Category: News

Glendale news press
LATimes.com
July 7 2004
Defendants discuss deals in murder trial
Selection of jurors starts today in teen’s stabbing, beating case.
Accused men might make pleas.
By Gary Moskowitz, News-Press
LOS ANGELES – The day before a retrial for accused killers Rafael
Gevorgyan and Karen Terteryan, their attorneys spent most of their
time debating last-minute plea bargains and preparing family members
for what might happen the second time around.
The men are accused in the beating and stabbing death of Hoover High
School student Raul Aguirre in 2000.
Last week, Terteryan was willing to accept an offer of 23 years and
eight months in prison. He is accused of stabbing Aguirre in the
heart during a fight. Gevorgyan, who is accused of hitting Aguirre on
the head with a crowbar, declined a plea bargain last week for 16
years in prison, and maintained his position Tuesday.
If convicted of murder, both men could face sentences of 25 years to
life in prison. The first jury deadlocked on charges against the men.
Gevorgyan, during Tuesday’s pretrial hearing, told the judge he
wanted to waive his right to a jury trial and have the judge hear the
case. When the judge questioned him about that decision, Gevorgyan
changed his mind and opted for a jury trial.
“My client is innocent, and the fact that he agreed to go with a jury
trial is proof of that,” said Andrew Flier, Gevorgyan’s attorney. “As
far as I’m concerned, I won a murder trial today. My client did not
kill anyone and is innocent of murder charges.”
Aguirre was 17 on May 5, 2000, when he tried to intervene in what
police say was a gang fight between a former co-worker of Aguirre’s
and Terteryan and Gevorgyan. Investigators have said Aguirre was not
a gang member.
Shepard Kopp, who is Terteryan’s attorney in the retrial, declined to
comment on whether his client was still interested in a plea deal.
“We are talking about trying this case, and that’s it,” Kopp said. He
added that the defendants might have the chance to accept plea
bargains today, before jury selection begins.
Gevorgyan’s aunt, Olga Manedjian, said she felt confident in her
nephew’s decision to go to a jury trial. Manedjian and other family
members held their hands to their faces in anticipation as Gevorgyan
made his decision to go to trial.
“He thinks it’s better, and it is his only hope,” Manedjian said. “I
was thinking he might take a deal, but he knows better than I do. I
know this is hard for him, but I think we should go to trial, too.”
During Tuesday’s pretrial hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Darrell Mavis
said he plans to use a taped conversation between the defendants as
they sat in the back of a police car after their arrest. The tape was
introduced during the first trial but the jury did not hear the tape
because questions arose about its translation from Armenian.
Mavis also plans to introduce new DNA tests that allegedly show
Aguirre’s blood on the crowbar that Gevorgyan is accused of wielding.
Gevorgyan testified during the first trial that he did not swing the
crowbar or hit Aguirre with it.
On Tuesday, Flier argued that the tape should not be admitted as
evidence because it is almost inaudible.
“We thought the tape was useful before, and still is now,” Mavis
said. “We decided it wasn’t going to be in the best interest of our
strategic efforts before, but it will become more clear as we try
this case again.”
Judge Michael Johnson will conduct oral questioning of about 75
jurors in the next two days.

Winston Salem Journal, NC
July 7 2004
Drink Up: Armenian wines make their debut
By Michael Hastings
JOURNAL FOOD EDITOR

