ARF PARTICIPATES IN SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL’S CIS AND CAUCASUS CONVENTION IN MOSCOW
ARF’s Press Service
Yerkir.am
May 26, 2006
The convention of the Socialist International’s Committee for CIS
and the Caucasus was held in Moscow on May 19-20.Representatives of
16 parties from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Bulgaria, France,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, Netherlands, Poland,
Russia, Sweden and Ukraine as well as representatives of women’s
organizations and Party of European Socialists (PES) participated in
the convention. The Russian social-democrat party chaired by Vladimir
Kishenin was hosting the event.
ARF’s delegation included Kiro Manoyan, ARF Bureau’s Political Affairs
Office director and Eduard Ghazarian of the same office as well as
Yura Navoyan, who heads the Hay Dat office in Moscow. Co-Chairman
of Azerbaijan’s social-democratic party, the first president of
Azerbaijani Republic Ayaz Mutalibov who had been exiled to Moscow
many years ago participated in the convention.
Chairwoman of the Committee, Member of the European Parliament
from the Hungarian Socialist Party Alexandra Doboji opened the
convention. Secretary General of Socialist International Luis Ayala
and the chairman of the hosting party made welcome remarks.
The two main issues on the convention’s agenda were Russia and
Byelorussia.
A number of political figures from these two countries attended
the convention.
The convention delegates discussed the situation with socialist
democracy in Russia first hearing the opinions of the Russian political
leaders and then analyses provided by the convention participants.
The Russian delegated voiced their concerns with the problems existing
in the country and the public administration system in general. The
delegates acknowledged that the federal programs initiated by President
Putin do have a socialist orientation. However, they also noted that
there are no social-democratic political movements in the country.
The delegates from the CIS countries stressed that consolidation
and development of social democracy in Russia will contribute to
the further development of social democracy in their countries and
natural development of the relations between CIS member states.
After the situation in Byelorussia was discussed the convention
adopted a resolution demanding the Byelorussian authorities to
release all political prisoners and calling upon the socialist and
social-democrat forces in the country to unite and jointly struggle
for the success of social democracy in Byelorussia.
At the convention the delegates reports on the political situation
in their countries after the Committee’s previous convention in Kyiv
was heard.
The Committee’s further plans were discussed. It was decided to
discuss the issue of Chechnya. Secretary General Ayala reiterated
the Committee’s previous decision that the next convention will be
held in the fall in Yerevan. At this convention issues of regional
importance will be discussed. Secretary General informed that Socialist
International’s Committee on Migration will convene in Moldova.
In addition to the official sessions of the convention ARF’s delegation
members had a number of meetings with participating delegations.
Socialist International is an organization that unites 170
political parties and organizations from all continents. The Armenian
Revolutionary Federation Party is the only party in the CIS that has
full membership in the Socialist International Organization.

ACTUAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE STILL HIGH IN ARMENIA
By Mher Ohanian
Yerkir.am
May 26, 2006
Though officially the unemployment rate has been significantly reduced
in Armenia the number of the people who are paid satisfactory wages
is still as low as it was 5 or 10 years ago.
According to official statistics, the unemployment rate stood at 7.7%
as of April 1 against the 9.3% percent registered in January.
The number of the people seeking employment is 116,200 people; 91,000
of them or 84.7% have an official status of unemployed.
According to official data, the unemployment rate in Armenia is even
lower than that of Germany, which has unemployment rate of about 10%.
Apparently there is a significant contradiction between the official
numbers and the reality. According to estimates, the economically
active part of the Armenian population is 1,163,000 but it is not
known which portion of these people is engaged in seasonal jobs inside
Armenia and outside it.
‘Hidden’ employment
An essential side of the Armenian labor market is the so-called hidden
employment, which can only be revealed through studies. In 2005, the
Armenian Statistics Service tried to carry out such study to reveal
the employment rate among people aged between 15 and 70.
The study showed that those who are employed ‘secretly’ count for only
22.9 percent of the total number of the employed people. The number
of the people who have jobs based on ‘unwritten’ contracts was only
16.2 percent and constituted only 25.4 percent of the total number
of the employed.
The number of the self-employed was only 6.7 percent of the total
number of the employed.
