Congressional Record
29 June 2005
Whereas the 20th century was the bloodiest in history and saw the
application of the tools of the modern industrial state to mass killings
which have come to be called genocide; (Introduced in House)

HCON 195 IH
109th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. CON. RES. 195
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, urging the Government of
the Republic of Turkey to acknowledge the culpability of its predecessor
state, the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian Genocide and engage in
rapprochement with the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people, and
supporting the accession of Turkey to the European Union if Turkey meets
certain criteria.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
June 29, 2005
Mr. SCHIFF submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on International Relations

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, urging the Government of
the Republic of Turkey to acknowledge the culpability of its predecessor
state, the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian Genocide and engage in
rapprochement with the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people, and
supporting the accession of Turkey to the European Union if Turkey meets
certain criteria.
Whereas the 20th century was the bloodiest in history and saw the
application of the tools of the modern industrial state to mass killings
which have come to be called genocide;
Whereas 20th century genocides have included the Armenian Genocide, the
Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, and the Rwandan Genocide;
Whereas the Government of Sudan is currently engaged in a genocide against
the people of Darfur, Sudan;
Whereas the consequences of these genocides continue to affect all humanity,
especially those who have been its victims;
Whereas only by acknowledging responsibility and reconciling with the
victims can a nation or people that committed genocide fully return to the
community of nations;
Whereas the Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century;
Whereas the Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1923, prior to the establishment of the Republic of
Turkey;
Whereas in August 1914, the Ottoman Government formed a paramilitary
organization called the Special Organization;
Whereas the Special Organization created units called `butcher battalions’,
which were made up of violent criminals released from prison, to carry out
the extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire;
Whereas in February 1915, the Ottoman Government ordered Armenian men
serving in the army disarmed and organized into forced labor groups;
Whereas on the night of April 23-24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian
intellectuals and community leaders were summarily arrested in
Constantinople;
Whereas this was the first of a series of roundups of Armenian politicians,
priests, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and writers of the Ottoman Empire,
most of whom were killed soon after;
Whereas the first mass deportations began in late March 1915 in the region
of Cilicia, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, according to an extensive
plan of deportation and elimination of the Armenian population of the
Ottoman Empire that was prepared by Talat Pasha, the head of the government;
Whereas notices of deportation were posted in public places and the news
announced publicly in the streets of Armenian towns and villages;
Whereas the Ottoman Government’s campaign resulted in the deportation of
nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were
killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which
succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in
their historic homeland;
Whereas there are numerous contemporaneous documentations of the Ottoman
Government’s campaign against the Armenians, including extensive accounts in
Western newspapers and government documents in the national archives of
Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, and the
Vatican;
Whereas this documentation unequivocally describes the systematic murder of
the Armenian people and the destruction of Armenian life within the Ottoman
Empire;
Whereas Henry Morgenthau Sr., the United States Ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire, sent a cable to the United States State Department in 1915:
`Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and
from harrowing reports of eye witnesses [sic] it appears that a campaign of
race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against
rebellion.’;
Whereas Abram Elkus, who succeeded Morgenthau as United States Ambassador in
1916, sent a cable to Washington that the Ottoman Turks were continuing an
`. . . unchecked policy of extermination through starvation, exhaustion, and
brutality of treatment’;
Whereas in 1920, the Communists came to power in Armenia following an
invasion by the Red Army;
Whereas Armenia was part of the Soviet Union for the next 70 years;
Whereas the Republic of Armenia is working toward democracy, the rule of
law, and a viable free market economy since obtaining its freedom from
Soviet rule in 1991;
Whereas the Republic of Armenia is a member of the Council of Europe, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization’s Partnership for Peace;
Whereas the Republic of Armenia is a friend and ally of the United States;
Whereas the modern Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923;
Whereas the Republic of Turkey abolished Ottoman institutions, including the
sultanate and caliphate, and underwent a period of modernization and
westernization;
Whereas the Republic of Turkey has been a long-standing member of numerous
international organizations, including the Council of Europe, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe;
Whereas the Republic of Turkey is a friend and ally of the United States;
Whereas the Republic of Turkey, because of its position at the crossroads of
Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Middle East, is well positioned
to play a leading role in shaping developments in Europe and beyond;
Whereas the United States has an interest in the stability and economic
development of Turkey and the Caucasus region;
Whereas the Republic of Turkey desires to join the European Union;
Whereas the European Union and the Republic of Turkey will begin accession
talks in October 2005;
Whereas former Secretary of State Colin Powell welcomed the announcement of
accession talks in December 2004 by saying that the United States is
`confident that the accession process, and Turkey’s eventual membership in
the European Union, will bring great benefits to Turkey and to the European
Union . . . [t]he Turkish people have much to look forward to . . . [a]
Turkey that is firmly anchored in Europe and sharing European values will be
a positive force for prosperity and democracy . . . [t]his is good for
Turkey, for the broader European region, and for the United States, and that
is why successive United States administrations have consistently supported
Turkey’s European aspirations’;
Whereas the European Union in 1993 established criteria for membership for
Central and Eastern European countries that require that the candidate
country must have achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy,
the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities,
the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to
cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union, and the
ability to take on the obligations of membership, including adherence to the
aims of political, economic, and monetary union;
Whereas Republic of Turkey is making progress in many of these areas, as
reflected in the decision to open accession negotiations;
Whereas in order to meet the accession criteria regarding the respect for
and treatment of minorities, the Republic of Turkey must acknowledge the
culpability of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian
Genocide;
Whereas the Republic of Turkey has consistently refused to acknowledge the
culpability of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian
Genocide;
Whereas the European Parliament passed a resolution in June 1987 stating
that the killing of `Armenians living in the territory of the Ottoman Empire
constitute genocide within the meaning of the Convention on the Prevention
and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the United Nations
General Assembly on 9 December 1948′;
Whereas in the 1987 Resolution the European Parliament stated that `the
refusal by the present Turkish Government to acknowledge the genocide
against the Armenian people committed by [the Ottoman] government, [is] an
insurmountable obstacle to consideration of the possibility of Turkey’s
accession to the Community’;
Whereas the European Parliament, in a resolution passed in November 2000 on
Turkey’s progress toward accession to the European Union, called upon Turkey
`to give fresh support to the Armenian minority, as an important part of
Turkish society, in particular by public recognition of the genocide which
that minority suffered before the establishment of the modern state of
Turkey’;
Whereas the European Parliament passed a resolution in February 2002
reiterating its recognition of the Armenian Genocide and noting `that the
Turkish regime after the First World War had several of those responsible
for the genocide severely punished’;
Whereas the European Parliament, in its December 2004 parliamentary report
on Turkey’s progress toward accession to the European Union, urged Turkey to
`promote the process of reconciliation with the Armenian people by
acknowledging the genocide’ and called on the European Council and
Commission to demand that Turkey `formally acknowledge the historic reality’
of the Genocide;
Whereas the national parliaments of several members of the European Union
and a number of other national parliaments have passed resolutions
recognizing the Armenian Genocide;
Whereas in recent years there has been an increasing willingness of Turkish
academics, journalists, and others to openly discuss the Armenian Genocide,
but this has often been met with hostility by the Government of the Republic
of Turkey;
Whereas a group of historians organized and scheduled an academic conference
relating to the Armenian Genocide to take place starting June 1, 2005, at
Bosporus University in Istanbul, but the Government of the Republic of
Turkey successfully pressured the university to cancel the conference; and
Whereas the Republic of Turkey’s acknowledgement of the actions of the
Ottoman Government, including the terrible tragedy of the Armenian Genocide,
will herald a new chapter in the history of the region and usher in a new
era of economic, social, and political progress: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That
Congress–
(1) commemorates the victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923;
(2) calls upon the President to commemorate the victims of the Armenian
Genocide on behalf of the people and Government of the United States;
(3) calls upon the Government of the Republic of Turkey to acknowledge the
culpability of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian
Genocide;
(4) calls upon the Government of the Republic of Turkey to promote
rapprochement with the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people and
realize a just resolution;
(5) supports the accession to the European Union of the Republic of Turkey
if Turkey–
(A) acknowledges the culpability of its predecessor state, the Ottoman
Empire for the Armenian Genocide;
(B) pursues rapprochement with the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian
people; and
(C) meets the other criteria for accession as determined by the European
Union;
(6) calls upon the European Union to look with favor upon any actions by the
Government of the Republic of Turkey to acknowledge the culpability of its
predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian Genocide and engage
in rapprochement with the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people;
(7) stands ready to assist the Republic of Turkey and the Republic of
Armenia and the Armenian people in this process; and
(8) calls upon the President, the Secretary of State, the European Union,
and others to assist the Republic of Turkey and the Republic of Armenia and
the Armenian people in this process.