New wines are constantly popping up in stores. Now local wine
drinkers can add Armenian wines to the mix, thanks to Ararat Import
Export LLC, formed by Edgar Vardanian, a dancer in Carolina Ballet in
Raleigh, and his partners, former dancer Vlad Burakov and importer
Arnie Slutsky.
Vardanian, 29, began importing brandy and wine from his native
Armenia last year in hopes of having a second career when it comes
time to hang up his dancing shoes.
Most of his imports are wines made from native Armenian grapes rarely
seen in this country. His newest wine is made from pomegranates,
which until recently have not been very popular in the United States.
“In Armenia, pomegranates grow everywhere. We use pomegranates in
some form in almost everything. I’ve been drinking the juice since I
was this high,” Vardanian said, indicating a height of about 2 feet.
The pomegranate fruit itself is notoriously difficult to eat because
it has hundreds of seeds. In Armenia, pomegranates also are made into
a sauce for fish and a syrup used in everything from cakes to
cocktails.
Potential health benefits
Vardanian decided to import pomegranate wine because trendy U.S.
chefs recently have been incorporating the juice and syrup in all
kinds of dishes. Also, pomegranates have been reported to have
potential health benefits, because of their cancer-fighting
antioxidants – more than that in red-wine grapes.
The pomegranate wine, available in Winston-Salem at Whole Foods
Market, is a semisweet wine. Served chilled, it tastes like a blend
of strawberry and red-grape juices. It’s a bit alcoholic at first,
but the fruity flavor increases in appeal upon subsequent sips. This
can be a refreshing wine for summer, not unlike an off-dry rose or
blush wine, such as white zinfandel.
Whole Foods also is carrying a couple of other Ararat red wines. The
1991 areni, a dry red, has lots of white pepper and restrained berry
fruit. Overall, it’s reminiscent of a lighter Cotes du Rhone wine.
Vernashen is like a cross between the pomegranate and areni wines.
Made from the areni grape, it has a peppery nose and berry fruit, but
only a touch a sweetness. All of the wines retail for about $10.
Thriving for centuries
Armenia’s modern wine industry began in 1870, but wine grapes have
thrived there for centuries.
Vardanian named his company for Armenia’s Mount Ararat. It is here,
according to the Bible, that Noah’s Ark came to rest after the flood,
at which time “Noah began to be an husbandman and he planted a
vineyard.” (Genesis 9:20).
Vardanian said that because Armenian wines are mostly imported
through the West Coast and tend to be a bit expensive once they reach
Eastern cities, he’s hoping to fill a void in the market. So far,
he’s encouraged. In fact, he’s working harder than he planned. “I
didn’t expect everybody to be calling me, saying, ‘Bring me some
more,'” he said.
He says he hopes that he’ll soon be able to hire a delivery person,
or contract with a distributor to help get his wines into stores.
Though some of Vardanian’s colleagues dance into their 40s, he knows
that his dancing days are limited. He also recently became engaged,
and he’s thinking about the difficulty of reconciling the performing
life with that of a family. “I’m getting to the age, it’s time to
think of kids,” he said. “With dancing, it’s hard. I can barely take
care of my dogs right now.”
;c=MGArticle&cid=1031776521593

Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, FL
July 7 2004
Ararat wins at Armenian film fest
Atom Egoyan’s 2002 movie, Ararat, won the top prize at the Golden
Apricot Film Festival of works by ethnic Armenian directors,
officials said Monday.
The festival included 57 movies by directors from 20 countries.
Egoyan is a Canadian of Armenian heritage.
Ararat depicts the plight of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Armenians
say that a 1915-1923 campaign to force Armenians out of eastern
Turkey left 1.5 million people dead and amounted to genocide. The
title refers to the mountain that Armenians regard as their national
symbol but which now is in Turkey.

