PRESS RELEASE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Australia & New Zealand
10 Macquarie Street
Chatswood NSW 2067
AUSTRALIA
Contact: Laura Artinian
Tel: (02) 9419-8056
Fax: (02) 9904-8446
Email: [email protected]
ARCHBISHOP AGHAN BALIOZIAN AMONG A TEN-PERSON DELEGATION FROM AUSTRALIA TO
VISIT INDONESIA FOR DIALOGUE ON INTERFAITH COOPERATION
Sydney, Thursday 9th December 2004 – The 10-person delegation from
Australia arrived this morning after participating in a Dialogue
on Interfaith Cooperation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The Dialogue
involved religious leaders from the major faiths and religions and
Interfaith experts from the South East Asia region that included
Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar,
New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand,
Timor Leste and Viet Nam. The theme of the Dialogue was “Dialogue on
Interfaith Cooperation: Community Building and Harmony”.
At the invitation of Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia, the
Hon. Alexander Downer M.P., His Eminence Archbishop Aghan Baliozian,
Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Australia
and New Zealand, was among the delegation from Australia that included
six Christian leaders representing the Catholic, Anglican, Uniting,
Lutheran and Armenian Orthodox Churches, plus representatives from
the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu faiths.
The Dialogue on Interfaith Cooperation is a joint Australia-Indonesia
initiative announced by Mr Downer and his Indonesian counterpart,
H.E. Dr N. Hassan Wirajuda at the ASEAN meetings in Jakarta in July.
The broad objective of the Dialogue is to convene discussion
among world denominations and to foster greater understanding and
cooperation between the various faith communities in the region.
By working together more closely, there is also much potential to
resolve the challenges that face communities today.
On his return, Archbishop Aghan said “It was a high level delegation
that demonstrated a mutual respect and understanding toward differing
faiths and beliefs. It is with real hope that the dialogue will
continue to create real harmony in the region.”
The organising of the Dialogue is a reflection of the good relationship
between the Republic of Indonesia and Australia. It provides a
strong basis for reinforcing mutually beneficial ties between the two
countries and in this case, a good understanding of interfaith issues.

Young Armenians puzzle over their homeland
By Susan Sachs
International Herald Tribune
The New York Times Thursday, December 9, 2004
YEREVAN, Armenia – In a smoky corner of the Red Bull bar, a favorite
hangout for university students, Zara Amatuni mulled over the reasons
she would leave her homeland.
“It’s poor, it has no natural resources, it has an undeveloped
economy and it’s unlikely to be developing in the next 10 years,”
she said with a small shrug.
Amatuni, 21, imagines herself in London, or perhaps Moscow. Her
language skills might land her a good-paying job, and plenty of
Armenians have marked the trail before her.
“We can fit in anywhere,” she said. “The only place we can’t is
Armenia.”
For young people who have come of age in an independent Armenia,
a small country with barely 3 million people, it is an awkward paradox.
Their parents grew up in a captive republic of the Soviet Union. Their
grandparents escaped the Turkish massacres of Armenians in the bloody
aftermath of World War I. For them, and for the 4-million strong
Armenian diaspora, the creation of a sovereign Armenian homeland 13
years ago was the fulfillment of a dream.
Yet the promised land has proved too constricting and its promise too
distant for the next generation’s ambitions. Those who want to leave
and those who want to stay are all trying to reconcile what it means
to be Armenian.
For some, no longer being part of the empire that was the Soviet
Union means a loss of significance in the world. Then there were
opportunities for well-educated Armenians to work in Moscow and
elsewhere.
Independence, they had hoped, would propel Armenia into the wider
world, important on its own. Instead, they find themselves in a
backwater where most of the decent-paying jobs are with international
aid organizations.
“Let us build Armenia here,” said Artyom Simonian, an acting student in
the struggling town of Gyumri, 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, northwest
of the capital, where residents are still recovering from a devastating
1988 earthquake.
He is one of those nostalgic for an imagined past. Like many of his
fellow students, Simonian, 21, was uncomfortable with the country’s
apparent choices, integration with Europe or tighter bonds with Russia.
“We are trying to love foreigners too much,” he said.
He and some other students, gathered around a small table in the
chilly cafeteria of the Gyumri Arts School, understand they have
fewer opportunities than did their parents, who learned to speak
Russian and became assimilated to Russian culture.
They long for a bigger, more muscular Armenia, a land that would
embrace what is now southeastern Turkey where their ancestors lived a
century ago. The snowy crest of Mount Ararat, now on the other side
of the border, floats on the horizon beyond Gyumri as a reminder of
that phantom homeland.
“I won’t consider myself Armenian until all of sacred Mount Ararat is
in Armenia,” said Alexan Gevorgian, another theater student. He saw
the world as essentially hostile and neighboring Turkey, 25 kilometers
to the west, as “an animal waiting for its prey to weaken.”
His bitterness was too much for Ludvig Harutiunian, the student council
president. “We young people should leave this hostility behind,”
he protested. “I’d like Armenia to be known for good things, not
genocide and wars and victims and mourning.” Harutiunian had evaluated
his prospects. His father was working in Russia, his brother was
working in Spain and he was resigned to finding a chance for artistic
expression elsewhere.
“Armenian culture is not developing and you have to go out,” he said.
Simonian interrupted, chiding, “It’s wrong to leave the country.” The
other students fell silent.
The insular views of many of these young people dismay older Armenians
who have a sharp sense of how their own horizons have shrunk.
“For 70 years we lived in a different country, where we were open to
Russian culture and history,” said Svetlana Muradian, a Gyumri mother
of six. “Kids now see nothing beyond Armenia. My only hope is that
my three sons will grow up and leave.”
The students in the Red Bull bar in Yerevan were struggling with a
different facet of the same dilemma. Fluent in English and Russian as
well as their native Armenian, they were impatient with the growing
pains of a post-Soviet state and deeply cynical about politics.
To Gevorg Karapetian, a doctoral student in computer engineering,
the ideal leader would be a businessman, “someone educated and clever
enough to make relationships with the neighboring countries.” The
present crowd of politicians did not measure up. “Our president and all
the presidents before him just want to be president,” said Karapetian.
Unlike the less privileged students in Gyumri, he and his friends
in the capital have reached out to the world beyond Armenia’s
borders. They get their news from the Internet and use it to chat with
English speakers from around the world. They regularly meet Armenians
from the United States and Russia who visit the homeland. But their
relative sophistication also makes them keenly aware of the contrast
between their aspirations and their country’s opportunities, souring
even their successes.
Victor Agababov, 22, earns the princely sum of $650 a month working
as a computer programmer in Yerevan, making him the best paid member
of his university class. Yet he tends to mock his own achievement
because his job involves doing outsourced work transferred from the
United States and Japan.
“We are a cheap work force,” he said.

