UK Newsquest Regional Press – This is Local London
February 4, 2005

Furore as advice centre staff axed

by Estelle Marais

MORE than 6 000 of Hounslow’s Armenian residents risk losing their
information and advice outlet after their community centre
temporarily closed last week and dismissed all full-time staff due to
funding and budget issues.

The Centre for Armenian Information and Advice (CAIA)in Acton closed
its doors to the community on Friday January 21 for one week after a
board of directors elected in October 2004 cited that the charity had
“inherited an unsustainable budget as a direct result of excessive
expenditure incurred by the previous board” and that there were
insufficient funds to enable CAIA to operate in its current position.

Directors dismissed the centre’s five full-time members of staff
including the qualified youth worker the information and advice
officer and the charity’s elderly lunch manager leaving over 6000 of
the borough’s Armenian community including elderly members – many of
whom do not speak English – without access to information regarding
health benefits housing and education.

The centre is currently running on a skeleton staff consisting of the
present board of directors and volunteers in an attempt to continue
some of its services.

But former CAIA employees insist that the charity was handed over to
the new board of directors in a healthy state not lacking in funding
in any way and argue that the staff dismissals are the result of an
initiative by the board to re-instate two employees who were
dismissed in March last year for gross misconduct.

Former chair and Osterley resident Manook Soghomonian said: “Five
professional staff have been dismissed with some bogus excuses that
do not tally up and as a result services and the functionality of the
centre has stopped. There was more than enough funding for the posts
and the centre was in a very healthy state. When we handed CAIA over
to the new board new grants were due to come in.

“All of the projects are running effectively and our current funders
were satisfied with the work we were doing on behalf of our members
and the community. The only reason for dismissing the staff is so
that the board can re-instate two employees who were dismissed for
gross misconduct last year but who claim they are innocent of any
wrong doing.”

Chiswick resident and former general secretary Andre Beglarian agreed
saying: “As far as I was aware there was sufficient funding to keep
the centre running as it had been all along. It was my job to monitor
the funding and it was my understanding that all five full-time
positions were fully catered for by our various funders. I have used
the centre for the last five years and it used to be a fantastic
opportunity for Armenians to mix in their own community as well as
for our children to be educated in an Armenian Ofsted-accredited
pre-school environment. The situation at the centre now is corrupt.
It is being abused by a few and as a result the masses cannot
benefit. The centre was closed when it didn’t need to be and the
community lost out and are still losing out.”

However chair of CAIA Vahe Paklayan refuted these claims saying:
“Dismissing the staff was an agonising decision and because the
charity was left to us in such a mess we are not able to build it up
brick by brick we are rebuilding it match stick by match stick. We
are not looking to blame staff our concern is just to save the
charity. All funding has been frozen and the centre is currently
being manned by our board of directors and some volunteers. Areas
which require qualified people are being manned by the proper
people.”

Replying to claims that the staff dismissals were aimed at
re-instating the two members of staff previously dismissed for gross
misconduct Mr Paklayan said: “There is no truth to that at all.”

The funders for the five full-time positions at CAIA include the
London Boroughs of Hounslow and Ealing Associated London Government
(ALG) the Big Lottery Fund City Parochial Foundation Bridge House and
Renewal SRB and with the exception of City Parochial Foundation
spokespeople for each funding company confirmed that funds were and
had been available to cater for the positions.

A spokesperson for the London Borough of Ealing said: “At the moment
we are unsure of the situation with CAIA and we have been trying to
contact the centre without any success. The council has heard along
the grapevine that staff have been dismissed and as our funds
contribute mainly to the advice work at the centre there is a
possibility that the grant may be suspended when it comes up for
discussion at the end of this month.”

Bridge House which funds the position of elderly health worker said
that funding for the post was available but had not yet been released
and City Parochial Foundation which funds the position of general
secretary said that the grant awarded in 2003 had been suspended in
the last few weeks and is currently under investigation.

CAIA is the only outlet for an estimated 20 000 Armenians living in
the UK 16 000 of whom live in London.

Its services are widely used throughout the borough of Hounslow but
in the last few years the centre has been hit with a series of
management problems.

In 2003 two employees were suspended for mismanagement and
subsequently applied to the employment tribunal for charges of unfair
dismissal and in January 2004 the Charity Commission began an
investigation into the allegations of misconduct at CAIA appointing
four new directors to the centre including Mr Soghomonian as chair to
oversee the decision of the tribunal.

Mr Soghomonian accused the Charity Commission of turning a blind eye
to the current situation saying: “CAIA won the case of gross
misconduct against the two employees at the employment tribunal and
we presented fortnightly reports to the Charity Commission on the
developments at the centre until the new board of directors took
charge in October last year. Ever since the centre has been in
turmoil. It would be wrong for CAIA to reinstate these two people
which is what I believe they want to do and the Charity Commission
seems to be oblivious to this.”

