ARMENIAN TENNIS TEAM BEATS TURKEY 3:0
PanARMENIAN.Net
May 3, 2010 – 21:04 AMT 16:04 GMT
April 30-May 3, Batumi hosted international youth table tennis
tournament, with Armenian, Turkish, Cyprus and Georgian teams
participating
In the first match, Armenia beat Georgia 3:1 and Turkey -3:0. In
tournament final, Armenian team gained a 3:1 victory over Georgia,
thus winning a champion title, RA Table Tennis Federation press
service told PanARMENIAN.Net
SONDAGE DU CENTRE SOCIOLOGIQUE " SOCIOMETRE " MENE AU KARABAGH
Stephane
armenews
3 mai 2010
ARMENIE
Azg rend compte des resultats du sondage du centre sociologique
" Sociomètre " mene au Karabagh du 8 au 10 avril auprès de 1408
residants dont 84% ont categoriquement rejete toute concession
a l’Azerbaïdjan. 50,1% des sondes se sont prononces en faveur de
l’independance du HK et 34,4% en faveur de la fusion du Karabagh et
de l’Armenie. 10,3 % des personnes interrogees se sont prononcees en
faveur du maintien du statu quo, estimant que le temps dictera des
solutions. 2,9% ont agree le retour des territoires avoisinant le HK
a l’Azerbaïdjan en echange d’un statut d’independance. Seulement 0,2%
accepteraient le retour du HK sous le giron azerbaïdjanais avec un
statut de large autonomie. 92,8% des songes se sont par ailleurs dits
opposes au retour des refugies azerbaïdjanais au Karabagh. 85,1% ont
categoriquement rejete des concessions dans le règlement du conflit
en echange de la normalisation des relations armeno-turques et de
l’ouverture de la frontière.
ARMENIA-TURKEY PEACE COLLAPSE FANS CAUCASUS TENSION
Matt Robinson
Kuwait Times
sid=NTI3MjA2NzIw
May 3 2010
Kuwait
The collapse of a plan to end a century of hostility between Armenia
and Turkey may have its biggest repercussions in the dispute over
Nagorno-Karabakh, a flashpoint near a corridor bringing oil and gas
to the West. The peace initiative between two of the players in a
complex web of relationships in the south Caucasus crumbled last week
when Armenia suspended ratification of the accord. Observers said the
pact, which would have established diplomatic relations and opened
their land border, was already dead locked as neither parliament had
approved the deal.
But its suspension has left another, potentially explosive issue
hanging in the balance-the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous
region lost by Azerbaijan to Armenian-backed forces in the bloodiest
of the ethnic conflicts that accompanied the 1991 collapse of the
Soviet Union. Many had hoped normalised relations between Armenia
and Turkey would help unlock talks on the enclave, which has run its
own affairs with the support of Armenia since splitting away from
Azerbaijan. It is connected to Armenia by a slim corridor.
Azerbaijan, a close Turkish ally and energy trading partner, saw the
accord as a betrayal, potentially robbing it of leverage over Armenia
in negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh. Analysts say the suspension will
do little to soothe Azeri concerns. "The process has left Azerbaijan
isolated, and effectively pulled the rug from under its foreign
policy framework," said Svante Cornell of the Central Asia-Caucasus
Institute. "It also leaves Armenia’s leadership weakened. Thus – more
frustration and more insecurity , the last thing the region needs,"
he said.
The deal agreed a year ago was the closest Turkey and Armenia had
come to moving past the World War One mass killing of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks that has poisoned their relationship. The United States
and Russia both backed the accord as a means of stabilising the south
Caucasus and encouraging greater trade and prosperity. Turkey stood
to reap diplomatic kudos in the West as it bids for membership of
the European Union. Landlocked Armenia would have benefited from
the reopening of its western frontier, closed by Turkey in 1993 in
solidarity with Azerbaijan.
Washington said last week the deal was not dead, but more time might
be needed to "create some new momentum". But diplomats say they see
little chance of Turkey dropping its demand for Armenian concessions
on Nagorno-Karabakh, or of Armenia complying in exchange for an
open frontier.
The peace overtures have severely strained ties between Turkey and
Azerbaijan, affecting negotiations on gas supplies key to the planned
Nabucco pipeline, which aims to bypass Russia to supply gas to the
European Union. Azerbaijan late last year struck deals to sell more
gas to Russia, whose South Stream pipeline project is the main rival
to Nabucco. such deals will draw supplies away from Nabucco and make
it harder for the project to get off the ground.
