COOPERATION BETWEEN ARMENIAN CHURCH AND LOCAL AUTHORITIES DEVELOPS
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Mar 20 2006
ETCHMIADZIN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. On the evening of
March 18, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of
All Armenians, hosted a gathering of political and religious leaders
from throughout Armenia in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin,
led by the Minister of Territorial Administration, Mr. Hovik
Abrahamian. Present for the meeting were all diocesan primates from
the Republics of Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh; regional governors
(Marzpets) of the Republic of Armenia; and mayors of cities from
throughout the country. According to the information system of the
Mother See, also present were the lay members of the Supreme Spiritual
Council. Reflecting on the administrative matters facing the Church,
the Pontiff underlined the great importance of reestablishing parish
life within the cities and villages of Armenia as a vital precondition
of fully achieving the Church’s mission in the fields of spiritual
education and pastoral ministry. “The restoration of parish councils,
parochial boards and parish life will greatly benefit our work in
strengthening the Armenian family by providing a strong foundation
built on Christian faith, Church teachings and Holy Tradition,
and reinforcing our independent statehood through education and
leadership”, stated the Catholicos of All Armenians. Minister of
Territorial Administration Hovik Abrahamian expressed his happiness
for the spirit of cooperation which is developing between the Armenian
Church and the local authorities. The Minister also placed importance
on these meetings occurring at regular intervals, in order to plan the
work ahead for the present and future collaboration between Church and
state, which he stated would benefit the prosperity of the homeland and
the life of the people. During the meeting, many proposals were offered
by the participants regarding spheres of cooperation. Also discussed
was concern among many regional and local officials regarding the
destructive activities of cults and various sects operating in Armenia.

IT IS ENVISAGED TO ESTABLISH ARMENIAN-INDIAN CENTER OF INFORMSTION TECHNOLOGIES IN ARMENIA
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. A preliminary agreement on providing
considerable assistance to the development of the information
technologies (IT) sector in Armenia has been reached between the
Armenian and Indian governments. RA Deputy Minister of Trade and
Economic Development Tigran Davtian stated this on March 20. According
to him, the assistance will cover the IT educational and technical
assistance. The issue of opening an Armenian-Indian IT center in
Armenia is now under discussion, and a preliminary agreement with
respect to it has been achieved as well. T. Davtian said that the
Armenian-Indian cooperation in the IT sector has become a realilty,
as a commission to deal with problems of this cooperation has been
set up. Besides, the Armenian company Aviainfotel has opened its
office in India.

IN OPINION OF INDIAN BUSINESSMEN, MAKING AN INDIAN FILM IN ARMENIA TO GIVE IMPETUS TO TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian-Indian relations have
entereed a new stage. RA Deputy Foreign Minister Armen Bayburtian
expressed this opinion at a press conference with the participation of
representatives of the Indian business delegation at the RA Ministry
of Foreign Affairs on March 20. The delegation came to Armenia on the
initiative of Harshad Mehta, Honorary Consul of Armenia in Mumbai,
who is also a big investor in Armenia where he has two diamond cutting
enterprises. Among the Indian businessmen are representatives of
Bollywood – an Indian film production company. According to Honorary
Consul H. Mehta, they intend to make films in Armenia and about
Armenia. He said about 1,000 films are made in Bollywood each year,
which are watched by 1.5 bln people all over the world, and an Indian
film made in Armenia will promote the development of the country’s
tourism. “Wherever Bollywood goes, it is followed by tourists,” the
company director Mukesh Bhatt assured. He said that he was a producer
of 45 films, 27 of which were made in various countries, in which an
increase in the number of tourits started after that. He expressed a
hope that he will become the first Indian film producers to make films
in Armenia. Mukesh Bhatt indicated the absence of direct Yerevan-Delhi
flights as the only difficulty, adding that he was promised that such
flights will be operated soon, while the Armenian partners promised
to provide all the equipment necessary for a film. It was noted during
the press conference that in 2005, goods worth a total of about 11 mln
USD were imported into Armenia from India, and exports from Armenia
to India made about 400 thousand USD. The two countries are closely
cooperating in the spheres of culture, education and science.

KAPAN “GANDZASAR” WINNER OF HUNAN AVETISIAN MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. The traditional memorial tournament
after Soviet Union hero Hunan Avetisian held on Armavir “Jubilee”
sports ground was over. 9 teams of Armenian championship highest
and first group took part in it. First they competed in 2 groups
where those who took the first places competed for the prize. Kapan
“Gandzasar” and Yerevan “Banants-2” teams competed with each other
in the final. “Gandzasar” defeated the latter with a score of 3 to
0 and won the cup. The prize was given to the winner team by hero’s
son, Henzel Avetisian. The tournament organizers had also instituted
prizes for football-players that distinguished themselves in separate
game links.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LEVON ARONIAN DEFEATS VESELIN TOPALOV
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. A unique chess tournament under the
title “Amber” started in Monte Carlo. 12 strongest chess-players
hold small competitions with one another. Each competition consists
of a “blind” and a quick game. After 2 tours 5 chess-players are
at once in the lead. They are: Levon Aronian (Armenia), Peter Leko
(Hungary), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Alexander Morozevich (Russia)
and Francisco Valekho (Spain). They gained 2.5 out of 4 possible points
each. Representative of Armenia, world cup-holder Levon Aronian drew
the game with Dutch Van Veli in the first tour (1 to 1) and defeated
world champion, Bulgarian Topalov in the second tour with a score of
1.5 to 0.5. The “Amber” tournament participants will play 22 games
in total. The winner and the other prize-winners will become known
on March 30.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN BOXERS WIN 2 PRIZES
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. Very strong boxers took part in
the memorial tournament after famous boxing specialist Felix Shtam
held in Warsaw. Nevertheless, 2 out of 5 members of the Armenian
national team taking part in the competitions succeeded in becoming
prize-winners. Gabriel Tolmogian, a boxer from Yerevan who performed in
the 54 kg weight category, took the second place and Samvel Matevosian,
a young boxer from Vanadzor, 69 kg weight category, took the 3rd palce.

WELCOME PLAYERS: A NEW DRIVE TO HELP REFUGEE SCHOLARS WILL BENEFIT NOT ONLY THEM BUT ALSO THE CAUSE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Donald Macleod
The Guardian – United Kingdom
Mar 21, 2006
A long, painful journey brought Nahro Zagros from classically trained
violinist and lecturer in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to playing gigs in
Hull with a band called Yorkshire Kurd.
Soon he is off on another journey to Armenia to study the music and
culture of the semi-nomadic Yezidis. For, with help from the Council
for Assisting Refugee Academics (Cara), Zagros is doing a masters
degree in ethnomusicology at York University, researching how music
can display cultural identity.
The young Kurdish musician is one of about 60 currently being helped
by Cara, an organisation that originated in 1933 to help academic
refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Over the decades the countries of
origin have changed – South Africa in the 1960s, Iraq and Iran in
the 1980s and 1990s – but the need has remained.
Indeed, only a tiny fraction of refugee academics receive help. Last
week the president of New York University, John Sexton, was in London
to launch the UK network of Scholars at Risk, set up in collaboration
with Cara to try and reach more of them.
He told a meeting at the British Academy that by helping academics
under extreme threat, they were protecting their own academic freedom
against less dramatic, but real encroachments.
“There is a vital connection between the aggressive struggle against
the most extreme cases of denial of academic freedom – cases that
take the form of threats and harassment, loss of jobs, and even
imprisonment and physical harm – and the less dramatic, but constant,
struggle against gradual encroachments on our own academic vocations,”
said Sexton, whose university is home to Scholars at Risk.
Zagros found himself among the extreme cases when he was a music
lecturer at Iraq’s Institute of Fine Arts and conductor of an orchestra
that toured in the Middle East and Europe. He worked for a television
station owned by Uday Hussein and was pressured into becoming involved
in events run by Uday.
Following a short visit to Kurdistan to see his relatives, he was
imprisoned for nearly six months in 2000. He fled Iraq shortly
afterwards.
Dispersed to Hull, he sought out other musicians and formed Yorkshire
Kurd, playing gigs to raise money for refugees and giving workshops
and performances in local schools to promote diversity. They have
also performed at festivals in Britain and abroad, playing a fusion
of Middle Eastern music, swing jazz, eastern European Gypsy music and
Jewish klezmer. “We like to combine all these great tunes and show
people we can work together and promote integration through music.”
Without Cara, he says, he could not have resumed study at York and
researched the Yezidis, a group of Kurds from Turkey who took refuge
in Armenia in the 1880s. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
a combination of unemployment and resurgent Armenian nationalism is
threatening their culture, says Zagros.
There are plenty of other stories to tell – the Iranian professor
of paediatrics, the Iraqi medical lecturer, both now establishing
themselves in this country, for instance. Applications for refugee
status in the UK are falling, but pleas for help from academics
continue to increase, says John Akker, executive secretary of Cara. He
estimates that of the 10,000 refugees in Glasgow, nearly 1,000 have
a substantial academic background.
Cara has recently been given pounds 500,000 over five years from the
Lisbet Rausing charitable fund to help with grants to scholars. With
the Scholars at Risk network, Cara is planning how universities
could use their services in such areas as HR, student services,
language centres, accommodation, welfare, childcare and international
activities, to help.
So far 15 UK universities have joined. Birkbeck College London,
Cambridge, Leeds Metropolitan, London South Bank University, York,
Glasgow Caledonian, London University, Wolverhampton, Kent and
Universities UK are represented on the board. The Open University,
Luton, School of Oriental and African Studies, Sunderland, Ulster and
Lincoln are members, and University College London, London School of
Economics, Keele, Manchester, King’s College London, and Oxford are
expected to join soon.
The payoff to Britain for sheltering academic refugees has been
spectacular. Of Cara’s former grantees, who included names like
Karl Popper and Max Perutz, 18 became Nobel laureates, 16 received
knighthoods, 71 were made fellows or foreign members of the Royal
Society, and 50 fellows of the British Academy.
But Sexton made a rather different case for the work of Cara and
Scholars at Risk -helping defend academic freedom against more
subtle pressures from outside the university, or even from political
correctness within academe.
“The race of our century will be a race between the university and
the madrasa; and it is important from the outset that we understand
the differences between the two,” he said.
“Xenophobes and ideologues seek to influence the research we undertake,
the books we write or the classes we teach. Thus, for example, in the
United States, research universities are pressurised to forgo stem
cell research, and pressed to meet externally defined ideological
quotas for faculty. And every university president at some point faces
enormous external pressure because a speaker deemed ‘controversial’
is coming to campus . . .
“For if not anchored in the causes and consequences of extreme threats,
our claims on behalf of academic freedom can too easily be construed
as petty disputes by a privileged elite demanding special rights
without corresponding responsibilities. Being able to locate the
complaints and warnings of those who fear government encroachment,
or attempts to quell disturbing speech or provocative research, along
the same spectrum that stretches to the more extreme and violent
forms of intellectual repression, forces a discussion of the central
importance of the principle of academic freedom. By seeing what happens
in societies where universities and scholars are put at extreme risk,
we come to better appreciate why we defend what we do and better
recognise the warning signs of the erosion of those freedoms.”
Cara, London South Bank University Technopark, 90 London Road,
London SE1 6LN Email: [email protected]
du
Iraqi musician Nahro Zagros fled his homeland after he was put under
pressure and imprisoned there Photograph: John Jones.

POPE BENEDICT, GREETING ARMENIAN PATRIARCH, RECALLS PEOPLE’S ‘TERRIBLE PERSECUTION’
AP Worldstream
Mar 20, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute Monday to the sufferings of Armenians
because of their Christian faith and recalled their “terrible
persecution,” a reference to the 1.5 million who died in the early
20th century in what Armenia insists was genocide by Turkey.
Benedict recalled Armenians’ history as he welcomed an Armenian
Catholic patriarch, Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, and Armenian pilgrims
to a Vatican audience.
Speaking about the Armenian people through the centuries, the pope
singled out the “sufferings which they underwent in the name of the
Christian faith in the years of the terrible persecution that went
down in history with the sadly meaningful name ‘metz yeghern,’ the
great evil.'”
Benedict was citing the term used by Armenians to refer to what they
say was genocide conducted by Turkey. Turkey vehemently denies that
the deaths were genocide and has harshly criticized countries which
call it as such.
Benedict did not use the term “genocide” in his official remarks. His
predecessor, Pope John Paul II, called the deaths genocide but did
not declare any party responsible.
In 301, Armenia became the world’s first country to declare itself
Christian.

CHAIRMAN ON RETURN TO COUNTRY
ddp news agency
20 Mar 06
Berlin: After a demonstration by Turkish nationalists in Berlin [on
Saturday 18 March], Home Affairs Senator Ehrhart Koerting (Social
Democratic Party of Germany) has got his people to check the legal
consequences for Dogu Perincek, chairman of the Turkish Workers’
Party. On the sidelines of the demonstration, the politician denied
the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, Koerting
told the Home Affairs Committee on Monday [20 March]. So that he
cannot give any “hate speeches” any more, the aliens authority is
now checking as a precaution whether Perincek could be expelled from
Germany if he enters the country again.
According to Koerting, 1,350 Turkish nationalists demonstrated in
Berlin on Saturday. They demanded, among other things, the rescission
of a Bundestag resolution of mid-2005, which recalls the “almost
complete eradication of the Armenians in Anatolia”. According to the
home affairs senator, only very few of the demonstrators came from
Berlin. [passage omitted]

GEORGIAN AMBASSADOR SAYS HIS COUNTRY INTERESTED IN RESUMPTION OF KARS-GYUMRI RAILROAD
ARMENPRESS
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, ARMENPRESS: Georgia’s ambassador to Armenia said
his country would spare nothing to have a railroad from Turkish Kars
to Armenian Gyumri resumed if it could force Turkey and Azerbaijan to
drop their plans to build a new road from Kars to Georgian Akhalkalaki,
a move protested by Armenia which says it would exacerbate Armenia’s
transport blockade imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Admitting his government’s failure to have any impact on Turkey
and Azerbaijan, the ambassador, Revaz Gachechiladze, said the old
railroad has become ‘a hostage’ of the Karabakh conflict and unsettled
Turkish-Armenian relations. Speaking to a news conference in Yerevan
the ambassador said his government would only welcome the reopening
of the Kars-Gyumri railroad.
He said Armenia too could become a transit country between Europe
and Asia like Georgia is and may benefit from it immensely.