Summit Daily News, CO
April 18 2004

Holocaust message: ‘We must never forget’

JANE STEBBINS
April 18, 2004

DILLON – Jews and Christians alike were reminded never to forget the
tragedy that was the Holocaust during a Yom HaShoah observance at
Lord of the Mountains Lutheran Church in Dillon Sunday.

The observance was part of Synagogue of the Summit services to
remember, reflect and commemorate the worst genocidal event of the
20th century.

After six yahrzeit candles were lighted by members of the synagogue,
Rabbi Elliot Baskin of Beth Evergreen told a Christmas story of a
Jewish boy who agreed to help an elderly woman carry a bag of wooden
blocks home to heat her house. As he left her house, she wished him a
merry Christmas.

The side trip made him late, and his parents berated him for his
actions. His father then returned with the boy to the woman’s home,
and as his father shouted at the old woman, she yelled, “Don’t shoot!
Don’t shoot!” As she pleaded, her sleeve slipped back on her arm,
revealing blue numbers tattooed on her forearm.

The walk home was the only one in which the boy had ever seen his
father cry.

“For whom did he cry?” Baskin said. “His pain? Hers? Were his tears
his only expression? We still have yet to come to terms with the
Holocaust.”

The only way people will, he said, is to understand the facts, renew
one’s religious commitment and make sure such an event never happens
again. That will be difficult as Holocaust survivors die over time.

One such survivor shared his experiences at the services, outlining
the list of people within his family who had died and the
difficulties the rest had to overcome. The man, who lives part-time
in Summit County, declined to give his name, saying he wants to live
his life in peace.

His story was anything but peaceful.

The Hungary-born man was 14 years old when the hell of a systematic
elimination of Jews began in Budapest, he said.

His grandfather was pulled from his sick bed, but died in a railroad
car on the way to Auschwitz; his body was tossed on the side of the
rails.

Two uncles left in 1941 for Israel; other family members hid in
cellars.

His sister was forced to build trenches, and his father survived two
years in a camp in Siberia. His parents were convicted of trumped-up
charges of capitalism because they owned a butcher shop, and served a
sentence in Dachau before his father was liberated. His mother was on
one of the last transports to Auschwitz, where she died.

The man himself shared a ghetto apartment with numerous other people,
and was the brunt of abuse – spitting, rock-throwing and fights – by
other kids.

He was able to overcome, however, going on to become an engineer and
moving to the United States 40 years ago.

Another challenge facing Jews is growing anti-Semitism in the world,
particularly by hate groups that try to convince people the genocide
never happened, Baskin said.

The list of lies is astonishing, Baskin said. The revisionists say
the ovens in which millions were killed were actually used to bake
bread, Anne Frank’s story was fabricated, testimony at the Nuremberg
trials was coerced and the toxic gases used to kill people was
actually being made to eradicate mice.

“We Jews have many frailties,” Baskin said. “Amnesia is not one of
them.”

The Jewish people, he said, are a nation of survivors, although there
are still fewer Jews in the world than there were before the
Holocaust. The ones killed in Auschwitz, Dachau and other places
would comprise a line from Denver to Durango.

“The Nazis tried to destroy every Jew, and they came very close to
success,” he said. “And the U.S. knew about the killings and chose to
do nothing. These facts need to be shared.”

He and others questioned why the U.S. and European nations ignored
the killing fields of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1980s, the
second Armenian massacre of 1.5 million in 1915-16 and, more
recently, the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

“Why do these destructions evoke so little response in an age when we
know?” Baskin said. “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat
it.”

Those who perished

Poland/Soviet Union 4,830,000

Hungary 400,000

Czechoslovakia 280,000

Germany 125,000

Netherlands 106,000

France 83,000

Austria 65,000

Greece 65,000

Yugoslavia 60,000

Rumania 40,000

Belgium 24,000

Italy 7,500

Norway 760

Luxembourg 700

A brief history

March 20, 1933: The first concentration camp at Dachau is
established.

June 15, 1938: 1,500 German Jews are sent to concentration camps.

November 9-10, 1938: “Night of the Broken Glass,” or Kristallnacht,
destroys Jewish synagogues and businesses; 30,000 Jews interned in
camps.

