Author: Kafian Jirair

IN LOS ANGELES TOO

08.html
12:23:32 – 05/10/2009

On October 4, more than 12000 Armenians living in Los Angeles held a
protest demonstration in front of the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly
Hills where the Armenian president Serge Sargsyan stopped. The
protesters among which there were religious fathers, men, women,
grandmothers, grandfathers, families, students, and youths were voicing
for four hours running their disapproval of the Armenian and Turkish
pre-signed protocols and were demanding from the Armenian government
not to ratify them. There were different posters with "Do not betray"
slogan which was attached in front of the hotel with the image of the
Armenian and Turkish presidents shaking hands. The main entrance of
the hotel was blockaded with police officials.

At 4 o’clock, the meeting of Serge Sargsyan and 52 Armenian
organizations, institutions including three representatives of national
parties in Los Angeles took place. According to our information,
businessmen were the greater part of the guests. During the meeting,
the president informed about his previous meetings in Paris and New
York as well as he tried to convince the guests that there is nothing
dangerous about the protocols. Nevertheless, the greater part of the
guests, politely, though told the president that his words do not
coincide with the reality. After the meetings, the member of the ARF
Central Committee of the Western U.S Yovan Tashjeyan held a speech
in front of the protesters and demanded from the Armenian government
to stop the process of ratification of the protocols.

ARF Central Committee of the Western U.S. / Public relations

PRESIDENT SARGSYAN IN LOS ANGELES – "WE WILL BENEFIT FROM RELATIONS WITH TURKEY"

-los-angelos/
2009/10/05 | 13:31

Politics

According to the RoA Presidential Press Service, during his meeting
with community leaders on October 4 in Los Angeles, President Serzh
Sargsyan went into a detailed description of the current stage of
negotiations regarding the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations
and the protocols soon to be signed by the leaders of both nations.

President Sargsyan stated that negotiations with Turkey had been
underway since Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union and
that such processes were only publicized recently. He claimed that the
current protocols offered Armenia the opportunity to conduct normal
negotiations with Turkey and to have normal relations with Ankara. He
said he was convinced that Armenia would not suffer as a result but
that it would reap certain benefits from relations with Turkey.

After the meeting, the AGBU hosted a dinner in honour of President
Sargsyan attended by some 500 representatives of Armenian organization
from the western United States and varios Latin American nations.

In his address, President Sargsyan said that the meeting had been
productive and that a frank and open discussion of a number of topics
had taken place. The president noted that the reason why there are so
many hyphenated Armenian communities in the world today was Turkey. He
said the losses and grief suffered were irreplaceable and inconsolable
but that our voices and spirit were unbroken. But he noted that we,
as a people, had little faith in our own resources and strengths.

"In this beautiful hall and across the world, what ties us together
are our Armenian dreams and the fate of Armenia, which is directly
linked to the fate of the diapora. All our thoughts, emotions, heated
debates, anger and thoughtful discussions, all have one objective –
to see a future Armenia that is strong, more developed and beautiful
and to see an Armenian people more unified and organized than ever
before. What ties us together aren’t only our roots but our national
aspirations for the future," President Sargsyan stated.

"The Armenia of the future will be the one that we dream and start to
put into practice today; just like Alexander Tamanyan dreamt and built
for Yerevan, the capital of the Armenian nation. Successive generations
actually resided in the city of Tamanyan. The years necessitated
certain modifications but I assure you all that we lived in that
city. A similar situation faces us today. Our country of tomorrow
will be based on the mental prowess we implement today in imagining
what type of nation we wish to see realized. To accomplish this we
need the same faith as displayed by Tamanyan. I am also here with
you today to reaffirm our faith in our own resources and capabilities
and in the future to come," noted President Sargsyan in his address.

ARMENIA CELEBRATES 70 YEARS OF FRAME BY FRAME WITH ITS FIRST ANIMATION FESTIVAL
Armen Boudjikanian

The Magazine of Animation
armenia-celebrates-70-years-of-frame-by.php
Octobe r 3, 2009

The first Yerevan international animation film festival, ReAnimania
’09, kicked off today in Armenia’s capital. The fest began with the
screening of Animal Crisis, a Spanish comedy competing in the feature
category. While this film’s drawbacks come from the limitations
of Flash animation (i.e.. crappy front view walk cycles), it does
take the medium away from the cinematically flat and minimal to
the world of Warner hurt gags and Ren and Stimpyesque dirtyness. It
does so with an Orwellian script and a pleasure in mutilating Disney
archetypes: the heroic stallion, the seedy lion and the treacherous
Hyena. Think of this film as South Park with animation principals
applied throughout. My favorite instant of the film: watching a Flash
hippo clap. A never before seen motion; at least by me.

Other highlights from the first day included an intimate interview
with Michel Ocelot of Kirikou and Azur et Asmar fame. The conversations
with the director set the tone of the festival. When Ocelot was asked
why he is interested in making films for children, he replied that he
does not think about his audience when starting to work on a film. He
only strives to do a good job. Ocelot believes that animation should
go in the direction that graphic novels have taken a while back:
dealing with issues in a way that audiences from any age group can
appreciate. In the mind of the French animation author, "Animation
is never just for children."

This statement was concurred by Vrej Kassouny, the interviewer and
director of the festival. Kassouny stated one of the main goals of
Reanimania is to make its audiences aware that animation does not
equal to films for children. Animation is an art form, and like any
art form you can work with it in different ways.

With retrospectives on Armenian animation, Bruno Bozzetto and Alexander
Shiryaev; the Pitching & Prod g for animation and 2D workshops,
competitions in feature, short, graduation, TV an educational films;
forums and studio showcases, Re-Animania is surely to shed some new
light on animation during the next three days. It runs until Oct 6th
at Kino Moscow in Yerevan, Armenia.

Find the festival schedule and read about the history of Armenian
animation on ReAnimania’s site.

Tiny ethnic minority disputes `common’ error
VERCÄ°HAN ZÄ°FLÄ°OÄ=9ELU
YEREVAN – Hürriyet Daily News
Sunday, October 4, 2009

The world knows them as the `Yazidis,’ but this tiny ethnic minority
disputes the common misconception and calls themselves the `Ezidis.’
`The whole of the Muslim world, Turks foremost, call us the
`Yazidis,’ which means devil worshipper. But we, the Ezidis, worship
the sun,’ said Pir Razmi Siyabend Rashoyan, the religious leader of the
three Ezidi villages in Armenia.
According to Rashoyan, the Muslim world is prejudiced against the
Ezidis because of their line of descent. `They call us the Yazidis
because we came from the bloodline of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid bin
Muawiyah, who killed Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet
Mohammed in Kerbala,’ he said.
Ezidis make up an important Iraqi minority community. Estimates of
the size of the Iraqi communities vary significantly, between 70,000
and 500,000. They are primarily Kurdish speaking, and most live in the
Mosul region of northern Iraq. There are traditional communities in
Georgia, Turkey and Syria, but these have declined since the 1990s with
some of their members migrating to Europe, especially to Germany.
Some scholars have derived the name Yazidi from the Old Iranic
`yazata,’ or divine being, while others say it is a derivation from
Umayyad Caliph Yazid, revered by the Ezidis as an incarnation of the
divine figure Sultan Ezi.
Despite the migration trend in other countries, Armenia has a more
stable Ezidi community, accounting for about 40,000 people, and they do
not see themselves as a minority in Armenia. The Ezidis in Armenia
mostly live in the villages of Talin, Barozh and Hogdemperyan, which
are 300 kilometers away from the capital, Yerevan.
Due to their village lives, the Ezidis experience chronic water and
gas problems. Aziz Tamoyan, the leader of the Ezidi people in Armenia,
said the lack of water was felt most during the winter. `Taking a bath
is a luxury for the villagers,’ Tamoyan said. `They try to survive in
the wintertime by melting ice to get fresh water.’
Anna Mistoyan, a resident of Talin, which is few meters away from
the Turkish border, said: `There is neither water nor gas. It is
torture to live here. During the winter, we cannot even get the amount
of water that we get in summer. There is no gas, so we cannot get warm.’
The village’s primary school is poorly cared for and dilapidated.
Kinarik Sivazian, one of the longest tenured teachers in the school,
said the building desperately needed reconstruction.
`It is almost impossible to study in here during the winter,’
Sivazian said. But Garush Hiroshoyan seemed more optimistic about the
situation in the village. `I am 90 years old. My father and mother came
here after fleeing from Turkey,’ Hiroshoyan said. `Yes, we do not have
water and gas, but we have peace in this country.’
Tamoyan said the Ezidis in Armenia fled Anatolia during the late
days of the Ottoman Empire and suggested that they had also suffered
during the 1915 killings of Armenians. `My people got their share from
the Armenian genocide in 1915,’ Tamoyan said. `After those days, some
Ezidis came to Armenia, and some of them migrated to various countries
across the world. Although our roots were in Anatolia, the Ezidi
population there is almost none at the moment.’
Recent normalization talks between Yerevan and Ankara have been
facing various woes and opposition from many sides, but the Ezidis have
their own reasons. They do not hesitate to voice their opposition
against the negotiations and openly confessed that they still have some
bias against not only Turks but also the Kurdish population in
southeastern Turkey. The Ezidis said they were fearful that they would
encounter problems if the border between Armenia and Turkey were opened.
Tamoyan said they were happy to live in Armenia: =80=9CWe see ourselves
as a part of the Armenian society and totally do not feel like a
minority. We can get education in our mother tongue, so we do not have
any difficulties at all.’

© 2009 Hurriyet Daily News
URL: nority-disputes-8216common8217-error-2009-10-04

Tert.am

No Document to be Signed in Moldova: Serzh Sargsyan

16:49 ¢ 02.10.09

In his interview to Armenian Reporter, Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan referred to his upcoming meeting with Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev in Moldova during the Commonwealth of Independent States
summit on October 8.

In answer to the journalist’s question if it is possible that a
document on Nagorno-Karabakh will be signed in Moldova or by the end
of the year, the president said revealed that he did "not expect to
sign any document in Moldova."

"Let me go further: in view of the limited progress we have made on
agreeing to very few portions of the Madrid Principles, we are quite
far from signing any document at this stage," the president told the
Armenian Reporter.

RA NA SPEAKER HOVIK ABRAHAMIAN IN IRAN ON OFFICIAL VISIT

NOYAN TAPAN
SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
TEHRAN

TEHRAN, SEPTEMBER 30, NOYAN TAPAN. RA National Assembly Speaker Hovik
Abrahamian’s official visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)
started on September 29. In the midday, at Mehrabad airport, first
Vice-Speaker of IRI parliament Seyyed Mohammad Hasan Abutorabifad met
the delegation led by the RA NA Speaker. H. Abrahamian had a short
talk with him at airport’s hall for guests of honor.

Then the delegation led by the RA NA Speaker visited IRI parliament
where H. Abrahamian met with IRI parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

At the meeting the sides discussed the agreements reached between
the two countries’ Presidents during RA President Serzh Sargsyan’s
official visit to Iran and issues of implementation of the programs
they had outlined. The interlocutors held the same opinion that
Armenian-Iranian strong and friendly relations are in the two
countries’ long-term strategic interests.

In that context they discussed region’s strategic situation. During
the meeting the interlocutors reached an agreement to deepen
interparliamentary cooperation between RA and IRI.

Then the delegation led by H. Abrahamian visited IRI Supreme National
Security Council where it met with Council Secretary Sayid Jalili.

According to a report by the RA NA Public Relations Department, in the
evening the same day the delegation led by H. Abrahamian visited the RA
Embassy in IRI where it met with Armenian diplomats working in Tehran.

ARMENIAN FM MEETS REPRESENTATIVES OF ARMENIAN COMMUNITY TO AMERICA

Panorama.am
14:28 30/09/2009

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan had various meetings
with the representatives of Armenian Community to the U.S. during
his working visit to New York, MFA PR department reports.

Armenian FM told the representatives of Armenian Community to New York
and New Jersey the principles of Armenian foreign policy and the main
problems to be challenged. The Fm has emphasized the normalization
of Armenian-Turkish ties and Artsakh conflict resolution.

Mr. Nalbandyan had a meeting with AGBU President Perch Sedrakyan when
the sides have discussed a wide range of issues. Edward Nalbandyan
has also met with chairmen of Armenian Assembly to America.

THE ARMENIAN-TURKISH PROTOCOLS UNACCEPTABLE TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THEIR CURRENT FORM
Nvard Davtyan

"Radiolur"
30.09.2009 15:42

The Democratic Party of Armenia is going to submit a number of
proposals at tomorrow’s parliamentary hearings on the Armenian-Turkish
protocols. The position of the Democratic Party is known. "The
protocols are unacceptable to us in the current form," leader of the
Party Aram Sargsyan told a press conference today.

"Some editing is necessary, and the world will not collapse if the
signing of the protocols is delayed for 2-3 months," he said.

"I will demand that the documents undergo an international
legal expertise, without which they cannot be submitted for
ratification. I know that the documents are going to be submitted to
the Constitutional Court, which has to assess whether they correspond
to our Constitution."

On the other hand, there is a very important factor: even if they are
not anti-constitutional, the protocols are not subject to ratification
because they are simply protocols. This has been proposed by the
Turkish side, because they are not sure that we’ll be able to sign
a bilateral agreement, which really needs to be ratified.

"If the protocols are to be ratified, there should be a memorandum
annexed, where the Armenian side will list all the unsolved
issues. First of all, I mean the internati onal recognition of the
fact of the Armenian Genocide," Aram Sargsyan said.

ARMAVIA TO GET TWO SUKHOI SUPERJET 100 IN 2010 JANUARY

ARKA
Sep 29, 2009

YEREVAN, September 29, /ARKA/. The owner of Armenia’s national air
carrier Armavia Mikhail Baghdasarov said Monday the company’s two
Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional aircrafts will arrive in Yerevan in
2010 January.

Speaking at the Monday presentation of a new CRJ-200 Bombardier
aircraft obtained by the company, he said Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircrafts
had been tested successfully in Armenia lately and will arrive no
later than in January 2010.

Armavia is the first company to receive Superjet 100, which was
designed to replace ageing Tupolev-134 and Yakovlev-42 planes on routes
between Russia’s regional cities. The Superjet is a joint creation
of Russian United Aviation Corporation (UAC) and U.S. plane maker
Boeing. It was developed with Italy’s Finmeccanica and can carry
75-95 passengers.

The aircraft made its maiden flight, initially planned for 2007,
in May 2008 and its first public flight in June this year. It can
travel as long as 4,400 km.Armavia" Air Company LLC is the national
air carrier of Armenia.

The company was founded in 1996.

The carrier is based in Zvartnots Airport, Yerevan. Armavia is a
member of the International Association of Air Transport (IATA). It
operates about 250 flights a month in 30 directions to former Soviet
republics, Middle East and Europe. In 2008 it flew 647,000 people. Its
fleet comprises Ð~P-319 (3), Ð~P-320 (2), Boeing 737-300, CRJ-200
and ТУ-134 aircrafts.

FM NALBANDYAN MEETS WITH U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE

Yerkir
29.09.2009 13:44

Yerevan (Yerkir) – Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan had
a meeting on September 28 with the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton.

Clinton mentioned that the Armenian-American ties are comprehensive,
embracing and have deep roots. She expressed readiness on behalf of
American Administration to continue comprehensive cooperation with the
Armenian president and government. She also hailed Armenia’s efforts
to normalize ties with Turkey and confirmed America’s position that
those ties should not be based on preconditions.