SENATE COMMITTEE GRILLS AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA DESIGNATE OVER U.S. POLICY ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Washington, DC, June 29. ArmInfo. While Members of Congress and
the Armenian community demand a full explanation for the premature
replacement of Ambassador to Armenia John M. Evans, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee today held a hearing on the Administration’s
nominee, Richard E. Hoagland, reports Armenian Assembly of America.
If confirmed, Hoagland would replace Evans who was rebuked by State
Department officials last year after publicly affirming the Armenian
Genocide during his meetings with Armenian-American communities. In
those exchanges, Evans declared that “the Armenian Genocide was the
first genocide of the twentieth century.” In making his statements,
Evans pointed to the International Center for Transitional Justice
(ICTJ), which concluded that the events could be properly characterized
as genocide.
Senator George Allen (R-VA), who chaired today’s proceedings, noted
that there have been serious concerns that Evans was forced to
prematurely end his service as a result of those public declarations.
“I don’t know this to be true,” Allen said, referring to the
circumstances surrounding Evans’ departure. “[I] will say that many
of my colleagues and I refer to the tragic events of 1915 as genocide
and have strongly encouraged the President to do so as well.”
-Switching topics, Coleman questioned Hoagland over the Turkish
blockade against Armenia, asking him how he plans to address this
issue. Hoagland responded that he would support talks between the
countries, noting that a peaceful resolution to the NK conflict
was paramount.
Allen, for his part, expressed concern over the proposed railroad
linking Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan, that would bypass Armenia.
Hoagland said it would make economic sense to rehabilitate the existing
rail line which traverses Armenia, adding that the U.S.
supports regional cooperation and economic integration. The Senator
also reaffirmed his commitment to ensure security assistance parity
between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In his opening statement, Hoagland stressed the importance of
strengthening U.S.-Armenia ties and said that if confirmed, he would
work to advance democratic and social reforms. He expressed concern
that Armenia’s elections have not met international standards, and
said he would work to implement electoral reforms in the run-up to
the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 and 2008.

