Category: News

ARMENIA VERSUS REST OF WORLD CHESS TOURNAMENT TO TAKE PLACE IN MOSCOW
ArmenPress
May 31 2004
YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS: The Russian capital of Moscow will host
a celebration from June 10-16 of the 75th anniversary of the birth
of the late Armenian world champion Tigran Petrosian. The “Armenia
v Rest of the World” six-player team tournament will see each player
face all members of the opposing team.
The Armenian team will consist of three Armenians; Vladimir Hakobian,
Smbat Lputian and Rafael Vahanian and three players with Armenian
connections; Garry Kasparov, whose mother is Armenian, world title
challenger Peter Leko, whose wife is Armenian, and Boris Gelfand,
who studied under Tigran Petrosian.
The Rest of the World team is likely to include Vishy Anand, Michael
Adams, Peter Svidler and Loek Van Wely.

Ottawa Citizen
May 31, 2004 Monday Final Edition
Montreal school bombing sparks inter-faith concert for peace:
Synagogue chooses to ‘do something practical’;
will raise money for books
by Bob Harvey
Ottawa faith groups hope to sow a little more peace in the world.
On Sunday at 7 p.m., Jews, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Armenian
Christians, Hindus and Muslims will join in a Concert for Peace at
the Beth Shalom Synagogue on Chapel Street.
Daniel Benlolo, the cantor at Beth Shalom, and the event’s
co-chairman, said that after the fire-bombing of Montreal’s United
Talmud Torah School on April 5, “we decided we wanted to do something
practical.”
Some of the money raised by the concert will go toward buying books
to replace those destroyed in the school library, and the rest will
be doled out by the participating groups to any project that might
help make peace.
Mr. Benlolo said “people think all Jews and all Arabs are the same,
and we’re trying to prove otherwise. We hope people will stop and say
there are some good people in the world.”
A note found at the scene of the fire-bombing linked it to Israel’s
killing of the founder of Hamas, a Palestinian resistance movement.
Mr. Benlolo said that when he met Palestinians, he sang his songs,
and the Palestinians sang theirs. “That way, camaraderie was
established.”
He said it is not just the Middle East that faces conflict today.
“We’ve learned that there is terrorism in cities all over the world.”
Mr. Benlolo said the concert will be strictly entertainment and “is
not going to make a huge difference in the world, but it is
definitely going to make a difference to some people, and these
people are going to be speaking about it to other people.”
The choirs, the musicians and the synagogue are waiving any payment,
and even the synagogue’s custodian is working for free.
Tickets for the peace concert and the dessert reception that follows
are $10. The synagogue’s auditorium has 740 seats, and there are only
125 seats still left. But Mr. Benlolo says that, if necessary, he
will open the doors to the synagogue and provide more seats.
Tickets can be obtained from the participating groups: the Jewish
community at 789-3501; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 832-0101; the Roman Catholic Cathedral at 241-7496; the
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada, at 224-8117; the Hindu
Temple at 822-1531; and the Ottawa Muslim Association, 722-8763.

Armavir unit of Russian Border Troops marks 80th jubilee
By Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 30, 2004 Sunday
ARMAVIR (Armenia), May 30 – The Armavir unit of the Russian Border
Troops, which is stationed on the Armenian-Turkish frontier, is
celebrating the 80th jubilee.
The 26th separate border battalion was formed on the basis of the 2nd
division of the Red Army after the Soviet regime had been established
in Armenia. The battalion was transformed into a border unit on May
25, 1924. The unit command was moved to Yerevan, Artashat and later
on to Oktemberyan (currently Armavir).
Border unit commander Col. Sergei Kuklin said they had detained 904
border trespassers since 1943. Four Heroes of the Soviet Union served
with the unit.
The Armavir unit “has always been a school of courage, patriotism
and internationalism,” Commander of the Armenian Border Troops Col.
Vyacheslav Voksanyan said. Head of the Armavir regional administration
Albert Geroyan said that the local residents and authorities are
actively cooperating with Russian border guards. Local businessmen
sponsor the border unit.
Yerevan regards the presence of Russian border guards and a Russian
military base in Armenia as an important component of the national
security.

