Month: April 2007

ARMENIAN CRISIS WITH GERMANY

Sabah, Turkey
April 13 2007

Germany is preparing a bill that will give a three years jail sentence
to those not only denying the Armenian genocide, but also to anyone
who says: "Armenian forced emigration."

The bill prepared by the EU term chair Germany has brought up the
greatest crisis between Turkey and this country since World War II.

Germany has prepared an unbelievable bill in regards to the claims
of genocide.

The imminent so-called genocide crisis with Germany

The EU term chair Germany has brought the so-called Armenian genocide
to the EU agenda and is attempting to make it a crime to call it an
"emigration," which is the cause of tension in the relations of the
two countries.

Turkey is struggling diplomatically against the EU term chair
Germany’s attempts to give a three years jail sentence to those not
only denying the Armenian genocide but also to anyone who says it
was an "Armenian emigration."

However, Germany remains silent despite the warnings up until to now.

The greatest crisis between the two countries since World War 2 is
coming very soon.

If the bill passes, a Turk calling it an "emigration" will be penalized
for up to three years’ imprisonment. The first counter attack from
Turkey started around 1.5 month ago with the warning sent to the
German Embassy.

HAYKO FROM ARMENIA VISITS BRUSSELS

Belgovision.com, Belgium
April 13 2007

Netherlands on Wednesday, Brussels on Thursday, Germany this
weekend… The promotion machine of this year’s Armenian Eurovision
representative is running smoothly. Hayko focuses on the Armenian
diaspora in Europe. Will the Armenian Belgians make sure that the
Belgian 12 Points will be awarded to Armenia again?

"The Eurovision Song Contest is very popular in Armenia," the Armenian
community in Brussels assures us. "Hayko is ‘our’ singer. He represents
‘our’ country." Patriotism is not unknown to the Armenian people in
Brussels. Just like last year, they will fully support their candidate,
sms votes included!

The Armenian community met at the house of FC Sahakyan

Armenia made its first appearance in the Eurovision Song Contest
last year and received 12 Points from Belgium. Hayko, who’ll be
taking the stage in Helsinki with the song Anytime You Need, hopes
for a repetition of Andre’s success. Thanks to him, Hayko is directly
qualified for the Eurovision Song Contest final on 12th May.

Everyone wants Anytime You Need, the single of Hayko

Hayko was invited by the Armenian community of Brussels. Together
with his manager and a producer of the Armenian broadcaster, Hayko
arrived at the Armenian community house in Brussels, where they were
welcomed by a local teacher of the Armenian language. The three of
them introduced the Armenian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest,
after Hayko signed his single and album for the fans.

Hayko signs his single and album for the fans

At the end of his promotional visit to Brussels, Hayko made some time
for a photo session with the fans and an interview with Belgovision.com
and 12Points.tv. Hayko thanked the Belgians for the 12 Points they
gave Armenia at last year’s Eurovision Song Contest and elaborated
on his promotour which doesn’t only include Belgium, but also the
Netherlands, Germany, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Greece,
Cyprus and Georgia.

Photos and Interview at

541

RUSSIA MILITARY BASE IN ARMENIA "NOT AGGRESSIVE IN NATURE" SAYS RUSSIAN DEPUTY PM

All Headline News
April 13 2007

Komfie Manalo – All Headline News Correspondent Moscow, Russia (AHN) –
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov on Wednesday assured
Armenians that is Gyumri military base in the country is not designed
to pose any threat to third countries.

Ivanov issued the announcement at the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

The Russian official said, "The base… is not aggressive in its
nature and does not target third countries."

He said the base will handle security problems within the context
of the Collective Security Treaty Organization framework to be
effectively resolved.

"The presence of a base here is an element of strategic partnership,
which also includes economy, culture, and the Russian language — there
are a lot of components making up the idea of strategic partnership,"
he said.

Ivanon adds, "I believe Armenia is our strategic partner. This is
not measured only by a military factor, but also by hundreds and
thousands of years of ties and our common history and culture."

The Gyumiri military base in Armenia was recently upgraded by the
Russian military when it deployed part of its military hardware to
the base.

The base is Russia’s 102nd military base and Moscow expects no problem
in maintaining the facility. Russia supplies Armenia with military
products at internal prices.

In his May 2004 visit to Armenia, Ivanov held talks with his Armenian
counterpart

Serge Sarkisian to discuss Russian-Armenian cooperation in the field
of defense, military-technological cooperation and military personnel
training.

2 EXPLOSIONS RATTLE ARMENIA

The Moscow Times, Russia
Reuters
April 13 2007

YEREVAN, Armenia — Blasts ripped through two local headquarters of
a pro-government party in Armenia on Thursday, raising tension in
the country ahead of parliamentary elections next month.

The two offices were seriously damaged, but no one was injured in
the explosions, said Baghdasar Mheryan, spokesman for the Prosperous
Armenia party. The blasts occurred two hours apart.

Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said people wanted to destabilize
the country with the blasts.

"We consider this crime an attempt to destabilize the situation ahead
of parliamentary elections and to create an intolerant atmosphere in
the country," a spokesman for the president said.

Experts say the Prosperous Armenia party, led by well-known businessman
Gagik Tsarukyan, has high chances of winning seats in the parliament.

Earlier this month, gunmen killed four people in an attack aimed at
the mayor of Armenia’s second-largest city, who survived. He was from
the Republican party.

Thursday’s explosions occurred at the party headquarters in the Avan
and Kanaker-Zeitun regions, a police official said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN SERVING LIFE TIME FOR TRYING TO KILL GEORGE W. BUSH WANTS TO CONVERT TO ISLAM

ARMENPRESS
Apr 13 2007

TBILISI, APRIL 13, ARMENPRESS: An ethnic Armenian citizen of Georgia,
Vladimir Harutunian, sentenced by a court to life in prison for
attempting to kill U.S. President Bush and Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili while they were addressing a public audience on Freedom
Square in central Tbilisi on May 10, 2005, said he would like to
convert to Islam, his lawyer Onise Mebonia revealed after visiting
the 31 year-old man in a Georgian tight security prison.

Harutunian was arrested in Tbilisi on July 20, 2005 after a shootout
with Georgian police that resulted in the death of Col. Zurab
Kvlividze, head of the Georgian Interior Ministry’s counterintelligence
department. He was wounded in the shootout receiving three not
life-threatening bullets.

The shootout and detention occurred in the village of Vashlisdzhvari,
outside the capital, Tbilisi. The man lived in an eight-story apartment
building with his mother, and was unemployed. The police operation came
two days after authorities released a photograph of a man suspected
of throwing the grenade, which failed to explode, at a podium where
Bush was speaking May 10 before tens of thousands of people. The
grenade landed less than 100 feet from the podium but did not explode.

Harutunian’s lawyer said the man would like to start also practicing
Yoga, but complained to her of the prison authorities who would
provide him with relating literature. He also demanded a permanent
telephone contact with his mother.

EXTREME POVERTY DRIVES ARMENIAN IN TBILISI TO COMMITTING SUICIDE

ARMENPRESS
Apr 13 2007

TBILISI, APRIL 13, ARMENPRESS: A 41 year-old ethnic Armenian, Amiran
Mkhitarian, a resident of Georgia’s capital city Tbilisi, killed
himself yesterday, Rustavi-2 TV channel reported. It said abject
poverty was the reason that drove the man to committing a suicide.

The TV said the man killed himself after failing to find money to
buy febrifuge medicine for his five year child.

Neighbors said the family fell into poverty last year after the man
was sacked. He left behind his wife and three children.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA FAMILY IS SENT ‘HOME’
Yakub Qureshi

Manchester Evening News, UK
April 13 2007

AN Armenian TV reporter who fled to Britain after raising the alarm
over alleged election fraud is being deported.

Gina Khatchatryan, who has been living with her family in Bury for
three years, says her life will be in danger if sent back after
blowing the whistle on ballot-rigging.

She, her husband and five-year-old daughter were due to be thrown
out today after their asylum appeal was rejected.

But she says she will have to go into hiding on her return having
previously received death threats.

The 30-year-old journalist worked for the country’s public TV station
Armenia 1, but had also supported the campaign of a political candidate
in local elections four years ago. While an observer at a polling
station, she and others spotted ballot boxes being interfered with
and alerted police.

Soon afterwards, she started receiving threats to drop the complaint
and decided to go into hiding.

But when thugs visited her and threatened daughter Elena, she was
forced to flee the country.

The family had been living in Bury while their application was
processed. Elena has been a pupil at Heap Bridge primary school and
English is her first language. Immigration officials accepted the
facts of the journalist’s claim, but believe she had overstated the
danger and rejected her argument.

The family were moved from their home in the early hours of Easter
Monday and taken to Yarls Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire. They
were due to be deported today from Heathrow Airport.

Home Office officials said an initial assessment by immigration
services and subsequent appeal hearings had deemed that the family
did not face sufficient risk.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DELEGATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TO LEAVE FOR STRASBOURG

National Assembly of RA, Armenia
April 13 2007

The delegation headed by Mr. Tigran Torosyan, President of the
National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, Head of the Delegation
of Armenia in PACE will be in Strasbourg in April 15-18: Mr. Armen
Roustamyan, Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations,
Mrs. Hermineh Naghdalyan, member of the NA Standing Committee on
Financial-Credit, Budgetary and Economic Affairs of the National
Assembly, Mr. Stepan Demirchyan, Head of the NA Justice faction were
on the delegation.

ASSASINATIONS AND BLASTS IN ARMENIA CONTINUE
by Artur Papyan

Global Voices Online, MA
April 13 2007

Armenia has gone out of control these days with blasts, shooting and
assassination attempts following one another.

"2 offices of ‘Prosperous Armenia’ [one of the most powerful
pro-presidential political parties running for parliament in the
elections on May 12, 2007] were blown up" reported Kornelij Glas (ru)
about the blasts that rocked in Zeytun and Avan districts of Yerevan,
the capital of Armenia on the night of April 12. This report was soon
followed by more detailed posts by other bloggers: Oneworld Multimedia,
Hyelog. Soon Onnik Krikoryan of Oneworld Multimedia followed up with
photos from the site of bombings and more comments:

Indeed, almost everybody in Yerevan is already pointing the finger at
the Republican Party although a few say that either the incident was
manufactured to make believe a serious rift between the two exists
or that Prosperous Armenia staged the incident themselves. However,
as I said, most believe it was the work of the Republicans although
the ruling party effectively denies the accusation.

The bloggers can’t stop wondering just how far the assassinations
will go; Armenia Blog is comparing Armenia these days with Chicago
80 years ago and quoting ArmeniaNow, listing some of the recent high
profile assassination attempts and killings:

The assassination attempt against the Mayor of Gyumri Monday night,
leaving three dead and three wounded, is the eighth high-profile and
public attack within just over a year. In all the cases, only two
arrests have been made, and none brought to justice

JLiving notes (ru) writes about attacks on Parliment candidates:
shootings at Hakob Hakobyan’s (Choit) car past midnight and the arson
attack at the election office of Sousanna Haroutyunyan.

Well, as Kornelij Glas (ru) puts it in his election leaflet #7, the
"Kalashnikov guns have already become the number one brand of the
pre-election campaign" in Armenia.

The terrible statistics make this pre-election campaign seem like
the most dangerous one since Armenia’s independence in 1991 …and
the official campaign has just started on 8th April!!!

WALZ: BUSH PREOCCUPIED WITH NATIONAL SECURITY
By Eric Black, Star Tribune

Minneapolis Star Tribune , MN
April 13 2007

The Minnesota Democrat told a university audience that U.S. foreign
policy has more than one priority.

Since 9/11, Bush administration foreign policy has been myopically
focused on national security, U.S. Rep. Tim Walz told a Minneapolis
audience Thursday.

National security is a priority, Walz said at the University of
Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute, but not the only one. And the
single-minded focus has undermined the United States’ standing in
the world and other important interests, he said.

Walz listed several examples:

~U The United States has neglected Latin America because Latin America
can’t do much to help America fight terrorism.

~U The United States hasn’t involved itself enough in the humanitarian
disaster in Darfur because that disaster doesn’t pose a security
threat to this country.

~U A bill that Walz is cosponsoring to recognize the World War I-era
Turkish genocide against Armenians is running into administration
resistance for fear that it will anger Turkey, an important Mideast
ally.

In a talk titled "Tomorrow’s Foreign Policy," Walz said the worst
thing about politics is the tendency to reduce everything to false
dichotomies, as if every question must be answered in black or white
terms. Walz, a Democrat, said that was typified by Republican efforts
to portray all alternatives to President Bush’s Iraq policy as "cut
and run."

After Walz made an appearance on MSNBC’s "Hardball," he said, an
experienced Democratic operative told him that his only mistake was
the use of the word "nuance." The operative told him the word "just
confuses the American people."

But, Walz said, speaking as part of a Humphrey Institute series
designed to give elected officials a chance to go deep on an issue,
"the problems we face require us to look beyond the simple dichotomies
and sound bites."

The roots of the oversimplification of foreign policy were in the
attacks of 9/11 and the U.S. attitude that "everything changed,"
according to Walz.

Not everything changed, Walz said. Ethnic hatreds broiling within
many nations hadn’t changed, nor had the division of the world into
richer and poorer.

When the United States decided that because it had been attacked,
the whole world had changed, other nations felt Washington was
disconnecting itself from them, Walz said.

The U.S. standing in the world is at an all-time low, Walz said, "and
that matters."It may make a good country song to say, ‘The heck with
you, we’re tough enough and we don’t care what you think," Walz said,
"but it doesn’t make a good foreign policy."