Copley News Service
June 30, 2005 Thursday

‘Yes’

by David Elliott Copley News Service

Yes to “Yes.” A few more words, to confirm affirmation:

This is a He and She story, written and directed with inspiration by
Sally Potter (“Orlando”), who began this as a short film written
right after the 9/11 disaster. The romance of He and She involves Us,
for it seems to press the flow of both public and private events into
a very deep bond of feeling.

Simon Abkarian, who is Armenian, plays He, a Lebanese surgeon driven
by his homeland’s strife to London, where he can only wield the blade
as a cook at a fancy hotel. She (Joan Allen) is an American scientist
with knowledge of strife because of her Northern Irish family, and on
edge because her research runs right into the abortion controversy.

She’s married to a successful Englishman (Sam Neill), who is
unfaithful and can barely verbalize emotions (with funny sadness, the
husband grooves alone to blues recordings, his private vent). Fed up
and lonely, She falls quickly for the honeyed advances of He, the
unemployed surgeon who can still cut to the heart (Abkarian has some
aura of a dark-eyed Arab prince in exile).

In an audacious gamble that first nibbles our ears, as an odd
surprise, and then becomes the true music of narrative, the
characters speak in loose rhymes. Not in too fussy a way, but with a
soft pressure of melodious accent and echo (often speaking mentally,
as when She says: “I’ve sung the song of science, I’ve sung it every
day. But I could agree that’s how I pray”).

The effect is not rap, nor a clever afterglow of Shakespeare, but
akin to the vernacular, chatty charms of Vikram Seth’s popular verse
novel “The Golden Gate.” Full of finesse, a touch pretentious, it
soon seems the way that these smart hearts (and even some fairly
crude kitchen workers) must speak. It’s funny and moving.

Potter combines verbal filigree with Alexei Rodionov’s wonderfully
fluent and intuitive camerawork. The movie dances with chances,
including political implications. Potter made the illicit courtship
and the sex as richly alive as any we’ve seen in modern films; the
self-consciousnessness doesn’t have the frosty manipulation that
seemed to put diagram lines between the actors in “Closer.”

Abkarian, going beyond suave pursuit into touching exposure, is even
finer than he was as Arshile Gorky in “Ararat.” And Allen continues
her fantastic year. She was wonderful in “Off the Map,” even better
in “The Upside of Anger,” and now her angular tautness is just the
instrument for the supple and often conflicted feelings of She.

Neill is movingly lost, Stephanie Leonidas as a godchild is deeply
touching, and Samantha Bond is She’s cherishable friend. Sheila
Hancock as She’s dying old aunt barely moves, but her long speech of
memory and longing, in Irish English voice-over, becomes the still
poetic fulcrum of the movie.

The other chief wisdom is provided, amusingly but with mounting
implication, by a canny hotel maid (Shirley Henderson). She stares
into the camera pertly, like a squirrel gazing into Buddha’s eye.