Just a superficial analysis of those numbers indicates that the
official statistics does not show the real picture of the unemployment
rate in the country. The studies carried out among households reveal
that the real unemployment rate in Armenia is 4 times bigger than the
numbers shown by the official statistics. Despite a decrease trend,
the actual unemployment rate in Armenia stood at 31.3 percent in
2005. For comparison, it was 31.6 percent in 2004, 35.3 percent in
2002, 38.4 percent in 2001.

IRANIAN ARMENIAN AWARDED MEDAL
Yerkir.am
May 26, 2006
Theater holiday in Iran is marked from April 20 to May 6. This year,
the Theater House honored four people, three of them are renowned
Iranian playwrights.
The fourth one was famous Iranian Armenian translator and director
Andranik Khachumian. He was awarded a medal. Behzad Farahani,
a renowned Iranian actor and director, called Khechumian a bridge
between two neighboring and friendly nations.
Khechumian is well-known in Armenia, too. He has helped to organize
trips of Armenian troupes to perform in Iran. In the Armmono Festival
in Yerevan, Khechumian has stage two of his plays.
Khechumian has also translated dozens of plays from Armenian into
Farsi.
Most of them have already been published, some have been stages.
In 2004, Khechumian was awarded the Artavazd prize of the Armenian
Theater Figures.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIANS OF KRASNODAR CELEBRATED REPUBLIC DAY
ArmRadio.am
29.05.2006 14:43
Armenians of Krasnodar celebrated the first Republic Day. The festive
event was held in the yard of St. Hovhannes Church, “Yerkramas”
newspaper of the Armenians of Russia informs. Despite the rain,
performances were given by creative groups and performer of “Narek”
regional center of culture and education and the Armenian community
of Pushkovsk province in Krasnodar region.

Talking Turkey: Sovereign meltdown on the Bosphorus?
By Matein Khalid
28 May 2006
Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates –
LIFE imitates art all too often on the ancient shores of the
Bosphorus.
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who was castigated by the Kemalist
establishment because he dared to question the historical whitewash of
theArmenian genocide, wrote a beautiful novel, Snow, about the
passions and ideological hatreds in a provincial Anatolian town. In
Snow, an Islamist assassinates the principal of a Turkish college
because he enforced the secular state’s ban against girls wearing
headscarves. Istanbul lawyer Alparslan Arslan might well have read
Pamuk’s Snow. Last week, Arslan walked into Turkey’s highest courtroom
and shot five judges, declaring he was a “soldier of Allah” who sought
to punish the judges who ruled against a woman teacher who wore a
headscarf in violation of laws dating back to the establishment of the
secular Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Pasha in 1924.
The killings in the Istanbul courtroom awakened the demons of the
post-Kemalist past, triggering demonstrations against the government
of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and a public spat with General Hilmi,
the Army chief. The military’s rebuke is ominous because the armed
forces are passionate guardians of the state’s secular Kemalist
legacy. After all, a Turkish militarycourt sentenced Prime Minister
Adnan Menderes to death in 1957 (ignoring a plea for the doomed
leader’s life from a young Pakistani diplomat named Z A Bhutto,
himself destined to face his own tryst with destiny and a Praetorian
dictator’s vengeance twenty years later) and removed Islamist Prime
Minister Nuruddin Erbakan from office in the 1990’s. A confrontation
between the Army and a non-secular civilian government in Turkey can
have only one endgame. A military coup d’etat.
Political risk is rising dangerously fast in Turkey. Three years ago,
Erdogan was hailed as a hero in the Middle East for his moderate
religiousagenda, for refusing to join Blair and Bush in the invasion
of Iraq, for accelerating the EU accession agenda, for epic banking
reforms, agreements with the IMF, for the plunge in inflation and
interest rates, the resurrection of the lira from the 2001 currency
meltdown, for defusing the geopolitical time bombs in Cyprus and
Kurdistan, for triggering a spectacular bull market on the Istanbul
Stock Exchange.
Yet Prime Minister Erdogan now faces a grim summer of
discontent. Despite his parliamentary majority, his Justice and
Development Party (AKP) is assailed by corruption scandals, the
outbreak of secessionist Kurdish violence in Anatolia and a global
emerging markets panic that eviscerated 25 per cent from the market
capitalisation of the ISE. Ankara’s relationship with Washington never
really recovered from Erdogan’s refusal to send Turkish troops into
Iraq and his policy to engage Syria and Iran was derailed by the
assassination of Rafik Hariri and the looming nuclear crisis with
Teheran.
