Category: News

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
August 18, 2004 Wednesday
Russia, Azerbaijan start talks, including on Karabakh conflict
By Natalya Lenskaya, Irina Chumakova
MOSCOW
Russian and Azerbaijan foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov and Elmar
Mamedyarov started talks in Moscow, one of whose topics will be the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Azerbaijan minister arrived in the
Russian capital on an official visit on Tuesday.
Russia hails the continuation of the Azerbaijan-Armenian dialogue at
various levels, Tass learnt from Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Boris Malakhov. “We believe that the participants in the conflict
should find out a mutually acceptable solution,” the Russian diplomat
emphasized. Moscow “is ready to render in this case the most active
assistance both on a bilateral basis and as a co-chairman of the OSCE
Minsk Group”, he added.
Struggle against terrorism will be also considered at the ministers’
meeting. They want to pay special attention to practical steps in
countering this threat.
Besides, Malakhov continued, the ministers will exchange opinions on
the regional and international situations as well as higher
cooperation within the Commonwealth of Independent States.
They will also discuss implementation of top-level understandings,
aimed at boosting volumes of bilateral economic cooperation,
including doubling of trade turnover. According to the spokesman,
Lavrov and Mamedyarov will discuss work on a legal status of the
Caspian and prospects for the second Caspian summit.
It is the first official visit by Mamedyarov to Russia as Azerbaijan
foreign minister. He was appointed to this post last April.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
August 18, 2004 Wednesday
Russia, CIS propose to UN to institute world remembrance day
By Vladimir Kikilo
UNITED NATIONS
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have put forward a proposal
to the U.N. General Assembly to announce May 8 and 9 Remembrance and
Reconciliation Days.
The proposal to put this issue as additional item on the agenda of
the forthcoming 59th session of the U.N. General Assembly is included
in the letter sent to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan by the
countries. Permanent representatives of these states at the United
Nations signed the letter.
“In 2005 the world will celebrate the 60th anniversary of victory
over fascism,” it is said in an explanatory note to the letter, in
particular.
“The great victory in the World War II was achieved by joint efforts
of peoples of many countries. It gave a powerful impetus to the
international community cohesion, which resulted in the establishment
of the United Nations Organisation. Through the suffering and death
of millions of people the nations of the world came to realise that
there is no alternative to the system of collective security that
took shape in the U.N. Charter for maintaining international peace,”
the message says.
“The peoples of our countries have shouldered the main burden of the
war, so we are convinced like no other that there are no such goals
that would justify unleashing of wars,” it is stressed in the
document.
“U.N. member states should jointly exert every effort with a view to
putting an end to the current armed conflicts using political
methods, preventing the emergence of such conflicts in the future and
promoting the maintenance of a stable and solid peace,” the document
says.
“It is in the common interests of humanity to further strengthen the
role and effectiveness of the United Nations Organisation as the
central element of the collective security system in the fulfilment
of the high task proclaimed in its Charter – to relieve the coming
generations from the scourge of war,” the letter reads.
The authors of the letter proposed to the U.N. General Assembly to
adopt a resolution that would announce May 8 and 9 the days of
remembrance and reconciliation, as well as to hold a special solemn
session of the Assembly in order to adopt a declaration aimed at the
unification of humankind in the name of peace and progress and
prevention of new world wars.

The hazards of a long, hard freeze
Unresolved wars have poisoned the newly independent republics of the
former Soviet south – and could flare anew
The Economist
August 19th 2004
STEPANAKERT, SUKHUMI, TIRASPOL AND TSKHINVALI — If the so-called frozen
conflicts of the Black Sea region are ever thawed
out, somebody will need to be standing by with a very large bucket indeed.
To outsiders, that may seem like an odd warning: unless you have a special
interest in the obscure enclaves of small, impoverished states, where local
feuds have flared up and died down, a frozen conflict may sound like a
conflict you can forget. But such a conclusion would be wrong: the region’s
unresolved wars-in Transdniestria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and
Nagorno-Karabakh-are a big reason why the newly independent states of the
former Soviet south have failed miserably to fulfil their potential. Instead
of enjoying their freedom, they have emerged into the world as stunted,
embittered and ill-governed creatures. And if real fighting flares again-a
process which has begun in South Ossetia (see article)-things could
become far worse.