January 30, 1939: Hitler declares that world war will mean the
“annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

May 15, 1939: Ravensbruck, the first women’s camp, is established.

September 9, 1939: World War II begins.

January 1940: First experimental gassing of Jews and other
“undesirables” occurs.

April 27: Heinrich Himmler orders the establishment of Auschwitz in
Oswiecim, Poland.

March 1, 1941: Himmler travels to Auschwitz and orders additional
facilities and the construction of Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

December 11, 1941: United States declares war on Germany.

February 15, 1941: First people are killed with Zyklon B in
Auschwitz.

March 20, 1941: Farmhouse renovated as gas chambers in
Auschwitz-Birkenau.

July 19, 1941: Heinrich Himmler orders complete extermination of
Polish Jews by the end of the year.

MarchÐJune, 1943: Four gas chambers and crematoria are operational in
Auschwitz-Birkenau.

December 1943: First transport of Austrian Jews to Auschwitz takes
place.

May 1944: First transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz takes place.

August 2 1944: A Gypsy family camp in Auschwitz is liquidated (2,897
prisoners).

May 7Ð8, 1945: V-E Day; Germany surrenders.

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Baku Today, Azerbaijan
April 19 2004

Steven Mann takes over post

US State Secretary’s senior adviser for the Caspian basin issues
Steven Mann started chairing OSCE’ s Minsk group on behalf of the
United States Saturday on April 17,2004.
Mann has succeeded other senior US diplomat Rudolf Perina.

Mann is the fourth US envoy for Minsk group.
Minsk group has been working for a peaceful settlement of
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 1992.

Alongside with the United States Russia and France are presiding over
the Minsk group.

Glendale News Press
LATimes.com
April 19 2004

Back to baking in Glendale

Glendale family returns to city where bakery business started, with a
new business on Central Avenue.

By Ryan Carter, News-Press

NORTHWEST GLENDALE – When Shakeh Mgerdichians had to move her small
bakery from Glendale to Reseda five years ago, she and her customers
hoped that one day she would come back. And now, they have returned.

Mignon Bakery & Café recently opened at 205 N. Central Ave. with an
expanded menu and hopes of doing healthy business with the nearby
office working population and residential neighborhoods just to the
west of the business.

“I always had in my mind to find a location in Glendale,” she said.
“I never gave up on this city. I am so happy to be back with my old
customers.”

Mgerdichians and her husband Garoush, both immigrants from Iran and
of Armenian descent, started their bakery in 1990 out of an
800-square-foot space on Stocker Street. Mgerdichians, who did not
have a background in baking, took classes to learn how to prepare
pastries. Eventually, sales began to increase to the point that the
couple could cater to Middle Eastern, European and traditional
American tastes in baked goods. They needed to expand. By the late
1990s, they found a larger location in Glendale, but Mgerdichians
said their landlord on Stocker was demanding they renew their lease
or leave, and the new spot was still being constructed. An option
opened up in Reseda on Vanowen Street, so they moved their business
there. It is still there.

Inside the new business, wall murals carry a French theme, and
everything from raspberry mousse to petit fruit tarts await customers
like works of art in a museum.

In contrast to the bakery in Reseda, which is a more traditional
bakery, offering mainly breads, the new bakery also offers an
expanded menu of sandwiches, smoothies, espressos, teas and coffees.
She also designs wedding cakes.

She acknowledged her bakery is not the only one in Glendale. “I never
think of these bakeries as competition because I’m too busy doing
everything I can to bring in my own customers,” she said.

Interfax
April 19 2004

Armenian industrial production up 10.5% in Q1

Yerevan. (Interfax) – Industrial production in Armenia in the first
quarter 2004 increased 10.5% year-on-year to 69.5 million dram, not
including industrial production in the electricity sector, Economic
Development and Trade Minister Ashot Shakhnazarian told journalists.

He said that the mining and diamond cutting industries accounted for
the largest share in industrial production in the reporting period.

The minister said that exports of industrial products from Armenia
increased 27% year-on-year to amount to 43.2 million dram in the
first quarter this year.
The official exchange rate on April 16 was 558.16 dram to the dollar.