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW I PUBLISHES HIS CHILDHOOD MEMOIRS IN TURKISH
Benjamin Harvey
AP Worldstream
Jun 30, 2006
A cocktail party may be the last place you’d expect to see the holiest
man in Orthodox Christendom.
But there was Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader
of the Orthodox Church, standing at one end of a hotel terrace
overlooking the Sea of Marmara, throwing his own cocktail party on
a recent Thursday evening.
The event was the release in Turkish of Bartholomew’s book, “When a
Patriarch was a Child.”
Bartholomew was, of course, the life of the party.
He wore a long black robe and a thick white beard, a black hat,
glasses and a silver sun medallion around his neck. He gave a short
speech and then the music started _ among the songs was a throaty
rendition of “My Way.”
Then Bartholomew began to mingle, shaking hands, kissing people on
the cheek, signing autographs, talking with a man in a wheelchair. You
might have thought he was running for public office.
And that’s what some Turks are afraid of. Every action Bartholomew
takes in this militantly secular, 99 percent Muslim country is loaded
with political undercurrents.
For those who don’t know the importance of the patriarch, the
explanation of many Orthodox Christians is often this: “He’s like
the pope.”
Not really.
Bartholomew is “first among equals” in the more than 250 million-strong
Orthodox church. He controls several Greek Orthodox churches directly,
but has trouble reining others in, like the Russian Orthodox and
Armenian Orthodox, who seem to enjoy their independence.
Today he heads a Christian community that for more than 17 centuries
has been centered in Istanbul. Only back then it was called
Constantinople, and Turkey wasn’t 99 percent Muslim like it is today.
At the head of the Orthodox hierarchy, Bartholomew denies a pope-like
role, but says his power is in coordinating the works of the Orthodox
worldwide.
Turkey refuses to officially recognize that power, saying Bartholomew
is not the “ecumenical” patriarch, but the leader only of Turkey’s
tiny Greek Orthodox community, which numbers just a couple thousand.
His book of 89 childhood memoirs, translated recently from Greek
to Turkish, aims to assuage Turkish fears that Bartholomew wants to
increase his power and carve out an autonomous, Vatican-like state
in Turkey.
Some here see that as a serious threat, and protests follow the
patriarch whenever he leaves his wooden dwelling on Istanbul’s Golden
Horn. Kemal Kerincsiz, the ultranationalist head of the Turkish
Lawyers’ Union, told The Associated Press this week that he submitted
a petition with 2.5 million signatures to the government, asking for
the patriarchate to be transplanted to Greece.
Kerincsiz said Bartholomew’s book was a ruse. “Patriarch Bartholomew
from beginning to end has been hiding his real goals,” he said. “This
is nothing more than a road to the establishment of a mini religious
state.”
Kerincsiz’s 2.5 million are especially fearful that the European Union,
which has demanded that Turkey improve its treatment of religious
minorities and reopen the Heybeliada Seminary where Bartholomew
trained, will support the patriarch. They think Europeans, especially
Greeks, have always been hoping to carve Muslim Turkey into pieces.
An ethnically Greek Turkish citizen born on February 29th of a leap
year, Bartholomew seemed destined to inhabit a strange world.
“When a Patriarch was a Child” gives Turks a glimpse into that world.
The self portrait that emerges is often one of startling innocence,
given the accusations of political plotting swirling around him. We
read about a child _ then called Dimitrios Arhondonis _ who grew up
on a predominantly Greek island called Gokceada (Imroz in Greek),
who loved books, his family, his country and nature, and who then
found God and decided to become a priest.
In his earliest writings, the 10-year-old Bartholomew talks mostly
about nature, farm work and animals. Charmingly childish sentences
abound, like: “We have to love and protect birds, who are our best
friends.”
Bartholomew shows an early attraction to fables with clearly stated
morals.
Over the course of the book, we see these fables fade out and get
replaced by religious feeling, which seems to combine his moral sense
with his awe of nature.
“I believe in God because the mountains, seas, rivers and everything
I see around me cannot have been created by man,” he writes. He says
he also believes because he thinks most injustices go unpunished in
this world and must be punished in the next _ and because he has seen
his prayers answered.
Significantly, much of the book focuses on Bartholomew’s high school
years at the Halki Theological School on Heybeliada Island, which he
refers to as “a part of heaven” during the book.
The school was closed in 1971 by the Turkish government, when Turkey
decided that independent religious institutions were incompatible
with the secular state. Bartholomew says he sees the closure of the
school as an attempt to starve the patriarchate of new leaders.
“This means that the government of the Republic of Turkey wants to
shut down the patriarchate. Because if it has no personnel, how can
it function?” he asks in the introduction.
Under Turkish law, all religious leaders _ including the patriarch _
must be Turkish citizens, which means the pool of potential Orthodox
leaders to choose from has shrunk dramatically over the years along
with Turkey’s shrinking Greek minority. This is another reason why
Greeks are so desperate to reopen the Halki seminary.
Bartholomew says he remains an optimist, and that with Turkey striving
for EU membership, the situation can change.
For many people, it’s surprising just how loyal Bartholomew is to
Turkey, despite all the protests and his claims that Christians are
treated as second-class citizens.
Speaking Turkish slowly, deliberately and with a heavy accent, the
patriarch spoke to the group gathered around him at the launch.
“Inshallah, this small book will add a small piece to the society’s
peace and togetherness.”
Then he went back under a small canopy and signed autographs.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DISAGREEMENT OF YEREVAN AND BAKU ON KARABAKH SETTLEMENT PRINCIPLES WOULD BE TRAGIC LOSS
PanARMENIAN.Net
30.06.2006 13:43 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “We have heard both sides say repeatedly that
they have never before been so close to an agreement. It would be
a tragically wasted opportunity for the two Presidents to let this
window of opportunity close in 2006 without even the basic principles
in place for a future peace agreement for Nagorno-Karabakh. As you
know, election cycles are approaching, first in Armenia and then in
Azerbaijan during 2007-2008,” says the statement made by the OSCE
Minsk Group Co-chairs and submitted to the OSCE Permanent Council
in Vienna June 22. “We have seen before the negative effect that
national elections can have on negotiations, and we continue to
believe that now is the time for the two Presidents to summon the
political will to take a courageous step forward together toward
peace. Mr. Chairman, as Co-Chairs, we have reached the limits of our
creativity in the identification, formulation, and finalization of
these principles. We do not believe additional alternatives advanced
by the mediators through additional meetings with the sides will
produce a different result.
We hope that the Permanent Council will join us in urging the parties
to the conflict to reach an agreement as soon as possible based on
the core principles we have recommended. If the two sides are unable
to agree on those principles we have put forward, we believe it is
now contingent upon them to work together to reach an alternative
agreement that both find acceptable. We remain ready to assist. As
mediators, however, we cannot make the difficult decisions for the
parties. We think the parties would be well-served at this point by
allowing their publics to engage in a robust discussion of the many
viewpoints on these issues. We are confident that neither society wants
renewed conflict, and we urge the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to
work with their publics and to work with each other to formulate an
agreement on core principles that both find acceptable. Ultimately,
it is the two sides that will be held accountable by their peoples
and by the international community if their actions lead to war and
not peace,” the statement says.

