PRESIDENT SARGSYAN HAD A FAREWELL MEETING WITH OUTGOING GERMAN AMBASSADOR
ARMRADIO.AM
26.06.2012 15:52
President Serzh Sargsyan had a farewell meeting with outgoing
Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Armenia, Hans-Jochen
Schmidt, President’s Press Office reported.
The President thanked the Ambassador for his activity targeted at the
reinforcement of Armenian-German relations throughout his tenure in
office and wished him success in his future activity.
From: A. Papazian
AUSTRIAN PRESIDENT URGES REMOVAL OF SNIPERS FROM BORDER AREAS
PanARMENIAN.Net
June 26, 2012 – 15:56 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – Snipers must be removed from border areas, Austrian
President Heinz Fischer said in Yerevan.
“I fully back the principle of peaceful resolution of the problem,
when thousands of lives are at stake,” he said, voicing hope that
Nagorno Karabakh conflict will be settled within the framework of
OSCE Minsk Group.
President Fischer further noted he is aware of Azerbaijani and Turkish
leaders’ positions on the issue, with visit to Armenia having given
him an opportunity to familiarize himself with the country’s stance.
From: A. Papazian
ATTEMPT OF ARMENIAN DEPUTY IN PACE TO IDENTIFY NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT WITH KOSOVO RESPONDED
APA
June 26 2012
Azerbaijan
Strabourg. Fuad Gulubayli – APA. Albanian Deputy Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister Edmond Haxhinasto has today made a speech at the
plenary meeting of the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe (PACE).
APA’s Europe bureau reports that member of the Armenian delegation
Naira Zohrabyan asked question on people of Nagorno Karabakh that
they can declare their independence as in Kosovo and it deserves
to recognize by the international community within the framework
of the UN. But the Albanian minister said that the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict is different than Kosovo: “The settlement of Nagorno Karabakh
is outside of our competence as the organization of the Council of
Europe. The OSCE Minsk Group is engaging in this issue and we support
the peaceful settlement of this conflict. Negotiations processes on
the conflict are the focus of attention of the Cabinet of Ministers
of Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is always ready to give
its contribution to the peace agreements. At the same time, the mains
issue is to create an atmosphere of mutual understanding between the
sides. About the Kosovo issue, it is a different issue and Kosovo
issue has its special characteristics.”
From: A. Papazian
RUSSIA TO PRESENT NEWEST ARMOR AT INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION IN MOSCOW REGION
Interfax
June 25 2012
Russia
Almost 200 Russian companies will take part in the Machine Building
Technologies 2012 international forum, which starts in Zhukovsky
near Moscow on June 27, to display over 1,000 military products, the
Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service reports. Interfax-AVN
has a report copy.
“A total of 198 Russian organizations will take part in the forum.
They will present 1,226 military exhibits, including 93 products that
cannot be sold to foreign clients but will be displayed by the order
of the Russian president,” the report said.
The forum will have 21 foreign exhibitors from 10 countries (Austria,
Armenia, Belarus, Germany, India, Italy, China, Singapore, Ukraine
and France).
Russia will put on display the Iskander operative and tactical missile
system, S-300V, Buk-M1-2E and Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems,
the modernized tank T-72, tanks T-90A and T-80U, armored personnel
carriers BMP-3, armored recovery vehicles BREM-1, the 152-millimeter
self-propelled launcher Msta, the multiple rocket launcher Grad and
some other hardware.
The forum will take place at the Rossiya transport exhibition grounds
from June 27 to July 1.
It is organized by the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry, the
Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service and Rostekhnologii.
There will be over 5,000 square meters of indoor exhibition space
and more than 3,000 square meters of outdoor exhibition space.
From: A. Papazian
AZERBAIJAN’S MILITARY EXPENDITURES GROW SIZABLY – PRESIDENT
ITAR-TASS
June 25, 2012 Monday 05:40 PM GMT+4
Russia
Military expenditures of Azerbaijan have grown more than 20 times
over the past few years, amounting to 3.6 billion dollars, President
Ilham Aliyev told graduates from military educational establishments
on Monday.
According to the president, “the Azerbaijani army now ranks among
the strongest armies not only of the region, but of the whole world”.
“Attention to the army is priority of the Azerbaijani state,” and
the society supports that, the president stressed.
“Azerbaijan will keep building up the strength of its army and
increasing its professionalism,” Aliyev noted. According to him,
“the Azerbaijani army defends stability in the region”. Focusing on
the conflict around the mostly Armenian populated Azerbaijani enclave
of Nagorny Karabakh, Aliyev said his country “has all possibilities
to restore its territorial integrity”.
From: A. Papazian
IWPR REPORTERS HIGHLIGHT PROVINCIAL POVERTY IN ARMENIA
Institute for War and Peace Reporting IWPR
Caucasus Reporting Service – Issue 647
June 26 2012
UK
Local government acts to help family whose plight was shown in
photo essay.
Journalists from the Armenian capital Yerevan have been encouraged
by an IWPR project to focus on endemic poverty and deprivation in
the countryside which often go unreported.
Participants in the programme paid a two-day visit in December 2011
to Gegharkunik, where around 40 per cent of the population lives
below the poverty line.
Journalists in urban areas rarely visit places like this. The aim of
the visit was to draw on local expertise to identify specific social
and economic concerns, to generate reporting on them and get it
published in the media. The four reporters and two photojournalists
on the trip met local officials and NGO representatives and visited
parts of Gegharkunik where life is hardest.
One of Armenia’s poorest regions, Gegharkunik has the highest rate of
economic migration of any region in Armenia – mostly men, and mostly
going to Russia to find seasonal work.
Life for those who remain can be bleak. During a visit to the village
of Vardenik, the journalists visited Silva Barkhoyan, her husband
Arayik Arakelyan and their six children in their tin shack, which had
plastic sheeting instead of glass for windows. Their two school-age
children were unable to attend classes because the family had no money
for clothing, while one four-year-old had a lung condition which they
could not afford to treat.
Freelance photojournalist Inna Mkhitaryan captured their plight on
camera (for a sample of her photographs see Armenia: Male Exodus From
Rural Communities), and after her pictures were published, a charity
and the local authorities took action to help the family.
The faith-based NGO World Vision Armenia provided clothing for the
children, while the Vardenik village authorities allocated 40,000
drams, around 100 US dollars, to help support the family.
Gegharkunik’s regional governor Nver Poghosyan instructed Hambardzum
Safaryan, head of the regional education department, to ensure that
the two older children were going to school.
“We acted immediately after publication… to ensure they attend
school on a regular basis,” Safaryan said.
Poghosyan has also pledged to allocate a 1,200-square-metre plot of
land to the family, which is expected to happen by autumn.
Arakelyan said he was grateful to the journalists who reported on
his family’s struggle.
“They didn’t ignore my hut – they came in and talked to us. More than
that, they wrote about my family and helped my six children get proper
clothing for school,” he said. “The land plot gives me hope that I
can make a living for my wife and six kids, and eke out an existence.”
who took part produced special reports on women’s issues in the
region, both for the media outlets they work for and also for a
special IWPR-supported newspaper supplement printed in January 2012,
which included four articles and two photo essays.
The mission was organised within the framework of IWPR’s Building
Bridges/Building Capacity: Conflict Prevention in the South Caucasus
project, supported by the Norwegian foreign ministry.
Hasmik Shahbazyan, head of press and public information in
Gegharkunik’s regional administration, said he was pleased the
journalists had come to see conditions in the region for themselves.
“I think articles like this support government bodies, in this case
the Gegharkunik administration,” he said. The articles that appeared
in the IWPR supplement were of huge educational value to women.
Victims of domestic violence gradually start standing up for their
rights and applying to various institutions to that end.”
From: A. Papazian
LES LIVRES SCOLAIRES TURCS METTENT LE TERRITOIRE DE L’ARMENIE EN TURQUIE
Stephane
armenews.com
mardi 26 juin 2012
Les ecoliers d’Istanbul ont recu des ouvrages scolaires multimedias
qui indiquent que le territoire de la Turquie inclut l’Armenie dans
son entier, quelques regions en Irak et certaines regions de Bulgarie,
aussi bien que la partie grecque de Chypre et plusieurs parties de
la Georgie.
Selon les auteurs des textes, Batoum est une ville Turque.
Le Ministère georgien des Affaires Etrangères a annonce qu’il allait
faire une enquete et contrôler cette information.
Selon le quotidien Milliyet la carte moderne de la Turquie se trouve
dans un CD publie dans le cadre de la campagne educative nationale
du Ministère de l’Education nationale.
From: A. Papazian
MP: AZERBAIJANI MILITARY PREPARED TO LIBERATE OCCUPIED LANDS
Trend
June 25 2012
Azerbaijan
Today, the Azerbaijani army is highly efficient and is always ready to
liberate the occupied lands of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani official Aydin
Mirzazade told the official website of the ruling New Azerbaijan party.
Azerbaijani army is a structure that meets the most modern
requirements, Mirzazade said.
He said until now the state has taken significant steps for Azerbaijani
armed forces to meet NATO standards.
In his opinion, these facts are well known also in Armenia which has
occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories and built its whole
policy on the occupation of lands of neighboring countries.
“Today the Azerbaijani army is an indication of the power of the
Azerbaijani state, proud of the Azerbaijani people, an army highly
trained to ensure the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,” deputy
chairman of the committee said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian
armed forces have occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan since 1992,
including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The
co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group – Russia, France and the U.S. –
are currently holding peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council’s four
resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the
surrounding regions.
From: A. Papazian
WHY DOES IRAN SUPPORT ARMENIA ABOUT KARABAKH ISSUE?
Today’s Zaman
*.html
June 24 2012
Turkey
The balance in Caucasia that shifted with the collapse of the Soviet
Union caused a big change in the foreign policy vision of the states
in the region.
While examining the problems that emerged between republics, which
gained their sovereignty, it is possible to see the changes in
foreign policy of neighboring countries. The attempt by neighboring
countries and international organizations to expand their influence
into Nagorno-Karabakh, one of the region’s unsolved problems,
indicate the results of the aforementioned changes in foreign policy
expansion. The attitude of Iran, one of the dominant actors in the
region, regarding the events occurring in Caucasia varies from time
to time. For Iran, Russia’s loss of power after the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the end of the threat of communism paved the way for
the emergence of new threats. All kinds of groundswells influencing
Iran via Caucasia throughout history caused, in the new political
sphere, the spread of the threat of ethnic nationalism. The reason why
Iran can’t ignore this threat is that Iran’s borders with neighboring
countries are surrounded by different ethnic groups. Today, close to
25 million Azerbaijani Turks live in the Southern Azerbaijan region,
which is on the Caucasian border of the country. Iran is worried about
the activities of West-oriented units in the region that could carry
out joint incursions with Russia about the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,
the most important matter of conflict in South Caucasia, thereby
Iran bears a varying attitude towards it because of Iran’s national
security concerns. The attitude of Iran, which acts by using Islamic
revolution discourse as a basis for its foreign policy just like in
its other policies, regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is to keep
balanced relations with both sides. Iran must behave warmly to Armenia
especially due to the ethnic structure of South Azerbaijan, and it
is also believed that the country may be adopting such an attitude
because of the instability of its alliances with big states. As for
Armenia, which has closed its border checkpoints with Turkey and
Azerbaijan and could have been faced with a dead end, but instead
can meet its need to access other countries comfortably through
Iran, and it can also establish important commercial and energy
partnerships with the country. Iran mentioned that it respects the
territorial integrity of countries right from the beginning of the
Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Iran’s expressing this discourse as a
principle and its engaging in conciliatory activities are policies
that Iran pursues for the purpose of taking advantage of balances
in the region in a way or for the purpose of minimizing prospective
damages. With regards to this issue, in Baku in 1992, Iran’s foreign n
affairs minister told Azerbaijani officials, for the first time that
Iran can be mediator country between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Iranian
Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmud Vaezi’s held talks in Baku and Yerevan
in order to negotiate about the details of the ceasefire and the
exchange of captives, however, Armenia’s invasion of Shusha’s and
Lachin’s caused Iran’s conciliation attempts to fail.
Iran under the thumb of Russia Feeling the dominance of Russia in
all of the developments in the region, Iran again pursued a solution
under Russia’s terms for the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. This resulted
in the emergence of closer relations with Armenia. Additionally,
Azerbaijan’s sympathy towards the Turkey-Israel strategic alliance
towards the end of 1990s was responded to with Iran’s sympathy
towards the Yerevan-Athens-Moscow alliance. With this alliance
becoming ineffective in the aftermath of Sept. 11, Iran headed towards
strengthening its relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan and from time
to time it disapproved of Armenia’s invasion in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The shifting attitude of Iran, which doesn’t mention any religious
or ethnic terms while describing the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, may be
explained in various terms. The threat that the Turkic society in
South Azerbaijan may be sympathetic with Azerbaijan, in the case that
the problem is solved, is one of Iran’s biggest concerns. According
to Iran, Armenia is a country that should be counted among the ranks
of Russia. And Turkey’s dominance in Caucasia may be decreased by
through diplomatic tensions between Turkey and Armenia; and Iran can
create some chances via the Armenia diaspora in the West and it can
even gain support from the diaspora in terms of improving its image
in the international community. As a matter of fact this latest issue
is directly related to the Armenians in Syria that support the Assad
regime. The attitudes of Iran, which considers Armenia as a means of
changing the balance in the region and makes expansions based on their
view of Armenia, about the Nagorno-Karabakh issue have been majorly
influenced by anti-Iran discourses of the Abulfaz Elchibey period.
Making an emphasis on sectarian integrity for South Azerbaijani
people, Iran has made special efforts to strengthen cultural ties. It
is unfavorable for Iran that the clashes taking place in the region
affect its own land.
Another issue is the necessity for the existence of a common policy
that Iran can move together with Russia against Western impact on the
region. It seems that Iran has joined the ranks of Russia with its
pro-Armenia attitude, which has caused a separate power balance in
the region, and enabled Iran to be less concerned about its national
security. With its desire to avoid the West-leaning effect of Turkey
in the region and to hinder the possible influence of Turkey on
Turkic people with its pro-Armenia attitudes, Iran wants to be a more
effective actor in the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Recently repeating
its offer to become a mediator between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran,
just like in the policy pursued by Russia, desires to make its presence
felt via this problem.
Azerbaijan expecting more decisive stance from Russia In this matter,
the message that Azerbaijan gave to Russia via its treatment of the
Gabala Radar Station issue must also be handled.
Keeping the Gabala issue as a trump card so far with regards to
Moscow’s attitudes concerning the Karabakh issue, Azerbaijan wants
to see a more decisive stance from Russia. According to the idea of
some experts, Russia intends to mobilize this station and move it
to Armenia or North Caucasia. With reference to recent radar station
discussions, the role that Russia cast for Iran should be argued.
Because of the showdown that started between Iran and Azerbaijan,
inducing Russia and attempting to have good relations with Israel are
important. Pursuing this way, Iran, which keeps on having problems with
the West, desires to improve its image by means of strong lobbies from
the Armenian diaspora, which carries out globally effective activities.
All these issues feature the fundamental issues that determine
Iran’s attitude towards the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Iran, as the
neighboring country, which pursues a pro-Armenia policy due to the
effect of the Turkic population in South Azerbaijan, is important in
terms of the collective development towards peace. With reference to
its impact on the solution of the problem, Iran, which will be unable
to sustain its anti-West and pro-Russia inclination in terms of the
existing problems in the region, has an indisputable importance as a
neighboring country. What Iran gained by means of the decisions that
it issued as a requirement of the policies it pursued in the region
is another matter that should be questioned. In addition to that,
Russia’s continual lack of involvement in regards to the Iranian
nuclear issue causes curiosity about what the new policies will be.
Iran’s mediation discourse, which it has started to frequently repeat,
gives the impression that in the short term Iran will pursue a more
conciliatory way that is open to a showdown with Azerbaijan because
of different expectations and inducements.
*Mehmet Fatih Oztarsu is an analyst at the Center for International
Strategy and Security Studies.
From: A. Papazian
BSTDB, ARMENIAN ARDSHININVESTBANK SIGN $8 MILLION LOAN AGREEMENT
news.am
June 25, 2012 | 19:45
YEREVAN.- The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) and
Armenia-based Ardshininvestbank signed a loan agreement on Sunday
aiming at provision of additional resources for mortgage lending
in Armenia.
Ardshininvestbank will draw on funds amounting to $8 million during the
next six months and extend affordable long-term residential mortgage
loans, including jumbo loans with a maximum amount of $200,000.
Mher Grigoryan, Chairman of the Management Board at Ardshininvestbank,
said real estate construction, which once strongly supported the
economic growth in Armenia, suffered greatly through the recent crisis.
“In this regard, it is also the responsibility of the banking sector to
stimulate the real estate and mortgage lending markets. This facility
with the BSTDB will allow Ardshininvestbank to assertively expand
its mortgage loan”, he added.
According to him, while the speculative demand for residential real
estate has significantly subsided, the fundamentals show strong demand
still exists, as the real estate market remains obsolete and densely
populated, with often 2 families living in small apartments.
“Short-term and high interest rate mortgage loans are the main
obstacles to expansion of the scope and scale of such lending. With
this project, we are going to improve the situation, solving some
of the existing issues, particularly by making mortgage loans more
affordable and accessible in Armenia,” said Grigoryan.
Ardshininvestbank is a bank with 49 branches throughout the Republic
of Armenia, six branches in the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and a
representation office in Paris. For further information please visit
or call 59-04-04.
The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) is an international
financial institution established by Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and
Ukraine. BSTDB supports economic development and regional cooperation
by providing loans, credit lines, equity and guarantees for projects
and trade financing in the public and private sectors in its member
countries.
From: A. Papazian