PRESS RELEASE

June 14, 2004

American University of Armenia Corporation
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Oakland, CA 94612
Telephone: (510) 987-9452
Fax: (510) 208-3576

Contact: Gohar Momjian
E-mail: [email protected]

HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE FUTURE OF ARMENIA’S ARMED FORCES

Yerevan – The American University of Armenia (AUA) Department of Law and the
AUA Student Law Club hosted a free public conference on June 5, 2004,
focusing on Human Rights and the Future of Armenia’s Armed Forces. Over 150
people attended the conference, which was intended to raise public awareness
of laws that affect the participation of Armenian citizens in the Armenian
army, as well as the respect for human rights by the Armenian armed forces.
“Human rights in the military is a major concern not just for soldiers and
parents, but for the armed forces, too,” said Anna Grigoryan, a student
researcher at AUA who played a leading role to organize the conference.

“Armenia’s armed forces have some of the same challenges that confront the
military of any nation: How to guarantee basic human rights, while also
maintaining discipline and combat readiness. The purpose of our conference
was to create greater awareness of this issue. We succeeded,” said Matthew
Karanian, Associate Dean, AUA Law Department. “This conference featured an
outstanding panel of speakers, including representatives from the highest
ranks of the Ministry of Defense who attended, as well as the Special Envoy
of the Council of Europe, the Chair of the Helsinki Committee, and other
leading human rights organizations.”

Avetick Ishkhanyan, Chair of the Helsinki Committee, noted that society and
government must take measures in order to prevent the politicization of the
Army, and that this is the first step in preventing crimes in the army. Vahe
Meliksetyan, Assistant to General Military Prosecutor, brought forth recent
statistics showing that the incidence of crime is going down in the army.
NGO members and government representatives suggested that in order to
prevent crime in the army, public awareness of the problem should be raised,
and soldiers and their parents should be apprised of their rights and
responsibilities.

Armenia’s cooperation with NATO under the “Partnership for Peace” program
and with CIS countries was also discussed, in addition to various
interpretations of the recently accepted laws on ‘Citizens Who Failed to
Complete Compulsory Military Service through Violation of the Established
Procedure’ and ‘Alternative Military Service.’
————–

The American University of Armenia offers a Master’s Degree in Law and in
Comparative Legal Studies. The programs feature a strong focus on business
and international law, with special emphasis on legal and institutional
reforms in the former Soviet republics. AUA is registered as a non-profit
educational organization in both Armenia and the United States and is
affiliated with the Regents of the University of California. Receiving
major support from the AGBU, AUA offers instruction leading to the Masters
Degree in eight graduate programs. For more information about AUA, visit

Pictures:
1: Greta Mirzoyan, Zinvori Mayr NGO, Chair; Ruben Martirosyan, Armenia’s
Human
Rights Defender (Ombudsman) representative; Vahe Meliksetyan, Assistant to
Armenia’s military prosecutor; Anna Grigoryan, AUA law student; Stephen
Barnett, AUA Dean of Law; Matthew Karanian, AUA Associate Dean of Law

2: General-Major Mickael Melkonyan, Armenia’s Ministry of Defense, head of
foreign relations and military cooperation; Deputy-Colonel Sedrak Sedrakyan,
Armenia’s Ministry of Defense, head of
the legal department

PARLIAMENT CHAIRMAN DISCUSSES DETAILS OF HIS VISIT TO BULGARIA

ArmenPress
June 14 2004

YEREVAN, JUNE 14, ARMENPRESS: Armenian parliament chairman Arthur
Baghdasarian met today with Bulgaria’s ambassador to Armenia, Stefan
Dimitrov to discuss the details of his upcoming visit to Bulgaria at
the invitation of his Bulgarian counterpart.

It was stated that Bulgaria attaches great importance to Baghdasarian’s
visit, especially that no reciprocal visits of top parliament officials
of both sides took place since 1999. Baghdasarian was quoted by
parliament press office as saying that the visit will become another
step towards strengthening bilateral parliamentary ties.

