Noblesville Daily Times

Saturday
March 19, 2005

Librarian shares Ukrainian egg decorating experience with children

By Beth Shively | Staff writer

Posted: 03/19/05 – 01:53:18 pm EST

The sticky-fingered girls gathered around a library table working on an
Easter craft had one caution for others who might like to try the modified
Ukrainian egg decorating project.

Dipping egg-shaped Styrofoam in sweetened condensed milk and then rolling it
in green, gold and multi-colored glitter is a fun project, they said, but
just a little bit messy.

“It’s pretty neat,” said Lauren Smith. “But it’s sticky.”

The project was inspired by Gwen Tetrick, a school media specialist who also
works in the Hamilton East Public Library youth rooms in Fishers in
Noblesville. Tetrick got the idea for the project while visiting in Ukraine
last summer, where her daughter was stationed as a Peace Corps volunteer.

“They’re just everywhere in Ukraine, just everywhere,” Tetrick said about
the elaborately decorated Pysanky eggs.

The country even has an egg-shaped museum to house the decorations, which
are made each year to celebrate spring, and are especially prevalent at
Easter. In addition to the Pysanky eggs made by Ukranians with hollowed
shells, hot wax and dyes, the museum houses jeweled Faberge eggs.

Tetrick was so inspired by the ornate objects and the warm and welcoming
people she met in Ukraine that she wanted to create a craft to do with
children who visit the Hamilton East Public Library. In addition to the
glittered eggs, the kids also colored wooden eggs using traditional Pysanky
colors and symbols to represent different emotions and objects.

Roses, for example, symbolize love and caring, ladders mean prosperity or
prayer, and a fish represents Christianity. But while the decoration of eggs
is closely associated with Easter, the craft was not invented for the
holiday.

According to the Easter Traditions Web site, painting eggs with bright
colors to celebrate spring is a practice that predates the advent of
Christianity. But because eggs symbolize new life, they are a logical symbol
for the celebration of Easter.

In addition to Ukrainian customs, cultures around the world have taken the
symbol and each added their own touches, the Web site said. Greeks dye their
Easter eggs red to symbolize and honor the blood of Christ, while Germans
and Austrians traditionally give green eggs on Maundy (or Holy) Thursday –
the day commemorating Christ’s Last Supper.

In Slavic countries, decorating eggs in special patterns of gold and silver
adds luster to the shell and to the sharing. The Armenian tradition is to
decorate hollowed-out eggshells with religious images significant to the
holiday.

But no matter the color or pattern used, Tetrick said in Ukraine there is
one element consistent with all egg decorating.

“It’s a very family-oriented project,” she said.

Know More

When decorating Pysanky eggs, Ukrainians use these colors to represent the
following:

White n purity or wisdom

Yellow n harvest, spirituality, spring, rebirth

Green n wealth, youth, growth, happiness

Blue n good health, clear skies

Orange n power, endurance, ambition

Red n happiness, hope, passion, nobility, bravery, enthusiasm, love

Brown n enrichment, good harvest, happiness

Purple n faith, trust, power

Pink n success

Black n remembrance

To learn more about Pysanky egg decorating, visit For
more information about Easter Traditions, visit

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Scotsman, UK
March 20 2005

Less talk, more action

BEN KIERNAN

IN TWO years of mass killings and forced population displacements,
Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias have caused the deaths of more
than 200,000 Africans in the country’s Darfur provinces. Though
existing international law already provides both a relevant statutory
definition of genocide and a court to judge these crimes, needless
semantic disputes are hampering effective punishment and deterrence.
Failure to promptly bring those responsible before the International
Criminal Court (ICC) could render the international community
helpless onlookers – and would further encourage such crimes.

Despite persistent reports of attacks on Africans in Darfur, military
intervention has been slow. The African Union peacekeeping force is
small. Guarding their own sovereignty, few African or Arab
governments will intervene in a regional Islamic state, or prosecute
its crimes. US intervention, with American forces extended in Iraq
and elsewhere, seems unlikely. Washington favours a genocide
tribunal, in a special court restricted to hearing the Darfur case.
It opposes the new permanent ICC, which one day might try US war
crimes.

Differing definitions of genocide plague the legal response. A United
Nations commission, urging referral of the case to ICC prosecutors,
recently found that crimes against humanity and war crimes are
occurring in Darfur. The commission avoided charging Sudanese
government officials with genocide stating that “only a competent
court” can determine if they have committed “acts with genocidal
intent”. Meanwhile, the US government, the German government and the
parliament of the European Union all accuse Khartoum of “genocide”.

