United Nations Development Programme Country Office in Armenia
14, Karl Liebknecht Street, Yerevan 375010, Armenia
Contact: Aramazd Ghalamkaryan
Tel: (374 1) 56 60 73
Fax: (374 1) 54 38 11
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
UNDP COUNTRY OFFICE IN ARMENIA
*7 June, 2004
WITH A VISIT TO ARMENIA’S LARGEST DUMP, UNDP AND THE MINISTRY OF NATURE
PROTECTION LAUNCH ENVIRONMENT WEEK*
Yerevan, Armenia
Today, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry
of Nature Protection officially marked World Environment Day by
organising a media event in the country’s largest waste disposal site in
Nubarashen, near Yerevan. In close cooperation with UN Agencies and
local and international organisations, UNDP and the Ministry of Nature
Protection jointly initiated Environment Week, an advocacy campaign
aimed at raising public awareness on environmental issues. Mr. Vardan
Ayvazyan, Minister of Nature Protection, Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident
Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, representatives of the
Government, civil society and the mass media participated in the event.
Nubarashen waste disposal site receives almost all the solid waste
produced in Yerevan city and suburbs. As much as 340 tonnes per day, or
102,000 tonnes per year, is deposited in the site. Most of the waste in
Nubarashen is domestically produced by the approximately 1,280,000 who
live in these areas. Industrial waste accounts for only a small
proportion. Large quantities of landfill gas, mainly methane gas, are
produced by the waste and discharged into the atmosphere without being
fully utilised.
According to Ms. Grande: “It is very fortunate that Armenia has achieved
high rates of economic growth in the last decade. At this stage in the
country’s transition, is it critically important to focus on the
environmental aspects of economic growth. The sustainable management of
natural resources and a clean environment are key to the country’s
medium and long-term development. If the environment is destroyed or
damaged, the country will suffer. UNDP is currently one of the major
donors in the area of nature protection and we are confident that our
partnership with Government authorities and the civil society will help
to ensure a healthy environment for a healthy people.”
Background: Armenia has acceded to a number of international treaties
and conventions focused on the environment. UNDP’s National Capacities
Self-Assessment (NCSA) project aims to support the Government
in identifying gaps in meeting the requirements of these global
conventions. The goal of Environment Week, a joint advocacy initiative
of UNDP Armenia and the Ministry of Nature Protection, is to: promote
environmental activities at the community level; raise public awareness
of ongoing initiatives in the area of nature protection; highlight
existing environmental issues; and initiate a public debate on the
linkages between human development and nature protection. Environment
Week also aims to bring together major actors in nature protection
and help find solutions to very urgent and important environmental
problems facing the country and the whole Transcaucasian region.
***
UNDP is the UN’s global development network. It advocates for change and
connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people
build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working with
them on their own solutions to global and national development
challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of
UNDP and our wide range of partners.
—
Aramazd Ghalamkaryan
Information and Resource Mobilisation Associate/
Support to UN Resident Coordinator
UNDP/UN Armenia
14 Karl Liebknecht St., Yerevan, 375010, Armenia
Tel: +3741 56 60 73 + 121
Mob: +3749 43 63 12
Fax: +3741 54 38 11
URLs: ;
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

YEREVAN MUNICIPALITY LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN AGAINST ILLEGAL PETROL STATIONS
A1 Plus | 16:21:39 | 07-06-2004 | Social |
125 of 270 Yerevan’s petrol stations are due to be dismantled because
they operate illegally without the municipality’s permission and 30
of them are already dismantled, the municipality officials say.
The municipality’s investigation in that field shows 105 petrol
stations need to be reconstructed and adjusted to proper criteria.

Sacramento reflects on his legacy
By Dion Nissenbaum and Mark Gladstone
Posted on Sun, Jun. 06, 2004
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO – Tucked away in a little-visited corner of the state
Capitol, Ronald Reagan’s portrait hangs beside those of his fellow
former governors — though his is the only one protected by glass.
While Jerry Brown was derided as “Governor Moonbeam” and Gray Davis
was recalled by disenchanted voters, Reagan is the only California
governor whose official portrait was defaced, a reflection of the
visceral reactions he still draws.
But on Saturday in this city where Reagan’s career as an elected
official began 37 years ago, any criticism was mostly muffled by the
grief of tourists and local residents.
As word began to spread that the president had died, school groups,
guided tours and visitors from around the globe trudged up four flights
of carpeted stairs to stand below Reagan’s portrait and reflect on
his legacy.
“Guys would have jumped off Niagara Falls for him,” said William
Edward Sullivan, a 79-year-old retired Army major who met Reagan two
decades ago during a presidential stop at a militay base. “I really
think he was one of the best presidents we ever had.”
Throughout the afternoon, visitors passed by Reagan’s portrait and
gazed up at the lifelike depiction of the smiling former governor
standing in Capitol Park with the afternoon sun bouncing off the
swoop of his trademark hair.
“He was always a man of integrity,” said Jerry Hunter, a pastor
from Bradenton, Fla. “He gave America hope and built up the American
spirit.” In death, as in life, Reagan evoked mixed reactions.
“He wasn’t my favorite, but rest in peace, I guess,” said one tourist
who declined to give his name.
For many years, Reagan’s portrait greeted visitors entering the
west side of the Capitol. But it was defaced several times over the
years, with pranksters adding horns and a mustache, said tour guide
Anne Adrian.
After being restored, the painting was moved to the third floor, next
to the impressionistic portrait of former Gov. Jerry Brown and the more
traditional paintings of former Govs. Geore Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.
Blocks from the Capitol at the Old Governor’s Mansion, there was a
mix of sadness and relief that Reagan was no longer suffering from
the debilitating and draining effects of Alzheimer’s.
At midafternoon, the news was just sinking in for tour guides and
visitors. The U.S. flag still had not been lowered, 90 minutes after
the announcement that the state’s 33rd governor had died.
Reagan and his wife, Nancy, moved into the 127-year-old gingerbread
house after his landslide victory over Democratic Gov. Pat Brown
in 1966.
But they stayed only three months, partly because the house was along
a busy street across from a smelly gasoline station. Nor was it a
child-friendly neighborhood for their active young son, Ron Jr.,
who liked sliding down the home’s banister.
Despite their short stay, a tour guide said visitors always ask about
the Reagans, especially about why there is just one photo of Nancy
on display. The gift shop sells a Nancy Reagan Fashion Paper Doll
et. And the guide said a display of a larger set of Reagan photos
was planned even before Reagan’s death.
“It’s sad because he left such a legacy in the United States,” said
Ken Toczyski, 48, a Louisville, Ky., minister. Recalling an uncertain
America of the late 1970s, the minister said Reagan came in and said:
“I believe in America. I think the people of America are what make
us great, and I want to see that greatness restored.”
Visitors on Saturday said the events of Reagan’s presidency are seared
in their memories.
“I can’t believe he lived so long. I remember when he was elected and
when he was shot. I remember what I was doing. I was in grade school,
in sixth grade,” said Joe Pounds, 34, a chef from Brooklyn, N.Y.,
who grew up in Sacramento.
It wasn’t just everyday people who were recalling the Reagans. Senate
President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, who served in the
Assembly when Reagan was governor, remembered his biting humor, even
when he was a target. Burton recaled how Reagan once labeled him as
“the one man in Sacramento who has the most to fear from the squirrels
in Capitol Park.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger canceled a trip to Las Vegas planned for
Monday. Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger made the leap from Hollywood
films to Sacramento. And before Reagan died, Schwarzenegger said
there was another connection. “He has been a big idol of mine,” said
Schwarzenegger. “I’ve campaigned for him. I’ve gone out there handing
out leaflets, making phone calls on his behalf, and was very active
during the campaign to make sure he becomes the president. And this
was at the time when I was not even a citizen yet.”

Russia convicts red flag fan
Moscow, Russia, Jun. 5 (UPI) — A Russian communist has been convicted
of throwing down Russia’s flag and replacing it with the old Soviet
one, the Moscow Times reported Friday.
Armen Beniaminov (a.k.a. Benyaminyan) was convicted in the Tverskoi
district court of desecrating the Russian flag and given a one year
suspended sentence, the paper said.
On Nov. 7, 2003, Beniaminov climbed on to the roof of the State Duma,
the main chamber of the Russian parliament, and threw the Russian
national flag to the ground, prosecutors said. They said he replaced
it with the old Red Flag of the Soviet Union that disintegrated at
the end of 1991.
Beniaminov told the court he respected the new Russian flag, but addedm
“I just wanted to make sure that the authorities do not forget our
history,” the Moscow Times said.
United Press International

Book on Armenian genocide by Turks concerns Kurds
Kurdish Media
June 6 2004
London (KurdishMedia.com) 06 June 2004:
BooK: THEY CALLED ME MUSTAFA: MEMOIR OF AN IMMIGRANT by Khachadoor
(Archie) Pilibosian, edited and coathored by Helene Pilibosian, is the
story of Khachadoor, a boy caught in the Armenian Genocide, kidnapped
by a Kurd and years later escapes slavery to emigrate to America.
Detailed are his birthplace of Ichmeh in Armenia and Armenian immigrant
life in Watertown, Mass., including his employment at the first
Star Market store in Watertown Square and his own store, Huron Spa
in Cambridge. His acquaintance with artist Arshile Gorky and Yenovk
Der Hagopian, singer of Armenian troubadour songs, is recorded.
Added for a second edition, Part II includes English translations
of his poems and stories presented for their authenticity of fact
and emotion. They were translated by Hagop Sarkissian with Helene
Pilibosian, who also wrote Notes on Part II, analyzing the reasons for
writing about genocide. With nostalgic photographs. ISBN 1-929966-04-0,
187 pages, paper, $16 (add $2 shipping).
This book has been licensed for the award-winning academic database
North American Immigrant Diaries, Letters and Oral Histories published
by Alexander Street Press.
MASSACHUSETTS STATE REPRESENTATIVE Warren Tolman read the Author’s
Preface at the April 24, 1992, Commemoration at the State House in
Boston. He added, “It is a very, very powerful book.”
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY FORMER SENIOR LECTURER Charles T. Ajamian
wrote in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, “It is a compelling story. It
affords new and corroborating insights into the Genocide.’
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: “Highly recommended.”
Available at Ohan Press, 171 Maplewood St., Watertown, MA 02472-1324
[email protected] Also available
at amazon.com, bn.com, Baker & Taylor

Contemporary Iranian Artwork Go on Display in Armenia
Mehr News Agency, Iran
June 6 2004
TEHRAN June 6 (MNA) — A selection of artwork by Iranian contemporary
artists are to go on display June 12 at the Yerevan National Art
Museum, Armenia.
According to the Public Relations Office of the Tehran Museum of
Contemporary Arts, a total of 60 paintings, statues and installation
work by contemporary artists will be showcased for two weeks.
Paintings by Marco Gregorian, Mohammad-Ibrahim Ja’fari, Edmund
Ayvazian, Kamran Katuzian, Sirak Melkonian, Gholam-Hossein Nami,
Mahdi Hosseini, Gizella Varga Sina’i, and Sharareh Salehi, sculptures
by Parviz Tanavoli, Fatemeh Emdadian, and Shideh Tami as well as
an installation work by Bita Fayyazi are among the works to be put
on display.
An exhibition of artwork by Armenian artists was displayed at Tehran
Museum of Contemporary Arts in 2001.

Hellenic News of America
June 6 2004
The Genocide of Greeks of Pontos (Black Sea).
Professor Konstantinos Fotiadis (2004).
The Genocide of Greeks of Pontos (Black Sea).
Athens: Editions of Institution of Parliament of Greeks for the
Parliamentarism and the Democracy, p.600 + photographs.
Presentation by Theofanis Malkidis Ph.D
Demokritus University of Thrace
GREECE
1. A owed action of debt
The investigation of genocide of Greeks of Pontos (Black Sea) from
the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) arrangement constituted a
question taboo for the Greek historical and political science. The
Greek-Turkish pact of friendship 1930, the simultaneous integration
of Greece and Turkey in the NATO in 1952, but also simultaneously the
called approach of two states, constituted points stations (and) for
the Pontian question. They are these parameters “that the Genocide of
Hellenism of Pontos did not acquire the compurgation that it was
imposed it acquires “, as stresses the writer in his import.
On one side because the political climate did not allow is
investigated the crime of mass murders of against Greeks, on the
other side when this became after initiative of scientists and
intellectual as minimal debt against the collective memory, faced a
very hostile environment.
However after fights and efforts of many years from Pont’s
inhabitants of second generation and associations of interior and
abroad, the Greek parliament recognized in 1994 the genocide of
Greeks of Pontos, establishing him 19 May as day of memory and price.
The law on the recognition of mass crime was from an alone him
station in the newer Greek history, that more precious perhaps it had
it offers the Hellenic state to the victims of liquidation from the
historical homeland and to their descendants, the refugees that
reached poor in Greece and nevertheless contributed in the Greek
politician, economic, social and cultural life.
The recognition of genocide by the Parliament of Greeks had a lot of
components and other so much priorities. The protection of the 19 th
May as day of memory of genocide of Greeks of Pontos, “action of duty
to the history and action of responsibility opposite in the newer
generations of Greeks”, her internationalisation in all the levels
(recognition from Turkey, the trespass of rights Pontians that lives
in Turkey and particularly in their place of existence in the
Pontos), the installation of Native of the Pont refugees from the
former Soviet Union in Greece, the documentation of genocide.
For reasons that are known and comprehensible as we reported more and
are connected with interests foreigner with the memory and the real
friendship between the populations the decision of national
delegation on the publication of documents genocide of Greeks of
Pontos, was not materialised immediately. Thus they passed 10 entire
years until the Greek Parliament publishes the book of professor
Konstantinos Fotiadis, which argued the murders of 353000 Greeks in
the Pontos the interval 1916-1923.
The book is separated in 13 chapters which cover the history of
Greeks of Pontos, the ethnological situation in the region, the
Ottoman reforms and the Young Turks arrangement, that was turned
against the Greeks (and the Armenian), program of Mustafa Kemal
arrangement for the crimes in the Pontos. The book includes primary
sources, the result of research of writer in government and owned
files of former USSR, France, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Italy,
Vatican, Society of Nations and Greece, while is mentioned also rich
bibliography in Greek and other languages.
2.The crime
The genocide of Pont’s inhabitants (1916 – 1923) with above 353.000
victims, constitutes a big genocide the 20 th century The term
genocide as it was shaped afterwards the end of second world war,
means the methodical extermination, total or partial, national,
racial or religious team and it is a primary crime, that does not
have interrelation with martial conflicts.
The partial or total annihilation national, racial or religious team
raises, accordingly to the article of 1 special Convention, which has
voted the General Assembly of UN in 1948 in the crime of genocide,
that is different from the crimes of war, after «it does not only
force the martial rules, but the himself it constitutes crime at the
humanity, provided that it refers in concrete individuals or nation,
but concerns entire the humanity “.
Thus the genocide constitutes the heavier crime according to the
international right, for which in deed does not exist prescription.
The one which commits the genocide does not exterminate a team for
something that e you do, but for something that is, s the case of
Greeks of Pontos, because they were Greeks and Christians.
The 19 May 1919 date the arrival of s Moustafa Kemal in the
Samsounta, is the beginning for the second and harder phase of
Genocide. The terrorism, the working battalions, the exiles, the
obliteration of leadership in the Amasia in 1921 , the rapes, the
mass murders, forced the Greeks of Pontos to abandon their homes and
leave after courses, in Greece, in the USSR, Iran, Syria, and
elsewhere (Australia, USA) or as means of self-defence is undertaken
resistance action against the organised drawing of extermination. He
has become henceforth today perceptible that t a victims of genocide
would be very more, if did not exist the guerrilla movement. The
conclusion of Pontian genocide it constitutes violent liquidation
surviving afterwards 1922 -1923.
3. The importance of publication
The recognition of genocide of Greeks of Pontos and the publication
of author’s work of Mr Fwtja’di from the Parliament of Greeks despite
the delay it vindicated Hellenism of Pontos and connected the modern
Hellenism with his past via the collective memory, that is to say
truth. The particular publication of professor Fotiadis is henceforth
a basic element of memory and « it rests with in the Parliament of
Greeks it transmits in the parliaments other countries her intention
to render her respectable memory that of Genocide “. Hellenism of
Pontos is a big and important part of Greek nation and it is not
possible to be ignored from the State and the Greek society. The
safeguarding and the further appointment and internationalisation of
day memory of genocide, which exceeds the Hellenism of Pontos and
penetrate all the Greek society, it constitutes main constitutive
element of institutions and society that are defended the history and
truth. And as lead the bigger, perhaps, Pontian writer, Dimitris
Psathas “it is not allowed we sacrifice the historical truth in no
expediency, as unfortunately, it was established it becomes from the
time that was engraved the said Greek-Turkish friendship. The non
critical silence of makes of History, he was perhaps also one from
their reason s that so much bad headed the ‘ friendship ‘ with Turks.
Throw the veil of oblivion in the past, but dry with, no we hide.
Know also same the Turks what they made their parents, in order to
they avoid what they stigmatised them in the same time who want they
take the place between the civilized nations. Only knowing Turks and
knowing those us and their stigmatised past, can sometimes engrave a
Greek-Turkish friendship on solid bases “.
Destexhe, A., Rwanda and genocide in the Twentieth Century, New York:
New York University Press. 1996, p. 2
Fotiadis, op. cit. Capital I Martyrology 1921, p. 365-419.
Âë. ÖùôéÜäçò, Ê. op.cit. Chapter ÉC¨ p. 457.
Fotiadis, K. op. cit. p.17.
Psathas D. (1953) Ground of Pontos, Athens: Editions of Estia p. 8.
;lang=US

Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada)
June 6, 2004 Sunday Final Edition
Conversations with the dead: The bones of massacre victims have a lot
to say to a forensic anthropologist
by Tom Hawthorn
The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in
Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo by Clea Koff; Knopf Canada;
271 pages; $34.95
One murder is a crime. One hundred murders, or 1,000, or 10,000,
or tens of thousands, are also crimes, although the enormity of the
wrongdoing is so great, so unbelievable, that it becomes possible
for the perpetrators to lie and cover up, making accomplices of so
many others.
Hitler, the mass murderer against whom other monsters are measured,
knew this well. Preparing plans for the extermination of the European
Jews, Hitler notoriously dismissed concerns about future world
opinion. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?” he said. Indeed, when earlier this year Canada’s House
of Commons belatedly condemned those deaths more than eight decades
after the fact, the vote was denounced by the Turkish government and
its supporters as being misinformed and unhelpful.
For survivors and grieving relatives, the horror of murder is
compounded by denying the fact.
Bearing witness is an antidote to such sickness. So, the Holocaust
memoir becomes a genre because it is necessary to count as many
survivors and name as many victims as possible, if we are to take
seriously the solemn promise of “never again.”
Yet, the past decade has provided a brutal awakening for those of
us under age 65 who ever wondered how the world could ignore the
deliberate and organized slaughter of so many people.
In Rwanda, political leaders squawked orders for mass murder over
the radio. In Serbia, otherwise decent people suspended disbelief and
accepted government propaganda denying the existence of mass graves.
In Canada, we tsk-tsked over news of the latest atrocities, our sense
of moral superiority once again affirmed.
Even as a teenager, Clea Koff knew the world’s atrocities demanded
a response from her. Raised in Africa, England and the United
States, this daughter of a Tanzanian mother and American father,
both documentary filmmakers, quips that she learned about the
lumpenproletariat at the supper table before she knew about Bert and
Ernie on television.
Fascinated by the nature of death even as a girl, she collected dead
birds and studied them as prelude to backyard burial.
Koff found inspiration for a career as a forensic anthropologist from
two sources: a television documentary on bodies preserved in the ash
from an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and Clyde Snow’s book, Witnesses
from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell, which describes efforts to
find the remains of the “disappeared” victims of Argentina’s bloody
military junta of the 1970s and 1980s.
“I had known for years that my goal was to help end human rights abuses
by proving to would-be killers that bones can talk,” she writes in The
Bone Woman, a compelling personal chronicle of months spent rooting
around in mass graves.
Koff was sent to Africa in 1996 with the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a United Nations organization formed
to bring the killers to justice. (Koff also worked for ICTY, the
tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.) She works with the remains of
murder victims, of which there is no shortage. The violence in Rwanda
was so widespread that it quickly claimed some 800,000 victims, the
vast majority killed by hand, usually by machete. Imagine every man,
woman and child in Vancouver and Burnaby hacked to death, some left
to rot where they fell, others thrown into pits and covered with dirt.
Koff finds Rwanda a beautiful, verdant land, where the serene setting
of the church at Kibuye masks the horror inflicted and a menace still
not dissipated.
While some skeletons display wounds to the arms and hands, others
bear only the fatal blows.
“The absence of defence wounds gave my image of that massacre an eerie
calmness; did people take the blows as though taking the sacrament?”
She finds herself smiling a lot in Rwanda, an incongruous reaction
to so horrid a killing field. “It is because I see not just death,
about which I can do nothing, but bones and teeth and hair, which I
can do something about …”
Bones offer clues as to age, sex, height, ancestry and cause of
death. Koff and her colleagues scrape away dirt until they uncover
remains, exchanging a pickaxe for a trowel for a pair of chopsticks
for the delicate task of flicking dirt from between finger joints.
A rational scientist, Koff has a poet’s eye in describing her
discoveries, noting in one case how “the big toe phalange (is) chunky
like a baby carrot, the other phalanges more like small licorice
pieces, held in anatomical position by a sock because the flesh of
the foot has decomposed.”
Descriptions of much of her work are not for the faint of heart (and
those now eating breakfast may wish to skip a few paragraphs). Koff
copes daily with ammonia fumes from intestines as well as saponified
remains, a state of decomposition in which skin remains tender. “If
you puncture it, something not dissimilar to cottage cheese came
foaming out …”
The smells of decomposition — “one being sharp and ripe, the other
thick and ‘hairy’ ” — permeates her own clothing, a scent she cannot
avoid even while eating lunch.
These horrors fuel nightmares that she duly records, yet an event
she witnesses causes her greater distress.
One fine evening as Koff dines al fresco on the shores of Lake Kivu,
her reverie is disturbed by a sickening sight: two desperate men
in the water being shot to death by uniformed Rwandan soldiers. “I
couldn’t conceive of which ‘side’ they were on, which side we were
thought to be on, or, indeed, if there were any sides.”
Seeking explanation, she is told the dead men were insurgents from
Zaire. The information is useless, for she has no means of judging
its accuracy.
“I hated the impotence of not being able to do more than just report
the killings and I hated the fear I now felt for my own life, even
though the bullets
hadn’t been directed at me or my teammates. And, insult upon insult,
I hated the fact I got to leave this place so easily.”
The Bone Woman was written from Koff’s journal entries, a strength
in retelling the small incidents of her labours, a weakness when
recounting the petty disputes one expects among colleagues working in
such hostile and unpalatable circumstances. She dislikes the teasing
she endures from teammates after telling a Reuter reporter that she
talks to the uncovered skeletons: “We’re coming. We’re coming to
take you out.” Her complaint is so overshadowed by the enormity of
the crimes in which she works daily as to seem callow and naive. Her
reaction is understandable perhaps for someone who marks her 24th
birthday literally up to her elbows in viscera.
Koff also exhumes bodies from mass graves in the former Yugoslavia
(“where the people who committed the crimes we would be uncovering
were still at large”) at Cerska, Nova Kasaba and a rubbish pit at
Ovcara, where missing men from the hospital at Vukovar had been dumped.
“These bodies, by their very presence, were dismantling years of the
perpetrators’ propaganda that the grave didn’t exist, that the missing
men were probably larking about in Italy, that a crime against humanity
hadn’t taken place five years earlier,” she writes.
Her work does not so much bring resolution to the crime, by uncovering
the assailant and having them punished, as restore the humanity to
those whose lives were taken. Long after the book is closed, a reader
remembers the woman in Rwanda with plastic pink necklaces; the hospital
patient who secreted his X rays in his clothing (for identification
after death? because he believed he was going to another hospital?);
the boy in Kosovo whose grave held marbles, a child’s plaything and
a reminder of our necessary outrage at his murder.
Tom Hawthorn is a Victoria reporter who last reviewed Conrad Black’s
biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Times Colonist.

Migrant loved family and his motorcycle
by Nicolle Nazarstian
Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
June 7, 2004 Monday
Mardiros Hatsakortzian
Refugee and family man
Born: 1910-1912
Died: May 3, 2004
MARDIROS Hatsakortzian led a simple life, its world revolving around
his family and its affairs.
But this quiet man, who was somewhat of a loner, reached minor fame
for thousands of people in the Armenian and Greek communities.
You only had to say his name to evoke instant images for which he was
synonymous — Station Pier, Port Melbourne, the Anzac Day march,
ringing of the St John’s church bell at Carlton, but, above all else,
his beloved Triumph motorcycle with its Armenian flag.
