ARMENIAN APOSTOLIC CHURCH CELEBRATES ANNUNCIATION DAY ON APRIL 7
Yerevan, April 7. ArmInfo. The Armenian Apostolic Church is
celebrating today one of the most significant holidays in the church
calendar – Annunciation Day.
The press-service of Mother See of Etchmiadzin told ArmInfo that
Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II declared Annunciation Day a Day
of Maternity and Beauty in Armenia. The Annunciation of the Blessed
Virgin Mary is the best example of maternity and the role of women in
society. This day, the Armenian Apostolic Church is christening
mothers at all the Armenian churches.

‘The Armenian Genocide’ screened at Congress library
07.04.2006 16:27
YEREVAN (YERKIR) – `The Armenian Genocide’ documentary was shown on
April 4 in its first public screening at the US Congress library. The
screening was intitiatied by Congressman Adam Schiff.
Following the screening, Armenian Ambassador to United States Tatul
Margarian thanked Schiff and praised the film’s producer Andrew
Goldberg.
The one-hour documentary will be aired throughout United States
beginning April 17 on PBS.

Karabakh analyst: Ilham Aliyev justifies militarization and
hyper-centralization by Karabakh factor

_
()
15:44 04/07/2006
`Oil drug heavily influenced minds of Azerbaijani politicians: their
optimism , caused by inflow of oil dollars into Azerbaijani economy and
Azerbaijan’s advantages concerning Armenia turns into bragging and creating
political mythology, which are very dangerous for societies,’ stated
Karabakh analyst David Karabekyan to REGNUM.
At the same time, he stressed, most likely Baku will intensify its activity
in foreign policy in future, wishing to strengthen its positions as
independent actor of sub-regional and regional politics, that more and more
firmly and harder proclaims its interests and readiness to defend them. `In
the situation, when the neighboring country strengthens its pressure on us,
it is necessary to defend our position more fundamentally, more heartily to
correct errors, look for resources to solve problems. I personally believe
that to deal with aggressive regime, propagating hatred against Armenia, is
the same as to put out fire with petrol or to try to calm down predator
with victim’s meat. Every new concession will cause new demand,’ said
David Karabekyan.
The analyst stressed, by manipulating the Karabakh factor, Azerbaijani
leaders solve questions of internal policy and of their power’s
strengthening. ` Manipulating the Karabakh factor, Aliyev-senior succeeded
in dismissing his fellow countrymen from Nakhichevan Abulfaz Elchibey from
the presidential post, and conjointly, having clearly calculated political
state of affairs in the country and around Transcaucasia, he got rid of
competitors-representatives of national security, defense and law
enforcement agencies, and opponents, as well as suppressed mutinies in
Lenkoran and people’s liberation movement of Lezghins, living in the North
of Azerbaijan,’ said David Karabekyan.
According to the analyst, Aliyev-junior smartly uses the factor for
justifying of military expenditures growth, hyper-centralization of
governing, and abundantly wide and active participation of power
structures’ representatives in social and political life of the
country. `As for the struggle against opposition, everything is easy and
effective here. Like his father, Aliyev-junior succeeded in persuading
Azeri and international community, that the post and political niche,
occupied by him, are exactly those, he is to occupy and will do it for
benefit of all and everyone. In contrast to impulsive and unpredictable
Saakashvili, Aliyev is predictable and bears certain traditions. It means,
unlike his opponents-oppositionists, Aliyev-junior intends to carry out
more reserved and considered policy in direction Russia-West and
Iran-Turkey-Russia-USA. Evidence of it is pretended successes of his
regime, which are proclaimed by Azerbaijani propaganda to be real, in
Karabakh settlement, economy, and growth of Azerbaijani factor in regional
policy,’ said David Karabekyan.
The analyst believes, forces opposing to the current regime are not able to
change fundamentally the situation in the country, whereas the ruling
regime demonstrate that it anyhow pushes the country forward.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azerbaijan not to join anti-Iran coalition – deputy foreign minister
Azad Azarbaycan TV, Baku
6 Apr 06
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has denied that
Azerbaijan is going to join the anti-Iran coalition, Azad Azarbaycan
TV reported on 6 April.
Speaking at a news conference on the results of his recent visit to
the USA, Azimov said: “How can Azerbaijan join the anti-Iran coalition
if the latter does not exist.” He said “such an issue cannot be
considered at all”, adding that Azerbaijan is not going to join any
coalition against any state.
Azimov said that Azerbaijan wants to establish good-neighbourly
relations with all states in the region. He also expressed hope that
as a result of the resolution of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict,
relations with Armenia will also normalize.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

KARABAKH AND IRAN ARE NOT RELATED
Lragir.am
07 April 06

For the United States, the conflict over Karabakh is an important
issue, and it is not realistic to say that the United States is eager
to resolve the conflict soon in the context of a possible campaign
against Iran. Thus Mher Shahgeldyan, Chair of the Committee of
Defense, Internal Affairs and National Security, explained the
activity and interest of the U.S. in the settlement of the conflict.
In his opinion, the settlement of the Karabakh conflict is important
for the United States in the context of regional policies, and is
viewed separately from the Iranian issue.
Mher Shahgeldyan says it is absolutely clear that the United States
seeks for a rapid settlement of the issue. In this regard the member
of parliament believes that Armenia should commend the efforts of
international organizations, the world, centers of power for the
settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
Mher Shahgeldyan particularly emphasized that the authors of these
efforts exclude application of force, which favors the stance of
Armenia.

ARMENIA MUST CHEER UP KARABAKH
Lragir.am
07 April 06
The year 2006 can be a window for the settlement of the Karabakh
conflict, stated Mher Shahgeldyan, Chair of the Committee of Defense,
Internal Affairs and National Security. He said if the conflict
parties fail to use this window, later it will be more difficult to
reach a settlement. Mher Shahgeldyan thinks that Armenia must make
efforts for the engagement of Karabakh in the talks or at least try to
make Karabakh diplomatically more active. For engagement in the talks,
the chair of the Committee of Defense, Internal Affairs and National
Security thinks it is positive, but he also reminds about
consideration of the logic of talks.
`Thus, the engagement of Karabakh in the talks is positive, at thesame
time, however, we must take into account different aspects of the
talks,’ says Mher Shahgeldyan, adding that Armenia should aspire to
make Karabakh diplomatically more active.

THEY TRUST HZOR HAYRENIK PARTY FOR SAMTSKHE-JAVAKHETI
Lragir.am
07 April 06
`The problem of closing the market of Bagratashen was caused by
customs abuse. There was smuggling. I think it will be closed
temporarily. The problems will be settled, the work of customs
services will normalize, and the market will be opened,’ said Shirak
Torosyan, the deputy leader of the political party Hzor Hayrenik to
our news reporter. Armen Avetisyan, the head of the Customs Committee,
announced April 6 about closing the market of Bagratashen on the
Georgian-Armenian border, which is a source of living for the
Armenians living on both sides of the border.
Hzor Hayrenik Party, attending to the problems of Samtskhe-Javakheti
and Javakheti Armenians, held public debates and extended proposals to
the Georgian embassy to Armenia and received a report that the
proposals have been translated and sent to the government of
Georgia. Hzor Hayrenik offered the same proposals to the government of
Armenia and published in press. `Wethink there will be a response,
because the problem aroused public interest. We think any problem can
be settled, no matter how complicated it is,’ said Shirak Torosyan,
adding that they follow the course of developments.
The proposals addressed to the governments of both countries were
signed by Hzor Hayrenik Party and Javakhq Union, the other political
organizations and NGOs support and trust these two, said Shirak
Torosyan. In the future there will be public debates on other
problems.

BETTER CONDITIONS FOR DOCTORS IN REGIONS
Lragir.am
07 April 06
During the presentation of the World Health Organization Report on
Human Resources on April 7 in Yerevan Minister of Health Norayr
Davidyan announced that alumni of the state medical universities will
be seconded to work in the regions. `This refers to students studying
on state scholarship. It will increase the flow of doctors to the
regions of the country.’ Norayr Davidyan said the shortage of doctors
is especially felt in border and mountainous areas. He said the
Ministry of Health of Armenia has worked out a program of sending
specialists to work in the regions. The program is implemented
currently and involves providing better conditions for doctors working
in far regions: high salary, allowances, accommodation.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian leader, Red Cross head discuss joint programmes
Mediamax news agency
7 Apr 06

Yerevan, 7 April: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan met the chairman
of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jacob
Kellenberger, in Yerevan today.
At the meeting the sides discussed the programmes implemented in
Armenia with the ICRC’s assistance, in particular the efforts to
search for missing persons, the presidential press service told
Mediamax today.
Kocharyan pointed that Armenia has always expressed its readiness to
provide favourable conditions for ICRC’s activities in the country.

