ARKADY GHUKASIAN: INDEPENDENCE IS THE ONLY CONDITION FOR THE KARABAKH PEOPLE TO PROSPER
Yerkir.am
September 01, 2006
In an interview with the Azat Artsakh newspaper, Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic President Arkady Ghukasian said that the independence is not
an end in itself but the only condition for the Karabakh people to
prosper on the land of its ancestors, Public Radio reported, citing
the news agency Mediamax.
“We knew that Karabakh’s international recognition would be a long
and bumpy road, which also depends on the geopolitical developments
in this region,” Ghukasian has said.
He has also added that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is a de facto
established state, and many accept that fact.
“We managed to not only defend our independence in a war initiated by
Azerbaijan but also to also overcome its consequences in a relatively
short historic period and build a state that in many aspects, including
democratization, is more advanced that Azerbaijan,” according to
Ghukassian.

ASHOT GHULIAN: ALL LEGAL ACTS OF DECLARING NKR WERE FAULTLESS
Yerkir.am
September 01, 2006
“The celebration of the 15th anniversary of the independence prove the
liveliness of our statehood and that the road we chose on September 2,
1991 was right,” Ashot Ghulian, the speaker of the Nagorno Karabakh
Republic National Assembly, said in a live broadcast of the Karabakh
Public TV, news agency Regnum reported.
Declaring an independent Nagorno Karabakh Republic during the Soviet
rule was a brave move, Ghulian said.
He also said the process of declaring the NKR was faultless in terms
of legitimacy.
“All the steps made and all the legal acts to declare independence
were faultless, and we have never heard any criticism in this regard to
date,” Ghulian said. “We did everything in line with the international
law and laws of the Soviet Union.”
Speaking of the war and its consequences, Ghulian said that beginning
2000, a serious work has been done to overcome the war consequences
and develop the economy. He also pointed to the role of the army in
ensuring the country’s security.

HIGH-TECH FOUNDATION OF DEVELOPMENT
By Artak BABAYAN
Yerkir.am
September 01, 2006
The experience of the developed countries shows that high intellectual
potential, research capacities and human resources are necessary but
not adequate preconditions for a country to become a leader in high
technologies. Serious financial investments and developed institutional
capacities are necessary for this. In the case of Armenia, not only
the government but also the Diaspora can play a serious role in this
respect. There is relevant experience in this field. We should build
on this experience and expand it. The Candle Project can become such
an initiative.
The Candle Project as a test for development
What can Armenia offer to counter the large-scale regional projects
such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeyhan oil pipeline? A group of physicists
from Armenia and the Diaspora as well as some Diaspora businessmen
believe the Candle Project for creation of an ultra-modern
synchronatron complex can become such an initiative.
This project is one of the best alternatives for revitalizing the
country’s deteriorated scientific potential and stagnated industry,
people dealing with this sphere assure. Technical manager of the
Candle Project, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Vassili Tsakanov
is sure the Candle Project can make Armenia a country capable of
producing high technologies on the international arena.
The Candle Project is a project for creation of ultra-modern
third generation source of light. The total cost of the Project is
approximately 78 million dollars. If the Project is implemented in
Armenia it will be unique for the former Soviet space, Eastern Europe
and Middle East.
Calculations show that about 3000 scientists from Armenia and abroad
can conduct high level and efficient research at the center. As the
experience of some countries shows, international companies working
in the sphere of high technologies can make large investments into
the Project.
The famous Diaspora Armenian businessman Jirayr Hovnanian is the
chairman of the Candle Project. The Project was significantly supported
by the US State Department. The Project received a 500 thousand dollar
grant from the State Department in 2002. With the grant the Project was
developed and the special committee established under the US National
Scientific Foundation approved the project with very positive feedback.
However, little progress seems to have been made since then. The
main reason for this is lack of understanding of the Project’s
importance both among the Armenian authorities and among the
business circles. In other words, the Armenian authorities do not
seem to be very enthusiastic about the implementation of the Candle
Project. “Otherwise, they would have declared the Project as a national
priority,” Tsakanov concludes.
Meanwhile, the US State Departments has officially informed the
Armenian authorities that it is ready to continue financing the Project
if it is officially declared as a national priority. Has there been
a decision on this issue?
There has been no decision.
Only 4 million dollars is necessary for the first phase of the
Project, the preliminary construction works. The management of the
Candle Project submitted a project proposal for this amount to the
US-funded Millennium Challenges Corporation. However, the proposal
was rejected. Had the Project been declared a national priority like,
for instance, the information technologies, other spheres related to
high technologies would have also developed.
Another obstacle on the way of implementation of the Candle Project,
according to the Project’s technical manager, is connected with the
clash of interests in the region. Because of the lobbying efforts of
Israel and Turkey the Project’s progress in the US State Department
was suspended for a long time. It was due to the active efforts of
the Armenian Diaspora that the Project was successfully pushed through.

THE FOURTH ARMMONO FESTIVAL WITHOUT A JURY AND WITH NO COMPETITION
By Hovannes Yeranian
Yerkir.am
September 01, 2006
The forth International Shakespeare Festival ArmMono will be launched
in Yerevan on September 12. This festival of mono performances has been
organized on Shakespeare themes for the second year. The Ministry of
Culture and Youth Affaires, the Union of Theater Actors of Armenia and
the Armenian National Center of the International Theater Institute
(UNESCO) do their best to make the festival a celebration of theater.
This is why there is no competition and no jury during the festival.
Directors of similar festivals from around the world will visit
Armenia which, the organizers believe, gives the Armenian actors an
opportunity to enter the international arena. Actors from Georgia,
Iran, Poland, Turkmenistan, Lithuania, England and Slovenia will
perform at the festival.
Hovhannes Hovhannissian, Levon Ivanian, Narineh Petrossian, Hasmik
Ter-Karapetian and Armen Santrossian from Armenia will also perform
at the festival.
The most interesting performance of the festival is the “… Lawful
Prison” international project. Actors from ten countries will perform
Shakespeare’s Hamlet in their languages. Two of the ten actors will
be Armenian. Mariam Ghazanchian will play Ofelia and Vardan Petrossian
will play Hamlet.
Director of ArmMono Festival Hakob Ghazanchian is the author and
director of this performance. The famous Polish director and theorist
Andzey Zurovski will be managing the festival. The famous Georgian
director Robert Sturua will be the guest of the festival.
The organizers of the festival believe the Shakespeare Festival
will be a good signal for the revival of Armenian theater rich in
Shakespeare traditions.

KARABAKH LEADER SEES NO GROUNDS FOR WAR
Arminfo, Yerevan
4 Sep 06
Stepanakert, 4 September: I am absolutely confident that at this
stage the world community would not want to see the resumption of war
between Karabakh and Azerbaijan and the aggressive statements that we
are hearing from Baku make us wonder as to “why they are doing this”,
President Arkadiy Gukasyan has said in reply to a question from an
Arminfo correspondent.
The president noted that he does not see any grounds for the
resumption of the war – neither political, nor economic nor moral
nor geographic. He said that the most important thing is that we have
achieved the task we set, won the war which was imposed on us, have
built a developed society and the fact that the people of Nagornyy
Karabakh have been living a free and independent life over the past
15 years is a sign of that.
The leader of Karabakh noted that the declaration of independence was
the only way for the people of Nagornyy Karabakh. Life shows that we
were right. Otherwise, we would have repeated the plight of Naxcivan
[Azerbaijani exclave], Gukasyan noted.
The president of Nagornyy Karabakh noted that the main task for the
republic is to maintain peace and within that framework to sign a
treaty with Azerbaijan and to achieve the international recognition
of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic. “I believe that we will be able
to solve these two main issues,” Gukasyan noted.

ARKADY GHUKASYAN: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY NOT INTERESTED IN THE RESUMPTION OF WAR
ArmRadio.am
04.09.2006 12:12
“I’m absolutely confident that today the international community is
not interested in the resumption of war between Nagorno Karabakh and
Azerbaijan,” NKR President Arkady Ghukasyan declared, ArmInfo reports.
Meantime, the President noted that he sees no political, economic,
moral or geographical reasons for the resumption of the war. In
his words, the most important today is that “we have reached
our objective: we have won the imposed war and have constructed
a developing state. The symbol of the past 15 years has been the
free and independent life of the Nagorno Karabakh people. NKR leader
noted that declaration of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic was the only
salvation for Artsakhi people.
“Life has proved that we are correct. Otherwise, we would face the fate
of Nakhijevan,” Arkady Ghukasyan mentioned. In the President’s words,
the two major aims of the republic are the maintenance of peace and
signing a treaty with Azerbaijan in this framework, as well as the
international recognition of NKR. I think we are able to resolve
these two problems,” Arkady Ghukasyan pointed out.

ARMENIAN ATHLETES TO PARTICIPATE IN THE “CAUCASUS CITIES CUP”
ArmRadio.am
04.09.2006 12:45
About 20 Armenian athletes will participate in the “Caucasus Cities
Cup” international athletics championship to be held September 12-14
in Sochi. The final composition of the team is not known so far,
but the team will comprise sportsmen from Yerevan, Kapan, Vanadzor,
Artashat and Gyumri and four trainers.
RA state athletics trainer Narine Shahbazyan told “Armenpress” that
Sochi was chosen as an alternative to South Caucasian countries,
since sportsmen of some country always refuse to participate in the
tournament. For instance, for the first time the championship was
held in Armenia, and Azerbaijani athletes refused to arrive.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Robert Fisk: American and Muslim: six million people in search of an identity
Seattle businessmen, students, Miami housewives… Well, what did I expect,
asks Robert Fisk at the Chicago Muslim convention

Sunday Independent/UK
03 September 2006

A guy with brown eyes and dark skin and a thick American accent walks
up to talk to me. I guess he’s an Iranian, possibly a
Pakistani. Where’re you from, I ask? “Austin, Texas,” he replies. Fisk
foiled again. But where do you originally come from I ask him? “I was
born in Newark, New Jersey.” Fisk clears his throat. Where does his
family originally come from? I’m beginning to feel like the man from
Homeland Security, racially profiling my new friend. “Lahore,” he
replies laconically and I try to make amends. The only beautiful city
in Pakistan, I say, and he smiles witheringly at me.

And I go on making the same mistake at the conference hall where the
biggest annual convention of American Muslims – perhaps 32,000 of them
– is meeting for a weekend of speeches and discussions that run all
the way from drug addiction to Condi Rice’s “new” and bloody Middle
East, from banking without interest to the Bush administration’s use
of torture and yes, of course, the after-effects on Muslims of the
international crimes against humanity of September 11, 2001.

You from Jordan I ask? “Denver, Colorado,” the young woman
replies. Born in San Diego. Family, yes, from Jordan. From Lebanon, I
ask another? “Buffalo, New York.” Actually, the family was from Syria.

It takes a while to realise that I’m playing the game of so many
American non-Muslims in the aftermath of the plane hijackings. I’m
sniffing for the world’s enemies only hours after President George W
Bush went into paranoid mode while addressing the American Legion in
Salt Lake City. He had just claimed that America is fighting “the
decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century” and then jumped on
the crumbling old arguments of pre-Second World War appeasement to
bang the Hitler drum as well.

Oddly, it’s the Muslim converts rather than the Muslim-born Americans
who are toughest on Bush. “He wants eternal war,” a young man with a
brown beard but very bright blue eyes – yes, he was from Vermont –
hissed at me. “He talks shit and we have to listen to this and promise
to be non-violent or someone will point the finger at us.” All agree
that the most pernicious element to the latest Bush rant is his gift
to Israel of placing Ehud Olmert in the ranks of his “war on terror”,
quite specifically linking Israel’s slaughter of Lebanese civilians in
July and August to his own manic project by stating that combatants
from Iraq and Lebanon “form the outlines of a single movement, a
worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand
in the way of their totalitarian ideology”.

I search for the anger amid these thousands of Muslims, businessmen
from Seattle and students from Harvard and housewives from Miami. It’s
there, I know, but as an Armenian friend of mine remarks in the
afternoon, they seem happy. And it’s true. There are more smiles than
expressions of contempt, more babies in backpacks and prams than
posters of pain. In fact there aren’t any posters at all. But I
suspect I know the truth. On their own, as thin minorities in the
towns and cities of the United States, America’s Muslims – perhaps six
million of them – can feel under siege, distrusted and even hated.

At the convention centre, however, they are in a self-confident
majority, Sunnis for the most part – America’s Shias, who may be in
the majority over all, don’t have the same organising abilities at
present – who blithely ignore the officers of the Illinois state
police and the Chicago cops’ bomb squad. I watch them, guns swinging
at their hips, go from stand to stand, occasionally inspecting the
boxes of books piled against the walls. Just who, I wonder, do they
think is going to bomb Muslims in Chicago? Salam al-Marati – he is
one of the few Muslims I meet who actually was born in the Arab world,
in the Baghdad suburb of Qadamiyeh – is director of the Muslim Public
Affairs Council (MPAC), a Los Angeles advocacy group which repeatedly
urges American Muslims to work with the authorities against violence
but who sees other dangers and other targets for Muslim political
anger: the pro-Israeli lobbyists who ostentatiously insist that the
vast majority of American Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding but
that a “network of Islamic terror” exists across the nation.

Daniel Pipes is a bête noire, as is Steven Emerson, a freelance
journalist who grinds out article after article about the “American
jihad” for such august papers as The Wall Street Journal, which, by
the way, more and more reads like The Jerusalem Post. Emerson and his
work are taken apart by al-Marati and his colleagues in a widely
circulated booklet entitled Counterproductive Terrorism: How
Anti-Islamic Rhetoric is Impeding America’s Homeland Security.

“Those representing pro-Israeli groups continue to intimidate and
marginalise those who are critical of Israeli policies by claiming
this is pro-terrorism,” al-Marati says with a mixture of anger and
weariness. “This is to the detriment of America, to the detriment of
countering terrorism.”

Maher Hathout, originally from the Cairo suburb of Qasr el-Aini and an
MPAC advisor, is, if anything, even more angry. “We are that group of
Americans who are not intimidated,” he says. “You go to the campuses,
and the Muslim students are the most outspoken. They are asking – we
are asking – how we can get the average American who knows the truth
about the Middle East to have the guts to speak it. Our job is to say:
‘Shame on you. You criticise your President. But when you speak of
Israel,you whisper.’ What has happened to the home of the brave?”

MPAC – which is operating in Chicago under the auspices of the
distinctly pro-Saudi Islamic Society of North America – has produced a
handbook called the Grassroots Campaign to Fight Terrorism, which
quotes from the Koran (“Whoever killed a human being… it shall be as
if he had killed all mankind”) and advises its supporters that “it is
our duty as American Muslims to protect our country and to contribute
to its betterment”.

“But what is the American-Muslim identity?” al-Marati asks. “Our
religious values and our American values are not incompatible. There
is no dissonance between the founding principles of America and Muslim
values. Unless we have this identity, we will be trapped. We will end
up creating Muslim ghettoes in America.”

Sometimes, though, these men and women remind me of nothing so much as
the more ardent members of the Israeli – or Armenian – lobby: fluent,
just a little bit over-eloquent, passionate – and I wonder if one day
they may get a little loose with the facts.

Panorama.am
14:06 02/09/06

TURKEY TO BECOME ALLY OF ARMENIA
The Union of Armenian Aryans (UAA) is terrified with the project of
Middle East, which suggests establishing Liberated Kurdistan on the
territory of the Western Armenia as part of Anglo-American
strategy. Armen Avetisyan, union chairman, held a press conference
today to share his concerns.
Avetisyan submitted to reporters a map outlined by analysts. `The
Middle East program is a new scheme which brings the interests of
Turkey and Israel into conflict,’ UAA leader says, referring to
anti-Israeli publications in the Turkish press. Avetisyan is sure that
pan-Turkish projects originate from Zionists and that present-day
Turkey serves Zionists’ policies. He concludes that Kurdish statehood
will serve Israel more than Kurds themselves. Avetisyan hopes that the
Armenian leadership will deliver its disposition to the problem. UAA
leader is deeply convinced that such things do not take place without
the knowledge of George W. Bush because `no plane blows up without his
knowledge.’ /Panorama.am/

Panorama.am
15:01 02/09/06

NAGORNO KARABAKH QUALIFIES FOR RIGHT OF
SELF-DETERMINATION, AUA LAW DEPARTMENT DEAN SAYS
`Nagorno Karabakh is a conflict not only between
Armenia and Azerbaijan but also between two core
principles of the international law – the right of
self-determination and the right of territorial
integration. We must always remember that whatever is
gained on the battle field in early 90s is only half
of the work. Similar victory is needed in the legal
and political field,’ Emil Babayan, dean of law
faculty at the American University of Armenia, told a
discussion on the concept of self-determination. The
seminar was dedicated to the 15th anniversary of
Nagorno Karabakh’s independence. Babayan detailed the
preconditions which make a nation entitled to the
right of self-determination and said people of Nagorno
Karabakh fully qualify to that. /Panorama.am/