Cooperation in health, culture and science sectors, as well as the
use of Bulgaria’s legislature development experience was underscored.
The government press office said a range of other issues was also
discussed during the meeting.

Film Museum to Detail Armenian Presence in Iranian Cinema
Tehran Times Culture Desk

Tehran Times
June 13 2004

TEHRAN June 12 (MNA) -– The second seasonal exhibition at the Film
Museum of Iran for the first time will detail the Armenian presence
in Iranian cinema.

Documents, posters, pictures, rare and historical cinematographic
tools that have never been previously screened or published will be
displayed. The News Bureau of Mass Media Relations at the Film Museum
in a statement released announced that the exhibition will be entitled
“One Week of Armenians’ Cinema.”

During the week, works by Avanes Oganians, Arbi Avanessian, Vartan
Antanessian, Jani Baghdassarian, Artem Ohanjanian, Arpik Baghdassarian,
Khachik, Samuel Khachikian, and Varuzh Karim Masihi along with others
will be displayed.

Coinciding with the 400th year anniversary of the migration of
Armenians to Iran another of the week’s programs will feature
screenings and clips from films highlighting Armenian actors.

The bureau in its statement said all the Armenian organizations
including, the Armenian Prelacy, the Armenian daily Alik, Iran’s Film
House, and Farabi Cinematic Foundation and other organizations will
actively participate in the exhibition.

The Film Museum of Iran will also be publishing a book being dubbed
“The Presence of Armenians in Iran’s Cinema” detailing the presence
and the impact of Armenians in the history of Iranian cinema.
AP/DWN/IS END MNA

Armenia to dispose Soviet liquid missile fuel
By Tigran Liloyan

ITAR-TASS News Agency
June 13, 2004 Sunday

YEREVAN, June 13 — Armenia will dispose liquid missile fuel, which is
left on the national territory from the Soviet period. A memorandum
to the effect has been signed between Armenian Defense Minister and
Secretary of the National Security Council Serzh Sarkisyan and head
of the OSCE mission in Yerevan Vladimir Pryakhin.

Further storing of the liquid missile fuel is dangerous, because the
fuel containers have decayed. The OSCE is ready to assign experts
for helping the Armenian project.

The Dissolving Opposition

Transitions Online, Czech Republic
June 14 2004

YEREVAN, Armenia–Armenia’s President Robert Kocharian appears to
have warded off a challenge to his authority, surviving a two-month
opposition protest campaign that aimed to force his resignation. Even
though the protests failed to attract large numbers of Armenians, some
political analysts in Yerevan say the opposition campaign inflicted
considerable political damage on Kocharian.

Since April, opposition leaders had promised “decisive action”
against Kocharian. However, at the most recent street protest in
central Yerevan, on 4 June, the opposition acknowledged that it lacked
sufficient backing to fulfill its aim, and abandoned plans to march on
Kocharian’s residence. “We believe that we are not yet ready to carry
out actions needed for achieving our final victory,” a leading member
of the opposition Justice bloc, Albert Bazeyan, told a thinning crowd.

The unrest stemmed from the February-March 2003 presidential election
in which Kocharian secured a second term amid allegations of vote
rigging. His opponents still refuse to recognize the legitimacy of his
reelection and were unsuccessful in a 2003 attempt to have the voting
results invalidated. Kocharian critics later decided to embrace protest
tactics, striving to imitate the success of Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili, who came to power amid the “Rose Revolution” in Tbilisi.

The opposition unveiled the protest strategy in early April. The most
critical moment occurred early on in the protest campaign, as riot
police, during the early hours of 13 April, dispersed opposition
protesters as they marched towards Kocharian’s official residence
in Yerevan.

The leaders of Armenia’s two main opposition groups, the Justice
bloc and the National Unity Party (AMK), have since continued the
unsanctioned rallies in the city center. The protests have flagged
in recent weeks as many opposition supporters grew increasingly
frustrated over the lack of “decisive action.”

