Author: Madatian Greg

Envoy denies Turkey to open Armenian border

ANS TV, Baku
17 Jun 04

[Presenter] Although the report that Turkey will open its borders
with Armenia was on the web site of the Turkish NTV channel, it
was removed later, the Turkish ambassador to Azerbaijan, Ahmet Unal
Cevikoz, said, adding that the Turkish Foreign Ministry has reacted
strongly to the report.

[Ahmet Unal Cevikoz] All these are wrong reports. Following this
report on the NTV web site, the Foreign Ministry told NTV that the
report was wrong and wide of the mark, and should be taken off the
air. In turn, NTV did not broadcast it.

I want to state clearly that at present, Turkey is not thinking of
opening its borders with Armenia and in this connection, there are
no changes in Turkey’s official policy pursued by our president,
prime minister and foreign minister. Our expectations to normalize
relations between Turkey and Armenia are obvious.

First of all, Armenia should demonstrate its desire for
good-neighbourly relations both with Azerbaijan and Turkey, vacate
Azerbaijan’s occupied lands and resolve the Nagornyy Karabakh issue
within the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and in
line with international legal norms.

PRESS RELEASE

June 15, 2004

American University of Armenia Corporation
300 Lakeside Drive, 4th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Telephone: (510) 987-9452
Fax: (510) 208-3576

Contact: Gohar Momjian
E-mail: [email protected]

AUA COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES DISCUSSES VIOLENCE IN ARMENIAN FAMILIES

Yerevan- On Monday, June 7, 2004, AUA’s College of Health Sciences (CHS)
held a public health panel discussion on “Violence in Armenian Families:
Myths or Reality?” Approximately 50 people, including AUA students and
faculty, community members of the general public, as well as the media
listened attentively as this sensitive and at times controversial issue was
discussed.

Moderated by the Director of the School of Health Care Management and
Administration and former Minister of Health, Dr. Mihran Nazaretyan noted,
“Violent behavior and the incidence of domestic violence in Armenia are not
clearly understood both by the general public and the state. The
epidemiology of domestic violence in the country is quite uncertain, thus
the problem has not been recognized as a public health issue. Just recently,
due to pressure from international organizations, newly created NGOs, as
well as the public, the problem has been disclosed and is currently
considered as an agenda item for state decision-makers and lawmakers.”

Other invited panelists, including Sara Anjargolian, Assistant Dean of AUA’s
Dept. of Law, Susanna Aslanyan, President of Armenia’s Maternity Fund NGO,
Iren Sargsyan, Gender Based Violence Program Coordinator, Prime II, and
Susanna Vardanyan, President of the Women Rights Center NGO in Yerevan, were
given time for short presentations expressing their thoughts and comments on
the social, cultural and gender determinants of domestic violence, education
and cooperation with the families, governmental bodies, and national
legislators.

Several suggestions were offered to help identify the problems more clearly
and provide better solutions. Priority should be given to more information,
education and public discussions, greater mass-media coverage, to involve
the entire family in an educational process, further legislative initiatives
and to engage support and cooperation with national lawmakers in order to
improve the laws regarding domestic violence and the rights of women.

The School of Health Care Management and Administration is the newest
program of the AUA College of Health Sciences and is a joint undertaking
with the Ministry of Health of Armenia. Its focus is on continuing medical
education throughout the regions of Armenia and to improve the health of the
population. The school trains a number of health care specialists in order
to create a critical mass of professionals with necessary level of skills
and abilities to implement plans and strategies of the Ministry of Health.
—————-
The American University of Armenia is registered as a non-profit educational
organization in both Armenia and the United States and is affiliated with
the Regents of the University of California. Receiving major support from
the AGBU, AUA offers instruction leading to the Masters Degree in eight
graduate programs. For more information about AUA, visit

Anand loses to Leko

Rediff, India
June 15 2004

Former World champion Viswanathan Anand suffered a shock defeat at the
hands of Hungarian Grandmaster Peter Leko in the fifth and penultimate
round of the Armenia versus Rest of the World chess contest at Hotel
Hyatt Ararat in Moscow on Monday.

Smbat Lputian also struck back firmly to help Armenia stage a
remarkable recovery in the closing stages of this match, being
organised to celebrate the 75th birth anniversary of late Armenian
World champion Tigran Petrosian.

Team Armenia eventually coasted home to a 4-2 victory, their first
so far in the six-game match, and narrowed the World’s lead down to
two points.

With just one more round of six games remaining in the Scheveningen
event, the World team is still the favourite to win.

The scores now stand at 16-14 in the World’s favour.

After five straight black victories, it was the turn of the first
player to do the damage and coming out triumphant was Leko, who played
an energy-filled end game to put it across Anand.

Playing the white side of a Sicilian Tiamanov, Leko opted for the
structure akin to the English attack and ensured himself a better
end game after the queens got traded very early in the middle game.

Anand’s game plan did not succeed in the latter stages even as pieces
got exchanged at regular intervals and the players arrived at rook
and pawns end game with equal strength.

However, the pawn structure of the Indian was earlier dismantled by
the Hungarian star and Anand found hard to cope.

Knocking down one pawn by force, Leko displayed excellent technique
to romp home in 68 moves.

Lputian had a dubious record thus far in the event with three losses
and a draw but the lowest rated Armenian player in the match held
on to his own to succeed over young Spaniard Francisco Vallejo Pons,
who had to pay heavy for his over ambitious play.

It was a position akin to the Queen’s gambit accepted after the opening
and Vallejo had a comfortable position on board after he won a pawn.

The just result should have been a draw as white had more active
pieces but trying harder, Vallejo went for an exchange and got two
menacing passed pawns on the queen’s side.

However, just as it appeared Vallejo was cruising, Lputian came up
with some dour defence, denying further liberty to his opponent.

As it turned out in the end, the better decision might have been a
draw by repetition that Vallejo refused after the exchange.

Lputian handled the end game pretty well to score his first victory
at a crucial moment for his team. The game lasted 76 moves.

All the remaining four matches were drawn and the quickest of the day
was between Adams and Gelfand, who signed truce in just 20 moves of
a Sicilian Nazdorf.

As if taking a cue from them, Etienne Bacrot of the World team agreed
to share a point with Vladimir Akopian after some shadow boxing in
the Nimzo Indian. However, this turned out to be bad strategy for the
World as giving away two easy draws with white backfired in the end.

Russian champion Peter Svidler pressed for some advantage against
the world’s top rated Garry Kasparov, who is representing Armenia,
as his mother is Armenian.

However, the Rossolimo attack by Svidler met with effective counter
play by Kasparov and eventually after routine exchanges the player
arrived at a minor pieces endgame and signed peace after 58 moves.

Rafael Vaganian drew with Loek Van Wely after an intense battle
arising out of a Queen pawn game where the former played white.

Even as the pieces changed hands quickly, Van Wely came quite close
to winning but for some fine defensive technique by Vaganian who
steered the game to theoretically drawn endgame in 44 moves.

Scores after match 5: Rest of the World leads Armenia 16-14 (Peter
Svidler drew with Garry Kasparov; Viswanathan Anand lost to Peter Leko;
Etienne Bacrot drew Vladimir Akopian; Francisco Vallejo Pons lost to
Smbat Lputian; Michael Adams drew with Boris Gelfand; Loek Van Wely
drew with Rafael Vaganian).

Edmonton Journal (Alberta)
June 14, 2004 Monday Final Edition

It’s an Outrage!: Canadian superstar playwright Tomson Highway
trashes PC police on eve of Magnetic North debut

by Liz Nicholls

EDMONTON — Something about Canadian theatre is making one of its
signature playwrights really really mad. It may be driving him right
out the stage door. In a nutshell, it’s political correctness. But
not the lack of it.

It’s midnight, and the ebullient Tomson Highway is on the blower from
a vast 19th-century Toronto mansion someone’s lent him while he
teaches a U of T course on aboriginal mythology. He and his partner
Raymond Lalonde are just back from their usual six-month exile in the
south of France: “The Inuit may have 40 words for snow, but the
French have 350 words for cheese,” he says.

He’s just thrown a birthday party for his brother-in-law (with
numerous of his 175 nephews and nieces in attendance), and a good
time was had by all. Tonight his raucous tragi-comedy Ernestine
Shuswap Gets Her Trout, his first play in a decade, opens at our
Magnetic North Festival.

It’s all good. “I’m 52 years old and I could die tomorrow and say
I’ve had a fabulous life.”

However, Tomson Highway is not a happy man.

The puckish author of such groundbreaking international hits as The
Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing is used to taking
shivs from both the white and native communities for his defence of
colour-blind casting. He’s convinced that’s why his plays, studied in
universities on both sides of the Atlantic, are so rarely produced.
Given the PC realities, they’re virtually impossible to cast without
offending someone or inviting the “cultural appropriation” charge.
Theatres are afraid to cast white actors as native characters.
Kamloops’ Western Canada Theatre, for whom Ernestine was written,
will undoubtedly take some heat for having a couple of white actors
in its four-member cast.

“Telling someone like me I have to put on a show with only native
actors is like telling Shakespeare he can only have Danish actors in
Hamlet, or Scottish actors in the Scottish Play,” declares Highway,
warming to the subject with his usual vigour. “What if they told
Jason Sherman he had to use only Jewish actors for the rest of his
life? Or Brecht should be limited to German actors to the end of
time? Does Atom Egoyan have to use only Armenians? Do you need Greeks
to do Medea?

“I only want the same freedom white playwrights have. Otherwise it’s
racist. Why should I be limited to native actors because I’m Indian?”

Highway, who went to see a production of Verdi’s Macbett in
Barcelona, notes tartly that “an Italian set to music something with
Scottish characters by an English writer, with 72 Spanish actors on
the stage… . Not one was Scottish!

“I get criticized and I don’t care,” he says. And indeed he’s been
steadfast in his objections over the years. “Every real artist has
always taken heat. It’s our job to take heat. Artists have been
imprisoned, tortured, executed for breaking the status quo. This is
nothing by comparison.”

The bottom line is that “people are trying to tell me how to do my
job and I don’t appreciate it… . There’s an element of fascism,
yes, and it’s disturbing. I lose a lot of work; people are scared to
rock the boat of political correctness. It may be great for native
actors (to insist on all-native casts), but if this continues it may
be the last time I ever write.”

He is not sympathetic to resentment from native actors when parts in
his plays go to white actors. “That’s showbiz man. If you can’t take
the heat, get the **** out of the kitchen.”

There have been easier beginnings to a script than the proposition he
was offered by WCT’s David Ross, who handed Highway a 1910 document
in which 12 chiefs of reserves surrounding Kamloops presented their
list of land-claim grievances to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier on an
official visit.

“Honestly, I had no idea what to do.” He laughs his mischievous
laugh. “So I decided to write about their wives.”

The play, he says, takes us “backstage at the main event, where the
women are cooking a dinner of mythical proportions before the arrival
of the dignitaries. Momentum builds. It’s very funny.”

There’s another stratum, of course, to a play that invokes land
claims. Especially since “we’re in the midst of reinventing a new
reality in Canada that includes native artists,” as Highway, the
self-styled “die-hard optimist,” says.

“We’re not going to go away. We love it here and we’re going to be
here always. So we need to keep asking certain questions. What
exactly is our place in the mosaic? How can we make ourselves
relevant? Artists are in the front line.”

[email protected]

Tomson Highway speaks Thursday

in the Timms Lobby at 6:30 p.m.

THEATRE PREVIEW

Ernestine Shuswap

Gets Her Trout

Directed by: David Ross

Starring: Isabel Thompson, Rose Johnson, Janet Michael,

Lisa C. Ravensbergen

Where: Timms Centre For The Arts

Running: Tonight through Friday

GRAPHIC: Photo: Kevin Van Paassen, National Post; Tomson Highway,
ducking from calls of “cultural appropriation,” has no qualms about
companies casting white actors in his plays, including Ernestine
Shuswap Gets Her Trout, at left.; Photo: Kevin Van Paassen, National
Post; (Scene from Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout)

BBC Accused over ‘Visit to Enclave’

The Scotsman, UK
June 10 2004

“PA”

Azerbaijan’s national broadcasting council has complained to the BBC
that a crew visited the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh without
the agreement of Azerbaijani authorities, the council said today.

A statement from the council said that the head of the BBC World
Service’s Azerbaijan bureau, Islam Atakishiev, was called to
the council to receive the complaint that a crew from the BBC’s
Russian-language service had gone to the enclave, which has been
under control of ethnic Armenian forces for a decade.

The crew “participated in direct dialogue with the terrorist regime
there,” the statement said.

“In the event of continued preparation of further reports demonstrating
indifference to Azerbaijan’s national interests, the question of
broadcasting the BBC on Azerbaijani territory will be reviewed,”
the statement said.

ANSA
ANSA English Media Service
June 8, 2004

ART: CRYING ARMENIAN STONES IN VENICE

VENICE

(ANSA) – VENICE, June 8 – A documentary exhibition offering a journey
among the crying stones of Armenia, as poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)
put it, will be held in the UNESCO Zorzi Palace in Venice between
June 8 and July 2, 2004.

The event was organised by the Centre for Documentary Research of
Armenian Culture CSDCA, the Unesco Venice-based Regional Bureau for
Science in Europe ROSTE and the Department for Eurasian Studies at
the Ca Foscari University.

The suggestive images shown in the exhibition illustrate in detail
a number of projects aimed at preserving and restoring Armenian
cultural heritage which have been already completed or are underway
in the country.

“The Armenian heritage is not only architectural, it is representative
of the Armenian culture in the broad sense of the term,” said Francis
Childe, Chief of the Asia/Pacific and Europe Section of UNESCO’s
Cultural Heritage Division.

The restoration works were carried out by Italian experts using
ancient techniques which also helped revive the local crafts sector.

The exhibition is divided into six sections which reconstruct the
historic and geographic context of the Armenian culture, show some of
the most famous examples of Armenian architecture, focus on important
construction techniques and preservation problems and deal with the
country’s efforts to document and preserve its cultural heritage and
also to encourage the development of local communities.

The last section is dedicated to the Armenian community in Venice,
present from 1715 onwards. Contacts between Venetians and Armenians
date back to the establishment of Venice. (ANSA). (BZ/krc)

Azerbaijan not to cede land to Nagorno-Karabakh – president

08.06.2004, 15.20

YEVLAKH (Azerbaijan), June 8 (Itar-Tass) – Azerbaijan will not cede
a sod of its land, President Ilham Aliyev said, addressing a meeting
in the city of Yevlakh devoted to the opening a street and a square
named after his father Geidar Aliyev on Tuesday.

He stressed that Azerbaijan would seek to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict peacefully.

“But if this fails, we will free the occupied territories by any
means. We must be ready for such situation,” Aliyev said, referring
to chunks of land that remained in Azerbaijan’s breakaway Armenian
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh after a six-year war.

Aliyev said he was optimistic about the future of his country that
has an important place in the region.

He stressed that the focus of the Azerbaijani leadership’s policy
was on “economic and social development, attention to people and care
for them”.

Aliyev said authorities must develop their regions, create new jobs,
favourable conditions for businesses, and attend to youth problems
and needs of people.

During his stay in Yevlakh, a city of 125,000 people, Aliyev inspected
the progress of the construction of a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline
and visited several social facilities.

He is expected to visit on Tuesday a nearby city of Mingechaur,
one of industrial centres of Azerbaijan

Leader of Karabakh urges mediators to help start dialogue with Baku

Noyan Tapan news agency, Yerevan
7 Jun 04

Stepanakert, 7 June: Only direct contacts between the mediators and
the Karabakh side and Stepanakert’s equal participation in the talks
could drive the peace settlement out of the deadlock, the president
of the NKR [Nagornyy Karabakh Republic], Arkadiy Gukasyan, said at a
meeting with the special representative of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the OSCE, Goran Lennmarker, on 4 June. Lennmarker arrived in
Karabakh on a fact-finding visit.

Arkadiy Gukasyan particularly stressed that Nagornyy Karabakh is
suffering from the fact that the conflict has not yet been resolved. As
an unrecognized republic, the NKR is being deprived of financial,
humanitarian and other necessary international assistance. In addition,
the president noted that Nagornyy Karabakh continued to remain under
the transport blockade. Despite these difficulties, Arkadiy Gukasyan
added, Nagornyy Karabakh aspires to make use of the whole of its
limited potential to develop the economic and social fields and to
form a civic society which will meet European standards.

The main information department under the NKR president reported
that Arkadiy Gukasyan expressed the hope that the OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly’s interest in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict and
its assistance in this process would promote peace in the region. At
the same time, the president stressed that the settlement was
being hindered due mainly to Azerbaijan’s position, its on-going
information war aimed at forming in society an extremely negative
attitude to the Armenian people. The settlement is also handicapped
by constant bellicose statements by the Baku authorities and their
reluctance to hold dialogue with Nagornyy Karabakh. In this connection,
Arkadiy Gukasyan said that rather than draw up recommendations on the
settlement, international mediators should aim at creating necessary
conditions for dialogue between Nagornyy Karabakh and Azerbaijan
which could help the sides resolve the crisis.

[Passage omitted: Lennmarker’s statement]

Saturday Review: Paperbacks: Fiction
ISOBEL MONTGOMERY AND DAVID JAYS

The Guardian – United Kingdom
Jun 05, 2004

A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies, by John Murray (Penguin, pounds
7.99)

A writer of short stories who has a medical background at once
suggests comparisons to Chekhov, but in the case of John Murray
they are worth drawing. The viewpoints in this collection are richer
than one would expect in a debut and the stories have an austerity,
almost a severity, born, one suspects, of Murray’s experiences as a
doctor in the developing world. Second-generation immigrants to the
US, often of Indian parentage, crisis-raddled or simply confused,
his characters struggle with what it means to be human. Murray grants
them epiphanies in Indian cholera treatment centres or refugee camps
on the Rwandan border; his stories are old-fashioned, yet refreshingly
bold when so many writing-school graduates do not venture beyond the
insular discontents of consumer culture. “What difference can any
of us make?” is a question worth raising, and one that Murray forces
his characters to face head on.

Isobel Montgomery

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury, pounds 6.99)

It is easy to see why Sam Mendes wants to film this wonderfully
vivid debut, which sets a coming-of-age story against Afghanistan’s
recent history. Amir and Hassan are motherless boys growing up in
Kabul just before the coup that deposed the last Afghan king. Amir
is Pashtun, a Sunni and privileged, while Hassan is the son of the
family servant, Shia and a member of the Hazara minority – making
theirs a friendship that cannot survive childhood. Its climax is
Kabul’s yearly kite-fighting festival in which the pair’s victory
culminates in Amir’s betrayal of Hassan. Amir is haunted by his
cowardice throughout invasion, escape and exile in America, and it
is only the fall of the Taliban that offers him an opportunity to
redress the wrong he has done his best friend. Hosseini brilliantly
personalises a place and a history for a western audience, but his
eagerness to match political upheaval with emotional crisis makes
the narrative over-determined. Isobel Montgomery

Buddha Da, by Anne Donovan (Canongate, pounds 7.99)

You can get used to anything . . . almost. But a dad who would “dae
anythin for a laugh so he wid; went doon the shops wi a perra knickers
on his heid” is much easier to cope with than one who announces “Ah’m
gaun doon the Buddhist Centre for a couple of hours”. Next thing he is
chasing round Glasgow with a trio of monks trying to track down the
reincarnation of a lama; then, before his family realises that this
is more than one of his fads, he has swapped drink for meditation and
is telling his wife he wants to practise celibacy. Told in a rich
Glaswegian through the alternating voices of Jimmy, his wife and
their 12-year-old daughter, Anne Donovan’s portrayal of a Damascene
conversion in an ordinary household is warm, if not always funny. She
not only makes the practical problems of religious fervour central
to the story, but within pages the dialect writing becomes something
to savour rather than stumble over. Isobel Montgomery

Gilgamesh, by Joan London (Atlantic Books, pounds 7.99)

Nunderup only just makes it on to the map of Australia; there’s nothing
there but hard work and hard faces. When Edith’s plump British cousin
and his handsome Armenian friend visit, imaginative horizons open –
and she gets pregnant. Armenia nags at her like a necessary dream,
until she slips away, baby in one arm, suitcase in the other. Edith
makes it to a dispiriting England and on to the Orient Express,
defying the approaching war until she attains her fabled Armenia. She
finds a disconcertingly real place, its hazy air laden with petrol
and protest. The ancient epic Gilgamesh , about friends who travel
the world and dare death together, haunts this book, even though
Edith feels it’s a Boys’ Own legend. Nothing happens to women, she
protests: “It’s not their story . . . women get stuck.” Her quest
is none the less achingly brave, and in this beautiful first novel,
the deceptively calm pages contain a turbulent, heroic longing.

David Jays

The Stranger at the Palazzo d’Oro, by Paul Theroux (Penguin, pounds
7.99)

In the title tale of Theroux’s collection, American artist Gil Mariner
returns to a snooty hotel in Taormina. He remembers a Sicilian summer
40 years earlier, when as a young traveller he was uncomfortably
coopted by a wealthy German countess. Softened up by luxury and
teased by the Countess’s breast with its “lovely smooth snout”, Gil
became a bedroom flunkey, playing self-hating sexual games. Theroux is
known for travel writing and fiction set abroad – other stories here
visit South Africa, Vegas and Hawaii – but this novella is stained by
grubby braggadocio. Better are the bewildering intimations of sexual
knowledge in “A Judas Memoir”. In four linked episodes, a Catholic boy
stumbles towards queasy adult knowledge in small-town America. Guilt,
disgust and betrayal snag his imagination, prompted by vicious nuns,
stagnant holy water and a priest pawing his scout troop with scaly
hands. David Jays

Living Nowhere, by John Burnside (Vintage, pounds 7.99)

Don’t believe the death certificates, says Burnside – everyone
in Corby dies of disappointment. The Northamptonshire town was
hollowed out when its steel plant closed in the 80s, but this novel
opens 20 years earlier, with the families who sought a new life
there. Everyone comes from somewhere else, no one considers it home –
not the Scottish Camerons nor the Latvian Ruckerts, each a family at
sea, especially after the friendship between teenage Francis and Jan
ends violently. The plant steeps the community in “a miasma of steel
and carbon and ore”, the smuts and stink staining even the snow. The
characters maintain a conviction that home is somewhere in the past
or future, but Burnside writes so forcefully about the pitiless town
that you miss it when Francis does a bunk, wandering from Scotland
to California. Writing with a poet’s electric apprehension of the
material world, Burnside puts the ghosts back into a town without
history. David Jays

LITHUANIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY GETS ARMENIAN INTERNS

Baltic News Service
June 1, 2004

VILNIUS, Jun 01 — Armenian diplomats are attending an internship
at the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to learn more about European
integration.

During the internship on May 31 through June 11, the Armenian diplomats
will study the Lithuanian experience of preparations for European Union
membership, various aspects of coordination of EU-related activities
and formation of the public opinion on Euro-integration.

The diplomats will attend a series of meetings at the President’s
Office, the parliament and the government and visit the Vilnius
University’s International Relations and Political Science Institute,
the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry’s press service said.

A similar internship was held for Ukrainian officials in January.

In the framework of the program to transfer the Lithuanian
Euro-integration experience to the countries of South Caucasus,
representatives of these countries will attend various training on
public administration in Lithuania in 2004-2005 The training will
be held in cooperation with the Lithuanian Institute of Public
Administration.