Author: Andres-Papazian

TOSP KNITTING FACTORY PLANS TO REVIVE PRE-CRISIS PRODUCTION RATE

PanARMENIAN.Net
June 20, 2011 – 14:38 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian Minister of Economy Tigran Davtyan visited
Tosp Armenian knitting factory on June 20 and familiarized himself
with its production capacities and prospects.

“Currently, the factory employs 135 people, however there is a
potential of raising this figure to 220, which depends on further
market developments,” Director General of Tosp ojsc Suren Bekirski
told journalists.

“Although the crisis had strong influence on production, the next
year we’ll manage to revive the pre-crisis production rate, that is,
AMD400 million,” he said.

In 2010, AMD156 million worth production was output at the factory,
which provided 7% growth. As of June 1, 2011, Tosp ojsc manufactured
production at the amount of AMD133,1 million, whereas export totaled
AMD33,5 million.

Regarding export volume increase, the Director General said that
currently they are negotiating supply issues with Russia.

In turn, the Economy Minister said that minor investments to the
light industry would boost jobs opportunities and help attraction
of foreign investments thanks to favorable trade regimes with CoE,
U.S. and CIS countries.

From: A. Papazian

HAVE NO EXPERIENCE BUT HAVE BENTLEY INSTEAD
HAKOB BADALYAN

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 15:34:21 – 20/06/2011

Commenting on the visit of the Armenian Catholicos to Georgia, the
patriarch of Georgia said our catholicos has no experience and wants
to solve an important issue at once.

It seems that the answer of our church can be simple but smart:
we have no experience but we have a Bentley instead. The Georgians
will not understand it, however. They will think Bentley is a variety
of khachapuri, the Georgian bread with cheese, and our answer will
produce no effect.

But if we reject this answer, we will hardly find another answer. The
point is that the visit of the Catholicos of All Armenians to Georgia
has obviously failed, and not because the Armenian side had not
expected such an aggressive policy from the Georgians.

Perhaps they had expected that Georgia would make recurrent commitments
to the renovation of Armenian churches and a solution of the issue
of status of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Once commitments made,
the spiritual authorities, just like the secular authorities do,
would finish the visit and assess it as highly fruitful.

However, the opposite happened. The Georgians did not try to blur or
cover up the demands of the Armenian side. They accepted these demands
and demanded a status for the Georgian church in Armenia instead.

Judging by the behavior and stupor of the Armenian side, they were
absolutely unready for this demand.

More exactly, here they were unready to link this demand to the
Armenian Apostolic Church in Georgia. Perhaps it did not occur to
them that Georgia would be so inhospitable to the Catholicos of the
neighbor country and set forth such complicated problems, knowing
that the Catholicos is not authorized to handle such issues.

However, Georgia demanded service for service.

In fact, our Catholicos has experience but it depends on the
situation. For instance, when the construction of a residence
is concerned, the experience of the Armenian Apostolic Church
is invaluable. Or, the church has an invaluable experience of
receiving gifts. The press reported the considerable experience of
our high-ranking church official fathers in running businesses. The
other minor experiences are not worthwhile to mention.

However, the problem is much more serious. In addition, it is related
to the state policy, the government-church relation. The point is that
the parties to this relation seem to have allied against the society.

In other words, the church justifies or covers the government in
case of a social initiative and vice versa. The sides do not seem
to have set other global issues before each other except for the
helpless hysteria about the fight against sects when the behavior
of the same government and church itself creates fertile soil for
the sects but they try to fight them through meaningless cliches on
national identity and values.

There is no government-church cooperation on any strategic issue.

Meanwhile, their cooperation on issues which contradict to the
interests of the society occurs on the basis of business and corporate
interests, which is a strategic danger to the state.

The visit of the Catholicos of All Armenians to Georgia was a vivid
illustration that the government-church tandem lacks a strategy. An
almost historical visit to the domain full of important issue ended
in a shameful failure.

Obviously, not only the secular but also the religious elite are
undergoing a crisis of adequacy to state and national problems.

Unfortunately, the crisis of “elites” harms the reputation of
the institutions, which complicates the situation and its further
improvement.

From: A. Papazian

9% INFLATION RECORDED IN MAY IN ARMENIA

/ARKA/
June 20, 2011
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, June 20. /ARKA/. Inflation of 9% was recorded in May in
Armenia compared with the same period of 2010, Armenian National
Statistic Service informs.

Consumer prices have not been changed in May 2011 compared with
April 2011.

Economic growth was 9.9% in 2011 compared with 13.7% in 2010.

According to the state budget, inflation was planned on the level of 4%
(±1.5%) in 2011 and GDP growth – 4.6%.

From: A. Papazian

PRESIDENT TALKS WITH AZERI, ARMENIAN COUNTERPARTS OVER PHONE

Office of the President

president.ir
June 19 2011
Iran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed issue of mutual interests as
well as regional developments over phone with Azeri President Ilham
Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan on Sunday.

During the separate telephone conversations, the president discussed
expansion of mutual relations and cooperation as well as regional
developments including the issue of terrorism.

During the telephone conversations, the president called for collective
cooperation among regional countries to uproot terrorism.

From: A. Papazian

ISRAEL ‘NOT TO RECOGNIZE’ ARMENIAN VERSION OF 1915 MASSACRES

news.az
June 20 2011
Azerbaijan

News.Az interviews Israeli journalist and political activist Avigdor
Eskin.

According to an agreement between Baku and Ankara, the Turkish embassy
deals with the problems of Azerbaijani citizens in countries where
Azerbaijan has no embassy. What is the explanation for all the fuss
about Turkey handling Azerbaijani consular issues in Israel?

Turkey has recently been clearly hostile towards Israel. This country
disseminates libellous information about us throughout the world. A
year ago, six ships, blessed by the Turkish government, with inveterate
terrorists on board were sent to Israeli shores. Those terrorists
attacked our soldiers. A new flotilla is planned for the near future.

In this context, it is bewildering that powers should be delegated to
Turkey in relations with Israel. The activeness of Nazim Ibrahimov
[head of Azerbaijan’s State Committee for Diaspora Affairs] and
his emissaries in discussion of the 1915 massacres in the Knesset
also seems strange. Why is Azerbaijan getting involved in this
dispute between Armenia and Turkey? Azerbaijanis were definitely not
participating in massacres of Armenians, and were even the victims
of aggression by some Bolshevik and Armenian divisions in the years
of the Civil War. It is necessary to make a separate study of how
Azerbaijanis were forced to flee their territories over the past
century. For example, a hundred years ago, there were more Azerbaijanis
than Armenians in Yerevan, while now Yerevan is mono-ethnic.

In this light, it is strange that your Committee on Diaspora Affairs
fulfills the instructions of Ankara in Israel. Mr Ibrahimov would
be better off dealing with invigorating your diaspora, consolidating
it and selecting effective lobby structures. You need to attain the
cancellation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment in Washington, resist
disinformation against you, you need to start a campaign for the
return of Azerbaijanis home from Russia and other countries. The
agenda also includes the right of Azerbaijanis in Iran to study
their language. Instead, you waste time and funds obeying Ankara’s
instructions. We have to state that the committee has failed to achieve
success in propaganda and political works in the countries of your
diaspora. But we know that after the sitting in July, staff changes
are expected there which will lead to the necessary reinvigoration.

Representatives of the Israeli side used to say that they treat the
lack of an Azerbaijani embassy in Israel with understanding and that
it did not have a special effect on the development of bilateral
relations. Is this no longer the case?

With Egypt, Jordan, most CIS countries, many Muslim countries,
including Turkey itself, having their embassies in Israel, the lack
of an Azerbaijani embassy in Israel cannot be called positive and is
an annoying factor. Correctness in relations implies mutuality too.

What are the prospects for the recognition of the Armenian genocide by
the Knesset in the light of worsening ties between Israel and Turkey?

Israel will remind the world about the way Turkey observed “human
rights” over the past century. We will respond fairly and firmly to
Ankara’s anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli campaign. But Israel will not
recognize the Armenian version. You know that Armenia is disseminating
the bloody slander that the leaders of the Young Turks were Jews and
Donme [Jewish converts to Islam] and that the massacres resulted from
a Zionist plot. We will never recognize this terrific lie.

Unfortunately, it is the current mainstream among Armenian
nationalists. I can prove it by hundreds of links in different
languages.

Much used to be spoken about the strategic and even military and
political triangle Israel-Turkey-Azerbaijan. Can these ideas be
developed further, given the existing problems, particularly between
Israel and Turkey?

I have no doubt that relations between Israel and Azerbaijan will
continue to develop. It is about historical ties between our nations
and about huge prospects of strategic and humanitarian cooperation. I
won’t be surprised if in ten years we launch a satellite named after
Heydar Aliyev into space. All Israeli leaders who ever met Aliyev
consider him to be one of the biggest leaders of the present-day
world. The contribution of the incumbent president of Azerbaijan
should also be mentioned. His stiff rhetoric in combination with
moderation and force of will have promoted progress in peace talks. We
are all looking forward to the meeting in Kazan. As for Ankara, the
recent events in the Arab world may recover Turkish top officials’
sight. Despite everything, Israel was and remains the best and
most reliable partner. Staking on Asad and Ahmadinejad is a policy
of failure.

I wish that Azerbaijanis will never forget those friendly relations
built between our nations for centuries. They can serve as an example
to the whole world.

From: A. Papazian

THE EULOGIZER: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST YELENA BONNER AND CHARLOTTE BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK MAYOR’S MOM
By Alan D. Abbey

JTA
June 20, 2011

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Eulogizer is a new column (soon-to-be blog)
that highlights the life accomplishments of famous and not-so-famous
Jews who have passed away recently. Learn about their achievements,
honor their memories and celebrate Jewish lives well lived with The
Eulogizer. Write to the Eulogizer at [email protected]. Read previous
columns here.

Yelena Bonner, 88, human rights activist

Yelena Bonner’s death in Boston on June 18 at 88 has been covered
widely, and JTA’s first-day news coverage provided the basics of her
life as wife of Nobel Prize-winning dissident Soviet nuclear physicist
Andrei Sakharov and as an activist on her own.

But there are additional fascinating aspects to her long life worth
a second look, especially regarding her Jewishness and Israel.

Throughout her life Bonner attempted to balance the priorities and
needs of her diverse heritage. Her father was an Armenian Bolshevik
revolutionary and one-time Communist Party chief in Armenia. Her
mother was the daughter of a Jewish family born into Siberian exile.

“I hope to live out my life until the end worthy of the
Russian culture in which I’ve spent my life, of the Jewish
and Armenian nationalities, and I am proud that mine has been
the difficult lot and happy fate to be the wife and friend
of academic Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov,” Bonner wrote in her 1988
“>memoir
“Alone Together: Story of Elena Bonner and Andrei Sakharov’s internal
exile in the Soviet Union.”

Bonner was “at heart a (Russian) patriot” and was wounded twice while
serving as a nurse in World War II. After the war she enrolled in
the Leningrad Medical Institute, but was expelled during a Stalin-era
campaign against Jews.

In the years after the Soviet Union fell, not only did Bonner continue
to speak out against corruption and anti-democratic rule in Russia,
she spoke and wrote eloquently about anti-Semitism and Israel.

Fellow former dissident and activist Natan Sharansky, now chairman of
the Jewish Agency, said that “The Jewish world and the State of Israel
have lost one of their most passionate champions. At the same time,
the global community of democratic dissidents, political prisoners
and human rights activists has lost one of its greatest leaders and
advocates. Whereas Andrei Sakharov was the heart of our struggle to
defeat the great evil of the Soviet system, Yelena Bonner was the
engine that encouraged us to act.”

In a 2002 essay titled “An Appeal to World Society,” Bonner wrote
with horror and prescience of the suicide terrorism initially directed
against Israel:

“The suicide bombers have introduced a new weapon — cheap and easily
transported — into the business of terrorism. And without a doubt,
it will spread around the world, not only to promote the political
aims of various extremist groups, but also as a way for tens and
hundreds of mentally disturbed persons to solve their problems. Anyone
tacitly sympathizing with the suicide-terrorists who thinks that this
new weapon of murder-on-command can be kept localized is mistaken. If
there is no attempt to fight back against them, very soon the suicide
bombers’ attacks will spread beyond Jerusalem. Their bombs will explode
on the Champs-Elysees, on Red Square … and Damascus, depending on
who orders and pays for the explosion and what are his goals.

“Despite all this, in Europe and America there is a growing
anti-Israeli hysteria whose battle-cry is the defense of the
Palestinian people, even though Israel is conducting a necessary
and just war not against the Palestinian people but against world
terrorism, against the terrorism syndicate linking Al Qaeda, Hamas,
Fatah, Islamic Jihad, et al.”

Bonner also saw clearly the growing threat against Israel now labeled
delegitimization:

“The extent of this hysteria is impressive … it has infected
American students, Hollywood stars, European scholars, members of
the Norwegian parliament and human rights organizations. Scientists
have been considering a boycott of their Israeli colleagues. Two
hundred and sixty-nine members of the European Parliament voted for
an anti-Israeli resolution. …

“Politicians have a short memory. They have forgotten how Arafat’s
Black September almost destroyed Jordan, the murder of Israeli athletes
at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and much else. The hysteria has tragically
isolated Israel, but it is also dangerous for Europe and America,
where it has stirred up a troubling wave of anti-Semitism.”

Click here to read the entire essay, which offers a striking scenario
for a demilitarized Palestinian state.

In a 2009 speech titled “About Israel and the World,” given at the
Freedom Forum in Oslo, Bonner said that many laid the blame for
suicide terrorism and bombing at the feet of former President Bush
“and as always, the Jews” and Israel, giving as examples the United
Nations anti-racism gatherings in Durban.

Bonner said she focused on Israel and Jews “not just because I’m
Jewish, but primarily because the Middle East conflict during the time
that has elapsed since the end of World War II has been a springboard
for political games and gambling by the big powers, the Arab countries
and some politicians who want the so-called ‘peace’ process to renew
their political name, and maybe even win a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Bonner said she continued to be shocked that her late husband and
Yasser Arafat were members of the club of Nobel Prize winners. She
spoke of Sakharov’s views of Israel and how many would be surprised
“at how sharp they look” compared to the views of those at odds with
Israel, and that Sakharov believed in Israel’s “absolute right to
exist,” and that the wars Israel fought were imposed by “irresponsible
Arab leaders.”

Charlotte Bloomberg, 102, mother of New York mayor

Charlotte Bloomberg, the mother of New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg and a “constant source of encouragement and wisdom for him,”
died June 19 at her home in Medford, Mass., at 102.

“As the center of our family, our mother’s unimpeachable integrity,
fierce independence, and constant love were gifts that profoundly
shaped our lives and the lives of so many who knew her,” Michael
Bloomberg said.

Charlotte Bloomberg was born in Jersey City, N.J., received a
bachelor’s degree in accounting from New York University, married
William Bloomberg in 1934, and moved to Massachusetts in 1945, where
she lived in the same house until her death, even as her son became
a billionaire media mogul and then New York mayor.

The New York Times noted that she “was co-president of her synagogue,
Temple Shalom,” which is also home to the William and Charlotte
Bloomberg Jewish Community Center, in her 90s.

She traveled to Jerusalem with Bloomberg in 2003, when he dedicated
a wing at Hadassah-University Hospital in honor of her 95th birthday.

From: A. Papazian

DAVIT BABAYAN: “THE AZERBAIJANI AUTHORITIES SPECULATE ON THE ISSUE OF REFUGEES FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES”

ARMENPRESS
JUNE 20, 2011
STEPANAKERT

The official Baku and Stepanakert’s stances and approaches on the
issue of refugees logically contradict each other, Chief of the NKR
President’s Staff Davit Babayan said today at a news conference.

He said the Azerbaijani authorities speculate on the issue of refugees
as a means of settling political issues. As to Baku’s statement on
the return of refugees, Davit Babayan said first of all the political
issues should be settled for the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh
issue. “Azerbaijan should recognize Karabakh’s independence,” he said.

From: A. Papazian

PRESIDENT OF ESCO CONCERN ARRESTED

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 18:22:30 – 20/06/2011

Sargis Aghabekyan, the president of Esco Concern, a Yerevan-based
realty company, was arrested for fraud and embezzlement of the property
of a group of people who had bought apartments in a building under
construction in Yerevan.

Sargis Aghabekyan was adviser to the NKR president Arkady Ghukasyan,
later he was the representative of the NKR Speaker to the National
Assembly of Armenia.

From: A. Papazian

GENOCIDE COMMEMORATION DAY BILL TO BE DISCUSSED AT JUNE 22 KNESSET PLENARY SITTING

PanARMENIAN.Net
June 20, 2011 – 21:13 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Israel’s Armenian community and Hay Dat Jerusalem
Office set major hopes on the discussion of a bill on Armenian Genocide
Commemoration Day in Israel.

As Georgetta Avakian, head of Hay Dat Jerusalem Office told a
PanARMENIAN.Net reporter, the draft law will be discussed at Knesset
plenary sitting on June 22. “We’ve got in touch with parliamentarians
urging them to pass the bill. We’re grateful to the draft law initiator
Aryeh Eldad and hope Israel will sooner or later recognise the Armenian
Genocide,” she said.

The Israeli ministerial legislative committee has rejected an Armenian
Genocide bill submitted by Knesset member Aryeh Eldad.

Eldad suggested that the Armenian Genocide should be included in
the school curriculum and taught on every April 24 to be declared
the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. He called on the government
“not to be afraid of Turkey.”

Eldad is confident that “the parliamentarians support his initiative
but are scared to vote in favour.” “Unfortunately, I was not present
at the discussion, but I am not going to give up and will raise the
issue at the Knesset’s plenary session,” he said.

In May, Knesset transferred discussion of a bill on recognition of
the Armenian Genocide to the committee on culture and education.

Meanwhile, members of Israel Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party exclude
possibility of its adoption.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIA HAS COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES IN LIGHT INDUSTRY SPHERE

ARMENPRESS
JUNE 20, 2011
YEREVAN

Now Armenia endeavors to increase its role in the international arena
in the sphere of light industry and tends to restore the production
volume it had in the Soviet Union, Minister of Economy Tigran Davtyan
said today at a news conference.

He said the enterprises operating in the sphere started to increase
their production volume and a number of new enterprises opened. “We
should do our best to seek such parts in the world market where we
can be competitive. Here the state plays a great role, as first of
all the Government should ensure nearly ideal conditions for local
manufacturers,” Tigran Davtyan said. He added that the works in
this direction are under way. Steps are being undertaken for the
improvement of the business environment, exportation procedure,
facilitation of the investment sphere, provision of tax privileges.

The minister says Armenia has comparative advantages in the sphere of
light industry. “We have some good trade regimes. The main markets
of realization are Europe, CIS and USA. Many countries, which are
our rivals in the international arena, do not have favorable trade
regimes. This is another opportunity to involve foreign companies in
the Armenian economy,” Tigran Davtyan said.

From: A. Papazian