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
April 19 2004

CONSTITUENT CONFERENCE OF CONGRESS OF EUROPEAN AZERBAIJANIS HELD IN
BERLIN
[April 19, 2004, 16:34:08]

As correspondent of AzerTAj reported, on April 17, constituent
conference of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of Europe (CAE) was held
in well-known Berlin hotel “Hilton”.

The Conference was attended by representatives of the Azerbaijan
communities and Diaspora organizations of Ukraine, the Russian
Federation, Belarus, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Finland,
Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, France, Spain, Czech, Poland, Romania,
Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, heads of the Azerbaijan societies
functioning in the US, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrghyzstan, head
of socio-political department of Administration of the President of
Azerbaijan Ali Hasanov, delegation of the State Committee on work
with the Azerbaijanis living in foreign countries, led by chairman of
committee Nazim Ibrahimov, the ambassador of our country in Germany
Huseynaga Sadigov, members of Great National Assembly of Turkey.

In the beginning, the national anthem of the Azerbaijan Republic was
performed.

Memory of the national leader Heydar Aliyev was revered with a moment
of silence.

Opening the conference by opening address, chairman of the State
Committee on Work with the Azerbaijanis living in foreign countries,
Nazim Ibrahimov, named creation of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of
Europe as an important event for association of Diaspora
organizations of this continent. He expressed confidence that the new
structure would carry out purposeful activity in strengthening of
connections of our compatriots living in Europe with their historical
Motherland – Azerbaijan, maintenance of political, spiritual unity
and solidarity between Azerbaijanis of the world.

Mr. Ali Hasanov has read congratulatory message of the President of
Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev to the participants of Conference.

In the first part of the conference, passed under the motto `Modern
Azerbaijan realities – the new stage of development and cooperation’,
have been heard reports of Ali Hasanov, on the topic `Azerbaijan on
the European space – the European states: democracy, secularity,
supremacy of law becomes norm of civil society’, ambassador Huseynaga
Sadigov – `Azerbaijani-German relations at the present stage’,
representative of the Ministry of Economic Development Samad Bashirov
– `Updating and dynamics in the Azerbaijan economy’, the adviser of
vice-president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Eldar Shahbazov
– `Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan – the bridge between the countries of the
Caspian region and Mediterranean’, the leading expert of the Ministry
of Youth, Sports and Tourism Farid Akhundov – `Opportunities of
tourist potential in Azerbaijan’.

In second half, discussed were issues of `Modern state and prospects
of development of the Azerbaijan Diaspora’. The speakers touched the
prospects of development of the Azerbaijan Diaspora, its
participation in the political life of the countries of residing, the
role in settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh
conflict, relations of the Azerbaijan communities with local state
structures at the decision of problems and cares of our compatriots,
of problems and cares in the field of protection of the rights of
Azerbaijanis in the countries of Europe.

The Conference has discussed the project of the Charter of the
Congress of Azerbaijanis of Europe and elected the directing bodies
of structure – the Central Council and Executive Committee. The
president of Association of Turkish-German businessmen Bahyaddin Gaya
was elected Chairman of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of Europe, and
executive director of All-Russia Azerbaijan congress Natig Agamirov
and chairman of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of Ukraine Ogtay
Efendiyev – vice-chairmen.

After statement of the Congress of Azerbaijanis of Europe, heads of
more than 50 communities and associations have signed the Protocol of
the official consent, and have called societies, associations and
national structures in other countries for cooperation in the name of
our national interests.

The Headquarters and Coordination Secretary of the Congress will
locate in Berlin. After official registration in Germany, the
Congress will receive the right to put before the international
organizations the questions connected to problems of Azerbaijan and
Azerbaijanis.

Chairman of the State Committee on Work with the Azerbaijanis Living
Abroad Nazim Ibrahimov has held a news conference devoted to results
of the Conference.

After the Conference, was organized a concert program of masters of
the art of Azerbaijan.

San Diego Union Tribune, CA
April 19 2004

Turkey seeks talks with Azeris, Armenia on Karabakh

ANKARA – Turkey called Monday for tripartite talks with neighboring
Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh in the latest sign that Ankara wants an end to the
long-running row.

Turkey has no diplomatic relations with Armenia because of the tiny
ex-Soviet republic’s occupation of Karabakh, a territory populated by
Christian ethnic Armenians but assigned to mainly Muslim,
Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan in Soviet times.

