Month: December 2008

The EU-Armenia cooperation coordinating commission met at the Office of
Government, chaired by head of commission, RA Prime Minister Tigran
Sargsyan.

F riday, 26 December 2008

The commission took note of the reports on the status of EU-Armenia
Action Plan under the European Neighborhood Policy, the priorities and
actions for 2009, the programs implemented under the European
Neighborhood and Partnership Facility (ENPF), the educational and
judicial reforms.

The ministries and agencies concerned were charged to submit by January
15, 2009 individual action plans and financial estimates under the
ENPF. They were also told to submit before the deadline of February 1,
2009 priority statements for discussion at the next commission session
of January 17, 2009.

A session of RA government’s charitable project coordination commission
took place, chaired by commission head Simon Ter-Simonyan.

3/
Friday, 26 December 2008

7 projects have been discussed. In particular, the following programs
have been approved: a charity catering project and an educational
program on the provision of tuition and scholarship to students from
vulnerable households as implemented by the Armenia branch of the
Armenian Relief Fund of America, the `Care-Free Childhood’ project to
be carried out in 2009-2010 by `Children First’ charitable society,
meant to support vulnerable households, single and needy elderly
people, perished freedom-fighters’ families and children.

The session similarly endorsed the `Care and Cure for Child Disability’
project to be implemented by the missioners’ charitable organization in
Yerevan for the period 2009-2011, the World Vision
International-implemented `Construction of Play-Grounds in Vardenis
Region’ program, as well as a Yerevan’s Physics Institute after A.I.
Alikhanyan SNCO-implemented program, sponsored by the National Fund for
Research and Advanced Technologies.

Another program as financed by Help Foundation will provide relief to
children suffering from blood diseases.

The meeting also discussed and approved several sub-programs under the
standing ones, as well as projects on import of charitable freight
destined to various organizations operational in Armenia.

HAKOBYAN DEFEATED BY CHEPARINOV

Panorama.am
14:53 26/12/2008

In the tenth round on December 25 GM Vladimir Hakobyan encountered GM
Ivan Cheparinov (Bulgaria) at the FIDE Grand Prix Tournament. Armenian
GM has been defeated in this round and gained no points. Currently
Hakobyan is on the 13th horizontal.

Dmitry Jakovenko and Ernesto Inarkiev meeting ended by the victory
of Jakovenko who leads the championship.

EBRD CONTRIBUTES TO MSE DEVELOPMENT IN ARMENIA

Panorama.am
15:10 26/12/2008

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is extending
a $10 million loan in three trenches to enable VTB Bank Armenia to
offer credit to micro and small sized enterprises (MSEs) across the
country, reports the "VTB Armenia" bank.

The project will enable the creditworthy MSEs in Armenia have access
to medium-term reliable sources of finance. The program is under
Armenia Multi-Bank Framework Facility II. The loan will be accompanied
by technical assistance under the Armenia Microlending Program,
an institution-building Technical Cooperation Program designed to
facilitate the MSE lending activities of partner banks. Technical
cooperation funds have been provided by the EBRD’s Early Transition
Countries Multi-donor Fund and Shareholders’ Special Fund.

VTB Bank Armenia, ranking fourth by total assets, is an important
player in the Armenian banking sector; it has the largest branch
network in the country. With its 78 branches across the country and
new products and services for the lower income groups, VTB Bank Armenia
is expected to contribute to the development of Armenia’s MSE sector,
including in the rural areas.

"Micro and small enterprises are the backbone for a developing
economy. There is a significant unmet demand for MSE finance in the
country", said Chikako Kuno, Director of the EBRD’s Group for Small
Business. "This facility gains particular prominence in the current
environment of global liquidity constraints and with VTB Bank’s wide
regional presence we hope to increase financial access for the rural,
micro and small entrepreneurs in the country", added Ms. Kuno.

The EBRD is committed to the development of the MSE sector in its
countries of operation. Its Group for Small Business manages long-term
MSE financing programs in 15 countries and has acquired substantial
experience in building MSE lending operations. Promoting micro and
small companies is one of the Bank’s top priorities in Armenia and,
indeed, across the entire region in which it operates EBRD is the
largest single investor in Armenia having invested some EUR 202 million
in 52 projects in all major sectors of the economy. The country is
part of the Early Transition Countries Initiative, launched in April
2004, which uses a streamlined approach to financing to mobilize more
investment and encourage economic reform.

According to the source, the EBRD, owned by 61 countries and two
intergovernmental institutions, aims to foster the transition from
centrally planned to market economies in central and Eastern Europe
and central Asia.

