Month: November 2006

Cyprus News Agency
Nov 23 2006
ARMENIA CYPRUS
The government of Armenia wants a speedy solution to the Cyprus
problem, according to the wishes of the people of Cyprus and its
leadership, said here Thursday President of Armenia Robert Kocharian,
who is on a state visit to the island.
He was speaking after official talks with Cyprus President Tassos
Papadopoulos at the Presidential Palace, with the participation of
delegations from the two countries.
In his statements, Kocharian pointed out that Turkeys EU course could
affect Armenias relations with Turkey, stressing that his country is
very much interested in Turkeys EU accession course.
On his part, President Papadopoulos said Turkey should implement its
European obligations, stressing that veto belongs to those who do not
want sanctions to be taken against Turkey.
Before the two presidents statements, an agreement between the
Government of the Republic of Cyprus and the Government of the
Republic of Armenia on co-operation in combating organized and other
forms of crime was signed by Cyprus` Minister of Justice and Public
Order Sophocles Sophocleous and Minister of Justice of Armenia Davit
Harutyunyan.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 23 2006
RAU RECTOR: YEREVAN AND TEHRAN SHOW GREAT INTEREST IN CONSTRUCTION OF
IRAN-ARMENIA GAS PIPELINE
Yerevan and Tehran show great interest in the construction of the
Iran-Armenia gas pipeline which will not only cover the Armenian
needs for gas delivery but also be a basis for a wider project of
enhancing export opportunities for Iran with Armenia becoming as a
transit country, Armen Darbinyan, the former prime minister of
Armenia, the rector of the Russian-Armenian State University said at
the “Recent Developments in World’s Oil and Gas: Challenges and
Opportunities” international conference in Tehran.
The RAU press-service told ArmInfo that in his speech A.Darbinyan
noted that Ukraine and other European countries are interested in
receiving the Iranian gas. But the “Gazprom” Russian company wants to
see no more competitors in European markets. The “Gazprom” didn’t
welcome the construction of the pipeline with an adequate size, he
said.
A.Darbinyan added that Armenia also faces the problem of aggravated
relations between Georgia and Russia affecting the Russian policy of
gas delivery. The proposal to sharply increase the price for gas
delivery and Georgia’s possible refusal of this term will put Armenia
in a very hard situation on the threshold of winter, as the pipeline
comes to Armenia through Georgia. So, we witness a regional problem
caused by politicizing the issue of gas delivery.

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 23 2006
LEADER OF RAMKAVAR-AZATAKAN PARTY CONFIRMED ITS PARTICIPATION IN
FORTHCOMING PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
Leader of the Armenian Ramkavar- Azatakan Party Harutyun Arakelyan
has confirmed his decision to run for the Armenian Parliament under
majority system in spring 2007.
At today’s press-conference, H.Arakelyan said that his candidacy will
be represented in the 9th constituency of Yerevan. He hopes first and
foremost for the support of his friends living in that district, as
he also was born and grew up there. He is not troubled by MP Vladimir
Badalyan’s possible nomination from this district. H.Arakelyan
emphasized that he materially assesses his chances of victory and
will not make a tragedy of his defeat. According to him, under the
majority system 3-4 members of the Ramkavar-Azatakan Party are going
to run for Parliament. He noted that many Armenian politicians who
state about a great number of followers, would dream about such
partisans the Ramkavar-Azatakan has. He stressed that their party
will remain in politics for 25 years at least and will never be
ashamed of its words and actions.

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 23 2006
FIDG PUBLISHES OVERVIEW OF MAJOR HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES IN THE REPUBLIC
OF ARMENIA
The Republic of Armenia presents a contrasted picture as far as
respect for Human Rights is concerned, says a report drafted by the
FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) together with its
parner organization in Armenia, the Civil Society Institute..
On paper, they are pretty much a model for the South Caucasus region
as they have ratified most of the European Human Rights instruments
and conducted major law reforms in conformity with them.
However the following concerns are noticeable:
although the country showed exceptional growth over the last years,
the economic and social situation does not benefit equally to the
whole population. The failed transition from a soviet communist
system to a liberal economy created enormous disparity between an
elite group of persons or clans, who, on the one hand, monopolised
the majority of the resources, and the rest of the population on the
other. Although the country witnesses the emergence of a
middle-class, it is still at the very bottom of the social scale.
Furthermore, these new wealthy people, which are interrelated with
the spheres of political power, have instituted private armed
polices, thus subjecting the country and the citizens to tangible
threats and acts of violence, be they motivated by political or
economic reasons. In addition, the country witnesses a high level of
institutional corruption, endemic in the whole region.
Factual anti-democratic events are perceived as a growing and
threatening trend over rights and freedoms before crucial
parliamentary elections in 2007 and presidential election in 2008. A
population indifferent to internal politics, an ethnically
homogeneous country, a strong support from the Diaspora are all
factors that ease the ruling of the country but also enable abuses by
the holders of power. Political and economic powers enjoy impunity.

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 23 2006
ROBERT KOCHARYAN: ARMENIA SUPPORTS THE CYPRIOTES’ SOLUTION OF THE
CYPRIAN PROBLEM
The negotiations of the Armenian and Cyprian Presidents, as well as
the enlarged Armenian-Cyprian negotiations passed in the atmosphere
of absolute mutual understanding. This was stated by Presidents of
the two countries Robert Kocharyan and Tasos Papadopulos at a joint
press-conference in Nicosia, Thursday.
The Cyprian President welcomed the first state visit of the Armenian
President and highly appreciated the role of the Armenian community
of Cyprus. Robert Kocharyan pointed out the warm relations between
the two countries and the dialogue which, however, should be
activated. Answering the question about Armenia’s position in the
Cyprian problem, R.Kocharyan noted that one can judge about his
country’s position by the voting in the UN and other international
organizations. He emphasized that Armenia supports the Cypriotes’
solution of the Cyprian problem. Asked how Cyprus can help Armenia in
European integration, Cyprian President T.Papadopulos said that
Cyprus is willing to assist Armenia using its experience. At the end
of the press-conference, Robert Kocharyan invited his Cyprian
colleague to visit Armenia next year.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany
November 22, 2006 Wednesday 3:52 PM EST
Armenian president in Cyprus to discuss EU-Turkey
DPA POLITICS Cyprus Diplomacy Armenia Armenian president in Cyprus to
discuss EU-Turkey Nicosia
Armenian President Robert Kocharian arrived
Wednesday on a three-day state visit to Cyprus, the first since the
former Soviet republic gained independence 15 years ago.
The visit is expected to fuel further debate about Turkey’s
eligibility to join the European Union, as Ankara refuses to
recognise the genocide against the Armenians in 1915, continues to
suppress freedoms and human rights of the Kurds and denies religious
communities their right to own and operate property.

This has led many European and western governments to recognise
the genocide as a crime against humanity, while the recent law in
Paris criminalising the denial of the genocide sparked a fresh row
between Turkey and Armenian-friendly France.

Turkey also refuses to abide by the Ankara protocol that obliges
it to recognise all 25 EU member states, including Cyprus, and
subsequently open up its ports and airports to Cypriot vessels.

The Armenian president, accompanied by Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian and a 30-member delegation, will begin his official
programme on Thursday, with a meeting with President Tassos
Papadopoulos at the Presidential Palace.

The official talks will include an agreement on co-operation in
combating organized and other forms of crime, as well as the renewal
of a memorandum of cooperation for bilateral education and culture
programmes for three more years.

Cyprus and Armenia are the only two countries that have a clear
policy as regards Turkey, wanting Ankara to undergo reforms and
changes and abandon occupied lands, said Ambassador Vahram Kazhoyan.

The Armenian diplomat said that the visit was finalised when the
two state leaders met at the events marking the 60th anniversary of
the end of World War II in Moscow last year.

On Friday, Kocharian will walk to the Green Line that has divided
the island since the Turkish invasion in 1974 and will later lay the
foundation stone to a monument commemorating the arrival of the
survivors of the Armenian genocide marking the spot where the
refugees first landed in the 1920s.

Eesti Paevaleht website, Tallinn, Estonia
20 Nov 2006
Estonian daily: low salaries, lack of motivation causing soldiers to
quit
The lack of staff in the institutions that are important to the state
is spreading like a plague. Just recently, we talked about nurses and
the police. Now, the Estonian Defence Forces are threatened by a
drought of educated officers and noncommissioned officers. The reason
is always the same: uncompetitive, low salaries and the lack of
motivation. “I have remained in the Estonian Defence Forces simply
out of idealism, but one day that idealism will run out. The family
looks at you with stupid faces and your child asks: Daddy, when are
we going on vacation to a warm country for a week?” a member of the
Estonian Defence Forces complains in today’s paper. Well-trained
members of the Estonian Defence Forces are offered salaries that are
several times higher to go to work for completely different power
structures of the civil sphere.
Another reason is that independence was gained a long time ago and
that we live under the protective wing of NATO, so why do we need the
army at all? Maybe this is also where the lack of interest by the
government and the respective ministry in the Estonian Defence Forces
and its situation comes from. The modern wars – and definitely not
the wars in the future – are not held in trenches with rifles. It has
been said that World War III has already started and that it is
either ideological, religious, or economic. A country can be
conquered without a single gunshot. For example, let us look at how
Russia behaves towards Armenia. The front has become invisible. The
soldiers, with their fine uniforms and guns, only have a ritual
representative function. Entering military service does not motivate
the young much, either. There are complaints the health of the
conscripts is getting worse and worse. Who would want to freeze while
doing military training, instead of studying?
Yet, the lack of officers and noncommissioned officers is not as big
a problem as the lack of doctors, policemen, or bus drivers. Even
though people do not work in the aforementioned jobs simply out of
idealism – those professions are essential and must be well paid. At
least right now, it is not as important how many men that are armed
to teeth we have and how many officers are commanding them. A state
of war cannot be foreseen, and the needs of the workers are
increasing.

The International Herald Tribune
November 23, 2006 Thursday
Dutch vote may herald important shift to left;
Christian Democrats lead, but polls showa ‘move to fringes’
AMSTERDAM
The Dutch are likely to keep their sitting, conservative prime
minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, following general elections
Wednesday, but early exit polls suggested that any new government
might have to make an important shift to the left.
With only a small portion of the ballots counted, the prime
minister’s Christian Democratic Party retained the largest number of
votes but fell far short of forming a government. Given the new
fractures on the right, the prime minister may have to work with two
leftist parties: the moderate Labor Party, which came in second, and
the new far-left Socialist Party.
In this case, the conservative prime minister would have to make
deals with political leaders with whom ideological relations have
been uneasy at best. The result may be more lenient policies toward
immigrants and asylum seekers, and less, rather than more, of the
recent social welfare reform.
Wouter Bos, the Labor leader, is a familiar face on the Dutch scene.
But the big surprise of the day was likely to fall to Jan
Marijnissen, a plainspeaking advocate for the underdog.
Dubbed the wizard of Oss, after his hometown, the former welder has
been called the political phenomenon of the year.
Once a Maoist, he took his party from its inflexible communist roots
and adapted it to become a working-class movement that got wide
backing from young people off all stripes as well as artists and
intellectuals.
Early results projected that the party could make a leap from its 9
seats to end up with 25 seats in the 150-member Parliament.
Marijnissen said he favored a general amnesty for all the failed
asylum seekers who may face deportation from the Netherlands.
Exit polls Wednesday night showed that the far-left Socialists
increased their vote to overtake the liberal VVD, Balkenende’s
coalition partner, making his job of forming a strong government much
more difficult.
”These are very disappointing results,” said Defense Minister Henk
Kamp, a member of the VVD.
He declined to comment on whether his party would be able to continue
in government.
”We’ll see who the CDA chooses. The initiative lies with others.”
Who joins the next coalition will determine how closely Balkenende
sticks to his business-friendly policies and tough line on
immigration, long a major concern of Dutch voters.
The other big winner, according to the exit polls, was the new party
of an anti-immigration maverick, Geert Wilders, who says the
Netherlands risks being flooded by Muslims and wants an immediate
halt to new migrants.
”What we see is a move to the fringes,” said a former CDA minister,
Piet Hein Donner. ”Whoever puts together the coalition will have a
very hard time transforming that into a good government agenda.”
The one coalition that looked most likely to have the 76 seats needed
for a majority was an uneasy partnership between the CDA and their
Labor rivals, likely to produce discord over tax, pensions and
immigration policy.
”My fear is that the CDA and Labor will form a coalition on the
basis of the present polls and that would mean a very unstable
government,” said Jan Kleinnijenhuis, a political science professor
at Amsterdam’s Free University.
Balkenende, 50, took credit for a strong economic recovery in the
last year that he said was supported by unpopular welfare reforms
that he pushed through early in his term. He has vowed to continue
his pro-business policy line.
”We have strengthened the economy,” he said Tuesday during a
televised debate with the leaders of the biggest parties.
”It has been a really hard fight for us, but we’ve come out
better.”
Charles Kalshoven, a senior economist at ABN Amro Holding NV in
Amsterdam, agreed: ”In the first years of his cabinet, Balkenende
made all the painful reforms. The economy is doing a lot better this
year. Consumer confidence is really very strong and if consumer
confidence is up, so are the ruling parties in the polls.”
Bos, the Labor leader, accused Balkenende of pandering to big
business and the wealthy while failing to fight inequality. He has
pledged to slow corporate tax cuts and increase spending on childcare
and job-creation programs. Labor has also promised an amnesty for
some immigrants who have waited years for asylum.
Balkenende has implemented tough immigration and integration laws
since the killing of Theo van Gogh, a Islam critic and filmmaker, by
an Islamist militant in 2004 and the murder of Pim Fortuyn, a popular
anti-immigration politician, in 2002.
His government has also said it will ban the wearing of burkas and
other Muslim face veils in public.
The election, originally scheduled for May 2007, was called after the
center-right coalition collapsed in June in a row over the
government’s handling of the disputed citizenship of Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
a Somali-born Dutch politician and Islam critic.
Back then, Labor had a strong lead in the opinion polls, but that
evaporated as the economy rebounded and as Balkenende went on the
offensive, portraying the telegenic Bos, a former manager for Shell,
as slick and superficial.
Labor had hoped for strong backing from the almost 10 percent of the
electorate of immigrant origin, although Turkish voters were angered
after it dropped an election candidate for not accepting Ottoman
Turkey’s killing of Armenians as genocide.
”The economy has clearly been the ruling coalition’s focus,” said
Joop van Holsteyn, a professor of political science at Leiden
University. ”Balkenende’s campaign was all about continuing on this
path.”
Immigration, the issue that has dominated Dutch politics in recent
years, played a less important role in the campaign than the economy,
despite the government’s backing the proposal last week to ban
face-covering clothing.

Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
Nov 22 2006
Turkish premier to go to Lebanon to meet premier, wants Palestinian
unity
[“PM ERDOGAN CRITICAL ON EU DEADLINE” – AA headline]
ISTANBUL (A.A) -22.11.2006 -“We are not used to policies aiming to
corner Turkey by imposing deadlines,” Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said on Wednesday, while commenting on the position of EU rotating
President Finland, which gave Turkey till December 6th to open its
ports and airport to Greek Cypriot vessels and aircraft.
Replying to questions of reporters after taking the floor at the 10th
International Business Forum (IBF) organized by the Independent
Industrialists’ & Businessmen’s Association (MUSIAD) in Istanbul,
Erdogan said, “we have done what we should do. The others (EU
countries) should now fulfil their duties.”
-TURKISH TROOPS IN LEBANON-
Erdogan said he would probably visit Lebanon in December to inspect
the Turkish troops deployed in the region, and to meet Lebanese PM
Fuad Siniora.
Commenting on assassination of Lebanese Minister of Industry Pierre
Gemayel, Erdogan said, “it is the time for unity and integrity. This
is of utmost importance for Lebanon, as well as for Palestine.”
-GENOCIDE ALLEGATIONS –
When a journalist recalled that, “there are now initiatives in the
USA, similar to those in France, trying to make a crime the denial of
so-called Armenian genocide,” Erdogan said, “We will be in an effort
to influence the members of US Congress psychologically. Everyone
should take into consideration the (importance of) strategic
partnership between Turkey and the United States.
The ties between us is not ordinary and cannot be wasted or left
aside. We will of course launch initiatives.”

European Report
November 22, 2006
EU/US/TURKEY : WASHINGTON INSISTS IT’S NOT MEDDLING IN CYPRUS ROW
The United States has not taken steps to resolve the current impasse
in Turkey’s EU accession talks and has no plans to do so, a senior
State Department official has told Europolitics. “We cannot intervene
now. Things are at endgame stage and there is no role for us,”
Matthew Bryza, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs, said on 20 November in an exclusive interview. He
was responding to reports of US moves to help its long-time ally
Turkey out of its tricky predicament, which centres on Ankara’s
refusal to let Greek Cypriot ships and planes enter its ports and
airports.
Bryza, the lead State Department official on this dossier, said he
had “no meetings” on it when he visited Brussels last week. The
reason he was in town was to meet the Armenian and Azerbaijani
foreign ministers to discuss the disputed province of
Nagorno-Karabakh, he said. He admitted he was playing a mediating
role earlier this summer but that “once the Finnish EU Presidency got
active, we backed off”. Bryza said unless the EU Presidency asked the
US to get involved, it would not do so. The Finns have set 6 December
as the deadline for reaching agreement on the Cyprus issue as they do
not want it to plague the 14/15 December European Council. EU leaders
are due to decide there whether or not to suspend accession talks
with Turkey given the slowdown in the Turkish reform process noted by
the European Commission in its 8 November report.
ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE
Bryza said that when the EU first agreed to open accession talks, it
did not set a clear deadline for Turkey to apply the Ankara Protocol
(the agreement that requires Turkey to open its ports and airports to
Cypriot ships and planes). He said this “ambiguity” left EU
negotiators and member states a “political space” with which to work.
This dispute is threatening to derail Turkey’s EU membership bid.
Cyprus, backed by Greece, France and Austria, is taking a tough line
on Turkey, while the Finnish Presidency, backed by the United
Kingdom, is trying to prevent a train wreck scenario’ at the December
summit.
The Ankara Protocol, signed in July 2005, extends the EC-Turkey
customs agreement to the ten new EU member states. Turkey is
reluctant to apply it while trade restrictions remain with the
northern part of Cyprus, which only Turkey recognises as an
independent state. Meanwhile, the EU on 27 October gave the green
light for a E139 million aid package for northern Cyprus.
Apart from the Cyprus problem, Bryza stressed “we are all better off
if Turkey continues its reforms,” including meeting the Copenhagen
criteria on human rights and democracy and the body of EU law known
as the acquis. The US has long been a loyal supporter of Turkey’s bid
to attain full EU membership. This backing was reiterated by US
President George Bush on 2 October during a joint press conference
with the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.