Sitting in one’s ‘phew’
Trinidad & Tobago Express, Trinidad and Tobago
June 1 2004
Going back to one’s school days and scrolling through the circuitry
of the hippocampus I am sure that some will recall their first risqué
jokes. There were several “Confucius says” jokes, mostly unprintable,
but the one that comes to mind with the degrading and abusive Iraqi
torture scenes is-“Confucius says man who breaks wind in church must
sit in his own ‘phew'”.
Whatever the excuses and apologies, and the ultimate reality, there
is no doubt that Bush and his cronies have produced a really massive
silent and deadly. So much for freedom and democracy, human rights,
American values and un-American behaviour, as if humanity can ever
forget the various atrocities of past United States governments.
Slavery? Indian wars? Wounded Knee? Haiti? Tokyo? Hiroshima? My Lai?
Agent Orange? Hanoi? These are integral and defining aspects of
American history. But in all fairness to them there have been many
comparable atrocities elsewhere. The genocide of the Armenians? The
Holocaust? The Warsaw ghetto? Lidice? Oradour sur Glane? Cologne?
Dresden? The Gulag? Apartheid? Laos? Sabra? Shatila? Rwanda? And now
the Vatican condemns the torture in Iraq! Really! Kevin Baldeosingh
can thank his lucky stars that he lives today not then when the
Vatican prevailed.
The thing is that victors and the more powerful in conflicts or wars
supposedly never commit atrocities, only the conquered. But we should
not be too hard on the United States Ambassador. He is, after all,
only doing what his employer requires of him. The only possibility
of faulting him is that unlike all the other heads of missions who
are discrete in what they say publicly, he feels that he is free to
say anything to the public, hence my column “Sensitivity Americana”.
Possibly he thinks that as citizens of an American satellite client
state, most citizens will conform. Possibly also he considers us no
more than an energy source for the US economy. He of course has a
choice. Conform and he holds the job. Dissent and he is recalled. His
public utterances are what Washington directs. He could continue to
project “American values”. This however might have little influence
of the views of many thinking citizens who will remember the history
of the USA, its violence, its gun obsession, its drug culture, its
support of right wing dictators and interventions in many countries
in the western hemisphere.
My guess is that he will simply continue to conform as all our
Government Senator Ministers opt to do. It continues to perplex many
however that he did not focus on one of the towering strengths of
the American way-its vibrant media, a real fourth estate. It was a
pair of military personnel with consciences and the American media
that exposed the horror and butchery of My Lai, something that was
known about at the highest levels, even one holding office today,
and something that was pardoned by a Republican president. After all
the victims were merely gooks like the lynched blacks of Alabama or
slaughtered Indians at Wounded Knee.
Having written over 100 columns for the Express over the past two
years or so I have on occasion expressed comments that may have
been critical of both the Panday and Manning administrations and of
other parts of the state apparatus. The criticisms have been on the
nature of the policies of these administrations but I have tried
to be constructive. Does that make me anti-Trinidadian”? Anti-UNC?
Anti-PNM? Indeed if anyone reads this column at the High Commission
in London they may be reminded that a member of the Commission made
the observation about me to my brother at a function in far off
Aberdeen-“your brother is a great patriot”!
Possibly this was only being diplomatic but I do in fact care for the
citizens of this country and for future generations and in any thing
that I write I try to be constructive. If anything most columnists and
leader writers aim at following in the traditions of the independent
minds who have written over the decades in the quality press of the
United States of America and the United Kingdom, countries in whose
shadows we live. Columns may be anti-foreign policy without being
anti-people. If any thing it is simply being anti-imperialism and
pro-Trinidad and Tobago and its interests as a democratic sovereign
nation with constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and
the press.
Much of what is wrong in the USA has come to light from a vibrant media
in that country. Indeed we would not have known of the photographs
of the tortured Iraqis except for the CBS, the New Yorker and the
Washington Post.
Torture and humiliation is not exactly new to human society as
there is an extensive written and pictorial record of its use in
conflicts between cultures, the word culture being used in its broad
not Trinidadian sense. It has been done in the name of God, revenge,
self-defence, manifest destiny, conquest, colonialism, lebensraum,
trade or whatever have you. And now we have torture and humiliation
of Iraqi prisoners. These by any interpretation are war crimes and
no amount of platitudes about American values, or the America I know,
or an isolated incident not reflecting all those brave, motivated and
highly trained military personnel serving their country “in harm’s way”
of which we are proud.
Much is now being made of the beheading of an unfortunate
American entrepreneur or contractor. Should the photographic
image of an atrocity be worse than an un-photographed un-recorded
atrocity? Does anyone really know of the numbers of un-photographed
torture incidents? But more important is the fact that the torture
has deflected attention from the greater abuse of the terminal
collateralisation of the uncounted hundreds or thousands of innocent
Iraqis. Are not the Iraqis in harm’s way? Especially the young and
innocent? More of them seem to have been killed. An eight-year old
girl disembowelled by a single bullet? And Rumsfeld is proud of his
occupying forces.
Again, we are dealing with a clash of cultures, and one that is
in essence no different from previous clashes over the past ten
millennia. Technologies may differ but in all there will be torture,
humiliation and death and destruction. The victors project themselves
as God fearing champions for freedom and democracy as opposed to
monsters, brutal terrorists and murderers. There are many dimensions to
the current ongoing war in Iraq. One of these is the imbalance between
the technologies available. The side with the weaker technology and
resources will do every thing to resist. But again while we decry the
American torture and abuse of their prisoners and while some praise
Amnesty International for blowing the gaff on them, perhaps we might
reflect on the torture that we inflict on the prison population in
Trinidad and Tobago. Torture by neglect can be as dehumanising as
torture with intent, in the same way that there is no difference
between being beheaded by a hand applied sword, a hand-triggered
rocket or artillery shell.
We like our American masters do not like to see reality. Does anyone
really believe that our media would ever be allowed freedom to film
the reality of the conditions in the Royal Jail described by an
officer of Amnesty International? We too are sitting in our own “phew”.