Bazeyan and other opposition leaders said they will continue to rally
supporters in the capital to keep up pressure on the authorities.
“There will be no stability in the country as long as Kocharian remains
in power because stability and Kocharian are incompatible things,”
the most radical of them, Aram Sarkisian, said.

But few observers believe that demonstrations attended by several
thousand people will pose a serious threat to the ruling regime.
Given the effective end of the protest campaign, political analysts
are examining the question of why the Armenian opposition failed
to mobilize what one of its leaders described as a “critical mass”
of demonstrators.

In the view of Aghasi Yenokian, director of the independent Armenian
Center for Political and International Studies, Justice and the
AMK never had a clear action plan. He said the opposition also lost
popular trust due to its inability to successfully press its appeal
over the presidential election tally. “The opposition has shown on
several occasions that it can let the people down at any moment,”
Yenokian said.

Still, some local political experts believe that the protests,
which provoked the worst-ever government crackdown on the Armenian
opposition, dealt a blow to Kocharian’s legitimacy at home and
abroad. That, they say, could open new cracks in the country’s shaky
governing coalition, rendering the medium- to long-term political
situation in the country unpredictable.

“Armenia is entering a period of political apathy where there is no
effective government and [no] effective opposition,” said a recent
commentary in the pro-opposition daily Haykakan Zhamanak.

Authorities have maintained throughout that the opposition protest
campaign was unconstitutional. On 8 June, one of Kocharian’s top allies
declared victory in the political struggle. “The opposition has failed
to achieve its goals,” Prime Minister Andranik Markarian said.

Throughout the crisis, Kocharian stressed that Armenia’s strong
security apparatus ensured that a repetition of the “Georgian scenario”
would not occur in Yerevan. At the same time, Kocharian has sought
to placate building popular frustration.

Kocharian has long tried to cast himself as the custodian of a
fast-growing economy. The benefits of economic growth, though, are
not evenly distributed in Armenia, as many in the country continue
to grapple with poverty. In recent weeks, Kocharian has expressed
renewed interest in improving living conditions. His schedule in
early June, for example, was full of meetings, heavily publicized by
state-controlled television channels, with officials at all levels
of government to examine issues ranging from suspected corruption in
high school graduation exams to patchy supplies of drinking water.

In addition to the high-profile effort to address popular concerns,
authorities have cracked down on the opposition, arresting hundreds of
government critics. The crackdown continued even after strong criticism
voiced by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in late
April. Since then, a 24-year-old man has been sentenced to an 18-month
jail term for hurling a plastic bottle at a riot police officer during
the 12-13 April events. Four other opposition activists received up
to 15-month prison sentences stemming from their participation in
another protest.

Although Kocharian is the winner of the latest round, experts
believe the political bout will continue. Yenokian, for one, viewed
the deepening intra-governmental infighting as a source of political
turmoil down the road. “The processes should not be considered over,”
the analyst said. “They may well have a continuation.”

Russian NTV channel off the Armenian air for good

A1+ web site
14 Jun 04

14 June: Russian NTV channel will no longer be broadcast in
Armenia. Today the National Commission for Radio and Television
[NCRT] unanimously decided to hand over the 23rd decimetre channel,
which previously relayed NTV channel programmes, to the Armenian
government for the transmission of Kultura [Culture] TV programmes.

The frequency was not put out to tender as it was given to the
government within the framework of an intergovernmental agreement on
the transmission of TV programmes concluded between Armenia and Russia.

The frequency was transferred to the Transport and Communications
Ministry. It is not yet clear who will rebroadcast. “The company
Paradiz [Paradise], which rebroadcast NTV, has no claims on it,”
the head of the NCRT, Grigor Amalyan, said. “The government has the
right to use it at its own discretion.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARINC CONDEMNS CANADIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES DECISION

Turkish Daily News
June 12, 2004

ANKARA – Speaker of Parliament Bulent Arinc sent a condemnation letter
to the Canadian House of Representatives President Peter Milliken
relating to a decision of the Canadian House of Representatives that
approved on April 21, 2004 the recognition of the so-called Armenian
Genocide and accepted it as crime of humanity.

Stating that the interpretation of the tragic event, which caused
the loss of lives during Ottoman rule in 1915, to wrong historical
data is a completely intolerable mistake, Arinc noted in his letter:
“Turkish Parliament believes that national parliaments are not the
right places to interpret historical events … National parliaments
should refrain from biased initiatives which carry the threat of
awakening hatred between the public upon the alleged and ungrounded
claims made by the marginal sectors of ethnic groups or third party
representatives about other nations.”

Indicating that, with this act, the Canadian House of Representatives
owns the responsibility of the negative developments that could
possibly develop between Turkey and Canada, Arinc stressed that
this decision fell in contradiction with the normalization efforts
of relations between the two neighbors Turkey and Armenia, in such a
sensitive part of the world. Arinc expressed Turkey’s sorrow for the
non-fulfilment of the responsibilities by those, who approved such a
humiliating and unjust decision, in such a sensitive period when the
world needs international solidarity and cooperation against violence
and intolerance.

The Armenians claimed that during the Ottoman Empire their ancestors
were executed for allegedly helping the invading Russian army during
World War I. Turkey, heir of the Ottoman Empire, rejects the genocide
claim, insisting that Armenians were killed in civil unrest during
the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey has fought hard to block international attempts to raise the
issue of the alleged Armenian genocide, while Armenia — with its
seven-million strong diaspora — has been pressing for international
recognition of the so-called genocide.

Opposition figure released as rights monitors arrive in Armenia

Associated Press Worldstream
June 12, 2004 Saturday

YEREVAN, Armenia — Authorities in Armenia have released an opposition
leader from jail after European human rights envoys arrived in the
former Soviet republic, a lawyer said Saturday.

Former Defense Minister Vagarshak Arutyunian was released late Friday,
but the case against him has not been closed and he is barred from
leaving the capital Yerevan, his lawyer Robert Grigorian said.

Grigorian said the release came after an appeal from the nation’s
human rights ombudsman, but he noted that it occurred the same day
that two representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe, or PACE, arrived in Armenia for talks on the political
situation and judicial reform.

Arutyunian was arrested during an April 12 protest in which
demonstrators called for the resignation of President Robert Kocharian,
and is accused of attempting to seize power and calling for change
in the country’s constitutional order. Six people arrested during
opposition protests remain jailed, Grigorian said.

Opposition leaders in the small, poverty-plagued Caucasus Mountain
country have organized a series of protests this spring aimed at
forcing the resignation of Kocharian, who won a second term last year
in an election they claim was marred by fraud. The April 12 protest
was forcefully broken up by police.

Kasparov throwaway
By Malcolm Pein

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
June 14, 2004, Monday

“CALL a doctor!” cried Boris Spassky as his fellow former world
champion Garry Kasparov inexplicably missed a win in a king and pawn
endgame against the French champion Etienne Bacrot and saw his
Armenian team go down to a third defeat against the Rest of the
World. The score stands at 11-7 to the RoW at the halfway stage.

The Armenian team should have won this round. Vladimir Akopian was
clearly better against Vishy Anand, but after he correctly rejected a
sacrificial possibility and headed for a superior endgame, Anand
defended well and then played very quickly to induce errors from his
opponent, and won the game.

The Armenian team did score one win, as the world title challenger
Peter Leko swept aside Loek Van Wely.

The match is being played in Moscow to celebrate the 75th anniversary
of the late Armenian world champion Tigran Petrosian.

