Author: Vardapetian Ophelia

Daily Illini, IL
April 26 2004

Armenian association holds vigil to remember World War I genocide

By Rachel Bass | Staff writer
Published Monday, April 26, 2004

Huddled together fighting the wind against the bleak, rainy sky, the
members of ArmA, the University’s Armenian Association, held their
first candlelight vigil on Saturday night to commemorate the Armenian
genocide during World War I.

Despite its end 81 years ago, the Armenian Genocide and its horrors
remain vivid in the mind of Zaruhi Sahakyan, a graduate student in
economics and the club’s president.

“We need to raise awareness and make it known that we shouldn’t
forget,” Sahakyan said.

Defined by Laine Pehta, ArmA’s treasurer and senior in LAS, as a
“concerted effort by a political power to completely destroy a
culture,” the Armenian genocide claimed the lives of 1,500,000
people. The Turkish government attempted to annihilate the Armenian
population of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1918, and then
again between 1920 and 1923. Diseases plagued the concentration camps
and many others suffered starvation and thirst during the deportation
to Syria. Those that escaped fled to Russia.

Areg Danagoulian, a teaching assistant in physics, emphasized the
importance of remembering the Armenian genocide.

“This was an actual attempt to systematically exterminate a people.
The victims were our ancestors,” Danagoulian said. “When it’s
forgotten, it ends up happening again.”

Sahakyan explained that the international observance for the genocide
occurs on April 24 because on that night in 1915, the Turkish
government arrested more than 200 Armenian intellects and public
figures.

“The largest obstacle to overcome now is that the government that
perpetrated this strongly denies it,” Pehta said. “The official
Turkish policy is that this did not happen.”

Nevertheless, the United Nations’ Genocide Convention acknowledges
the Armenian Genocide. Thirty-three U.S. states also officially
recognize it, the most recent of which was Idaho, Sahakyan said.

As part of the candlelight vigil, Pehta read an excerpt from Burning
Tigris, a book by Peter Balakian, an Armenian intellectual who
teaches at Colgate University. Those gathered also recited prayers
and observed a moment of silence.

Lauren Buchakjian, freshman in business, then performed a piece on
the violin by Armenian composer Komitas, titled “Krunk” — which
translates to “swallow.”

“Komitas was a victim of the genocide,” Buchakjian said. “This song
is a portrayal of what he saw and what he felt, and it depicts the
deep sadness that people felt.”

The Rev. George Pyle of the Three Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Church in
Champaign attended to lend his support and stand in solidarity. He
also came to remember his grandmother who suffered in the 1922
genocide.

“If we forget hatred, we will relieve it,” Pyle said. “I choose to
remember the Armenians and I choose to remember all people who have
suffered.”

FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief

=================================================

19 April 2004
ARMENIA: COUNCIL OF EUROPE FAILS TO PUNISH COMMITMENT VIOLATIONS OVER
IMPRISONED CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

With 24 Jehovah’s Witnesses in prison for refusing military service on
grounds of conscience, another fined and a further three awaiting trial,
Council of Europe officials have been unable to explain to Forum 18 News
Service what punishment Armenia faces – if any – for violating its
commitments to the organisation. The commitments required Armenia to have
freed all imprisoned conscientious objectors and introduced alternative
service by January 2004, but it failed on both counts. One outsider
involved in the issue at the Council of Europe, who preferred not to be
identified, told Forum 18 that the Armenian government had deployed “an
especially successful lobbying campaign” to have the issue buried. The
Jehovah’s Witnesses, one of Armenia’s largest religious minorities, appear
no nearer to receiving state registration.

21 April 2004
RUSSIA: SPRING OFFENSIVE AGAINST THE “VITALIBAN”?

Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad within Russia less
enthusiastic about a proposed merger with the Moscow Patriarchate have
faced obstruction from the state authorities, Forum 18 News Service has
learnt. When 50 clergy and lay members held a diocesan assembly in Tula
region in February, officers of the police and FSB (former KGB) questioned
their legal right to meet, while elsewhere local authorities have failed to
register parishes, obstruct those that meet in privately-owned buildings
and even threatened to confiscate churches built with parishioners’ funds.
Without state registration, parishes cannot produce publications or conduct
missionary activity, but some clergy argue it is better not to have
registration. “It is easier for state officials to apply pressure to a
community with legal status by finding fault with its documentation,” one
priest told Forum 18.

22 April 2004
RUSSIA: METHODISTS MAY HAVE FOUGHT OFF CHURCH STEALING

A Korean Methodist church in northern Moscow appears to have fought off an
attempt by a commercial firm to steal their church building. A district
court ruled against the Moscow justice department on 26 March after the
church challenged the justice department’s acceptance of fraudulent
documents which claimed to have transferred the church to the company.
Galina Skakun of the justice department admitted in court the Methodists’
claim to the building, and tried to defend her department even though it
failed to verify the authenticity of the documents. Church administrator
Svetlana Kim said the Methodists believe that coverage of their case by
both Forum 18 News Service and Russian news agencies “really helped us”.

21 April 2004
UZBEKISTAN: SHOULD CHRISTIANS BE SHOT?

Amid a major crackdown, eleven Protestants in Nukus were questioned at the
public prosecutor’s office and pressured to convert to Islam. They were
also threatened with being shot, though the city prosecutor, M. Arzymbetov,
subsequently denied this to Forum 18 News Service. The prosecutor also
tried to have a Protestant, Iklas Aldungarov, expelled from his university
medical course, but the university rector, Oral Ataniyazova, has resisted
the pressure. “How and what Aldungarov believes is his own personal
business, and we do not have the right to interfere with it,” she told
Forum 18. She added that a very large number of young people in the region
are becoming Christians. “Evidently, the Christian churches have managed to
set up a competent, well conceived operation here. I do not think that is a
bad thing. Let’s see the mosques here work as well as the Christian
churches.” Pressure on Protestants elsewhere in Uzbekistan is also
continuing.
* See full article below. *

21 April 2004
UZBEKISTAN: SHOULD CHRISTIANS BE SHOT?

By Igor Rotar, Central Asia Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service

Amid a major crackdown on a group of Protestants in Nukus, the capital of
the Karakalpakstan [Qoraqalpoghiston] autonomous republic in north-western
Uzbekistan, eleven members of a local congregation, the Church of Christ,
have been summoned for questioning at the public prosecutor’s office, where
they were pressured to renounce their faith and convert to Islam. They now
face fines in court. “All of them are members of an unregistered religious
organisation,” Nukus city prosecutor M. Arzymbetov told Forum 18 News
Service on 19 April. “The activity of unregistered organisations is
forbidden by law.” He denied reports Forum 18 had received that the
Protestants had been coarsely insulted and threatened with being shot. “It
wasn’t I who spoke to the Protestants, but my assistant Kasym
Davletmuradov. He is a very bright man and he is not capable of such a
thing.” Arzymbetov also tried to have church member Iklas Aldungarov
expelled from his university in retaliation for his participation in the
church, though so far Aldungarov has held onto his place.

The crackdown began on 1 April, when Arzymbetov wrote to the rector of the
Medical University, Oral Ataniyazova, to inform her that Aldungarov, a
final year student, was taking part in “an illegal religious sect”, the
Church of Christ. The letter, of which Forum 18 has a copy, told her that
the public prosecutor had evidence that Aldungarov had violated Article 240
part 1 (breaking the law on religious organisations) and Article 241
(breaking the law on giving religious instruction) of the code of
administrative offences and that the case had already been passed to the
court. Describing “attracting people to other religious confessions”,
distributing religious literature and organising meetings as “a crude
violation of the law” impermissible among students, the prosecutor called
for Aldungarov to be removed from the university and to confirm that this
had been done by 10 April.

Sources told Forum 18 that Aldungarov had never had any problems before,
has never been detained or had literature confiscated.

Arzymbetov confirmed that he had written to the university about
Aldungarov, but denied that he had ordered that he be expelled. “I simply
recommended that the rector should keep an eye on her students,” he claimed
to Forum 18. “The question of Aldungarov’s expulsion did not arise and he
remains a student there.”

Yet university rector Ataniyazova confirmed that the public prosecutor’s
letter had recommended that Aldungarov be excluded but insisted she had
rejected such pressure. “We replied to the prosecutor that Aldungarov’s
religious beliefs do not have any bearing on his studies, and therefore we
consider it simply unethical to consider such a letter,” she told Forum 18
from Nukus on 16 April. “How and what Aldungarov believes is his own
personal business, and we do not have the right to interfere with it.” She
said that a very large number of young people in Karakalpakstan are
converting to Christianity. “Evidently, the Christian churches have managed
to set up a competent, well conceived operation here. I do not think that
is a bad thing. Let’s see the mosques here work as well as the Christian
churches.”

At the same time she claimed that Aldungarov was a very poor student.
“Every session he fails two or three exams. But I want to stress that we
are not going to make a connection between Aldungarov’s progress and his
religious convictions.”

In the wake of the attempt to oust Aldungarov from the university, the
National Security Service (former KGB) secret police and the public
prosecutor’s office then widened their crackdown, beginning on 9 March to
summon other church members for questioning.

Protestant sources told Forum 18 that Arzymbetov, his assistant M.
Utemuratov, and investigator Davletmuratov tried to force those summoned to
sign statements admitting that they had participated in “illegal” religious
meetings and training. When one church member Mahset Jabbabergenov refused
to sign the documents, Arzymbetov reportedly began swearing at him and
threatening to imprison if he did not sign. When the threats had no impact,
he reportedly declared: “You Christians should all be shot!” Officials from
the public prosecutor’s office also insisted that Jabbabergenov, Aldungarov
and the other Protestants – Arzubay Abenov, Bahadir Joushimov, Kolbuy
Joushimov, Timur Uralbaev, Miruert Muratova, Abbat Allamuratov, Aygul
Allamuratova and Muhamed Saitov – should give up their Christian faith and
become Muslims. Other local Protestants were later summoned for
questioning.

“Although the authorities had no facts to prove the accusation they kept
inviting everybody who had any connection with Christianity and questioning
them,” one Protestant source who preferred not to be identified told Forum
18. “If during the questioning they heard any names they summoned those
people to the office.”

Meanwhile, pressure has continued on Protestants in other parts of the
country. On 10 March the criminal court for Yakkasaroy district of the
capital Tashkent fined six Protestants – Salimjon Babakulov, Mardjon
Nurulov, Olim Mamurov, Nadira Tadjikulova, Nargiza Tadjikulova and Jamilya
Makhmudova. They were punished for holding religious meetings in private
apartments under Article 240 and Article 241 of the administrative code.

In another incident in Tashkent, on 9 March police raided and cut short a
meeting being held by around 10 Protestants on the premises of the Harvest
company. Uzbek citizens present were each fined five times the minimum
wage, or 27,200 soms (183 Norwegian kroner, 22 Euros or 27 US dollars). The
South Korean citizens who were present at the meeting were “recommended” to
leave the country for engaging in “unlawful religious activity”.

Meanwhile on 23 March the deputy head of the justice department for
Tashkent region, Sh. Khaknazarov, ordered a founding group that was seeking
registration for a Protestant church on Friendship collective farm near
Tashkent to revise its registration application, claiming it contained
“grammatical errors”. “Every time, the justice administration deliberately
concentrates in its letters only on some inaccuracies, so that next time
they can once again refuse registration supposedly for objective reasons,”
one Protestant who preferred not to be named told Forum 18. “In fact,
officials are simply dragging their feet so that the church cannot
function.” (See also F18News 18 March 2004
)

Elsewhere, Baptists of the Council of Churches who refuse on principle to
register with the authorities told Forum 18 on 10 April that Viktor
Otmakhov, whose home in the town of Angren near Tashkent is used for
services, was summoned to the town’s public prosecutor’s office on 1 April
and questioned for five hours. Deputy public prosecutor Nurlan Bainazarov
demanded that he name all those who attend services and give their home
addresses, but Otmakhov refused. Bainazarov then threatened to start a
criminal case against him. He was given a written warning that if he does
not stop services in his home, arrests, fines and other unspecified
punishments will follow.

These incidents are the latest in a continuing series of attacks on
Protestants across Uzbekistan (eg. see F18News 4 March 2004
) and take place in the
context of the current post-terrorist bombing crackdown against people of
all faiths (see F18 News 13 April
).

For more background, see Forum 18’s latest religious freedom survey at

A printer-friendly map of Uzbekistan is available at
.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=uzbeki
(END)

© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved.

You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit is given to
F18News

Past and current Forum 18 information can be found at

Interfax
April 21 2004

Armenia, Iran negotiating gas pipeline construction

Yerevan. (Interfax) – Yerevan is holding talks with Tehran on
constructing a gas pipeline between Iran and Armenia to fully satisfy
Armenia’s internal demand for gas, President Robert Kocharian said at
a Tuesday press conference.

No other options are being discussed, because they could be
problematic for Armenia, Kocharian said. “We are discussing this
project only with the purpose to improve Armenia’s energy security,”
the president said.

The construction of the second power transmission line is continuing.
The line will make it possible to supply electricity to Iran in
exchange for gas, while “other options are quite problematic,”
Kocharian said.

The signing of a final agreement on constructing a gas pipeline
between Iran and Armenia is expected when Iranian Petroleum and Gas
Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh visits Yerevan in late May.

The construction of the gas pipeline should begin in late 2004 and be
finished in 2006.

In line with agreements signed earlier, the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline
is expected to be 141-kilometer long, and 100 kilometers of it will
be located in Iran and 41 in Armenia. The project has been estimated
at $120 million.

On the denial of genocide

Jerusalem Post
Bret Stephens
Apr. 15, 2004

In April 1998, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UN
Genocide Convention, a “Statement by Concerned Scholars and Writers”
was published by the Armenian National Institute. Its purpose was to
“commemorate the Armenian Genocide of 1915” and “condemn the Turkish
government’s denial of this crime against humanity.”

“Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide,” the statement
read. “In a century plagued by genocide, we affirm the moral necessity
of remembering.”

The statement garnered more than 150 signatures, including those of
William Styron, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut, Seamus
Heaney, John Updike and Daniel Goldhagen. Also signing was Ben
Kiernan, a professor of history at Yale and director of its Genocide
Studies Program. And therein lies a tale.

In 1994, Kiernan, an Australian, was awarded a $500,000 grant by the
US State Department to establish the Cambodian Genocide Project, the
purpose of which was to gather precise data on Khmer Rouge crimes in
order to bring its leaders to justice. But Kiernan’s scholarship, it
turned out, was blemished by his past attempts to whitewash those
crimes.

“Did the new government [of Cambodia] plan and approve a systematic
large-scale purge?” asked Kiernan in the pages of the Australian
Outlook in December 1976. “There is little evidence that they did.”
Elsewhere, he had claimed at the height of the killing that
“photographs of alleged atrocities are fake” (The Age, March 2, 1977)
and that “there is ample evidence in Cambodian and other sources that
the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have
recently made it out to be” (Melbourne Journal of Politics, 1976).

Kiernan’s appointment elicited outrage in some quarters, particularly
in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal and in Commentary
magazine. But the Clinton State Department ignored calls to have the
grant rescinded and Kiernan proceeded as planned. In 1997, Yale made
Kiernan a full professor. In 2002, he was awarded the Critical Asian
Studies Prize. He is currently at work on a history of genocide from
1492 to the present.

In fairness, from the 1980s onward Kiernan became a tireless
chronicler of Khmer Rouge atrocities. But this was only after those
atrocities became impossible to deny. What’s significant, at any rate,
is that Kiernan is hardly the only scholar still active today who came
to the Khmer Rouge’s defense while the killing fields were in full
bloom.

In June 1977, The Nation – the flagship publication of the American
Left – ran a lengthy review of three books dealing with contemporary
events in Cambodia. The reviewers, Noam Chomsky of MIT and Edward
Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, cast aspersions on the
reliability of one book alleging Khmer Rouge atrocities while
lavishing praise on a volume which gave “a very favorable picture of
[the Khmer Rouge’s] programs and policies.” As with Kiernan, Chomsky
and Herman noted “repeated discoveries that massacre reports were
false.” And in a chilling echo of classic Holocaust denial, they gave
credence to the view that the death toll in Cambodia was mainly
attributable to sickness, not slaughter.

PERHAPS IT is not surprising that Kiernan, Herman and Chomsky were Pol
Pot apologists. It was in the late Seventies, after all, that Chomsky
was coming to the defense of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, while
Kiernan was a disciple, and apparently remains an admirer, of the
Australian Stalinist Wilfred Burchett.

But three points are significant. First, all three vehemently deny
their past sympathies. So much for “the moral necessity of
remembering.” Second, in sympathizing with the Khmer Rouge when they
did, they hardly traveled alone: Efforts to deny the existence of the
killing fields were widespread at the time, particularly in Europe,
and certainly not beyond the pale as far as the editors of The Nation
were concerned. Third, Kiernan, Chomsky and Herman are representative
of a broader phenomenon, namely, the tendency among self-styled
progressives and human-rights activists to willfully ignore, or
tacitly acquiesce in, some of the worst human-rights abuses of their
era.

Why? Among the oft-made arguments of people like Chomsky and Herman
is that Western policy makers focus only on the human-rights abuses
committed by their enemies, not their friends. Why, for example, was
so much Western attention and outrage devoted to goings-on in
Communist Cambodia, instead of East Timor, which was then under the
thumb of US-allied Indonesia? Why obsess about the sins of the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua, but not those of the Pinochet regime in
Chile? It’s a legitimate point. But what has been true of some
quarters of the Right has been at least as true of parts of the
Left. In their 1977 review, Chomsky and Herman did not merely point
out hypocrisy in Western attitudes; they systematically attempted to
shred the evidence that the Khmer Rouge was guilty of “autogenocide”
(the killing of their own people). Furthermore, they repeatedly argued
that most of Cambodia’s suffering was either the direct or indirect
consequence of American actions. Thus, in discussing photographs of
Cambodian civilians pulling plows in a field, they first alleged the
photos were faked, then suggested that if people rather than oxen were
in fact pulling plows, it was because “the savage American assault on
Cambodia did not spare the animal population.”

The proclivity to deny was not unique to the Cambodian situation.
Walter Duranty, the New York Times’s Pulitzer-winning Soviet
correspondent in the early 1930s, completely failed to report the
forced famine of the 1930s, which killed an estimated 10 million
peasants, mostly Ukrainian. This was not out of ignorance. Instead, it
stemmed from his conviction that “within five years or less [peasants]
will benefit enormously from being forced to accept a modern form of
agriculture [i.e., collectivization].” For him, the key question was
not the human toll, but “whether the Soviet drive to Socialism is or
is not successful irrespective of costs.”

A more recent case of genocide denial occurred 10 years ago this
month. In April 1994, as eyewitness evidence mounted that Hutus in
Rwanda were methodically exterminating hundreds of thousands of
Tutsis, the US State Department assiduously avoided use of the term
genocide. As described by Samantha Power in her article “Bystanders to
Genocide” (The Atlantic Monthly, September 2001), then-secretary of
state Warren Christopher instructed his spokesmen and deputies to
speak only of “acts of genocide,” a legalism that would, he believed,
avoid triggering US obligations under the Genocide Convention to
intervene. Power quotes the following remarkable exchange between
State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly and Reuters reporter
Alan Elsner.

Elsner: How would you describe events taking place in Rwanda? Shelly:
Based on the evidence we have seen from observations on the ground, we
have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred in
Rwanda.

Elsner: What’s the difference between “acts of genocide” and
“genocide?” Shelly: Well, I think the – as you know, there’s a legal
definition of this… clearly not all of the killings that have taken
place in Rwanda are killings to which you might apply the label… But
as to the distinctions between the words, we’re trying to call what we
have seen so far as best as we can; and based, again, on the evidence,
we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred.

Elsner: How many acts of genocide does it take to make a genocide?
Shelly: Alan, that’s just not a question I’m in a position to answer.

UNLIKE CHOMSKY, Kiernan and Herman, the Clinton administration did not
attempt to deny the unfolding reality in Rwanda. And unlike Duranty,
the administration did not wink at the mass killing as the necessary
price to be paid for achieving some prospective greater good. Their
motives were purely political. The US had been badly burned by events
in Somalia six months earlier and the appetite for another African
humanitarian assistance mission was slight.

Yet the administration, and particularly Clinton himself, did have at
least one thing in common with Chomsky, Kiernan and Herman: They
sought to obscure their past actions. On a visit to Rwanda in March
1998, Clinton confessed “that we in the United States and the world
community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to
try to limit what occurred.” Yet as Power points out, “this implied
that the United States had done a good deal but not quite enough. In
reality the United States… led a successful effort to remove most of
the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked
to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements.”

Clinton’s post facto handwringing notwithstanding, there were at least
intellectually defensible reasons for the US to stay out of Rwanda
when it did. To begin with, there was no compelling strategic
rationale to intervene, no vital material interests at stake in
Rwanda. Furthermore, Rwanda’s was hardly the only African tragedy in
the 1990s: assorted wars in Somalia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia and
Ivory Coast collectively took approximately three million lives.

Why should one tragedy deserve intervention, and not the other? And
how does a single intervention put a stop to concurrent or future
genocides or massacres? Absent compelling answers to such questions,
the natural tendency is to do nothing. Of course, the Genocide
Convention is meant to compel great powers to act, whatever the
tangled moral dilemmas or strategic considerations.

Yet as Canadian scholar Michael Ignatieff has noted, in the case of
Rwanda the Convention did at least as much to hamper an effective
response to the genocidaires as it did to deter them. There were
limited measures the US and other countries might have taken in Rwanda
against the Hutu militia, such as jamming Hutu radio. One reason they
failed to take them is that the Convention condemned the US and other
countries into an all-or-nothing approach. Either a genocide was
taking place, in which case maximum efforts had to be undertaken to
stop it; or it wasn’t, in which case the situation in Rwanda was a
matter for Rwandans to resolve themselves. Confronted by such options,
denying the genocide, and doing nothing to help the massacred Tutsis,
seemed the counsel of prudence.

The instinct to do nothing, however, does not apply only to hardheaded
practitioners of realpolitik. In the face of atrocity, pacifists and
human-rights activists also tend to counsel inaction or measures not
likely to bring about a swift end to the atrocities. For example,
Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth argued recently that the war
in Iraq was “not a humanitarian intervention,” since despite the
uncontested awfulness of Saddam’s regime “it is possible to imagine
scenarios even worse.”

Many others in the so-called peace camp also tend to apply the
precautionary principle when it comes to military intervention, on the
theory that waging a war to end a bad regime might impose greater
hardship on the tyrannized population than the tyranny itself. Thus
the anguished predictions, prior to the Iraq war, of tens of thousands
of civilian casualties and up to two million dead as a result of food
shortages, water contamination and so forth.

WHAT ASTONISHES one most, looking back on some of this sordid history,
is not so much that so many genocides or mass killings were “allowed”
to happen.

Rather, it is that the reasons for shielding ones eyes from the
killing are so many, and the reasons for “doing something” are so few
and weak.

The hard Left represented by Chomsky looked the other way in Cambodia
because it could not believe that a “progressive” regime could be
responsible for such horror. The Durantys of the world understood that
killing was taking place on a mass scale, but thought it was a
worthwhile price to pay for the sake of realizing utopia. For Clinton,
interfering in Rwanda was not worth the prospective cost in American
lives or political capital.

For those who marched against invading Iraq, war is worse than
tyranny. For the so-called realists, a foreign policy based on
human-rights considerations is a bottomless swamp of open-ended
commitments and moral hazards into which no responsible power can
allow itself to wade. Anyway, if Hutus want to exterminate Tutsis –
indeed, if Tutsis put themselves in a position where it is possible
that they may be exterminated – that’s nobody’s fault but theirs.

Monday is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. Sirens will blare,
traffic will come to a halt, and for a minute or two an entire nation
will stand in silence. They will do so behind the shield of a mighty
army – so far, the only proven remedy for collective helplessness.

[email protected]

EBRD to increase investment in seven poorest CIS countries

ITAR-TASS
April 19, 2004

MOSCOW, April 19 — The European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (EBRD) announces plans to increase investments in Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
to help them fight poverty.

In order to help the seven poorest CIS nations, the EBRD is ready to
take great risk and increase investments and donor financing. “The Bank
is ready to take on the risk as we seek to invest more in countries
at the earlier stages of transition,” EBRD President Jean Lemierre
said at the Board of Governors Annual Meeting in London on April 18-19.

In his words, more tan 50 percent of people in Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan live
in poverty. The economy of these countries is less consistent
with market standards than the economy of other countries. A large
state debt complicates foreign borrowing for economic development and
social needs. Other obstacles to borrowing are underdeveloped markets,
the closed borders, lack of banking and other services, insufficient
infrastructures in these countries.

The EBRD will invest in the private banking sector to enable it to
small and medium-size business in these countries, as well as the
housing and communal sector, energy sector and transport.

“We will finance the kind of projects that we have found work best
in these circumstances: small businesses, microfinance, investment
to facilitate cross-border trade, small-scale infrastructure,”
Lemierre said.

He said the EBRD might invest from 500,000 to two million euros in
these projects.

In addition, Lemierre asked the donor nations to increase their grants
to the EBRD for use in other countries. He said additional grants
would allow the bank to invest up to 150 million euros in each of
these countries annually (currently it invests 90 million euros).

“We cannot do this on our own,” Lemierre continued. “In order to
strengthen the initiative, the Bank has invited donor countries to
contribute to provide technical cooperation, and to help prepare and
co-finance projects. But the EBRD takes the full burden of added risk
on its own books.”

All Go For International Railway Corridor

Global News Wire – Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
Africa Analysis
April 16, 2004

Russia will supply expertise and investment for a major railway network
that should link eastern and northern Europe with India through Iran.
This North-South international transport corridor has been on the
drawing board for some time and will be formally launched next year.

Russia, Iran and India established the concept of the transport corridor
and have so far been joined officially by Kazakhstan and Belarus. There
are ongoing talks with Oman, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Syria,
Sweden, Finland and Bulgaria, all of which are already known to have
shown an interest.

Several other countries are also keen to link into, and support, what
promises to be one of the major freight corridors anywhere. Official
estimates put north-south freight at up to 50m tonnes a year by 2010.

The latest commitment by Russia comes after a meeting in Iran between
Iranian transport minister Ahmad Khorram and Russian Railways company
president Gennady Fadeyev . Russian Railways is also involved in
bilateral discussions with the Iranian government about the building of
several rail lines in Iran.

Rail traffic between the two countries has increased dramatically over
the past year and, once the international corridor is formed, should
double in 2005. The 4m tonnes of freight estimated to be carried between
Iran and Russia this year should rise to 8m tonnes.

Iran, which is spending large sums on the development of its ports, sees
itself as a hub for North-South traffic, providing port facilities to
service the Asia-Pacific region.

A1 Plus | 20:21:51 | 16-04-2004 | Politics |

KOCHARYAN AGAIN IN “ARAGAST”

While the participants of joint Opposition meeting demand for Robert
Kocharyan’s resignation, he spends time in “Aragast” Cafe with US
Ambassador in Armenia.

It is to remind in 2001 Kocharyan’s bodyguard beat up Poghos
Poghosyan, citizen of Georgia, to death in “Aragast” Cafe.

The Moscow Times
Thursday, Apr. 15, 2004. Page 201

Russia Revising Great Game Rule Book

By Catherine Belton
Staff Writer

To hear President Vladimir Putin tell it, the great game of the 21st century
is economic in nature and Russia intends to change the way it’s played.

Putin made the rules of this new game clear in December, when he told the
nation that the greatest danger facing Russia is a weak economy.

“Our biggest threat is falling behind in the economic field,” Putin told the
country in his annual teleconference. “There is a tough, competitive battle
going on in the world. But unlike previously, this battle has moved from the
realm of military conflict to economic competition.”

In this chess game, like those of the past, energy is king. But this time
Russia is exploiting its prowess like never before.

On the eastern front, it has Japan and China locked in a bidding war for
Siberian oil, while in the west it has Europe struggling to deal with its
dependency on Gazprom’s gas, and in the south it is slowly extending its
electric tentacles through state power monopoly Unified Energy Systems.

But what is emerging as a sort of “Putin Doctrine” doesn’t stop there. It
seems to envision Russia as the pivot around which the global oil market
revolves, the power broker that can tip the balance between OPEC and the
United States. And it seems to call for the rapid international expansion of
patriotic companies — both state-owned and private, energy and nonenergy.

In this quest, Putin appears to have the backing of big business.

“If you don’t compete globally, then you are definitely going to lose,” said
Kakha Bendukidze, board chairman of United Heavy Machinery, the nation’s
largest machine-building concern and one of its leading multinationals.

“If you don’t move into foreign territory, global competitors are only going
to come to your market and try to compete with you there,” he said in a
recent interview.

Business leaders, however, are divided over how best to get there — whether
Putin’s way, which emphasizes the might of the state, or a freer market
approach might be better.

But at this stage the debate is meaningless. Thanks to a new and pliant
parliament, and the October jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin, unlike a
year ago, holds all the cards.

Indeed, some see the arrest of Khodorkovsky as part of Putin’s wider
development strategy.

Although the charges against the billionaire were fraud and tax evasion,
some say it was his attempts to challenge the authority of the state that
got him in trouble, particularly his efforts to break the government’s
pipeline monopoly.

By pushing for the building of privately owned pipelines — one directly to
China and another to Murmansk to better supply America — “Khodorkovsky was
pursuing a set of interests … that was a threat to Putin’s state policy,”
a senior U.S. administration official said in an interview in Washington
earlier this year.

In addition, the official said, Khodorkovsky’s attempts to merge his oil
company Yukos with smaller rival Sibneft and then sell a chunk of that
company to a U.S. supermajor like ExxonMobil would have made him
“untouchable.”

“Fundamentally, this was a question about power,” he said. “What
Khodorkovsky was proposing presented problems for both foreign and domestic
policy. … State control over pipelines was both a domestic and foreign
policy lever.”

Now, however, all talk of building private pipelines — or even of selling
an equity stake in a major Russian oil producer to a U.S. company — is
taboo.

“This is not the scheme the United States wants to see,” said Julia Nanay, a
senior energy analyst at Petroleum Finance Corp. in Washington. “It would
like to see lots of private companies, private pipelines and more exports.”

It is worth noting, she said, that since Khodorkovsky’s arrest conditions
have gotten worse for U.S. oil majors that already had a foothold in Russia
— especially ExxonMobil, which lost its license to the giant Sakhalin-3
field late last year.

“All this sees to be eroding the U.S.-Russia energy dialog,” Nanay said.

While these developments may be bad news for Washington, which is anxious to
reduce supplies from OPEC, they have increased Russia’s clout on the world
stage, analysts said.

Playing Both Sides

Strengthening ties with the Arab world while not completely alienating the
United States is a tough task, but it’s one that Putin appears to be
attempting.

In the past, much to the satisfaction of the United States, Russia and OPEC
have been at odds. While Russia has been cranking up exports at breakneck
speed, OPEC has been doing just the opposite, arguing that it needs higher
oil prices to compensate for the United States’ decision to depreciate the
dollar.

But now, in what may turn out to be a pivotal policy shift, Russia appears
to be winding down its export drive. Last month Economic Development and
Trade Minister, German Gref, boldly stated that 2004 would be the last year
of major export growth for the foreseeable future.

Gref said exports will likely surge 14 percent this year to 266 million
tons, but after that growth will be minimal, around 2 percent per year for
several years to come.

Such a move would endear Russia to OPEC and the entire Arab world, analysts
said.

Many analysts expect OPEC to come under increasing pressure over the next
few years as instability in the Middle East grows and individual members
such as Venezuela and Nigeria are pressured into leaving.

So, by reducing export growth, Russia could help the cartel survive, said
Alfa Bank chief strategist Chris Weafer, a former adviser to OPEC who
retains close ties to the organization.

What’s more, Weafer said, by deliberately slowing down exports over the next
few years, “the entire Arab world will see Russia as a significant ally and
Russia’s political influence in the Arab world will increase.”

Russian oil majors are already capitalizing on the warming ties. LUKoil in
January became one of a handful of foreign firms to gain the rights to
develop a potentially huge gas field in Saudi Arabia. Notably, no U.S. firms
were awarded the same rights, as they are reportedly finding it increasingly
difficult to gain a foothold in the kingdom.

Oil Is Not Enough

At the same time Russia is attempting to maximize its oil clout, it is
making an aggressive attempt to grow other sectors of the economy and help
its captains of industry gain strategic positions on global markets.

“I think there is a gradual revolution taking place in foreign economic
relations,” said Bendukidze. “There is a growing recognition in the Foreign
Ministry and in the Economic Development and Trade Ministry that they need
to support Russian businesses abroad, including attempts to make investments
outside Russia.”

One recent development that could ease the way for global expansion is a new
law that simplifies rules for transferring cash out of the country for
investment purposes. The law, which Bendukidze helped draft, will come into
force this summer.

The move could help speed up the global expansion of companies like
Severstal, which recently snapped up Michigan-based steelmaker Rouge
Industries for $286 million, and Norilsk Nickel, which at the end of last
month made the biggest foreign acquisition of any Russian company to date —
its $1.16 billion purchase of 20 percent of South African gold miner, Gold
Fields. But with currency laws still tight, most of the money that Norilsk
used for the purchase had to come from U.S. Citigroup.

But Russian companies still face many disadvantages when they compete for
contracts abroad, one of which, according to Bendukidze, is the cost of
capital.

Russian corporates still face higher borrowing costs than their competitors,
partly because Russia has no analog to the huge export-financing schemes run
by government agencies such as Eximbank in the United States or Hermes in
Germany.

“A significant part of world business is built on export financing,”
Bendukidze said.

“The state gives money and ensures against political risks … But in Russia
there are practically no accessible cheap export financing credits,” he
said. “How can we get projects in such conditions?”

Back to the Future

One region where Russian companies do have the upper hand, however, is in
the republics of the former Soviet Union — and several are moving
aggressively to take advantage of it.

“Russian companies have a lot of capital and a competitive advantage, so it
is hardly surprising that many of them are starting to try to join up the
dots in the former Soviet Union,” said Roland Nash, chief strategist at
Renaissance Capital.

Leading the way are state-controlled giants like Gazprom and UES. Gazprom is
seeking to use its influence as a major supplier and payer of transit fees
to Ukraine and Belarus to gain major equity stakes in each of the two
countries’ pipeline networks. And UES, under CEO Anatoly Chubais’ “liberal
imperialism” slogan, has been seeking to recreate Russia’s monopoly on
electricity production and distribution in former Soviet space.

UES has already bought stakes in electricity assets in Armenia, Kazakhstan
and Georgia, and Chubais has said he wants to move into Bulgaria, Latvia,
Lithuania and Slovakia. The power monopoly is also in talks to rent an
international power grid that connects Armenia, Georgia, Iran and Turkey.

With U.S.-dominated NATO moving troops to Russia’s borders, Moscow is
countering by taking control of key infrastructure assets.

“Former Soviet states can’t afford to ignore Russia’s wishes,” Weafer said.
“At the end of the day, Russia can just turn the lights off. You can’t run
an electricity cable from Washington.”

But it’s not just state-owned companies that are active in the former Soviet
Union. Private companies like Russian Aluminum, the world’s second-largest
aluminum producer, have been active in the region for years and are looking
to expand.

“This is the return that Putin is getting from helping grow a stronger
economy,” Nash said. “The greater the economic clout of Russian companies
there, the more political clout.”

Russian companies seem to be having a rougher ride in former Soviet
satellite countries, however, as both NATO and the European Union creep
closer.

LUKoil, for example, was recently barred from participating in the
privatization of major Polish refinery because of fears such a strategic
acquisition would revive Russia’s influence in the former Warsaw Pact
nation.

Poland is one of eight former Warsaw Pact countries that will join the
European Union on May 1, making it harder for Russian companies to do
business with their former Cold War allies, analysts say.

In the meantime, Russia is seeking compensation for the expansion. In a
recent letter to the EU, Russia forwarded a list of 14 demands, including
one to raise quotas on Russian steel imports.

The EU may be Russia’s biggest trading partner, but Russia certainly has a
trump card to play. For the foreseeable future, Russia’s greatest tool for
making the West listen to its concerns is its vast energy reserves.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Weafer said. “In the old days of the former
Soviet Union, Russia’s political clout was measured by the 14,000 nuclear
missiles it had pointing west. Now it’s measured by the pipelines it has
pointing west.”

Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th St., NW, Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet:

PRESS RELEASE

April 15, 2004
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918

ANCA SHARES ARMENIAN AMERICAN DISAPPOINTMENT OVER
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WITH CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS

— Letters to Speaker Hastert and
Majority Leader Frist Outline Specific
Armenian American Policy Concerns

— ANCA Chairman Praises Republican
Friends of Armenia in Congress

WASHINGTON, DC – In letters sent this week to Congressional
leaders, the Armenian National Committee Of America (ANCA) voiced
the disappointment of the Armenian American community over the Bush
Administration’s record on Armenian issues. In its correspondence,
the ANCA called for renewed efforts by the leadership of the
legislative branch to urge the White House to adopt more
constructive policies on issues of special concern to Armenian
American voters.

Included with the letters, signed by ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian
and sent to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist, were copies of the ANCA’s 2004 Armenian American
Presidential Report Card, which gave the President generally low
marks on a range of fifteen different Armenian American issues.
These issues, were grouped into three general categories, as
follows:

1) Unfulfilled commitments: Most notable among
the unfulfilled commitments were the President’s
failure to honor his campaign pledge in February
of 2000 to properly recognize the Armenian Genocide,
and his decision this February to abandon the 2001
White House agreement with both Congress and the
Armenian American community to maintain parity in
military aid to Armenia and Azerbaijan.

2) Opposition to community concerns: In terms
of active opposition to community concerns, we
have seen the White House block Congressional
legislation concerning the Armenian Genocide,
waive Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act,
propose reductions in U.S. aid to Armenia, and
mistakenly place Armenia on a Department of
Justice/INS terrorist watch list.

3) Failure to prioritize Armenian issues: The
Administration has failed to prioritize either
U.S.-Armenia ties or the White House’s relationship
with the Armenian American community. An example
of the former is the failure of the Administration
to take meaningful proactive steps to foster
increased U.S.-Armenia commercial relations, or
even to press Congress to move quickly to adopt
Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status for
Armenia. An example of the latter is that the
President has not invited the collective
leadership of the Armenian American community to
a meeting at the White House despite repeated
requests for such interaction.

Both the Senate and House letters included more than a dozen
specific recommendations by the ANCA about how the Congressional
leadership could encourage the White House to improve its standing
among Armenian American voters.

The ANCA letter also stressed that, while disappointed with the
President’s performance, the ANCA “highly values our many close
friends in Congress and throughout the country and wants to ensure
that they can effectively reach out to Armenian Americans this
election season, confident in the knowledge that their national
leadership has been supportive of Armenian issues.”

Hachikian highlighted that Armenian Americans “have great respect
for the tremendous leadership of Congressman Joe Knollenberg as Co-
Chairman of the Armenian Caucus and appreciate his spearheading of
the adoption of legislation in the House granting Armenia Permanent
Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status. This important measure,
which is awaiting Senate action, was provided crucial Committee
support by Chairman Bill Thomas of the Ways and Means Committee.
Our community deeply appreciates the efforts of Congressman George
Radanovich in introducing and advocating tirelessly on behalf of
the Genocide Resolution, and those of Judiciary Committee Chairman
James Sensenbrenner for moving this important measure out of
Committee. We admire the efforts of Congressman Mark Kirk, who has
worked with Congressman Knollenberg and Chairman Jim Kolbe of the
Foreign Operations Subcommittee to address Armenian American
concerns in the foreign aid bill. Throughout the nation, Armenian
Americans value their friendships with Republican legislators, from
David Dreier in California, Eric Cantor in Virginia, Chris Smith in
New Jersey, Mark Souder in Indiana, to New York’s John Sweeney, who
is of Armenian heritage, and many others.” In the Senate,
Hachikian made special mention of “Senators Mitch McConnell, John
Ensign, George Allen, Elizabeth Dole, and many others,” noting that
the ANCA wants to “ensure that they can effectively reach out to
Armenian Americans this election season, confident in the knowledge
that their national leadership has been supportive of Armenian
issues.”

In a similar letter sent last week to the Chairman of the Bush-
Cheney -04 campaign, Marc Racicot, the ANCA included a copy of its
Bush Administrations’ Report Card and suggested “a number of steps
that the Administration can take to improve its standing among our
nation’s one and a half million citizens of Armenian heritage.”
The letter went on to note that, “these issues are of profound
importance to our entire community – Republicans, Democrats, and
independents – all of whom, sadly, are united in the view that this
Administration, despite its early promise, has fallen far short of
their expectations.” Racicot, in addition to being the former
Governor of Montana, was the immediate past Chairman of the
Republican National Committee.

For the full text of the ANCA 2004 Armenian American Presidential
Report Card visit:
;pressregion=anca

For the National Organization for Republican Armenians perspective
on the Bush Administration’s record visit:

The Armenian American Leadership Council’s (AADLC) review of the
Bush Administration can be found at:

A review of Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) record on Armenian issues is
located at:

#####

A1 Plus | 17:38:05 | 13-04-2004 | Politics |

STEPAN DEMIRCHYAN TALKING TO JOURNALISTS

“Unfortunately, our community is ill-informed about the night events. Even
many journalists are absolutely unaware of what happened”, said People Party
leader Stepan Demirchyan.

He denounced assault on marchers as crime against Armenian people. The key
criminal is who ordered outrages against civilian population.

Commenting on the police officials’ statement accusing demonstrators of
provoking violence from the law enforcement, the party leader said it was a
complete lie and conspiracy against people who were singing, dancing and
showed no signs of aggressiveness.

“We have irrefutable evidence that pointed objects were thrown on pavement
after the outrageous events in an apparent attempt to accuse the opposition
of plotting a coup”, Demirchyan said.

He told journalists the opposition would keep them in touch with its further
steps.