Armenian Patriarch blames Turkey for poor relations
The Armenian Patriarch Karekin II said that the genocide issue was not one that could be debated.
NTV/MSNBC (Turkey)
December 8 – The Patriarch of the Armenian Church on Wednesday claimed
that Ankara was responsible for lack of formal diplomatic relations
with Yerevan.
Patriarch Karekin II said that this was because Turkey insisted on
setting preliminary conditions for the normalising of the relations.
However, Karekin II said that it was essential to resolve the question
of Ngorno-Karabag region of Azerbaijan and which is currently occupied
by Armenia, and the recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide.
“Undoubtedly in such a climate it is of special importance to open
the border and improve co-operation,” he said.
But he stressed that the issue of genocide was not an issue that
could be the subject of debate.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU-Ottoman Comparison
by MEHMET KAMIS
Zaman Online, Turkey
Dec 9 2004
Historians say that it is better to evaluate each period from its
own perspective, but from time to time we should look at history from
the viewpoint of today. The Ottoman Empire used to resemble today’s
European Union (EU). We could possibly define the Ottoman geography
as the EU of its era even though it covered a different region. The
empire stretched from the Balkans through the Middle East to Africa.
Over 40 countries today fill the vacuum left after the collapse of
the empire. Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Bosnia,
Serbia, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Romania and Hungary all now seem
foreign to each other, even though once they sheltered under the same
roof. If we look at them through the eyes of today, millions of Turks,
Bosnians, Palestinians, Serbs, Arabs, Greeks, Hungarians, Romanians,
Bulgarians, Armenians and Jews would have been trading in this region
as an economic union, without any customs control.
Had it not been for the mismanagement of imports and British tricks,
the Ottoman Empire would have survived, and would have prevented
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Balkan wars and the ongoing
conflict in Iraq. Turkey is now surrounded by countries, which had
lived in peace as part of the Ottoman Empire, but whose history since
then has been unhappy and desperate. These countries once again are
in dire need of a larger roof.
Again through the eyes of today, it is certain that the Ottomans were
more liberal than the EU on human rights. The EU has not attained
Ottoman standards especially with regards to the freedom of thought
and protection of the rights of subjects, to let them wear their own
religious and traditional dresses and speak their own languages.
Today’s EU does not protect freedoms as the Ottomans did. The Ottomans
were very successful in accommodating differences and providing
freedoms, when compared to the EU, and always had a liberal attitude in
protecting the identities of various nations and religions. The empire
never embraced the imperialist ideal that the ruled must resemble
their rulers, and refrained from imposing a lifestyle on them. The
EU Turkey demands are more severe and its judgment more negative,
showing that the EU is afraid of anything that does not resemble
itself. On the other side, the Ottoman Empire’s structure was one in
which many different ethnic and religious groups were able to live
together without any problems. My question is this: Which is more
contemporary and democratic, the Ottoman Empire, which recognized the
differences, allowed them live together and provided everyone freedom
on religious and traditional issues without assimilation; or the West,
that wants to assimilate everything and is afraid of differences?
From: Baghdasarian

