Author: Felekian Ara

Council of Europe Slams Kocharian~Rs Constitutional Reform

Radio Free Europe, Czech Rep
May 31 2005

31/05/2005 10:52

President Robert Kocharian and his leading allies were meeting
late Monday to discuss harsh criticism of their draft amendments
to Armenia’s constitution which has been voiced by a key Council of
Europe body.

The so-called Venice Commission, which monitors legislative reform in
the human rights organization’s member states, expressed on Friday its
“deep dissatisfaction” with the latest version of those amendments. It
warned that the Armenian authorities should put more significant
curbs on Kocharian’s sweeping powers if they want to forge closer
links with Europe.

“The members of the Venice Commission’s Working Group on constitutional
reform in Armenia expressed their deep dissatisfaction with this
text, as most of the Commission’s comments have not been taken into
consideration,” the commission said in a statement.

The statement quoted one of the members of the group, Kaarlo Tuori,
as saying: “The draft constitutional amendments need to be drastically
revised before they undergo the second reading.”

The constitutional package was approved by the Armenian parliament,
dominated by Kocharian’s loyalists, in the first reading on May 11.
It is a slightly revised version of the draft amendments that were
unveiled by Kocharian and his three-party governing coalition last
November.

In a report last December, Venice Commission experts said “more
significant amendments” are needed for putting in place an effective
system of checks and balances between the government branches in
Armenia.

Their recommendations would in particular give more powers to the
National Assembly, seriously limit the president’s controversial
authority to appoint and sack virtually all judges and make the mayor
of Yerevan an elected official. The Armenian authorities have so far
been reluctant to embrace such changes.

The Venice Commission warned that if their recommendations are not
“fully” accepted by the authorities “the whole constitutional reform
process would fail to bring Armenia closer to European values and
attain the aim of further European integration.”

The issue apparently topped the agenda Kocharian’s meeting on Monday
with leaders of the three parties represented in his government. One of
them, deputy parliament speaker Tigran Torosian, strongly criticized
the Council of Europe body. “While accepting their questioning,
I think that their reaction is not adequate,” he told RFE/RL before
the meeting.

Torosian argued that Venice Commission experts should have reserved
judgment on the issue until after their visit to Yerevan which is
scheduled to start on Thursday. He said the parliament has yet to
debate the amendments in the second and final reading and could change
them as a result.

Torosian, who has personally dealt with the Venice Commission, went
on to accuse the Council of Europe of trying to “equate” Armenia
with Azerbaijan. “I am certain that this statement can be used for
political aims by other organizations,” he said without elaborating.

Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian was far more cautious in his reaction
to the embarrassing criticism. “I think a lot has been that in that
direction,” he told reporters, referring to constitutional reform. “We
are still not where the Europeans would like us to be. That is why
we have to work.”

Constitutional reform was one of the conditions for Armenia’s hard-won
accession to the Council of Europe in January 2001. In a resolution
adopted last September, the organization’s Parliamentary Assembly
(PACE) gave Yerevan until June to hold the repeatedly delayed
constitutional referendum. Armenian officials reportedly told PACE
leaders in April that the vote will likely take place in late July
or early August.

PETER BALAKIAN DELIVERS IN LEBANON LECTURES DEDICATED TO ARMENIAN
GENOCIDE

ATTENTION: CORRECTED VERSION OF THE MAY 27 MATERIAL BEIRUT, MAY 30,
NOYAN TAPAN. On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide and the 50th foundation anniversary of the Lebanon Haykazian
University, lectures about the Armenian Genocide of Peter Balakian, an
American Armenian writer and researcher, took place on May 23 and 24
by the joint organization of the Haykazian University and the US
Embassy in Lebanon. Areg Hovhannisian, the RA Ambassador to Lebanon
and the US Charge d’Affaires were present at the lecture which took
place in the hall of the first Evangelic Church of Beirut on May
24. As Noyan Tapan was informed from the Press Center of the State
Commision on organizing events dedicated to the 90th anniversary of
the Armenian Genocide, the next day, on May 25, Peter Balakian visited
the Embassy of Armenia in Lebanon accompanied by representatives of
the Haykazian University’s lecturers’ and professors’ staff. At the
end of the meeting, Ambassador Areg Hovhannisian presented Peter
Balakian a souvenir.

Le Figaro
30 mai 2005

Rene Hovivian, dit Hoviv

par Armelle Heliot

Rene Hovivian dit Hoviv, dessinateur de presse et auteur de nombreux
ouvrages, chroniques du temps, s’est eteint des suites d’un cancer a
son domicile de Clamart, dans la nuit de vendredi a samedi. Il avait
75 ans.

TEXTE-ARTICLE:

On le sait, un dessin de presse dit souvent plus long qu’un
editorial. Hoviv etait de ces plumes-la : celles qui saisissent en un
instant l’absurdite d’une situation et la traduisent en une scène
souvent drôle, parfois mechante. Dessinateur, il aura travaille au
Herisson, a Paris-Match, mais c’est sans doute au Quotidien de Paris
auprès de Philippe Tesson qu’il aura connu les annees les plus
heureuses de son travail.

Hoviv avait le coeur tendre et beaucoup de malice. La vie lui avait
appris a etre corrosif. Ne en France en 1929, Rene Hovivian et ses
parents eurent a subir l’episode ubuesque du retour au pays qui
tourna a la catastrophe pour de nombreux Armeniens exiles. L’URSS en
1947, deux ans après la guerre, avait eu besoin de faire revenir les
Armeniens de France, comme ceux exiles au Liban ou en Italie.
Beaucoup revèrent de ce retour au pays aime. Mais très vite les
autorites sovietiques ne purent supporter ce peuple de haute et
ancienne culture… et on envoya bon nombre d’entre eux en Siberie.

A Moscou, où il frequentait les intellectuels, on somma un jour Rene
Hovivian de deguerpir dans les soixante-douze heures. Ayant conserve
la nationalite francaise, Hoviv finit par obtenir un billet d’avion,
et c’est miracle si sa famille put revenir en France.

De telles aventures vous forgent un caractère. Et alimentent une
lucidite certaine. L’anticommunisme d’Hoviv etait fonde. Et son
talent sûr. Il avait très tôt suivi des cours de dessin et frequente
l’Ecole des beaux-arts de Lyon.

Fidèle en amitie, toujours attentif aux autres, il a publie une
vingtaine d’ouvrages qui etaient autant de chroniques du temps qui
passe, du monde comme il va. Hoviv n’etait agressif qu’en politique.
Il aimait les humains, jusque dans leurs illusions, comme le montrent
ses albums : C’est l’epoque qui veut ca ou bien Y a-t-il un pilote
dans l’avion ? sans oublier Les Kamarades…

–Boundary_(ID_W+DjHc6Edtzf2FqLZcJyIQ)–

Deployment of peacekeepers out of question, NKR president says

30.05.2005 11:13

YEREVAN (YERKIR) – “Deployment of peacekeepers in Nagorno Karabakh
is out of the question; the ceasefire has been maintained for over
11 years,” Nagorno Karabakh Republic President Arkady Ghukasian
said commenting on media reports that Ukraine was ready to dispatch
peacekeeping troops to the conflict zone, Armenpress reported.

Ghukasian dismissed as perplexing those statements, noting that
negotiations are under way to settle the issue. “Negotiations are a
complicated process and it cannot be clearly said today which stage
we are at because of Azerbaijan’s destructive position — to get
everything without conceding anything,” he added.

Azerbaijan, Georgia in talks over Russian arms redeployment – envoy

Trend news agency
27 May 05

Baku, 27 May, Trend correspondent E. Huseynov: The Azerbaijani
leadership is holding consultations with Tbilisi to prevent the
redeployment of a part of Russian property and military hardware from
Georgia to Armenia, Ramiz Hasanov, Azerbaijani ambassador to Georgia,
has told Trend.

He said that the Azerbaijani side understands Georgia’s interest in a
speedy withdrawal of Russian troops from their country, but for Baku
it also matters to where they will be redeployed.

“They must not end up in Armenia. Therefore, we are constantly
discussing this issue with Tbilisi,” the envoy said.

Hasanov added that the withdrawal of heavy hardware from the Russian
bases had not started yet, and only ammunition was being redeployed.

[Passage omitted: chief of the Russian General Staff said recently
that Russian bases would be withdrawn form Georgia]

The Desert Sun, CA
May 27 2005

Where’s the accountability in Armenian genocide?

Lillie D. Merigian
Special to The Desert Sun
May 27, 2005

Even as we move ahead into the 21st century, civilized man needs to
commemorate the tragedy of man’s inhumanity to man.
The paradox only begins there. We who have devised so many ways of
honoring our dead – mourning, eulogizing, memorializing, martyring –
have yet to find viable means of preventing the deliberate
annihilation of one group of human beings by another. We have yet to
establish a permanent mechanism of rectification for those who
suffered and survived the horror of such outrageous acts.

April 24 marked the 90th anniversary of the genocide of 1.5 million
Armenian people who were mercilessly slaughtered on their
2,500-year-old homeland by the Ottoman Turkish Government in 1915.

Henry P. Morgenthau, American ambassador to Turkey at that time,
wrote the following account in his autobiography in a chapter titled
“Murder of a Nation”: “The facts contained in the reports received at
the Embassy from absolutely trustworthy eyewitnesses surpass the most
beastly and diabolical cruelties ever before perpetrated or imagined
in the history of the world.”

Less than 30 years later, Adolph Hitler looked askance and said to
his military hierarchy, “Who nowadays still talks of the
extermination of the Armenians?” The first genocide of the 20th
century was a devastating blow to a people whose cultural roots
predate the second millennium. Those who survived or escaped the
ravages of the genocide fled to other lands where their indomitable
spirits sustained and revitalized them. But the scars and the pain of
remembrance remain eternal.

American poet-philosopher George Santyana has said, “Those who forget
the past are condemned to relive it.”

Can there by any doubt that if the civilized world had taken
stringent action against the Turkish government in 1915, Hitler would
have dared to attempt the eradication of European Jews?

Genocide is a crime that has no statutory limitations. The moral,
psychological, and political impact does not diminish with the
passage of time. Monuments and commemorations for the victims of past
injustices are grim reminders to a few, but meaningless deterrents to
those who blatantly violate human rights as an expedient means to
achieve their ends. (Note those in recent history: Cambodia,
Indonesia, Iraq, Rwanda and the Sudan). Neither political expediency
nor solicitous silence must prevail over morality or human rights.

Today, 90 years after the Armenian genocide, no world court has
convened; no judge or jury has heard the charges against the Turkish
Republic, which is the responsible successor to the Ottoman
government. The Armenians have yet to have their Nuremberg. The
Armenian case remains unresolved.

Just as there are those who have labeled the Nazi Holocaust of the
Jews a “hoax,” there is an equally unconscionable effort by the
Turkish government to distort and deny the truth about the planned,
systematic genocide of 1.5 million Armenians.

The governments of France, Belgium, Sweden, Italy and the European
Commission have openly acknowledged the Armenian genocide. The United
States, a world superpower, continues to give in to Turkish
intimidation by failing to acknowledge the Armenian genocide as such,
opting not to antagonize a “loyal NATO ally.”

Today, Turkey is trying desperately to be admitted into the European
Union. It is doing everything to skirt the genocide issue while
trying to make it look as if it is interested in “studying the matter
further” to gain E.U. favor.

Civilized nations need to defy inhumane acts of governments and not
implicitly or explicitly condone these acts by looking the other way
or accept them in the time-honored, but highly perverted name of
“national interest.” The dignity of mankind must not suffer
degradation at the whim and will of madmen, and human rights must not
be cast aside by the misplaced priorities of modern governments.

Who nowadays still talks of the extermination of the Armenians?
Armenians do. And they will not let history be rewritten or
forgotten.

Lillie D. Merigian is a resident of Palm Springs.

Bangkok Post, Thailand
May 27 2005

Turkish democracy under fire

Ankara _ Turkey came under fire yesterday for halting a landmark
conference questioning the official line on the mass killings of
Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, as EU diplomats warned that
Ankara’s democratic credentials had taken a serious blow.

Istanbul’s prestigious Bogazici University, where the gathering was
to open on Wednesday, put off the event after Justice Minister Cemil
Cicek accused the participants _ Turkish academics and intellectuals
who dispute Ankara’s version of the 1915-1917 massacres _ of
“treason”.

Mr Cicek condemned the initiative as “a stab in the back to the
Turkish nation” and said the organisers deserved to be prosecuted.
The killings, one of the most controversial episodes in Ottoman
history, is rarely discussed in schools and the aborted conference
would have been the first by Turkish personalities to question the
official stand on the events.

Several countries have recognised the massacres as genocide _ a
theory Turkey fiercely rejects _ and Brussels has urged Ankara to
face its past and expand freedom of speech.

“The remarks of the justice minister are unacceptable. This is an
authoritarian approach raising questions over Turkey’s reform
process,” a diplomat from an EU country said on condition of
anonymity.

“Now it is a real watershed. We expect government action to correct
Mr Cicek’s remarks,” he said. “It’s up to the government to decide
what to do. Doing nothing would also be a choice, but certainly not
in favour of Turkey’s EU membership prospects.” The incident follows
a brutal police clampdown on a women’s demonstration in Istanbul in
March, which raised tensions between Turkey and the EU.

It also coincides with increasing criticism at home that Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, a conservative movement
with Islamist roots, has lost its reform drive since winning a date
in December for accession talks scheduled to start on Oct 3.

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
May 25 2005

ASLA must redesign center

By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

GLENDALE– The city has sent the Armenian Society of Los Angeles back
to the drawing board to dramatically alter plans for a new
53,000-square-foot center, which had received the support of city
staff.
The Redevelopment Agency made up of City Council members voted 3-2
Tuesday to deny the nonprofit organization stage-one approval for its
plans and to send the project back for a complete redesign, saying it
would be incompatible with the neighborhood. The plans, which had
received approval from the design review board, will once again have
to be presented to the board.

Mayor Rafi Manoukian and Councilmen Dave Weaver and Bob Yousefian
said they wanted to see the building’s square footage and height
reduced.

“It’s incompatible. The architecture doesn’t fit. It’s tall, it’s out
of place, so I cannot support it,” Weaver said. “It’s a moneymaker
thing and I don’t think I have an obligation to help an organization
grow. Putting in a 20,000-square-foot building, double what they
originally had, OK, I can do that.”

The 49-year-old organization with 600 members had plans to build a
contemporary structure with glass, metal and stone at 117 S. Louise,
city-owned land given to the group in exchange for its property on
South Brand Boulevard.

Plans included a four-story, 53,100-square-foot cultural center with
a theater, art gallery, library, classrooms, banquet facilities,
gymnasium, administrative offices and storage rooms.

ASLA officials had hoped to begin construction late this year and
complete the project by late 2006.

The group — which has a Saturday school, an 80-member choir and a
theater group — was forced to move from its 11,000-square-foot home
at 221 S. Brand Blvd., which is on the Americana at Brand project
site.

The Redevelopment Agency approved a $5 million deal with the
organization to exchange properties, including setting aside $250,000
to help the ASLA pay for temporary space during construction. The
city has offered the group a 6,300-square-foot office at 320 W.
Wilson Ave.

ASLA president Tomik Alexanian said he felt the organization is
getting the run-around.

“We can’t conduct our business, we might lose members, and now I’m
hearing we might be delayed because there might be issues,” he said.
“We are under humongous pressure to answer members on why there are
delays. What assurance do we have to continue our business and save
this 50-year-old society?”

The pastor and several members of the Glendale Presbyterian Church,
which would be neighbors of the new ASLA, expressed concerns about
the new large center, the planned banquet facility, and the impacts
it would have on their church.

“We continue to believe the project is too massive for the site
itself and would have a number of adverse effects on the
neighborhood,” said Pastor Ken Baker. “We’re urging the board to
re-evaluate the project, scaling it back to 20,000 square feet, which
we feel would be much more compatible with the neighborhood and the
neighbors themselves.”

Councilman Frank Quintero was the only councilman to support the
organization’s plans for a center nearly five times its original
size.

“This was a nonprofit that was forced to move out. Now, we have an
organization that wants to grow, so the fact that they want to build
a larger facility makes sense to me,” he said. “I see no reason to
deny them the ability to build a larger facility. They’re entitled to
it. I have no doubt that they’re going to be an excellent neighbor.”

Pan Armenian News

RUSSIAN ANALYST: KARABAKH SITUATION SHOULD BE RESOLVED

25.05.2005 04:50

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ When responding to the question whether the creation of
the security belt around Nagorno Karabakh has been justified, President of
Strategy Saint Petersburg Center for Humanitarian and Political Studies
Alexander Sungurovstated, `You know, I have not been there but I am aware
that these were the regions from where the Armenian villages of Karabakh
were bombarded. Due to this reason these territories were meant to be taken
under control.’ In Alexander Sungurov’s words, if approaching the issue from
the pure military viewpoint everything is all right. However from the
position of peace, these are places where people used to live. One should
think of the opposite party as of people, he added. The present situation is
the reflection of the military operations and bloodshed and it should be
resolved, IA Regnum reports

A1plus

| 17:39:11 | 23-05-2005 | Politics |

DEPUTIES SLEEP IN THE NA HALL

This week the NA will have to listen to many reports. The RA NA Chamber of
Control, National TV and Radio Companies Council, the Central Bank, and the
Stock Committee will represent their reports of 2004.

Nevertheless, at the very first day of work the deputies preferred to
discuss about 17 international treaties. And as far as this discussion does
not demand hard work, after having secured the necessary quorum the deputies
left the hall, and the issues were discussed by no more than 10 deputies.

The deputies were so relaxed that there was even a ridiculous case took
place. While representing one of the international treaties, angry with the
question of a delegate, one of the deputy Ministers called them `not to wake
up from deep sleep and ask question’. The answer of NA deputy President
Vahan Hovhannisyan was more than surprising, `I support those who sleep in
the hall. The other delegates sleep God knows where’.