Author: Kajoyan Gevork

CHANGES IN THE LAWS

A1plus

| 16:27:59 | 02-05-2005 | Official |

On May 2 Robert Kocharyan has signed the Laws on amending the Laws
on Ecology and ecological fees, and on Holidays and memory.

A Jewish Renaissance in Russia
by Michael Mainville, Special to the Star

The Toronto Star, Ontario, Canada
May 1, 2005 Sunday

Moscow

When she fled the Soviet Union for Israel with her family as a
teenager, the last place Irina Azanyan expected to end up 15 years
later was in Moscow.

“My parents were desperate to get away and we went as soon as we
could,” she says. “I loved Israel, even before I’d ever been there. I
don’t know why, maybe it was in my genes.”

Yet here she sits in her fifth-floor office at the Moscow Jewish
Community Centre, switching effortlessly between Russian and Hebrew
as she fields calls for Russia’s chief rabbi, Berl Lazar.

Two floors down, a cleaning woman is sweeping out the massive banquet
hall in preparation for this weekend’s dinner marking the end of
Passover.

The chorus of a group of pensioners studying Hebrew emanates from
a nearby classroom as bearded young men in broad-rimmed black hats
stroll the halls with books under their arms.

Azanyan and her family fled the repressive Soviet regime at the tail
end of a massive wave of emigration that saw about 1 million Soviet
Jews settle in Israel by the mid-1990s. But now she is among the
estimated 100,000 who have come back – the strongest sign yet of a
startling revival of Jewish life in a country that has one of the
worst records of Jewish persecution in history.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning,” says
Lazar, who has been Russia’s chief rabbi since 2000.

“When they left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt
that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened to their
family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a community.”

Last week also marked a turning point for Russian Jews with President
Vladimir Putin’s historic visit to Israel, the first by a Russian or
Soviet head of state. Asked if he thought five years ago that he would
ever accompany a Russian president on a trip to Israel, Lazar laughs.

“Honestly, I didn’t think two months ago that this would have been
possible,” he says. “There has been a sincere change in the official
attitude to Israel and the Jewish community in Russia.”

During his visit, Putin paid tribute to the Jewish community’s
contributions to Russia and spoke out against anti-Semitism while
touring Jerusalem’s Holocaust History Museum.

“Today, we must state clearly that there can be no place in the 21st
century for xenophobia, anti-Semitism or any other manifestations of
ethnic and religious intolerance,” said Putin.

“This is not only our duty before the memory of the millions of people
killed by bullets or in the gas chambers, it is also our obligation
to future generations.”

Lazar says the visit was a testament to how far Russia has come since
the days when Jews were largely barred from public worship and faced
open discrimination in jobs and education.

Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism, dating back to the
establishment of the Pale of Jewish Settlement when the country
absorbed large populations of Polish and Ukrainian Jews in the late
18th century.

For nearly 150 years, Jews required special permission to live in
Russia proper and faced a host of other restrictions. Anti-Jewish riots
were common and a wave of pogroms in southern Russia in the early 1880s
prompted about 2 million Russian Jews to immigrate to North America.

By the early 20th century – radicalized by generations of repression
– Jews were at the forefront of revolutionary activity in Russia.
Jewish activists played a prominent role in the Russian Revolution
and actually outnumbered ethnic Russians in the first Communist
Central Committee.

One of Lenin’s first actions as Soviet leader was to abolish the Pale
of Settlement and grant freedom of worship. In the next few years,
40 per cent of Soviet Jews left the Pale and settled in large Russian
cities. But early hopes for emancipation were dashed by the rise
of Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid and anti-Semitic during
his rule.

Many of the most prominent victims of his purges – including Leon
Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev – were Jewish. Many
historians contend that, at the time of his death in 1953, Stalin
was preparing for a mass deportation of Soviet Jews to the so-called
Jewish Autonomous Zone in the Siberian wastelands north of China.

For the remainder of the Soviet period, Jews – their ethnicity clearly
marked on internal passports – faced a range of state-sponsored and
unofficial anti-Semitism. Universities were allowed to accept only a
small number of Jewish students and many jobs, especially government
positions, were closed to them.