Nato, the EU, IMF, the PKK, the Turkish general staff, London and
Washington are formidable adversaries for any Turkish Prime Minister
to have to confront. In fact, Erdogan’s insistence on an executive
from a Sharia compliant finance house to succeed the incumbent
governor of the Central Bank outraged the offshore money managers who
own Turkish shares and Eurobonds, triggering a panic sell-off on the
ISE even worse than India’s Sensex trauma. When the Turkish President,
a secular stalwart, vetoed Erdogan’s central bank nominee, a
constitutional crisis ensued. Moreover, AKP mayors amplified the
crisis by enforcing alcohol free red zones even in the cosmopolitan,
tourist dependent Istanbul and the sun-drenched playgrounds of the
Aegean coast.
Erdogan is no Khoemini, even if his enemies portray him as a backward
foe of the Kemalist ethos. He is merely trying to mobilise his
constituency in rural Turkey to win the 2007 election in a landslide,
to succeed Ahmed Nezer as President and preempt a military coup
against an Islamist head of state. His effort to promote his Islamist
agenda backfired because it coincided with an embryonic political
economic and financial crisis in Turkey reminiscent ofthe Mexican
meltdown in 1994. Wall Street was horrified by the tequila crisis in
the Latin American financial markets twelve years ago. Is history
setting the stage for the next global emerging market blow up – the
baklava crisis on the Bosphorus?
It is such a pity that a moderate Islamist government in Turkey could
well fall victim to global financial hurricanes, a leveraged daisy
chain of hedge fund hot money that once crippled Southeast Asia in
1998. Erdogan’s election ended a generation of unstable coalition
governments, a cold war with Greece over Cyprus, a secessionist war in
Eastern Anatolia waged by “mountain Turks” (Kemalist doublespeak for
Kurds), hyperinflation and capital markets chaos.
Yet with its current account deficit and colossal Eurobond borrowing
programme, Turkey is hostage to the ebb and flow of hot capital that
literally moves across the world’s financial markets at the speed of
light.
Turkey offered the perfect synthesis between a moderate Islamist ethos
and the democratic ideal. It could so easily have morphed into a
Muslim version of Catholic Ireland or Chile, a parliamentary democracy
where religion and freedom could coexist. If Erdogan falls, it would
mean the loss of the West’s natural strategic ally in the Islamic
world at a time when Iraq has degenerated into civil war and Tomahawk
cruise missiles and Stealth bombers could soon streak across the skies
of Iran. A world on the brink of Armageddon cannot afford yet another
sanguinary “clash of civilisations”.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker

Federation of Armenian Organizations in The Netherlands
24 April Committee
For Recognition and Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide of 1915
Address: Weesperstraat 91 – 2574 VS The Hague, The Netherlands
Phone: +31704490209
Website:
E-mail: [email protected]
Contact: M. Hakhverdian
Press Release
Genocide denial bill introduction by Christian Union faction
In a press conference on 1 June 2006 at 11 am, MP Mrs. Tineke Huizinga
of Christian Union Faction will present the introduction of a bill to
Dutch Parliament that criminalises the denial of genocides and other
crimes against humanity. The explanatory note explicitly mentions the
Armenian Genocide as one of the genocides meant in this law.
The press conference will be given by Christian Union parliamentarians
Mrs. Huizinga and Mr. Rouvoet together with representatives of 24
April Committee of FAON (Federation of Armenian Organisations in the
Netherlands), CIDI (Centre for Information and Documentation Israel)
and LBR (Dutch antiracism organisation).

British National Party, UK
May 28 2006
More news from Corsham Madrassa.
Wiltshire correspondent reports.
Strange logo to use in a school which is 99% white

Earlier this week we presented some snippets from revision notes
prepared for students studying for the GSCE modules of the Religious
Education examination in Islam and Christianity. We explained,
quoting from course material, how Islam was presented in a positive
way, unlike Christianity – which was deliberately associated with
racism, intolerance and slavery.
We have today received the full revision booklets for both modules
and shall make a number of further observations from them,
particularly on that part of the Islam propaganda text entitled “The
Life of Muhammad”.
The Life of Muhammad (Sanitised version).
According to the text Muhammad “had a difficult start to life” his
father dies before he was born, as does his mother when he is just
6-years old. It also tells us that he was trusted, honest, kind,
respected and a good businessman who liked to meditate. Sounds a real
nice regular sort of guy to us!
It also tells us how he, as a young man, married an ageing (wealthy?)
widow – for reasons that are not explained but may be speculated
upon. Apparently he took no other wives until after she had died (on
her insistence?), at which time he was aged 49-years. Then, of
course, he married an 8-year old girl by the name of Aisya, –
something that would earn him quite a few years “inside” if repeated
today! Strangely the revision notes make not the slightest reference
of this well documented historical fact – yet has the effrontery to
ask the questions: “Can Muhammad’s example be followed in the 21st
Century?” and “How is Muhammad a role model?” The mind boggles!
The piece also tells us that Muhammad was opposed to the owning of
slaves – which is peculiar bearing in mind Islam’s thousand year
pivotal role in that sordid industry – dealing in countless millions
of slaves taken from the African interior and the southern shores of
Europe! Again the revision text makes no mention of Islam as a major
player in slavery down the centuries – nor of the centuries of
Islamic slaving off our own Westcountry shores!
We also learn from the text that “there were 2 very important battles
(Badr and Uhud) before Muhammed took control of Makkah” and that he
ensured that “all women and children were protected from the
fighting”. No mention here of the butchering of the prisoners taken
at these battles or of bodies being dumped down local wells! No
mention either of the looting of settlements, raiding of camel
caravans for plunder and all the usual trappings of inter-tribal
Arabian warfare including murder, rape, enslavement and mutilation!
Regular readers may also recall, in our earlier report, how the Dutch
Reform Church was held accountable in the accompanying revision notes
on Christianity, for the evil of Apartheid in 1960’s South Africa. To
provide some balance you may reasonably have expected to find a
condemnatory reference in the Islam revision notes relating to
Islamic mass murder and ethnic cleansing down the centuries. But no –
nothing! So why, we naively ask, is there no mention of the genocide
of an estimated one million Christian Armenians by Turkish Muslims in
the 1920’s, or, perhaps a few lines on the mass murder of some 50,000
Christian Greeks, at around the same time, in the former Greek town
today known as Izmir! And if the compilers of the revision notes wish
to make an historical reference more contemporarily with Christian
Apartheid then perhaps they could use the example of Indian partition
– where an estimated one million Sikhs and Hindus were butchered by
Muslim fanaticc or of the Turkish Muslim invasion of Cyprus. As
regards the latter to this day the Muslim Turkish authorities refuse
to disclose what was done to over a thousand still missing Greek
Christian prisoner taken during their illegal invasion? Once again
none of this is even hinted at in the revision notes!
Media maintains its silence.
You would have thought that the media in Wiltshire would be “all
over” the Corsham School and local education authority asking some
probing questions in relation to what is being taught in that
establishment and who, exactly, is doing the teaching. But no – not a
word has yet appeared in print! Can it be that Wiltshire’s editors
and journalists don’t agree with the premise that parents have a
right to know what their kids are being exposed to?
In addition the moribund Christian Church in Wiltshire has expressed
no obvious interest in defending The Faith. They appear to believe
that attending same-sex “weddings” between senior clergymen is of
more importance! On the national scene can it be that the revelations
of the past decade concerning buggering bishops and paedophile
priests has so cowed all within that organization that they maintain
a low profile for fear of more skeletons emerging from the closet?
And if Christian patriots hold any expectation that the present
“princes of the Church” will rise in defence of The Faith then they
are to be sorely disappointed – nothing short of a new Reformation
will put wrong to right!
contentID=980
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Regnum, Russia
May 28 2006
Amrenian foreign minister: Parties are still too far from signing any
document on Karabakh
A meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents Robert Kocharyan and
Ilham Aliyev will most probably be held on June 4 in Bucharest,
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan has announced.
According to him, on the negotiation table there is a document on
some principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, which
will be worked out by the presidents. `If the parties come to an
agreement on those principles, the paper will become a document,’
Oskanyan is quoted as saying. Answering the question by a REGNUM
correspondent whether there will be an opportunity to sign any
document in Bucharest, the Armenian minister is reported as saying
`the situation is too far from it.’ `The parties should agree on some
principles, after that we can speak of a document,’ Vardan Oskanyan
stressed.
As REGNUM earlier reported, the meeting of the presidents is expected
to be held within framework of The Black for Partnership and Dialog
Summit in Bucharest on June 4-6.

Regnum, Russia
May 28 2006
A320 flight recorders delivered to Paris
Flight recorders of the Armenian A320 airbus that crashed off Sochi
coast in the Black Sea were delivered to Paris on May 27, spokeswoman
for the Armenian Civil Aviation Agency Gayane Davtyan has told a
REGNUM correspondent.
According to her, the flight recorders will be subjected to
examination in France, after that they will be unsealed. However,
most probably, the decoding procedure will be held in Moscow. Gayane
Davtyan also reported that the agency’s envoy, flight safety
inspector Gagik Galstyan is in Paris at present moment.
The A320 airbus was flying from Yerevan to Sochi on May 3. In six
kilometers from the strip the plane fell in to the sea. 113 people
were aboard, all of them were killed in the crash.

Detroit Free Press, MI
May 28 2006
TERRY LAWSON: ‘Code’ review touches a nerve
May 28, 2006
Email this Print this BY TERRY LAWSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
By Tuesday, I had received 14 letters addressing my review of “The Da
Vinci Code.” Now, before you start forming the words, “Fourteen? Big
deal,” on your coffee-stained lips, read the sentence again: The key
word here is “letters.”
I had dozens more e-mails, some of them composed by people who had
seen the movie. But letters? Journalists these days approach anything
posted by U.S. mail — unless it’s a rebate or a free magazine —
with a grimace. We figure it will fall into one of four categories:
prisoners or institutionalized people who seek our help in correcting
a horrid injustice; readers who play gotcha with writers or our copy
desks on grammatical or spelling errors; anonymous cranks who just
hate us, or elderly people who do not and never will go near a
computer keyboard.
Though not all the readers gave their ages, these 14 paper relics of
ancient times appeared to be the product of the last category.
Although only one said it plainly and uncoded, the message was
simple: I will rot in hell.
This might be the case, but I seriously doubt it will be for jumping
on the Catholic Church, which is what rankled my correspondents.
Like most of my fellow worshipers at the golden calf called the
movies, I thought “Da Vinci” and its so-called historical conclusions
were hooey.
Yet I can certainly understand why people were upset enough to take
to quill and papyrus. If it’s not exactly open season on Catholics,
true believers are seeing the church’s iconography used in some
pretty kinky ways these days.
Madonna may be 47 and a contented cabalist, but that doesn’t mean
she’s forgotten how subverting Catholic symbols translates to
publicity. She’s fastening herself to a big mirrored cross to sing
“Live to Tell” in her current Confessions tour.
She checked in with her own house organ, the New York Daily News,
last week to defend herself: “I don’t think Jesus would be mad at
me,” she said. Of course not, Madge; he’s Jesus. He has to forgive
you, not only for that “Sex” book but for “Shanghai Surprise.” But
why should we be surprised if some of his followers on Earth hold a
grudge?
Meanwhile, on 6-6-06, a remake of the 1976 thriller “The Omen” comes
around, and seeing it last week at a screening, I realized I had
forgotten that secretive Catholics were to blame for covering up the
fact that the Antichrist had been unleashed on the world. I didn’t
recall there being an enormous stink about this at the time; maybe
the Church was too busy explaining why it still occasionally approved
the ancient ritual at the heart of the 1973 smash hit “The Exorcist.”
Yet a little research reveals the original “Omen” did have Catholic
critics complaining that the film was a Protestant attack on
Catholicism. The Anglican hero was played by Gregory Peck, who had
Catholic Armenian roots. In the new film, the character is played by
Liev Schreiber, whose mother was Jewish.
Not that I would want to start anything, but you know, the Jews do
control Hollywood, at least when they’re not going to cabala lectures
or (Hindu) yoga class or mocking evangelicals. The days when
distortion and prejudice could be explained away with “Hey, it’s only
a movie” are gone forever, and while postage stamps may not be far
behind, the Internet seems custom-made — intelligently designed? —
for outrage and activism.
God may work in mysterious ways, but organized religions work the
media. Remember Kevin Smith’s plan to call his “Clerks” sequel “The
Passion of the Clerks”? Put down those pens: It now has the secular
title “Clerks II.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress