PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon
Armenian version:
Watch the recorded video of the message of His Holiness Aram I on the
occasion of the 3rd Pan-Armenian Writers’ Conference held in Antelias here:
Re ad the message of His Holiness Aram I in Armenian here:
Messages/messages5.htm
HIS HOLINESS ARAM I BESTOWS LEVON ANANIAN WITH
THE “ST MESROB MASHDOTS” INSIGNIA
His Holiness Aram I praised all the participants in the Third Pan-Armenian
Writers’ Conference and all Armenian writers in Armenia and the Diaspora in
his remarks during the ceremonial closing of the conference on April 9.
The Armenian Pontiff particularly commended the president of the Writers’
Union of Armenia, Levon Ananian. V. Rev. Fr. Norair Ashekian read the
Pontifical letter and the public attended carefully to the utmost levels of
Pontifical praise addressed to Levon Ananian. In his Pontifical encyclical,
His Holiness pointed out that all Armenian writers and intellectuals are
praised through Ananian.
On the sounds of excited claps from the public, His Holiness Aram I placed
the “St. Mesrob Mashdots” insignia on the chest of Levon Ananian, a true
servant of the Armenian language and literature.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the history and
mission of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of the
Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.

CRAG
E-mail: [email protected]
Web-sites: w3.crag.org.uk / w3.accc.org.uk
Commemorative Community Evening on Friday, 21st April, at 7:00 pm at
Victoria Hall, Ealing Town Hall, Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London W5.
The programme of this open and public event is geared toward the
Armenian community as a whole. It includes talks by a number of
prominent speakers (Armenian and non-Armenian) as well as interesting
cultural interludes by talented artists.

Annual March on Saturday, 22nd April, 11.00 from Marble Arch to
Whitehall & Cenotaph.
The march will be led by the Armenian Church, ACCC & CRAG and there
will be prayers at the Cenotaph and the placement of a wreath, as well
as the handing of a letter to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing St by
ACCC & CRAG representatives.
Divine Liturgy (Hokehankisd) on Sunday, 23 April, at 11:00 am led by
HG Bishop Nathan Hovhannesian at St Yeghiche Armenian Church, Cranley
Gardens, London SW7.
Short Memorial Service and laying of wreaths on Monday, 24 April, at
7:00 pm at St Sarkis Church, Iverna Gardens, London W8.
Commemorative Evening “The Truth about Armenia” on Tuesday, 25 April,
at 7:00 pm, by Wales-Armenia Solidarity, at the Temple of Peace,
Cathays Park, in Cardiff CF10.

Kyoda News
Wednesday April 12
U.N. meeting adopts resolution on trans-Asian railway network
(Kyodo) _ A U.N. meeting adopted Wednesday a resolution on an agreement to
construct the ambitious Trans-Asian Railway Network connecting 28 countries
from Asia to Europe, paving the way for its signing in November.
The adoption of the resolution on the Intergovernmental Agreement on the
Trans-Asian Railway Network was made by ministers and officials attending
the 62nd annual meeting of the Bangkok-based U.N. Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
“The TAR network is one of the building blocks towards the realization of
the vision of an international integrated intermodal transport system for
the whole region,” UNESCAP Executive Secretary Kim Hak Su told participants
of the meeting.
“The agreement identified routes of international importance that serve the
immediate transport needs of UNESCAP members, providing regional
connectivity as well as linkages to Europe,” he added.
The agreement, aimed at offering efficient transport services for the
movement of passengers and goods within the UNESCAP region and between Asia
and Europe, will open for signature during a ministerial conference on
transport slated for Nov. 6-11 in Busan, South Korea.
The TAR network consists of about 81,000 kilometers of rail routes
connecting 28 countries in the region that are also UNESCAP members, from
Indonesia in the south to Russia in the north and from Turkey in the west to
South Korea in the east.
Studies by UNESCAP member countries carried out between 1996 and 2001 have
identified four corridors: the 12,600-km Southeast Asia corridor, the
32,500-km Northeast Asia corridor, the 13,200-km Central Asia and Caucasus
corridor and the 22,600-km South Asia-Iran-Turkey corridor.
Initiated in early 1960s, the TAR project was earlier aimed at providing a
continuous 14,000-km rail link between Singapore and Istanbul with possible
onward connections to Europe and Africa.
Regional conflicts and centralistic economic policies that opposed a more
open market-oriented economy, however, have prevented materialization of the
ambitious plan.
The return of peace to Southeast Asia, the emergence of independent
countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia and the adoption of
market-oriented economic principles in many countries, particularly in China
and Russia, in 1980s and early 1990s raised the need for the development in
efficient transport infrastructure and services.
Finally, in 1992, the idea, which is also aimed at providing improved access
for landlocked countries to major ports, was revived under the framework of
the Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development project adopted by
UNESCAP’s 48th session.
A similar international agreement on the Asian Highway Network, also under
the auspices of UNESCAP, came into force in July 2005.
UNESCAP groups Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Georgia,
India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia,
Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri
Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

FAITH AND FOOD: The family table takes on special significance during
the Easter season
Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan)
April 12, 2006
BY SYLVIA RECTOR, FREE PRESS FOOD WRITER
Here’s a tip for the teens at St. John’s Armenian Church: At the end of
high school, when the Rev. Father Garabed Kochakian does the big senior
interview to test your knowledge of the faith, one of the questions
he’ll throw at you is about … food.
It’s partly because he’s that kind of pastor: spirited as well as spiritual.
But it’s also because food in the Armenian Eastern Orthodox faith is
both sustenance and symbol, eaten — and often not eaten — as a way to
observe church teachings.
It takes on even greater significance during the 40-plus days of fasting
known in Orthodoxy as Great Lent, which leads up to this week’s Fast of
Great and Holy Week and, finally, to Easter Sunday. Together they
represent the most sacred period of the calendar for the Eastern
Orthodox people.
“It is the highlight of the year,” Father Kochakian said last week over
lunch at his home, where he, along with his wife, Roberta, and Women’s
Guild member Dolly Matoian talked about fasting, Armenian food and the
beloved custom they call the Easter egg game.
The meatless Great Lenten lunch was delicious.
The pastor’s words on food, fasting and the family table were thought
provoking.
And the egg game — the shell-cracking high point of Armenian Easter
dinner — turns out to be quite a feisty event.
As Roberta Kochakian said, “Everyone plays, and there’s no pandering to
the children. If you win, you win.”
But before the fun on Easter Sunday comes the most rigorous period of
fasting in Armenian Orthodoxy, a faith that recognizes more than 200
annual fast days — or more precisely, days of abstinence from certain
foods, Father Kochakian said.
As St. John’s pastor, he leads one of the largest Armenian Orthodox
congregations in the United States. More than 3,000 people attend St.
John’s, the landmark building with the distinctive gold-domed roof
beside the Lodge Freeway in Southfield.
Armenia is north of Syria, Iraq and Iran and next to Turkey, so its food
is Middle Eastern with Turkish influences.
In the Armenian church’s most restrictive Lenten fast, the monastic
fast, followers abstain from meat and meat products, including eggs and
dairy foods, for the entire 40-plus days of Great Lent.
In modern practice, the observance is usually modified.
In his own home, says Father Kochakian, “We don’t eat any meat during
the Lenten period, but dairy and those types of things I do consume. We
live in a society where you need your energy. … I’m on the go 24-7.”
People try to observe as best they can, he said. Depending on health and
family situations, some people fast only on Wednesdays and Fridays;
others might do so only in Holy Week. No one is to be judged on how they
fast, he said.
“The idea of just giving up one food item is not really the object of
Lent. It’s to change your life completely,” he said. “And where do you
change your life? It starts at the table … because you sit at the
table every day. And whatever is ordinary that is changed, influences you.”
The everyday table holds special significance in Orthodox teaching
because it is where food is served, and “food brings people together and
maintains unity. … The table in your home, in the Christian teaching,
is an extension of the altar table in the sanctuary. We are fed from both.
“The food for our mortality is in the home, and the food for our
immortality is at the altar — the body and blood of Christ,” he
explained, referring to the bread and wine in Christianity’s
2,000-year-old communion ritual.
He says people have told him, ” ‘Father Garabed, you’re always talking
about food. You even quiz the kids on food. What does that have to do
with Sunday School?’ But it does.”
At home, Roberta Kochakian adjusts her cooking in observance of the
season’s dietary rules.
Since Feb. 27, the Monday before Ash Wednesday, she has cooked without
meat and will do so until Saturday night, Easter Eve. The faithful in
other branches of the Orthodox Church follow very similar customs, she
noted, although most of them will celebrate Easter a week later on April 23.
A meatless diet requires cooking with water instead of broth, for
example, but it helps that Armenian cuisine already emphasizes
vegetables, legumes and grains.
“Even on a daily basis we cook a lot of vegetables and just a little bit
of meat — things like an eggplant stew or a green bean stew, where the
vegetable is the main ingredient.”
Parishioner Dolly Matoian, who taught many types of cooking at the old
Kitchen Glamor stores, recently began teaching Armenian cooking at St.
John’s. The cuisine is “the classic Mediterranean diet. It’s very
healthy,” she says.
All kinds of vegetables are important, along with lentils, chickpeas and
bulgur; olive oil is the main fat; olives and pickled vegetables are
enjoyed, and yogurt is a mainstay.
There are both hot and cold yogurt soups, and though they might sound
bland, the hot version Matoian prepared for lunch was flavorful and
tangy with onions and fresh mint.
With it, Roberta Kochakian served Greek olives, Armenian flatbread,
bulgur pilaf, and one of Father Kochakian’s favorites: a sweet but
savory okra-and-apricot stew like the one his mother made.
For dessert she had baked a batch of crisp, tasty vegan cookies called
simit, and Matoian brought choereg bread, an Armenian Easter tradition.
The braided oblong loaf, light but rich with eggs and butter, is
flavored with mahlab, an aromatic spice made from the kernels of certain
cherry pits.
Choereg is one of many classics Matoian and other churchwomen
demonstrate on a cooking DVD they made last year, after younger women
began asking how to cook traditional foods. (Details, this page.)
The table also held a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, dyed red like the ones
prepared for Easter Sunday.
Roberta Kochakian had colored them by simmering them with yellow-onion
skins. (Use a packed cupful of skins for up to a dozen eggs and let them
sit in the water a while after cooking for a deeper color.)
Just before Easter dinner, everyone will grab an egg and go around the
table, laughing as they all try to crack someone else’s egg with their
own. And everyone plays to win, from grandparents to little kids.
They hold the egg in their fist with only the end showing and tap the
end of an opponent’s egg. The cracking of the shell, Father Kochakian
said, recalls the opening of Jesus’ tomb and the Resurrection.
“The person who is hitting gives the Easter greeting, ‘Christ is risen,’
and the person being hit responds, ‘Indeed he is risen’ or ‘Blessed is
the resurrection of Christ,’ ” he said.
The survivor of each tap gets the loser’s egg and goes on to another
match, and so on. The Greek and some Syrian Orthodox churches also
observe the tradition.
“Years ago, we assumed all the people of the world did this,” Roberta
Kochakian said, laughing. “Every Christian household has eggs on Easter,
so we assumed they all cracked eggs like we did.” They were shocked to
learn it wasn’t universal.
But it could be. “It’s a wonderful custom. Anybody can do it,” she said.
Contact SYLVIA RECTOR at 313-222-5026 or [email protected].
Further information about Armenian cuisine: DVD teaches Armenian cooking
Many of Armenia’s traditional recipes are demonstrated on a DVD called
“Hye Dining,” featuring members of the Women’s Guild of St. John’s
Armenian Church. Segments range from the method for rolling multiple
layers of dough, to making the stuffed lamb meatballs called kufteh. The
project was launched last year after guild member Dolly Matoian’s
Armenian cooking classes were swamped by eager young students. More than
1,000 copies have been sold. All inquiries can be sent to the following
address: Women’s Guild of St. John’s Armenian Church, 22001 Northwestern
Highway, Southfield MI 48075.
PHOTO CAPTION: Father Garabed Kochakian licks his finger as he dishes up
a lunch plate of Greek olives, bulgur pilaf, dziranov bameeya (okra with
apricots), simit cookies, and Armenian flat bread at home in Farmington
Hills. (PATRICIA BECK/Detroit Free Press)
?AID=/20060412/FEATURES02/604120329

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian National Committee
Eastern United States
P.O. Box 1066
New York, NY 10040
Contact: Doug Geogerian
Tel: 917 428 1918
Fax: 718 651 3637
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
ARF Hosts “Armenians and the Left” Conference
Fisk Announces Plans to Speak in Turkey
NEW YORK–The Armenian Revolutionary Federation concluded a weekend-long
conference entitled Armenians and the Left on April 9th, when featured
speakers Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky spoke at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in front of a crowd of 750 about War, Geopolitics and History:
Conflict in the Middle East. During his lecture, Fisk explained why the
Armenian Genocide must be known in order to understand how the region has
been condemned since World War I to foreign intervention, chronic war and
mass slaughter.