Why this debate over the definition of genocide? Although the concept
preceded the invention of the term, the jurist Raphael Lemkin coined
the word in his 1944 classic Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Warning of
what we now call the Holocaust, he cited previous cases, particularly
the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Young Turk
regime. Lemkin thought the term should denote the attempted
destruction not only of ethnic and religious groups but also of
political ones, and that it encompassed systematic cultural
destruction as well.

The 1941-45 Nazi genocide of Jews and Gypsies constitutes not only
the most extreme case of genocide, it differs from previous cases –
the conquistadors’ brutality in the New World or Ottoman massacres –
in an important respect: the Holocaust was one of the first examples
of attempted physical racial extermination. On a smaller scale, this
fate had already befallen a number of indigenous peoples in the
Americas, Africa and Australia – and, later, the Vietnamese minority
in Cambodia and Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. By then, planned
near-complete annihilation of a people had become the colloquial
meaning of “genocide”.

Yet the postwar UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
Genocide adopted Lemkin’s broader concept, which encompasses the
crimes in Darfur. Ratified by most UN member states, the 1948
convention defines genocide as acts committed “with the intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or
religious group, as such”.

It includes even non-violent destruction of such a group. While
excluding cultural destruction and political extermination, the
convention specifically covers removal of children, imposing living
conditions that make it difficult to sustain a group’s existence, or
inflicting physical or mental harm, with the intent to destroy a
group “as such”. Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission found in 1997 that the UN definition of genocide applied
to the removals of Aboriginal children from their parents to “breed
out the colour” – as one Australian official put it in 1933. The law
thus expands the popular understanding of genocide. As in the case of
Darfur, genocide may fall well short of total physical extermination.

The legal recourse now available to victims under international law
is a good reason to accept the 1948 UN definition. In 2003, Sudan
acceded to the Genocide Convention. It is statutory international
law, binding on 136 states. In the past decade, UN tribunals for
Bosnia and Rwanda have convicted genocide perpetrators from both
countries. The convention’s definition is enshrined in the statute of
the ICC, created in 2002 and ratified by 94 states.

The legal definition is broad in another sense. In criminal law, the
term “intent” does not equal “motive”. One of Hitler’s motives for
the construction of Auschwitz was to destroy the Jews directly, but
other genocide perpetrators have pursued different goals – conquest
(Indonesia in East Timor), “ethnic cleansing” (in Bosnia and Darfur)
– which resulted in more indirect cases. If those perpetrators did
not set out to commit genocide, it was a predictable result of their
actions.

The regimes pursued their objectives, knowing that at least partial
genocide would result from their violence: driving Africans from
Darfur, crushing all national resistance in East Timor, imposing
totalitarian racism in Cambodia. When such policies knowingly bring
genocidal results, their perpetrators may be legally judged to have
possessed the “intent” to destroy a group, whatever their motive.
Such crimes are not the same as the Holocaust, but international law
has made them another form of genocide.

The 1948 Convention also outlaws complicity, incitement, conspiracy
and attempt to commit genocide. A government could commit those
crimes by facilitating an ongoing genocide against indigenous people.
Darfur may include such cases of official complicity with the
Janjaweed militia attacks. In colonial Australia, British authorities
did not set out to exterminate Aborigines but some police and
settlers did. Nor did US federal officials adopt such a goal in
California and the West, though some state governments and
bounty-hunting posses did. Yet courts in both countries prohibited
testimony by native people. Such official policies and their
deliberate, sustained enforcement facilitated or resulted in the
predictable genocide of a number of Aboriginal and Native American
peoples.

Complicity, discrimination and refusal of legal responsibility to
protect threatened groups continued in the 20th century. Even after
World War II, the UN Security Council failed to enforce the 1948
Genocide Convention until the crime recurred in Europe. By then
genocide had proliferated elsewhere. A few independent scholars,
inspired by Lemkin, had long been working to broaden understanding of
the phenomenon beyond the Holocaust. Most scholars now include the
Armenian, Bangladeshi, Cambodian, East Timorese, Guatemalan,
Sudanese, and other cases, along with those of Bosnia and Rwanda.

Attention has also turned to indigenous peoples. A German official
recently apologised to the Herero people of Namibia for Berlin’s
genocidal conquest of South-West Africa in 1904-05. The US and
Australia have yet to acknowledge genocides against their indigenous
inhabitants but now the Muslim Africans of Darfur have a legal
remedy.

After a century of genocide, resistance and research on the
phenomenon, the world community has a legal definition, an
international statute outlawing the crime and a court asserting
jurisdiction over it. The task now requires less definitional
disputation, more investigation, rigorous enforcement and
compensation for the victims. Unless either the Sudanese government
invites the ICC, or the UN decides to send the case before the ICC,
the Darfur crimes may go unpunished. Lest international efforts to
prevent genocide disintegrate into empty talk, the ICC should be
allowed to take up the case of Darfur.

Ben Kiernan is the A.Whitney Griswold Professor of History and
director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University

Lebanon Leader Pulls Out of Arab Summit

Saturday March 19, 2005 6:16 PM
By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN

Associated Press Writer

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – Lebanon’s pro-Syrian president said Saturday
that he will not attend an Arab summit because of political turmoil in
his country as investigators searched for clues to a car bomb that
rocked a largely Christian neighborhood in Beirut, injuring nine
people.

President Emile Lahoud did not elaborate on his decision not to
participate in Monday’s summit in Algeria, but it came as Syria
withdraws troops from Lebanon after facing heavy pressure from the
United States and fellow Arab countries to end a three decade
presence.

The attack devastated an eight-story apartment building in the largely
Christian New Jdeideh neighborhood shortly after midnight on Saturday
and sent panicked residents in their pajamas into the street.

Lahoud, a close Syrian ally, made no mention of the attack, saying
only in a statement that Lebanon was experiencing “exceptional
circumstances” that required “immediate and direct dialogue”
between opposition and pro-government groups.

He also offered to host immediate talks between Lebanon’s various
political factions amid negotiations over the formation of a new
government.

Opposition legislator Fares Soeid dismissed the invite, saying: “It’s
too late. This subject is closed.”

The violence raised concerns among some Lebanese that pro-Damascus
elements might resort to violence to show, in their view, the need for
a continued presence by Syrian forces. Hundreds of thousands of
Lebanese have demonstrated for and against Syria since the Feb. 14
slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The anti-Syrian
protests have featured large numbers of Maronite Christians.

Police closed all entrances leading to the blast site and blocked
onlookers from nearing the devastated building. After sunrise,
residents began clearing debris and inspecting their damaged shops and
homes.

The Lebanese military also announced stricter measures against any
security violators. “The army will not allow that freedom of
expression be abused in order to harm security and stability,” it
said in a statement.

Security officials said on condition of anonymity the blast was caused
by a time-bomb underneath a car belonging to a Lebanese-Armenian
resident of the damaged building. The whereabouts of the car owner
were not known.

Earlier, witnesses said the car attempted to stop in front of a bingo
hall, but security guards asked its driver to move along. The driver
then parked the car a short way down the road. Minutes later it
exploded.

Opposition leader Walid Jumblatt warned there could be more car bombs
and assassination attempts but urged calm.

“Car bomb messages do not threaten our national unity,” Jumblatt
said in a speech to supporters at his mountain palace of Mukhtara,
southeast of Beirut.

The leader of the militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria
and Iran, warned the opposition against closing the door to
dialogue. That “could take the country to an unsafe place and create
an atmosphere that the enemies of Lebanon might use, as happened last
night,” Hassan Nasrallah said Saturday.

Political demands from factions for and against Syria have bogged down
efforts to form a new government, raising concerns that the deadlock
could threaten upcoming elections and even Syria’s final withdrawal.

Pro-Damascus premier-designate Omar Karami, whose previous government
was forced to resign as anti-Syrian sentiment increased, has insisted
on a “national unity” government. But the opposition is refusing to
join unless its demands are met. The opposition wants a neutral
Cabinet to arrange for elections, the resignation of security chiefs
and an international investigation into the blast that killed Hariri
and 17 other people.

Many have linked the Lebanese and Syrian governments to the killing;
both governments deny any involvement.

Some opposition members accuse Karami of stalling to destroy chances
of holding an election they believe the pro-Syrian camp will lose.

Jumblatt told Future Television that parliamentary polls should be
held as planned for April and May. “Let them hold the elections
according to the electoral law they deem suitable, but we will not
participate in the government,” he said.

Saturday’s explosion blew off the fronts of some structures, left a
seven-foot-deep crater, damaged parked cars and shops and shattered
windows for several blocks.

Christian opposition member Pierre Gemayel linked the attack to the
Syrian troop pullout.

“This has been the message to the Lebanese people for a while – to
sow fear and terror among Lebanese citizens,” he told Al-Jazeera
satellite television. The message is “if there is a Syrian
withdrawal from Lebanon, look what Lebanon will face.”

The intensity of the political battle over Syria’s troops has raised
fears of a return to the sectarian violence of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil
war. So far, however, the political camps do not conform to religious
boundaries, with Christians and Muslims on both sides of the debate.

On Thursday, Syria completed the first phase of its withdrawal in
Lebanon, redeploying all its remaining soldiers and military
intelligence officers to the eastern Bekaa Valley. Of the 14,000
troops that were in Lebanon last month, at least 4,000 soldiers have
returned to Syria.

At the United Nations, Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir said that
Syria had given assurances it would withdraw its troops before the
country’s elections, as U.N. and American officials want.

GEORGIA GIVES HIGH IMPORTANCE TO FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH ARMENIA:
GEORGIAN PRESIDENT PRESS SERVICE

TBILISI, MARCH 19. ARMINFO. Georgia gives high importance to friendly
relations with Armenia, says the press service of the Georgian
president commenting on the ARF Dashnaktsoutyun party’s disproving the
facts given by the Georgian president’s foreign relations advisor
Valery Gachechiladze in his Mar 14 interview to Rao (Georgia).

The ARMINFO correspondent in Tbilisi reports that in the above
interview Gachechiladze says that Armenians settled in Georgia after
the tragic events in Turkey in 1915 when they became “a blind tool in
others’ hands.” And so he excludes the possibility of social explosion
in Samtskhe Javakheti (mostly Armenian region of Georgia) in case of
the withdrawal of the Russian military base from the regional center
Akhalkalaki. “Even though ARF Dashnaktsoutyun planned to destroy
Georgia the Armenians have not forgotten that it was Georgia who gave
them refuge after the above tragic events,” says Gachechiladze.

Disproving his statements ARFD says that it was not planning Georgia’s
breakdown by means of the North Caucasus. It’s goal is to protect the
rights of the Javakheti Armenians. Moreover ARFD condemns
Gachechiladze for calling Armenians “a blind tool in others’ hands”
thereby repeating Turkey’s official position on the Armenian Genocide.

In conclusion ARFD says that it is ready to assist the Georgian
authorities in their measures to help the Javakheti Armenians socially
and economically. “Discrimination against them will have no good
consequences for Georgia,” says ARFD.

Meanwhile the press service of the Georgian president says that
Gachechiladze is not presidential advisor for region relations and
that it does not agree with his statements on Samtskhe Javakheti. “We
are convinced that no provocative words or actions will be able to
bring tensions to the Georgians’ centuries old brotherly relations
with the Javakheti Armenians,” says the press service.

Azerbaijan News Service
March 19 2005

AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN PARLIAMENTARIANS FAIL TO REACH AGREEMENT AT
QORAN LENMARKER INITIATED MEETING
2005-03-19 19:32

Meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian parliamentarians held in
Brussels on initiative of Qoran Lenmarker OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
special representative on Daqliq Qarabaq conflict gave no results.
Member of Azerbaijani delegation at OSCE PA Eldar Ibrahimov informed
ANS about the meeting. Both sides put forward own arguments.
Azerbaijani side wants restoration of territorial integrity while
Armenians claim economic ties. That’s why we failed top come to any
agreement. Heads of international organizations during the meeting at
European Parliament and European Commission told the conflicting
sides it is up to them to find solution to the problem. Foreign
organizations may just assist by adopting documents and making
reports. OSCE PA special representative on Daqliq Qarabaq conflict
Qoran Lenmarker is going to present his report on the conflict on
March. The report will be presented to both sides. We shall see
whether we are satisfied or not says Eldar Ibrahimov. Mr. Lenmarker’s
report will be heard at OSCE session to be held on June in
Washington.

Turkish Press
Depending on the intentions
Published: 3/18/2005
 
BY ERDAL SAFAK

SABAH- Turkey is now concerned over its European Union membership
talks since Brussels decided to postpone entry talks with Croatia due
to its failure to arrest a top war crimes suspect. ˜Will this
decision be a precedent for other candidate countries?’ our diplomats
are now asking. According to our Foreign Ministry, the issue has
nothing to do with Turkey’s membership talks.

However, the international community has interpreted the decision as a
powerful signal to other would-be EU members that they must fully
respect human rights. For example, French Foreign Minister Michel
Barnier said that the EU’s decision is a precedent for Turkey, proving
that Brussels would never give any ground on human rights. In
addition, Joost Lagendijk, the co-president of the Turkey-EU Joint
Parliamentary Commission, stated that Turkey must take the decision to
heart. ˜On Oct. 3, Brussels will examine the list of conditions
that it stipulated had to be completed by that date,’ he added. ˜If
Ankara fails to fulfill even one of them, Brussels can decide to
postpone the country’s accession talks, as in the case of Croatia.’

The final statement of last December’s Brussels summit covered Croatia
in three paragraphs. In the first, Brussels praised the country’s
preparations for EU membership. In the second, Brussels urged Zagreb
to surrender a Croatian former general to the UN war crimes tribunal
for trial. The last paragraph underlines that this is the only
precondition to start the nation’s accession talks.

What about the paragraphs on Turkey? There are seven articles on our
country, from which there seem to be two preconditions: First, the
amendment of the Ankara Agreement in line with the EU’s current
members. In other words, Ankara must recognize the Greek Cypriot
administration. Second, six laws must be approved by the Parliament by
Oct. 3.

However, there are also certain sentences that could be interpreted as
preconditions as well, depending on the intentions of the reader. For
example, Brussels will closely monitor both Turkey’s reform process to
ensure the protection of human rights and basic freedoms, and Ankara’s
progress on political reforms in line with the Accession Partnership
Document.

Moreover, the statement also stressed that Brussels noted the earlier
European Parliament decision on Turkey, which lists a number of
preconditions for Turkey’s membership talks such as Ankara’s official
recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide, opening the Armenian
border, reopening the Heybeliada Seminary and ending compulsory
religion courses in schools. If the EU leaders said that they noted
this EP decision, should we see these as further preconditions or not?
As I said, everything hinges on the intentions. If Brussels has good
intentions towards Ankara, the only problem we’ll have is the Customs
Union. However, if the EU leaders decide to see the summit statement
through another, wider-angle lens, then everything will grow much more
complicated¦

Anadolu Agency
March 19 2005

Armenian Allegations and Turkey’s EU Full Membership

Gul: There is not direct or indirect connection between Armenian
allegations and Turkey’s EU full membership

Turkish Foreign Ministry & Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said on
Friday that there was no direct or indirect connection between
Turkey’s EU membership and so-called Armenian genocide allegations.
Replying to the written motion of True Path Party (DYP)
parliamentarian Ummet Kandogan, Gul said Turkey met Copenhagen
Political Criteria required for start of Turkey’s EU membership
talks.

Gul said conditions of membership process were definite for every
candidate, stressing that Turkey’s membership process would continue
within the framework drawn by EU acquisitions.

Gul saida History Research Group was formed within the body of the
Turkish Historical Society (TTK) probing Armenian allegations, noting
that the books that would be written as a result of those studies
would be presented to the information of Turkish and international
public.

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
March 19 2005

NATO SECRETARY GENERAL’S SPECIAL ENVOY VISITS UZBEKISTAN
[March 19, 2005, 15:45:59]

A delegation headed by special envoy of the NATO Secretary General on
Central Asia and Caucasus Robert Simons has visited Uzbekistan.

In the news conference on conclusions of the visit, Mr. Simons said:
`In meeting in the Ali Majlis, as well as with the heads of
ministries of foreign affairs and defense, discussed were questions
of expansion of co-op between NATO and Uzbekistan, NATO assistance to
the force structures, combat against terrorism, situation in
Afghanistan, transitions from the territory of the country of
numerous cargo to Afghanistan’.

At the news conference, R. Simons also dwelt on the conflicts in the
CIS space, including the problem of Nagorno Karabakh. He noted that
visiting the Caucasus region, he discussed with the President of
Azerbaijan and Armenia the ways of settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict, and the NATO, of course, is for peaceful resolution to the
said problem.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
March 19 2005

Mines found near BTC pipeline planted by Russian military

AssA-Irada 19/03/2005 13:13

Ten mines, recently discovered close to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC)
oil pipeline in the Akhalkalaki district of Georgia, found to be
training mines, according to the Javakhetia governor’s office.

The mines planted by the Russian military 15 kilometers away from the
BTC do not pose any threat to the pipeline.

90% of residents in the Javakhetia district are Armenians who were
settled in the region during the deportation of Meskhet Turks after
World War II.

Azerbaijan News Service
March 18 2005

REPORT OF FACT-FINDING MISSION DISCUSSED IN VIENNA
2005-03-18 09:38

Discussion of the report of fact-finding mission investigated illegal
settlement of Armenians in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in
standing council of OSCE in Vienna has been completed. The mission
stated that Daqliq Qarabaq administration is responsible for illegal
settlement in the first place. Resettlement of territories of
Azerbaijan must not be allowed, historical and cultural monuments
must be preserved based on the mission representatives’
recommendations.