REACTION TO THE APOLOGY CAMPAIGN

Hurriyet
Dec 26 2008
Turkey

ANKARA – Azerbaijan Cultural Association President Cemil Unal regarding
the Armenian apology campaign aimed at the 1915 events said, "Those
who apologize are condemning Turkey as if they were judges."

He added that Turks would be "honored to face their pasts," but
demanded those who apologized to provide documentation, "If we made
such a mistake, then of course we would apologize."

US ARMENIAN GROUP HAILS ‘APOLOGY’

Hurriyet
Dec 26 2008
Turkey

WASHINGTON-The Armenian National Committee of America, or ANCA,
the largest U.S. Armenian group, praised the campaign by a group
of intellectuals in Turkey to collectively apologizing for the 1915
incidents in the Ottoman Empire on Tuesday.

"The efforts of those courageous parliamentarians and historians
in Turkey who have placed the Armenian genocide center-stage must
be commended," said the ANCA communications director, Elizabeth
Chouldjian, according to an ANCA statement.

Armenian community wants formal recognition "By the same token,
the campaign by Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and other
Turkish leaders to quash honest discussion of the murder of 1.5
million Armenians from 1915-1923 must not be rewarded. Silence by the
international community will be misinterpreted by Turkey’s leadership
as support for their genocide denial agenda," she said.

"Only by formally recognizing the Armenian genocide can the United
States and democratic countries around the world send a clear message
that they stand with the voices of truth in Turkey," Chouldjian said.

The apology campaign, launched by a group of intellectuals earlier
this month, has caused controversy in Turkey, with government leaders,
most politicians, the military and retired ambassadors and other
diplomats opposing the move.

The retired diplomats referred to the assassination of dozens of
Turkish diplomats by Armenian terrorists throughout the world in the
1970s and 1980s, saying the apology campaign was wrong and misleading.

Last week the Armenian Assembly of America, the second largest
U.S. Armenian group, said the apology campaign effectively meant
the beginning of a process that would lead to Turkey facing "its
genocidal past."

For U.S. Armenians, the top objective is to win formal U.S. recognition
of the 1918 incidents as "genocide".

During his election campaign, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama
pledged to recognize the incidents as "genocide" if elected president.

Pro-Armenian lawmakers are expected to introduce fresh "genocide"
resolutions shortly after the new Congress takes effect Jan. 6.

Formal recognition will hurt bilaretal ties Turkish government says
formal any American recognition of the 1915 incidents as "genocide"
will hurt bilateral relations in a major and lasting way.

The Armenian Assembly of America, or AAA, had deemed last week the
move by a group of Turkish intellectuals to collectively apologize
for 1915 incidents effectively meant the beginning of a process that
would lead to Turkey facing "its genocidal past."

"An irreversible trend has commenced in Turkey. Over 12,000 people in
Turkey want history to be recorded truthfully, having already signed
the Internet-based petition apologizing for what they call the ‘great
catastrophe’ that befell the Armenians of Ottoman Turkey in 1915,"
said executive director of AAA Bryan Ardouny.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ENVOY SAYS TURKEY WANTS UPPER KARABAKH SOLUTION SOON

Dec 26 2008
Turkey

Turkey’s Ambassador also said Parliamentary Assembly meeting of Turkish
Speaking countries would hold its first meeting in September in Baku.

Turkey wants the problem about Upper Karabakh to be solved through
peaceful methods and within the scope of international law, Turkey’s
Ambassador said.

"Turkey has been waiting for the problem to be solved for 15 years. It
does not have the patience to wait for another 15 years," Turkey’s
Ambassador to Baku Hulusi Kilic said at a press conference at the
Turkish Embassy in Baku while assessing relations between Turkey and
Azerbaijan in 2008.

Kilic said Turkey advocated Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and
rightful stance of Azerbaijan on the matter, noting, "Upper Karabakh
problem should be solved soon and occupation should end."

Commenting on economic relations and various projects between Turkey
and Azerbaijan, Kilic said, "relations between the two parties are
at satisfactory level."

Kilic described "Baku-Tbilisi-Kars" project, which will enable direct
railway transportation with Turkey, as "the project of the era",
adding that construction would end in 2010.

Kilic also said Parliamentary Assembly meeting of Turkish Speaking
countries would hold its first meeting in September in Baku.

SHOULD TURKEY APOLOGIZE TO THE ARMENIANS?
Asli Aydintasbas

Forbes
/2008/12/24/Turkey-Armenians-genocide-oped-cx_aa_1 226aydintasbas.html
Dec 27 2008
NY

ISTANBUL–Should we apologize to Armenians?

It’s almost a miracle, but I have somehow managed to avoid the
"Armenian issue" throughout my journalism career. I never wrote a
single column on it, even throughout the various diplomatic rows
between Turkey and Armenia on whether or not the tragic events of
1915 were genocide.

