WHAT ABOUT EVALUATIONS?
A1plus
| 20:25:20 | 15-06-2005 | Official |
Today Robert Kocharyan had a working meeting with the leaders of the
member-parties of the political coalition. The draft Constitution
was discussed.
This is the only information spread by the RA President information
service and we can only guess what the authorities will answer the
Venice Commission which is not at all satisfies with the coalition
draft constitution.
PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr. Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:
PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon
Armenian version:
AROUND 20 CLERICS AND DEACONS ARE ORDAINED IN THE ST. GREGORY THE
ILLUMINATOR CATHEDRAL
Around 20 seminary students were ordained as clerics and deacons
in the service of the Armenian Apostolic Church on June 12 in the
St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral.
Rev. Fr. Tatoul Anoushian, a member of the brotherhood of the
Constantinople Patriarchate conducted the holy mass. The sermon
was delivered by Bishop Kegham Khatcherian, primate of the Diocese
of Lebanon.
The primate highlighted the character traits of people determined
to dedicate themselves to the service of the church. He stressed the
importance of the coupling of one’s rights with one’s obligations.
“Every one of you was granted the right of service to the church on a
certain level. But each right assumes an obligation. That obligation
will be your dedicated service to the holy church of God. Today you
climb the first stairs of this service, so you can reach higher levels
through your work in the future,” said the bishop.
After the mass, a procession of the newly ordained clerics and deacons
headed towards the Veharan, where they kneeled in front oh His Holiness
Aram I and received his blessings.
His Holiness advised them to prepare and self-educate themselves
for higher services. “Your study years at the seminary open up our
church’s and nations ‘ treasury. You will have to gain so much from
these years, so you can enrich our people in the near future on both
ecclesiastical and national levels through the riches you acquired,”
said His Holiness.
His Holiness also commended the dean of the seminary, its staff,
the students and their parents, for their encouragement and support
of the students throughout their study.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates
of the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the
history and the mission of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer
to the web page of the Catholicosate, The
Cilician Catholicosate, the administrative center of the church is
located in Antelias, Lebanon.
DUE TO NEW TECHNOLOGIES, 12 CHILDREN IN ARMENIA TO GIVE OPPORTUNITY
TO HEAR
YEREVAN, JUNE 13. ARMINFO. In 2005, 12 Armenian children will be
able to hear. It will be possible owing to the cochlear implantation
method, Executive Director of “Erebuni” Medical center (Yerevan)
Artur Ristomyan says journalists today.
He says that 6 children will be made surgical operation in a few days,
the rests – in 2005 autumn. Rostomyan noted that such operations
were made only in Russia (amongst CIS countries) before. To remind,
Armenia’s Health-Care Ministry organizes the Open Day for those having
problems with hearing. All comers may pass free consultations in
“Erebuni”, “Armenia” and “Arabkir” Medical centers.
According to Armenia’s Health-Care Ministry, 11.374 adults (4.106
are registered in the dispensary), 7.247 children under 14 (1.782
dispensary) and 1.397 15-17-years-old teenagers (523 dispensary)
have problems with hearing. -r-
Tuzmen And Swiss Economy Minister Reciprocally Postpone Visits
Turkish Press
June 13 2005
ANKARA (AA) – Turkish State Minister Kursat Tuzmen and Swiss Economy
Minister Joseph Deiss postponed visits reciprocally because of the
investigation opened against Yusuf Halacoglu, the Chairman of Turkish
Institute of History, in Switzerland.
Diplomatic sources told A.A correspondent that Tuzmen’s visit to
Switzerland, scheduled for June 22nd and 24th, and his participation to
Turkish-Swiss Business Council meeting was postponed to an indefinite
date.
Deiss’s scheduled visit to Turkey, planned to take place at the
beginning of September, will not take place, either.
A legal procedure was opened in Switzerland against Halacoglu because
of his statement against the allegations of so-called Armenian
genocide.
The allegations of so-called Armenian genocide continue to be an
element overshadowing Turkish-Swiss relations from time to time.
The most important development affecting the relations negatively was
approval of several resolutions by the Swiss authorities to recognize
the so-called genocide.
Pasadena Star-News, CA
San Gabriel Valley Tribune, CA
Whittier Daily News, CA
June 11 2005
Renewing bonds to Armenia
Church leader consecrates items for church during visit
By Marshall Allen , Staff Writer
PASADENA — When His Holiness Karekin II, pontiff of all Armenians,
entered the church hall Friday night, he was crowded by parishioners.
Karekin II held a scepter in his left hand and a gold cross in his
right. The cross he extended to members of the crowd, touching it
lightly on their heads or shoulders, blessing them.
The processional into St. Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Church was
led by a cross bearer, holding the Christian symbol high. The
sweetness of incense symbolizing prayers rising to heaven wafted
through the room.
One of the deacons, wearing a robe of maroon velvet and gold satin,
carried the “Khachkar,’ an ornate cross carved into a white stone
tablet. Later in the ceremony, the stone cross was washed in water
and wine and consecrated with holy oil by Karekin II.
About 500 people, most of them church members or their guests,
crowded the banquet room. It was the pontiff’s final event of his
10-day visit to Los Angeles, a momentous honor for the 153,000
Armenians who live in Los Angeles County. There are about 775,000
members of the Armenian Church in the United States.
“We’re a handful of people the Armenians worldwide we’re scattered
like leaves to the wind,’ said Nicholas Lambajian, 36, of Pasadena.
“Every time he visits our bonds to our church are renewed; our bonds
to our homeland are renewed. It makes us feel just a little bit more
Armenian, even though we’re proud to be Americans.’
Lambajian is chairman of the church’s building committee, a $2.3
million project scheduled to be completed Nov. 29. Friday’s
processional began a service where Karekin II consecrated five items
for the new church. They included the stone cross and four paintings.
The ceremony also included the delivery of an encyclical to church
member Richard Mushegain, a leader in the local Armenian community.
Mushegain said that Karekin II’s visit is a way to establish ties
between Armenia and the United States.
The pontifical visit was also an opportunity to reach out to other
groups, he said. Karekin II visited Childrens Hospital of Los
Angeles, where he thanked officials for establishing a relationship
with two pediatric hospitals in Armenia, Mushegain said.
The visit by Karekin II was his second to St. Gregory since he was
elected Supreme Patriarch in 1999.
Armenia’s foreign minister wants more U.S. involvement in resolving
Armenia-Turkey dispute
AP Worldstream; Jun 10, 2005
WILLIAM C. MANN
Armenia’s foreign minister urged the United States to become more
involved in settling his country’s dispute with Turkey, especially in
persuading Turkey to reopen its border and resume normal trade with
its landlocked northern neighbor.
The Turks closed the border in 1993 during Christian Armenia’s
six-year war with another Muslim neighbor, Azerbaijan.
“The United States is active in this, but we would like to see them
more engaged,” Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian said Friday after a
meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“I believe the United States can be more assertive on the border
matter. Not other matters, but on the border.”
Turkey closed the border after Armenian-backed troops from
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Christian Armenian enclave ruled by
Azerbaijan when Armenia and Azerbaijan were Soviet republics, moved
into other parts of Azerbaijan, seized towns and approached the
Iranian and Turkish borders. A 1994 truce largely ended hostilities,
but a final settlement has not been reached.
Armenia considers ending the Turkish trade embargo the key to better
relations, but at the heart of their estrangement is Turkey’s refusal
to accept Armenia’s charge that Ottoman Turks committed genocide
against Armenians. Armenia says as many as 1.5 million Armenians died
violently or of disease and hunger in 1915-1923 as they were driven
from eastern Turkey. Turkey says the number was inflated and the
deaths resulted from efforts to secure the Ottoman Empire’s border
with Russia and defend against Armenian militants.
Oskanian said universal acceptance of the genocide remains on
Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. Argentina, Canada, France, Poland and
Russia are among countries that have accepted that it occurred, but
the Bush administration remains leery of it. Oskanian said he met with
the co-chairmen of the Armenian caucus in the House of Representatives
while he was in Washington, and they plan again to submit a resolution
on the subject.
Turkey, however, would not have to yield on the question before
relations could be restored, he said.
He said Friday that the United States should emphasize to Turkey that
it “should not only aspire to be a bridge between East and West but
aspire to be a bridge between parts of Europe.”
“Armenia and Turkey are not at war. We have no problem with that
country,” he said. “We have historical differences. Germany and France
have historical differences, which they talk about … but they don’t
close their borders.”
The genocide question “has been put on a different track” from the
border question, Oskanian said, “and those tracks do not meet at any
point.”
Clearly the trade embargo has eclipsed the genocide question as
Armenia’s main worry. Two weeks ago, in Helsinki, Finland, Oskanian
made a similar appeal to the European Union to use its leverage with
Turkey to open “the last closed border in Europe.”
Turkey is a candidate for EU membership, and such enmity among
European states does not sit well with other members who must consider
the Turkish application.
Still, the politics of the situation are complicated.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has offered to restore
relations once Armenia agreed to a commission of experts from both
sides to study the history of the late Ottoman period and determine
whether a genocide of Armenians occurred.
Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran
June 9 2005
Gas exports from Assalouyeh to earn dlrs 5 bn a year
Assalouyeh, Bushehr prov, June 9, IRNA
Iran’s gas exports from Assalouyeh region will earn the country as
much as five billion dollars a year.
Managing Director of National Iranian Gas Company Roknoddin Javadi
told IRNA that his company had finalized talks with foreign companies
for export of 20 million tons of LNG and contract on export of an
additional 7.5 million tons will be signed in the next few days.
Javadi said the contract for transfer of gas to the UAE, Azerbaijan
and Armenia through pipeline is finalized and talks are underway for
conclusion of three more contracts.
Once the contracts are enforced Iran’s annual LNG exports will earn
it as much as dlrs 3.5 to four billion and exports through pipelines
will fetch about one billion dollars a year.
The Moscow Times, Russia
June 9 2005
A Woman’s Right to Self-Defense
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer
Prosecutors are asking the Moscow City Court to overturn a woman’s
murder conviction on the grounds that she acted in self-defense
against a man who was trying to rape her.
In what is being seen as a landmark ruling on a woman’s right to
self-defense, the City Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday asked the court
to overturn a verdict last Thursday by the Lyublinsky District Court.
Alexandra Ivannikova, 29, stabbed Sergei Bagdasaryan, 23, in the
thigh with a knife after waving down his car for a ride in December
2003. The knife struck Bagdasaryan in an artery, and he was dead by
the time police arrived at the scene.
The Lyublinsky court found Ivannikova guilty of murder and gave her a
suspended sentence. District prosecutors had sought a three-year
prison sentence.
In their appeal, city prosecutors said that Ivannikova’s actions “did
not constitute a crime,” spokesman Sergei Marchenko said by telephone
Wednesday. “The district prosecutor has expressed her opinion. We
disagreed and said so.”
City prosecutors appeared to have taken note of public outcry over
the conviction. Ivannikova’s relatives and independent observers had
expressed dismay at the original verdict of the district court, which
found her guilty despite accepting that she had acted in self-defense
to avoid being raped.
“This is a landmark case, not because it is a victory for justice but
one for public opinion, which is still taken into account sometimes,”
said Yulia Latynina, who hosts a show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
The prosecutors’ decision to seek to overturn the conviction came as
a surprise to Ivannikova and her lawyer.
“I sighed with relief when I got a suspended sentence last week, and
I cannot say how surprised I was to learn the prosecutors are on my
side,” Ivannikova said by telephone. “I realize that this is not over
yet and no one knows which decision the city court will take.”
Ivannikova’s lawyer, Alexei Parshin, said, “It is no secret that our
judges are reluctant to acquit defendants, especially on murder
charges.”
No date for the city court hearing has been set.
Ivannikova got into Bagdasaryan’s Lada car in southern Moscow on Dec.
8, 2003, after he agreed to take her home for 100 rubles, according
to court documents. She became alarmed after she noticed that he had
passed her house and turned instead into a dark side street near
Donetskaya Ulitsa.
Bagdasaryan parked the car and locked the doors. Ivannikova testified
that he then pulled his pants down and attempted to undress her,
despite her protests. Ivannikova said she eventually managed to take
a kitchen knife out of her purse and stab him in the leg.
Then she got out the car and ran away. She stopped a police car and
told officers what she had done, but by the time they found
Bagdasaryan he was already dead.
Parshin, Ivannikova’s lawyer, insisted that his client had acted in
self-defense, and that she had carried the knife for self-protection
after being raped at the age of 16.
Nikolai Rylatko, a lawyer for Sergei Bagdasaryan’s father, Andrei,
said in remarks published Wednesday in Gazeta that he was preparing
to appeal the Lyublinsky court sentence as too mild, and criticized
prosecutors for making what he called a political decision.
A small crowd from the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and other
radical nationalist groups rallied outside Lyublinsky court in
Ivannikova’s defense last week in an apparent attempt to whip up
racial prejudice against Bagdasaryan, an ethnic Armenian.
But Parshin insisted that race was not a factor in the case, and that
Ivannikova was not seeking the nationalists’ support.
Dmitry Olshansky, a prominent defense lawyer, said that in the past
those accused of killing in self-defense had been routinely sentenced
to prison terms, but that this policy was slowly changing, with more
leniency being shown to defendants.
The turning point was the adoption of an amendment to the Criminal
Code late last year that rejected the concept of adequate response,
he said.
“Earlier, if one was attacked by a fist, he was allowed by law to
defend himself only with a fist and not with a knife or a gun,”
Olshansky said. “Now, someone defending himself and his property can
use a gun against anyone trying to get into his apartment, regardless
of whether the intruder is armed or not.”
According to Interior Ministry statistics, about 8,000 rapes and
attempted rapes were recorded last year.
Olshansky said that although the number of rape cases that reached
court was quite large, it were only the tip of the iceberg.
“Policemen often try to prevent these cases from being recorded in
order to keep good clear-up rates,” he said.
Staff Writer Nabi Abdullaev contributed to this report.
ROSE-ROTH SEMINAR TO BE HELD IN YEREVAN ON OCTOBER 6-9
YEREVAN, June 8. /ARKA/. NATO Parliamentary Assembly will hold
Rose-Roth seminar in Yerevan on October 6-9, 2005, as stated the
Chairman of the RA NA Standing Committee on Defense, National Security
and Internal Affairs Mher Shahgeldyan. He noted that in the course of
the seminar regional issues will be discussed. Sjaheldyan didn’t
exclude that “global processes in the world will be analyzed at the
seminar”. He emphasized the importance of the fact that Armenia
submitted an individual plan of activities in the framework of
partnership with NATO and received positive feedback. According to
Shahgeldyan, “the program is quite pragmatic and realistic and has
strategic importance for Armenia”. A.H. -0–
Reuters AlertNet, UK
June 7 2005
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Presidential pardon for six Armenians jailed for
coup
Source: IRIN
LIBREVILLE, 7 June (IRIN) – President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has
pardoned six Armenian pilots who were sentenced to between 14 and 24
years in prison last November for allegedly taking part in a
mercenary plot to overthrow him.
In a decree read on national radio on the occasion of his 63rd
birthday on Sunday, the head of the tiny oil-rich West African state
said the pardon was “a humanitarian gesture” and ordered their
immediate release and “repatriation to their homeland.”
According to a translated report on the BBC monitoring service, the
Armenian TV AL+ website said the six Armenians, who repeatedly
proclaimed their innocence, are to be brought home this week and are
currently being treated in hospital.
The group, who made up an aircrew, were among 15 foreign nationals
arrested in March 2004 for allegedly taking part in a coup involving
around 70 mercenaries, most of them South Africans.
A German arrested with them died in detention about 10 days later.
According to Amnesty International, the six Armenians and five South
Africans who were finally convicted of plotting against the president
have spent the last 15 months handcuffed and shackled 24 hours a day,
including during the trial.
News of their release came as Amnesty International released a
20-page report summing up its comments on the November trial against
the alleged coup instigators in the capital Malabo.
“This trial did not respect international laws and standards for fair
trials, and breached national law,” the report said.
Among its recommendations, the rights watchdog called for a quick and
fair hearing of a defence appeal and an investigation into
allegations of torture and human rights abuse.
Nick Du Toit, a former South African soldier alleged to be the leader
of the group, said on the last day of the trial: “We were arrested
and chained and treated like wild animals and tortured by the
police.”
He was the sole defendant to have initially confessed to a role in
the conspiracy. He later said that his admission of guilt had been
obtained by torture.
The prisoners have been held in Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black
Beach prison outside Malabo where Amnesty said last April they faced
starvation.
Obiang went on air at the time to deny the allegation, saying on
national radio “although there are many prisoners incarcerated at
Black Beach, they are well treated.”
The head of state has been widely accused of corruption and human
rights abuse during his 25-year rule of what used to be one of the
world’s poorest nations.
Equatorial Guinea now produces 350,000 barrels per day of oil and has
become Africa’s third-biggest oil producer after Nigeria and Angola,
but most of its 500,000 people still live in dire poverty.
Although oil generates US $30,000 per year for every one of the
Equatorial Guinea’s 500,000 inhabitants – giving the country a gross
domestic product per capita equivalent to that of Switzerland or
Denmark – life expectancy remains low at 49 and less than half the
population have access to clean drinking water, according the UN
Human Development Index.