Author: Andres-Papazian

HOVIK ABRAHAMYAN SPEAKS ABOUT GLOBAL FINANCIAL-ECONOMIC CRISIS

armradio.am
21.07.2010 17:30

President of the National Assembly of Armenia made a speech at the
third World Conference of Speakers of Parliament today. Speakers of
Parliament from 150 countries participate in the Conference.

Hovik Abrahamyan’s speech was dedicated to the global
financial-economic crisis.

“In some countries the financial crisis grew into a political one,
and governments were forced to resign. This comes to prove the
necessity of reshaping the field of global macroeconomic management
and regulation of financial markets,” Hovik Abrahamyan said.

“Despite the fact that the main responsibility for resisting the crisis
lays with the government, the parliaments of our countries should have
the capacity of making necessary decisions. These include decreasing
the influence of the crisis on the unemployed and most vulnerable
layers of society,” he noted.

Touching upon the influence of the crisis on Armenia and reminding
that on November 12, 2008 the Armenian Government presented its
anti-crisis program to the Parliament, Hovik Abrahamyan stated:
“The National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia played an important
role in the process of alleviating the consequences of the financial
crisis. In close cooperation with the President and the Government,
the Parliament managed to adopt and implement necessary legislative
amendments for realization of the anti-crisis measures.”

According to Hovik Abrahamyan, “thanks to joint efforts the world is
able to solve the existing problems and move forward towards stable
development and peaceful co-existence.”

From: A. Papazian

RAMIZ FATALIEV’S INTERVIEW TO RADIO “AZADLIG” (LIBERTY)

KHOJALY: The chronicle of unseen forgery and falsification

The interview in full in the Azerbaijani language is here.

And we will bring only an extract concerning the events we are
interested in where he unambiguously announces that the Azerbaijani
authorities were informed about the due assault and consciously
refused to evacuate the population.

Ramiz-mualim, everybody knows these shots very well. And if at that
time nobody doubted your and other photographs’ heroism, after those
events, various opinions were voiced about you as a director of the
commission on investigation of Khojaly events. They began to speak
not about heroism but in some cases even about treachery.

Those were times when everybody was fighting for the power. Everybody
knew among whom the struggle was taking place. Some strived for
the change of power, others wanted to gain power. Some wanted the
commission to take the accusation off the committers of the Khojali
tragedy, others were eager to throw mud at them in order those first
could gain power.

If you remember, on the 14th of May, 1992, I said in the Milli Majlis
that “we haven’t sum up yet, that’s why we cannot say anything. But
now, too, it could be said that the Khojali events took place because
of indifference, the improper placing of the personnel and because of
political short-sightedness. It could be said that for some political
reasons and for the maintenance of the power, they didn’t give Khojaly
up” Everybody heard that Mutalibov was innocent. Everybody heard,
but in fact it was not true.

Ramiz Fataliev

Was born in June, 1946, in Baku. In 1972 finished the course of
higher directors and script-writers. Was the head of the film studio
Azerbaijanfilm after Djafar Djabarli.

That the video-chronicles on 20 January, 1990, when the Soviet
forces committed crimes in Baku are kept in TV archives is his and
his colleagues’ merits. There exist almost 50 films the director and
the script-writer of which he was himself.

 4 Day remained before the events in Khojaly. On the 22nd of February,
in the president’s, prime-minister’s, KGB minister’s and others’
presence, the meeting of the National Security Council was held.

Nobody knows so far where the mistake was made, and who made it.  At
the meeting a resolution was made not to evacuate the people from
KHOJALY. It was considered that if we evacuate the population, we
will invite Armenians to occupy the settlement. That is, we ourselves
incited Armenians to attack. Even the members of the Security Council
didn’t believe that Armenians could have committed actions of the
kind, similar to genocide. They thought that if the population left
the settlement we ourselves would give Khojaly up.

This political short-sightedness and ignorance of the situation
brought to the words I pronounced from the tribune. There exists a
shorthand record, and it can be verified. The people heard what they
wanted to hear.

When I say people, I mean the Majlis. Because everybody was present
there. Some people were prepared for it, the others were not. My
voice was deafened by them. So, if everything repeats itself today,
I will struggle for it again. And I hope this time there will be some
people who will be willing to hear me.

From: A. Papazian

OUTGOING TOURISM: INDICATION OF PEOPLE’S WELL-BEING OR EXPENSIVENESS OF LOCAL RESORTS?
By Gayane Lazarian

ArmeniaNow
20.07.10 | 09:41

Features

Despite continued government efforts to promote internal tourism,
Armenian holidaymakers still seem to prefer better ‘value-for-money’
foreign destinations this holiday season.

Traditionally popular seaside resorts in Turkey and Georgia remain
a more preferred option for many who find the sights and resorts in
Armenia less affordable.

A week of holiday in local resorts like Tsaghkadzor, Dilijan,
Aghveran, Jermuk, Sevan will cost 80,000-200,000 ($220-$500 per
person), depending on hotel.

Taking into account the monthly average wage in Armenia is 104,000
drams (about $280), such prices in domestic resorts makes them
unaffordable for most Armenian families. (Children above age 2 are
usually charged 50 percent.)

“Prices should have been different in Armenia. And if some people may
afford visiting new places, a seaside, and be refreshed, they may go
abroad,” says Anahit Papazyan, Director of Levon Travel tourist agency.

Mekhak Apresyan, Head of the Tourism and Regional Economic Development
Department at the Ministry of Economy does not agree that the local
tourism is expensive. He says there places in Armenia where it is
possible to have a rest paying only 6,000-7,000 drams (about $20)
per day for a person. But as a rule, such places are soviet-style
hotels of poor facilities- lack of comfort, without hot water.

Georgia’s Black Sea shore and its resorts towns Batumi, Kobuleti,
Ureki are now the most attractive destination for Armenian families,
especially since Yerevan-Batumi railway started running in 2007. The
train ticket price Yerevan-Batumi is about $60 (round trip). Still,
few tour agencies offer tour packages to Georgia, reasoning that
they work with hotels, the prices of which are very high; whereas,
most families prefer to rent apartments in Georgia themselves.

Psychologist Karine Nalchajyan says that family holidays are predicated
on family budget. And when they find out that they can spend the same
amount of money both in Armenia and abroad, they prefer to go abroad.

“Let us not forget that Armenia is a post-Soviet country, and people
here have the Soviet ‘syndrome’ that they cannot leave for abroad. And
now when there are opportunities, and people can afford it [going
abroad], then their cognitive interest takes them to other countries,”
Nalchajyan says.

Five-member family of Anush Grigoryan, 52, stayed last year in Batumi
for 20 days and spent 814,000 drams (about $2,200 — $22 per person).

“We rented a three-room apartment, paying 60 Georgian laris (about
$30) per day, and we were spending 15 laris (about $5) on food per
day for each of us,” Grigoryan says.

Last year Madlen Harutyunyan, 33, spent her summer holiday in Batumi
with her husband and four-year-old daughter. This year she plans to
leave for Batumi, too.

“It is a more effective rest, useful and less expensive. We were
paying 20 laris (about $10) per night for two of us, and 30 laris
(about $15) for food. We totally spent $550 for 10 days there. And
once we went to Tsaghkadzor, where we paid 24,000 drams (about $64)
per night for two of us,” Harutyunyan says.

Aharon Adibekyan, Chairman of Sociometer Social Research Center,
believes that the development of foreign tourism connects with rise of
living standards in Armenia and the awareness of having a comfortable
rest is raised in the public.

“Armenian families get a lot of money from abroad, and people save
some money from that sum for their summer holidays,” Adibekyan says.

“The business sector works, many (who got work in recent years)
already renovated their houses, they bought cars, and now they are
also thinking about having a normal and comfortable summer holiday.”

Besides Georgia, Armenian tourists go for their summer holidays in
seaside towns of Turkey. Prices in Antalya start from 370,000 drams
(about $1,000) for a person, including a four-star hotel, three times
food, and airplane ticket.

Director of Geographic Travel Club Anna Petrosyan says this year
people’s flow to that direction decreased based on political events.

This year tour agencies offer new packages to Armenian tourists to
Tunis, Tunisia. A 14-day tour costs 555,000-592,000 drams (about
$1,500-$1,600) including airplane ticket, visa formation, and three
meals a day.

In 2009, about 526,000 people left Armenia to have a rest abroad;
this index is 1.5-2 percent higher as compared to 2008. According to
the National Statistical Service data, as compared to May, last year,
there was 12.4-percent inflation in the tourism sector of Armenia.

From: A. Papazian

AYAZ MUTALIBOV’S INTERVIEW

KHOJALY: The chronicle of unseen forgery and falsification

The first president of Azerbaijan recently gave an extremely
interesting interview to one of the Russian TV channels in which it is
narrated that the first president of Azerbaijan, who proclaimed the
independence of the country, at present is living in the outskirts
of Moscow in a state apartment, without a passport and livelihood.

An ordinary refugee with triumphal past and rather obscure future.

This is how the Azerbaijani treat their leaders when the power passes
to other hands.

According to the reportage: “The ruling class of the Alievs did
everything so that the citizens should consider Heydar Aliev to be
the founder of their country and

should forget that they had ever had a first president. It is already
15 years that Ayaz Mutalibov has been wanted by the police in his
country. Heydar Aliev accused him of plotting coup d’etat.

Mutalibov denies the accusation but does not return to his homeland no
to be taken to prison. He is considered as an enemy in his motherland
and Ayaz Mutalibov is not admitted even by the Azerbaijani community
in Moscow”.

“He ran to Moscow two months after his resignation and two days
after the feeble attempt to return to the President’s palace. When
the armed supporters of the opposition went out to the streets to
demand the president’s resignation, Mutalibov went to the Russian
military airport and, leaving his family in Baku, escaped from the
country. Now he avoids speaking about this fact, but it is certain
that Mutalibov preferred to save himself and only after several days
 his friends took his family in cars first to Daghestan and then to
Moscow. He has been an exile since then: a guest to Russia, an enemy
to Azerbaijan, an enemy to Armenia”.

“The whole negative after the Khojaly tragedy was focused on me. I had
to take the whole responsibility upon myself though I was not guilty
of anything”, – claimed Ayaz Mutalibov in the interview. Let us remind
you that on the 2nd of April in 1992, in “Nezavisimaya gazeta”  Ayaz
Mutalibov gave an interview to an independent Czech journalist,  Dana
Mazalova, who afterwards  became persecuted in her own country. The
cause of all these trials was the excessive frankness of the first
president which cost him his impeachment. During the interview it
became quite clear that the Azerbaijani version of the Khojaly events
is none other than a well-planned provocation of the Azerbaijani.

The clan of the Alievs did not forgive Mutalibov for such frankness.

>>From the interview of the former president of Azerbaijan Ayaz
Mutalibov to the Czech journalist  Dana Mazalova, “Njvaya Gazeta”,
2.04.92

Question:What is your opinion about the KHOJALY events after which
you resigned? Dead bodies of the Khojaly inhabitants were found not
far from Aghdam. Someone first shot at legs so that people could
not go farther. Then he added the axe, on the 29th of February my
colleagues took photos of all this. Then during new sequences these
very corpses were scalped. A very strange game…

Answer: As the Khojali inhabitants, who narrowly escaped, say, it was
all organized in order to have ground for my resignation. Some forces
functioned for the effort to discredit the president. I don’t think
that Armenians, who always have a distinct and competent attitude
towards such situations, could have let the Azerbaijani get the
documents unmasking them in fascist actions.  It could be supposed
that somebody is interested to show these sequences afterwards,
at the BC session and to focus everything on my person.

If I claim the Azerbaijani opposition to be guilty in it, they might
say that I am telling lies about them. However, the general background
of arguments is, that a corridor by which the people could leave, was,
nevertheless, left by Armenians. Why then would they begin to shoot?

Especially in the territory nearby Aghdam, where by that time there
had been enough forces to help the people. Or, just come to an
agreement that the civil population will leave. Such practice has
always been usual.

I have always been told that people in Khojaly hold themselves up and
it is necessary to support them with armaments, people and food. I
gave a commission to use helicopters for this purpose. However, the
pilots refused to fly there as they do not have special devices to
avoid stingers. Nearly a week passed. An Aghdam alignment was sttked
nearby to watch the developments there. As soon as the military forces
encircled Khojaly, it was necessary to evacuate the population.

Earlier such a commission was given by me concerning Shushi: to
leave men there and to take women and children off. These are also
laws of the war: you must save their lives. My behavior was unbiased
and fefinite: I gave such commissions but I have no idea why they
were not fulfilled. By the way, I spoke to Lazarian, the head of
Military Forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, several times: “You laid several
people on the ground. Give us an opportunity to take their bodies off
here”. But he replied that there must be no bodies, that our people
are with them and that they are fed there, though they are short of
provisions, and they are ready to exchange them with their hostages.

Question: When were you informed about those lost lives?

Answer: The next day after I was informed that there are just a few
killed people in Khojaly. The information came from the minister of
Home Affairs.

Question:  Who was responsible for that information?

Answer: The minister himself. By that time a press-centre had been
established in the Ministry of Defense. After the story about the
helicopters we had an agreement that nobody would spread doubtful
information.

Question:  Do you consider the Prime Minister Hasan Hasanov
responsible, too?

Answer: The head of the government, of course, is responsible for
everything, though he refuses to have anything to do with such
questions. Well, the government is  government.

From: A. Papazian

MEETING AT THE RA MOD

20.07.10

On the 20th of July, 2010 RA MoD Seyran Ohanyan received the
delegation headed by deputy director of Russia’s Federal Service
Kostantin Birulin. During the meeting the two sides discussed the
prospects of the development of the military-technical cooperation
between the RA and the RF.

Secretary of the RA National Security Council Arthur Baghdasaryan,
CSTO secretary in chief Nikolai Bordyuzha, deputy CSTO secretary
Valery Semerikov, president of the business council adjunct to the
CSTO Military-Economic Cooperation Council Alexander Nozdrachev, as
well as heads of advanced companies of Russia’s military-industrial
complex were present at the meeting.

During the meeting they discussed the opportunities of the development
of the military-industrial complex, creation of joint Armenian-Russian
military-industrial companies and matters of harmonizing the legal
sector concerned with the sphere.

From: A. Papazian

WHAT ANM IS GOING TO DO

16:44:53 – 21/07/2010

The newly-elected head of the ANM board Aram Manukyan during a press
conference on July 21 presented to the journalists what the Armenian
National Movement is going to do in the nearest future. He noted
that they will start working actively with international structures
to internationalize the issue of political prisoners. He said, they
will use the possibilities provided by their being in international
structures to release the political prisoners as soon as possible.

According to Aram Manukyan this is a new sphere for the party.

Secondly, they will strengthen and broaden ANM territorial units. “We
should expand all over Armenia. This is a serious task. We have
much to do in this direction. Involvement and activation of youths
in all the processes is also planned. We have also planned courses:
language, political, liberation courses”, says Aram Manukyan noting
that the party will in a short time become very young.

According to him, ANM will have results in a short time. Aram Manukyan
says it will strengthen the Armenian National Congress as well. Aram
Manukyan also notes that they are going to activate their work with
the HAK.

From: A. Papazian

RA DEFENCE MINISTER’S VISIT TO ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

19.07.10

>>From 17th to 18th of July the delegation headed by RA MoD Seyran
Ohanyan was in the Islamic Republic of Iran on an official visit.

During the visit Seyran Ohanyan met the president of the Islamic
Republic of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian Defense Minister
Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, Supreme National Security Council
Secretary Sayid Djalili and minister of foreign affairs Manuchehr
Motthaki. On the 17th of July in the ministry of defence and AF
support, after the meeting ceremony Seyran Ohanyan and A. Vahidi had
a tete-a-tete conversation.

During the meeting the present international and regional situation
and the possible developments were discussed. They underlined
the importance of settling the present problems in a peaceful and
negotiating way, considering the cooperation, peace and stability
important preconditions for the welfare and prosperity of the nations
in the region.

The MoDs of the two countries highly evaluated the Armenian-Iranian
friendly relations, expressed their satisfaction with the present level
of political dialogue, underlined that such visits create opportunities
for discussing various issues regarding the Armenian-Iranian relations
and for finding mutually beneficial solutions.

On the 18th of July the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the RA Minister of Defence. On the same
day Seyran Ohanyan met the IRI Supreme National Security Council
Secretary Sayid Djalili and the IRI minister of foreign affairs M.

Motthaki.

During the meeting with the IRI President the RA MoD passed to Mr.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad RA president Serzh Sargsyan’s greetings and
best wishes. They both emphasized the Armenian-Iranian high leveled
relations and underlined the wide range of opportunities for their
progress.

During all the official meetings the two sides mentioned that the
Armenian-Iranian cooperation, which has a history of millenniums,
promote the strengthening of peace and stability in our region. They
reconfirmed their position, that a secure and stabile environment is
the cornerstone for development and prosperity of the nations in the
region. They underlined the role of the Armenian community in Iran
in strengthening the Armenian-Iranian friendly relations.

During the visit RA MoD Seyran Ohanyan visited the RA embassy in Iran
and also met the representatives of the Armenian community in Iran.

From: A. Papazian

THEY AGREE WITH TER-PETROSYAN

16:43:05 – 21/07/2010

ANM agrees with Ter-Petrosyan’s idea voiced on July 17 that Armenia’s
security, demographic growth and economic development is impossible
without the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue regardless of
who is in power.

“I am highly assessing his courage not to escape from the reality,
to present the truth. In reality, there are challenges in front of our
nation, and there are people who try to avoid them, but Ter-Petrosyan
has the political will and the courage to present them. Take it
as an alarm and concern relating to challenges our country faces”,
said on July 21, Aram Manukyan.

Manukyan noted that Armenians are leaving from Armenia; there are
demographic issues both in Armenia and Karabakh. “The most serious
challenges, the answer to which the power does not have, which is
to be stopped somehow. This process is quite dangerous”, says Aram
Manukyan. He does not agree that Ter-Petrosyan changed the philosophy,
the stresses of the struggle declared in 2008 and wants to pass
from internal issues to determining home issues with the Karabakh
conflict settlement.

Aram Manukyan says there is no such change. Manukyan notes that only
a strong Armenia can ensure a favorable for us settlement of the
Karabakh issue and only a strong power can succeed in NKR issue.

From: A. Papazian

WALLS IN THE DESERT: ARE THEY WORTHY OF OUR FAITH?

Huffington Post

July 20 2010

Ben Daniel.Presbyterian minister; author, ‘Neighbor: Christian
Encounters with “Illegal” Immigration’

It’s nighttime in Jerusalem, the Holy City, the monotheistic hub of
Abrahamic traditions, the very footstool of the Divine, and, as I am
still a little bit jetlagged, I go out for a stroll in the cool of the
evening. I’m staying on the Mount of Olives at a hotel that is several
high seasons past its sell-by date. The toilet doesn’t always flush;
the carpet is torn and stained; but what the establishment lacks in
amenities it more than compensates for in location.

The view out the front of the hotel is breathtaking; indeed, it may be
entirely unrivaled for someone like me, a person of faith fascinated
by the interplay between religious traditions. From my room I look
past ancient Jewish cemeteries, out over the Garden of Gethsemane and
the Kidron Valley to the Crusader-built walls of the Old City. If
my room were across the hall, I’d have an uninhibited view of the
Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque. For Muslims Jerusalem is, after
Mecca and Medina, Islam’s third most important city. For Jews, it is
the center of the religious universe, and for Christians, Jerusalem
is holy because of its significance in the story of crucifixion and
resurrection. Everybody wants a piece of Jerusalem.

I spend most of the day down in the Old City’s warren of streets. The
place bustles with locals, tourists, and pilgrims, Jews, Muslims,
and Christians. Aggressive shopkeepers sell everything from religious
trinkets to tailored suits. The smells are wonderful, the colors are
startling, and as far as I can tell, people are getting along with
each other.

I’m not naive. I know that deep and complicated disagreements permeate
Jerusalem’s past, present, and future, but as one Armenian shopkeeper
tells me after I compliment him on the broadly interfaith character of
the merchandise in his store (he is selling icons, menorahs, stoles,
and keffiyehs), “If you are from Jerusalem, you respect everyone. We
grow up together and we are friends. Sometimes the politicians make
trouble, and the press likes to write about the bad stuff, but here
we are like family.”

Those are hopeful words, and I mull over them in my head as I walk in
the gardens behind my hotel. From here, during the day, a person can
look out over the Kidron Valley as it wends its way into the Judean
desert. The vista is spectacular, but it’s bisected by the ugliness
of a wall that snakes its way through the landscape, separating Israel
proper from the West Bank and the people who live there.

A warm, gentle wind is blowing up off the Dead Sea, and I find myself
wondering why humans put such faith in walls.

Last summer I visited another desert wall, the one that stretches,
almost without interruption, across the U.S.-Mexico border between
San Ysidro, California and just west of El Paso, Texas, where the
Rio Grande begins the work of demarcating the frontier along the
southwest flank of the Lone Star State. They’re not so dissimilar,
these barriers. Both walls were built on land appropriated by military
might. Both walls were built to control the movements of people who
had lived on the land and had moved freely through the geography
of the place long before the current topography became a political
reality. And in both places the walls were built in the name of
national security. In Israel, as in the United States, pundits have
proclaimed the walls to be a success, but I believe that all depends
upon how one defines success.

There are practical problems with walls. No wall can be built higher
than even the crudest of improvised rockets can fly, nor deep enough
to stop a tunnel. Nothing built by one pair of hands can escape
destruction by the hands of another, and the walls that humans do not
destroy are breached, over time, by the forces of nature. The sands
of the desert shift. The water that flows down wadis and arroyos will
move anything that blocks its course. Walls are insanely expensive
to maintain.

The spiritual questions posed by claims of the walls’ success also are
problematic: are walls worthy of the faith we put in them? Will they
bring us peace? Do they make a positive contribution to common good?

Do they in fact make us better neighbors?

If I were looking for success, searching for what it looks like
when people live in healthy communities, I’d forget the wall in the
Judean desert and look to Jerusalem’s Old City, where people must live
peaceably if they will live together at all, or I’d look to some of
the smaller border towns I’ve visited where people tell me life was
better when walls didn’t separate families and communities. Before
the wall was built in the Sonora desert, there was less crime, greater
prosperity, and no one died of thirst and exposure out in the remote
desert while trying to come north.

The walls in the Judean and Sonoran deserts both were built after an
influx of new people migrated into a place and felt a need to control
those already living there. Such migration is part of the human story.

As long as there have been people, some of those people have moved
and settled down in places where they were not born, and when new
people move in, conflicts erupt — often violently. It is a drama
as old as the myths that define us. Cain settled down and became a
farmer. His brother Abel chose the nomadic life of a shepherd. Things
didn’t work out between them, but our past doesn’t have to determine
our future. I have to believe that humans are capable of living next
to one another without building barriers.

As I breathe in the holiness of the desert air and make my way to bed,
Robert Frost’s famous words come to me:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall That sends the
frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The hopeful part of me thinks that “something” just may be the Spirit
of God.

From: A. Papazian

MESSENGER OF BAD NEWS: NO CONCRETE PROGRESS IN TURKEY-ARMENIAN RELATIONS
By Sercan Canbolat

Journal of Turkish Weekly
July 20 2010

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited Kazakhstan to attend
an informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In that regard, foreign
ministers and high-level officials from OSCE-member states will
gather in Almaty to discuss recent developments about Kyrgyzstan and
Afghanistan as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Azerbaijan
and Armenia.

Davutoglu had meetings with EU’s High Representative for Foreign
Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s
Foreign Minister, Sven Alkalaj. He also had talks with Kazakhstan’s
President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Almaty on Saturday.

In addition, Mr. Davutoglu had an interview with local journals and
he stated clearly that opening the border with Armenia was out of the
question. In that sense, he refused news reports claiming the border
between Turkey and Armenia would be opened soon. Davutoglu asserted
that “nowadays, opening the border is out of the question. These news
stories are completely wrong.”

Moreover, Mr. Davutoglu added that he had discussed the subject with
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov underlining that he
assured Mr. Mammadyarov in the meeting that no such thing was planned.

However, according to Turkish diplomatic sources, Turkey might
allow the passage of NATO equipment through the Dogukapi crossing in
the northeastern province of Kars for a six-day NATO humanitarian
exercise in Armenia’s Lori Mar region. However, the aforementioned
border opening would only be a temporary implementation.

With regards to the Upper Karabakh issue, Ahmet Davutoglu had talks
with foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In this respect,
Davutoglu maintains his optimism about overcoming the deadlock between
Azerbaijan and Armenia by asserting that “talks will continue. I
believe that a solution will be achieved.”

From: A. Papazian