April 6, 2006
“There is No Remedy Against the Language of Truth”
A Lesson from the Holocaust for Us All
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
At a second-hand book stall in the Rue Monsieur le Prince in Paris a
few days ago, I came across the second volume of Victor Klemperer’s
diaries. The first volume, recounting his relentless, horrifying
degradation as a German Jew in the first eight years of Hitler’s
rule–from 1933 to 1941–I had bought in Pakistan just before
America’s 2001 bombardment of Afghanistan.
It was a strange experience–while sipping tea amid the relics of the
Raj, roses struggling across the lawn beside me, an old British
military cemetery at the end of the road–to read of Klemperer’s
efforts to survive in Dresden with his wife Eva as the Nazis closed in
on his Jewish neighbours. Even more intriguing was to find that the
infinitely heroic Klemperer, a cousin of the great conductor, showed
great compassion for the Palestinian Arabs of the 1930s who feared
that they would lose their homeland to a Jewish state.
“I cannot help myself,” Klemperer writes on 2 November 1933, nine
months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. “I sympathise with
the Arabs who are in revolt (in Palestine), whose land is being
‘bought’. A Red Indian fate, says Eva.”
( 041511/counterpunchmaga)
Even more devastating is Klemperer’s critique of Zionism–which he
does not ameliorate even after Hitler’s Holocaust of the Jews of
Europe begins. “To me,” he writes in June of 1934, “the Zionists, who
want to go back to the Jewish state of AD70 … are just as offensive
as the Nazis. With their nosing after blood, their ancient ‘cultural
roots’, their partly canting, partly obtuse winding back of the world
they are altogether a match for the National Socialists…”
Yet Klemperer’s day-by-day account of the Holocaust, the cruelty of
the local Dresden Gestapo, the suicide of Jews as they are ordered to
join the transports east, his early knowledge of Auschwitz–Klemperer
got word of this most infamous of extermination camps as early as
March 1942, although he did not realise the scale of the mass murders
there until the closing months of the war–fill one with rage that
anyone could still deny the reality of the Jewish genocide.
Reading these diaries as the RER train takes me out to Charles de
Gaulle airport–through the 1930s art deco architecture of Drancy
station where French Jews were taken by their own police force before
transportation to Auschwitz–I wish President Ahmadinejad of Iran
could travel with me.
For Ahmadinejad it was who called the Jewish Holocaust a “myth”, who
ostentatiously called for a conference–in Tehran, of course–to find
out the truth about the genocide of six million Jews, which any sane
historian acknowledges to be one of the terrible realities of the 20th
century, along, of course, with the Holocaust of one and a half
million Armenians in 1915.
The best reply to Ahmadinejad’s childish nonsense came from
ex-president Khatami of Iran, the only honourable Middle East leader
of our time, whose refusal to countenance violence by his own
supporters inevitably and sadly led to the demise of his “civil
society” at the hands of more ruthless clerical opponents. “The death
of even one Jew is a crime,” Khatami said, thus destroying in one
sentence the lie that his successor was trying to propagate.
Indeed, his words symbolised something more important: that the
importance and the evil of the Holocaust do not depend on the Jewish
identity of the victims. The awesome, wickedness of the Holocaust lies
in the fact that the victims were human beings–just like you and me.
How do we then persuade the Muslims of the Middle East of this simple
truth? I thought that the letter which the head of the Iranian Jewish
Committee, Haroun Yashayaie, wrote to Ahmadinejad provided part of the
answer. “The Holocaust is not a myth any more than the genocide
imposed by Saddam (Hussein) on Halabja or the massacre by (Ariel)
Sharon of Palestinians and Lebanese in the camps of Sabra and
Chatila,” Yashayaie–who represents Iran’s 25,000 Jews–said.
Note here how there is no attempt to enumerate the comparisons. Six
million murdered Jews is a numerically far greater crime than the
thousands of Kurds gassed at Halabja or the 1,700 Palestinians
murdered by Israel’s Lebanese Phalangist allies at Sabra and Chatila
in 1982. But Yashayaie’s letter was drawing a different kind of
parallel: the pain that the denial of history causes to the survivors.
I have heard Israelis deny their army’s involvement in the Sabra and
Chatila massacres–despite Israel’s own official enquiry which proved
that Ariel Sharon sent the murderers into the camps–and I remember
how the CIA initially urged US embassies o blame Iran for the gassings
at Halabja.
Indeed, it is easy to find examples of one of the most egregious lies
uttered against the 750,000 Palestinians who fled their land in 1948:
that they were ordered by Arab radio stations to flee their homes
until the Jews had been “driven into the sea”–when they would return
to take back their property.
Israeli academic researchers have themselves proved that no such radio
broadcasts were ever made, that the Palestinians fled–victims of what
we would today call ethnic cleansing–after a series of massacres by
Israeli forces, especially in the village of Deir Yassin, just outside
Jerusalem.
So what is there to learn from the second volume of Klemperer’s
diaries? Just after he received word from the Gestapo that he and Eva
were to be transported east to their deaths, the RAF raided Dresden
and, amid the tens of thousands of civilians which the February 1945
firestorm consumed, the Gestapo archives also went up in flames. All
record of the Klemperers’ existence was turned to ash, like the Jews
who preceded them to Auschwitz. So the couple took off their Jewish
stars and wandered Germany as refugees without papers until they found
salvation after the Nazi surrender.
Just before their rescue, they showed compassion to three distraught
German soldiers who were lost in the forests of their homeland. And
even during their worst ordeals, as they waited for the doorbell to
ring and the Gestapo to arrive to search their Dresden home and notify
them of their fate, Klemperer was able to write in his diary a
sentence which every journalist and historian should learn by heart:
“There is no remedy against the truth of language.”
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of _Pity the
Nation_
( N/1560254424/counterpunchmaga)
. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s collection, _The Politics
of Anti-Semitism_
( unterPunch/CounterPunch_Bookshop.html).
Fisk’s new book is _The Conquest of the Middle East_
( 041511/counterpunchmaga) .