In the belief that Washington was the main driver of the
Turkish-Armenian thaw, Azerbaijan this month cancelled joint military
exercises with the United States and threatened to reconsider their
"strategic relationship". "Long-term peace and normalisation of
relations in the south Caucasus cannot be achieved by rewarding
aggression and by excluding the region’s strategically most important
country," Novruz Mammadov, chief foreign policy adviser to Azeri
President Ilham Aliyev, wrote last week.
An estimated 30,000 people died in the Nagorno-Karabakh war before
a ceasefire was agreed in 1994. More than 15 years of mediation by
Russia, the United States and France have yielded a loose framework of
"basic principles", but no peace deal. Snipers and landmines on the
frontline meanwhile pick off young Azeri and Armenian conscripts on
a regular basis. Intensified negotiations last year between Aliyev
and Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan fuelled hope that some sort of
solution might be close.
The International Crisis Group thinktank warned this month of a
threat from "domestically entrenched maximalist forces" opposed to
a Nagorno-Karabakh deal in Armenia and Azerbaijan. "If the talks
fail now, Armenia and Azerbaijan may find themselves trapped in
a spiralling military escalation which will have unpredictable
consequences for both countries and for wider regional security,"
ICG analyst Tabib Huseynov wrote. Thanks to its elevated position and
heavy fortifications, military experts say Nagorno-Karabakh would be
difficult to retake. But that has not stopped Azerbaijan from spending
heavily on its military and frequently threatening to try.
The Azerbaijan army has all capabilities to hit any target on the
territory of Armenia if necessary," Defence Minister Safar Abiyev
said last week. A resumption in hostilities could quickly suck in
other powers in a region crisscrossed by energy pipelines. Russia’s
largest military base outside its borders is located in Armenia,
and the two countries are close allies. – AFP
PACE: AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN MPS WILL MEET IN ORGANIZATION’S JUNE SESSION
Trend
April 30 2010
Azerbaijan
The Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
(PACE) held discussions on the establishment of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Subcommittee on the last day of the structure’s spring session,
PACE President Movlud Cavusoglu told journalists today.
"Heads of the Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations have held meeting
this week with my participation. The sides decided to hold a similar
meeting in June in a broader format,’ Cavusoglu said.
"Representatives of the Azerbaijani and Armenian opposition and
members of the countries’ delegations to PACE also may attend the
event. I have forwarded the idea on involvement of representatives of
the opposition in a meeting. Today, the question of the meeting was
introduced to the Bureau, whose members, after discussing the matter,
supported this initiative."
Regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh Subcommittee’s future work, he said
that this issue will be resolved after the meeting to be held in June
in the session.
OBAMA’S RWANDA? THE SLAUGHTER IN THE CONGO
DAVID ROSEN
CounterPunch
sen04302010.html
April 30 2010
On a trip to Rwanda in March 1998, President Bill Clinton issued
what has come to be known as the "Clinton apology." Speaking on the
Kigali Airport tarmac, he (in)famously stated: "We come here today
partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and
the world community did not do as much as we could have and should
have done to try to limit what occurred [in Rwanda]." He then added
in true Clintonesque style:
It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost
members of your family, but all over the world there were people
like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not
fully appreciate [pause] the depth [pause] and the speed [pause]
with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.
By "unimaginable terror," Clinton was referring to the Rwandan
Genocide of 1994 in which Hutus, in a campaign orchestrated by the
Hutu-led government, slaughtered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu
political moderates. "We did not act quickly enough after the killing
began," he apologized. "We should not have allowed the refugee camps
to become safe havens for the killers. We did not immediately call
these crimes by their rightful name: genocide."
In this mea culpa, "Slick Willie" artfully dodged his and U.S.
culpability in facilitating the genocide. As the old adage asks:
What did he know and when did he know it? According to Samantha
Power, the Harvard foreign policy scholar and now with the Obama
National Security Council, Clinton woke up to the horrors of Rwanda
while reading a "New Yorker" article by Philip Gourevitch. She reports
that he forwarded the article to his national-security adviser, Sandy
Berger, demanding: "’How did this happen?," adding, ‘I want to get
to the bottom of this.’"
And getting to the bottom of it he surely didn’t. As Power reminds us,
"The President’s urgency and outrage were oddly timed. As the terror
in Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in
stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the
death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands." [Power, "Bystanders
to Genocide," Atlantic, September 2001]
Clinton, secretary of state Madeleine Albright and others within his
administration knew for years what was taking place in Rwanda and
did little to halt the genocide. After the bloodletting ceased,
Clinton awoke from a somnambulist stupor, saxophone in hand,
and, being America’s "first black president," flew to Kigali to
apologize. His apology rang hollow to those who had suffered due to
Clinton’s inaction.
The question before President Obama is whether he will, like Clinton
and many other of his predecessor, awake from his presidential slumber
in a few years and travel to Kinshasa to make yet another apology
for his and his administration’s failed policies with regard to the
slaughter taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)?
Standing aside in the face of horrendous slaughter, be it formally
"genocide" or another form of mass killing, rape and pillage, is
as American as apple pie. Sadly, Obama seems to be continuing this
ignoble tradition.
* * *
The DRC has been in a state of war since 1994 when the Rwanda Genocide
spilled across its eastern border. Civil struggle, ethnic conflicts,
foreign invasions and battles over mineral wealth have repeatedly
overwhelmed this fragile country. Estimates of those killed since the
outbreak of the "First Congo War" in 1996 range from 3 million (Human
Security Report) to 5.4 million (International Rescue Committee). No
matter which estimate one accepts, the ongoing slaughter taking place
in the DRC represents the greatest bloodletting since World War II.
Oxfam International recently released a study, "Now, The World Is
Without Me," assessing the growing horror of violence being inflicted
on the noncombatant population in the DRC, especially the systematic
campaign of rape of women and young girls. The Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative conducted the study. More than 4,000 rape victims were
interviewed from 2004 to 2008 in a hospital in the eastern city
of Bukavu.
Rape has long been an instrument of war, a tactic used to terrorize
the noncombatant population. [See "’The Hard Hand of War’: Rape as
an Instrument of Total War," CounterPunch, April 4, 2008] In the DRC,
members of the Congolese army, Rwandan militias and armed gangs have
raped tens of thousands of women. According to the Oxfam report, there
has been a 17-fold increase in civilian rape over the past few years.
More than 9,000 people, including men and boys, were raped in 2009.
The study’s findings are deeply disturbing:
# 60 percent of rape victims surveyed were gang raped by armed men;
# 56 percent of assaults were carried out in the family home by
armed men;
# 16 percent took place in fields and almost 15 percent in the forest;
# 57 percent of assaults were carried out at night.
Sexual slavery was also reported, affecting 12 percent of the women
with some being held captive and repeatedly raped for years.
More revealing as to the spread of the "fog of war" to civil society is
the finding that in 2008 civilians committed 38 percent of the rapes,
compared to less than 1 percent in 2004. The study notes: "These
findings imply a normalisation of rape among the civilian population,
suggesting the erosion of all constructive social mechanisms that
ought to protect civilians from sexual violence."
Rape is an act of violation and, in a traditional or patriarchal
society, a mark of shame often borne by the victim for years. The Oxfam
study reports that female rape victims feel stigmatized by the act of
violation, that they are somehow responsible for the crime perpetrated
against them. They often are rejected by the their families and 9
percent report being abandoned by their spouse. They often do not seek
medical care for fear of being identified as a victim; only 12 percent
come to the local hospital within a month of the assault and over half
of the women waited more than a year before seeking treatment. Sadly,
very few women came for treatment in time to prevent HIV infection.
"Rape of this scale and brutality is scandalous," said Krista Riddley,
director of Oxfam’s humanitarian policy. "This is a wake-up call
at a time when plans are being discussed for UN peacekeepers to
leave the country. The situation is not secure if a woman can’t even
sleep safely in her own bed at night." Susan Bartels, Harvard’s chief
researcher, warns, "Sexual violence has become more normal in civilian
life. … The scale of rape over Congo’s years of war has made this
crime seem more acceptable."
* * *
America has a long history of denying immoral socio-political barbary.
It starts with Thomas Jefferson, who not only wrote eloquently as to
the rights of human subjects, but accepted the horrors of slavery as
part of the fabric of the new nation and, as a slave-owner, fathered
six children with a slave woman he clearly loved.
Andrew Jackson, the valiant commander of the victorious forces in the
Battle of New Orleans, waged a vicious war against America’s native
people, most notably his slaughter of the Seminole and Creek Indians
in 1817. As he advised, "We are not only fighting hostile armies,
but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor,
feel the hard hand of war."
The first modern genocidal war took place amidst World War I and the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Between 1915-1916, Turkish troops
slaughtered an estimated 1 to 1.5 million ethnic Albanians. Efforts
by Woodrow Wilson to make Armenia an official U.S. protectorate were
rejected by Congress in 1920; however, later that year, the Republic
of Armenia was established.
As the climate for America’s entry into the 1940s European conflict
intensified into what would become a second world war, it is now
clear that Franklin Roosevelt and his closest advisors knew about Nazi
anti-Semitism, concentration camps and the mass imprisonment of Jews.
Whether they knew that Jews and others were being exterminated in
gas chambers remains an open question.
Nevertheless, Roosevelt approved Operation Thunderclap, the
firebombing of Dresden in which tens of thousand of noncombatants were
incinerated. He also seems to have known of mad-dog Curtis LeMay’s
plan to firebomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities and kill hundreds
of thousand of noncombatants. More so, he approved the development of
the nuclear weaponry that would incinerate noncombatants in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. FDR did not live long enough to give the final order
to bomb Japan; this honor fell to his replacement, Harry Truman.
In the half-century since the end of world war, mass slaughter has
been institutionalized. China’s politically-orchestrated famine
of1958-1961 saw between 15 and 40 million people suffer and die. An
estimated one million people were killed due to the partition of
Pakistan; two million were exterminated in the Cambodian genocide of
1975-1979. During this period, American’s great conservative leader,
Ronald Reagan, approved the killing of tens of thousands of populists
in Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and other parts of Latin America.
Clinton’s decision to have NATO undertake a 78-day bombing assault on
Serbia in 1999 seems to be the lesson he learned from his failure to
halt the Rwanda Genocide. However, the terrorization of noncombatants
and the rape of the civilian female population taking place in the
Congo signals a new, degenerate, stage in modern warfare.
President Obama is not unaware of the horrors of that defile the
Congo. As a Senator, he sponsored a bill approved in December 2006
to provide relief and promote democracy in Congo. He also cited rape
in the Congo as part of his Nobel Prize speech rationalizing just war:
Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with
increased pressure – and such pressure exists only when the world
stands together as one. … The same principle applies to those who
violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there
is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma –
there must be consequences.
So, what are the consequences for the continuing slaughter inflicted
in the Congo?
So far these consequences seem only cosmetic. In 2009, Hillary
Clinton visited the Congo, only her non-diplomatic outburst due a
translation error garnered headlines while the ongoing ware in the DRC
was ignored. Obama appointed Howard Wolpe as a special advisor for
the region. One only wonders whether he will be any more successful
then his colleagues Sen. George Mitchell for Israel-Palestine and
Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan-Pakistan.
Sadly, as DRC President Joseph Kabila is seeking to have the UN’s
20,000 peacekeeping mission withdrawn, the decision by Obama’s UN
representative Susan Rice to not participate in the Security Council’s
scheduled visit to the DRC helped scuttle the trip. This may signal
the UN’s capitulation to Kabila’s demands.
Having visited Rwanda in the wake of the 1994 slaughter, Rice remarked:
"I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing corpses outside
and inside a church. Corpses that had been hacked up. It was the most
horrible thing I’ve ever seen." Apparently truly shocked, she added,
"It makes you mad. It makes you determined. It makes you know that
even if you’re the last lone voice and you believe you’re right,
it is worth every bit of energy you can throw into it."
One can only wonder where Rice’s anger, along with that of Obama and
Clinton, are with regard to the rape and murder taking place in eastern
Congo? Most likely, if the UN peacekeepers are withdrawn, the slaughter
will increase and more women will be victims of rape and abuse.
David Rosen is the author of "Sex Scandals America: Politics &
the Ritual of Public Shaming" (Key, 2009); he can be reached at
[email protected].
"BERMUDA TRIANGLE"
HAKOB BADALYAN
Lragir.am
30/04/10
After the decision on suspension of the ratification process of the
Armenian and Turkish protocols, a tendency to concentrate the public
attention on the Karabakh issue is noticed. After the suspension,
panics about the dangerous situation in the NKR issue became more
often. Moreover, since the start of the NKR negotiation process, 20
years ago, a very particular reality has been notable during its whole
period: first, always, every government was accused of failing the
negotiations and besides, every government, has always insisted that
everything is all right and there is no need to believe opponents,
while the opponents say everything is very bad and the government
hides the truth from the public.
The society, the ordinary citizen following the whole process,
really appears in a difficult condition. It does not know whom to
believe if there is opposition to the governmental policy. Sometimes
very grounded, on the other hand, there is Karabakh and released
territories which are still "Armenian", and are not yielded. Who is
right? The powers of all times or the oppositions of all times which
during years replaced each other? Besides, the problem to understand
this chaos, the society faces another problem of finding out the
measurement with which to assess the policy over the NKR issue.
The point is that during the last twenty years, the axis calculating
the expedience, rightness, effectiveness and the correspondence of
the policy over the NKR issue to the national and public as well as
civil interest was not set.
Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his supporters say that during their
governance, the negotiation process was more favorable for Armenia
than during Robert Kocharyan’s and Serge Sargsyan’s tenures. Robert
Kocharyan and his supporters affirm that during their power, the
NKR negotiation process was more expedient for Armenia than during
Ter-Petrosyan’s and Sargsyan’s tenures. While, Serge Sargsyan and his
supporters insist that the Karabakh dispute is in a better situation
during their governance than it was during Ter-Petrosyan’s and
Kocharyan’s tenures.
How the poor Armenian citizen is going to cope with the situation?
Naturally, the version that all of them, Levon Ter-Petrosyan,
Robert Kocharyan and Serge Sargsyan are to leave altogether, starts
to be much spoken. But this approach seems a little too idealistic,
consequently, a bit unreal. It is comprehensible that such a thing
will never happen in the nearest future. Perhaps, it is even worthless
to happen because the answer to the question what is going to happen
after is unknown. Who is going to fill the field to help us find
stable and clear measurements to assess the NKR issue? I do think
there is lack of potential for such a force.
Merely, this potential is not enough. It has to still show its
vitality to show that the place of the Bermuda triangle of the NKR
issue "Ter-Petrosyan-Kocharyan-Sargsyan" will not remain empty but at
the same time, will not be filled with the same logic. Such a tendency
or a sign has not been noticed so far and "Bermudas" continue their
absorption of time and distance.
After all this, it would be a little naïve to accuse Bermuda triangle
that it devours ships. After all, let ships find a new way or not
deviate from their own.
2+2=5 OR 6:HOW? EXPLAINS TURKISH FM SPOKESPERSON BURAK OZUGERGIN
Tert.am
30.04.10
In the near future Turkey has not planned anything pertaining Armenia,
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Burak Ozugergin said, referring
to a draft bill recently adopted on the Israeli Knesset agenda
recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
"As it was in the past we hope that the bill will not yield any fruit
this time either. There has been no change in our approach towards
the parliaments that condemn the history. It would be far better if
historians dealt with history," said Ozugergin.
Speaking about recent publications in the mass media about the
Karabakh conflict Ozugergin said: "The impression is that by signing
the Protocols and by starting the normalization process we can no
longer be interested in the Karabakh conflict."
"This logic cannot be perceived: we signed the Protocols and for
that reason we stop being interested in the region, focusing all our
attention on normalizing relations with Armenia. This is a strange
logic. By normalizing the relations with Armenia we should not have
losses in Karabakh and vice versa. In mathematics 2+2 always equals
to 4. But in international relations that sum may be equal to 5 or 6.
Peace in the Caucasus is something like that. The results to be
achieved will be far bigger, should relations between Armenia and
Azerbaijan normalize and should we normalize relations with Armenia
too. That is what we want to ensure," said Ozugergin.
"CUSTOMARY GENOCIDE: FEBRUARY, 1988, SUMGAIT:" NEW DOCUMENTARY TO UNFOLD THE TRUTH
Tert.am
28.04.10
A presentation of a new documentary – Sumgait, February, 1988 – took
place yesterday on April 27. The film is the second documentary in the
"Customary Genocide" series project carried out in assistance of the
Public Relations and Information Centre of the Presidential Staff of
the Republic of Armenia.
The first film – Baku, January, 1990 – was first shown in January
2010. It was translated into several languages and is being
disseminated in DVDs and also available on the Internet.
Authors of the film say that it is a condemnation of a crime against
humanity that was perpetrated in the Soviet Azerbaijan from February
27-29, 1988.
Exclusive video shootings and photographs, witness accounts, documents
by investigation and court proceedings found in the film are presented
to the public for the first time. Not only they disclose the truth
about what happened in Sumgait, but they also prove the fact that the
crime was organized by the Azerbaijani authorities and special services
with the leaders of the Soviet Union having their own part of guilt.
For 22 years after this tragedy Azerbaijan has been purposefully
distorting the truth, the essence of Sumgait.
By providing such facts and documents Customary Genocide is aimed at
dispelling all the suspicions that a well-planned crime was perpetrated
against Armenians in the Soviet Azerbaijan.
RENOVATION OR DESTRUCTION?: CONFLICTING REPORTS ON AN ARMENIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GEORGIA
Siranuysh Gevorgyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
28.04.10 | 11:45
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Conflicting reports have been made lately in Armenia about the fate
of a seventh-century Armenian Catholic church in Akhaltsikhe, in the
Armenian-populated province of Georgia.
While the Armenian Catholic Church and nongovernmental organizations
raising the issue of the church say that yet another Armenian church
is being destroyed in Georgia, the Georgian-Armenian Diocese of the
Armenian Apostolic Church insists that "small khachkars (cross stones)
and Armenian inscriptions have been moved for the needs of research
being conducted ahead of repairs."
Enlarge Photo
The Mitq Analytical Center last week disseminated information about
Sourb Khach (Holy Cross) Church, saying in a statement that Georgian
religious leadership and state bodies responsible for the preservation
of monuments are planning to knock down the church in Akhaltsikhe (or
Akhaltskha, the administrative center of Georgia’s Armenian-populated
Samtskhe-Javakheti province) and build a Georgian Catholic church in
its place.
The center quoted Armenian priest in Akhaltsikhe Ter Manouk Zeinalian
as testifying to the ongoing destruction of the church. According to
the release of the center, Father Zeinalian said: "One of the altars
has been destroyed and four stones with Armenian inscriptions have
been unearthed from underneath. One of the stones has disappeared. One
of the arches has been destroyed too. Armenians of Akhaltsikhe are
demanding that the process be halted. It’s an Armenian church and
belongs to Armenians."
Monuments expert in Armenia Samvel Karapetyan also says that in
the first half of the 19th century the church originally built as
an apostolic house of worship, was passed to the Armenian Catholic
community. According to him, the Armenian traces are all over that
church – khachkars, a medieval cemetery with Armenian inscriptions
in the surroundings of the church, etc.
Karapetyan says that according to the information he has, cleaning
work is still in progress in the church, because of which khachkars
set in the church walls have already been taken out.
"This is another victim, another church ‘under restoration’ in
Akhaltsikhe," says Karapetyan. He adds that there are no khachkars
or Armenian inscriptions left in any of the churches that have been
re-appropriated in Georgia and that there is nothing that could remind
of the rightful owner.
The Georgian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, meanwhile,
told ArmeniaNow that a few months ago the church was transferred
to the Roman Catholic Church, which also pledged to renovate the
non-functioning church.
"Certain khachkars have been shifted for research purposes, but they
are to be placed back to where they were. The Catholic Church of
Georgia assures us that no inscription or khachkar will be damaged as
a result of the repairs," said a representative the Armenian Apostolic
Church’s Georgian Diocese, adding that some local Armenian youths
who witnessed specialists work on the site erroneously thought that
the church was being knocked down, while in actual fact it is not so.
Despite these assurances, spiritual leader of the Armenian Catholic
Church in Yerevan Fr. Petros Yesayan is perplexed at how an Armenian
catholic church could be handed over to the Roman Catholic Church if
it already belonged to the latter.
"The Georgians are destroying the church. They will erase whatever
is Armenian," says Fr. Petros.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry also has information only about cleaning
work being carried out at the church in Georgia.
"We don’t have information about khachkars being taken out of the
walls. At least we’ve got assurances from the Georgian embassy that
the church will not be damaged," Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran
Balayan told ArmeniaNow.
AGHVAN VARDANYAN: THE PROTOCOLS ARE DEAD
Lilit Muradyan
"Radiolur"
28.04.2010 17:05
"The protocols are dead and are no longer subject to discussion,"
member of the ARF Bureau Aghvan Vardanyan told a press conference
today.
Among the positive aspects of the Armenian-Turkish process Aghvan
Vardanyan pointed to the fact that today everyone speaks not only
about the Armenian Genocide, but also about the elimination of its
consequences.
ARF representative negatively assessed the fact that Turkey started
defending Azerbaijan’s interests publicly, and Turkey’s wish to
mediate in the Karabakh conflict settlement caused division among
Armenians. "Besides, we lost a year and a half on the process, while
many domestic problems remained unsolved," he added.
Accoridng to Aghvan Vardanyan, we have one main problem on the
foreign policy agenda – the Karabakh issue, and all efforts should
be concentrated on its settlement.
"Armenia should also continue exerting pressure on Turkey to open the
shared border," he said adding that "this is the only closed border
in Europe." "There should be no closed borders irrespective of any
protocols or documents," he stated.