This very female movie is also empathetic with men, and its sexy
candor is not depersonalizing, but spiritualizing. He is a wayward
Muslim, modern but not rootless. She professes atheism. But the world
is being rudely divided by hot believers, and for all their
resistance these urbanites want spiritual grounding.

The crisis of the face-off of East and West, very post-9/11 but
echoing (like an old rhyme) back through the British Empire, is
delicately incarnated. He and She are never Its. They remain people,
not symbols.

The affirmation of “Yes” is in its worried, wondering love for
everyone. The poetry spreads from the dialogue into everything. It’s
a great film.

A Sony Pictures Classics release. Director, writer: Sally Potter.
Cast: Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Sheila Hancock, Samantha
Bond, Stephanie Leonidas and Shirley Henderson. Running time: 1 hr.,
40 min. Rated R. 4 stars (out of 4.)

Daily News (NY)
June 30, 2005, Thursday

Works use love affairs to probe conflict between Islam and the West

By Celia McGee

As far as conspiracy theories go, the idea that a racist Buckingham
Palace ordered a hit on Princess Diana and her Muslim lover in a
Paris traffic tunnel eight years ago was one of the wilder ones.

But if moviemakers, writers and big-budget musical teams are to be
believed, since 9/11 little is fair in love and war when it comes to
the romantic meeting of the Middle East and West.

With the opening of “Yes,” written and directed by Sally Potter
(“Orlando”), the entertainment industry is beginning to deal with the
difficult subject of love affairs between Muslims and non-Muslims in
the light of recent world events.

“To some extent love stories with obstacles like the ones in ‘Yes’
have been around at least as long as ‘Romeo and Juliet,'” Potter says
of her movie, which is about a passionate entanglement between an
Irish-American scientist (Joan Allen) and the refugee Lebanese
surgeon (Simon Abkarian) she meets in London, where he has been
forced into a hotel kitchen job.

But, Potter believes, the World Trade Center attacks intensified
feelings on both sides about crossing boundaries of faith and ethnic
background. She set out to make a movie that tackled a lot that has
gone on since then.

“There was so much hate in the air after Sept. 11, with Americans
portrayed as the big baddies and people from the Middle East as
mysterious demons,” she says. “I wanted to set a cross-cultural love
story against it.”

Potter is not alone. This weekend also sees the U.S. release of the
French movie “Lila Says,” in which the lovebirds are a North African
teenager and a French girl of Polish descent living with her devoutly
Catholic and seriously twisted “aunt.” Based on a 1996 literary hit,
the story’s been updated with searing references to post-9/11
tensions.

November will bring Ken Loach’s “Ae Fond Kiss,” which shows a Muslim
deejay and a Scottish piano teacher in Glasgow encountering prejudice
of all stripes when they fall in love.

To be published next month, “Desertion,” a semi-autobiographical
novel by the Booker Prize-shortlisted Abdulrazak Gurnah, should also
draw attention. It reveals how a tragic love story about an
Englishman and a local Muslim beauty in 19th-century Kenya sets the
stage for heartache in modern times.

And playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton is adapting the
best-selling “The White Mughal” as a musical extravaganza that’s
conscious, he has said, of today’s global atmosphere. The book is the
true tale of an 18th-century official with England’s East India
Company who converted to Islam to marry an Indian princess descended
from the prophet Muhammad.

Movies like Potter’s, says Richard Pena, program director of the Film
Society of Lincoln Center, are being made in a climate where “Arabs
have become the ultimate ‘other.’ So the question has become what
happens when one gets involved in a romantic relationship with that
‘other,’ and what does one really know about them. Is it a matter of
‘sleeping with the enemy’?”

Allen says she tried to reflect such questions in her “Yes”
performance.

“I learned about a culture that wasn’t very familiar to me,” she
says, “and my eyes were really opened. One of the crucial messages
for me was the depth of our climate of suspicion and intolerance and
threat.”

She says she has been especially moved by audiences’ warm responses
to the movie and how “it leaves people in tears. I’m scared about
what’s going on in our government right now _ any dialogue has been
shut down, and dialogue is quintessentially American. This movie
should help start it up again.”

To play her sad and angry Lebanese lover, Abkarian, an Armenian
Christian, partly drew on childhood memories of when his family
briefly lived in Lebanon.

But he was also working with the way he has often found himself
unfavorably stereotyped in Europe and the U.S.

“We need to teach people that being one thing is not better than
another,” he says, “that we all need to coexist. I would end my days
if I didn’t believe we can meet in love and mutual respect.”

To that end, Potter says she fought against high odds to get “Yes”
made. Funding was hard to come by, the invasion of Iraq meant she
could no longer shoot scenes in Beirut, and new State Department
restrictions suddenly prevented Allen from filming in Cuba, another
important plot location.

“I do still believe that love can overcome hatred,” Potter says.
“Love _ and hope _ is the engine that pioneers change for the
better.”

ARMENIAN DM: GENERALS MUST CONTROL THEMSELVES AND POLITICIANS MUST NOT
“CHEEK UP”

YEREVAN, JULY 1. ARMINFO. NKR Defense Minister Lt.General Seyran
Ohanyan must have iron nerves to control himself and not to yield to
provocation. Such was the comment of Armenian Defense Minister Serge
Sargsyan on the incident in Stepanakert when a representative of the
NKR Defense Army, a member of Artsakh Central Committee of ARFD party
Pavel Manukyan was beaten up.

He thinks the incident a personal conflict between Karabakh generals
and Pavel Manukyan, and it must not be politicized and “grown to a
conflict” between Seyran Ohanyan and ARFD. In any case, a military
commander, especially of the level of Seyran Ohanyan, must have iron
self-control, however, NKR defense minister seems to have problems
with it, although he is one of the most disciplined general “I have
known.” On the other hand, native politicians must be self-restrained
with respect to the army leadership and “not to cheek up”. “How one
can call ‘rascals’ a person repeatedly wounded in the course of
military actions in Karabakh or such Honored Commanders as Samvel
Karapetyan or Vardan Balayan?” the minister said with bewilderment. He
pointed out that the incident requires analysis and carefulness.
Today’s officers and generals in Armenia and NKR are quite different
with their understanding of behavior and discipline from the officers
and generals of ealry 90s. Minister Sargsyan thinks.

Pan Armenian News

ROBERT KOCHARIAN CONGRATULATED US EMBASSY STAFF WITH INDEPENDENCE DAY

01.07.2005 03:28

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On the occasion of the US national holiday – the
Independence Day – Armenian President Robert Kocharian visited the US
Embassy in Yerevan, RA Presdient’s press center reported. Robert Kocharian
congratulated the embassy staff with the holiday and expressed assurance
that the close ties established between the two states will develop in
future.

IN THE NEAREST FUTURE ARMAVIA APPEAR IN MARKET “RENEWED”

YEREVAN, JULY 1. ARMINFO. During the last several days for technical
reasons several flights of the national air carrier of Armenia the
company Armavia are implemented with delay, in connection of which the
management of the air company presents its apologies for the
discomfort caused to passengers.

ARMINFO was informed in the press office of the company, in the
nearest future all the technical problems will be solved, and the
company will appear in the market “renewed”.

To remind, at the beginning of June of the current year Mika Armenia
Trading Ltd repurchased 68% of the shares of the company Armavia and
now it is controlling over 100% of the package of the shares of the
company.