The conference began on April 7 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture,
where over 1,000 people attended a lecture by Fisk about the Middle East and
US journalism. The crowd featured many out-of-town guests, including twenty
members of the Armenian Youth Federation of Canada as well as travelers from
Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston and Los Angeles.
The conference’s main events took place on Saturday, April 8, when twenty
activists, scholars, and opinion makers gave presentations at the CUNY
Graduate Center in Manhattan. Presentations took place in six panels on a
variety of critical topics, including human rights in the Caucasus, women
and political power, globalization and imperialism, Armeno-Turkish dialogue,
Armenian political identity, and reparations for mass crimes against
humanity. The day ended with Robert Fisk and David Barsamian holding a
conversation in front of all conference attendees about `War, Propaganda and
the Media.’
Fisk also promoted his most recent book, The Great War for Civilization, in
which he dedicates an entire chapter to the Armenian Genocide, which he
described as `The First Holocaust.’ In his column last weekend for The
Independent, Fisk took up the case of John Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to
Armenia, who is being forced to retire over his affirmation of the Armenian
Genocide during a speech he gave last year in San Francisco. After rebuking
the Bush Administration for its imminent dismissal of Evans, Fisk announced
his plans to travel to Van and other areas of Western Armenia to promote the
Turkish language edition of his book.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS RELEASE
UCLA AEF Chair in Armenian History
Contact: Prof. Richard Hovannisian
Tel: 310-825-3375
Email: [email protected]
UCLA CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN ARMENIA
(MAY 6, 2006)
Los Angeles-`Armenia: Challenges of Sustainable Development’ is the theme
of an international conference to be held at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA), on Saturday, May 6, from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM. in the
Court of Sciences 50 (Young Hall). The conference featuring specialists in
economics, finance, and governance is dedicated to UCLA Professor Emeritus
of Economics, Armen A. Alchian, a world-renowned economist and teacher who
was born in Fresno in 1914 and joined the UCLA faculty in 1946.
The conference is organized by the Armenian Educational
Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA and the Armenian
International Policy Research Group (AIPRG), with support from the UCLA Von
Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Department of Economics.
AEF Chair Holder Richard Hovannisian will open the morning session with
introductory comments on `The Economic Factor,’ followed by the
presentation of Professor Alchian and his contributions to economic theory
by a similarly distinguished Professor of Economics, Harold Demsetz.
Enrique Gelband, Deputy Division Chief and former Mission Chief
to Armenia of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will give the keynote
address on `Growth and Poverty Reduction in Armenia: Achievements and
Challenges,’ the title of his recent book published by the IMF. A panel
discussion on the subject will be moderated by UCLA Professor of Economics
Michael Intriligator and include William Ascher, McKenna Professor of
Government and Economics at Claremont McKenna College; Daniel Mazmanian,
Director of the Judith and John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the
Public Enterprise at the University of Southern California; and Ara
Khanjian, Professor of Economics at Ventura College.
The Saturday afternoon session moderated by Professor Lee
Ohanian of the UCLA Department of Economics focuses on specific topics
relating to Armenia’s economic development. David Grigorian of the IMF will
speak on `Tax Potential versus Tax Effort: Factors behind the Stubbornly
Low Tax Collection in Armenia’; Bryan Roberts of the Department of Homeland
Security, `Remittances, Poverty, and Growth in Armenia’; and Nerses
Yeritsyan, Central Bank of Armenia, `Financial Sector Development in
Armenia: Problems and Challenges.’ A discussion period will conclude the
afternoon session.
Richard Hovannisian stated: `I am pleased that after sixteen
wonderful semi-annual conferences on Historic Armenian Cities and
Provinces, we shifted the focus to contemporary issues in 2005 with `The
Enduring Legacy of the Armenian Genocide’ and `Three Turkish Voices on the
Armenian Question.’ Now, for the first conference of 2006, the economic and
fiscal challenges facing the Republic of Armenia will be addressed. I am
thankful to David Grigorian for arranging much of the program, especially
as Ascher, Khanjian, Roberts, Yeritsyan, and Grigorian are also associated
with AIPRG. The subject of this conference is of critical importance to
Armenia and all those concerned with the welfare of its people.’
The conference is open to the public and free of charge.
Parking is available in Structure 2 at the Hilgard and Westholme Avenue
entrance to UCLA, where a one-day parking permit ($8.00) may be obtained at
the parking kiosk. A map of the UCLA campus can be found at the web site:
<; /map/ or the UCLA Armenian Studies web site at For additional information, e-mail: Richard Hovannisian: www.ucla.edu