At the heart of each conflict is a claimed mini-state whose rulers
prevailed, by dint of Russian arms, in a local war. While there are huge
differences, these statelets have things in common. Ten years or more of
isolation under unrecognised governments have left them as harsh,
militarised societies, with few functioning institutions, and economies
open to crime.
South Ossetia is the pettiest, but currently the hottest of the conflict
zones. It is a landlocked province of Georgia which would have no viability
as a legitimate country. It survives as a conduit for smuggling between
Georgia and Russia, mainly in cheap spirits, arms and grain, under the
diplomatic protection of the Russian government and the military
protection of Russian troops.
Of the four statelets, Karabakh comes closest to being a normal society-at
least for the ethnic Armenians who remain there. Nearly a million people
from both sides of the war were put to flight by the fighting which
concluded in 1994 with a big victory by soldiers from Karabakh and
Armenia itself.
Especially since 2001, when a local bully and racketeer, Samvel Babayan, was
put in jail, Karabakh-which calls itself independent but is in practice
virtually joined to Armenia-has had something recognisable as local politics
and a mixed economy. Investment from the Armenian diaspora has boosted the
economy. One new arrival from America, Vartkes Anivian, started a
dairy-products company after the war, and now employs 250 people. Municipal
elections have just been held in the enclave-to the fury of Azerbaijan, to
which Karabakh legally belongs-and there was genuine competition between the
candidates. The atmosphere in Stepanakert, Karabakh’s capital, is
orderly in a post-Soviet way, not chaotic.
So Karabakh might have a decent future if the enclave’s future could somehow
be settled. Four years ago, a compromise seemed within reach: most of
Karabakh would have been joined to Armenia, while the Azeris recovered the
surrounding areas and gained a corridor between their republic’s two parts.
More recently, the mood on both sides has hardened, and a big body of
Azerbaijani opinion longs to recover the land by force.
Small wars, or medium?
The fighting over Karabakh was and could again become a fair-sized war;
South Ossetia by comparison is a small, though strategically significant,
squabble. Abkhazia, in Georgia, and Transdniestria, in Moldova, fall
somewhere in between.
Both Abkhazia and Transdniestria can make claims to special political
status, if not to independence, on historical grounds. Both regimes control
territories and economies capable of standing alone. But both are willing
hostages of Russia, which helped them fight their wars of secession when the
Soviet Union collapsed, and has given them military and diplomatic support
ever since. It has issued passports so freely that probably a majority of
the population in each enclave could claim Russian nationality. But Russia’s
“protection” has also become the main obstacle to a constitutional
settlement. Russia prefers to keep the enclaves as its own pawns. At its
most mischievous, the Kremlin’s strategy may view Transdniestria as a second
version of Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave near Poland-in other words, a
trouble-making outpost on the borders of NATO. And some of the worst
features of Russia’s own governance have been transferred to its protégés in
Georgia and Moldova: organised crime, corruption, and authoritarian
leadership.
For the people of these non-countries, life goes on, after a fashion. “It is
a normal town, but blown up a bit,” says a United Nations official trying to
put the best face on Sukhumi, “capital” of Abkhazia. And there is indeed the
ghost of something lovely in the landscape, where the beaches curve
north to the Russian border.
“It is a normal town, but blown up a bit”
But to call Sukhumi “normal”, even by the elastic standards of the Caucasus,
is stretching things. For one thing, half of its population is missing.
Ethnic Georgians fled the city or were driven out in the civil war of
1992-93. And to say that Sukhumi is blown up “a bit” risks flattering a town
where only about one-third of the buildings are in good shape, one-third are
badly run down, and one-third are derelict. The roads are crumbling, the
pavements are grassing over, and the airport is dead save for a few UN
helicopters. Tourists from Russia are the mainstay, along with agriculture,
of the visible economy. The invisible economy belongs to burly men who drive
smart cars with handguns on their hips. They, or their like, run a
blacker-than-black trade centred on the port. Smuggling probably involves
drugs, arms, fuel and stolen cars. “Whatever you have”, says the UN
official, “it disappears into a black hole when it hits the docks.”
Tiraspol, the capital of Transdniestria, presents a more orderly façade.
Streets are eerily quiet and clean, and almost bare of cars, even on a
weekday afternoon. Nobody in civilian clothes carries a gun openly. A statue
of Lenin looks down from a pink marble column in front of the presidential
palace. The Bolshevik leader looks uncannily like Transdniestria’s own
bearded “president”, Igor Smirnov, a former metalworker from Kamchatka in
the Russian Pacific who moved to Tiraspol in 1987 as a factory manager and
manoeuvred his way into power. Mr Smirnov’s son heads the “state customs
committee”, the second-biggest job in a land which lives largely on trade,
licit and illicit, between Ukraine and the rest of Moldova.
In the past month both Moldova and Ukraine have announced much tighter
customs controls on goods moving out of Transdniestria. Moldova was
retaliating against a decision by the authorities in Transdniestra to shut
schools there still teaching Romanian in the Latin alphabet.
But despite such occasional flurries of firm government, experience suggests
that Transdniestria’s borders will remain porous enough for it to go on
supplying Moldovan markets with untaxed consumer goods, and to go on
shipping its more sinister cargoes, including arms, out through Ukraine or
by air. According to a recent report from the International Crisis Group, a
Brussels think-tank, Transdniestria has five or six arms factories making
small arms, mortars and missile-launchers, for sale to the world’s
trouble-spots. A recent study from the German Marshall Fund of the United
States has called the conflict zones “unresolved fragments of Soviet Empire
[which] now serve as shipping points for weapons, narcotics, and victims of
human trafficking, as breeding grounds for transnational organised crime,
and last but not least, for terrorism”. That may be a bit too hard on
Karabakh, but a fairly accurate account of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and
Transdniestria. It may be time for the world to slop them out.

The Armenian genocide
Face history’s heartbreaking truth
The International Herald Tribune
Thursday, August 19, 2004
By Jay Bushinsky
JERUSALEM — When the writer Franz Werfl, visiting this majestic city in
the early 1930s, sought a shoemaker, he was told that there was a very
competent one on Jaffa Road. His wife, the former Alma Mahler, had lost
one of her shoes aboard ship en route to Palestine and was desperate to
have the missing one replaced.
The shoemaker’s name was Garabidian – an Armenian name. Werfl was
surprised to discover Armenians in Jerusalem. When he found out that the
Old City had an Armenian Quarter and that most of its inhabitants were
survivors of the 20th century’s first genocide, he was overwhelmed with
emotion. That conversation inspired his internationally acclaimed novel,
“The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.”
The carnage perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks 89 years ago, in which 1.5
million ethnic Armenians were killed or deported, was a tragic prelude
to the Nazi Holocaust of 1939-1945 in which six million Jews were
annihilated.
Hitler’s determination to destroy European Jewry was encouraged by the
world’s lack of interest in the Armenian tragedy. In a speech delivered
to his troops on Aug. 22, 1939 – nine days before he invaded Poland – he
was quoted as having said: “Who, after all, speaks today of the
annihilation of the Armenians?”
The fact that these words were not included in the official text has
prompted skeptics to contend that they never were uttered. They may have
been said off the cuff, since it is hard to believe that they could have
been invented by others.
Ironically, Hitler’s rhetorical question is inscribed on one of the
walls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington, and rightly so. But
there is a vast chasm between moral sentiment and political expediency.
The latest attempt by Armenian-American activists to win Congressional
recognition of the Armenian genocide was a failure. Other interest
groups, including Jewish ones, misguided or opportunistic, convinced a
vast majority of the American lawmakers that a resolution along those
lines would offend the Turks at a time when the United States needs them
as allies.
Israeli diplomacy also puts contemporary priorities ahead of moral
obligations. When a major documentary about the Armenian genocide was
due to be screened here, the foreign ministry intervened out of
consideration for Turkish sensibilities. It is hypocritical to expect
compassion and sympathy from the peoples of the world for the lives lost
in the Holocaust when ‘raison d’état’ prevents Israel and most Israelis
from commiserating with the Armenians.
Israel’s government winced when Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, assailed its policy and behavior in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip as well as toward the Palestinians in general. But neither Israel
nor the overseas Jewish organizations dared remind Erdogan that leaders
of nations that had committed crimes against humanity had best refrain
from preaching to others – a lesson learned and followed by Germany.
Historical truth must be faced regardless of how heartbreaking it may
be. It cannot be subordinated to the ebb and flow of modern
international relations. Anyone who visited the Armenians’ grim memorial
to their martyred brothers and sisters south of Yerevan, Armenia’s
capital, in the shadow of biblical Mount Ararat, cannot but grieve with
them.
Israelis, Jews, Zionists and their supporters should comfort the
Armenians in their national sorrow and the Turks should accept the
photographs, documents and above all testimony, which commemorate the
Armenian genocide, instead of insisting that it never happened.
By Jay Bushinsky is a freelance writer based in Israel.

Athens2004 Official Website
Armenian Athletes at Athens 2004 Olympics
Name National Olympic Committee Sport
AGAEV Mamed – ARM Wrestling
ALEKSANYAN Gevorg – ARM Weightlifting
ANDREASYAN Aram – ARM Canoe/Kayak Flatwater
ANDREASYAN Serob – ARM Rowing
ARAKELIAN Avetik – ARM Athletics
ASMARYAN Gevorg – ARM Canoe/Kayak Flatwater
ATOYAN Gegham – ARM Weightlifting
AVETISYAN Varduhi – ARM Swimming
BAKHTAMYAN Norayr – ARM Shooting
BERBERYAN Martin – ARM Wrestling
DANIELYAN Artur – ARM Weightlifting
DANIELYAN Ashot – ARM Weightlifting
GALSTYAN Haykaz – ARM Wrestling
GALUSTYAN Vaghinak – ARM Wrestling
GEGHAMYAN Levon – ARM Wrestling
GEVORGYAN Arayik – ARM Wrestling
GHAZARYAN Armen – ARM Weightlifting
GHAZARYAN Marine – ARM Athletics
HAYRAPETYAN Arshak – ARM Wrestling
HOVHANNISYAN Zhirayr – ARM Wrestling
HOVSEPYAN Hayk – ARM Canoe/Kayak Flatwater
ISRAYELYAN Varuzhan – ARM Judo
JAVAKHYAN Vahagn – ARM Athletics
JUHARYAN Vahan – ARM Wrestling
KAMALYAN Tigran – ARM Weightlifting
KHACHATRYAN Sos – ARM Weightlifting
KHURSHUDYAN Hripsime -ARM Weightlifting
KOLOYAN Mikayel – ARM Swimming
KYAPANAKTSYAN Khachatur-ARM Weightlifting
MALUMYAN Artak – ARM Boxing
MARKOSYAN Suren – ARM Wrestling
MARTIROSYAN Armen – ARM Athletics
MARTIROSYAN Tigran – ARM Weightlifting
MATEVOSYAN Samvel – ARM Boxing
MELIKYAN Arsen – ARM Weightlifting
NALBANDYAN Aleksan – ARM Boxing
NAZARYAN Armen – ARM Judo
NURIJANYAN Eric – ARM Athletics
PAPOYAN Davit – ARM Wrestling
SARGSIAN Sargis – ARM Tennis
SARGSYAN Makar – ARM Rowing
SARGSYAN Meruzhan – ARM Athletics
SHAHNAZARYAN Andranik – ARM Archery
TOROSYAN Aida – ARM Athletics
TOVMASYAN Harutyun – ARM Boxing
TOVMASYAN Marat – ARM Boxing
VARDANYAN Garsevan – ARM Wrestling
VASILYAN Varazdat – ARM Weightlifting

Athens 2004 Official Website
Armenian Coaches at the Athens 2004 Olympics
ADAMYAN Vardan – ARM Rowing
ALAVERDYAN Pashik – ARM Weightlifting
BABAYAN Tigran – ARM Judo
BICHAKHCHYAN Vahan – ARM Weightlifting
DANIELYAN Roman – ARM Weightlifting
GASPARYAN Aram – ARM Wrestling
GEVORGYAN Samvel – ARM Wrestling
JULFALAKYAN Levon – ARM Wrestling
KHACHATURYAN Sargis – ARM Athletics
MARGARYAN Samvel – ARM Wrestling
MEHRABYAN Rafik – ARM Boxing
MIRZOYAN Hoksen – ARM Wrestling
NIKOGHOSYAN Seyran – ARM Shooting
SARGSYAN Bagrat – ARM Tennis
SIMONYAN Simon – ARM Canoe/Kayak Flatwater
YENOKYAN Hrant – ARM Wrestling
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Athens 2004 Official website
Armenian Referees/Judges at Athens 2004 Olympics
KAZARIAN Levon – Armenia – Wrestling
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Tenterfield Star, Australia
Aug 19 2004
Entertainment – International ensemble on the way to Tenterfield
Thursday, 19 August 2004
A GROUP of four international artists is set to bring a unique
musical experience to the audience at a concert in Tenterfield next
Thursday, August 26.
The four musicians, known as the Tavantinsuya Ensemble, play violin,
clarinet, viola and piano in a wide repertoire of works. They combine
in different ways to present a variety of duos, trios and quartets
and for this concert they have chosen works highlighting the elegance
of Mozart, the romantic warmth of Max Bruch and the Latin American
rhythms of Salzelo. They’ve included some folk-style intensity of the
music of Armenian composer Khacharturian as well as selections from
George Gershwin’s ‘Porgy and Bess’, an intriguing short piece by
young Australian composer Nigel Sabin and some popular clarinet
pieces.
The concert will take place at the Sir Henry Parkes Memorial School
of Arts from 8pm with pre-concert wine and cheese available from 7pm
to 8pm and during intermission from the Friends of the Sir Henry
Parkes Memorial School of Arts.
Meet the artists
Ronald Woodcock
Ronald Woodcock had toured in over 87 countries during a
distinguished career as concerto and recital soloist, chamber player,
teacher and orchestral conductor.
He has performed in centres such as London, Vienna, Paris, Berlin,
Warsaw, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires as well as in remote
countries such as Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Peru and the Solomon
Islands where he has introduced Western classical music to audiences
for the first time.
Iola Shelley
Iola Shelley was born in Wales and began piano lessons at four. At
the age of 13 she was the youngest student ever to receive the LRAM
and ARCM Performing Diplomas. Along with an illustrious solo piano
career, she has also studied cello, oboe and organ.
In Christchurch, Iola Shelley was one of the founding members of the
Christchurch Conservatoire which was formed in 1978 by members of the
Camerata Piano Quartet.
Graham Evans
Graham Evans first learnt the piano but later took up the clarinet
which became his professional instrument. He was a member of the Band
of the Irish Guards which led to winning a scholarship at the Royal
College of Music. On graduating, he joined the Northern Sinfonia,
Britain’s longest established chamber orchestra. He toured
extensively throughout Europe, the USA and South America as well as
recording with leading musicians for the major record companies.
Louise Woodcock
Louise Woodcock studied viola and piano at the Capetown College of
Music, gaining her LRSM (Performers) and winning a scholarship to the
Vienna Academy of Music. She was a member of the Capetown, Durban and
Auckland Symphony Orchestras and violist in the New Music Group
chamber ensemble in Auckland. For 20 years she was a string teacher
for the Education Department of South Australia and being appointed
string examiner for the Australian Music Examinations Board.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Glendale News Press
LATimes.com
Aug 19 2004
Fighter is Glendale’s badge of honor
Vanes Martirosyan is the most prominent success story from local
boxing program that is due for a comeback in September.
By Josh Kleinbaum, News-Press
GLENDALE – When Vanes Martirosyan went to Rosemont Middle School, he
had a tendency to be disruptive. An energetic boy and an aspiring
boxer, the Armenian-born kid would lose his focus, leading to
trouble.
Once, his guidance counselor at Rosemont wanted to suspend him.
Instead, Officer Ron Williams, who ran Glendale’s Police Athletic
League youth boxing program, made a deal with the counselor: If Vanes
slacks off, Williams will suspend him from boxing.
“I suspended him two times,” Williams said. “Each time, he came back
with more dedication and determination, and his schooling improved.”
Now, Martirosyan is an 18-year-old welterweight fighter representing
the United States in the Olympics. Today, he will fight Cuba’s
Lorenzo Aragon, a two-time world champion.
Martirosyan should be the poster boy for the Police Department’s
boxing program, which has produced several successful professionals
but no other Olympians. He joined the program at 7, a few months shy
of the minimum age requirement – Williams made an exception for him.
He quickly became one of the program’s best boxers. By 14,
Martirosyan outgrew the program, and Williams recommended another
gym, where he could get sponsorship to travel to the top tournaments.
The poster boy image has one problem. For now, the Police
Department’s boxing program, designed to give discipline and
direction to troubled youth, is in hibernation.
The program lost its venue last year, when Roosevelt Middle School
underwent major renovations. Then, facing budget cuts, the department
reassigned Williams from the Police Activities League to regular
patrol.
“Some of the kids who are looking to have a way to get rid of their
frustrations and get their discipline, this is a good venue for
them,” Mayor Bob Yousefian said. “They come in and punch the bags.
This is a way to take aggravation out on a bag rather than a person.
It’s keeping a lot of at-risk youth out of jails, and it’s generating
less headaches for the police department.”
Sgt. Ron Insalaco said the program will be back in September at
Wilson Middle School, with a civilian and a sworn officer running the
program. Williams will not be involved, Insalaco said.
Martirosyan is the program’s most high-profile success story, but
he’s not the only one. William Abelyan, a featherweight, has a 23-5
record. William Adamyan, a light welterweight, has a 9-1 record.
Ernie Zavala, a light welterweight with an 18-3 record, trains with
Freddie Roach, Mike Tyson’s trainer.
Just as important, Williams said, are the people who joined the
program and never had success in the sport.
“Even if a kid can’t box or had no athletic ability, when he or she
put on that [Police Athletic League] shirt, there was a sense of
pride,” Williams said. “It’s difficult to weigh the program’s
success, but from the comments I get today, it’s clear that it’s a
valuable asset to the department and the city.”
Martirosyan’s success is a little easier to measure. Entering the
Olympic qualifying tournament, he was ranked the No. 14 amateur
welterweight, and he shocked most boxing experts by grabbing the
welterweight Olympic spot. After he dominated Algeria’s Benamar
Meskine, 45-20, in his opening fight Sunday, NBC’s Olympic website
called him “America’s Longest Shot.” If he beats Aragon today, that
long shot may have a golden shot.
“I’m positive he’s going to win a gold medal,” Williams said. “You
heard it here first. Positive.”

Hartford Courant , CT
Aug 19 2004
Tradition Takes Back Seat
August 19, 2004
Combined Wire Services
For all the talk of reaching back to the ancient roots of the games,
some Olympic venues have all the reverence of a real-life beer
commercial.
Tanned, toned dancers in orange bikinis gyrate at beach volleyball.
Laker Girl wannabes in flashy dresses shimmy at men’s basketball.
Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” blares from the speakers at
baseball.
These may be your great-great-grandfather’s games in terms of
location, but some venues at the Athens games offer all the subtlety
of Wrestlemania – or the NBA, which helped coordinate entertainment
during basketball games.
“From the first to the last detail, they are responsible for that,”
basketball venue manager Dimitris Karydas said Wednesday. “It looks
to you the same because it is the same.”
Tuesday night’s sold-out game between the United States and Greece,
which didn’t need extra hype, was sexed up even more with a
nine-member dance group from Russia and Ukraine called the Red Foxes,
who shook their shoulders and fan-kicked their way through Jennifer
Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud.” Wearing silky-red, low-cut halter dresses
and black high heels, the dancers smiled and tossed their hair (in
varying shades of blond) with unwavering enthusiasm.
For Dad and country: Norik Martirosyan lost a hand in a grenade
explosion, so he uses his other one when he’s chain-smoking
cigarettes – an old, unhealthy habit that Martirosyan’s son, Vanes,
has begged his father to stop.
When Vanes won the Olympic trials after the two favorites in his
weight class were disqualified, Norik said, “Vanes, if you win a gold
medal, I’ll quit smoking.” So Vanes Martirosyan, of Glendale, Calif.,
an 18-year-old underdog, son of an Armenian immigrant, is determined
to win Olympic gold in the 152-pound class so his father will quit
smoking. And for one other reason.
“For all the time I have been boxing,” Vanes said, “my father has
told me what a lucky boy I am to be growing up in the United States.
… He has told me, since I can remember, that there would be no
greater honor for a sportsman such as me to win a gold medal to honor
our country.”
Martirosyan will fight 2003 Pan American Games gold medalist Lorenzo
Aragon of Cuba in the second round today. Martirosyan outpointed
Benamar Meskine of Algeria in the first round.
Busy in Beijing: The Beijing Olympics are four years away, but
construction of the venues is so far ahead of schedule the
International Olympic Committee has asked Chinese organizers to slow
down to better manage their cash flow.
The Chinese have been equally zealous about preparing their athletes
for the 2008 Games. And China has gotten off to a dazzling start in
Athens, ranking second to the U.S. in the medal count with 22
overall.
Ratings report: NBC’s television ratings for the first five days of
the Summer Olympics in Athens are 5 percent higher than the same span
of the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.
The network telecasts for last Friday through Tuesday were watched by
an average 15.4 percent of the 108.4 million U.S. households with
televisions, compared with 14.6 percent for the first five days of
the Sydney games, NBC said, citing Nielsen Media Research Inc.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress