LIBRARY OF “MKHITAR SEBASTATSI” EDUCATIONAL COMPLEX TO BE AFTER
POLITICIAN TIGRAN HAYRAPETIAN

YEREVAN, MARCH 23, NOYAN TAPAN. The centralized library of the Yerevan
“Mkhitar Sebastatsi” educational complex is reconstructed, the solemn
ceremony of its opening will take place on March 28. The library will
from now on be called after prematurely deceased politician Tigran
Hayrapetian. The library serves about 2500 pupils and employees of the
educational complex as well as a number of schools and the
inhabitation of the Malatia-Sebastia community. As it is mentioned in
the information submitted to Noyan Tapan by the information service of
the educational complex, educational institutions implementing
pre-school, comprehensive, vocational (pre-professional), middle
specialized out-school educational programs function in the structure
of the “Mkhitar Sebastatsi” educational complex. The educational
complex implements “Preparatory Education at Comprehensive School,”
“Distance School of Young Observer and Creator,” “Inclusive Education”
and other republican programs.

RA NA DISCUSSES AGREEMENT ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMUNICATION BY COURIER

YEREVAN, MARCH 23, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA National Assembly discussed on
March 22 the agreement “On Intergovernmental Communication by Courier”
(signed on January 22, 1993, in Minsk) presented for certification by
the President of the republic and the report on making amendments in
that agreement, signed on May 27, 1997 in Moscow. The goal of the
Agreement and Report is to guarantee operative dispatch of the
official correspondence among the member countries of the Commonwealth
of Independent States and heads of governments, authority and
government bodies. The operative rulling of the intergovernmental
communication by courier will be implemented by the coordinating
council of departments of the services of communication by courier of
the member states of the agreement. The agreement regulates
inviolability of dispatching the official correspondence as well
issues relating to UN employees’ rights and obligations. By the
report the status of the UN employee envisaged by the agreement is
changed, according to what he makes use of the right of bearing,
keeping weapon, corresponding to the legislation of the state where he
is.

TWO TOURS REMAIN TO THE END OF CHESS REPUBLICAN CHAMPIONSHIPS

YEREVAN, MARCH 23, NOYAN TAPAN. 2 tours have remained to the end of
the men’s and women’s chess republican championships. Currently,
Artashes Minasian is in the lead in men’s championship. He drew the
game with Tigran Kotanjian in the 7th tour. Arman Pashinian and Ashot
Anastasian drew the game. The rest three games ended with the victory
of one of the sides. Tigran L.Petrosian defeated Tigran Nalbandian,
Karen Asrian defeated Arsen Yeghiazarian, Ara Minasian defeated David
Kalashian. A.Minasian is in the lead in the championship after 7
tours. He gained 5.5 points. Three participants, Asrian, Anastasian
ans Pashikian, have 4.5 points each. In the women’s championship the
only draw of the 7th tour was registered in the game between Nune
Darbinian and Nelly Aghinian. Siranush Andreasian defeated Marianna
Gasparian, Liana Aghabekian defeated Naira Movsisian, Narine Gasparian
defeated Lusine Alaverdian, Lilit Galoyan defeated Anahit
Kharatian. The leader is N.Aghinian who has gained 6 points out of 7
possible ones. Andreasian lags behind her only by 0.5 points
(Aghinian-Andreasian game will be held in the penultimate, 8th
tour). 4 participants at once have 4 points each.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NET INCOMES OF ‘PERNOD RICARD’ GREW BY 51,1$ IN THE FIRST HALF OF
2005-2006 TERM

PARIS, MARCH 23. ARMINFO. The net income of the ‘Pernod Ricard SA’,
the second biggest producer of alcohol beverages in the world, grew by
51,1% in the first half of the 2005-2006 term, totaling EUR 488
million against EOR 232 million in the previous term. The company’s
finance report says that sales grew by 66,6% coming to 3,27 billion
against 1,96 billion in the previous term.

Operation incomes totaled EUR 760 million, 56,1% more than the same
index of 2004-2005 term which totaled 487 million. The Pernod Ricard
board says the success id resulted from the purchase of the Domecq
Plc. British company at the price of $13 million. Pernod Rivard also
owns the Yerevan Brandy Factory.

Department of Legal and Structural Reforms opened at Chief
Prosecutor’s Office

ArmRadio
23.03.2006 11:32

Department of Legal and Structural Reforms has been opened at RA Chief
Prosecutor’s Office.

Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan issued the decree on March 21,
considering the necessity of rearranging the activity of the
Prosecutor’s Office directed at legal and structural reforms. 10 days
after his appointment Head of the Department on Legal and Structural
Reforms will have to present projects of arrangements of organizing
and raising the efficiency of the Office’s activity in the sphere of
legal and structural reforms.

Forthcoming visits of RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan

ArmRadio
23.03.2006 17:58

March 26-31 RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan will pay a working
visit to the United States.

April 27 together with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Minister
Oskanyan will participate in the ceremony of signing a compact with
the `Millennium Challenges’ Corporation. The same day his meeting with
the US Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group is expected. Vardan Oskanyan
will meet the UNDP Coordinator Kemal Dervish, as well as President of
the General Assembly Yan Eliason.

March 31 the Minister’s meeting with UN Secretary General Coffi Annan
is scheduled.

April 6-7 the Foreign Minister will pay a working visit to Moscow,
where his meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and
Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Igor Ivanov are scheduled.

April 7-9 Minister Oskanyan will leave for Syria on a working visit,
where he will meet President Bashar Asad and Foreign Minister Valid
Muallim.

France risks EU row over human rights in Turkey
By Daniel Dombey in Brussels and Vincent Boland in Ankara

FT
March 22 2006 16:31

France is pushing the European Union to take a tougher line on human
rights in accession negotiations with Turkey in a move the European
Commission fears will damage relations with Ankara.

EU leaders are also facing calls from Paris to thrash out a new, more
rigorous strategy for enlargement ` an issue that foreign ministers
will discuss at a summit on Thursday night.

Some members of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats also back the
plan, saying the EU would only be able to admit big new member states
to the 25-nation bloc after major institutional reform, such as that
envisaged in the proposed constitution rejected by French and Dutch
voters last year. Angela Merkel, German chancellor, recently
downplayed the hopes of western Balkan countries of full EU
membership.

The French initiatives deepen the Commission’s concerns that Paris and
its allies are seeking to frustrate Turkey’s bid for membership a mere
six months after the EU agreed to begin the accession process.

`Some member states want to introduce new goal posts in a
non-transparent manner,’ said a senior Commission official. `This may
backfire because it is not considered in Turkey that we are playing a
fair game.’

Paris insists it is acting in good faith and does not seek to obstruct
the negotiations. It adds that worries about enlargement played a
large role in the French public’s rejection of the European
constitution in a referendum last year and that leaders need to
consider seriously the limits of the EU’s capacity to absorb new
members.

`This is not a question of stopping enlargement,’ said a senior French
diplomat. `This is a question of showing that someone is flying the
plane.’

The first French push is to link negotiations on education and culture
` normally one of the least contentious parts of enlargement talks `
to human rights criteria.

Paris says the education and culture `chapter’ has to take account of
human rights issues, such as Turkish textbooks that treat minorities
as untrustworthy.

The Commission and countries such as the UK respond that it is unfair
to add new conditions to negotiations that have traditionally focused
a state’s record in adopting EU laws.

Although the EU’s 25 member states have agreed to start another
chapter ` on science and technology ` no negotiations have started,
because the current Austrian presidency of the EU would like to begin
talks on both chapters at the same time.

But the larger issue is whether the question of human rights will
overshadow almost all of Turkey’s negotiations with the EU, instead of
mainly being dealt with in chapters on fundamental rights and justice
and home affairs.

An opinion poll last week showed that support in Turkey for EU
membership is slipping. Although some 66 per cent of Turks still
support entry, the trend is downwards, as it has been almost since
Turkey secured its negotiations last October.

Blogcritics.org, OH
March 23 2006

On Holocaust: Anti-Semite or Anti-Human?
March 23, 2006
temporal

Defining the Horrific : Readings on Genocide and Holocaust in the
20th Century
William Hewitt

hol.o.caust n. 1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss
of life, especially by fire. 2. [Middle English, burnt offering, from
Old French holocauste, from Latin holocaustum, from Greek
holokauston, from neuter of holokaustos, burnt whole : holo-, holo- +
kaustos, burnt (from kaiein, to burn).]

I just finished reading an involved, wonderfully mesmerizing review
of Lajos Koltai’s Fateless: Death and the Children by Alan Dale.

Something I read there caught my eye and lingered in my mind long
after I finished reading that review. He wrote: The Holocaust, a
crime of historic proportions, is simply greater than any heroic
ordeal out of conventional romance–it calls for a new approach to
character and narrative.

Forget entire human history: even our recent history is replete with
what we call crimes against peace, humanity and genocide.

Consider these:

Roma (Gypsy) Holocaust Deaths: Determining the percentage or number
of Roma (Gypsies) who died in the Holocaust (called the Porrajmos,
“paw-RYE-mos” in Romani, a word which means “the Devouring”) is not
easy. The latest (1997) figure from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Research Institute in Washington puts the number of Romani lives lost
by 1945 at “between a half and one and a half million.”
Armenian Genocide: The official Ottoman statistics compiled for the
period between 1915 to 1917-18 were of 800,000 (Armenians) killed,
which suggests that possibly over a million perished. This figure
originates from Djemal’s bureau’s compilation statistics. The results
have been published in the official Ottoman gazette.

