Reuters AlertNet, UK
April 2 2004

Three die in Armenia cable car crash

YEREVAN, April 2 (Reuters) – A cablecar in the capital of Armenia
fell 10 metres (30 feet) to the ground on Friday, killing three
passengers and injuring eight, the state emergencies service said.

It said in a statement that two people died on the spot when a
12-seat cabin fell into a courtyard. Nine passengers were rushed to
hospital, where one died later.

There have been no official statements as to what had caused the
accident on the cablecar operating from the city centre to a hillside
residential district. A manager of the company running the link
suggested in a television interview that unusually strong winds might
have been the reason.

Submitted by Janoyan Ana

The Scotsman, UK
April 2 2004

Cable Car Crashes

A cable car crashed to the ground in the Armenian capital Yerevan
today, killing three passengers and injuring six others, officials
said.

The aerial cable car was carrying nine passengers when it plummeted
from a height of some 65 feet after the cable broke, Emergency
Situations Department spokesman Araik Movseyan said.

One of the dead and two of the injured were Armenian citizens, he
said. Prosecutors have opened a criminal case and an investigation.

The Mercury, Australia

April 2 2004

Highlights in history on this date

1993 – Armenian forces seize Kelbajar in Azerbaijan, completing a
land link to the Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabach.

1512 – Beyazid II, Sultan of Turkey, abdicates in favour of son,
Selim I.
1559 – Peace treaty between France and Spain is signed at
Cateau-Cambresis, France, leaving Spain the dominant power in Italy
for the next 150 years.
1612 – Protestant Union of Germany signs defensive alliance with
England.
1682 – Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Spanish painter best known for his
populist religious works, dies.
1721 – Sir Robert Walpole is appointed first lord of the treasury and
chancellor of the exchequer, effectively Britain’s first prime
minister.
1833 – Attempt by revolutionaries to take over Frankfurt Diet in
Germany is crushed.
1860 – The legendary Pony Express begins a US mail service between St
Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.
1865 – In the American Civil War, Union forces occupy the Confederate
capital Richmond, Virginia.
1882 – After more than 15 years of robbing banks and trains, US
outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back at St Joseph, Missouri by a
member of his gang.
1883 – State Premier Thomas McIlwraith claims British New Guinea as a
Queensland possession; the claim was later disallowed by Britain.
1897 – Death of Johannes Brahms, German composer and pianist.
1913 – English suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is found guilty of
encouraging supporters to arson and sentenced to three years in
prison.
1920 – US author F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre are married, four
days after publication of his novel This Side of Paradise.
1922 – Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Soviet
Communist Party.
1930 – Ras Tafari becomes Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia
(Ethiopia).
1933 – First flight over Mt Everest in the Himalayas is made by four
Britons in two biplanes.
1936 – Bruno Hauptmann is electrocuted for the kidnap-murder of US
aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son.
1941 – British troops evacuate Libyan port Bengazi during World War
II.
1943 – Death of German actor Conrad Veidt, best known for his roles
in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Casablanca.
1948 – United States creates the Marshall Plan, allocating $US5.33
billion in aid to 16 European nations to help in rebuilding after
WWII.
1949 – Transjordan signs an armistice with the newly founded state
Israel.
1968 – Less than 24 hours before his assassination in Memphis,
Tennessee, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr delivers his
famous “mountaintop” speech to a rally of striking sanitation
workers.
1974 – More than 300 people die when a series of deadly tornadoes
strike wide parts of the US South and Midwest before jumping across
the border into Canada.
1975 – Russian Anatoly Karpov, 23, becomes world chess champion when
American Bobby Fischer fails to show up for their match in Manila.
1982 – Britain dispatches a naval task force to the south Atlantic to
reclaim the disputed Falkland Islands from Argentina; UN Security
Council votes 10-1 in favour of a resolution demanding withdrawal of
Argentine forces; A new state Labor government, under John Cain, is
elected in Victoria.
1986 – Peter Pears, British operatic tenor, dies.
1987 – The late Duchess of Windsor’s jewels are auctioned, fetching
nearly $US45 million.
1989 – Guerrillas and South African-led security forces wage fierce
hand-to-hand battles in northern Nigeria.
1990 – Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan dies in suburban Los Angeles at age
66.
1991 – UN Security Council votes 12-1 to accept a ceasefire
resolution requiring Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction
and authorising peacekeeping troops to be deployed in the region;
Death of British novelist Graham Greene, aged 86, in Switzerland.
1992 – Communist Ramiz Alia resigns as president of Albania, two
weeks after a non-Communist parliament is elected.
1993 – Armenian forces seize Kelbajar in Azerbaijan, completing a
land link to the Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabach.
1994 – Thousands jam a Sarajevo cathedral for the first peaceful
Easter in two years, but fighting continues along Serb-Muslim front
lines.
1995 – At least 150 Hutus, mostly women and children, are massacred
in a single village in north-eastern Burundi.
1996 – A US Air Force military plane carrying US Commerce Secretary
Ron Brown and 34 others crashes in stormy weather on a hillside
outside Dubrovnik, Croatia, killing all aboard; Former maths
professor Theodore Kaczynski is arrested, accused of being America’s
murderous Unabomber.
1997 – Iraq begins distributing the first shipments of 400,000 tonnes
of wheat bought under a deal with the United Nations allowing the
sale of oil for food.
1998 – The Dow Jones industrial average of the New York Stock
Exchange reaches 9,000 for the first time, five months after the
Dow’s biggest one-day drop had many thinking the market was going
into a recession; Australian Defence Force ends its six-month drought
relief operation in Papua New Guinea after delivering 3.2 million kg
of aid to remote areas.
1999 – Christians and Muslims armed with swords, spears and homemade
bombs riot and burn a church, a mosque and several houses in Ambon,
the eastern Indonesian province where chronic rioting has killed more
than 200 people; Lionel Bart, British composer of the musical Oliver,
dies aged 68.
2000 – A federal judge in Washington rules that Microsoft Corp has
violated US antitrust laws by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on
competitors during the race to link Americans to the internet.
2001 – The death toll in a meningitis outbreak in Burkina Faso tops
1,000. The government and the World Health Organisation scramble to
secure millions of vaccine doses to control the epidemic which is
spreading to neighbouring countries.
2002 – The Afghan Army is reborn when the first 600 soldiers trained
for six weeks by international peacekeepers graduate in a ceremony
attended by interim leader Hamid Karzai.
2003 – The World Health Organisation reports 2,270 illnesses,
including 79 deaths, from a spreading epidemic of a new respiratory
ailment known as SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome; The US
Congress overwhelmingly votes to approve nearly $US80 billion
($A107.65 billion) to finance the war in Iraq, reward key allies,
bolster anti-terrorism efforts and help struggling airlines.

Azerbaijan, Armenia hinder peace process – Russian mediator

Azad Azarbaycan TV, Baku
1 Apr 04

[Presenter] The Russian co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group, Yuriy
Merzlyakov today [1 April] made a new statement about the current
state of the [Karabakh conflict] settlement process. Saying that the
Minsk Group has prepared new proposals and ideas, Merzlyakov said that
they had not been discussed through the fault of the conflicting
parties. He also said that it is not possible to produce a proposal
which would satisfy both parties.

[Correspondent] The OSCE Minsk Group is trying to decide a place and
date for the talks on the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict. However, no agreement has been reached with the parties so
far. This is what the Russian co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group,
Yuriy Merzlyakov, told ATV.

Commenting on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statement that the
OSCE Minsk Group had not made concrete proposals, Merzlyakov said that
there were new ideas and proposals, but the co-chairmen could not
obtain the parties’ consent to meet and discuss them.

[Merzlyakov, by phone, with superimposed Azeri translation] It is
impossible to produce a proposal which will satisfy all the
parties. Therefore, the talks must continue. The Minsk Group has new
ideas and proposals; but unfortunately, we fail in our attempts to
organize a discussion of the proposals with the parties.

[Correspondent] As for other complaints about the Minsk Group’s
activities, Merzlyakov said that it was the fault of the parties, not
the Minsk Group, that consultations had not taken place.

[Merzlyakov] We have been working since January 2004 to have the
consultations held. But we cannot achieve this as either one or other
party insists that the date of a meeting should be changed. We first
received Armenia’s proposal to postpone the Prague meeting. Then the
other side came out against the meeting.

[Correspondent] Merzlyakov went on to add that one cannot say that the
peace process has reached a deadlock. We are optimists and hope that
we will be able to start consultations with the sides soon, end quote.

Kamran Hasanov, “Son Xabar”.

Minneapolis Star Tribune , MN
April 2 2004

Sunday’s film festival highlights

[parts omitted]

OAK STREET:
“The Documentarist,” 9:45 p.m. (Armenia, 62 min.) Black-and-white
portrait of Armenia, a country that throughout history has been
ravaged by war, poverty, substance abuse, emigration and crime.

ArmenPress
April 2 2004

LEBANON’S PRIME MINISTER WRAPS UP YEREVAN VISIT

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, ARMENPRESS: Wrapping up a two-day visit to
Yerevan, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, said the maiden
session of a joint intergovernmental commission focused on ways for
boosting commercial exchange between the two countries and reviewing
all previously signed agreements.
Speaking to a news conference together with his Armenian
counterpart, Andranik Margarian, Hariri said Armenian and Lebanese
officials agreed to set up a permanent joint structure that would
explore and facilitate investment opportunities in the two countries
and discuss new transportation schemes to promote bigger trade
exchange.
Armenian prime minister in turn said a lot has to be done for
proper study of the countries’ markets, which he said can be achieved
through reciprocal visits, exchange of information and other relevant
actions. He also said that Armenia has a lot to learn from Lebanon’s
burgeoning tourism industry.
Hariri, arrived in Yerevan accompanied by cabinet ministers and
four ethnic Armenian members of the Lebanese parliament. Before the
1975 civil war Lebanon was home to one of the most influential
Armenian communities abroad numbering more than 300,000, but despite
that thousands of them chose to emigrate to Europe and USA, the
community is represented in the government and parliament, being also
instrumental in contributing to warm political relations between the
two nations.

ArmenPress
April 2 2004

THREE DIE, SIX OTHERS GET INJURIES IN FUNICULAR ACCIDENT

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, ARMENPRESS: Three people were killed and six
others received heavy injuries when a funicular railway car fell on
the ground today. The accident occurred at 2 pm when the car was
taking passengers to Nor Nork borough from downtown Yerevan. Another
car that was sliding towards the center did not fall down due to
braking system.
The injured were rushed to hospital. An official of the
emergencies department said the accident may have been caused by the
obsolete machinery.

ArmenPress
April 2 2004

RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT REACTS TO ALIYEV’S CRITICISM OF MINSK GROUP

BAKU, APRIL 2, ARMENPRESS: In a somewhat angry reaction to Azeri
president, Ilham Aliyev’s criticism of the OSCE Minks group for
“failing to develop new proposals for regulation of the Karabagh
conflict,’ the Russian co-chairman of the group, Yuri Merzlyakov
countered that the group has developed new proposals, but cannot
bring the conflicting sides at negotiation table to discuss them.
In an interview with a Baku-based 525 Gazet, the Russian diplomat
said it is impossible to draft proposals that would be welcomed by
all parties and therefore they will continue their efforts, hoping
for the soonest resumption of talks.

ArmenPress
April 2 2004

KOCHARIAN CONFERS WITH INTELLECTUALS

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, ARMENPRESS: Armenian president Robert Kocharian
conferred today with members of an initiative group of intellectuals
who had asked him in a letter to set up a presidential commission,
composed of volunteers, to study the current problems of spiritual
and cultural life, develop proposals for their solutions and present
them to the authorized bodies.
The intellectuals praised the government’s policy aimed at
reviving the cultural life saying positive changes in this area are
obvious with a succession of cultural events, reconstruction of
cultural establishments and publication of books.
The president emphasized in turn that the cultural policy must be
extended from the capital to regions, adding that an extensive
project was developed to rehabilitate regional cultural
establishments.
Intellectuals said that concurrently with positive shifts there
are serious concerns over the intervention of low-quality artistic
values and overlooking of younger generation’s upbringing.
Sharing their concerns president Kocharian proposed first an
in-depth look into all relevant problems and search for mechanisms
for effective operation of the commission.

ArmenPress
April 2 2004

ARSHILE GORKY’S CENTENARY TO BE MARKED IN YEREVAN

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, ARMENPRESS: The centenary of Arshile Gorky, one
of the most famous contemporary artists, the founder of Abstract
Surrealism, will be marked in Yerevan on April 15 by a set of events,
initiated by Arshile Gorky Foundation in collaboration with the Union
of Armenian Artists. One of the events will be an exhibition of
pictures and sculptures of Armenian artists. The government has set
up a commission to steer the events. An exhibition of his works will
be organized also at New York Metropolitan Museum. By the way, there
is only one picture by Gorky in Armenia, kept at the headquarters of
the Armenian Church in Etchmiadzin.
Arshile Gorky was born Vosdanik Adoian in the village of Khorkom,
province of Van, Armenia, on April 15, 1904. The Adoians became
refugees from the Turkish invasion; Gorky himself left Van in 1915
and arrived in the United States about March 1, 1920. He stayed with
relatives in Watertown, Massachusetts, and with his father, who had
settled in Providence, Rhode Island. By 1922 he lived in Watertown
and taught at the New School of Design in Boston. In 1925 he moved to
New York and changed his name to Arshile Gorky. He entered the Grand
Central School of Art in New York as a student but soon became an
instructor of drawing; from 1926 to 1931 he was a member of the
faculty. Throughout the 1920s Gorky’s painting was influenced by
Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, and, above all, Pablo Picasso.
In 1930 Gorky’s work was included in a group show at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. During the thirties he associated closely
with Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, and John Graham; he shared a
studio with de Kooning late in the decade. Gorky’s first solo show
took place at the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia in 1931. From 1935
to 1937 he worked under the WPA Federal Art Project on murals for
Newark Airport. His involvement with the WPA continued into 1941.
Gorky’s first solo show in New York was held at the Boyer Galleries
in 1938. The San Francisco Museum of Art exhibited his work in 1941.
In the 1940s he was profoundly affected by the work of European
Surrealists, particularly Joan Miró, André Masson, and Matta. By 1944
he met André Breton and became a friend of other Surrealist emigrés
in this country. Gorky’s first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery
in New York took place in 1945. From 1942 to 1948 he worked for part
of each year in the countryside of Connecticut or Virginia. A
succession of personal tragedies, including a fire in his studio that
destroyed much of his work, a serious operation, and an automobile
accident, preceded Gorky’s death by suicide on July 21, 1948, in
Sherman, Connecticut.