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission said: “The Commission’s
Inquiry into the charity closed in October 2004. The Inquiry was
closed upon an Annual General Meeting and elections taking place in
accordance with the charity’s governing document and with company
law. The elections provided the charity’s members with an opportunity
to elect a new Board of Directors to the charity. Since the elections
the new Board has had control of the administration of the charity.
The Commission’s report of the results of its Inquiry will be
published shortly.

The Commission has considered and will consider concerns arising
since the closure of the Inquiry in connection with this charity.”

PanArmenian News
Feb 4 2005

ARMENIA TO HEAD REGIONAL GROUP OF REGIONAL GROUP BASEL CONFERENCE ON
BANKING SUPERVISION

04.02.2005 15:09

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today the conference of the Regional Group on
Banking Supervision with the participation of representatives of the
South Caucasian states, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kirghizia,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan finished its work in Yerevan. As reported
by Regnum news agency, Armenia in the person of Central Bank Chairman
Tirgan Sargsian will preside over the regional group of the Basel
Conference on banking Supervision within next two years. He noted
that “the exchange of experience will help to clarify the phases of
implementation of Basel standards in Armenia”. The next conference
will also be held in Armenia this October.

RIA OREANDA
Economic News
February 4, 2005 Friday

“Gazprom” Increases Gas Supply to Armenia

Moscow. The working meeting of the Chairman of the Board Alexey
Miller and the General Director of JSC “ArmRosgazprom” Karen
Karapetian has been held in the central office of JSC “Gazprom”.

The parties have discussed questions on bilateral cooperation in
power sphere in view of growth of economy of Armenia. The special
attention has been paid to the program of gasification of the
republic.

The decision to supply “ArmRosgazprom” with additional volumes of
natural gas over stipulated balance for coverage of growing needs of
Armenia in energy carriers in 2005 was adopted.

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
February 4, 2005, Friday

RUSSIA IS SITTING ON THE FENCE

WPS observer

The Russian Defense Ministry has handed over the Tbilisi Armored
Vehicle Repair Plant to the balance of the Georgian Defense Ministry,
the Russian and Georgian media reported of late. Colonel Levan
Nikolaishvili, deputy chief of the Georgian General Staff, and
Colonel Andrei Popov, deputy chief of the headquarters of the Russian
Group of Forces in the Caucasus (GRVZ) signed the corresponding
agreement on February 2. Under the agreement, Russia is obliged to
repay the debt to the Georgian budget for communal services and
renting. Tbilisi is saying that the plant was allegedly handed over
in the framework of the Istanbul agreements of 1999 on withdrawal of
the Russian military bases and military hardware from Georgia. This
is not entirely so, since in Istanbul the matter only concerned
withdrawal of the Russian military bases from Vaziani and Gudauta and
granting permission for temporary deployment of Russian bases in
Akhalkalaki and Batumi. The documents signed in Istanbul mention no
other military objects, including a military plant. Thus, handing
over the tank repair plant has been the initiative of Moscow.

The observers have already assessed negative effects of this action.
Firstly, according to observers with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, until
lately under repair in Tbilisi have been Georgian and Russian tanks,
as well as the armored vehicles for the Armenian army. In this
connection official Baku accused Georgia several years ago of giving
military aid to the unfriendly Yerevan. Baku then refused to accept
an offer of such services for the Azerbaijani army in Baku, initiated
by Georgia and the GRVZ command. It is clear now that the enterprise
has been the property of Georgia and it will be harder for Yerevan to
repair its tanks.

Secondly, Vladimir Popov, academician at the Academy of Military
Sciences, told WPS, “handing over a Russian tank repair plant to
Georgia by the GRVZ means that Moscow is indirectly supporting
preparation of the Georgian troops for invasion in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia.” Popov reminds that in June 1992 Russia already handed over
military plants, objects and armored hardware of the former Soviet
Trans-Caucasian Military District to Georgia (modern tanks included).
Several weeks later these tanks took part in the fratricidal war on
approaches to Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. The situation differs now.
However, the Georgian president doesn’t rule out the script of
subduing the intractable autonomies by force. In this case the
specialists won’t have time to idle at the tank repair plant.

Evident is the situation when Russia has initiated the loss of its
geopolitical and military influence in Georgia to some extent.
Undoubtedly, detached repair battalions are included into GRVZ units.
However, they are unable to perform mid-life and major repair of
combatant vehicles. It means the Russian General Staff has doomed the
military hardware of the GRVZ to slow extinction. As is widely known,
Georgia is trying as hard as it can to weaken the GRVZ. Other steps
linked to reducing the number of Russian military objects in this
country will follow the above action.

Perhaps Moscow is not insisting on the long-term stay of its military
bases in Georgia and plans to change their profile into peacekeeping
or anti-terrorist centers. In opinion of Russian Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov, “such centers must have nothing in common with
military bases. This could be an utterly different form of military
co-operation, which meets the Russian-Georgian interests and promotes
resolution of the problems available,” the minister said. It is not a
secret that Georgia is after NATO membership and is increasing its
armed forces with the aid of the USA. Georgia’s military budget is
about $65 million now. In 2005 the Pentagon intends to allocate $60
million more for a year-long training of four battalions in Georgia.
The Pentagon had already allocated $64 million in the framework of
the Training & Equip program earlier, which were used to train four
army special force battalions and several units for other security
structures. All these units are being used in Iraq now. The observers
don’t rule out that on gaining experience the Georgian commandos
might commence hostilities against Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan
Feb 4 2005

SPEAKER OF AZERBAIJAN PARLIAMENT INVITES HIS FRENCH COUNTERPART TO
VISIT AZERBAIJAN

APPROPRIATE LETTER OF INVITATION WAS PRESENTED TO THE FRENCH
AMBASSADOR IN BAKU
[February 04, 2005, 22:48:14]

Speaker of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic Murtuz Alaskarov on
February 4 has received ambassador of France in Azerbaijan Rolan
Blatman.

Noting high level of the relations between two countries, Mr.
Alaskarov said the heads of states have great role in this. After the
visit of the nationwide leader of Azerbaijan people Heydar Aliyev to
France in 1993, the negotiations he carried out there, the bilateral
relations acquired higher level. That visit of Azerbaijan President
has defined perspectives of Azerbaijani-French relations. Due to
this, the parliamentary links also develop successfully, the Speaker
said.

Then, Chairman of Milli Majlis updated on the Armenia-Azerbaijan,
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He, in particular, noted that despite of
the Resolutions of the UN Security Council, the Council of Europe and
the demand of other international organizations, neither the said
structures nor the OSCE Minsk Group directly engaged in the problem
do not impose sharp sanction against the aggressor. We hope France,
as a co-chair of Minsk Group, will increase its efforts in this
direction, Mr. Alaskarov underlined.

Ambassador Rolan Blatman said his country adheres peaceful settlement
of the conflict. He had widely discussed the question in his recent
meeting with the president of Azerbaijan. We are interested in
all-round relations with Azerbaijan, he stressed. The diplomat also
informed that the French Cultural Center would open shortly in Baku.
At the same time, the parliamentary friendship groups of two
countries will hold a meeting in the capital of Azerbaijan. Speaker
of the French Parliament also wished to take part at the actions. In
mid-year, a meeting of the inter-governmental commission is expected
in Paris. In 2005, the Days of France will pass in Azerbaijan and the
Days of Azerbaijan – in France.

Speaker of Azerbaijan Parliament invited his French counterpart to
visit Azerbaijan and conveyed appropriate letter of invitation to the
Ambassador.

In the meeting, also were exchanged views on a number of questions of
mutual interest.

YaleGlobal Online, CT
Feb 4 2005

Over 200,000 people have died in the violence in Sudan’s Darfur
provinces. And as the bloodshed continues, genocide scholar Ben
Kiernan writes, members of the international community – who may
actually have the influence to halt the killings and prosecute the
perpetrators – have been preoccupied with semantic and jurisdictional
wrangling. Kiernan provides an historical background to the legal
definition of “genocide,” noting that the concept pre-dated the term.
He writes, “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,” And now, in order to halt the massacres in
Sudan, punish those responsible, deter such crimes elsewhere, Kiernan
concludes that the next step must be for the International Criminal
Court to hear the Darfur case. – YaleGlobal

Letting Sudan Get Away with Murder

Debate over whether to call the mass murder in Darfur “genocide” is
preventing efforts to bring those responsible to justice

Ben Kiernan
YaleGlobal, 4 February 2005

Horsemen of death: Janjaweed rebel leader Musa Hilal (left) and his
men have been accused of committing genocide in Darfur

NEW HAVEN: In two years of mass killings and forced population
displacements, Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias have caused the
deaths of over 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 favors 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 – the most heinous crime against
humanity – stating that “only a competent court” can determine if
they have committed “acts with genocidal intent.” Meanwhile, the US
government, the German government, the Parliament of the European
Union, the US Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Conscience, and Yad
Vashem, all accuse Khartoum of “genocide.”

Why this debate over the definition of genocide? Although the concept
of genocide preceded the invention of the term, the jurist Raphael
Lemkin coined the term “genocide” 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 that 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 nineteenth-century
Ottoman massacres of Armenians – in an important respect: The
Holocaust was one of the first historical 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 United Nations 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 applies to the removals of Aboriginal children
from their parents to “breed out the color” – 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.

While some scholars use the term more broadly, to include destruction
of political groups, 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 (which
the US ratified in 1988). It is statutory international law, binding
on 136 states. In the past decade, UN tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda
have prosecuted and 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, too. 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 –
communism (Stalin and Pol Pot), 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 Muslim communities from
Bosnia or Africans from Darfur, crushing all national resistance in
East Timor, imposing totalitarian racism in Cambodia. When such
policies, purposefully pursued, knowingly bring genocidal results,
their perpetrators may be legally judged to have possessed the
“intent” to destroy a group, at least “in part,” 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 twentieth 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
genocides 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 apologized to the Herero people of Namibia for Berlin’s
genocidal conquest of Southwest Africa in 1904-05. The United States
and Australia have yet to acknowledge earlier 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,
He is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power, and
The Pol Pot Regime (Yale 2002, 2004), and co-editor of The Specter of
Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2003).

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
February 4, 2005, Friday

ARMENIAN DEFENSE MINISTER TO VISIT IRAN

Armenian Defense Minister Serzhik Sarkisyan, who is also Security
Council secretary, will pay a visit to Iran on invitation of Hassan
Rouhani, secretary of the Irani Security Council. Over the course of
the visit Sarkisyan is expected to meet with the Irani president,
defense and foreign ministers, Security Council secretary, according
to Colonel Seyran Shakhsuvaryan of the Armenian Defense Ministry
press service. The sides will discuss the issues of bilateral
co-operation and regional issues.

Source: Regnum news agency, February 2, 2005

ArmenPress
Feb 4 2005

CONSTRUCTION OF NEW DEFENSE MINISTRY BUILDING TO START IN MARCH

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 4, ARMENPRESS: A senior official of the Armenian
defense ministry told Armenpress that the construction of new
premises for the ministry will kick off in March. Colonel Armen
Sarkisian, head of a department supervising construction and utility
affairs, said the new building will be located at Yerevan Jrvezh
borough in the outskirts of Yerevan.
He said a Russian Ingeokom-Yerevan company was chosen as a
sub-contractor. The official said no budget money will be spent on
the building’s construction, adding that the money will be donated by
Armenians who are in the constituent board of Ingeokom. Sarkisian
said the deal was due to defense minister Serzh Sarkisian’s personal
connections with these people.

ArmenPress
Feb 4 2005

REVIEW COURT DENIES PETITION TO RELEASE LEADER OF NATIONALISTIC PARTY

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 4, ARMENPRESS: An Armenian court of review left
unchanged today a petition filed by a marginal Armenian Aryan Union
party that requested release of its leader Armen Avetisian pending
trial. A local first instance court in Yerevan allowed prosecutors in
late January to arrest Avetisian on charges of inciting inter-ethnic
hatred. The arrest followed a newspaper interview in which Avetisian
called for the expulsion of all Jews living in Armenia, saying they
are to blame for Armenians’ vows. The review court said if at large
Avetisian may impede or avoid investigation.
A lawyer for Avetisian accused the review court of making an
unsubstantiated decision citing her client’s clean record, an
apartment in Yerevan and three small children. She also said two
opposition parliament members, Viktor Dalakian and Manuk Gasparian
have also petitioned for his release vouching that he would not leave
the city.
The lawyer argued further that her client’s right to express his
opinion was broken and his detention looks like “a punishment.” She
said she would take Avetisian’s case to the European Human Rights
Court in Strasbourg if fails to achieve justice in Armenia.
Armenian ombudsman Larisa Alaverdian also asked last week
prosecutors to release Avetisian saying charges against him were not
serious enough to require his detention. She argued that
anti-Semitism is non-existent in Armenia.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ArmenPress
Feb 4 2005

FINANCIAL POLICY HINGES ON WORLD REACTION TO STATE OF THE UNION
ADDRESS, ARMENIAN CB GOVERNOR ARGUES

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 4, ARMENPRESS: Armenian Central Bank (CB)
governor Tigran Sarkisian presumed today that Armenia’s financial
policy in 2005 would be largely hinging on the reaction of EU, China
and Russia, as well as IMF and World Bank to US president George W.
Bush’s State of the Union address, in which he said that the budget
he’ll send to congress next week will hold the growth of
discretionary spending below inflation, make tax relief permanent,
and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.
Sarkisian, however, added that Armenia’s financial policy was
immune from drastic shifts and changes. He said the Central Bank will
come up with a statement after the end of negotiations with World
Bank and IMF officials who are arriving in Armenia somewhere in the
second half of February to discuss here release of new loans for
medium-term development projects.
Another factor that may affect Armenia’s financial policy,
according to the chairman of Armenia’s Central bank, is a decision by
the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by a quarter of a point
to 2.50%, while the EU has maintained it at 2 percent.