A report provided that as soon as February 1916, 1.5 million
Armenians were destroyed. A report in May 27, 1916, by Foreign Office
Intelligence Director Erzberger provided the same figure, as did an
October 4, 1916 report by the German Interim Ambassador to Turkey,
Radowitz, again with 1.5 million as the estimate of Armenian’s having
perished. It seems that the generally cited 1.5 million figure had
originated from those German sources. What might be considered by
many one of the most balanced German account is those of the German
major Endres, who served in the Turkish army, and who has estimated
the number of Armenians having lost their lives during the war to be
1.2 million.

“We have never denied the Armenian crime of genocide inflicted upon
2.5 million Muslim people between 1914 and 1920.” Agop Zahoryan,
‘Voices of Agonies’, p. 91.

Massacre in Cambodia: Estimates of the number of people who perished
under the Khmer Rouge vary tremendously, even within the present
Cambodian government. A figure of three million deaths between 1975
and 1979 was given by the Vietnamese-sponsored Phnom Penh regime, the
People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Father Ponchaud suggested 2.3
million; the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project estimated 1.7 million;
Amnesty International estimated 1.4 million; and the United States
Department of State, 1.2 million. Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot cited
figures of 1 million and 800,000, respectively

Tragedy in Chechnia: Today, 12 years later, is there anyone who
mourns the more than 30% of the total Chechen population who perished
in the last two wars? Who cares today about the hundreds of thousands
of Chechen refugees who fled wherever they could from the Chechen
killing-field, only to find themselves in unbearably miserable
conditions, with no hope of being treated as decent human beings?

The Rwandan Genocide: The slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis
and moderate Hutus, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia
groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100
days from April 6th through mid-July 1994.

Slaughter in Yugoslavia: Each nation (Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats)
reported many casualties in the three-sided conflict, in which the
Bosniaks reported the highest number of deaths and casualties.
However, the only case officially ruled by the U.N. Hague tribunal as
genocide was the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. At the end of the war
approximately 102,000 people had been killed according to the ICTY
and more than 2 million people fled their homes (including over 1
million to neighboring nations and the west)

There is more

Over twenty million Russian deaths in WWII.
The thousands who died and millions who were displaced during the
great divide in the sub continent – the partition of the subcontinent
into India and Pakistan.
Hundreds of thousands dead in the troubled region of Kashmir at the
hand of terrorists and Government Forces of India and Pakistan.
These are part and parcel of our heritage – correction our human
heritage and conscience. But when the word holocaust is mentioned
what image crosses your mind? Which of the holocausts mentioned above
comes to your mind?

Let me admit I am probably like the majority of folks here. This word
reminds me of the Jewish holocaust more than the other horrible
travesties.

How did that happen? Was it all of those movies? Books? Constant
references in the media? Who is triggering this guilt in me? By
maintaining our silence on all the holocausts perpetrated by us on
some of us are we not culpable?

I am not an anti-Semite. But I certainly could be anti-Human if I
remained silent any longer and not point out our fallacy.

Also on Desicritcs

love words and people who are in awe of them. words are the sole
arbiter and the final survivor. what else is there to state?

57.php

Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region
104 North Belmont Street, Suite 200
Glendale, California 91206
Phone: 818.500.1918 Fax: 818.246.7353
[email protected]
PRESS RELEASE
Thursday, March 23, 2006

Contact: Armen Carapetian
Tel: (818) 500-1918

USC PROMPTLY CANCELS CONFERENCE ON `TURKISH PERSPECTIVE’ ON THE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Armenian National Committee of America – Western
Region (ANCA-WR) learned on March 22nd that a planned conference at
the University of Southern California (USC) featuring leading deniers
of the Armenian Genocide was canceled.

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy originally sponsored the
conference, entitled `Turkish-Armenian Relations: The Turkish
Perspective’, which was scheduled to take place on Sunday, March
26th. Former Turkish Ambassadors Gündüz Aktan and Ömer Engin
Lütem were invited to speak about the Armenian Genocide and
Turkish-Armenian relations. Aktam and Lütem are notorious deniers
of the Armenian Genocide, and the event announcement made no attempt
to hide that their discussion would not only distort history but
attempt to justify Ottoman Turkey’s extermination of its Armenian
population.

`The USC event, which was to have featured Turkish members of the
State Department’s discredited TARC initiative, is part of an
orchestrated national campaign to breath new life into the failed
effort,’ said Zanku Armenian, a member of the ANCA-WR Board of
Directors. `The ANCA-WR, working with USC Armenian student groups,
Alumni and school supporters, was able to demonstrate to USC officials
the misguided and sinister nature of this panel which led to its
cancellation. The cancellation, along with the March 22nd Los Angeles
Times editorial reaffirming the Armenian Genocide, sends a strong
message to those who deny the Armenian Genocide: ‘You are not welcome
in California.’ We applaud USC administrators for taking prompt
action to rectify this situation and thus protecting USC’s fine
reputation from being used in Turkey’s propaganda war.’

Outraged student groups called on USC administrators to ask why this
conference was organized. In a letter to the director of the USC
Center on Public Diplomacy, ANCA-WR Chairman Steven Dadaian called on
the organizers to drop the conference. The quick action to draw
attention to this issue by many groups and individuals resulted in the
ultimate cancellation once USC officials were made aware of the real
intent of the event.

The ANCA is the largest and most influential Armenian American
grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a
network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the United
States and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA
actively advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a
broad range of issues.

Editor’s Note: The text of the ANCA-WR letter to USC is attached
below.

#####

March 22, 2006

USC Center on Public Diplomacy
Joshua S. Fouts
3502 Watt Way, ASC Suite 103
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0281

Dear Mr. Fouts:

It has recently come to our attention that the USC Center on Public
Diplomacy is hosting a program called `Armenian `Genocide’,
International Law and the Psychology of Destroying the Other’
featuring two speakers who are notorious deniers of the Armenian
Genocide, Gündüz S. Aktan and Ömer Engin Lütem.

According to the description of the program issued by the Center,
Messrs. Aktan and Lütem have the extraordinary task of turning the
victims of the first genocide of the 20th century into the
perpetrators. Based on the program, it appears that Messrs. Aktan and
Lütem plan to argue the Turkish government’s official position that
(i) there were no massacres of Armenians, (ii) even if there were
massacres, the Armenians deserved them, (iii) the Armenians killed
more Turks than vice versa and (iv) the deaths were as a result of
`relocation’ and were not Genocide.

As today’s Los Angeles Times editorial clearly states, the facts
surrounding the Armenian Genocide are not in dispute. The Armenian
Genocide has been recognized by the United Nations, the United States
government and even the Ottoman courts who convicted the perpetrators
of the Armenian Genocide in absentia. The fact that USC is going to
provide a forum for Turkish foreign agents to deny historical facts by
making outright false statements is disturbing and a violation of your
own Code of Ethics. Genocide Denial is a form of hatred and bigotry
and it is outside the purview of accepted standards of civil discourse
within the academic community. It is a deliberate misrepresentation of
fact and a scientific fraud which must not be tolerated by the
University. What’s more, this panel is a threat to the University’s
academic environment because it frames the genocide as a historical
controversy.

All this is heightened by the fact that USC has an Armenian-American
student body of over a thousand students whose families are the direct
descendants of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Turks and now
officially denied by the Turkish government. This panel will
undoubtedly be considered an extremely offensive event which
disrespects the rights and dignity of not only your students but to
all the hundreds of thousands who are the victims and surviving
children of the Armenian Genocide.

We wonder what the reaction would be if USC were to host a
`discussion’ for neo-Nazis to argue that no Jews were killed, going so
far as to assert that while some Jews may have been killed during the
Holocaust, they deserved it. Would USC allow their name to be
associated with such a hypothetical event much less be sponsoring it?

Our organization is prepared to work with USC to minimize the damage
caused to the university’s image within the Armenian-American
community as a result of this program being scheduled if immediate
action is taken to cancel it. However, if USC chooses to proceed with
this program, our organization will be forced to take further action
to protest the University’s complicity in providing a forum for
genocide deniers.

We are requesting a meeting this week to discuss this urgent matter.
Please feel free to contact me at (818) 500-1918.

Sincerely,

[signed]

Steven J. Dadaian
Chairman, Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region

cc: Steven B. Sample
C.L. Max Nikias
Joseph Aoun
Vartan Gregorian

Baku Today
March 23 2006

Azerbaijan Discovers New Gold Deposits

23/03/2006 22:22

Initial explorations gave promising results on new gold deposits in
Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources
Huseyn Bagirov told journalists.

Exploration works were conducted in the large and Small Caucasus, and
Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

Geological-exploration works will now be conducted in these
perspective areas. The ministry also conducts work regarding the
illegal development of gold deposits in the Azerbaijan’s territories
occupied by Armenia. Important information is given to international
organizations.

Currently, the attraction of international legal mechanisms to
prevent the illegal exploitation of Azerbaijan’s gold deposits is
going on, the Minister said.