Armenian Defence Ministry sets up research institute
Mediamax news agency
31 May 04
Yerevan, 31 May: The opening ceremony of the Armenian Defence
Ministry’s National Strategic Research Institute named after Commander
Drastamat Kanayan took place in Yerevan today.
Armenian Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan said today that Drastamat
Kanayan’s heirs came out with the idea of setting up the institute in
1998. According to the defence minister, taking into account Armenia’s
difficult geopolitical surrounding, the foundation of the institute
“was an urgent necessity”.
The Armenian defence minister’s adviser, Col Haik Kotandzhyan, will
head the institute.
The All-Armenian Ayastan Fund ordered the construction of the institute
which will be finished in March 2005.

US Azeris should have close ties with Congress, congressman tells Azeri TV
Space TV, Baku
25 May 04
US Congressman Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, has urged American Azeris to be more active and to support
the Azerbaijani caucus in the US Congress, Azerbaijani Space TV said
on 25 May.
In a live link-up with the studio of Space TV and a panel of
experts, the head the Azerbaijani caucus called on the US Azeris
to “have relations with Congress members and ask them to join the
Azerbaijani caucus” which is “a small group of 10 people”. “However,
we are growing. The caucus has representatives of both parties,”
Weldon said, adding that the Israeli and Armenian caucus are much
stronger because they take this issue seriously.
Curt Weldon said that the caucus was set up to inform US congressmen
of Azerbaijan and to prevent any laws “directed against your country’s
interests” from being adopted. “This is the best way of establishing
cooperation between the two nations,” he said. “In some cases,
this is a kind of bridge to help to avoid conflicts and perhaps,
some negative feelings your people or other nations might have about
the USA,” Weldon said.
“The US congressmen want to bring together the Azerbaijani and Armenian
leaders and tell them that we want to be friends with both nations
and both countries. Do not force us to take sides. We do not want to
do that,” he said.
Questions were asked about the amount of the US aid to Armenia which
is larger than that to Azerbaijan especially in view of Azerbaijan’s
active involvement in the US-led antiterror fight. In reply to the
question, Weldon said that his “country and president highly values
Azerbaijan’s role in the fight against terrorism”.
Weldon added that “Azerbaijan’s decision to send its military force to
Iraq is highly appreciated as well as the fact that the Azerbaijani
sons and daughters are taking part in that side-by-side with the
Americans. The Americans should be made aware of this. As for your
question whether the US Congress is aware of Azerbaijan’s role
in the fight against terrorism, I would say that most of them are
not. The purpose of the caucus is to better inform them. You asked
me why Armenia receives such extensive support. This is because the
Armenian caucus is strong. There are a couple of reasons for that. The
Armenians have had their caucus for many years. Hundreds of thousands
of Armenians live in the USA. They have close relations with their
congressmen. The US Armenians are very active and ask congressmen to
work with Armenia on significant issues. The US Azeris should be more
active with their congressmen.
“What we do not want is to be pro-Armenian against Azerbaijan
or pro-Azerbaijani against Armenia. We want the US congressmen
to understand both countries well and to make friends with both
countries and their peoples. To achieve this, we would like Armenia
and Azerbaijan to understand each other better. We want something
similar with other countries as well,” Weldon said.