‘NO CASES OF ARSON RECORDED’
AZG Armenian Daily
30/06/2006
On June 28, field assistants of Andrzej Kasprzyk, representative of
OSCE chairman for Nagorno Karabakh, carried out a monitoring upon the
request of Karabakh authorities. No cases of arson were recorded during
the monitoring. To remind, Azerbaijanis continually make a fuss about
the Armenian side setting fire to Azeri forests. The monitoring was
carried out along the Armenian-Azeri contact line and in the sites
of alleged fires.

AZERBAIJANI LEADER: ECONOMIC STRENGTH TO ALLOW ADVANTAGEOUS RESOLUTION OF DISPUTED TERRITORY
Aida Sultanova
AP Worldstream
Jun 29, 2006
Azerbaijan’s rapidly growing economy would allow it to resolve the
dispute with Armenia over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh territory
to its own advantage, Azerbaijan’s president said Thursday.
Ilham Aliev’s comments were the latest in a series of increasingly
aggressive statements on the mountainous territory, whose status
remain unresolved more than a decade after a cease-fire ended six
years of open conflict.
Foreign ministers from the Group of 8 major industrialized nations,
meeting in Moscow, called for prompt resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh’s
status and other lingering conflicts in the former Soviet Union.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan, but is populated mostly by
ethnic Armenians, who have run it and seven contiguous districts since
an uneasy 1994 cease-fire ended six years of full-scale war. Sporadic
border clashes regularly break out and the unresolved conflict has
held up development in the strategic region.
Azerbaijan would not accept any resolution that “doesn’t correspond
to the country’s national interests,” Aliev said.
“From a political viewpoint, Azerbaijan’s superiority is evident,
our military potential is also growing,” he told a crowd in Ujar,
250 kilometers (155 miles) west of the capital, Baku.
“As for the economy, we are five times stronger than Armenia now and
in the near future our economic superiority will be increased by 10,
20 fold,” he said. “I am fully confident that due to this we’ll be
able to settle the Karabakh problem to our advantage.”
“Azerbaijan is willing to solve the problem by peaceful means, but
it will never reconcile with the loss of its territories,” he said.
Pushed by international mediators including France, the United States
and Russia, Aliev and his Armenian counterpart, Robert Kocharian, have
already met twice this year to try and agree on a resolution. Neither
effort has yielded any results, though some observers have said the
fact that the two presidents continue to meet was positive.
Azerbaijan’s economy has grown substantially in recent years as its
vast Casp ian Sea oil reserves have begun to be tapped. Aliev said
last year that the country’s military spending was set to double to
nearly US$300 million in 2005.
In Moscow, meanwhile, G-8 diplomats called for Armenia and Azerbaijan
to reach an agreement this year on the territory.
“We call on Azerbaijan and Armenia to show political will with the
aim to reach an agreement this year and prepare their peoples for
peace and not for war,” the joint statement said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NAY TO REFERENDUM? WHAT ABOUT AUTONOMY?
By Aghavni Harutyunian
AZG Armenian Daily
30/06/2006
Aliyev’s Populism Couched in Same Words
Granting Nagorno Karabakh high status of autonomy and “agreeing to
deployment of international peacekeepers was a major concession on
Azerbaijan’s part,” Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev stated. “It
can be considered a concession that we make it possible to deploy
peacekeeping forces. We can be ready for that though it’s not easy for
us as there are no foreign military detachments in our country. This
is our fundamental stance,” Aliyev stated.
On the other hand, “granting Nagorno Karabakh the high status of
autonomy is a big concession as previously it used to enjoy the
status of autonomous oblast. I am stating that we are ready to apply
the highest status of autonomy that the world knows. There can be no
other concession,” Aliyev said.
Though this stance is not something new, it’s interesting that
the Azerbaijani president is speaking of impossibility to make
other concessions. What does it mean? Is there a proposal of other
concessions too that are kept under wraps with the unpublicized
elements of the framework agreement? In the meantime it’s obvious
that such deployment of international peacekeepers seems to be,
in Aliyev’s words, a concession whereas it will simply serve as a
guarantee for carrying out reached agreements (concessions).