Pope keeps up tradition of visiting Spanish Steps to start Christmas schedule
CBC News, Canada
Dec 8 2004
04:02 PM EST Dec 08
Pope John Paul II waves from his popemobile at the foot of the
Spanish Steps after he read a prayer in honor of the Virgin Mary, on
the Italian national holiday of the Immaculate Conception, in Rome,
Wednesday. (AP/Andrew Medichini)
ROME (AP) – Waving from his white popemobile, Pope John Paul blessed
shoppers and tourists at the foot of the Spanish Steps on Wednesday
as he began his busy Christmas schedule with a traditional visit to
the popular square in the heart of historic Rome.
He rode in an open-sided vehicle down narrow Via Condotti, a street
lined with some of Rome’s swankiest shops. John Paul, dressed in a
white robe and a red embroidered stole, sat in an upholstered chair
on a wheeled platform, and in a hoarse voice read a prayer in honour
of the Virgin Mary.
Dec. 8 is the church and Italian national holiday of the Immaculate
Conception, which marks the Roman Catholic dogma that the mother
of Jesus was conceived without original sin. In the morning, he
presided at a two-hour mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark the 150th
anniversary of the declaration of the dogma.
The Pope prayed that Mary would “help us to build a world where the
life of man is always loved and defended, every form of violence is
banned, peace is tenaciously sought by all.”
Thousands of Romans and out-of-towners took a break from gift-buying
on the first official day of the city’s Christmas shopping season to
catch a glimpse of the Pope in the square with its towering column
topped by a statue of Mary.
They cheered as the pontiff arrived during an afternoon break in the
rain that had drenched Rome earlier. Mayor Walter Veltroni watched
as John Paul blessed a basket brimming with pink roses that were then
placed at the foot of the column.
Ailing with Parkinson’s disease and hip and knee problems, John Paul
no longer walks or stands during his many public appearances. But
the Vatican’s official schedule of papal ceremonies indicates the
84-year-old pontiff is sticking to the heavy Christmas season schedule
of the last several years.
On Christmas Eve, he will preside over a solemn midnight mass in St.
Peter’s Basilica. Several years ago he stopped celebrating a late
morning mass on Christmas Day, but he is scheduled to deliver his
traditional message “Urbi et Orbi” (“to the city and to the world”)
at noon on Dec. 25. He will also lead a service of thanksgiving for
the blessing of 2004 on New Year’s Eve in the basilica.
Earlier Wednesday, the Pope said he was praying for the Iraqi people
after militants bombed two churches in Mosul, the latest anti-Christian
violence in the country.
“I express my spiritual closeness to the faithful, shocked by the
attacks,” John Paul said, speaking from his apartment window above
St. Peter’s Square.
He said he was praying that Iraqis “may finally know a time of
reconciliation and peace.”
In co-ordinated attacks Tuesday, militants bombed an Armenian
Catholic and a Chaldean church in Mosul, injuring three people.
Iraq’s militants have regularly targeted various ethnic communities,
including the minority Christians.

Armenian MP rubbishes Turkish premier’s remarks on ethnic minorities
Arminfo
7 Dec 04
Yerevan, 7 December: One should not take “at face value” Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent statement during the opening of
the Armenian museum in Istanbul that ethnic groups living in Turkey are
native elements of that country and that Turkey has defended and will
defend their interests, Vaan Ovanesyan, deputy speaker of the Armenian
parliament and a member of the bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation – Dashnaktsutyun, told a press conference today.
Today Turkey is ready to say flattering words to the Armenian
people in order to successfully implement its far-reaching plans,
he said. However, the deputy speaker said, this is just an attempt
“to blow smoke” into the eyes of the international community and the
Armenian people.