These are what Mardiros will always be remembered for.
Although known by many, very few people knew him well. He was an odd
man with an eccentric streak, which made him hard to get to know.
He was a God-fearing man, with remarkably simple tastes reflected in
all facets of his life, right down to the clothes he wore and the
food he ate.
He was very humble, but at times proud and stubborn. Religious, but
at times a rogue. Not even something as simple as his true age was
clear.
He was born between 1910 and 1912 in Dikranaged, a town on the
Armenian/Turkish border, the youngest of seven siblings.
World War I broke out and the then Turkish Ottoman Government used
the opportunity to exercise its form of ethnic cleansing against more
than a million Armenians living in the border towns and provinces
between the two countries. It became known as the Armenian Genocide.
His father, Tateyos, who had a haberdashery stall in the town’s
market, died as a result of the violence, as did many of his
neighbours.
In the chaos and whirlwind of those events, for his own safety and
survival, his mother placed Mardiros and his youngest sister in an
Armenian orphanage.
Like millions of his country’s people, he became a refugee. The
refugees spilled out to different parts of the world.
>>From about age seven, Mardiros spent the next 10-12 years in
orphanages and international relief missions throughout the Middle
East. Some were no more than tent camps, where he lived for months at
a time with thousands of other children.
He spent seven years in a Greek orphanage, from which came his love
affair with its people and traditions.
None were more loved than the blessing of the waters ritual, which
explains why in early January every year he dived into the Port
Melbourne water and raced for the cross with men less than half his
age.
At about 18, Mardiros left Greece for Egypt and eventually made his
way to Palestine by 1937. There he married Jeanette, who was 14 years
old.
When World War II began, he joined the Royal Electric Mechanical
Engineers of the British army as a fitter and turner.
It was during this time that he discovered his true love and passion:
motorcycles. It was also where he acquired the electrical and
mechanical skills that enabled him to come up with so many crazy
inventions many years later.
His two daughters were born during the war years, after which he
worked as a transport driver before migrating to Australia in 1963
and settling in Blackburn.
In Melbourne, Mardiros worked for Wormald Security alongside his
son-in-law for 15 years before retiring in 1978.
After retiring, he could almost always be found in his garage
tinkering with his motorcycle or the family Mazda, or doing something
to drive Jeanette crazy, like painting all the outdoor fittings on
their property in the colours of the Armenian flag.
Unbelievably, it was only this year, aged well into his 90s, that he
failed to dive for the cross.
I can vividly recall being with him the previous year on the pier
with hundreds of other people, all wanting to shake the hand of an
old man who had just come out of the water wearing nothing but his
underwear and a wooden crucifix.
Uncharacteristically, he made a point of wanting me to be there to
see him that year.
You could see it in his eyes on that warm, sunny day — he was tired
now, and you couldn’t help but sense that he knew this was the last
time.
Nicolle Nazarstian
(granddaughter)

Russian ex-premier Yevgeniy Primakov warns against anti-Americanism
NTV Mir, Moscow
6 Jun 04
Russia has maintained its opposition to US policy on Iraq, but has
wisely avoided a damaging lapse into anti-Americanism, ex-premier
Yevgeniy Primakov told Russian NTV Mir television.
Primakov said Moscow had been against US policy on Iraq in
circumvention of the UN from the very start, and “we have stuck to
our position”.
“But if we had allowed this policy to develop into anti-Americanism,
we would have lost out… Could you imagine antiterrorist activity
against international terrorism – this is the main threat – being
pursued without the Americans? Could it be done? Could we now seek to
do something against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
without the Americans?”
Primakov, who heads the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
denied Russian business interests in Iraq had suffered as a result
of the US-led war.
“I just want to say that it was necessary to prevent this from
developing into an anti-American tendency. What would we have
achieved? A return to the cold war? Would you have withstood an arms
race, I ask you now?” he said rhetorically on the “Orange Juice”
interview programme.
Primakov told presenter Vladimir Solovyev he had just been to the
Armenian capital, Yerevan, for a children’s festival and he did not
think that a conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia was imminent as
“everyone understands” that peaceful methods are needed.
Territorial integrity, he said, is an “incontrovertible value”, and
“today one must speak of self-determination without it necessarily
leading to separation”.