TURKISH LAWYER SEEKS CHARGES AGAINST ARMENIAN RELIGIOUS LEADER
AP Worldstream
Jun 29, 2006
A nationalist lawyer said Thursday that he has petitioned prosecutors
to bring an Armenian religious leader to trial for “insulting
Turkishness.”
Karekin II, whose official title is Catholicos of All Armenians, made a
visit to the Greek Orthodox leader in Istanbul last week. While calling
for improved relations between the two countries, he repeated Armenia’s
long-held view that the Turks committed genocide against Armenians.
“We can find positive solutions to the problems between us through
working side by side,” he said. “The genocide, however, is one of
the issues standing between us.”
Turkey vehemently denies that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks around the time of World War I was genocide, and several cases
have been brought against those who say otherwise. The cases have
been opened under a law making it a crime to “insult Turkishness.”
Lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, who previously led a legal campaign against
novelist Orhan Pamuk, asked an Istanbul prosecutor to bring charges
against Karekin.
It was not clear if prosecutor would act against Karekin, who returned
to Armenia on Wednesday.
Pamuk went on trial after he said in a magazine interview that Turks
had killed 1 million Armenians, but the charges were later dropped.
Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million of their ancestors were
killing in an organized genocidal campaign by Ottoman Turks, and have
pushed for recognition of the killings as genocide around the world.

STATEMENT WAS TOUGH
By Tamar Minasian
AZG Armenian Daily
30/06/2006
The statement of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs was tough and
unexpected; Grigor Harutyunian, member of the National Unity Party,
told journalists at “Pastark” club yesterday. “Negotiations are
proceeding in the wrong direction, their format is wrong,” Harutyunian
assures. In his opinion, Armenian president Robert Kocharian transposes
Karabakh-Azerbaijan relations to the sphere of Armenia-Azerbaijan
relations.
He is sure that the president will soon resign but not forced by the
authorities or the opposition but because “resignation will be a way
out from this situation when a document is being imposed.”
Armenia, Harutyunian argues, is taking one-sided concessions, which
is the result of illegitimate leadership. As to the inner political
situation, he welcomes the activities of the Republican Party and
promises that the opposition will be more active in autumn.

‘REVALUATION OF DRAM IN THE MARKET IS THE RESULT OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY SITUATION’
By Ara Martirosian
AZG Armenian Daily
30/06/2006
Ardshininvestbank’s Board Chairman Said at the Opening of Bank’s
Offshoot in Etchmiadzin
“Etchmiadzin” branch of Ardshininvestbank opened its doors in a new
building on June 28. As one of the bank’s 51 offshoots, “Etchmiadzin”
with its 18 employees will serve 3-3.5 thousand citizens.
At ribbon-cutting ceremony chairman of Ardshininvestbank’s Board,
Aram Andreasian, stated that contrary to other Armenian banks,
Ardshininvestbank already has branches all over Armenia. He emphasized
that the bank’s policy is to create comfortable conditions for the
clientele and added that 5-6 more branches will be repaired.
Asked about revaluation of Armenian dram, Mr. Andreasian said that
it’s a positive phenomenon in general though exporters suffer
certain loss. Yet, today’s currency is the result of demand and
supply situation in the market. He informed that dollar transfers via
Ardshininvestbank have increased against last year. Besides, big sums
flow into construction sphere and that also affects exchange rates and
increases demand for US dollar. Aram Andreasian thinks that it’s more
important that prices are stable than the changes in exchange rates.

FESTIVAL DEDICATED TO METAKSIA SIMONIAN
AZG Armenian Daily
30/06/2006
On July 2-8, “Metaksia” first republican theatre festival will be
held in Armenia. The festival is dedicated to 80th anniversary of
outstanding Armenian actress Metaksia Simonian. In the course of
June 28 press conference, Vahe Shahverdian, art director of the
Yerevan State Academic Theatre after Gabriel Sundukian, said that
15 performances will be staged at the Armenian theatres within the
framework of the festival.
It’s noteworthy that by RA Government’s decision, the anniversaries
of nine prominent Armenian art workers will be celebrated, namely
the anniversaries of Hakob Hovnatanian, Dmitriy Nalbandian, Grigor
Khanjian, Mkrtich Armen, Hakob Gyurjian, Metaksia Simonian, Makar
Yekmalian, Tatevik Sazandarian and Tigran Levonian.