Armenian parliament amends law on parties
Arminfo
8 Dec 04
Yerevan, 8 December: The Armenian parliament has adopted a draft
law, which has been initiated by the republic’s ruling coalition,
on changes to the law on parties in its first and final reading.
The draft law envisages strengthening of the parties. It particularly
says that a party cannot have less than 2,000 members, including no
less than 100 members in a region. The draft law also says that the
currently operating parties have to meet the requirements considered
by the changes to the law on parties during a year after the law
takes effect.
Armenia’s Justice Ministry has registered 65 parties up to now.

Albright to visit Azerbaijan
AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Dec 9 2004
The former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is
expected to visit Azerbaijan soon as part of her tour over the South
Caucasus region.
During the visit Albright is scheduled to meet with President Ilham
Aliyev, Milli Majlis (parliament) speaker Murtuz Alasgarov, as well
as opposition leaders, a diplomatic source told Azernews.
The talks will focus on the democratic development in Azerbaijan and
the Upper Garabagh conflict.
The former US Secretary of State currently heads the National Democracy
Institute operating in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

Armenian police say media reports impede probe into editor’s car blaze
Arminfo
8 Dec 04
Yerevan, 8 December: The investigation into the explosion in the car
of the editor of Yerevan daily Aykakan Zhamanak, Nikol Pashinyan, is
continuing. Measures are being taken to ensure that the investigation
is complete, comprehensive and objective, the press service of the
Armenian police has said in a statement.
It must be noted that at approximately 2040 local time [1640 gmt]
on 22 November, the Niva jeep belonging to Nikol Pashinyan caught
fire outside Aykakan Zhamanak’s editorial office.
“Without waiting for the examination of the scene of the incident
to complete, Pashinyan made a hasty, unfounded, subjective and
deliberately provocative statement saying that the explosion of his
car was allegedly pre-planned,” the statement says. A forensic fire
and technical examination was set for the next day and it concluded
on 2 December that “the blaze was caused by open fire or, which is
less likely, by malfunctioning cables”.
“As for the blast theory offered by certain media outlets, experts
have ruled it out,” the police say in the statement.
[Passage omitted: reported details]
“We think that against the backdrop of the investigation into
the incident, which has been instituted not at anyone’s behest or
contrary to anyone’s interests, but within the framework of the
law and in line with the requirements of the law, the statements
by certain media outlets about the ‘obedience’ and indifference of
the law-enforcement bodies look at least strange and subjective.
They are not only strange, but also ineffective in terms of a prompt
and complete investigation,” the Armenian police say in the statement.

Zenit News Agency, Italy
Dec 9 2004
Papal Solidarity Offered for Iraqi Catholics After New Attacks
Church and Bishop’s Palace in Mosul Are Destroyed
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 8, 2004 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II expressed his
closeness to Iraqi Catholics shaken by two new terrorist attacks which
destroyed an Armenian-Catholic church and the Chaldean bishop’s palace
in Mosul.
“I express my spiritual closeness to the faithful, distressed by the
attack, and I implore the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin
Mary, that the Iraqi people may at last know times of reconciliation
and peace,” the Pope said today after praying the Angelus on the
solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
On Tuesday, attackers entered the Armenian Catholic church in the
Wihda neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, according to
AsiaNews. They forced out a security guard and two other people who
were there and then set off two bombs, according to eyewitnesses.
Around 4:30 p.m., a group of four or five armed men stormed the
Chaldean bishop’s palace on the right bank of the Tigris River.
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, 62, was away on pastoral duties. The
only person in the building was Father Raghid Aziz Kara. He told
AsiaNews that after the attackers ordered him to leave the premises,
they proceeded to lay and then detonate explosive devices. He heard
three explosions and saw the building engulfed in flames.
The nearby Church of the Purification, which Muslims also venerate
because of its famous statue of Our Lady, was untouched. Police were
investigating.
Archbishop Fernando Filoni, apostolic nuncio in Baghdad, told AsiaNews
that the attacks against the bishop’s resident and the Armenian
Catholic church are “grave and cowardly acts against defenseless
Christian symbols and institutions.”
The nuncio said that the Armenian church “was supposed to be
inaugurated on Christmas Day.” The attack against it shows “how little
respect terrorists have for people and holy places,” he said.
He said that the bishop’s palace in Mosul had been receiving threats
for some time. “Today they became a reality,” he noted.
In reference to U.S. action in Fallujah, Archbishop Filoni said that
terrorists promised “they would destroy a church for every mosque that
was attacked. But all these acts stem from an exasperated violence
that especially strikes those who are defenseless.”