However the European Union, which Turkey wants to join, and the
United States have both urged Ankara to lift its trade blockade of
Armenia to help promote regional peace. Every aspiring EU member
state is required to seek good relations with all its neighbors.

“In the coming months we predict … a three-way meeting (between
Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan),” Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul told the Anatolian state news agency.

“Putting the (Karabakh) problem in the deep-freeze is wrong because
there is an occupation there. We say this problem should be solved
and we need to discuss the problem to solve it.”

But Gul also ruled out any early lifting of Turkey’s economic
blockade, despite lobbying by Turkish businessmen.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev won reassurances during a state visit to
Ankara last week that Turkey would make no unilateral moves which
might upset oil-rich Azerbaijan, diplomats said.

Turkey and Azerbaijan share not only close cultural and linguistic
ties but also important energy interests.

An international consortium is building an oil pipeline worth around
$3 billion which is due to start carrying crude from 2005 from the
Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Asked about Gul’s comments, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan
said his country would not accept Turkey as a mediator in the
Karabakh dispute because it was biased against it.

But speaking at a news conference in Yerevan, he said the three
countries had met before to discuss regional cooperation which had
also touched on bilateral problems such as Karabakh.

“If a similar agenda were offered this time, I see no problem in
(Armenia’s) participation in such talks,” he said.

Gul said the tripartite meeting, if given the go-ahead, would take
place before a planned NATO summit in Istanbul in late June. Armenia
is expected to take part in that meeting as a country with NATO ties.

Oskanyan recently met his Azeri counterpart in Prague and they are
expected to hold fresh talks in May.

About 35,000 people died in six years of fighting over Karabakh which
ended in a 1994 cease-fire. A decade of diplomatic efforts by the
United States, Russia and France to end the deadlock have so far
failed.

(Additional reporting by Hasmik Lazarian in Yerevan)

Interfax
April 19 2004

U.S. wants Karabakh resolved in OSCE Minsk Group format

YEREVAN. April 19 (Interfax) – The United States believes the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved within the framework of
the OSCE Minsk Group, U.S. diplomat Stephen Mann, who was appointed
in early April as co-chair of the group, told a news conference in
Yerevan on Monday.

He said that in acting as the U.S. co-chairman of the group, he will
be guided by the national interests of the United States. Mann
explained that the U.S. wants the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolved
through peace talks.

Mann met in Yerevan with Armenian President Robert Kocharian, heads
of defense and security agencies, and the leader of the self-
proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. He said his talks with
Kocharian were warm and useful.

The U.S. official will travel from Yerevan to Tbilisi and Baku for
meetings with the leaders of Georgia and Azerbaijan. <>

New University, CA
April 19 2004

Armenian Genocide:
Affirmation Through Education
by: Taraneh Arhamsadr
Staff Writer

Graphic Illustration By Michelle Le

`Immemorial Muscians,’ a 1997 oil painting by Jacques Aslanian,
conveys a sense of loss among the older generation of Armenians.
Aslanian is known to create art based on his Armenian culture, often
using the topic of exile as a central theme for his work.

Courtesy Of The Armenian Genocide Organization

During the Armenian Genocide, hundreds of thousands of families were
broken. Children were separated from their families and ended up
spending their childhoods in large orphanages.

As inhabitants of a country that allows the free exchange of
knowledge, it is our responsibility to attempt and understand as much
as we can about the world around us. Because of all the negativity
present in our world, some find it easier to shield their eyes from
the pain and suffering, and just go through their daily lives in a
state of ignorant bliss. But it shouldn’t be like this. Upon looking
beyond the high school history books, we find that the most hateful
atrocities passed through time with hardly a whisper. One such
notably horrific event that many know nothing about is the Armenian
genocide – also known as the first holocaust of the 20th century.

Some students believe that a noteworthy cause for the Armenian
genocide in the Ottoman Empire was a rise of nationalism.

Before the late 1800s, Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks lived in
a state of mutual tolerance. But Armenians wished to gain their
independence from the empire, and the fact that the region where they
lived was in between two large Turkish regions – thereby blocking
Turkish domination – made them a much-hated target. For this and many
other reasons, Turkish nationalists began premeditating the perfect
plan to rid their land of these people.

On April 24, 1915, in the early part of World War I, Turkish
nationalists systematically killed hundreds of Armenian community
leaders.

This marked the start of what no one could possibly fathom – the mass
killing of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire.

Armenian men were drafted into the army believing that they would
contribute to the war effort, but instead were immediately killed or
worked to death.

After the men were removed from the community, the children, women
and elderly complied with commands to relocate. Led across Anatolia
to reach the Syrian Desert, the trip was not without its hardships.
During the `death march,’ many Armenians were raped, starved and
dehydrated, and many died along the way.

Upon reaching the Syrian Desert, whoever remained was immediately
killed.

Those who were able to escape, usually with help from Turkish
missionaries, usually had lost most of their family members. Children
ended up in orphanages without an identity. Women lost their
husbands, families were destroyed. In all, 1.5 million people were
massacred.

While the people of Turkey do not know much about the actions of
their predecessors, the Turkish government has been going out of
their way for decades to affirm that none of this ever happened.

Mark Levine, a professor in the department of history specializing
Middle Eastern history, feels the people of Turkey have not been
given a chance to learn what really happened because of the
government.

`I think it’s mainly the government and everyone involved with it
that’s mainly preaching the denial ideology,’ Levine said. `Though
[the people of Turkey] are more open to talking about it than they
were in the past, they’re never going to learn anything close to the
truth. It’s not going to be an issue that affects their life on a day
to day basis.’

Many Armenians believe that the Turkish government’s efforts only add
to the insult, because they feel that a solution will never be
reached unless governments own up to their past misdeeds.

This week, the Armenian Student Association at UCI is commemorating
and affirming the event. A small but dedicated group, they have
worked tirelessly to make sure that this horrible tragedy is never
forgotten.

`We just want people to know the history. As [Armenian] youth, we’ve
got to continue the story until people accept it and understand it,’
said first-year applied ecology major and ASA committee member Arda
Arjian.

Arjian worked with other ASA members to get the city of Irvine
involved in this event.

`In the city of Irvine, we passed a proclamation about Armenian
genocide, which I wrote. From now, April 24 is going to be a day of
remembrance for Armenian genocide. We don’t want this to be something
that people forget,’ Arjian said.

It is interesting to find a group of young people who have such a
vested interest in their `mother-culture,’ and this may lay in the
fact that this event is still not too far gone.

`I think it’s passed down from fathers and grandfathers, because many
young people have relatives who passed away in the genocide. One of
the biggest reasons that we’re in America to begin with is because
the genocide took place,’ said cultural director of ASA and graduate
student in mechanical and aerospace engineering Vicken Jermakian.

Students of ASA know that they are entitled to learn about anything
they wish as Americans. But they also understand that any society
will attempt to slant their eyes toward certain events while

downplaying others, and it seems that this event is one that is

lesser-known, compared to, for example, the holocaust that

took place against Jews in World War II.

`To me, it’s not about how much publicity we get compared to other
genocides, because I feel that all of them are important,’ Jermakian
said. `It’s been very hard for modern governments to grasp the fact
that genocide is evil. We want the Armenian genocide to be remembered
so as to prevent future genocides from taking place, by educating
people.’

This week, a variety of events will be taking place to commemorate
the holocaust. Armenian students would like to see their peers
participate and attempt to learn more about what happened.

On Wednesday evening, there will be a candlelight vigil at 7 P.M.
That same day, there will be a display of Armenian dancing at the
Student Center.

An important event which students should try and attend is a
screening of Atom Egoyan’s film `Ararat’ on Monday evening at 8 P.M.
in HIB 100.

`This movie depicts some of the minor atrocities of the Armenian
genocide. It will help those who know nothing about the genocide. It
gives people a good stepping stone and an idea of what happened when
everyone turned their backs,’ Arjian said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 20 2004

In the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide
Film depicts a fragile history after tragedy

Information Minister Samaha said more such documentaries should be
made on the history of Lebanon’s various communities

By Nada Raad
Daily Star staff

A documentary on the Armenian community in Lebanon that airs this
Friday evening on the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) will
shed light on the history of their presence here, which, according to
the producer Carmen Labaki, began well before the 1915 Genocide.

The documentary, “Armenians in Lebanon” was filmed in Armenia,
Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon in an attempt to illustrate the Armenian
history and show their “dispersal” following the 1915 Genocide, which
left more than a million dead.

Co-produced by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International
(LBCI), the 85-minute documentary will be broadcast on LBC on Friday
after the 8 p.m. news report, and one day ahead of the Armenian
Genocide Remembrance Day on April 24.

Labaki, who spent one year working on the film, said that she decided
to shoot the documentary after realizing that Armenian history is
unknown by many here, including some Armenians. Labaki, who
previously produced two documentaries – “Brazil in Lebanon,” released
in 1997, and “France in Lebanon,” released in 2001 – said that the
scene which most touched her concerns the shooting of the Bedouin
Armenians living in the Syrian Desert.

“Every Bedouin Armenian living in Syria has a story to tell about his
parents’ plight,” Labaki said during the documentary’s release on
Monday at the Haigazian University in Beirut. “But the story told by
this second generation does not have the same impact as if it were
told by the generation who lived the genocide,” she added.

The documentary presents Armenian nationals who were uprooted from
their country, their culture and their families and friends, but who
can still list the names of family members. In Syria, many Armenians
are now Muslim Bedouins and have Arab names because they were adopted
by Syrian families.

The documentary shows locations where Armenians were killed and
tortured by the Turks. During the Genocide some were killed in
Armenia while others were killed during a march from Turkey to Syria.
On April 24, 1915, after the Armenians in the army were disarmed and
then killed, the political and intellectual leaders meet the same
fate.

After this event, the remaining Armenians were told they would be
relocated by marching them to concentration camps in the desert
between Jerablus and Deir ez-Zor where they were left without food
and water to starve under the sun.

In a technique common to many documentaries, the producer used
contrasting footage, with scenes of real footage in black and white
abutting contemporary shots of the genocide march.

“We went to Marqadeh in Deir ez-Zor to shoot the documentary. When I
dug in the sand I found bones … from the genocide,” Labaki said.

The documentary was also shot in Shadadeh, an area located in Deir
ez-Zor, where around 300,000 Armenians were put in a cave and burned.

In Syria, many Armenians live in Aleppo, while others left to come to
Lebanon. According to the documentary, the Armenian presence in
Lebanon dates from 1741, when the Armenian Patriarchy was established
in Bzemmar. Following the Genocide, Armenians arrived from Syria and
Turkey in Anjar where some died from cold and illness.

Currently, the Armenian community is concentrated in Bourj Hammoud
and they are well-known for their professionalism in commerce,
jewelry design, carpet making, and crafts.

In 1934, the Armenian community was allowed to vote, and in 1966 some
members assumed ministerial posts.

Currently, the Armenian community is active through three political
parties: the Tashnak Party, the Ramgavar Party, and the Hentchak
Party. In Beirut, four MPs out of the 18 elected members are from the
Armenian community.

The documentary shows that before 1975, members of the Armenian
community here considered themselves as “Armenians living in
Lebanon,” while today they say, “We are Lebanese from an Armenian
origin.” Nonetheless, many members of the Armenian community are
currently returning to their homeland. “Mount Ararat is waiting for
them,” the documentary said.

“We need memory in this country,” Information Minister Michel Samaha
said at the opening. He added that such a documentary should be done
on all the ethnic groups in the country to allow the Lebanese to
learn more about each other.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Tacy Ltd., Israel
April 20 2004

ANGOLAN AMBASSADOR CALLS FOR STRENGHTENED RELATIONS WITH ARMENIA

General Roberto Leal Ramos Monteiro “Ngongo”, Angola’s Ambassador to
Armenia, has called for the strengthening of relations between the
two countries in the areas of economy and commerce at a ceremony
where his credential letters were handed over to the local President
Robert Kotcharian.

The ambassador met with the Deputy Foreign Minister, Fatou Markarian,
the Deputy President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
Andranik Aleksayan, and visited the diamond polishing firm Dca, which
is owned by Gagik Abrahamyan.

Monteiro, who is also Ambassador to Azerbadjan, Belorussia, Ukraine,
Moldavia and the Russian Federation, says that the President of
Armenia revealed that Armenia, the ninth global player in diamond
lapidation, is open to initiatives of bilateral cooperation at
company-related level.