Author: Felekian Ara

Armenian foreign minister says Warsaw talks “productive”, next one on 12 May

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
30 Apr 04

The meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents [Robert
Kocharyan and Ilham Aliyev] in Warsaw will give a boost to future
negotiations, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan has said. The
Armenian foreign minister said that the second meeting between the two
presidents was more productive than the first one which was for
familiarization purposes.

The second meeting was more productive because the presidents could
talk about a settlement of the conflict. Oskanyan said that the
presidents themselves were positive about the meeting and noted their
intention to continue to hold meetings.

Vardan Oskanyan also said that the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers will have their next meeting in Strasbourg on 12-13 May. We
shall continue with the talks which started in Prague.

Vardan Oskanyan said that the recent meeting between the presidents
and their instructions to the foreign ministers will give a new
impetus to the process.

The Daily Star, Lebanon
May 4 2004

Accusations fly as ballot counts still not complete
Parties tout their own numbers

By Leila Hatoum
Special to The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Despite an announcement that the Interior Ministry would
declare the official election results by Monday afternoon, ballots were
still being counted as The Daily Star went to press, although the
sorting process was concluded.

The delay was attributed to the outdated manual counting system adopted
for municipal elections. National Liberal Party leader Dory Chamoun
commented sarcastically on the delays in issuing the official results
by saying, “maybe it is a difficult dish to cook.”

“Some said that ballot boxes were tampered with; others say that there
was a mistake in counting, and they had to start all over again,” said
Chamoun.

A Lebanese Forces (LF) member close to Qornet Shehwan said that the
delay did not concern the party as they had calculated their own
unofficial results.

Lebanese Forces press spokeswoman Antoinette Geagea said the LF,
“without exaggeration, have scored well in the elections in many areas
such as Damour, Motelleh, Naameh, etc.”

Meanwhile, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) was not sure of the final
results, as the counting system they were using to count unofficial
votes broke down during the process.

“I still haven’t received any details regarding the results,” said
Elias Zoghbi, the FPM media representative, dismissing forgery as the
cause of the delay.

“It is slow for us because the machines broke down and for the
authorities, I guess because of the manual process they are still
following,” Zoghbi added.

In contrast, an FPM source who asked to remain anonymous said that the
results were against the opposition because of many factors – one of
which was the issue of the naturalized citizens who came from various
districts to cast their votes.

“Some got to vote more than once,” said the source, who explained that
FPM representatives had seen an Armenian voting in Zalka while using
falsified identification.

Again, more education

The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland
and Putnam Counties in New York.
(Original publication: May 4, 2004)
It is difficult to understand the second, most recent “hate crime” act
in the Pearl River School District.

A swastika, sexually explicit phrases and racist graffiti were drawn
on chalkboard at the Middle School, just a month after hate symbols
were discovered on a wall at the high school.

While these deplorable, deeply regrettable and awfully ignorant
moments have not been legally termed hate crimes under newer state
legislation, that is what they are, bias-based.

The hope is that the incidents are aberrations, that there will not be
any more of this in the Pearl River district, in any other school in
Rockland, in store bathrooms and at bus stops, etc.

What lesson do we offer Iraq and the rest of the world when we do not
address our own prejudices?

For decades at least, drawing swastikas and writing racist or
ethnic-disparaging comment has been the work of children and adults
who should know better, who should know the history of horror in the
world.

Horror such as the Holocaust; horror such as the lynchings of blacks;
horror such as the torture and mass executions in Cambodia, of the
Armenians, in the Crusades and in all too many paces in the
present-day world.

While education cannot always reform the ignorant who does not want to
know and understand history, it is vital that we as adults, as
parents, as citizens, as neighbors and as teachers and writers and
others do the utmost to educate the young and the ignorant.

The bad moments in world and U.S. history must be graphically
presented, with a full balance that seeks to show reform. In Rockland,
the great diversity that is this county, and which has been its
history since the beginning, must be discussed in the schools and in
the homes.

There is much to discuss in this county. Within the past few months, a
menorah in a Pearl River park was overturned, a Christian religious
statue in Monsey was toppled and a Congers neighborhood was terrorized
with hate literature and a cross burning.

This is not the Rockland we wish.

Following the latest incident in the Pearl River Schools, the district
sent parents and staff a letter on the same day that a Holocaust
survivor spoke to 10th-graders in response to swastikas scrawled on a
corridor wall outside the high school classroom of two Jewish teachers
in mid-March.

The most recent hate crime was back in April, but district spokesman
Sandy Cokeley Pedersen said it wanted “to give time for the
investigation, understanding that once this becomes public knowledge,
it drastically diminishes the chance of getting any kind of admission.

Orangetown police are conducting their own investigation, and our
opinion is that if the culprits are caught, they must be held
accountable. This second incident is just too much.

The primary goal, though, should be more education for all of us so
that bias incidents do not happen in the first place.

ArmenPress
May 4 2004

CENTRAL BANK ADMITS SALE OF GOLD RESERVES

YEREVAN, MAY 4, ARMENPRESS: The Central Bank of Armenia has
confirmed today reports that it sold the country’s gold reserves of
about 1.4 tons. The Bank would not disclose the details of the deal,
which took place at the end of last year.
Today Central Bank governor, Tigran Sarkisian, said the decision
to sell the country’s gold reserves was based on an earlier decision
of the Bank that “high correlation between gold and the euro means
that even without gold in international reserves the necessary level
of diversification can be maintained and at the same time the yield
of international reserves can be raised.”
Sarkisian said gold reserves remained unchanged at around 1,396
kg, which on October 1 2003 was estimated at $17.1 million (3.65% of
Armenia’s international reserves of $468.7 million).
Dealers were instructed to sell the entire gold reserves when the
price for one ounce was $380, but the they sold it when the price
went up to $400, bringing Armenia $3 billion Drams in extra profits.
Sarkisian said the deal was very profitable, as all the raised money
went to the budget.
Sarkisian argued that gold reserves are considered as a means of
wealth accumulation, “but Armenia is not in a condition to do so, as
gold reserves yield virtually no profits and in any case Armenia will
have to pay its foreign debt in hard currency.”
Armenia’s international reserves, already without gold, totaled
$512 million on April 1 2004, while the country’s foreign debt has
amounted to over $1 billion.

New Yorker, NY
April 26 2004

DEPT. OF STYLE
WORD PROBLEM
Issue of 2004-05-03

Among the many peculiarities of Times house style – such as the
tradition, in the Book Review, that the word `odyssey’ refer only to
a journey that begins and ends in the same place – one of the more
nettlesome has been the long-standing practice that writers are not
supposed to call the Armenian genocide of 1915 a genocide. Reporters
at the paper have used considerable ingenuity to avoid the word
(`Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915,’ `the tragedy’) and have
sometimes added evenhanded explanations that pleased many Turks but
drove Armenian readers to distraction: `Armenians say vast numbers of
their countrymen were massacred. The Turks argue that the killings
occurred in partisan fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.’

The quirk was not strictly policed, and a small number of writers,
intentionally or otherwise, managed to get the phrase into the paper.
Ben Ratliff wrote, in 2001, that the Armenian-American metal band
System of a Down `wrote an enraged song about the Armenian genocide
of 1915.’ Another writer who slipped it in was Bill Keller, in a 1988
piece from Yerevan, during his time at the paper’s Moscow bureau:
`Like the Israelis, the Armenians are united by a vivid sense of
victimization, stemming from the 1915 Turkish massacre of 1.5 million
Armenians. Armenians are brought up on this story of genocide.’

Keller, who became the paper’s executive editor last July, finally
changed the policy earlier this month. During a telephone
conversation the other day, he said that his reporting in Armenia and
Azerbaijan `made me wary of reciting the word `genocide’ as a casual
accusation, because in the various ethnic conflicts that arose as the
Soviet Union came apart everyone was screaming genocide at everyone
else.’ He said, `You could portray a fair bit of the horror of 1915
without using the word `genocide.’ It’s one of those heavy-artillery
words that can get diminished if you use them too much.’

Most scholars use the United Nations definition of genocide, from the
1948 Genocide Convention: killing or harming people `with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group.’ But, Keller says, `we were using a dictionary
definition that was the purist definition – to eliminate all of a race
of people from the face of the earth.’ The Times’ position was based
on the notion that the systematic killing that began in 1915 applied
mainly to Armenians inside the Ottoman Empire.

Last July, the Boston Globe started using the term, which, Keller
says, `made me think, this seems like a relic we could dispense
with.’ In January, the Times ran a story about the release in Turkey
of `Ararat,’ Atom Egoyan’s 2002 movie about the events of 1915. The
piece, which referred to `widely differing’ Turkish and Armenian
positions, prompted Peter Balakian, a professor of humanities at
Colgate, and Samantha Power, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
book `A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,’ to write
a stinging letter to the editor. Balakian also got in touch with
Daniel Okrent, the paper’s new public editor, asking if he and Power
could come in and talk to the Times about the genocide style problem.
Okrent found the issue `intellectually interesting and provocative
enough that I thought Keller and Siegal’ – Allan M. Siegal, the paper’s
standards editor – `might be interested.’ Balakian and Power, joined by
Robert Melson, a Holocaust survivor and Purdue professor, met Keller
in his office on March 16th. Before the meeting started, Keller told
the group that he was going to make the change. `A lot of reputable
scholarship has expanded that definition to include a broader range
of crimes,’ Keller said later. `I don’t feel I’m particularly
qualified to judge exactly what a precise functional definition of
genocide is, but it seemed a no-brainer that killing a million people
because they were Armenians fit the definition.’

Siegal drew up new guidelines. `It was a nerdy decision on the
merits,’ he said. Writers can now use the word `genocide,’ but they
don’t have to. As the guidelines say, `While we may of course report
Turkish denials on those occasions where they are relevant, we should
not couple them with the historians’ findings, as if they had equal
weight.’ Okrent pointed out that `the pursuit of balance can create
imbalance, because sometimes something is true.’ Although the word
`genocide’ was not coined until 1944, a Times reporter in Washington
in 1915 described State Department reports showing that `the Turk has
undertaken a war of extermination on Armenians.’ You might say it has
been a kind of odyssey.

– Gary Bass

ArmenPress
April 24 2004

KOCHARIAN LEAVES FOR PARIS APRIL 25

YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS: Armenian president Robert Kocharian
is leaving for Paris on April 25 on a working visit. Kocharian’s
press office said that in Paris he will have a meeting with president
Jacques Chirac. President Kocharian and Mrs. Bella Kocharian will
also attend a concert of world famous singer Charles Aznavour at
Palais de Congres. Armenian president will also confer with the chief
manager of French Bouig company Olivier Bouig.
On April 27 the Armenian delegation, consisting also of foreign
minister Vartan Oskanian and trade and economic development minister
Karen Chshmaritian, will leave for Poland to participate in the World
Economic Forum.
President Kocharian will take part in the meeting titled the
Caucasus and will attend the opening of the plenary session. On the
sidelines of the Forum Kocharian will meet with its executive
president Klaus Schwab. In Warsaw Kocharian is scheduled to meet also
with president Alexander Kwasniewski and his Georgian counterpart
Mikhail Saakashvili.

ArmenPress
April 23 2004

PRIME MINISTER ADDRESSES NATION ON OCCASION OF 89-TH ANNIVERSARY OF
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

YEREVAN, APRIL 23, ARMENPRESS: In a message to the nation on the
occasion of the 89-th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian
prime minister Andranik Margarian said the massacres of Armenians in
1915, planned and carried out by the government of the Ottoman Turkey
was a crime against the civilized humanity, which was not prevented,
recognized and condemned at that time, serving as a precedent of
impunity for repetition of future such crimes.
The message says that Armenia hails the united efforts of the
international community aimed to prevent repetition of new genocides
regarding it as one of its foreign policy priorities. “The geography
of nations and parliaments which have officially acknowledged the
Armenian genocide is expanding, which is a key prerequisite for
preventing future such crimes, for strengthening the international
security system and promoting dialogue among civilizations,” the
message says.
It runs further that the protracted policy of denial or distortion
of the historical truth, adopted by heirs of perpetrators of the 1915
genocide who are trying to send it to oblivion is an evidence of
their failure to surmount the feeling of inferiority which cannot
help establish the environment of co-existence and meet the demands
of the modern world. “The climate of impunity is fraught with new
repetitions of such crimes at any moment at any corner of the globe,”
the message says.
“Today when Armenians throughout the world pay tribute to the
memory of thousands of innocent victims of 1915 massacres we once
again underline that Armenia wants to see Turkey a nation free of its
past burden, wants it to give up its policy of denial to become a
country truly coveting to integrate with the family of civilized
European nations,” the message runs.
The prime minister says then that next year will mark the 90-th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide and the 6-th anniversary of the
end of one of the bloodiest wars, WW II, suggesting that the year of
2005 be declared A Year of Commemoration of and Struggle Against
Wars, Genocides, Deportations and Abuse of Human Rights.
The message also says that the issue of the international
recognition of the Armenian genocide and its condemnation will remain
on Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. It says that concurrently Armenia
reaffirms its desire to have natural relations with all its neighbors
and its resolution to build a strong and prosperous country.
“I am confident that Armenia will make its contribution to global
efforts together with other nations for building a just and safe
world,” the message concludes.

The Moscow Times
Friday, Apr. 23, 2004. Page 8

Recognizing Armenia’s Past and Its Present

By Kim Iskyan

Saturday is the 89th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, a dark episode of
history indelibly carved into the souls of the 5 million people of Armenian
descent scattered throughout the world and the 2.5 million people living in
Armenia today. Armenians can never forget or forgive the slaughter of some
1.5 million men, women and children at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

But while continuing to honor the memory of genocide victims, Armenia today,
along with its vast and powerful diaspora and those in the international
community who support it, needs to ensure that future generations of
survivors of the 20th century’s first genocide have more to live for than
feelings of outrage and injustice.

Defining what happened to Armenians in 1915-1923 has evolved into a game of
high-stakes geopolitical grammar, with implications that stretch far beyond
the tiny Caucasus country nestled at the intersection of the Middle East,
Europe and the former Soviet Union. Armenia points to a vast number of
eyewitness accounts describing the systematic atrocities perpetuated against
Armenians to eliminate them from the Ottoman Empire. A legal analysis by the
International Center for Transitional Justice concluded that the episode fit
the (admittedly broad) definition of genocide in the United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Turkey contends that Armenian deaths were an inevitable consequence of war
and preventive measures necessitated by security and political concerns, but
which had no genocidal intent. The notion of exclusive victimhood is
particularly galling to Turkey, which points to the deaths of an estimated
2.5 million Muslims during the same period.

This is not merely a question of semantics or national pride. Turkey
regularly threatens geopolitical retribution against countries that
characterize the events during the period as genocide. In October 2000, for
example, Turkey threatened to deny the United States access to a Turkish
military base used for launching air patrols over Iraq if the U.S. House of
Representatives approved a resolution accusing Turkey of genocide.

For fear of alienating a critical NATO ally, and despite heavy pressure from
well-organized Armenian-American lobbying groups, the U.S. government
studiously avoids the term “genocide,” opting instead for less politically
charged terms such as “murder.”

Why is this issue so important? For Turkey, admitting that the country’s
forebears were guilty of genocide would contradict generations of official
indoctrination and could lead to uncomfortable questions about the
foundation of the republic. It could also open the door to potentially
massive territorial and financial reparation claims.

Many Armenians are passionate in their insistence that the genocide be
officially recognized. The issue is comparatively inconsequential for
Turkey, whose population is 25 times larger than Armenia’s and whose economy
is roughly 180 times larger.

The cultural and ethnic identity of Armenians — particularly those in the
diaspora — is formed in no small part by the trauma of genocide passed down
through the generations. Armenians seek acknowledgment of their suffering, a
sense of closure and, possibly, compensation. They are rankled that the
Holocaust is accepted as historical fact, while they still struggle for
recognition of the Armenian genocide. To deny the Holocaust is an act of
intellectual savagery, while in some circles refuting the Armenian genocide
is considered evidence of evenhandedness.

For all that, it is imperative that Armenia confront the reality of Turkey
today. Since the early 1990s Turkey has blockaded its border with Armenia,
originally as a show of support for Azerbaijan during the Nagorny Karabakh
conflict.

The World Bank estimates that opening the border would give a 30 percent
boost to the Armenian economy. With this in mind, the Armenian Foreign
Ministry does not predicate relations with Turkey upon genocide recognition.
Istanbul is an occasional destination for wealthy young Armenians looking to
get away for a long weekend. Trade through mutual neighbor Georgia is
thriving.

Meanwhile, many elements of Armenia’s diverse diaspora remain focused on
genocide recognition, often at the expense of issues of more immediate
impact on the country and region today. Few diaspora organizations uttered a
whimper of protest, for example, when the government of Armenian President
Robert Kocharyan brutally suppressed opposition demonstrations this month,
demonstrating a blatant disregard for human rights.

Genocide recognition is critical, but so is a sustained and genuine focus
on, say, reducing the 50 percent poverty rate in Armenia so that the
country’s youth might have something more to look forward to than a one-way
ticket out of the country.

Armenians should not and will not surrender in their battle to earn
historical recognition for their suffering. So long as the plight of the
Armenians is ignored, the risk of history repeating itself will remain. But
Armenia, its diaspora and the world community should be careful not to allow
recognition of the genocide to undermine the future of the country and the
region.

Kim Iskyan, a freelance journalist and consultant in Yerevan, contributed
this comment to The Moscow Times.

Armenian opposition activists detained ahead of rally – web site

A1+ web site
21 Apr 04

Employees of the criminal department of the Yerevan police arrested a
member of the Republic Hanrapetutyun Party, lawyer Karapet Minasyan, at
about 1400 0900 gmt today.

To all appearances, he will be set free after the rally scheduled for
today . Minasyan is not the only person arrested today. Several
opposition activists were taken to police for an “explanatory
lecture”.

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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