CounterPunch
July 7 2004
Elie Wiesel’s Strange Parade
Madman or Commissar?
By MICKEY Z.
Parade Magazine took full advantage of Independence (sic) Day falling
on a Sunday by hiring none other than Elie Wiesel to pen a little
something called “The America I Love” for their patriotic cover
story. Over a two-page spread, the “Nobel Laureate” explained how
America “for two centuries, has stood as a living symbol of all that
is charitable and decent to victims of injustice everywhere…where
those who have are taught to give back.” The perpetually disheveled
Wiesel explained that in the U.S., “compassion for the refugee and
respect for the other still have biblical connotations.”
Those same thoughts coming from a housewife in Peoria or truck driver
in Boise are typically chalked up to ignorance so, perhaps Elie
Wiesel is just an idiot…too simple-minded to discern reality from
fantasy. But we can’t let him off the hook so easily when, after
reminding us-yet again-of his Holocaust experiences, the winner of
the Presidential Medal of Freedom admits, “U.S. history has gone
through severe trials” (apparently this is how Nobel Peace Prize
winners think: it’s “history” that undergoes trials). Ever careful to
point out his bearing witness to the civil rights movement (and
equally careful to avoid explaining what that means), Wiesel calls
anti-black racism “scandalous and depressing.” But, take heart, black
America, because dear Elie adds “racism as such has vanished from,
the American scene.”
Roll over, Mumia…and tell Leonard Peltier the news.
Wiesel deigns to mention a few more of America’s indiscretions but is
at the ready to explain: “No nation is composed of saints alone. None
is sheltered from mistakes and misdeeds” (more scholarly talk:
“mistakes,” not “policy”). “America is always ready to learn from its
mishaps,” he writes. “Self-criticism remains its second nature.”
This is the territory of madmen and commissars. Who else speaks such
words…and is convinced they speak the truth? Precisely what kind of
man is this professional sufferer, Elie Wiesel? Here are two peeks
behind the myth:
While Wiesel’s documentation of the Nazi Holocaust has earned him
international acclamation and a Nobel Peace Prize, he is not always
predisposed to yield the genocide victim’s spotlight. In 1982, for
example, a conference on genocide was held in Israel with Wiesel
scheduled to be honorary chairman, but the situation became
complicated when the Armenians wanted in. Here’s how Noam Chomsky
described the incident: “The Israeli government put pressure upon
[Wiesel] to drop the Armenian genocide. They allowed the others, but
not the Armenian one. He was pressured by the government to withdraw,
and being a loyal commissar as he is, he withdrew…because the
Israeli government had said they didn’t want Armenian genocide
brought up.” Wiesel went even further, calling up noted Israeli
Holocaust historian, Yehuda Bauer, and pleading with him to also
boycott the conference. “That gives an indication of the extent to
which people like Elie Wiesel were carrying out their usual function
of serving Israeli state interests,” Chomsky explains, “even to the
extent of denying a holocaust, which he regularly does.” Why not
welcome the Armenians, you wonder? Chalk it up to two conspicuous
factors: the need to monopolize the Holocaust(tm) image and the
geopolitical reality that Turkey (the nation responsible for the
Armenian genocide) is a rare and much-needed Muslim ally for Israel.
In Parade, Wiesel also speaks of brave American soldiers bringing
“rays of hope” to the people of Iraq. However, such rays were not
welcome in Central and South America when Israel served as a U.S.
proxy for proving arms to murderous regimes like that of Guatemala.
In 1981, shortly after Israel agreed to provide military aid to this
oppressive regime, a Guatemalan officer had a feature article
published in the army’s Staff College review. In that article, the
officer praised Adolf Hitler, National Socialism, and the Final
Solution-quoting extensively from Mein Kampf and chalking up Hitler’s
anti-Semitism to the “discovery” that communism was part of a “Jewish
conspiracy.” Despite such seemingly incompatible ideology, Israel’s
estimated military assistance to Guatemala in 1982 was $90 million.
What type of policies did the Guatemalan government pursue with the
help they received from a nation populated with thousands of
Holocaust survivors? Consider the words of Gabriel, one of the
Guatemalan freedom fighters interviewed in 1994 by Jennifer Harbury:
“In my country, child malnutrition is close to 85 percent. Ten
percent of all children will be dead before the age of five, and this
is only the number actually reported to government agencies. Close to
70 percent of our people are functionally illiterate. There is almost
no industry in our country-you need land to survive. Less than 3
percent of our landowners own over 65 percent of our lands. In the
last fifteen years or so, there have been over 150,000 political
murders and disappearances. Don’t talk to me about Gandhi; he
wouldn’t have survived a week here.”
Similar stories can be culled from countries throughout the region,
but apparently have had no effect on the rulers of the Jewish state.
For example, when Israel faced an international arms embargo after
the 1967 war, a plan to divert Belgian and Swiss arms to the Holy
Land was implemented. These weapons were supposedly destined for
Bolivia to be transported by a company managed by Klaus Barbie…as
in “The Butcher of Lyon.”
One Jewish figure that might be expected to find fault with such
policy is, of course, Parade cover boy Elie Wiesel. Here is an
episode from mid-1985, documented by Yoav Karni in Ha’aretz, which
should put to rest any exalted expectations of the revered moralist:
When Wiesel received a letter from a Nobel Prize laureate documenting
Israel’s contributions to the atrocities in Guatemala, suggesting
that he use his considerable influence to put a stop to Israel’s
practice of arming neo-Nazis, Wiesel “sighed” and admitted to Karni
that he did not reply to that particular letter. “I usually answer at
once,” he explained, “but what can I answer to him?”
One is left to only wonder how Wiesel’s silent sigh might have been
received if it was in response to a letter not about Jewish
complicity in the murder of Guatemalans but instead about the
function of Auschwitz in 1943.
In Parade, Elie Wiesel claims he discovered in America “the strength
to overcome cynicism and despair.” It sounds like what he’s actually
overcome is honesty and compassion.
Mickey Z. is the author of two brand new books: “The Seven Deadly
Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda” (Common Courage
Press) and “A Gigantic Mistake: Articles and Essays for Your
Intellectual Self-Defense” (Library Empyreal/Wildside Press). For
more information, please visit:

Xinhua, China
July 7 2004
Russian parliament ratifies Euro weapons limitation treaty

MOSCOW, July 7 (Xinhuanet) — Russia’s parliament on Wednesday
completed ratification of the amended Treaty on Conventional Forces
in Europe (CFE) which limits the deployment of heavy weapons across
the European continent, the Interfax news agency reported.
The Federation Council, parliament’s upper house, approved it
Wednesday by a vote of 137-1 following ratification by the State
Duma, the lower house of parliament, on June 25 and the treaty now
goes to President Vladimir Putin for signing.
The modified accord could significantly reduce the deployment of
warplanes, tanks and other heavy non-nuclear weapons in Europe. It
will take effect when all 30 signatory countries ratify it.
Under the treaty, Russia can have 6,350 tanks, 11,280 armored
personnel carriers, 6,315 artillery, 3,416 combat aircraft and 885
helicopter gunships.
Russia can also keep its weapons and military hardware in Armenia
and Ukraine under the treaty.
The original CFE treaty was approved in 1990 by the 22 members of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact alliances.
An amended version of the treaty was signed in 1999 following the
collapse of former Soviet Union.
Russia has been particularly concerned about the reluctance of the
four new NATO members — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia —
to ratify the amended version of the treaty.
Some Russian officials fear that if the four do not join the
treaty they could become NATO outposts for nuclear arms or army
bases.
However, NATO argues that until Russian forces and weapons are
pulled back from Georgia and Moldova, they cannot ratify the treaty.
Moscow says its pledge to withdraw forces from the two countries is a
separate issue from the treaty. Enditem

