Armenian News

Armenians, Georgians In Unholy Row Over Church
By Nina Akhmeteli, AFP

Amidst the rambling homes and cobble-stoned streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi's old town, two stone churches stand side-by-side, sharing a snow-covered courtyard.

One, the Georgian Orthodox Church of Jvaris Mama, is alive with parishioners and lit candles. Its neighbor, the Norashen Church, sits lonely and locked. Unused for nearly seven decades, the Norashen Church is at the heart of long-running dispute between
the Armenian Apostolic and the Georgian Orthodox Churches.

The dispute has flared again in recent weeks, raising ethnic tensions in Georgia as it is still recovering from an August war with Russia over the South Ossetia region, where ethnic Ossetian separatists broke from Georgian control in the early 1990s. Ownership disputes
between the two churches are common, but the Norashen Church has come to symbolize what some in the local Armenian community say is the "Georgianization" of traditionally Armenian churches.

Armenian experts say the Norashen Church was built in the 15th century for the local Armenian community and continued to operate until it was shut down during the Soviet Union's anti-religion drive in the 1930s. The Georgian church says there is no conclusive evidence that Norashen was Armenian and that its origins are open to
debate. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ownership of the church fell to the Georgian government and the dispute has yet to be resolved.

The latest flare-up occurred when local Armenians claimed that the priest of the Georgian church next to Norashen, Father Tariel Sikinchelashvili, tried to remove Armenian tombstones from its graveyard. Alexander Ohanian, the head of the head of Armenian Cooperation Centre of Georgia, said that in mid-November he saw a bulldozer working in the church yard and that two Armenian tombstones had been removed.

Local Armenians gathered in the yard and confronted Father Tariel, accusing him of seeking to remove evidence that the church is Armenian. The tombstones were later returned, but Ohanian said local Armenians don't believe their removal was an accident. "It is too naive to think that he acted alone, without permission from his
superiors," Ohanian said.

A senior Armenian priest in Tbilisi, Father Narek Kushian, said the
Georgian church has been trying to convert the building since 1989.
"Father Tariel is trying to seize the church and add Orthodox
attributes to raise questions about its origin," Kushian said. "The
inscription on the cupola of the church was erased by him and the
main attributes showing this church is Armenian, such as the altar,
have also been destroyed."

Approached in his church, Father Tariel refused to comment on the
allegations. "I am just too tired of it all," he said. "I've done as
much as I can and all I can do now is pray."

A spokesman for the Georgian Orthodox Church, Davit Sharashenidze,
said a commission is to resolve ownership disputes between the two
churches. "We can't say unambiguously that it is an Armenian church,
as there is also evidence backing opposite claims," he said. "The
Georgian side has similar claims regarding Georgian churches in
Armenia and these issues need study and research by scientists."

But the dispute has already become political as well as religious. In
recent weeks, hundreds of Armenians have participated in rallies in
Yerevan to protest against the alleged destruction of Armenian
cultural monuments in Georgia.

The dispute was also raised during a December visit by Armenian Prime
Minister Tigran Sarkisian to Georgia. Georgian Prime Minister Grigol
Mgaloblishvili said after meeting his Armenian counterpart that he
hoped no issues would be "politically exploited" to drive a wedge
between the two peoples.

The issue is especially sensitive in Georgia, where interethnic
conflicts in South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia,
have left thousands dead. After the Abkhaz and Ossetians, Armenians
are the third-largest ethnic minority in Georgia, with nearly 250,000
Armenians in the country of 4.3 million.



Time Out
January 1, 2009
DVD - Film - Ashik Kerib/The Legend of the Suram Fortress;
Certs: PG (£19.99 each)
by Wally Hammond

These are slightly lesser, later works from the dissident,
otherworldly Armenian-Georgian Sergei Paradjanov, director of the
exalted folk cine-poem 'Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors' (1964) and
the vibrant tableaux-vivant, 'The Colour of Pomegranates'
(1968). Previous to these films, Paradjanov had been making more
conventional Soviet-era 'socialist-realist' works; the official
'outrage' that followed their camp radicalism and blazing iconography
led to a period of 'priest-like' solitary confinement on trumped-up
charges for the director, an experience that informs the two 1980s
titles on review. 'Ashik Kerib' takes a Lermontov story of the
1,000-day wanderings of the titular minstrel, whereas the slightly
wackier 'The Legend of the Suram Fortress' is based on a Georgian
nationalist folk song and a nineteenth-century novel by Daniel
Chongadze.

Both, in their colourful, dazzlingly eccentric way pay tribute to the
tribulations (and audacity) of the 'solitary artist' and the buried
cultural histories and peoples whom they 'inspire', here those of the
subsumed countries of Azerbaijan and Georgia, respectively. Both discs
provide ample, contextualising extras, including docs on the source
writers. In addition, each has a 30-minute, slightly overlapping, doc
on the great man himself, one featuring his wife Svetlana Shcherbatyuk,
which both sidestep his gayness but not his irrepressible energy,
gnomic hoaxing and the purity of his unique, eclectic, poetic
imagination.


The FINANCIAL, Georgia
Jan 3 2009
Moody's reports: Negative outlook for Armenian banking system
03/01/2009 09:22


The FINANCIAL -- The fundamental credit outlook for the Armenian
financial institutions is negative, reflecting the operating
environment's potential volatility and lingering political tensions,
says Moody's Investors Service in its new Banking System Outlook on
Armenia.

Moody's negative outlook for the Armenian banking system expresses the
rating agency's view on the likely future direction of fundamental
credit conditions in the industry over the next 12 to 18 months. It
does not represent a projection of rating upgrades versus downgrades.

"Given that the Armenian banking sector is still at an early stage of
development, its banks have not been exposed to US sub-prime risk,
failed western banks or other international risky asset classes and,
during 2007 and 2008, were able to weather the international credit
crisis relatively unscathed. Nonetheless, local banks remain reliant
on international institutional funding to finance domestic lending
and, subsequent to the disruption in international credit markets,
particularly in Q4 2008, were faced with increasing spreads for
whatever little funding they could access," explains Stathis
Kyriakides, a Moody's Assistant Vice President and author of the
report.

Moody's negative outlook reflects concerns over potentially rising
asset quality problems as a result of the projected slowdown of the
domestic economy and, equally importantly, of the economies of
Armenia's main trading partners during 2009. Concerns over asset
quality (which is currently still very good) are compounded by the
unseasoned nature of loan portfolios (and the consequent potential for
accelerated deterioration under less favourable market conditions) in
Moody's view and borrowers' potentially unhedged foreign currency
positions translating into currency-induced credit risk for banks.

Moody's cautions that operational risk also remains heightened for
banks in Armenia, among other reasons as a result of the country's
developing technical infrastructure, as does political risk, as shown
by the events surrounding the general election in March 2008. In
particular, the controversy over the result and the subsequent riots
and state of emergency highlight the still material political risks in
the country.

"Nonetheless, Moody's notes that as the climax of the turmoil during
March 2008 was short-lived, customers maintained their confidence and
the banking sector was largely unaffected," says Mr. Kyriakides.

Moody's recognises that the sector benefits from high levels of
aggregate capitalisation (although this varies significantly between
financial institutions) and high but declining liquidity (both of
which are shields against deteriorating market conditions), and still
good prospects for growth for banks with access to capital funds as
the level of financial intermediation (despite increasing) remains low
and demand for credit reportedly is higher than supply.

Going forward, and depending on the extent of any economic slowdown,
Moody's expects the better positioned banks with strong capitalisation
and good domestic franchises to be able to successfully steer
themselves through any difficulties, while there may be an
acceleration of market consolidation.

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