Tuesday, Armenian PM Continues To Eye Long Tenure . Anush Muradian Armenia - Prime Minister Karen Karapetian speaks at the Sixth Armenia-Diaspora Conference in Yerevan, 19Sep2017. Prime Minister Karen Karapetian again made clear on Tuesday that he wants to retain his post after President Serzh Sarkisian's final term in office ends in April. Karapetian also insisted that the leadership of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has still not decided who should be the country's prime minister then. Some senior HHK figures, notably former parliament speaker Galust Sahakian, have stated in recent weeks that Sarkisian should continue to govern Armenia as prime minister or in another capacity. "This is their personal opinion," Karapetian told reporters. "The party has no decision yet. As soon as the party makes a decision we will announce it." The Armenian president, who is the HHK's top leader, himself has shed little light on his political plans so far. The end of his decade-long presidency will be followed by Armenia's transformation into a parliamentary republic in which the prime minister will be, at least on paper, the most powerful state official. Karapetian spoke to the press after delivering a speech at the Sixth Armenia-Diaspora Conference in Yerevan and answering questions from some of its participants. One of them, a Lebanese-Armenian businessman, wondered whether he would like to stay on as prime minister next year. "Yes," the premier replied briefly. He has repeatedly made similar statements since being appointed by Sarkisian as prime minister in September 2016. In his speech at the government-organized forum, Karapetian again defended his one-year track record and reaffirmed his pledges to implement far-reaching economic reforms. He cited official statistical data showing faster economic growth, rising exports and improved tax collection in the country. Critics dismiss these figures, saying that they have had little impact on living standards in the past year. "We do realize that these results of our one-year work are not enough to qualitatively change the lives of Armenia's residents," said Karapetian. "We must actively continue our policies while developing and implementing new programs." Karapetian renewed his calls for Diaspora Armenians' involvement in his reform drive, saying that they "understand very well what kind of environment foreign investors expect and can guide us accordingly." "For that purpose, we are planning to hold next autumn a big economic and investment forum in Armenia during which we will discuss Armenia's future and our vision for Armenia," he said. Turkish-Armenian Politician To Seek Genocide Recognition . Tatevik Lazarian Armenia - Garo Paylan, an ethnic Armenian member of Turkey's parliament, arrives for an Armenia-Diaspora conference in Yerevan, 18Sep2017. Garo Paylan, an ethnic Armenian member of Turkey's parliament, on Tuesday pledged to continue fighting for an official Turkish recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Paylan is among 1,800 Armenians from around the world who converged on Yerevan to take part in the latest government-organized conference on Armenia's relations with its worldwide Diaspora. The conference got underway on Monday in the presence of President Serzh Sarkisian and other senior Armenian officials. "Turkey is again in a dark period," Paylan declared in his speech at the forum. "And we know very well that such tendencies lead to crimes. A great crime, a genocide, was perpetrated 102 years ago and that crime is continuing because a crime that goes unpunished causes new crimes." "I do believe that one day we will achieve justice leading to the recognition of the genocide and I will continue to fight for it," he added, sparking rapturous applause. Paylan, 44, is one of the three Istanbul Armenians who were elected to the Turkish parliament from different political parties in 2015. He is affiliated with the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), which is in opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The HDP is the only major Turkish party to have recognized the World War One-era mass killings of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. Successive Turkish governments have for decades claimed that Ottoman Armenians died in smaller numbers and not as a result of a government policy of extermination. "The HDP knows that without facing up to the genocide Turkey can neither solve the Kurdish problem nor establish democracy," said Paylan. Paylan, who has previously run an Armenian school in Istanbul, pledged to challenge Ankara's genocide denial shortly after being elected to the Turkish parliament. In April 2016, he read out on the parliament floor the names of Armenian intellectuals who were rounded up in 1915 and subsequently executed by the Ottoman authorities at the start of the genocide. He was suspended from the legislature for three days in January after referring the "genocides" of Armenians and other Ottoman minorities. In July, the Turkish parliament passed a law that banned its members from mentioning the Armenian genocide in the chamber. Armenia's Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian praised Paylan's activities when the two men met in Yerevan on Monday. Nalbandian's press office said they discussed, among other things, the "resolution of regional problems." Paylan said in his speech that only "a democratic Turkey" would agree to normalize relations with Armenia. "Unless Turkey becomes a democracy we could wait [for that] for decades," he said. U.S. Lawmakers Discuss Karabakh, Investments In Yerevan . Astghik Bedevian Armenia - Members of the U.S. House of Representatives at a meeting with Armenian parliamentarians in Yerevan, 19Sep2017. Six members of the U.S. House of Representatives discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and obstacles to closer U.S.-Armenian commercial ties with Armenian government officials and parliamentarians during a visit to Yerevan on Tuesday. The congressional delegation met with Prime Minister Karen Karapetian, parliament speaker Ara Babloyan and several other Armenian lawmakers representing different political parties. The delegation comprised three of the four co-chairs of the Congressional Caucasus on Armenian Issues: Frank Pallone, Jackie Speier and David Valadao. The unresolved Karabakh dispute was high on the agenda of the meetings, with Karapetian and Babloayn praising U.S. mediation of Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. Both sides agreed on the need for the conflict's peaceful resolution. Anna Eshoo, another member of the U.S. delegation, said she and her colleagues stressed the importance of a Karabakh settlement for Armenia's economic development. "I think that the future of Armenia very much rests on a peaceful resolution," she told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). Eshoo insisted that a compromise solution to the conflict is possible despite the current deadlock in the negotiation process. "I think that we need to be optimistic," said the California Democrat. Most of the visiting lawmakers have strongly supported direct U.S. economic assistance to Karabakh provided for almost two decades. Some of that aid has been spent on humanitarian demining operations conducted by the HALO Trust, a British charity. As recently as two weeks ago the House of Representatives approved $1.5 million in fresh funding for such activities. Valadao, who represents another California constituency home to many Armenian Americans, travelled to Karabakh on Monday to inspect the HALO Trust's mine-clearing activities. He said in Yerevan that he is not worried about being blacklisted by Azerbaijan for visiting the Armenian-populated territory without Baku's permission. "That's their choice to make those types of decisions," the Republican congressman told RFE/RL's Armenian service. "I can't worry about that." The U.S. lawmakers also spoke with their Armenian colleagues about ways of boosting U.S. investments in Armenia. Eshoo said they stressed the importance of combatting government corruption in the country. "[Corruption] is anathema to American companies," she said. "They listened very carefully," the congresswoman said of the Armenian parliamentarians. "I think it's important that friends always tell friends the truth." The meeting with Karapetian also touched upon prospects for signing a U.S.-Armenian agreement on the avoidance of double taxation. An Armenian deputy minister for transport and communications, Boris Demirkhanian, said such an agreement is especially important for Armenia's burgeoning information technology (IT) sector when he spoke at the American delegation's separate meeting with local tech executives. The visiting legislators were briefed on strong U.S. presence in the sector, according to a statement by the Armenian Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology. The sector has expanded by an average of over 20 percent annually in the past decade. It is dominated by the Armenian branches of U.S. tech giants like as Synopsys, National Instruments, Mentor Graphics and VMware. Czech Government `Unaware' Of Arms Sales To Azerbaijan . Armen Koloyan Czech Republic - A DANA-M1 self-propelled gun-howitzer. (Photo courtesy of www.army-technology.com) The government of the Czech Republic on Tuesday claimed to have not authorized the newly disclosed delivery to Azerbaijan of Czech-made heavy artillery systems. The Azerbaijani military began on Monday large-scale exercises which it said are involving 15,000 troops as well as hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers, cannons and other military hardware. Photographs released by it showed two columns of Dana self-propelled howitzers and RM-70 multiple-launch rocket systems joining the drills. Both weapons are manufactured by Czech companies. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry did not demonstrate them until this year. It is not clear when and how it got hold of them. In a statement to RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am), the Foreign Ministry in Prague insisted that in recent years the Czech government has not issued mandatory licenses for the sale of any "lethal weapons" to Azerbaijan. What is more, it said, the government turned down in 2017 and 2016 Azerbaijani requests for the purchase of the 152-milimeter Dana howitzers and the 122-milimeter RM-70 rockets and informed the European Union about that. The ministry added that it does not know just how they were delivered to Azerbaijan. It promised to look into the matter. The United States and other key NATO members states have long maintained embargoes on sales of offensive weapons to Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Czech Republic joined the alliance in 1999. The Czech Foreign Ministry said the Central European nation is strongly opposed to any attempts at a military solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Press Review "Zhamanak" reports on President Serzh Sarkisian's speech at the latest Armenia-Diaspora conference and, in particular, his calls for Diaspora Armenians to relocate to their ancestral homeland en masse. The paper says that the economic situation in Armenia is anything but favorable for such immigration. "Haykakan Zhamanak" points to the organizers' failure to invite representatives of the Yelk alliance and other major opposition groups to the conference. "As Diaspora Minister Hranush Hakobian stressed in her speech, some 1,800 guests from 71 countries were taking part in the event," writes the paper. "But there was no room for the parliamentary opposition." It cites Sarkisian's claims that his administration "welcomes and appreciates pluralism." It suggests that Sarkisian referred not to pluralism within Armenia but differences among various Diaspora organizations. "Hraparak" comments on Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian's remark at the conference that Armenian territorial concessions to Azerbaijan are on the agenda of ongoing peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh. Nalbandian referred to those lands whose return to Azerbaijan would create no "security threats to Karabakh" itself. The paper claims that this runs counter to statements made by Armenian officials just a few weeks ago. "Aravot" is critical of the Armenian government's plans to intensify Russian language classes in Armenia's schools. "The language is not a secondary issue and they are well aware of this in imperial centers," editorializes the paper. "Speaking a foreign language is a good thing. It doesn't hurt to speak Russian, to put it mildly # But speaking a foreign language and giving it any official status are different things. That has nothing to do with Russia." The paper says it would be just as critical of if the United States pressured Armenia to give English an official status. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org