The deputy speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament, Ziyafat Asgarov;
a member of the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe,
MP Asim Molla-zada; the head of the section of the presidential
executive office for work with Azerbaijanis abroad, Rustam Mammadov;
and the editor-in-chief of the Russian-language newspaper Ekho and a
Space TV correspondent, Seyran Mammadov, were all members of the panel.
The “Ekspert: Azerbaijan-USA TV bridge” programme was broadcast on
Space TV at 1630 gmt on 25 May and also at 0730 gmt on 26 May and
hosted by Sevinc Mirzayeva.

International rights group criticizes Azeri body for POWs – Armenian agency
Mediamax news agency
31 May 04
Yerevan, 31 May: The Azerbaijani state commission for POWs, hostages
and missing persons is engaged more in propaganda rather than search.
The press service of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic [NKR] Foreign
Ministry has told Mediamax news agency that the co-chairmen of the
International working group for the release of POWs and hostages and
for the tracing of missing persons, Svetlana Gannushkina and Bernhard
Clasen, said this at a meeting with the NKR foreign minister, Ashot
Gulyan, in Stepanakert [Xankandi] today.
The co-chairmen of the International working group also said that
humanitarian problems could not be politicized. At the same time,
they noted that it was important to continue the activities of the
International working group.
Ashot Gulyan, for his part, expressed the hope that the experience
accumulated by the International working group would help it resolve
the problems facing it, which are also a cause of concern for all
the sides to the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. The minister noted
that the fact that Azerbaijan excessively politicized the issue
of missing persons and POWs and laid false claims to Armenia and
Nagornyy Karabakh significantly hindered the search work and created
an atmosphere of distrust. Ashot Gulyan said that a clear-cut position
of the International working group in this regard could help prevent
the Azerbaijani side from taking such steps.

Azeri president meets outgoing diplomats
Space TV, Baku
31 May 04
[Presenter] Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev today received the
outgoing head of the OSCE Baku Office, Peter Burkhard, and the French
ambassador to Azerbaijan, Chantale Poiret.
[Correspondent over video of Aliyev, Burkhard and Poiret] Ilham Aliyev
expressed his regret that Peter Burkhard’s diplomatic mission in
Azerbaijan is coming to an end, adding that his tenure was memorable
and interesting. The president thanked the head of the OSCE Baku
Office for active involvement in Azerbaijan’s democratization,
economic reforms and civil society building.
The OSCE representative expressed satisfaction with the hospitality
and respect he enjoyed while in Baku. He said that the OSCE and other
influential organizations would continue their active cooperation
with our country also in the future.
Today Aliyev also met the French ambassador to Azerbaijan, Chantale
Poiret. The president noted the high level of political, economic
and other kind of bilateral relations during Chantale Poiret’s time
in Azerbaijan. At the same time, he praised the ambassador for her
efforts to arrange his visit to France and spoke highly of its outcome.
He talked about the ambassador’s role in developing ties between the
two countries and said that as a cochair of the OSCE Minsk Group,
France was making great efforts to settle the Armenian, Azerbaijani
and Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, and Mrs Poiret played an important
role in this process.
She praised our nation for hospitality shown during her period in
office. The ambassador said that she would not cease her contacts
with Azerbaijan once in France.
Gunay Mammadova for Space TV

