Author: Kamalian Hagop

OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS TO VISIT REGION BY LATE MAY TO PREPARE RA AND AZERI PRESIDENTS’ NEXT MEETING

Noyan Tapan
May 21, 2009

BRUSSELS, MAY 21, NOYAN TAPAN. RA Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian,
who was in Brussels on a working visit, met with OSCE Minsk Group
French Co-chair Bernard Fassier on May 20. The Nagorno Karabakh
settlement negotiations process was discussed at the meeting.

B. Fassier presented the results of the meetings he had in Baku. He
said that as a continuation of their last week’s visit to Yerevan and
Baku the Co-chairs will visit the region by the end of this month to
prepare RA and Azeri Presidents’ next meeting that may take place in
Saint Petersburg.

AUTHOR PETER BALAKIAN DISCUSSES NEW WORK ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WITH OCEANA SOPHOMORES
Jean Bartlett

Pacifica Tribune
13037
May 21 2009
CA

Oceana High School is very much about teaching students social
responsibility.

Through course work which involves studies of genocide and human rights
issues and the consequences of indifference, through participation
in community activism projects and by experiencing living history
lessons through the words of "eyewitness" speakers — each teenager
is given the tools to understand the significance of their voice in
their community, in their nation and in their world.

Tuesday afternoon Oceana Frosh/Soph Humanities teachers Karen
Lichtenberg and Jennifer McEnany along with Jack Weinstein, San
Francisco Bay Area Region Director of Facing History and Ourselves,
welcomed celebrated American-Armenian poet, writer and academic Peter
Balakian, an expert on the Armenian Genocide, to Oceana High School’s
Little Theatre. He spoke to the sophomores.

Balakian is a professor of humanities at Colgate University;
Lichtenberg’s alma mater. He has authored eight books including his
memoir, "Black Dog of Fate," winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize
for memoir and a New York Times Notable Book.

"Black Dog of Fate" chronicles Balakian’s gradual awareness that he
is a descendent of Armenian genocide survivors.

The recipient of many prestigious awards including the Movses
Khorenatsi Medal, one of Armenia’s highest civilian honors for
contributions in the field of culture, arts, literature, education,
and humanities, Balakian told students he did not come to lecture
on an event but rather to introduce a newly published memoir of the
Armenian Genocide that is a dramatic eyewitness account of the first
modern genocide.

The book was originally published in Armenian in 1922. Prior to its
very recent translation and subsequent publication in English, the
book only existed in small editions, read by Armenian scholars and
clergy. Balakian only came to know about this book in 1991, when a
friend sent him a commemorative article from a French magazine which
honored his great, great uncle Grigoris Balakian.

Born in 1876, Grigoris died in Marseilles in 1934. He was bishop of the
Armenian Apostolic Church in southern France . All this, his great,
great nephew knew. However, Peter did not know and learned through
the article, that Grigoris Balakian had written a 71-chapter memoir
called "Armenian Gogatha" and that Grigoris was a first-hand witness
to the Armenian genocide.

Why didn’t Balakian know this about his uncle, one student
asked. Balakian, who grew up in a suburban, affluent all-American
kind of family, explained: "People don’t like to talk about painful
things. Traumatic stuff is often swept under the rug and sometimes
families are really defined by secrets."

In 1992, Balakian asked a friend to translate the table of contents
of his uncle’s book into English and when she did so, Peter said he
was blown away and knew the entire memoir had to be translated.

"I felt the responsibility of bringing a big piece of news to a wider
audience," said Balakian.

Published by Knopf on April 2, the 560-page "Armenian Golgotha" –
A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918, by Grigoris Balakian
(author), Peter Balakian (translator) and Aris Sevag (translator),
is already garnering high critical acclaim.

"My uncle was one of the famous 250 Constantinople Armenian
intellectual and cultural leaders arrested on the night of April 24,
1915," said Balakian. This was the start of the Ottoman Turkish
government’s systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people
from Turkey.

"On that night in April, the Turkish government began the genocide
process by gathering up the writers, journalists, clergy, cultural
leaders (wealthy individuals who supported the arts) and teachers —
so that these individuals would be stopped from using their resources
to get the message out, to resist." These early victims were taken
to a prison 200 miles into the interior of Turkey and then onto a
100-mile death march into the very dense mountains of central and
southern Turkey.

Balakian’s uncle, also a published author, was a high ranking
celibate priest. Over the next four years, Grigoris Balakian would
bear witness to horrendous slaughter, to mass atrocities. Because
he was a clergyman, survivors would seek him out to tell him what
they had witnessed. Perpetrators of the genocide crimes would also
talk to Balakian because he was a priest and because they presumed
he would be dead before he could tell others what they told him. In
addition "neutral" bystanders, often German, Swiss and Austrian
railway engineers — would tell Grigoris Balakian about atrocities
they had witnessed.

"My uncle had a special role in Armenian society as a leader and as
an intellectual, and he was a very impressive individual who tried to
save the lives of 100 bedraggled famine-ravished deportees that he lead
from northern Turkey down to southern Turkey," said Balakian. "You
are going to find him as a very tortured, anguished priest because
he is witnessing the destruction of the flock of his race and his
own role as a clergyman plays a part in how the story is told."

When asked, an Oceana student explained that Golgotha means "place
of the skull" and it is the biblical name for where Jesus was
crucified. It is also known as Calgary.

"My uncle saw the Armenian story, as a story of crucifixion and
martyrdom," said Balakian.

Balakian said this book is an, "Incredible panorama of a destruction
of the Armenian civilization, a 2500 year-old civilization on its own
historic homeland — that is being destroyed by the Ottoman Turkish
government as my great uncle walks on a death march through city
after city, town after town."

The book examines cultural destruction. Armenian churches, books,
libraries, paintings, schools — anything that was an achievement to
their civilization was destroyed. The cultural destruction included the
loss of their religious identity. Held at knifepoint, many Armenians
were told to convert to Islam or die.

Impossibly, Grigoris would escape, disguised as a railroad worker
and then later as a German soldier.

Professor Balakian and Oceana Sophomores discussed their knowledge of
Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author of 36 works dealing with
Judaism, the Holocaust and the "moral responsibility of all people
to fight hatred, racism and genocide."

It was pointed out that Hitler used the Armenian Genocide as a
"template" for the Holocaust for in it he saw that there was a way
a nation could exterminate a targeted group of people. In August of
1939 Hitler said, "Who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation
of the Armenians?"

Oceana sophomores asked many questions. Did the government of Turkey
today fully acknowledge the Armenian Genocide? (No.) Will the book be
published in Turkey ? (Yes, eventually by human rights activist and
brave Turkish publisher Ragip Zarakolu.) Who is Rafal Lemkin? (The
Holocaust survivor who coined the term "genocide.")

Several Oceana students pointed out that by questioning the past and
critiquing the past and dealing with the past, an educated and caring
society will resist repeating the mistakes of the past.

Balakian was given a boom of applause, and as the clock signified the
end of the school day, many sophomores formed a line to question the
visiting professor.

ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT REVEALS PLAN FOR RUSSIAN LOAN

overnment-reveals-plan-for-russian-loan/
May 21st, 2009

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)-The Armenian authorities shed more light Thursday
on how they plan to spend a $500 million anti-crisis loan that will
be provided to them by the government of Russia.

An agreement on the release of the loan, repayable in 15 years, was
signed by the Armenian and Russian foreign ministers in Moscow on
Wednesday. They confirmed that it is meant to alleviate the growing
impact of the global economic meltdown on Armenia.

Economy Minister Nerses Yeritsian told RFE/RL that the bulk of the
sum will be used to finance "development programs" envisaged by
the Armenian state budget for this year. He gave no details of those
programs.

The Russian loan is equivalent to approximately one fifth of total
expenditures projected by the budget. The Armenian government has been
struggling to meet the spending target because of a major shortfall
in tax revenues resulting from the economic recession.

Addressing a weekly session of his cabinet earlier on Thursday, Prime
Minister Tigran Sarkisian said $30 million of the loan will be re-lent
to Armenian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through local
commercial banks. The government already obtained a $50 million loan
from the World Bank for that purpose earlier this year.

"Additional funs will be allocated to mortgage lending," said
Sarkisian. He referred to a special fund that was set up by the
Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) to make housing loans more accessible
and cheaper to the population. The CBA contributed 5 billion drams
($13.4 million) to the fund in April and expects its authorized
capital to total 30 billion drams by the end of this year.

The authorities hope that the mortgage scheme will also give a boost
to Armenia’s construction sector. It has been hit particularly hard
by the economic crisis, contracting by 42.4 percent in the first four
months of 2009. The slump was in turn primarily responsible for a
9.7 percent decline in Armenia’s Gross Domestic Product registered
during that period.

"The 42 percent reduction is normal in the sense that the situation
is similar all over the world," said Yeritsian. "Demand and prices
for real estate have gone down everywhere."

The minister added that the government has approved unprecedented tax
rebates for the country’s leading construction firms in addition
to 20 billion drams in credit guarantees that it offered them in
April. "Government efforts to stop [the decline] are evident, and I
want to stress that time is needed for that to affect the economy,"
he said. "I hope that we will see an opposite trend in the second
half of the year."

ARMENIA AND IRAN ARE FACING ISOLATION ISSUE

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
21.05.2009 13:48 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "Armenian-Iranian relations should be viewed from
several viewpoints – common challenges, common interests, development
and perspectives of strategic relations between two neighboring
states," Director of Armenian Center for National and International
Studies (ACNIS), Richard Giragosian said during "Perspectives of
Armenian Iranian relations" discussion.

"Armenia and Iran are currently facing isolation issues; Armenia
is blockaded by two neighboring states: Turkey and Azerbaijan and
West is imposing economic sanctions on Iran. Besides, both Armenia
and Iran are in an unstable region, especially after 2008’s August
events in Georgia," the expert noted.

According to Richard Giragosian, not only the settlement of NKR
conflict and Turkey’s increased activity in the region but also
internal political issues are a challenge for Armenia. "Iran has also
faced a number of geopolitical issues, specifically its exclusion from
Turkey-suggested stability and collaboration platform in Caucasus,"
he emphasized. The expert stressed the necessity of Yerevan and
Tehran’s participation in regional projects.

"To develop Armenian – Iranian relations, 4 aspects should be
noted. First, development of transportation and communication
between the countries. Armenia -Iran railway construction program is
a promising project not only for the two countries. It’s a specific
corridor, connecting the North and the South," the expert noted. "The
second aspect is collaboration in the sphere of energetic. Everyone
understands that Nabucco implementation would hardly be possible
without Iranian gas."

Speaking of the third aspect, ACNIS Director emphasized the necessity
of increasing investment and product turnover volumes between Armenia
and Iran. "Product Turnover volumes between our countries comprised
only $ 227 million. Armenian Government has to undertake certain
steps to improve the situation," he said adding that development of
political dialogue between Yerevan and Tehran is one of the primary
aspects of the development of bilateral strategic relations.

RUSSIA AND ARMENIA SIGNED 15-YEAR CREDIT AGREEMENT FOR PROVISION OF $500 MILLION

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
20.05.2009 18:05 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Moscow is to grant Yerevan a $500 million loan to
prop up the Armenian economy amid the ongoing economic crisis.

Wednesday’s agreement to extend the 15-year loan at LIBOR plus 3%
was signed by Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and his Armenian
counterpart Tigran Davtyan in Moscow.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Kudrin said that the loan was
granted on concessional terms, with interest at about 4% per annum,
a reflection of the current market situation.

"We’ll grant a five-year grace period, during which only interest
will be paid," RIA Novosti cited Kudrin as saying.

The means received will be allocated to infrastructure development,
support of small and medium-sized business and country’s economy.

JIRAYR SEFILYAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE APPEALS TO ALL-ARMENIA FUND

2009/05/19 | 19:16
important society

Today, the "Jirayr Sefilyan Citizen’s Rights Defense Committee"
issued a public appeal to the All-Armenia Fund, urging the benevolent
organization to raise the issue of granting citizenship to Jirayr
Sefilyan with the President of Armenia.

The appeal states that the All-Armenia Fund, while recognizing the
need to transform the historic Artsakh city of Shushi into a spiritual
and cultural center, must not forget those who sacrificed all to
liberate the town which led to the possibility of joining Artsakh
with Mother Armenia.

The appeal states that Jirayr Sefilyan participated in the liberation
of Shushi and that he commanded a special unit in the battle and
calls into question the fact that such a person has yet to be granted
Armenian citizenship.

STYLE WITHOUT A USE-BY DATE
By Erin O’Dwyer

Stuff.co.nz
/Style-without-a-use-by-date/
May 18 2009
New Zealand

Hot on the heels of the slow food movement comes slow fashion.

It started with the food world. After years of having barely
nutritious, cheap and nasty fast food shoved down their throats,
chefs and home cooks responded with an international movement aimed
at taking food back to its honest, nourishing roots.

The result was raw food, then slow food, then mouth-watering,
made-from-scratch nostalgia food.

Now fashion appears to be going down a similar route.

A global trend for "slow fashion" is on the rise, focusing on designs
that will stay in fashion over several seasons and high-quality
fabrics that are made to last.

Where the slow food movement helped us to focus on how food was grown
and prepared, slow fashion aims to limit the use of cheap, unpleasant
materials, to end sweat-shop production and do away with bargain bins.

In Britain, where the movement already has a firm hold, sales in
linen, cashmere and silk are on the rise. People are returning to
trusted brands, digging out vintage Chanel jackets and taking their
Prada suits out of mothballs instead of buying new.

According to Dr Kate Fletcher, an academic in sustainable fashion at
the London College of Fashion, several factors are driving the slow
movement. One is the sincere desire of many consumers for sustainable,
guilt-free fashions.

Another is the current economic climate, which has left many people
examining how much they spend on clothing and whether they could look
as good, or better, for less.

Fletcher says the recession is already changing the way people shop
and she cites the current "recessionista" trends for shopping one’s
wardrobe (mining the things you’ve already got at home and wearing
them in different ways) and clothes-swapping meetings.

Mind you, some habits are hard to shake. "People are used to buying
lots and buying cheap and there is at least some of this that will
continue, even through a recession," she says.

"The demographic that is most used to this type of consumption is
too young to remember the last recession and so this is unchartered
territory for them."

Fletcher, whose role as a reader in sustainable fashion at LCF is
in itself a sign of the rise of slow fashion, sees the phenomenon as
more than a trend. Instead she says it is "an alternative production
and consumption system" where quality is paramount.

"There are always going to be trends within the slow movement," says
Fletcher, who is also the author of the book Sustainable Fashion
And Textiles.

"And that is important to bring in new ideas. But [slow fashion’s]
roots tap into different ground than today’s industry and to make it
happen takes fundamental industrial restructuring and innovation."

Slow fashion began grabbing headlines at last year’s London Fashion
Week but its history stretches back further.

One major early step for the movement was the British Fashion Council’s
decision four years ago to found the Estethica project to showcase
designers committed to sustainability.

The initiative now promotes labels such as People Tree, Sonya Kashmiri,
Ivana Basilotta and Reet Aus, whose collection is recycled from
mass-produced fast-fashion clothes.

In 2006 the editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, heralded
the end of throwaway, budget fashion and the return of timeless,
treasured classics.

In a column for Britain’s Daily Mail she wrote that modern clothes
had all the "disposability of fast food" and a trip to a chain store
could be "as instantly fulfilling as a Big Mac".

"The thrill will last about as long," she said.

Shulman’s words have proved prophetic. Fast fashion cheap, seasonal,
high-street fashion is now on the outer for many.

Instead, eco-conscious fashionistas are padding out their vintage
recycled wardrobes with new items that give more than a passing nod
to bygone eras. They are meant to be kept, which explains the often
hefty prices.

At Levon Karapetyan’s bespoke boutique, G&L Handmade Shoes in
Paddington, the cheapest pair of handmade pumps sells for $499. If that
doesn’t make you gulp, then the exquisite range ratchets out at $1600.

Despite much belt-tightening, Karapetyan is doing good business. The
company is even about to launch online with a design-your-own-shoes
website.

"We can see that there is a more quality customer coming back," says
Karapetyan, who learned the craft as a teenager in his native Armenia.

"You can buy a leather shoe for $50 but you don’t know where that
leather has come from. It’s leather that we wouldn’t even touch for
lining. Here, people can buy a handmade product which will last. They
consider it a luxury but it’s worth more because it is lasting longer
and they can ask about the maintenance later."

In Europe, a new high-end Venice clothing brand, Slowear, has vowed to
keep the same styles around forever. The proof will be in the pudding.

At the other end of the fashion spectrum is Thunderpants. The New
Zealand lingerie company is run by sisters Josie and Sophie Bidwill.

They unashamedly call their merchandise "undies" and promise the
knickers will last for at least three years.

Their sexy nouveau cottontails are a mix of 92 per cent cotton and
8 per cent lycra, handmade in Martinborough and hand-printed locally
in original wood-cut designs.

Thunderpants was born 15 years ago, after the sisters became frustrated
with the lack of choice between frilly lace G-strings and grandma
bloomers.

They began by making seven pairs a week. They now make 700 a week,
selling across New Zealand as well as online to Australia, the US
and Britain.

The business operates on sustainable principles and with a team of
less than 10 people. "We all live in the country, we have outhouses
and chicken coops so we needed it to be functional," says publicist
Addie Miller.

"But we all love fashion and textiles and we have nostalgia for retro
items. It’s the same pattern that has been going on for 15 years but
we change the print every year."

Sydney Powerhouse Museum curator of textiles Lindy Ward predicts that
slow fashion, spurred on by the financial crisis, will lead to smaller
boutiques, less mass-market fashion and a more varied, fragmented look
on the catwalk. And she wonders whether the fast fashion of the 1980s,
’90s and early 2000s were just a blip on the radar.

"People have always reused and recycled in the past," she says.

"For young people who grew up in the ’80s, it’s something new to
have a skirt five years later and still be wearing it. In the past
people would never have dreamed of throwing anything away. The irony
is that this is the time that we need to be out there buying more to
keep people in jobs."

The answer is that you still buy, just buy sustainable. Choose a few
classic pieces in cotton, silk, wool, cashmere or linen.

Then team them with vintage items, op-shop finds or clothing
swaps. Melbourne designer Karen Rieschieck was well ahead of the trend
13 years ago when she began designing and stocking labels that stood
the test of time.

Her Swanston Street boutique, Alice Euphemia, stocks Sydney labels
such as Karla Spetic, Ellery, Tina Kalivas plus Paddington designer
Marnie Skillings well known for her washed silks, merino wools,
hand-loomed lace and original prints.

"They are all labels that have a strong design and their own identity,
so they’re fresh and you can wear them now but they will also last,"
says Rieschieck. "One of the best compliments we get is: ‘I bought
this skirt 10 years ago and I still wear it.’

"It’s so tempting to go for something shiny and new but if you
choose fantastic fabrics and buy clothes that are well designed,
you’re going to keep them for years."

AFTER INTERRUPTION OF TWO YEARS MEMBERS OF HAIGAZIAN UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEET

Noyan Tapan
May 19, 2009

BEIRUT, MAY 19, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY: After an intertuption
of two years due to the unstable political situation in Lebanon,
the members of Haigazian Univesity Board of Trustees met in Beirut
on May 1-3. The Board has 15 members from United States, some of
which are ex-officio ones. 13 of them were present at the meeting,
which demonstrates the Board’s strong bond and sense of duty towards
Haigazian University and its development plans.

They were welcomed by six local members and the University
administration.

During the meetings many topics and issues related to academic and
development plans were covered. The Board has formed new sub-committees
specialized in Finance, Legal Matters and Development. It was planned
to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the University in the United
States, Lebanon and the Gulf region. At academic level the Board
has announced the start of a new scholarship program, which each
year offers a 100% merit scholarship to three new applicants with
outstanding academic performance.

FIRST SUPERJET-100 TO BE SOLD TO ARMENIA

Interfax
May 12 2009
Russia

The first Sukhoi Superjet-100 will be sold to the Armenian airline
Armavia, Olga Kayukova, a spokesman for the Sukhoi Civil Aircraft
Company, told reporters.

"This model is at the final stage of assembly and will soon be supplied
to Armavia," Kayukova said.

Kayukova said the catalogue price of the Superjet-100 is $28 million,
but the value of the contract is discussed individually in each case
and "payments are made in advance."

According to Kayukova, 98 Superjet-100 planes have been ordered as
of today. "Of these planes, thirty were ordered by Aeroflot and ten
were ordered by Italian companies. Some advanced payments have already
been made," she said.

TURKISH PM OFF TO BAKU TO ALLAY CONCERNS OVER ARMENIA TIES

Agence France Presse
May 12 2009

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew to Azerbaijan on Tuesday to
reassure its leaders that Turkey’s efforts to reconcile with Armenia
may undermine Baku’s interests.

The visit, Erdogan said, is aimed at "eradicating misunderstandings
and misperceptions" over Turkey’s policies and pledged that Azeri
interests remained a priority for Ankara.

"Nobody should have the slightest doubt that Turkey will continue to
defend Azerbaijan’s interests as it has done so far," Erdogan told
reporters before his departure. "Our relations are strong and based
on a culture of fraternity."

Erdogan, accompanied by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, was to meet
with President Ilham Aliyev and address the Azeri parliament Wednesday.

Turkey said last month it had agreed a "roadmap" to normalise relations
with Armenia, its neighbor to the east, with which it has a bloody
history and no diplomatic ties.

Azerbaijan, which shares ethnic roots with Turkey, is worried that
Ankara may reconcile with Yerevan and re-open the border between the
two countries, overriding Azeri interests.

Ankara sealed its border with Armenia in 1991 in solidarity with Baku
over the conflict in Nagorny Karabakh, an Armenian-majority Azeri
enclave Armenia had occupied two years earlier, dealing a heavy
economic blow on Yerevan.

Ankara has said a peace deal with Armenia will depend on the resolution
of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict and is eager for progress on the
issue.

Turkish-Armenian ties have been poisoned also by Yerevan’s campaign
for an international recognition of the mass killings of Armenians
under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

After his visit to Baku, Erdogan was to meet with Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Saturday.

Russia, which has been mediating between Armenia and Azerbaijan over
Nagorny Karabakh, is reportedly pushing for a summit between Aliyev
and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian in June aimed at moving to
formally end the conflict.