During the time I covered Washington for a Turkish paper, I stayed
a dispassionate reporter as the Armenian Diaspora tried year after
year to pass various U.S. congressional resolutions condemning the
1915 events–and Ankara lobbied hard to ward these off.

The truth was, undeniably bad things happened in the Eastern provinces
of the declining Ottoman Empire in 1915, but I had no idea whether
or not they "amounted to" genocide.

Depending on whom you believe, 500,000 or 1.5 million Armenians were
either forcibly deported or coldly massacred, either during the chaos
of a civil war or by an organized state campaign. The Armenians in turn
either killed thousands of Muslim Turks in an effort to establish an
independent homeland, or they were fighting a civil war of liberation.

I am not trying to make light of the fact that this was a horribly
painful episode, leading to the death of thousands of innocents. But
today’s discussion is largely semantic–"genocide or not?"

While most Turks are taught in schools that killing happened "on
both sides" and do not believe their Ottoman ancestors committed the
g-word, Armenians in the tiny modern Caucasus republic have built
their national identity on the pain of genocide. It is to them what
the Jewish Holocaust is to Israelis.

Comment On This Story

But the reason I have so far avoided the topic was not because of
an inability to face the past, but because I felt I never could
do justice to the mountains of books, memoirs and historic archives
arguing one side or the other. After all, plenty of Turkish, Armenian,
American and French historians dedicated lifetimes to this debate.

I, on the other hand, lacked that kind of attention span. At school,
we were taught that the "so-called genocide" charge was trumped up by
the Armenian diaspora because it was their raison d’etre. Friends and
family mostly seemed to think the Ottomans had committed some sort of
"ethnic cleansing," but that it wasn’t genocide. (Legally speaking,
"war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing" do not necessarily mean genocide,
the most heinous of all crimes against humanity.)

During the time I lived abroad, I encountered plenty of Armenian
resentment toward Turkey, but then again, I thought, "What’s
new?" After all, neighboring Greeks, Kurds, Iranians, Arabs and some
Europeans often seemed to hate Turkey, too! (Being the descendants
of an imperial people is overrated on the karmic scale.)

But not everyone in Turkey is willing to go with the type of
"strategic ignorance" I have been carefully practicing on the Armenian
issue. Recently, a group of 200 Turkish intellectuals signed an online
petition "apologizing" to Armenians for their suffering at the hands
of Ottoman forces during the First World War.

It reads: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to
and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians
were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share,
I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I
apologize to them." The name of the Web site translated into English is
"weapologize.com."

Even with no mention of genocide, the short text hit a raw nerve
with the Turkish public. Politicians lined up to condemn the
initiative, while a group of academics and retired diplomats issued
a counter-declaration, denying charges of genocide and asking for the
Armenians to apologize for the murder of 38 Turkish diplomats in the
1970s by Armenian terrorists seeking revenge. "I find it unreasonable
to apologize when there is no crime," Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said. Spinoff Web sites are full of nationalist fervor.

In clogged Istanbul traffic, an irate driver gave me his unsolicited
view: "Excuse me, miss, but now they want to apologize to Armenians. I
am a Muslim expelled from the Balkans when the empire collapsed. My
family was annihilated. We lost all land and property and took refuge
in Turkey. Who will apologize to me?"

Another unsolicited response came over e-mail from the lady who had
recently decorated our home: "I have no idea whom else we are supposed
to apologize to. The Anzacs for the Gallipoli? The Greek, British, and
Italian soldiers for having liberated our homeland [in 1923] from their
invasion? Does anyone remember there were two sides to this conflict?"

I ran into a senior diplomat at a funeral and he told me that neither
the apology nor the counter-declaration rang the right tone. "They
are both extreme positions and would encourage extremists on both
sides." In Turkey, the apology certainly created a backlash, while in
Armenia, it is likely to encourage those who want to seek compensation
and land from Turkey.

So incendiary has the apology been that the Turkish President Abdullah
Gul had to withdraw his initial support for the statement when he
was accused of having Armenian blood. And Turkey’s military issued
a statement condemning the apology, suggesting it would torpedo any
possibility of rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.

It is difficult to tell if the online petition has actually lifted
a taboo or reinforced it. For starters, Turks are never good at
apologizing. With no exposure to Oprah and psycho-babble, anger is
preferable to soul-searching in much of the Middle East. But even
most liberal Turks I know hate the idea of an apology to Armenians,
partly because it tacitly admits to genocide–something the majority
do not believe happened.

Of course Turkey needs to face its past and have a more open debate
on the Armenian issue. But do you begin with an apology? I fear this
would foment enough anger on both sides of the border to just about
block any meaningful dialogue.

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated by Turkish
nationalists after he labeled the 1915 events a genocide. On the
Armenian side, there are politicians who still have hopes of reclaiming
land. In both countries, there is a potential climate of violence and,
until that abates, an apology will just incite more trouble.

I wish the petition Web site said everything that it did, but
had stopped short of an apology. It would have more appeal here in
Turkey. Rome was not built in a day and bridges between nations cannot
be either.

Turks and Armenians have a long way to go in overcoming hatred,
and certainly setting history straight will have to be part of that
process. But apology is not the beginning. Friendship, something we
lacked for almost a century, is.

If I could have my own petition, I would say to Armenians, "Friends,
I feel your pain and am sorry for not recognizing it before. Let’s
leave aside semantics for now and just meet." And then wait for what
they had to tell me.

Asli Aydintasbas is an Istanbul-based journalist and former Ankara
bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.

KHAZAR IBRAHIM: "WE WANT THE YEAR OF 2009 TO BE THE YEAR OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI CONFLICT OVER NAGORNO KARABAKH"

Today.Az
politics/49833.html
Dec 27 2008
Azerbaijan

The external policy of 2009 remained transparent and had a tendency
of deepening relations with all countries of the world, basing on
national interests of Azerbaijan, said spokesman for the Foreign
Ministry of Azerbaijan Khazar Ibrahim.

According to him, the main priority for the country remained the
resolution of the Karabakh conflict.

"In this direction we can note obvious progress. As is known, a
resolution of the UN General Assembly, clearly fixing that the Karabakh
conflict must be settled in the framework of the territorial integrity
of Azerbaijan and stating the need of the immediate withdrawal of
all Armenian armed forces from the occupied lands of our country,
was adopted on March 14 of 2008.

Moreover, on November 2 the Presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and
Russia, signed a Moscow declaration, which also states that the
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict must be settled in the framework
of the international law and decisions and documents, adopted in
these frames. Naturally that all documents state the priority of the
resolution of the Karabakh conflict in the framework of the territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan", said Ibrahim.

He said along to it, another positive result of 2008 was the successful
development of relations with all countries both inside and outside
our region, with which our country have great mutual interests. The
number of our diplomatic representations in the world has risen
and the relations with such international organizations as UN, OIC,
EU and OSCE have been developing successfully.

"Azerbaijan’s contribution to the provision of peace and security
in different countries of the world has also been successful which
is proven by the multi-fold expansion of the Azerbaijani military
contingent in Afghanistan and the support, provided by Azerbaijan to
the countries, which sustained different disasters in the passing year.

Speaking about the position of official Baku on the expanding relations
between Armenia and Turkey, he said Aezrbaijan does not interfere to
the issue of relations between the countries.

"Even so more Turkey has repeatedly stated clearly that the Karabakh
conflict must be settled in the framework of the territorial integrity
of Azerbaijan, while the Armenian armed forces must be withdrawn from
the occupied lands of our country.

As for the expectations about the year of 2009 in the sense of the
Karabakh conflict, the spokesman noted: "Certainly, we would want
the year of 2009 to become a year of the resolution of the Karabakh
conflict. At least we plan to attain significant breakthrough in the
negotiation process on its resolution.

But here most things would depend on the constructiveness of the
Armenian party. Therefore, we will spare no efforts to close Armenia
to adoption of constructive steps in the resolution of the Karabakh
conflict. Here the role of the OSCE MG, which we expect to take
definite steps to make the position of the Armenian party constructive,
will be very important".

TURKISH AMBASSADOR TO AZERBAIJAN: "THE STATEMENTS OF SOME MASS MEDIAS THAT TURKEY WILL TURN ITS BACK TO AZERBAIJAN IN THE ISSUE OF NAGORNO KARABAKH SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED"

Today.Az
olitics/49828.html
Dec 27 2008
Azerbaijan

The process of the Karabakh conflict resolution has lasted for 15 years
and Turkey does not want it to last for another 15 tears, said Turkish
ambassador to Azerbaijan Hulusi Kilic at a press conference yesterday.

He noted that regular meetings and talks between the sides are
necessary for the conflict resolution.

"The Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia met in
New York and this was followed by a meeting of presidents. We are
planning to hold another meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Turkey,
Azerbaijan and Armenia in February", said he.

At the same time, the ambassador noted that in the issue of Nagorno
Karabakh Turkey has always been by Azerbaijan’s side.

"The statements of some mass medias that Turkey will turn its back to
Azerbaijan in the issue of Nagorno Karabakh should not be trusted",
said he.