Armenia met most of European body’s demands, official says
Mediamax news agency
31 May 04
Yerevan, 31 May: A delegation of the monitoring committee of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will visit
Armenia on 14-17 June. This was announced by Jerzy Jaskiernia, PACE’s
co-rapporteur on Armenia, at a meeting with Deputy Speaker of the
National Assembly Tigran Torosyan today, the press service of the
National Assembly told Mediamax news agency.
At Jaskiernia’s request, Torosyan commented on the domestic political
situation in Armenia and the implementation of the resolutions passed
at the winter and spring sessions of the PACE. Torosyan said that
the opposition had rejected the proposals of the ruling coalition for
resolving the existing problems through a political agreement. Instead
the opposition opted for the tactics of staging demonstrations.
Torosyan said that the Armenian authorities met most of the demands
of the PACE resolutions, and that a detailed report will be prepared
before the visit of the monitoring committee.
Responding to Jaskiernia’s question on bringing to book those who
violated laws during the latest presidential and parliamentary
elections in Armenia, Torosyan said that the Prosecutor-General’s
Office had recently submitted additional material on those cases. This
document will be discussed by the National Assembly when the temporary
parliamentary commission on European integration will deliver its
report, Torosyan said.
If need be, the additional material on the case will be submitted to
the monitoring committee during its visit to Yerevan, he said.

Azeri Village Poised on the Edge of the Abyss
By Chloe Arnold
The Moscow Times
Tuesday, June 1, 2004. Page 11.
LAHIC, Azerbaijan — Hussein Ali is not a happy man. The little wooden
house where he has lived all his life has started to give way and if
he doesn’t watch out it will slip off the hillside and tumble hundreds
of meters into the ravine below.
The residents of Lahic, a ramshackle village high in the Caucasus
Mountains, are starting to wonder how long they can continue to live
here. Every year, when the snows start to melt and the streams that
trickle down the mountains become gushing rivers, they lose a little
bit more of their land.
“That used to be our potato field,” Intigam Ismailov, another resident
of the village, told me. He pointed to a thin strip of earth clinging
to the scree. Far below us, there was no sign of the rest of the
potato patch; only a dust-coloured river, snaking its way south to
the Caspian Sea.
During the long summer months, most Azeris escape the scorching heat
of the capital and head north to cooler climes. In the old days, they
went west to Karabakh, where the land is so fertile they say you can
push a twig into the ground and it will grow into a pomegranate tree.
But since the war with neighboring Armenia, Karabakh has been off
limits to Azeris, and now they go elsewhere during the hottest part
of the year.
Lahic is a four-hour drive from the capital — the last hour a
20-kilometer stretch that is not for the fainthearted. The narrow track
wends its way up a dramatic gorge with soaring red cliffs and glimpses
of snow-covered peaks even higher in the sky. The path regularly gets
washed away, and halfway up there are three rusty machines that are
called into service every time a section of the road gives way.
At the end of the pass, you come to Lahic, a close-knit community
where families have lived in the same house and farmed the same land
for hundreds of years. They even speak their own language, a dialect
of Farsi, first spoken by their ancestors, who came from Iran over
1,000 years ago.
The local skill is copper-work, and as you wander the village’s single
cobbled street, you hear the constant tapping of hammers on metal as
craftsmen forge another delicate candlestick or samovar. They rely
on tourists and rich weekenders to buy their trinkets to help make
ends meet.
But with half the village poised to slide off the mountainside,
no one knows how much longer Lahic will exist.
“None of us wants to leave,” Intigam told me sadly. “But when your
house is edging its way toward the brink of a precipice, it may be
time to move on.”
Chloe Arnold is a freelance journalist based in Baku, Azerbaijan.