In the years after its founding in 1948, Israel’s emergence as a close
Western ally led to the persecution of many Soviet Jews as alleged
Zionist sympathizers. The few token synagogues still in operation
were under open police surveillance.

Azanyan’s experiences were typical. Growing up in the Ukrainian
capital Kyiv, she knew little of her Jewish heritage, except for a
few words of Yiddish and the names of important holidays.

Fearful of persecution, her grandfather had changed his last name
from Eisenberg to the Armenian-sounding Azanyan after World War II.

This would come back to haunt the family when Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev opened the doors for Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel in
the 1980s. Without an obvious Jewish name, the family was repeatedly
denied the right to leave the Soviet Union. Thirteen-year-old Azanyan
nonetheless began studying Hebrew and learning all she could about
Israel.

The Azanyans were finally able to emigrate as the Soviet Union was
disintegrating in 1990. They touched down in Israel on Azanyan’s
16th birthday.

“It was like a dream come true,” she recalls.

After finishing high school and her two years of mandatory military
service, Azanyan studied history and archaeology at the Tel Aviv
University. In 1998, she followed a Russian Jewish boyfriend back
to the former Soviet Union and found a job at the Israeli embassy
in Moscow.

While there, she was stunned to be dealing with hundreds of other
Israelis who were returning to Russia.

“People were coming back for many different reasons,” she says.

“Some people saw economic opportunities in Russia. Some people were
worried about security in Israel. And some people came back because
they weren’t ready to go to Israel.

“They expected too much and didn’t realize how much work it would be
to start a new life in a different country.”

After leaving the embassy in 2001, she decided to stay in Russia and
took the job as Lazar’s assistant.

“I still love Israel and I’d like to go back some day,” she says.
“But for now, I’m happy here.”

Like Azanyan, most of those who’ve returned have kept their Israeli
passports and, in some cases, maintain homes in both countries.

Rabbi Lazar says it’s irrelevant whether returning Jews are planning
to stay in Russia permanently or some day go back to Israel.

“They don’t know how long they’re going to stay. Two years, a year,
six months, what’s the difference? The fact that they’re coming back
at all is a strong statement.”

Which isn’t to say that anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in
Russia. In fact, some observers believe that the community’s increasing
profile has sparked a backlash from nationalist Russians.

In January, 19 nationalist lawmakers sent a letter to Russia’s
prosecutor-general, asking him to outlaw all Jewish organizations on
the grounds that they foster ethnic hatred against Russians.

Two months later, several Russian cultural figures, including former
world chess champion Boris Spassky, sent a similar letter backed by
a petition signed by 5,000 Russians. Among other accusations, the
letter accused Jews of being “anti-Christian and inhumane” and of
“committing ritual murders.”

Nationalist politicians – a growing force in Russian politics –
rant openly about Jewish conspiracies to control the Russian economy,
pointing out that many of Russia’s billionaire oligarchs are Jewish,
including former Yukos oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in jail
awaiting a verdict in his long-running tax-evasion and fraud trial.

Defending the letter in a February appearance on one of Russia’s most
popular political talk shows, State Duma deputy Albert Makashov spoke
for nearly an hour about the allegedly illegal privatizations that
left much of the country’s wealth in the oligarchs’ hands.

“All I am saying is that most oligarchs come from one diaspora:
Jewish,” he said. “They stole everything God gave us.”

Asked to call in their support for either Makashov or his opponent in
the debate, more than 53,000 of about 100,000 callers chose Makashov.

Attacks on Jews also remain a problem. The Moscow Bureau of Human
Rights reported this month that 27 anti-Semitic attacks occurred in
Moscow in 2004 and the first three months of 2005.

In January, six thugs shouting anti-Semitic slurs attacked a group
of Orthodox Jews in a Moscow underpass. Two young boys and one man
escaped, but Rabbi Alexander Lakshin was left beaten and bloodied.

When he tried to ask employees at a local shop to use their phone to
call the police, they refused and told him to leave.

Yet even Lakshin is encouraged by recent developments in Russia. In
the weeks since the attack, police arrested three suspects, two of
whom are now facing charges that could land them in jail for years.

“No country in the world can boast of having no anti-Semites,” he
says. “It’s how a society reacts to these kinds of attacks that’s
important.

“Yes, it was a sad thing that happened. But when I think about how
much tremendous change there has been in Russia since I was a boy,
when I see groups of young people walking about unafraid, it makes
me so happy.”

At the seven-storey, $25 million Moscow Jewish Community Centre built
five years ago, there’s a growing sense that the Jewish renaissance
is irreversible.

Stretching over two city blocks, the centre includes a synagogue,
library, fitness centre and kosher restaurant, all built with
donations from abroad and the local community. Record numbers of
Jewish families are signing up for its free services and this year’s
Passover celebrations have been the biggest in memory.

Down the street, a $125 million complex – which will include Russia’s
first Jewish museum, a medical centre and a school – is being built on
land donated by the city of Moscow. Smaller centres, most featuring
the first local Jewish schools in decades, are being built across
the country.

In the past five years, the number of distinct Jewish communities
in Russia has swelled from 87 to more than 200. Fifteen years ago,
there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more
than 15,000 students attend such schools.

Lazar says that of the estimated 1 million Jews who remained in
Russia following the exodus to Israel, very few were once prepared
to even identify themselves as Jewish. But today, about 120,000 Jews
are fully involved in the community.

“Nowhere in the world have we ever seen a Jewish community of this
size reviving from essentially nothing.”

Avraham Berkowitz, executive director of the Federation of Jewish
Communities in the former Soviet Union, says he felt the change most
acutely during Passover this year.

Every year, the FJC co-ordinates a campaign to send kosher food
products used in making Passover dishes to Jewish communities across
the country.

This year’s campaign was the largest ever, with 1.2 million pounds
of matzo and 250,000 bottles of wine distributed nationwide.

“More and more Jews are coming out of the woodwork and they’re not
afraid to say so,” muses Berkowitz.

“The change in Russia from 15 years ago to today is nothing short of
a miracle.”

Michael Mainville is a Canadian journalist based in Moscow.

In the past five years, the number of distinct Jewish communities
in Russia has swelled from 87 to more than 200. Fifteen years ago,
there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more
than 15,000 students attend such schools

GRAPHIC: LUKE TCHALENKO PHOTOS, ABOVE AND TOP RIGHT EMILIO MORENATTI
ap Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned anti-Semitism and “any
other manifestations of ethnic and religious intolerance” during his
historic visit to Jerusalem’s Holocaust History Museum last week.
Photos at left and top show a prayer service at Moscow’s $25 million
Jewish Community Centre.EMILIO MORENATTI ap Russian President Vladimir
Putin condemned anti-Semitism and “any other manifestations of ethnic
and religious intolerance” during his historic visit to Jerusalem’s
Holocaust History Museum last week. Photos at left and top show a
prayer service at Moscow’s $25 million Jewish Community Centre.

Turkish Press
April 30 2005

Press Scan

”WE WILL NOT OPEN OUR BORDER CROSSING WITH ARMENIA”

YENI SAFAK- Turkish Foreign Minister & Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah
Gul said that they were not planning to open the border crossing
between Turkey and Armenia. Gul told reporters that Turkey displayed
its good-will towards Armenia.

US DEPARTMENT OF STATE CONSIDERS ARMENIA TO BE AN ACTIVE PARTICIPANT
OF STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISM

YEREVAN, April 28. /ARKA/. In 2004, Armenia as before was a
full-fledged and active participant of the world struggle against
terrorism, according to the US Department of State report `Threats of
Terrorism in Foreign Countries’. According to the report, the new
Criminal Code of Armenia precisely determines the concept of
`terrorist attacks’. `RA NA adopted a law against money laundering and
terrorism funding, which brought the legislation of Armenia in line
with international standards’, according to the document. Accordingto
the report, in 2004, Armenian frontier guard detected 42 grams of
radioactive substances, not useful for the production of
arms. `Notwithstandingthe fact that the means, most likely, are not
for terrorist purposes, however the Armenian frontier guard showed
their ability to detect and neutralize nuclear substances’, according
to the document. According to the US Department of State, CBA
collaborated in full for detection and freezing bank accounts of
terrorists, however, in 2004, no such accounts were detected in
Armenia. A.H. -0–

THE PRESS RELEASE OF NKR NATIONAL STATISTICS SERVICE

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
29 April 05

INDUSTRY In the first quarter of 2005 3778.8 million drams worth of
products in actual prices were produced in the republic, growing by
108.9 per cent in comparable prices since the same period of 2004. The
growth of production excluding the branch of mining industry was 94.6
per cent. The absolute increase in production of goods was provided by
the mining industry. The sales of manufactured goods totaled 3965.2
million drams which increased by 124.3 per cent since the first
quarter of 2004. The average number of workers on payroll employed in
industry is 4244 increasing by 619 or 17.1 per cent since the same
period of 2004. Productive efficiency totaled 890.4 thousand drams
declining by 66.6 thousand drams or 7 per cent. In the first quarter
of the current year the average monthly salary in industry totaled 51
173 drams increasing by 3075 thousand since the same period in
2004. AGRICULTURE In the first quarter of the current year gross
agricultural output totaled 1439.9 million drams declining by 6.1 per
cent in comparable prices since the first quarter of 2004. In the
first quarter of 2005 431.5 tonnes of cattle and paultry (the
preslaughter weight) was sold, which is 66.3 per cent of the first
quarter of 2004, 6323.5 tonnes of milk (104.1 per cent) and 3680
thousand eggs were produced. BUILDING In the first quarter of 2005
building in the republic totaled 1470.3 million drams increasing by
328.7 million drams or 128.8 per cent since the first quarter of 2004.

AA.
29-04-2005

PRESS RELEASE
Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
Tel: 020-874-71465
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:

ARMENIAN COMMUNITY COMES TOGETHER TO COMMEMORATE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE – 25 April 2005

Community Event at Ealing Town Hall on Friday evening, Divine Liturgy
and Requiem Service St Yeghiche Church on Sunday, March from South
Kensington to the Cenotaph via Vigil at the Turkish Embassy and
Memorial Service at the Cenotaph

The two guest speakers at the Community Event on Friday evening were
the Deputy-Mayor of Ealing Borough of London, Councillor Michael
Elliott , and Stephen Pound, MP for Ealing North . Both expressed
their strong support for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in
the UK and vowed to lend their support toward the recognition of the
genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey against Armenians in 1915 under
cover of WWI.

Councillor Michael Elliott , who becomes Mayor of Ealing in summer,
pledged his effort in trying to help pass a Motion in the Council for
the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Stephen Pound also
re-iterated that it was his duty to be with the Armenians as they
commemorated the 90 th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. He
predicted that the tide is turning against Turkey’s denialist stance
and referred to a letter from the Turkish Parliament in Ankara that
cast doubt over the Blue Book authored by Arnold Toynbee and Lord
James Bryce. He said to the 500-person full hall that he replied to
the letter by stressing that he had heard far too many accounts from
Armenians of their own families’ experiences of the genocide to even
consider such a denialist letter.

Also speaking at the Community event were the Chair of the Armenian
Community and Church Council, the Primate of the Armenian Apostolic
Church and the Chair of the Committee for the Commemoration of the 90
th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. All three referred to the
trauma of the genocide and asked the British Government to put its
interests aside and join the increasing number of countries that have
recognised the Armenian Genocide to date.

At the Church Service at St Yeghiche, representatives from the
Anglican , Catholic and Orthodox Churches read out Messages of Support
with the Armenian Church and people. Speaking to a full Church of well
over 750 people, they expressed their solidarity with Armenians who,
alongside other communities,had faced genocide in 1915.

The Commemorative March that followed the church service saw well over
1200 Armenians and non-Armenians walking with posters together toward
the Cenotaph where a wreath-laying ceremony took place in memory of
the one-and-half-million Armenians who were killed during the Armenian
Genocide. Led by the Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the
Chair of the Armenian Community & Church Council as well as other
dignitaries, the March delivered a powerful message of vigilance and
non-forgetfulness for the events of 1915. It asked the British
Government and Turkey to come clean on this travesty to justice so
that Never again means anything for the future.

The key speaker at the Cenotaph was Dr Charles Tannock , Conservative
MEP for London and Vice-Chairman of the Human Rights Sub-Committee at
the European Parliament . He explained how he had come to learn about
the Armenian Genocide, and how this had helped him become a firm
supporter of the justice of the Armenian cause. He pledged his
unwavering support on both the British and European levels in helping
Armenians secure recognition of the genocide in the UK and on the
European level.

This weekend was the highlight of a yearlong series of commemorative
events that have been planned in the United Kingdom – in London as
much as in Wales and Scotland. Following in the footsteps of countries
such as France, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Russia, Greece, the Holy
See, the Netherlands, Belgiumand Cyprus, Armenians in the UK are
insisting their Government and Parliament recognise the Armenian
Genocide. Gwynedd County Council in Wales was the first local council
to recognise the Armenian Genocide last year.

WAIS Document Retrieval
[Congressional Record: April 27, 2005 (Extensions)]
[Page E780]
>From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr27ap05-17]

90TH COMMEMORATION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

______

speech of

HON. STEPHEN F. LYNCH

of massachusetts

in the house of representatives

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join with Armenians
throughout the United States, Armenia, and the world in commemorating
the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, one of the darkest
episodes in Europe’s recent past. This week, members and friends of the
Armenian community gather to remember April 24, 1915, when the arrest
and murder of 200 Armenian politicians, academics, and community
leaders in Constantinople marked the beginning of an 8-year campaign of
extermination against the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire.
Between 1915 and 1923, approximately 1.5 million Armenians were
killed and more than 500,000 were exiled to the desert to die of thirst
or starvation. The Armenian genocide was the first mass murder of the
20th century, a century that was sadly to be marked by many similar
attempts at racial or ethnic extermination, from the Holocaust to the
Rwandan genocide and now the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
In the 90 years since the beginning of this genocide, we have learned
the importance of commemorating these tragic events. In 1939, after
invading Poland and relocating most Jews to labor or death camps,
Hitler cynically defended his own actions by asking, “Who remembers
the Armenians?” Just a few years later, 6 million Jews were dead. Now
is the time when we must answer Hitler’s question with a clear voice:
We remember the Armenians, and we stand resolved that genocide is a
crime against all humanity. We must remember the legacy of the Armenian
genocide and we must speak out against such tragedies to ensure that no
similar evil occurs again.
While today is the day in which we solemnly remember the victims of
the Armenian genocide, I believe it is also a day in which we can
celebrate the extraordinary vitality and strength of the Armenian
people, who have fought successfully to preserve their culture and
identity for over a thousand years. The Armenian people withstood the
horrors of genocide, two world wars, and several decades of Soviet
dominance in order to establish modern Armenia. Armenia has defiantly
rebuilt itself as a nation and a society–a triumph of human spirit in
the face of overwhelming adversity.
It is my firm belief that it is only by learning from and
commemorating the past can we work toward a future free from racial,
ethnic, and religious hate. By acknowledging the Armenian genocide and
speaking out against the principles by which it was conducted, we can
send a clear message: never again.

Pan Armenian News

ARMENIA ATTRACTIVE FOR TOURISM FOR SECURITY AND STABILITY

28.04.2005 05:08

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ `Armenian tourism develops mainly by means of the private
sector. However the Government in its turn does its best for the intensive
development of the sector and for our country to be visited not only in
summer, but also in winter. We make every effort to get integrated with the
international tourism,’ stated Deputy Minister of Trade and Economic
Development of Armenia Ara Petrosian when opening CTS 2005 international
tourism exhibition in Yerevan. In his words, the annual growth makes 20-25%
in the tourism sphere. Thus, 260 thousand tourists visited Armenia in 2004.
300 thousand are planned to be received this year. Ara Petrosian also
informed that 20 million drams (some $46 thousand) are annually allocated
for tourism needs from the state budget of Armenia. Meanwhile, a tourist
spends $800-100 a week. In his turn Lebanese Ambassador to Armenia Jebrail
Butros Jaara stated that Armenia is an attractive and peculiar country for
tourism, first of all through its security and stability. 33 companies from
Armenia, Belarus and Iran (2 air companies, 7 hotel complexes, 1 transport
organization, 13 travel agents, 1 insurance company, 5 NGOs, 3 editions, 1
information agency) take part in the CTS 2005 tourism exhibition organized
by the Yerevan representation of the American Society of Travel Agents
(ASTA) with the support of the Ministry of Trade and Economic Development of
Armenia. It should be noted that last December the Armenian Government
approved the annual program for development of tourism in 2005. 60-65% of
visits of tourists falls to the share of the Armenian Diaspora, while local
tourists number about 10%. The share of tourism in the GDP of Armenia makes
5-6%, Regnum news agency reported.

kurdishinfo.com, Germany
April 27 2005

Do the Armenian Churches in Van remain on dusty pages of history?

VAN (DÄ°HA) – Whilst the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry
allocated TL 2 trillion 4 hundred billion for the restoration of
Akdamar Church, the historical Red Church of 750 years which is 7 km
away from Lake Van and belongs to Armenians was abandoned to its own
fate.

Nowadays, when the Armenian Massacre has been discussed, the Armenian
Churches in Van have almost become extinct due to indifference. From
an architectural and historical point of view, the most remarkable
church in the eastern city of Van is the Armenian Red Church (called
Dêra Sor, Dêra Kutisan in Kurdish) of 750 years. It has the same
architectural style as the Akdamar Church and is located within the
borders of Göründü (Mıxrapêt) village on the side of Lake Van;
however, this miracle of great historic and architectural value has
not been able to take in any presenting brochure. What’s more, the
Church has been provided with no protective measures but exposed to
treasure seekers’ destruction; its walls, which treasure hunters
scraped out, are nearly in a state of non-existence. Transportation
to the Church is procured either on foot or with saddle animals, as
there is no road and the nearest location to church is Göründü
village 10 km away. The church, which has been abandoned to its own
fate, was robbed of its iron doom last summer, too.

TL 2.4 trillion of the Akdamar Church
While the Akdamar Church made a contribution of 2 trillion 4 hundred
billon after Van Governor Niyazi Tanılır applied to the Ministry of
Culture and Tourism no one knows or minds how much the Red Church has
been suffering from the lack of interest.

“Our fathers lived together with Armenians”
Fahrettin Kızılaslan from Göründü Village showed reaction to why
no contribution has hitherto been made for the Red Church in their
settlement and stated he, as a Muslim, is in favor of protecting the
archeological and historical values of Armenians. “Our fathers and
Armenians lived together on these lands. Today, I want to claim these
traces my self, but unfortunately, I cannot afford to do so. The
State should have granted an allowance to the Red Church, just like
it contributed to the Akdamar Church, restored it and assigned a
guard to the Church at least. For no one has saved this great work of
art, every treasure haunter scraped it off as much as s/he wanted, so
destruct its walls. This part of church which has still been standing
up can be restored well.”

“Blow on tourism”
The church is desired to be visited by a great many of domestic and
foreign tourists, but they cannot because of the lack of road to
enable transportation, explains Kızıltaş adding, because there is
no road the tourists who want to see the Church turn from Güründü
back.” Such a church being within the border of our village is of
great significance to develop and present it, yet this historical
Armenian Church has not been given any place in a catalogue
representing Van. Transportation is carried out on foot or with
saddle animals. Had been built up a road, far more tourists would
come to visit the Armenian Red Church”

Van Culture Director: Van city is full of Armenian works
Van Culture Director Izet Kütükoğlu said they were confused at
which art works of Armenians they would restore, as there are so many
archeological values of Armenians in Van. “The city is full of
Armenian works and is rich of historical and architectural places.
There are many churches in country and in where we are unable to
arrive at. An allowance has been granted for the Akdamar Church this
year. We are trying to repair historical structures in Van, as much
as we have the chance and the possibility to do. The archeological
construction like HoÅŸap Castle has been suffering from destructions
too much; repairs and restoration will be held when there is a
sufficient budget”

Kommersant, Russia
April 26 2005

Two-Way (Out) Relations

Russia and Georgia specify the timetable for closing Russian military
bases

Friendship of Nations

Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili arrived in Moscow on
Monday. The main topic of her negotiations with Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov was the pullout of Russian troops from Batumi
and Akhalkalaki. Moscow was trying to reach an agreement before the
May 9 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Georgian
President Mikhail Saakashvili and even made significant concessions
in order to reach that goal.

Kommersant has learned from sources in Tbilisi that Russian and
Georgian diplomacy is working toward a document that could be signed
in the immediate future by the presidents of those countries, a
`joint statement on current issues in bilateral relations.’ It looks
as though the Foreign Ministry was ordered to reach an agreement in
time for the celebrations on May 9, when Saakashvili will visit
Moscow. The Russian leadership intends the signing of the document
and reconciliation between Russia and Georgia on Victory Day as an
added bonus for the day.

But the signing of the agreement is still not possible without
solving the problem of the Russian military bases in Georgia.
Therefore, the diplomats made every effort in Monday’s negotiations
to reach an agreement on them. Only concessions from Russia could
ease the tension and guarantee that Saakashvili would final give his
final assent to come to Moscow (he still has not given a firm
answer). They did not forget in Moscow, however, that the agreement
has to be signed by May 15 in any case at all. That is the day when
the Georgian parliament’s ultimatum that practically outlawed the
bases runs out.

After the negotiations Monday, Lavrov noted with satisfaction that
`the positions of Moscow and Tbilisi on the timetable for the closure
of the Russian military bases have come closer.’ He added that `a
gradual withdrawal may begin this year.’ Kommersant has obtained
information that Lavrov made it clear in the negotiations that Moscow
is ready to give up its previous demands and is ready to agree to
move its base in Akhalkalaki to Armenia by the end of 2007 and close
the base in Batumi by the end of 2008. During a joint press
conference, the ministers avoided specific dates, but Georgian Prime
Minister Zurab Nogaideli made his views in an interview with the
Interfax news agency also on Monday. He stated decisively that all
Russian bases should be closed by the end of 2007, and added that
Tbilisi `does not intend to compensate’ Moscow for it.

Zurabishvili was cautious in her estimations Monday and stated that
`it is necessary to agree not only on the timetable of the closure of
the Russian military bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki, but also on
specific issues connected with those closures… The devil is hiding in
the details.’ The details that Moscow and Tbilisi still have to agree
on are many. Russia is placing big hopes on the Russian-Georgian
Antiterrorism Center that, in its plans, is to arise in place of the
bases and replace the bases in many ways. Tbilisi is not openly
against that idea, but does not see any particular sense in it
either. Georgian law enforcement bodies are completely satisfied with
their current cooperation with NATO and the United States Train and
Equip Program for the Georgian special forces. Therefore, Tbilisi’s
enthusiasm for Russian-Georgian antiterrorism efforts is considerably
weaker than Moscow’s. Another source of contention may be Russia’s
proposal to sign a supplemental agreement on Russian military transit
through Georgia, which Russia need in order to have a military base
in Armenia.

The latest Russian-Georgian mini-scandal also complicated the talks
the foreign ministers. Zurabishvili did not hide her annoyance at
Russian ambassador to Moldova Nikolay Ryabov, who said that Mikhail
Saakashvili `imagines that he is the messiah of the West in the
former Soviet Union.’ Finally, another stumbling block was the latest
military exercises in Abkhazia, conducted with the participation of
Russia. Moscow is probably already thinking of those things as the
details.

by Mikhail Zygar