Bacrot
p p p p p p p c p p p p ) p p p p c p p p p n p p d n p p p p p p p p

Kasparov

Position after 65Kg6

Kasparov’s error comes after Bacrot has just played 65Kg6 to reach
the position in the diagram above. Kasparov played 66.Kd4?? and after
66Kh5 a draw was agreed because of 66Kh5 67.Ke5 Kg4 68.Kf6 (68.h5
Kxh5 69 Kxf5 f6! 70 g4+ Kh4 draws) 68Kxg3.

Kasparov could have won with 66.Kf3! Kf6 (66Kh5 67.Kf4 transposes)
67.Kf4 Kg6 68.Ke5 winning the f5 pawn and the game; 68f6+ 69.Ke6 does
not help. After 66.Kf3! Kg7 67.Kf4 Kf6 68.h5 Ke6 69.Kg5 the h pawn
runs.

THIS sharp pawn sacrifice from Boris Gelfand gives Francisco Vallejo
Pons (White) attacking chances and 19.c6! dxc6 20.Ne4 Qe7 21.Qe5 was
good for White. Instead, Gelfand gives up all the white squares to
win the c7 pawn but gets mated. In the final position the black rook
comes to c8 and Qe2+ wins.

B Gelfand – F Vallejo Pons

Armenia-ROW (3) Moscow

1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 b6 4 Nc3 Bb4 5 Bg5 Bb7 6 e3 h6 7 Bh4 g5 8 Bg3
Ne4 9 Nd2 Nxc3 10 bxc3 Bxc3 11 Rc1 Bb4 12 h4 gxh4 13 Rxh4 Be7 14 Rh5
Bd6 15 Qg4 Qf6 16 c5! Bxg3 17 Qxg3 Na6 18 Bd3 Rc8 19 Bxa6? Bxa6 20
cxb6 axb6 21 Rxc7 Rxc7 22 Qxc7 Qg6 23 Rh3 Qd3 24 Kd1 Ke7! 0-1

Pons
p p p 7 p f c e c p – o p c p o p p p p p n p p p p Y n p * b p l n b
p p p X p p

Gelfand

Final position after 24Ke7!

PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Coordinator of Information Services
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 60; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:

June 11, 2004
___________________

DIOCESE TO HOST EXPERT ON PRESERVATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

The efforts by the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library to digital preserve
Armenian manuscripts will be the focus of an illustrated presentation
by Fr. Columba Stewart, OSB, executive director of the library at
the Eastern Diocesan Center in New York on Tuesday, June 15, 2004.

The presentation, organized by the Diocese’s Zohrab Information Center,
is open to the public will begin at 7 p.m. in the Guild Hall of the
Diocesan Center, 630 Second Ave. in New York City.

The Hill Monastic Manuscript Library holds the world’s largest
collection of microfilm and digital images of handwritten books.
The most recent estimate shows the library’s holdings at 90,000
manuscripts, about 30,000,000 pages.

Begun in 1965 by the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s Abbey as a
response to the destruction of European monastic libraries during the
two World Wars, the library has photographed resources from libraries
throughout Europe and Ethiopia. Currently the library is photographing
manuscripts in Sweden and at four sites in Lebanon.

The library’s most recent efforts have been to provide increased access
to its digital images via the Internet and to focus on preserving the
manuscript traditions of the Christian East, with a special emphasis
on collections of Armenian manuscripts.

The strong Armenian literary and artistic heritage created many
wonderful manuscripts, which are today universally regarded as
masterpieces of the book arts. In April 2004, the library began
photographing the manuscripts of the Armenian Catholicate of Cilicia
in Antelias, Lebanon. They are in conversation with other Armenian
libraries, and will soon meet with the Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul
about preserving the Patriarchate’s collection

The June 15 program will begin at 7 p.m., and will conclude with
a reception. The Diocese is located at 630 Second Ave. (at 34th
St.), in New York City. The event is free and open to the public.
For further information, call (212) 686-0710 ext. 26 or e-mail
[email protected].

-6/11/04

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