Federal Information and News Dispatch, Inc.
State Department
June 30, 2005

Weekly Review of Developments in Human Rights and Democracy;
President Bush on Victims of Torture Day, Dewey on torture and
refugees, funding for refugees, Patterson on U.N. Human Rights
Council, NGOs on U.N. human rights reform, Azerbaijan, electronic
journals

TEXT: Following are some of the most significant recent U.S.
government policy pronouncements, hearings and reports on human
rights and democracy, as well as some noteworthy materials released
by international organizations and nongovernmental organizations on
these topics:

[parts omitted]

UNITED STATES FUNDS PROGRAMS FOR REFUGEES

The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
releases a fact sheet periodically on U.S. funding provided to
programs for refugees administered by international organizations.

U.S. refugee policy is based on the premise that the care of refugees
and other conflict victims and the pursuit of permanent solutions for
refugee crises are shared international responsibilities.

The most recent fact sheet, released June 13,shows funding actions
completed in May with international and nongovernmental organizations
and includes, for example, funding for U.N. Development Program
activities in Russia’s North Caucasus region and funding for the
construction of houses and schools for refugees in Armenia.

FORMER PRESS SECRETARY OF ARMENIA’S POLICE KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT

YEREVAN, JULY 1. ARMINFO. The former press secretary of Armenia’s
police Artak Vardazaryan was killed in a car accident last night.

The Emergency Department of Armenia reports that Vardazaryan’s BMW
drove into a power transmission pole with Vardazaryan killed on the
spot. The chief editor of the Hayastani Hanrapetoutyun newspaper
Tigran Farmanyan was injured in the head and was taken to the hospital
for surgery.

ARMENTEL ANNOUNCES DOUBLE REDUCTION OF TARIFFS FOR MOBILE
COMMUNICATION

YEREVAN, JULY 1. ARMINFO. ArmenTel has published summer tariffs for
mobile communication.

Press Secretary of the company Hasmik Chutilyan informs ARMINFO that
starting from July 1, a minute of calls for contract subscribers (SIM
cards) costs 43.2 AMD instead of the previous 54 AMD, for the
subscribers of prepayment system (Easy cards) a minute of calls will
cost 79.2 AMD instead of the 118 AMD effective from, July 1. The
prices are presented VAT inclusive. It should be noted that from July
1, the second operator of mobile communication K-Telecom has started
selling its mobile communication cards.

IN 2005 YEREVAN BRANDY COMPANY INTENDS TO PRODUCE AND SELL SOME 4.5
MLN LITERS OF COGNAC

YEREVAN, JULY 1. ARMINFO. In 2005 Yerevan Brandy Company intends to
produce and sell some 4.5 mln liters of cognac. YBC President and
Director General Herve Caroff informs ARMINFO.

He says 90% of the production the enterprise intends to export, first
of all, to Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Herve Caroff says that the
company can reach the level of 5 mln liters, but it does not intend to
“use” the reserves of brandy spirit so rapidly, regulating the
situation depending on the volume of grapes harvest. Everything will
depend on the forthcoming season of grapes purchases, he says, adding
that two years ago considerable areas vineyards were damaged by severe
winter frosts. During the last year a tendency towards increase in the
harvest of grapes was observed, hence the sales volume began
growing. Herve Caroff thinks it is early to speak of the purchase
price of the forthcoming harvest. The company intends to purchase not
large volume of raw materials in Nagorny Karabakh as well. On the
whole, Herve Caroff is satisfied with the work in Armenia wherein high
quality cognac is in demand. In this connection, the company intends
to constantly extend the production and sales volumes in the internal
market.

It should be noted that in 2004 the company purchased raw materials
for some $6 mln. In 2005 this indicator will be increased 20%. In 2005
YBC intends to purchase 25,000 tons of grapes as against 20,000 ton
last year. For this purpose, the company intends to spend $8 mln. YBC
has contracts with over 4,000 farmers in Armenia. The sales volumes of
YBC in 2004 was 4 mln liters. YBC was bought by Pernod Ricard French
group of companies in May 1999 fpr $30 mln. The trademarks of YBC are
registered in 48 countries world wide, with its production being sold
in 25 states.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress