud references to Chekhov, and the gun that is on
the mantelpiece from the beginning of the action is at last duly and
lethally discharged. (It is described as a “Canakkale” rifle, Canakkale
being the Turkish name for the Dardanelle Straits and the site of
Gallipoli-the battle that was Atatürk’s baptism as a leader.) The
handgun that goes off later, and extinguishes Ka’s life, is heard
only offstage. But it is clear that Islamist revenge has followed
him to the heart of Europe and punished him for his ambivalence.
Prolix and often clumsy as it is, Pamuk’s new novel should be taken
as a cultural warning. So weighty was the impression of Atatürk that
ever since his death, in 1938, Western statecraft has been searching
for an emulator or successor. Nasser was thought for a while to be
the needful charismatic, secularizing strongman. So was Sadat. So,
for a while, was the Shah of Iran. And so was Saddam Hussein . Eager
above all to have a modern yet “Muslim” state within the tent, the
United States and the European Union have lately been taking Turkey’s
claims to modernity more and more at face value. The attentive reader
of Snow will not be so swift to embrace this consoling conclusion.
The URL for this page is

Ministry says H1 investments in Armenia’s telecoms up 40%
Prime-Tass English-language Business Newswire
September 7, 2004
YEREVAN, Sept 7 (Prime-Tass) — Investment into the telecommunications
sector in Armenia rose over 40% on the year in January-June to
U.S. USD 41.5 million, the Economic Development and Trade Minister
Tigran Davtyan told reporters Tuesday.
Of the total, direct investments amounted to USD 21 million,
Davtyan said.
The major investor in the sector was Greece’s Telecommunications
Organization (OTE), he also said adding that the company continues
to invest in the sector.
“The increase of OTE’s investments testifies that the company is ready
for the fact that ArmenTel will not keep its monopoly in the Armenian
telecommunications sector for a long period of time,” Davtyan said.
ArmenTel is an Armenian telecommunications company, which was granted
the right to a monopoly for 15 years in 1997.
On September 8, 2003, the government decided to deprive ArmenTel of
its monopoly license, but the decision has not yet been enforced due
to ongoing lawsuits.
OTE controls a 90% stake in ArmenTel, while the remaining 10% is held
by Armenian government.
According to a financial statement provided by OTE, ArmenTel’s
operating revenue rose 22.7% on the year to 21.1 million euros in
the second quarter. End