Category: News

March 21, 2004, 9:55 p.m.

Turtle Bay’s Carnival of Corruption
Digging deeper into the scandalous Oil-for-Food program

By Claudia Rosett

With United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan finally conceding the
need for an independent investigation of the U.N.’s 1996-2003
Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, the next question is how investigators
might begin to get a grip on the U.N.’s central role in this huge
scandal.

Naturally, the rampant signs of corruption are important, and leads on
graft involving U.N. personnel – including the program’s executive
director, Benon Sevan – need pursuing. If Sevan did receive oil from
Saddam, as it now appears, then the immediate follow-up question is:
What might Sevan have done in return, given his responsibilities for
“overall management and coordinationof all United Nations humanitarian
activities in Iraq”?

KOJO’S CONSULTANCY

It would also be prudent, if only to clear up any doubts, for
investigators to look into the relationship between Annan’s son, Kojo
Annan, and the Swiss-based company, Cotecna Inspection SA, which two
years into the seven-year Oil-for-Food program won a contract from the
U.N. for the pivotal job of inspecting all Oil-for-Food shipments into
Iraq – a responsibility Cotecna hasheld ever since. Kojo Annan worked
for Cotecna in the mid-1990s, a possible conflict of interest which
neither Cotecna nor the U.N. bothered to declare.

A spokesman in Kofi Annan’s office has now offered in Kojo’s defense
that Kojo was no longer in the pay of Cotecna on the day the company
won the U.N.

contract. But the timing was close: Kojo had resigned from a
consulting jobfor Cotecna earlier that same month. According to
Annan’s spokesman, Kojo held a staff job at Cotecna in a junior
position from December 1995 through February 1998. Just two months
later, Kojo reappeared on Cotecna’s payroll as a consultant, via a
firm called Sutton Investments, from April 1998 to December 1998,
resigning from that consultancy just before Cotecna clinched the
U.N. contract on December 31, 1998.

It might all be mere coincidence. Kojo’s recent statements, relayed to
me last Friday by Kofi Annan’s U.N. office, convey that Kojo’s
consulting workfor Cotecna was limited to projects in Nigeria and
Ghana, unrelated to Oil-for-Food. But given the U.N.’s tendency to
take several months to process contracts, and considering that the
U.N. had to review several competing bids, the dates here suggest that
Kojo resigned from Cotecna’s staff only to return as a consultant
during precisely the period in which Cotecna would most likely have
been assembling and submitting its bid for the U.N. job, and the
U.N. Secretariat would have been reviewing the bids. That certainly
warrants attention by an independent panel.

But beyond such specific questions, the larger issue is the U.N. setup
of secrecy and lack of accountability that fostered the Oil-for-Food
fiasco inthe first place. The damage at this point includes Iraqis
deprived of billions of dollars worth of relief, and signs of massive
corruption quite likely involving hundreds of U.N.-approved
contractors in dozens of countries, as well as the U.N.’s own head of
the program, Sevan. An inquiry should also look into the
U.N. Secretariat’s silent assent to Saddam’s efforts to buy political
influence in the Security Council. In this bribe-riddled program,
Saddam tipped vast amounts of business to contractors in such
veto-wielding Security Council member states as Russia, France, and to
a lesser extent, China. In the heated debates over Iraq, leading up to
the beginning of the war last March, Annan brought none of Saddam’s
influence-peddling to public attention, though he had access to
specific information about the huge sums going from Saddam’s regime to
select nations, and the public did not.

OIL-FOR-TERROR?

Even more disturbing is the $10.1 billion that the General Accounting
Office estimates Saddam Hussein was able to salt away “in illegal
revenues relatedto the Oil-for-Food program.” By GAO estimates,
recently revised upward, Saddam acquired $4.4 billion via kickbacks on
relief contracts and illicit surcharges on oil contracts; plus $5.7
billion via oil smuggling. All this took place under cover of repeated
Oil-for-Food “good housekeeping” seals of approval.The U.S. has so far
located only a small portion of these assets. That leaves billions of
Saddam’s secret stash still out there. The danger is that Baathists,
terrorists (with whom Saddam did indeed have connections), or some
combination of the two, will get to these billions first, if they
haven’t already. It is worth asking if some mix of U.N. secrecy,
incompetence, and corruption may have allowed the accumulation of
money now backing terrorist attacks in Iraq, or elsewhere.

In any event, the first practical step should be to secure the U.N.’s
own records of Oil-for-Food. In Baghdad, Oil-for-Food-related
documents kept by Saddam have already proven a source of damning
information and are under investigation. The Iraqi Governing Council
has already commissioned a report by the private accounting firm KPMG
International, due out in a few months. And U.S.

administrators in Baghdad have now frozen the records there relating
to Oil-for-Food, to help with congressional inquiries in advance of
hearings expected next month.

But at the U.N.’s New York headquarters, not all records have been
rendered up. The U.N. treasurer’s office still controls the
Oil-for-Food bank accounts, held in the French bank, BNP Paribas. And,
the U.N. still has in its keeping all U.N. records of these BNP
accounts, according to officials both in Baghdad and at the U.N.

These accounts are highly relevant to any independent look at the U.N.

itself. As Sevan reminded Saddam’s regime on July 12, 2001, “the
signatories are United Nations staff members.” Through these accounts
passed more than $100 billion in U.N.-approved oil sales and relief
purchases made by Saddam, andtoward the end of the U.N.’s
administration of Oil-for-Food, they held balances of more than $12
billion.

Outside the U.N. these bank accounts have long been a source of some
mystery.

The U.N. has refused to disclose BNP statements, or the amount of
interest paid on those balances of billions. Even such directly
concerned parties asthe Kurdish regional authorities of northern Iraq
– entitled to 13 percent of the proceeds of Saddam’s Oil-for-Food
sales – who for years have been requesting a look at the books, have
received no details.

The U.N. bank records of Oil-for-Food could be especially important in
filling in gaps in U.N. documentation on other fronts. For example,
the U.N.-processed relief contracts were often brief, vague, and in
some cases involved suppliers who could not later be located, as
confirmed both by notes on theU.N.’s own website, and in a phone
interview with officials of the U.S. Defense Contract Management
Agency, which together with the Defense Contract Audit Agency last
summer reviewed hundreds of top-dollar Oil-for-Food contracts, culled
from the thousands still open after the fall of Saddam. The bank
records should at least include full details of all transfers of funds
– the accountswhence they came, and the accounts to which they went.

Why did the U.S. allow the U.N. to keep control of the accounts (and
the records) after responsibility for winding down all other aspects
of the Oil-for-Food program was turned over to the CPA last November?
One CPA official explains that the BNP accounts were left in the hands
of U.N. personnel because the bookkeeping was so Byzantine the CPA
feared any attempt to intervene might interrupt needed deliveries of
relief to Iraq.

MISSING BANK STATEMENTS

It now appears that neither the Iraqi Governing Council nor the CPA
has thus far received a single bank statement from either BNP or the
U.N. treasurer’s office. A frustrated CPA official, connected with the
wrapping-up of some $8.2 billion worth of relief contracts inherited
from the U.N., tells me there has been no answer to his repeated
requests to see current statements: “They never say no, but they never
do it either.” Neither has the Iraqi central bank received any
statements, he adds. For the Iraqis and CPA officials now
administering the remaining contracts in Iraq, this source explains,
there is no way to tell “what activity has taken place” in the BNP
accounts, or “how much money’s left.”

U.N. Treasurer Suzanne Bishopric, reached by phone in New York last
Friday, confirms that she has sent no bank statements either to the
CPA or to the Iraqi Governing Council. As she explains it, “They never
asked me.” Bishopric says that in any case, after the U.N.’s
withdrawal from Iraq following the bombing of the U.N.’s Baghdad
offices last August, she has not been able to deliver current bank
statements because “we have no mechanism to send them.” Asked if it
would not be possible to transmit the statements by fax, email, or
express-delivery service, Bishopric says, “I’m not going there.”
Bishopric further explains that the U.N. does plan to turn over all
the records to the CPA, “with absolutely full disclosure.” Asked why
the delay of many months, she says the U.N. is busy scanning all the
records into computer files, in order to turn over the collected works
all at once. She expects this project will be finished “in a few
weeks.”

Perhaps the U.N.’s delay of almost a year in delivering to the Iraqis
and the CPA any bank statements, either past or current, is simply a
function of the lumbering U.N. bureaucracy. In this CPA-U.N. version
of he-said she-said, it is hard to know whether the U.S. government
failed to deliver to the U.N. the CPA’s request for the information,
or the U.N. received the requests but ignored them.

Either way, two questions leap out. Why should the U.N. records of the
BNP accounts be in a condition such that it is taking months to
assemble and turn them over? And why would the U.N. not forward
regular updates to the CPA now running the program? In the context of
the Oil-for-Food program, so beset by allegations of bribes,
kickbacks, and shady financial dealings that Annan after months of
denials and resistance has finally bowed to demands for an independent
investigation, it would be a lot healthier to have the bank records,
right up to the latest statement, and in whatever condition, turned
over post-haste to the Iraqis, the CPA, and any other authorities who
might be able to preserve them – as they are – until an independent
investigation canbegin.

If the problem is lack of a delivery vehicle, and the more than $1
billion in U.N. administrative fees collected from Saddam under the
Oil-for-Food program have already been used up, it would seem
worthwhile for the U.S. government, on top of its usual
22-percent-or-so contribution to the U.N.’s core budget, to donate to
the U.N. treasurer’s office the cost of express delivery of all
BNP-related documents. Or maybe just back a truck up to the
U.N. loading dock and haul away every last Oil-for-Food-related file
and CD-ROM, right now. Annan, who recently expressed his wish that the
reputation of the U.N. should not be impugned, would surely be glad to
cooperate.

THE ABSENT AUDIT REPORTS

An independent panel will also have to be genuinely independent – not
as defined within the incestuous U.N. Secretariat, but by lights of
the same commercial world in which the U.N. Secretariat ran this
program. There has been much protest by the U.N. that Oil-for-Food was
the most audited U.N. program ever.

Back in 1995, in U.N. Resolution 986, authorizing Oil-for-Food, the
Security Council asked the Secretary-General to hire “independent and
certified public accountants” to audit the program’s bank accounts and
“to keep the Government of Iraq fully informed.” These are the same
escrow accounts on which the U.N., post-Saddam, has kept all the
records and statements to itself.

According to the U.N. treasurer, Bishopric, the auditing of the escrow
accounts was entrusted by the secretary-general to a “board of
auditors” consisting of government agencies of a revolving trio of
member states. There has beenno public disclosure of their
findings. This three-member board of auditors was chaired in 2002 by
the Philippines, and in 2003 by France – home base to BNP.

That may qualify as U.N. in-house supervision, but hardly as an
independent audit.

Yet more “auditing” was carried out by the U.N.’s own Office of
Internal Oversight Services, which is not an independent firm, but a
U.N. agency within the Secretariat, with every incentive to protect in
public the reputation of the same U.N. bureaucracy it is supposed to
be auditing. Nor has this oversight office been forthcoming. Nothing
remotely approaching a full audit report has been released outside the
U.N. According to an adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council, Claude
Hankes-Drielsma, even Saddam’s regime saw little of these
audits. Early in Oil-for-Food, from 1997-1999, they were sent to
Baghdad. But it now appears that after 1999, they stopped
coming. Whether Security Council members saw all the documents is hard
to say. One diplomat linked to the Security Council notes that the
volume of paperwork associated with Oil-for-Food wasso huge that not
everything was sent over automatically to members of the Security
Council. Some material had to be specifically requested. It’s not
clear everything was.

A VESUVIUS OF GRAFT

Once a genuinely competent and independent panel is set up, the task
should be not simply to look for discrepancies in the records, or
clear evidence of corruption. The larger problem is that the U.N.,
while running largely on public money, operates with a degree of
secrecy that means graft has to reach Vesuvian proportions before
outside watchdogs can easily prove anything.

There is also the problem that at the U.N., the buck seems to stop
nowhere.

In Oil-for-Food, the Secretariat agreed to shoulder enormous tasks
requiring a high degree of integrity and responsibility. But when
allegations of corruption and mismanagement began to emerge, the
immediate defense of U.N.officials, including Annan, was to present
the Secretariat as nothing more than a hapless and humble servant of
the Security Council. U.N. officials argued that Oil-for-Food staffers
were not responsible for spotting Saddam’s pricing scams, but were
merely supposed to check that the paperwork was in order (a goal the
treasurer’s office seems to have missed).

If U.N. staff in truth had no responsibility for sounding an alarm on
obvious kickbacks, oil smuggling, and gross, damaging, and dangerous
violations of U.N. sanctions and relief rules, then why bother with
the U.N. staff at all? The Security Council might as well have let
Saddam handle his own paperwork.

But the Secretariat was, in fact, expected to supervise the
program. For example, Resolution 986, authorizing the Secretariat to
set up Oil-for-Food, specifically laid out the goal of ensuring
“equitable distribution of humanitarian relief” – not the embezzlement
by Saddam of $10.1 billion. If carrying out this mandate was an
impossible job – and given the habits of Saddam, perhaps it was –
Sevan and Annan themselves, in the interest of upholding the integrity
of the Secretariat, should have stepped forward to voice the problem,
just as Annan found occasion to voice his criticisms of U.S. policy in
Iraq.

DID KOFI KNOW?

Instead, U.N. officials urged the rapid growth of Oil-for-Food, with
Annan and Sevan using their public platforms to complain that the
U.S. and U.K. were spending too much time scrutinizing contracts
(France, Russia, and China evidently were not). In the final year of
the program, Annan agreed to a revised plan that cut the Security
Council out of the loop on all Oil-for-Food contract approvals except
those involving goods that might be used for weapons. This allowed the
Secretariat to more swiftly and directly process what have now turned
out to be thousands of relief contracts involving billions in bribes
to suppliers and kickbacks to Saddam.

Could Kofi Annan – no fool – really have been oblivious to the
carnival of corruption under his jurisdiction? “I don’t think that’s
plausible,” says Hankes-Drielsma.

Ultimately, the big questions here are not just who profited from
graft under Oil-for-Food, but the extent to which the U.N. setup of
secrecy, warped incentives, and lack of accountability allowed it to
supervise the transformation of Oil-for-Food into a program of
theft-from-Iraqis, cash-for-Saddam, and grease-for-the-U.N. Were this
a corporation, the CEO, Enron-style, would already be out the front
door, and a major restructuring underway. The least that needs to come
out of an independent investigation, or congressional hearings for
that matter, is a clear understanding of the ways in which the
U.N. Secretariat must be not simply reprimanded, but deeply reformed,
starting with the introduction of complete transparency in U.N. use of
public money -and proceeding to any further incentives that might be
devised to ensure it will better honor the public trust.

– Claudia Rosett is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies, and an adjunct fellow with the Hudson
Institute. Rosett previously wrote on the United Nations Oil-for-Food
Program for NRO here.

Kasparov triumphant in Reykjavik Rapid

22.03.2004

Had Nigel Short converted his advantage in the first game it would
have gone down as one of the more spectacular of Kasparov’s few
losses. Instead it turned into another bitter pill for the Englishman
to swallow. Kasparov turned the tables and won, then drew the second
to take the match and the title. Report and games.

The song remains the same
ChessBase News
Final result – Sun. March 21
Nigel Short Garry Kasparov 0-1

In keeping with our 1993 retro theme, Nigel Short and Garry Kasparov
reenacted several of the the scenes that occurred in many of their
world championship match games in which the Englishman had the white
pieces. Short would gain an impressive attack against Kasparov’s
Sicilian only to falter against sharp defense.

In the first game today Short got a dream attacking position but
Kasparov kept battling and finally wrested the advantage through
nightmarish complications. Kasparov found White’s king and it ended
abruptly with a queen sacrifice mate in three.

It was similar in several ways, if not in complexity and gravity, to
the legendary game eight of the 93 world championship, but it was
bitter enoughfor Short, who has been playing excellent chess.

Would the second game be more than a formality? Kasparov had the
momentum and white and he needed only a draw to secure the tournament
win. He quickly built up a crushing position and although he blundered
it away against resourceful defense by Short the game finished in a
drawn endgame.

For Kasparov it was a somewhat shaky tournament win, but anything less
than victory would have been considered a surprise, the curse of high
expectations.

(Being the top seed by over 100 points didn’t hurt.)
In the past few years it has been hard to say if Kasparov’s level is
slipping simply because he has played so rarely. This year there are
no Ponomariov matches to be canceled so we hope he surpasses his
recent annual totals of classical games played. He played 37 in 2001,
21 in 2002, and 18 in 2003 (not including 10 classical games against
Junior and Fritz), for 76 total.

Kramnik and Anand, who might be the new #2 on the upcoming rating
list, have both recently criticized Kasparov for his lack of
activity. For the record, Anand played 37, 16, and 39 classical games
in 2001, 02, and 03 (92 total).

Kramnik played 37, 3, 38 (78 total). Anand has also been much more
active on the rapid circuit.

A1 Plus | 21:09:15 | 22-03-2004 | Social |

MOSCOW NEEDS NO RECORDS

Today, Bruce Khlebnikov-Hatsagortsyan, 14, beat a record by pulling bus with
his long hair for three meters.{BR}

The show was staged by our compatriot Levon Manukyan who is a member of
Russian State Duma.

When Bruce was six years old, he pulled a car with his teeth, the boy’s
mother Nelli Khlebnukova says. “I realized that was God’s gift. God is
always with him, but every time I anxious about him. This is the 26th time
his success has been put in Guinness World Records”, she says.

Nelli Khlebnikova said Bruce is not going to beat records in Moscow where he
is merely being said “thank you” and nobody care of his problems.

—

CASE ON INCIDENT IN “TRIUMPH” CAFE BROUGHT FROM PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE OF
YEREVAN TO PROSECUTOR GENERAL’S OFFICE OF RA

YEREVAN
March 22, 2004
Noyan Tapan

The examination on the case of the March 12 incident in the “Triumph”
cafe was brought from the Prosecutor’s Office of Yerevan to the
Prosecutor General’s Office of RA, the preliminary examination on the
case continues. On March 22, Gurgen Ambarian, the press secretary of
the RA Prosecutor General, said this to Noyan Tapan. A criminal case
on three articles of the RA Criminal Code, 112, 235 and 285:
“premediated infliction of serious physical injuries”, “illegal
keeping of arms”, “hooliganism,” was instituted on the fact.

Mar 22, 2004, 05:59

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Armenians and Tibetans, two peoples who “share the same fate,” banded together last Friday in a gesture of solidarity.

“The noble Tibetan people are also victims of injustice and a cultural genocide to this day, while the rest of the world looks on,” said Azad Chichmanian, a member of the Ad Hoc Armenian Committee in Support of Tibet-China Negotiations. Like Armenia, Tibet is a “small but proud nation, working hard to gain recognition for crimes against humanity,” he added.

Chichmanian said that a group of Armenians “saw an opportunity to contribute in a positive way and help.” The Ad Hoc Committee joined forces with Armenian student associations from Concordia, McGill and Université de Montréal to host an information night at UdeM.

“It means so much to the Tibetan community,” said Thubten Samdup, national president of the Canada-Tibet Committee. “It has been played up on the Tibetan radio, in the newspapers. We feel like we’re not alone.”

Addressing the small crowd, Samdup said pressuring the Prime Minister’s office to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a key issue. He will be visiting the nation’s capital on April 24, which happens to coincide with the day Armenians will be commemorating the Armenian Genocide.

The Canada-Tibet Committee is not asking the federal government to take a firm position on the matter, but simply to broker dialogue between the leaders, Samdup said.

“We’re not going to beg for a photo-op with the Dalai Lama, we want something tangible,” he explained. Human rights are the cornerstone of Canadian policy, he said, and our nation is in a unique position to take this leadership role.

For Samdup, it is a matter of preserving Tibet’s identity. “I definitely don’t want to sit back and be a witness to my culture and people being wiped out.”

Following the Canada Tibet Connittee president’s address, the Ad Hoc group encouraged audience members to sign letters for their MPs, asking them to support Canada-Tibet negotiations. “The message is, we don’t want this repeated. We’ll stand shoulder to shoulder [with Tibetans],” Viken Attarian, a member of the Armenian group, said.

As of yet, 137 of 298 members of parliament have signed on and expressed support for the initiative. Samdup contends that if a majority of representatives are sympathetic to their cause, Prime Minister Paul Martin will have to consider taking action. “If China’s going to listen to anyone, it might be Canada.”

YEREVAN, March 22 (Itar-Tass) – Russia’s foreign trade bank Vneshtorgbank (VTB) will buy a blocking stake in Armenia’s savings bank Armsberbank.

The parties are expected to sign a correspondent agreement in Yerevan on Wednesday, March 24, chairman of the Armsberbank Board Mikhail Bagdasarov told Itar-Tass on Monday.

The deal between the two banks will become the most advantageous for Armenia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said. “This is a mechanism that unites the Russian and Armenian banks that are supported by solid financial sources,” Bagdasarov said.

The deal is necessary for the development of bilateral economic relations with Russia, he said. Armenian businessmen will have an opportunity to enter the Russian market, while Russian businessmen – Armenian.

Russia’s largest companies that work in Armenia will take out loans from Armsberbank, a future VTB affiliate. “As a shareholder VTB intends to increase Armsberbank’s charter capital four or five-fold and expand its service sector,” he said.

Armsberbank will retain thirty percent of the shares and have the right to have a say in important deals. Bagdasarov expressed confidence that this formula will allow Armenia to attract large investments from Russia through VTB.

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian National Committee
San Francisco – Bay Area
51 Commonwealth Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
Tel: (415) 387-3433
Fax: (415) 751-0617
[email protected]

Contact: Roxanne Makasdjian (415) 641-0525

March 19, 2004

Bay Area ANC Welcomes Khandjian and Morgenthau

Actress Arsinée Khandjian and Dr. Henry Morgenthau IV discuss Hai Tad
Prof. Stephan Astourian and Prof. Armen Der Kiureghian Honored

San Francisco, March 6, 2004 — Actress Arsinée Khandjian was the special
guest at the annual Bay Area Armenian National Committee’s `Hai Tad
Evening,’ along with pediatrician Henry `Ben’ Morgenthau IV, great-grandson
of the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey in 1915. The evening also highlighted the
Bay Area ANC’s accomplishments of the past year, and honored two Bay Area
professors, Stephan Astourian and Armen Der Kiureghian as `local heroes.’

Famed Canadian-Armenian actress Arsinée Khandjian spoke about the artist’s
role in Hai Tad, the Armenian Cause. Khandjian, who has acted extensively
in feature films, on stage and television, and has received many awards,
including the Genie award (the Canadian Academy Award), used her experience
in the feature film `ARARAT,’ to speak about her role and the film’s role in
Hai Tad. She said that historically, artwork which runs counter to the
accepted political ideology is often labeled as `propaganda.’ In
discussions with her husband, film director Atom Egoyan, about how to
approach the subject of the Armenian Genocide on film, Khandjian said they
were faced with the question of `how to remember’ the story of the Genocide.
She said that for some people, merely the step of making the film was a
political act. `They felt that not only had we decided to remember the
Genocide, but we were also suggesting how to remember it,’ said Khandjian.

Khandjian said `ARARAT’ was first and foremost a work of art, but she quoted
from Egoyan words to illustrate all the issues he wanted to address in the
film. `…the screenplay had to tell the story of what happened, why it
happened, why it’s denied, why it continues to happen, and what happens when
you continue to deny.’ Khandjian said that the filmmaker did not feel the
need to prove the Genocide happened. `The only concern was to find a way to
give voice to a true history, to retrieve it from oblivion and make the
viewers ask themselves why they have never heard of it. These were the
obligations felt by the filmmaker.’

Khandjian recognized that the film `ARARAT’ has become a political
instrument, supported or rejected because of its subject matter. She said
she regarded these reactions as inevitable, but that they do `…suggest that
as artists, we, nonetheless, have to be prepared to enter into political
discourse and sometimes directly so.’

As an example, Khandjian discussed the political maneuverings surrounding
the possibility of `ARARAT’s screening in Turkey. She described how the
Turkish Minister of Culture had announced that the film would be screened in
Turkey, but that shortly after, `Turkey’s Nationalist Action Party had said
that any individual choosing to attend screenings of the film would suffer
the consequences of the decision to shame Turkey by paying dearly with his
or her life.’ This latter development (which resulted in the cancellation of
the film’s release in Turkey), was not reported in the press, while the
former announcement by the Minister of Culture had been widely reported
through the Associated Press. Khandjian saw this as yet another boost for
the deception by the Turkish government, which deserved to be exposed to the
International community.

After many attempts to capture the attention of various Armenian
organizations and individuals, Khandjian said it was only the Toronto ANC’s
Aris Babikian who took the issue on. `He was the one person who listened
carefully to what I was proposing as an opportunity and as an approach to
turn the situation around in our interest. I am thankful and humbled by his
generosity to commit the time and effort to this cause.’ Khandjian said
that after Babikian contacted every Toronto newspaper editor, journalists
began taking an interest.

Khandjian quoted Canada’s top newspaper, The Globe and Mail, which wrote
under the headline `Blocking ARARAT,’ `The movie provides a test of the
country’s political maturity at a time when Turkey is pressing to join the
European Union. Turkey is failing the test.’ Soon after, the ANCA
Washington headquarters and Western Region offices took it upon themselves
to alert the American press, said Khandjian, after which both the New York
Times and Los Angeles Times reported on the blocking of the film in Turkey.

Stressing that the purpose in making `ARARAT’ for Khandjian and Egoyan was
to explore `the very essence of what we have to carry on as an identity in
our lives,’ Khandjian recognized `the power of art to reach the heart and
the mind of humanity. If we played a role in Hai Tad, it was only because
we first and foremost believed in the need to tell our story as we know it.’
Khandjian called on Armenian institutions and artists to recognize and
validate each other’s contributions and strengthen communication between them.

Henry Morgenthau IV also addressed the crowd at `Hai Tad’ evening, saying
that his family was always around Armenians while he was growing up in
Boston. `At my Bar Mitzvah there were Armenians, and at April 24th, there
were Morgenthaus,’ said Morgenthau IV, who has earned a BS degree from Yale,
a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, his
medical credentials from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York,
and is presently practicing pediatrics for the sickest children in San
Francisco hospitals. He has also produced films, campaigned for
congressional candidates and has worked in organizations promoting health
care reform and low-income housing.

Morgenthau IV spoke about the history of the Morgenthau family, which
achieved great political and financial success, after many booms and busts
in the business world. He described his great-grandfather as outwardly very
jovial and cheerful, but very disciplined in his private life. `Financial
success should not be a goal in itself,’ was one of Morgenthau’s maxims, he
said, which drove his great-grandfather’s purpose to do good in the world.
He spoke of the elder Morgenthau’s permanent legacy of adhering to
principles, which gave him the courage to stand up for the Armenians.

Speaking about his trip to Armenia with his father in April, 1999 at the
invitation of the Armenian National Institute, Morgenthau said, `It was the
spontaneous outpouring of affection from the Armenian people which still
stays with me from that trip. My father writes that he felt almost as
though he were the ambassador during that trip.’

`These experiences have instilled in me a desire to continue Ambassador
Morgenthau’s legacy…’ said Morgenthau IV. He said that if his
great-grandfather were alive today, he knows he would continue to fight for
official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but that he would also `be
quick to recognize the vulnerability’ of Armenia at present, and would see
new opportunities for Armenia.

In his introduction to Morgenthau IV, Bay Area ANC member Mark Markarian
said that Morgenthau’s grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Jr. was U.S. Secretary
of the Treasury during WWI, during which time he worked on behalf of the
Jews facing the Holocaust. Morgenthau Jr. initiated a U.S. Treasury program
which funded Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg’s trip to Budapest, where he
saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Ironically, those
rescued Jews included Bay Area Congressman Tom Lantos, one of the most
vociferous opponents of Armenian Genocide recognition in Congress.

Honored as `local heroes’ at the event were Professor Stephan Astourian, the
Executive Director of the Armenian Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley, and
U.C. Berkeley Engineering Professor Armen Der Kiureghian. Introducing Prof.
Astourian, ANC member and U.C. Berkeley Armenian Students Association
co-president Hasmig Tatiossian introduced her professor as someone who had
helped instill in her a keen interest in Armenian history and politics.
Astourian arrived at U.C. Berkeley as a visiting professor six years ago
and was able to swiftly raise the status of Armenian Studies at the
university to a full-fledged program, integrating it into the broader
university and linking it with other departments on campus. His courses are
praised for their rigor and content, and Astourian has volunteered his time
to provide community lectures and testify before the government bodies on
issues of history and Armenian Genocide education. Tatiossian praised
Astourian on behalf of the ANC as someone whose presence, scholarship, and
service in the academic arena is making strong, enduring contributions to
the Armenian Cause.

Introducing Professor Armen Der Kiureghian, ANC member and American
University of Armenia staff member Gohar Momjian, described Der Kiureghian’s
many contributions to the Bay Area community and to Armenia. Der Kiureghian
was the initiator and founding member of the American University of Armenia,
and using his expertise in civil engineering and seismic safety, he helped
Armenia greatly after its devastating 1988 earthquake, and established AUA’s
Engineering Research Center, acquiring funding for the research work of more
than 100 scientists in Armenia. Der Kuireghian was instrumental in
establishing the Armenian Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley, and has
spearheaded efforts to prevent Armenian Genocide denial on campus. For
these major contributions and the many more ways Professor Der Kiureghian
has been involved in the preservation and vibrancy of the Armenian community
here and abroad, the Bay Area ANC presented him with its `local hero’ award.

Speaking on behalf of the Bay Area ANC, Roxanne Makasdjian outlined the
committee’s key initiatives of the past year. Describing the various
actions taken to achieve recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Makasdjian
said, `With the atmosphere of terrorism which surrounds us today, our
message becomes clearer than ever before: that when the U.S. covers up for
the faults of its friends, it is seen by the rest of the world as
hypocritical, selfish, and fraudulent – and its message of human rights,
democracy, and justice for all is looked upon as a sham, which sews hatred
and resentment among those it says it seeks to save.’ Makasdjian listed the
various Bay Area genocide resolutions the ANC helped pass, the Armenian
Genocide film screening it organized, the publicity it helped generate
around the book `Burning Tigris’ and film `ARARAT,’ relationships with local
press surrounding their coverage of the Genocide, and the progress of the
Bay Area ANC’s Genocide Education Project. Makasdjian presented the
Project’s newly published lesson plans, `Human Rights and Genocide: A Case
Study of the First Genocide of the 20th Century,’ and discussed the success
of new educational website, `TeachGenocide.org’

Makasdjian also updated those present on ANC’s local political advocacy
efforts, including its Mayoral Candidates Forum, and the committee’s
outreach to university students. She also spoke of the newest problem to
arise on the federal level – the Bush administration’s proposal to increase
military aid to Azerbaijan, giving it approximately three-times the amount
offered to Armenia. Makasdjian urged the audience to support the ANC’s
efforts to persuade Congress against making such unbalanced appropriations
which dangerously effect Armenia’s national security.

Of special note at `Hai Tad Evening’ was the attendance of former California
Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian. Makasdjian noted that this Spring,
Arabian will be awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor, as
someone from an immigrant community who has achieved so much. Also
recognized for their generosity were the many Bay Area Armenian-American
community members who have contributed financially to the committee’s
ongoing activities.

###

Full Speech by Arsinée Khandjian at Bay Area ANC `Hai Tad Evening’:

PICTURE CAPTION:
Left to right: Bay Area ANC Representative Roxanne Makasdjian, Actress
Arsinée Khandjian, Professor Stephan Astourian, Dr. Henry Morgenthau IV, and
Professor Armen Der Kiureghian

Turn to 10.com, RI
March 22 2004

Former Cranston Pastor Faces Embezzlement Charges

CRANSTON, R.I. — A Cranston man faces charges he embezzled money
from his church, News Channel 10 reported.

Megerdich Megerdichian served as pastor of the Holy Cross Armenian
Apostolic Church, in Troy, N.Y., for 16 years. The congregation
removed him in 1998.

Prosecutors said he allegedly stole money and kept it in a secret
bank account.

Megerdichian has pleaded guilty to evading taxes, authorities said.

Phayul, Tibet
March 22 2004

Shoulder to shoulder Armenians and Tibetans band together in
solidarity

WTN[Monday, March 22, 2004 10:37]
By Anna Sarkissian

Armenians and Tibetans, two peoples who “share the same fate,” banded
together last Friday in a gesture of solidarity.

“The noble Tibetan people are also victims of injustice and a
cultural genocide to this day, while the rest of the world looks on,”
said Azad Chichmanian, a member of the Ad Hoc Armenian Committee in
Support of Tibet-China Negotiations. Like Armenia, Tibet is a “small
but proud nation, working hard to gain recognition for crimes against
humanity,” he added.

Chichmanian said that a group of Armenians “saw an opportunity to
contribute in a positive way and help.” The Ad Hoc Committee joined
forces with Armenian student associations from Concordia, McGill and
Université de Montréal to host an information night at UdeM.

“It means so much to the Tibetan community,” said Thubten Samdup,
national president of the Canada-Tibet Committee. “It has been played
up on the Tibetan radio, in the newspapers. We feel like we’re not
alone.”

Addressing the small crowd, Samdup said pressuring the Prime
Minister’s office to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a key
issue. He will be visiting the nation’s capital on April 24, which
happens to coincide with the day Armenians will be commemorating the
Armenian Genocide.

The Canada-Tibet Committee is not asking the federal government to
take a firm position on the matter, but simply to broker dialogue
between the leaders, Samdup said.

“We’re not going to beg for a photo-op with the Dalai Lama, we want
something tangible,” he explained. Human rights are the cornerstone
of Canadian policy, he said, and our nation is in a unique position
to take this leadership role.

For Samdup, it is a matter of preserving Tibet’s identity. “I
definitely don’t want to sit back and be a witness to my culture and
people being wiped out.”

Following the Canada Tibet Connittee president’s address, the Ad Hoc
group encouraged audience members to sign letters for their MPs,
asking them to support Canada-Tibet negotiations. “The message is, we
don’t want this repeated. We’ll stand shoulder to shoulder [with
Tibetans],” Viken Attarian, a member of the Armenian group, said.

As of yet, 137 of 298 members of parliament have signed on and
expressed support for the initiative. Samdup contends that if a
majority of representatives are sympathetic to their cause, Prime
Minister Paul Martin will have to consider taking action. “If China’s
going to listen to anyone, it might be Canada.”

Maranatha Christian Journal
March 22 2004

Scepticism And Optimism
Greet Turkmenistan Decree

( F18News) — Despite a surprise 11 March decree from Turkmenistan
President Saparmurat Niyazov lifting the requirement that a religious
community must have 500 adult citizen members before it can register,
officials have insisted that unregistered religious activity remains
illegal.

Religious believers of the many illegal faiths – including all
Protestant, Armenian Apostolic, Shia Muslim, Jewish, Hare Krishna,
Baha’i and Jehovah’s Witness communities – have been taken by
surprise by an March 11 decree from Turkmenistan’s authoritarian
president Saparmurat Niyazov allowing religious communities to gain
official registration regardless of how many members they have or
what faith they belong to.

Some have told Forum 18 News Service they are optimistic that
conditions will improve, though others – especially from groups that
have regularly suffered fines, beatings and threats – are sceptical.
Under the country’s harsh religion law, communities have previously
needed five hundred adult citizen members (a requirement almost
impossible for religious minorities to achieve), while since last
November unregistered religious activity has been a crime. The new
decree makes no mention of decriminalising unregistered religious
activity.

Bibi Agina, an official of the department that registers social
organisations at the Adalat (Justice) Ministry, told Forum 18 that
the decree does not mean that unregistered religious communities can
start to meet freely in private homes. “As before, religious
communities can only function after they get registration,” she told
Forum 18 from Ashgabad on 12 March. “The decree simply gives
religious communities like the Baptists and others the possibility to
work legally.”

Officials at the government’s Gengeshi (Council) for Religious
Affairs were, as usual, reluctant to talk, putting down the phone
when Forum 18 telephoned. Eventually Forum 18 managed to speak to
Mukhamed (who refused to give his last name), an aide to the deputy
chairman Murad Karriyev, who said the same as Agina that the decree
does not entitle unregistered religious communities to begin to
function. “They still need registration,” he insisted to Forum 18.

Radik Zakirov, a Protestant from Ashgabad, said his community is not
preparing to register under the new decree. But he believed it might
mark a change of policy. “The authorities have tried up till now to
use repressive measures and have understood this is unsuccessful,” he
told Forum 18 on March 12. “They seem now to be trying to bring
religious communities under state control – perhaps a cleverer
policy.”

One immediate welcome for the decree came from Armenia’s Ambassador
to Turkmenistan, Aram Grigorian, who has been seeking the return to
the local Armenian community of their church in the Caspian port city
of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk), which was confiscated during
the Soviet period. “This is a very progressive decree,” he told Forum
18 from Ashgabad on March 12. “We will try to make use of it.”

The government has not allowed any Armenian Apostolic churches to
reopen or open in Turkmenistan and, if they wish to attend services,
Armenian Apostolic believers are forced to go to the only legal
Christian denomination, the Russian Orthodox Church, although the
Armenian Church is of the Oriental family of Christian Churches, not
the Orthodox.

Vasili Kalin, chairman of the ruling council of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses in Russia, who maintains close ties with fellow believers
in Turkmenistan, was cautiously optimistic over what he regarded as
perhaps the start of a process of improvement. “We welcome the
guarantees of freedom of religion and registration in the decree,” he
told Forum 18 from St Petersburg on 12 March, “but experience teaches
us to look at what happens in practice.” Anatoly Melnik, a Jehovah’s
Witness leader from Kazakhstan with contacts in Turkmenistan, was
more pessimistic over whether the decree will improve life for their
communities, believing the decree might be simply a “propaganda
measure”.

Kalin said their communities in Turkmenistan are ready to register,
but pointed out that several Jehovah’s Witnesses remain in prison for
their faith. “It would be a good gesture that Turkmenistan is ready
to abide by its international human rights commitments if these
innocent people would be freed. We hope to see that soon.” He said
the new decree might be a signal that Turkmenistan is changing “just
as in the Soviet Union when the situation changed”. He pointed out
that moving from illegality in the Soviet Union to a position where
Jehovah’s Witnesses could register their communities took time.

One Protestant, whose church has had numerous problems from the
authorities and has to meet in secret to try to evade state control,
was sceptical about whether the decree would make a lot of
difference. “We know about the decree,” the Protestant – who
preferred not to be identified – told Forum 18. “But are we
optimistic? Not so much.”

A Christian representative outside Turkmenistan with close links in
the country told Forum 18 that “if the decree becomes a reality, it
will be good”. The representative noted that without registration the
church has faced a number of problems, including the impossibility of
acquiring property for services.

Most sceptical were leaders of unregistered Protestant churches.
Viktor Makrousov of the Pentecostal church (who had not yet seen the
decree) and Vladimir Tolmachev of Greater Grace both separately
believed the situation is unlikely to improve on the ground. “Our
main problem has not been the 500 signatures required for
registration – we could achieve that,” Tolmachev told Forum 18 from
Ashgabad on March 12. “The problem is that people signing the
registration application would get problems – they would be sacked
from their work, especially those who are ethnic Turkmens. It is a
problem of people’s safety.”

Niyazov’s decree, reported on state television on 11 March and
published in Russian on the pro-government website turkmenistan.ru,
claims that the country “carries out fully” its commitments under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and the Declaration on the Elimination of
All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or
Belief “while securing the harmony of the religious confessions
functioning in Turkmenistan”. In reality, the government has
flagrantly violated these international commitments amid the heaviest
controls on religious life of all the former Soviet republics.

The decree sets out three provisions:

“1. To secure the registration on the territory of Turkmenistan of
religious organisations and groups in accordance with
generally-accepted international norms and procedures.

“2. To register on the territory of Turkmenistan according to
established procedure religious groups of citizens independently of
their number, faith and religion.

“3. The Adalat Ministry of Turkmenistan is to put into effect the
current decree from the day of its publication.”

The decree was published at the same time as a decree ordering the
lifting of exit controls on Turkmenistan’s citizens. Both this and
the denial of religious freedom have been heavily criticised by
foreign governments and human rights activists. Religious believers
within the country are generally too frightened to speak out openly
against the restrictions on their religious activity.