Month: June 2009

RA NA SPECIAL SITTING TO BE CONVENED ON JUNE 2

Noyan Tapan
June 1, 2009

YEREVAN, JUNE 1, NOYAN TAPAN. RA NA Speaker Hovik Abrahamian signed a
decision, according to which a RA NA special sitting will be convened
on June 2, at 12:00 with the agenda established by the initiator.

RA NA special sitting’s agenda is:

– RA bill On Making an Amendment to the RA Law On RA Budget System,

– Ratification of international agreement: agreement Between RA
Government and RF Government On Providing a State Credit to RA,

– RA bill On Making an Amendment to the RA Law On RA Budget System
(second reading).

According to the RA NA Public Relations Department, parliamentary
hearings will take place the same day at the NA sitting hall on the
initiative of the NA Standing Committee on State and Legal Issues. The
bill On Making Amendments and Addenda to the RA Law On Civil Service
authored by the government will be discussed.

PKK TERROR MUST BE FULLY ERADICATED FROM NORTH OF IRAQ, TURKEY’S DEFENSE MINISTER

Anadolu Agency
June 1 2009
Turkey

WASHINGTON, D.C. (A.A) – 01.06.2009 – Turkish Minister of National
Defense Vecdi Gonul said Monday the U.S. support against PKK terrorism
was appreciated.

Speaking at a meeting of the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in
Washington, D.C., Gonul said that PKK terror must be fully eradicated
from the north of Iraq.

"We appreciate U.S. support against PKK terrorism. PKK terror must
be fully wiped out of northern Iraq," Gonul stressed.

We welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama’s confirmation of the
continuation of U.S. support against terrorist PKK and intelligence
sharing during his recent visit to Turkey, Gonul said.

Touching on Turkish-Armenian relations, Gonul said that efforts have
been made since the year 2007 to normalize relations between Turkey
and Armenia.

"Resolving problems between Turkey and Armenia will not only benefit
the two countries but the whole southern Caucasus," Gonul noted.

"The U.S. should speed up efforts so that problems between Azerbaijan
and Armenia get resolved soon," Gonul said.

In reference to an Armenian resolution in the U.S. Congress, Gonul
said that such initiatives could harm the normalization of relations
between Turkey and Armenia.

We expect the U.S. administration to continue to make efforts so that
the resolution in the U.S. Congress does not get accepted, Gonul said.

"We are pleased with the support U.S. President Obama has extended
to Turkey’s EU membership," Gonul also said.

ARMENIA FORBIDS SMALL BUSINESS TAX INSPECTION

HULIQ
June 1 2009
SC

The government of Armenia made a decision which forbids the tax
authorities to conduct tax inspections in small businesses aiming to
relieve the small business owners from unnecessary difficulties with
tax authorities.

"During 2009-2010 all types of inspectorial checks in the small and
medium-sized enterprises (SME) will be forbidden. 22 inspectorial
bodies exist in RA. Exceptions will be cases concerning health of
the population and security of the state. Even those exceptions will
be carried under the control of the Prime Minister, and only in the
presence of the written consent of the Prime Minister. I am sure
that in this sense our anti-crisis resistibility will increase,"
RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said yesterday at the session of
the Government.

"This is really an unprecedented decision. We have taken this decision
upon the directive of the President of the Republic with the view
of creating a favorable atmosphere for the development of small and
medium-sized businesses, and overcoming the adverse effects of the
global crisis," the Prime Minister added.

RA Government Information and Public Relations Department

MURR REFUSES TO TALK ABOUT THE ARMENIAN VOTERS IN METN

iloubnan.info
ics/actualite/id/35086
June 1 2009
Lebanon

BEIRUT – Following the dialogue session at Baabda on Monday, MP
Michel Murr refused to talk about the role of the Armenian in the
Metn district, and said: "leave the Armenian matter aside, no one is
dealing with the Armenian subject now."

Murr also revealed that it had been agreed on in the dialogue session
to ease the tension and described his electoral situation in Metn as a
"comfortable one."

When asked who he expects to win, He said, "I do not know the results
in all of Lebanon, but I know that of Metn. When asked in regards
of FPM leader’s missing the session, Murr said, "we did not miss
General Aoun."

SOME OF OBAMA’S LESS PUBLICIZED FLIP FLOPS
Rick Moran

American Thinker
6/some_of_obamas_less_publicized.html
June 1 2009

Alex Conant of Politico has an interesting article on some of Obama’s
flip flops that have not received the attention of some of his major
turnarounds like his no lobbyist pledge and his detainee policies.

Some of these lesser known flip flops have been mentioned at AT,
others might surprise you.

1. Osama Bin Laden. During the campaign, Obama made a big deal about
capturing the terrorist, calling him the "number one national security
priority" for his administration.

By the time he was sworn in, Obama was saying that capturing Bin
Laden was not necessary to "meet our goal of protecting America." His
recent speech on Afghanistan announcing the troop increase never
mentioned Osama.

There’s more:

On human space exploration: Early in his presidential campaign,
Obama had great reservations about the costs and risks of human space
flight. He said he would delay NASA’s plans to send humans to the moon
and, eventually, Mars and, instead, spend that money on education. But,
as Florida, Ohio and Texas became more politically important, Obama
began to walk back his proposed NASA cuts, promising to fund unmanned
space exploration and some other scientific missions.

Now that he’s in office, Obama’s reversal is complete: The White House
budget, released earlier this month, provides a healthy increase in
NASA funding and explicitly endorses the "goal of returning Americans
to the moon and exploring other destinations."

On the Armenian genocide: In the U.S. Senate and on the campaign trail,
Obama firmly declared that the death of 1.5 million Armenians during
World War I was "genocide" – a touchy topic between Turks and Armenians
and a political priority for Armenian-Americans – and promised that
"as president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide."

Nonetheless, during his recent trip to Turkey as president, Obama
broke his promise. Instead, he tried to muddy the waters, announcing
that "my views are on the record and I have not changed views" but
refusing to state what those views actually are.

Obama has also broken his promises on small business tax cuts,
"don’t ask don’t tell," needle exchange programs, and allowing for
5 days of public comment before signing a bill.

David Axelrod recently told Politico that Obama’s governance is
"consistent" with his campaigning. Perhaps Mr. Axelrod was referring
to another planet because here on earth, that is not how we would
describe a guy who flip flops on so many issues.

SOME CHRISTIANS VOTING FOR HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON
by Adrine Akopyan

AllGov
ting_for_Hezbollah_in_Lebanon_90601
June 1 2009

Last month’s announcement by the Armenian Tashnaq party in Lebanon
of its intention to support Hezbollah in the upcoming parliamentary
elections could provide the crucial votes needed for Hezbollah’s
coalition to inch ahead of the current pro-Western majority. Nearly
160,000-strong, the Armenian voting bloc is the largest and best
organized of the Lebanese Christian communities.

Accused by their opponents of siding with the opposition in order
to protect large Armenian communities in both Iran and Syria, the
chairman of the Lebanese branch of Tashnaq, Hovig Mekhitarian, disputed
all such claims. "We want candidates who represent our community,"
Mekhitarian said. "We are not with the opposition, and not with the
majority." He further emphasized that their decision was not based
on ideology, but rather served a purely local purpose.

With a deep history of political neutrality, the Armenians, much
like other minority ethnic groups, have put their own communitiy’s
interests above those of the Lebanese state’s as a whole. The Hezbollah
coalition offered them complete control over all Armenian-dominated
districts. The pro-Western majority leader, Saad Hariri, attempted
to court Tashnaq leaders, but ultimately proved unsuccessful because
he did not offer enough. "He was really only offering one seat, and
he wanted our support in 15 other seats," Mekhitarian said. Those
who negotiated on behalf of Hariri painted a slightly different
picture. They held that the majority leadership had given into all of
the Tashnaq’s demands for parliamentary seats, but in return wanted
Armenian support before and after the elections. Conscious of their
neutrality and unwilling to appear too close to any single political
group, the Armenians refused the offer.

OBAMA PIVOTS PRAGMATIC, ANYTHING BUT BUSH GONE
By David Paul Kuhn

RealClearPolitics
http://www.realclearpoliti cs.com/articles/2009/06/01/obama_pivots_pragmatic_ anything_but_bush_gone_96765.html
June 1 2009

The illusions appear gone. On the world stage, the idealistic candidate
has become the pragmatic president.

George W. Bush took five years to pivot away from neo-conservative
idealism. Obama has turned away from his tepid idealism in a matter of
months. The words will remain grandiose. But the gauntlet before Barack
Obama has compelled him to be practical. Marriages of convenience
are again dominating U.S. foreign policy.

Obama flies off to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week, ahead of traveling
to Europe to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day. We recall
D-Day as a big moment of last century’s big moral war. Good and evil
were clear and we were good. But we were also willing to ally with
Joseph Stalin’s repressive regime to face down the far greater evil.

Today’s Middle East politics offer more shades of grey. But democracy,
as with World War II, is not this president’s chief concern. At
this point, it’s the avoidance of war from East Asia to the Middle
East. Obama has responded to rapid escalation with a rapid, and
healthy, turn towards full-on pragmatism.

Every new administration has a learning curve on international
affairs. In recent decades, there has been a pattern of a new White
House attempting the opposite of its predecessor.

George W. Bush’s early strategy was ABC (Anything but Clinton). Clinton
engaged North Korea so Bush would not. Clinton tried a shotgun
wedding on Palestine and Israel. Bush left the fraught relationship
alone. Clinton conveyed the image of consensus on treaties like
Kyoto. Bush scuttled them. Clinton tolerated a Saddam Hussein who
stayed within his borders, and Bush, well we know what happened there.

Obama initially attempted an ABB (Anything but Bush) policy. Bush
spoke in Manichean terms about national security threats. Obama would
do nuance. Obama directed the Pentagon to trash the term "Global
War on Terror" in favor of "Overseas Contingency Operation." It was
rhetorical de-escalation. He pledged to close the detention center
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a bold stroke to symbolize his turn
away from Bush (though Bush eventually moved towards that policy as
well). Obama publicly reached his hand out to Iran, where Bush only
finally resigned himself to quiet efforts. Obama is engaging the
Israel-Palestine issue early and hard.

But Obama has kept more Bush than he intended. Obama has rankled his
left flank by continuing Bush’s military tribunals for Guantanamo
detainees despite calling them an "enormous failure" nearly a year
ago. Elsewhere, citing Bush’s argument that national security requires
secrecy, Obama has defended warrantless wiretapping and withheld
photos depicting prisoner abuse.

Obama’s talk in Prague of a world without nuclear weapons has given
way to the concern that Iran and North Korea could spark a nuclear
arms race in East Asia and the Middle East.

Obama’s open-ended promises for a "new beginning" on Iran now carry
a caveat. Obama recently set a year-end deadline for significant
diplomatic progress.

Last month, Obama sat beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and decided not to give him the full-court press. Obama did not say
all settlement building must stop. But last week, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton did. "Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural
growth exceptions," she said.

This White House initially shied away from setting diplomatic
trip-wires for North Korea, relying on consensus and containment. But
just this weekend, following North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Defense
Secretary Robert Gates offered the first explicit red line. Gates
said the Obama administration intends to hold North Korea "fully
accountable" should it sell or transfer any nuclear material.

Obama’s early decision to flip on his pledge to call the Armenian
genocide, genocide, now appears to be a harbinger of a full-turn toward
pragmatism. Even U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is walking lockstep.

The woman who in 1991 unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square that read,
"to those who died for democracy in China" and attempted to push
a human rights petition to President Hu Jintao, was mostly mum on
human rights during her recent visit to China. The visit came only
days before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Obama has more immediate needs from China: a partner on the economic
recession, North Korea and environmental policy.

Bush also shifted by the winter of his presidency. He quietly engaged
North Korea and Iran. His good-and-evil language faded as he came to
work with all but the most hardened adversaries in Iraq. Bush came
to mildly push for a two-state solution in the Middle East and even,
to the chagrin of Dick Cheney, moved to close the Guantanamo detention
center. Bush realized hard power was not enough.

Obama is now adding some hard to his soft power. It’s this move to
have realism reign over idealism that frames Obama’s speech in Cairo
Thursday, a heavily anticipated address to the Muslim world. Few
expect a sequel to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s 2005 speech
in Cairo, when she recanted a policy that put stability before "the
democratic aspirations of all people."

Democracy is not the ends for Obama in his Middle East. It’s
peace. More immediately, the absence of war between Israel and
Iran. Jordan exemplifies why some monarchs are better for peace, just
as Hamas’ 2006 victory demonstrated that elections can undercut peace.

Bush attempted in his last years to walk back his commitment to
"ending tyranny in our world." But it’s the Democrat who has ended
the democracy agenda. Obama heads to authoritarian Egypt with more
pressing problems on his mind than tyranny.

David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for
RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter. He can be
reached at [email protected]

ARMENIAN DEPUTY RECOGNIZES BELONGING OF NAGORNO KARABAKH TO AZERBAIJAN

Today.Az
tics/52735.html
June 1 2009
Azerbaijan

Member of the Heritage opposition faction Vardan Khachatryan has
recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and belonging of Nagorno
Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

Commenting on the signing of the Moscow Declaration by the Presidents
of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia, the deputy pointed to the paragraph
requiring the return of Azerbaijani refugees to their homes.

"This mostly relates to the return of refugees to their homes,
including only Azeri natives, who are temporarily displaced and,
according to the same rules of international law, should not appear
in the status of refugees", he explained.

Khachatryan is right – Azerbaijanis of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven
adjacent districts, expelled from their land by the armed forces of the
invader state of Armenia, are not refugees but internally displaced
persons (IDP) as defined by Geneva convention of 1951 because when
leaving Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts and directing
to the safe regions of Azerbaijan, they have not crossed the state
border and stayed in the Azerbaijani state.

After returning to their homes as a result of the settlement of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, they still will not
cross the state border, as Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. It
is for this reason that they are currently not considered refugees and
internally displaced persons, and deputy Khachatryan has mentioned it
thus recognizing the fact that Nagorno Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKISH PREMIER: IT IS TIME TO PUT AN END TO KARABAKH CONFLICT

Today.Az
cs/52733.html
June 1 2009
Azerbaijan

"The time has come to put an end to the Karabakh problem, which
hinders the development of the South Caucasus", said Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan while speaking to public, according to CNN-Turk.

According to him, the Karabakh conflict is also a problem for
Turkey. "We have said this in open to our Russian, American and
European partners and called on them to settle this conflict as soon
as possible. This problem is a major obstacle in the development of
the region", he said.

The Turkish Premier expressed his optimism about the upcoming meeting
of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Saint Petersburg.

"My friend and brother Ilham Aliyev is a worthy politician and I think
that he is actively defending Azerbaijan’s interests. Everything in
this issue depends on constructive stance of Armenia and MG co-chairs,
who assumed the mission to resolve this conflict", said Erdogan.

"Turkey and Azerbaijan are brother countries and our interests
are united.

Our only problem is the Karabakh conflict, whose solution requires
a principled stance of the international community. We want the
Co-Chairs to understand their responsibility in solving this problem",
said the Prime Minister.

AZERBAIJANI DEFENSE MINISTRY CONFIRMS TWO SOLDIERS OF ARMENIAN ARMY CROSSED TO AZERBAIJAN

APA
June 1 2009
Azerbaijan

Baku – APA. Azerbaijani Defense Ministry made an official statement
on crossing of two soldiers of Armenian Army to Azerbaijan.

Spokesman for Defense Ministry, Lieutenant-Colonel Eldar Sabiroglu
told APA that the soldiers of military unit #38862 at the disposal of
Armenian Defense Ministry Arutunyan Ohan Varinakovich and Tomasyan
Gevork Serjikovich surrendered to the servicemen in Goranboy region
of Azerbaijan at 13.00 on May 31, 2009. They are held in the relevant
military unit of Azerbaijani Defense Ministry. Sabiroglu said the
soldiers linked it to the tortures they underwent in Karabakh.

"They said they could not bear the tortures and were obliged to cross
the line of contact," he said.

Spokesman said both of the soldiers were citizens of Armenia.

"Arutunyan Ohan was born in Martuni region of Armenia, Tomasyan Gevork
in Nairi region. Both were born in 1991," he said.