Armenian, Egyptian officials discuss ties, fight against terrorism
Arminfo
7 Jul 04

Yerevan, 7 July: Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan today
received Muhammad Sha’ban, assistant minister of the Egyptian Foreign
Ministry. Sha’ban is paying a two-day visit to Yerevan in order to
conduct a political dialogue between the two countries’ foreign
ministries.
The sides said they highly value the Egyptian-Armenian political
dialogue and the countries’ cooperation within international
organizations, the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s press service has told
Arminfo news agency. It is important to intensify economic ties and
the Armenian community in Egypt is playing a significant role in this,
the sides said.
After that, they exchanged views on developing international
relations. In particular, they touched on the situation in Iraq and a
peaceful settlement to the Palestine-Israel conflict. In this
connection, the sides condemned any acts of terrorism.
Oskanyan briefed Sha’ban on Armenia’s relations with the EU and Turkey
and on the latest developments around the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict
settlement.
Sha’ban has already met Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Ruben
Shugaryan.

Pravda, Russia
July 7 2004
Margelov on CFE ratification
18:34 2004-07-07
The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) ratified on Wednesday
by the Federation Council (upper house of parliament) allows Russia
to preserve military presence in Armenia and Ukraine, Federation
Council international committee head Mikhail Margelov told RIA
Novosti.
“The treaty complicates disguised and quick deployment of combined
arms groups and hinders starting the so-called classic wars on
European territory,” he said.
Speaking about the ratified CFE, Margelov said the document envisages
mutual inspections and consultations of the countries that joined it,
which provides a possibility to develop military cooperation between
Russia and NATO.
Speaking on the delay in Baltic states’ accession to the adapted CFE,
Margelov said this situation “will fix the existence in Europe of the
so-called gray zones.” This, in the Russian senator’s opinion, “will
testify to NATO’s intention to build up armaments directly on Russian
borders,” which will provoke a relevant reaction of Moscow and entail
distrust.
Mikhail Margelov concluded that Russia is interested in the adapted
CFE and expects from its Western partners and neighbors loyalty to
European security principles.

Armenian minister urges more Russian investment
Noyan Tapan news agency
7 Jul 04
Moscow, 7 July: During their 6 July meeting, Armenian Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanyan and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov lauded the
recent progress in trade and economic ties between the two countries.
Oskanyan told Lavrov that it was necessary to restore as soon as
possible the Armenian companies which were handed over to Russia as
part of the property-for-debt deal, the Foreign Ministry has
reported. This would boost Russia’s investments in the Armenian
economy, facilitate economic growth in Armenia and create new jobs.
The sides also talked about the positive example of successfully
developing cooperation between constituent parts of the Russian
Federation and Armenian districts. The significance of restoring
transport links between the two countries was also discussed. Russia
promised to pay more attention to this issue.

AssA-Irada
July 7 2004
Trial of individual charged with high treason underway
The trial of ethnic Armenian R. Eyvazov is underway at the Military
Court for Serious Crimes.
He is charged with passing on military secrets to Armenia and
torturing Azerbaijani captives in Khankandi prison while on duty as
an officer of the Azerbaijan Army during the war. He is accused of
personal involvement in the beating to death of Azerbaijani
prisoners.
The National Security Ministry and Military Prosecutor’s Office began
the case against Eyvazov after a number of Azerbaijani soldiers,
returning home from captivity with the aid of international
organizations, informed relevant government agencies of the horrors
they suffered.

Armenian journalists on fact-finding visit to border area
Noyan Tapan news agency
6 Jul 04

Yerevan, 6 July: About 70 representatives of the Armenian media have
paid a one-day visit to the border region where the 3rd army corps of
the Armenian armed forces is deployed.
The press service of the Armenian Defence Ministry told a Noyan Tapan
correspondent that the reason for visiting the border section in
Tavush District was a truce violation by the Azerbaijani side. Two
cases of that have also been registered in the area of a pump station
close to the village of Berkaber of Idzhevan Region [northeast
Armenia], where two Armenian servicemen were killed in the enemy fire.
After these incidents there were rumours about the growth of tension
between the Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces along the contact
line. To refute that, the administration of the Defence Ministry
organized this visit.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress