FOREIGN MINISTER: ARMENIA-DIASPORA RELATIONS BASED ON MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND TRUST
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Sept 18 2006
YEREVAN, September 18. /ARKA – Novosti-Armenia/. Armenia-Diaspora
relations are based on mutual understanding and trust, Armenian
Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan said Monday speaking at the third
Armenia-Diaspora forum opening in Yerevan.
He said the forum would give a new impetus to these relations.
In his words, the forum will outline future activities of all Armenians
worldwide, who has many common problems.
“We don’t overestimate our expectations from the forum and don’t think
it will solve all problems in Armenia and Diaspora. However it will
spur these relations and we’ll be able to reach our goals thanks to
consolidation”, Oskanyan said.

SHUSHI (NKR) MAY BECOME SCIENTIFIC AND EDUCATIONAL, HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CENTER OF ALL-ARMENIAN SIGNIFICANCE
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Sept 19 2006
YEREVAN, September 19. /ARKA/. President of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic Arkady Ghukasyan told journalists in Yerevan on Monday
that Shushi city (NKR) might become a scientific and educational,
historical and cultural center of all-Armenian significance.
He said that the program on rehabilitation of Shushi was one of
the wide-ranging directions of rehabilitation and development of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
“It’s also a serious political step of NKR in strengthening of peace”,
he said.
In this connection Ghukasyan emphasized that one of the most
perspective directions of cooperation of Karabakh and Diaspora is the
intellectual sphere, and particularly search for ways of cooperation
with leading Armenian businessmen of world scientific centers.
“The international experience and the best scientific and educational
traditions of Armenia may become a basis for creation of a system of
training of high-qualified specialists in Karabakh”, Ghukasyan said.
On September 18-23, the third Armenia-Diaspora forum is being
held in Yerevan. Presidents of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Robert
Kocharyan and Arkady Ghukasyan, Catholicos of all-Armenians Garegin
II and Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia Aram I, as well as
representatives of the scientific and educational spheres, Diaspora
and national minorities.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SILVER COMMEMORATIVE COIN DEDICATED TO 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIA’S INDEPENDENCE PUT IN CIRCULATION IN SEP 2006
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Sept 18 2006
YEREVAN, September 18. /ARKA/. A silver commemorative coin,
dedicated to the 15th anniversary of Armenia’s independence, is put in
circulation on September 2006. The press service of the Central Bank
of Armenia reported that this coin is the seventh from the series of
commemorative coins titled “Armenian Statehood”.
The nominal value of the coin is AMD 5000. It is made from pure
silver. It’s weight amounts to five troy ounces, the diameter being
63 mm. The image of the Armenian president’s residence is stamped on
the coin. There are a total of 300 coins.
In 2001, the CBA issued another commemorative coin, dedicated to the
10th anniversary of Armenia’s independence.

ARMENIA’S GDP FOR RECENT FIVE YEARS AVERAGES 12.21%
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Sept 18 2006
YEREVAN, September 18. /ARKA/. Armenia’s average GDP for recent five
years has made 12.21%, Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said Monday
at Armenia-Diaspora 3rd forum.
He said private sector contributed 85% to the growth, of which 40%
came from small- and mid-scale entrepreneurship.
The president said offshore investments totaled $500 million last year.
He finds this a great achievement for a country having neither oil
nor gas.
Kocharyan also pointed out that large-scale reforms had been
implemented in Armenia last four years.
He stressed that Armenia’s membership in WTO speeded up the country’s
integration in the world economy and made its relations with trade
partners predictable.
The head of state singled out energy sector as well as mining,
processing and jewelry industries, information technologies and
construction as the leading areas in the country’s economy.
He stressed the role Armenian communities worldwide with their direct
investments play in Armenia’s economy.
The 3rd Armenia-Diaspora forum is to last three days – from September
18 to 20 – in Yerevan.
Armenian Apostolic Church leader Catholicos Garegin II is set to
speak at the forum.

DEFENSE OF MULTIPLE ROOTS LANDS BEST-SELLING AUTHOR IN COURT
by Nicolas Cheviron
Agence France Presse — English
September 19, 2006 Tuesday 1:45 AM GMT
Multicultural and multilingual and determined to defend her right
to be so, prominent author Elif Shafak’s ruffling of establishment
feathers in Turkey has resulted in a lawsuit for “denigrating the
Turkish national identity” that begins here Thursday.
The novels of the 35-year-old Shafak, peopled with uprooted characters
who switch nationality, religion and even sex, has managed to offend
almost all sectors of Turkey’s complex establishment.
Militant secular defenders of the principles set by Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, the founder of the republic, conservative Islamists and far
right nationalists all disapprove.
She angered the Kemalists by reproaching the republic, founded by
Ataturk from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, of rejecting
the Ottomans’ multicultural past and replacing it with what she sees
as an impoverished, if monolithic, national identity.
They also frowned at her column in the Islamist — albeit moderate
— daily Zaman and her marriage to a former commentator of the same
newspaper, which has alleged links to a powerful religious brotherhood.
Conservative Muslims were indignant when her first novel, “Pinhan”
(The Sufi), published in 1998, told the story of a hermaphrodite
Muslim mystic.
For the far right, the last straw was a passage in her latest opus,
“Baba ve Pic” (The Bastard of Istanbul), calling for a national
reflection on the near-taboo subject of the Armenian massacres of
World War I, whose “genocide” label Turkey vehemently rejects.
An association of far-right lawyers that has distinguished itself
over the past few years by instigating lawsuits against liberal
intellectuals is behind the trial scheduled to begin before an Istanbul
court on Thursday.
“The Bastard of Istanbul” is sweeping saga of four generations of
women moving between Turkey and the United States and recounting the
tale of an Armenian family that fled the massacres of 1915, leaving
behind a child who was reared as a Turk and a Muslim.
Shafak knows what she is talking about: the product of the Kemalist
establishment she criticizes, the granddaughter of a military family
and the daughter of diplomats, she has led a nomadic existence.
Born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971, she spent her youth in Spain
and Jordan and shares her time between Turkey and the United States,
where she teaches at the University of Arizona.
“I do have roots, but my roots are not in one place, neither in the
ground nor in the air,” she explained in a 2005 interview in New
Perspectives Quarterly.
“Im connected to different cultures, and thats, I think, part of the
reason why I believe its possible to be multicultural, multilingual
and multifaith,” she said.
After the controversial “The Sufi” came “The Mirrors of the City”,
which told the tale of conversos — Jews converted to Catholicism to
flee the Spanish inquisition — who sought refuge in Istanbul.
“The Gaze” was the story of women’s quest for independence throughout
the centuries and “The Flea Palace” recounted the moral and physical
collapse of the residents of an Istanbul apartment building.
And “The Saint of Incipient Insanities”, written in English in 2004,
is the story of a score of foreigners’ fruitless quest for fulfillment
in the United States.
Whether Shafak will appear at her trial on Thursday is still unclear,
however.
She became a mother for the first time on Saturday and her baby
daughter’s name reflects Shafak’s preoccupations as a writer —
Shehrazad Zelda, after, respectively, the legendary teller of the
1001 tales of the Arabian Nights, and the talented and tragic spouse
of US author F. Scott Fitzgerald.

ANOTHER WRITER GOES ON TRIAL IN NEW BLOW TO TURKEY’S EU CREDENTIALS
Agence France Presse — English
September 19, 2006 Tuesday 1:44 AM GMT
A celebrated Turkish novelist goes on trial Thursday over her book
on the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, casting fresh
doubts on Turkey’s democratic credentials just weeks before the EU
releases a key report on its troubled membership bid.
Elif Shafak, 35, is the latest in a string of intellectuals to
answer charges of “denigrating the Turkish national identity” under
an infamous penal code provision that has led the European Union to
question Turkey’s commitment to freedom of speech.
The case, in which Shafak risks up to three years in jail, has ignited
further criticism because the charges stem from remarks by fictional
Armenian characters in her best-selling novel “The Bastard of Istanbul”
or “Baba ve Pic” (The Father and the Bastard) in Turkish.
Article 301 has landed many other intellectuals in court, including
Turkey’s best-known writer Orhan Pamuk.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn urged Ankara in July to amend
Article 301 “in order to guarantee freedom of expression”, after an
appeals court upheld a conviction against Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink under the same provision, setting a precedent.
Dink’s six-month sentence was suspended, while the case against Pamuk
was dropped on a technicality. No one has so far gone to jail under
the article, but dozens of cases are pending.
“Article 301 is being used so heedlessly to crush people in
courtrooms,” Dink said in February after he was acquitted in an
earlier case tried under the 301 clause.
“What needs to be done is repeal the article,” he said.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul recently hinted the provision may be
amended as part of reforms that the government is planning to rush
through parliament before the European Commission gives its verdict on
Turkey’s progress towards membership in a crucial report on October 24.
Turkey’s accession talks are already in trouble over its rejection
to open its sea and air ports to Greek Cypriot use under a customs
union accord with the European Union.
The proceedings against Shafak were initiated after a complaint
filed by a nationalist lawyer notorious for relentlessly pursuing
before the courts intellectuals who dispute the official line on the
Armenian massacres.
Much to Turkey’s chagrin, the World War I killings have been recognized
as genocide by many countries and open debate of the issue often
drives nationalist sentiment into a frenzy.
It was unclear whether Shafak will be present in the courtroom Thursday
as she just gave birth to her first child, a girl, at the weekend.
“The Bastard of Istanbul”, originally written in English, was
released here in March 2006 and quickly became a bestseller. It will
be published in the United States and Britain next year.
The novel moves between Istanbul and San Fransisco as it tells
the intertwined stories of four generations of Turkish women and
an Armenian-American family, the descendants of survivors of the
massacres.
Armenians assert that up to 1.5 million of their people were
slaughtered in what was a genocide between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks
died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence in
eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling
Ottoman Empire.
Shafak, who was born in France and spent her teenage years abroad as
the daughter of a Turkish diplomat, writes both in English and Turkish.
She is also an assistant professor at Arizona University’s Near
Eastern Studies department and divides her time between Turkey and
the United States.

OSCE MG FREEZES NK PEACE RROCESS: ANM MEMBER
ARMINFO News Agency
September 19, 2006 Tuesday
The OSCE MG has frozen the Karabakh peace process and the problem has
been transferred to other international organizations, particularly,
to the UN, says the representative of the formerly ruling Armenian
National Movement party David Shahnazaryan.
The OSCE MG will make no new proposals and the old ones parrot the
stage-by-stage scenario – which is against Armenia’s interests. The
situation is turning against the Armenian side.
The Karabakh problem is lost chess game of the present authorities.
Azerbaijan has pushed its resolution on occupied territories into the
UN agenda, Azeri refugees are going to appeal to the European Court
for getting compensation from Armenia. “And what is the Armenian
side doing? Nothing.” Instead of using its lobby in the US to push a
resolution on the destruction of cultural monument in Nakhichevan and
other documents into the UN agenda, Yerevan is keeping silence and uses
its lobby just to hold actions against the change of the US ambassador
to Armenia. “They are acting like rabbits!” says Shahnazaryan.
He says that under present condition the Nagorno Karabakh authorities
should say that Armenian President Robert Kocharyan does not represent
their official position and only then will the international community
agree to involve Nagorno Karabakh in the negotiating process. But
instead the NK authorities are passively watching the process.
As a result of the present regime’s policy Armenia has become a toy in
the hands of super powers, but, unlike Azerbaijan, it is uninteresting
and useless toy. The building of the Kars-Tbilisi rail will put Armenia
in full isolation. The present regime’s policy is delaying the Karabakh
peace process giving Azerbaijan time for gaining strength. If this
policy continues the international community will impose a solution
on Yerevan and Yerevan will have to accept it.
The situation is moving towards war and unless the Armenian authorities
want it they will have to accept the unacceptable stage-by-stage
scenario. If in 90s this scenario could give Armenia big dividends
now the country may get only the stoppage of the Kars-Tbilisi project.
Shahnazaryan sees just one way out of the situation – the change of
the present criminal regime led by Kocharyan.

HEAD OF REPUBLICAN PARTY FRACTION: NK CONFLICT TO BE SETTLED IN 2012
ARMINFO News Agency
September 19, 2006 Tuesday
The Karabakh conflict will be settled in 2012, Galoust Sahakyan,
Head of the Republican Party fraction, said at a press-conference in
“Mirror” club, Tuesday.
He doesn’t share the optimism of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen
that there will be progress the peace talks in 2006. Sahakyan also
said that the Karabakh conflict settlement doesn’t at all depend
on Armenia, Azerbaijan or Nagorno- Karabakh. “The Karabakh conflict
settlement depends on super-states, for whom Armenia is just a toy”,
he noted. Sahakyan expressed confidence that the peace process
will not reach a deadlock. The settlement depends on the formation
and consolidation of the Armenian statehood. He pointed out that
the conflict can’t be resolved by the Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents, this question must find a national solution. The Armenian
people will agree only to a settlement scenario stipulating either
Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence or its joining Armenia. “Perhaps,
it is because of the Armenian side’s position of principle that the
problem settlement is delayed, however, Armenia will never change
Nagorno- Karabakh’s independence for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline or the
Kars-Tbilisi railroad”, Sahakyan said.

ARMENIAN-EGYPTIAN BUSINESS IT FORUM TO BE HELD IN YEREVAN SEPT 22
ARMINFO News Agency
September 19, 2006 Tuesday
Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF) informs that it is organizing
Armenian-Egyptian Business IT Forum to be held on 22 September, 2006
at the Congress hotel in the framework of the IT Month 2006 events.
Egypt -Armenia meetings held in February 2006 in Cairo has become
the starting point for joint Egypt-Armenia initiatives, first of
those is the Armenian-Egyptian Business IT Forum devoted to further
exploring of business development opportunities between IT companies
of two countries.
The main focus of the Armenian-Egyptian Business Forum is mutually
beneficial cooperation in ICT projects and initiatives targeting
the Egyptian and Armenian markets as well as other regions by
utilizing the expertise of companies. As well, the mutual cooperation
includes development and enhancement the capabilities, resources,
management and business practices applied by companies. Among other
issues, such pressing topics as implementation of expert exchange
program, which will be based on preliminary the identification
of mutual interest/matching, provision of technical assistance
and implementation/deployment services in the mutual projects and
activities will be discussed.
8 leading Egyptian companies are expected to participate in the
Forum, representing such IT specializations as software development,
IT services, IT applications for e-government, e- health, industrial
systems, e-commerce and data centers.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HRANT DINK INTENDS TO APPEAL TO EUROPEAN COURT ON HUMAN RIGHTS
ARMINFO News Agency
September 19, 2006 Tuesday
Hrant Dink, Editor-in-Chief of the Turkey-based Armenian newspaper
“Agos”, is going to appeal to the European Court on Human Rights.
He told journalists today that his trial for insulting the Turks’
national mentality has gone through all Turkish courts. “The other
day the Turkish Cassation Court approved the First Instance Court’s
verdict to sentence me to six months in prison”, he said. As soon as
he gets the official verdict of the Cassation Court he will ask the
European Court to protect his rights. This may take several months.
He said that he intends to struggle for his freedom in Turkey
till the end, but if he is still convicted he will have to leave
his motherland. He said that Turkey not only denies the Armenian
Genocide, but also suggests an absurd version of the historical facts:
it says that it was the Armenians and not Turks who perpetrated the
massacre. Modern Turkey undergoes the process of democratic reforms
and, particularly, the question of the Genocide.
Dink said that his business is not to condemn the Turkish viewpoint
of the Genocide, but to submit the subject for a wider discussion.
“The Turkish authorities defend their viewpoint and their freedom of
speech everywhere, particularly, in France, who wants to adopt a law
stipulating that a person denying the Armenian Genocide in France
should be prosecuted, but, in fact, are not willing to provide this
freedom in their own country. It is inadmissible and needs revision”,
Dink said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress