Author: Antonian Lara

The Burns Supper and the British Embassy help mothers and children in
Gegharkunik and Lori marz

ArmRadio.am
30.05.2006 14:03
On Wednesday 31 May, at 11:30 the British Embassy in Armenia will hold
a press conference to mark the handover of charity funds raised at the
2006 Burns Supper to the beneficiary.
This year the 8th annual Burns Supper raised AMD 9 Million ($20,000),
for the purchase of much needed medical equipment for the Martuni
Maternity Hospital in Gegharkunik Marz. The purchase of the equipment
will be arranged by USAID-funded Project NOVA, which will receive the
money on behalf of the beneficiary on the day of press conference.
The 2006 Burns Supper raised funds through the sale of the tickets and
through an auction on the night

MASS DISCHARGINGS IN SYUNIK SOUTH BRANCH OF “ARMENTEL” COMPANY

KAPAN, MAY 29, NOYAN TAPAN. 38 enployees of the Syunik south branch of
the “ArmenTel” CJSC were notified on May 26 that they will be
discharged on May 29. This decision, according to notifactions given
to them, is provided by volumes of the production in the company,
change of conditions of economic, technological and labour
organization. According to Article 116 of the RA Labour Code, in the
case of mass dischargings, the employer is obliged to inform employees
and send a corresponding notification to the RA State Employment
Service not later than 3 months before dissoluting the job
contract. But the Noyan Tapan correspondent was informed by the
Territorial Employment Center that they had not got such a message
from ArmenTel. And the discharged employees, finding that they were
illegally discharged are going to address to the court.
Vladimir Vardanian, the Director of the Syunik marz center of the
company informed the “NT” correspondent that dischargings are again
expected soon, and 180 employees of 333 ones of the marz service will
not lose their jobs.
According to him, “stations are being made digital, and keeping so
many vacancies becomes needless.”

PanARMENIAN.Net
Mediators Believe in Possible Agreement

Co-chairmen of the Minsk group assert that there are
grounds for optimism.
26.05.2006 GMT+04:00

The regular visit of OSCE Minsk group co-chairmen has
come to the end. This visit can hardly be called
regular due to a number of specific differences from
the previous visits of mediators in Yerevan and Baku.
Firstly, this time the co-chairmen arrived in full
staff which has not been the case of at least half a
year. After the unsuccessful meeting of the two
presidents in Ramboulliet, mediators arrived in
Yerevan and Baku individually. Early in 2006 Bernard
Fassier twice came to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Steven
Mann has also visited Aliev and Kocharyan. As for the
Russian mediator Yuri Merzlyakov, he looked to be
keeping away. The joint visit of cochairmen confirms
that co-chairman states are again in the same team.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Another unprecedented circumstance
is that this time co-chairmen were joined by
high-ranking representatives of foreign policy
structures of countries, involved in the mediatorial
mission – Russian deputy foreign minister Grigory
Karasin, US State Secretary’s assistant Daniel Fried
and the political issues director of French Foreign
Ministry Stanislas d’Labule.
Last year the co-chairmen were twice accompanied in
regional visits by the former deputy foreign minister
of Russia Vyacheslav Trubnikov. The stately delegation
staff is first of all aimed at demonstrating
seriousness of the peacemakers’ intensions. This can
also be proved by the mediators’ announcements made
after their meetings with Aliev and Kocharyan. `The
joint mission is an extraordinary undertaking. It
should be taken as an evidence of seriousness of our
approach towards conflict regulation and of our common
conviction that we are on a stage when mutually
beneficial agreement is reachable’; it is said in two
similar documents.
The third peculiarity of the visit is that this time
co-chairmen limited themselves to visiting Baku and
Yerevan and did not consider it expedient to get
acquainted with the position of official Stepanakert.
There would not be anything special here if not a
singe detail: according to the Baku `Trend’
information agency, before the start of negotiations
with the Azeri foreign minister Elmar Mamedyarov,
delegation members had a working meeting with the
deputy foreign minister of Azerbaijan Araz Azimov. But
for some reason the meeting was also participated by
Nizami Bakhmanov who is called in Baku the `leader of
Azeri community of Nagorno-Karabakh’. Did mediators
know that Bakhmanov was going to wait for them in
Azimov’s office or it was unexpected for them?
Unfortunately journalists present at the briefing of
mediators in Yerevan could not ask them about that.
The same source also reports about the existence of
agreements concerning a number of meetings of the US
State Secretary’s assistance Daniel Fried in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Administration of
the President of Azerbaijan. It may be assumed that
the matter concerns separate meetings, without the
participation of diplomats from Russia and France.
What did Fried discuss with the representatives of
Aliev’s administration? This question gaining special
significance in the context of the quite noteworthy
article in Baku published `Express’ newspaper.
Referring to informed sources in Washington, the
author of the article asserts that `Pentagon has
applied to the US Congress with a request to assign 43
million dollars for the reconstruction of four
military aerodromes in Azerbaijan and creation of
anti-missile defense and radio-electronic intelligence
systems’. If it turns out that this sensational news
has at least anything with reality it will become the
first symptom testifying to the existence of certain
principal agreements between George Bush and Ilham
Aliev. It is worth reminding that late in April Ilham
Aliev was `called’ to Washington for discussing
Azerbaijan’s position in case of military actions
against Iran. If Aliev really promised Bush to provide
military base for attacking Iran, it is clear that he
will be counting on the White House’s `services’ in
Karabakh issue. In any case, the existence of
agreements between Washington and Baku concerning
Azerbaijan’s participation in anti-Iranian coalition
will have a negative impact on the regulation process
of Karabakh conflict. Nevertheless, it is still a big
question – is it worth relying on the sources of
`Express’ newspaper? Though the sensational
information published in the paper have not yet been
denied by anyone.
«PanARMENIAN.Net» analytical department

Montenegro referendum sets precedent for Karabakh solution – Armenian paper
Ayots Ashkhar, Yerevan
24 May 06
Text of Vardan Grigoryan’s report by Armenian newspaper Ayots Ashkhar
on 24 May headlined “Montenegro precedent” and subheaded “New
situation in the Karabakh negotiations”
The independence referendum held in Montenegro on 21 May drastically
changes the world’s previous ideas of the right to self-determination
and territorial integrity.
It turned out after the referendum that it is possible to separate
“blood brothers” in the Balkans in order to speed up Montenegro’s
admission to the European Union, while everything possible can be done
in the post-Soviet area to preserve the nonexistent “territorial
integrity” of Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan which are weaker than
Serbia. At the same time, it is known that international law equally
applies to all subjects that recognize its standards.
The double standards of the West lead to the freezing of post-Soviet
conflicts and turn nations involved in them into hostages of serious
geo-political games. This happened in the case of the Dniester region,
Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
But the Nagornyy Karabakh problem was separated from this “package”.
It is no secret that in the last few years, the USA and the European
Union have always separated Karabakh from the rest of the unrecognized
post-Soviet countries, emphasizing the unique nature of the Karabakh
issue. The idea of holding a second self-determination referendum in
Karabakh result from this. This referendum gains a new sense and
meaning after the referendum held in Montenegro.
Earlier, the problem of holding the self-determination referendum in
the Nagornyy Karabakh republic [NKR] was seen in the context of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations and the signing of a peace agreement
on their basis. It is natural that Azerbaijan is doing everything
possible to postpone the referendum.
But the recent events show that the world community should see the
referendum which will be held in the NKR through the prism of the
“Montenegro option”, i.e. it should not take Azerbaijan’s agreement as
a basis. When the leadership of Serbia recently spoke out against the
referendum in Montenegro, nobody listened to them. In doing so, the
entire Western community in the person of the OSCE Minsk Group member
countries – the USA and France – set a precedent according to which
the holding of a referendum does not depend on the principle of
“territorial integrity”. It is clear that in this new legal and
political reality, the terms and procedure of the referendum in
Karabakh become a subject not of the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks, but
of relations between the NKR leadership and people and mediator
states.

ECONOMISTS’ CLUB FUNCTIONS IN GAVAR STATE UNIVERSITY

GAVAR, MAY 25, NOYAN TAPAN. The first anniversary of the Economists’
Club of Gavar State University has been marked lately. The club was
founded with the efforts of the students of the Faculty of Economics
and University’s management. Founder-Rector of Gavar State University,
professor Hrant Hakobian, Dean of the Faculty of Economics Samvel
Amirkhanian and Deputy Dean Mariam Hergnian became honorable members
of the Economists’ Club. The club’s mission is to unite the students,
to give them additional information about innovations in the sphere of
economy, about issues relating to this or that sphere. Dean of the
Faculty of Economics Samvel Amirkhanian said in his interview to Noyan
Tapan correspondent that besides economic knowledge, the students
should also get acquainted with practical works and club members’
visits to many industrial enterprises are organized for this purpose.

EXTREMIST GANG IN RUSSIA DISMANTLED
New York Times
Indianapolis Star,IN
May 25 2006
Officials say arrests bring end to group accused of a series of
racially motivated killings
MOSCOW — The authorities in St. Petersburg announced Wednesday that
they had broken up an extremist group that had shocked Russia with a
string of racially motivated killings, including that of an African
student in April and of an expert on hate crimes nearly two years ago.
The authorities said they had recently arrested five members of the
loosely organized group. Two others appeared to have been arrested
earlier on separate charges, while an eighth was fatally shot as police
tried to arrest him May 18. The police seized weapons, explosives
and neo-Nazi literature in raids of the gang members’ apartments,
the authorities said.
Though charges have not been filed, the case amounted to a rare
judicial success in Russia’s fight against a deadly wave of racism
that has resulted in at least 48 killings across Russia in the past
18 months.
St. Petersburg’s prosecutor, Sergei P. Zaitsev, said the seven
young men in custody were members of a small extremist group with no
known name.
The group’s members are accused of killing Lamzar Samba, a 28-year-old
student from Senegal, who was shot in the neck as he left a nightclub
April 7.
Zaitsev accused the group of killing an Armenian and a Korean, as
well as two of its own members. He said the group was also involved
in the killing of Nikolai M. Girenko, a Russian anthropologist who
became an expert on neo-Nazis, skinheads and other extremist movements.

LE KARABAKH VEUT SUIVRE L’EXEMPLE DU MONTENEGRO
Agence France Presse
25 mai 2006 jeudi 1:44 PM GMT
Le territoire azerbaïdjanais du Nagorny Karabakh, contrôle par des
separatistes armeniens, a salue jeudi la separation du Montenegro
de la Serbie, esperant etre lui aussi reconnu comme Etat independant
par la communaute internationale.
“Le referendum au Montenegro a cree un precedent important. (…) Je
pense que nous avons toutes les raisons d’esperer etre reconnus (comme
Etat independant) par la communaute internationale”, a affirme le
“president” du Nagorny Karabakh, Arkadi Goukassian, en visite a Moscou.
“La republique du Nagorny Karabakh est independante et le restera,
independamment de ce que veut l’Azerbaïdjan”, a ajoute M. Goukassian,
cite par l’agence Ria Novosti.
Le Nagorny Karabakh, peuple de quelque 145.000 Armeniens, a fait
secession de l’Azerbaïdjan au terme d’un conflit arme qui a fait,
entre 1988 et 1994, quelque 25.000 morts et des centaines de milliers
de deplaces.
Un cessez-le-feu est intervenu en 1994 mais la situation reste tendue,
malgre des efforts de mediation de l’OSCE.
Le Montenegro a vote dimanche a 55,5% pour sa separation de la Serbie,
lors d’un referendum, un choix qui a marque le demantèlement definitif
de la Yougoslavie.
La separation du Montenegro pourrait ouvrir une “boîte de Pandore”
pour une myriade de mouvements independantistes en Europe et dans
l’ex-URSS, estiment les analystes.
Les independantistes du Pays basque (nord de l’Espagne) et de Catalogne
(nord-est), ainsi que la republique separatiste non reconnue de
Transdniestrie, en Moldavie, et celle d’Abkhazie, en Georgie, ont
exprime leur satisfaction après le referendum montenegrin, esperant
etre legitimes par un processus similaire.
–Boundary_(ID_d/CRkJyvrBEtkdtXLZlE/g) —

WHO DOES HISTORY BELONG TO IF NOT THE HISTORIANS?
By Semih Idiz
Turkish Press
May 25 2006
MILLIYET- I said earlier that the bill to criminalize denial of the
so-called Armenian genocide would be passed by France’s Parliament.
We can’t say that it didn’t pass. In other words, we can’t say that
common sense won. Observers believe that the bill will pass if it comes
to a vote. Now people say the bill will be brought to the agenda by
the end of this year.
The French Armenians aren’t satisfied with the situation either. They
would prefer for the bill to be passed in the General Assembly and
stay in legal procedures even if it’s not accepted. Armenian Deputy
Partick Deveciyan lashed out at French Foreign Minister Philippe
Douste-Blazy. In his speech in Parliament, Balazy pointed to France’s
important political and economic interests in its relations with Turkey
and said the bill should be rejected. Deveciyan branded Blazy’s request
“unethical.”
However, the French are concerned about their economy. Smart observers
know that foreign trade and foreign investment are very important
in their economy. In other word, they are aware that Blazy’s words
aren’t empty. If we come to ‘ethical’ Deveciyan, in light of the
French approach to Algeria, he is also aware that the bill isn’t at
all ethical. He’s already stated his views on history.
After being reminded how at least one leading French historian is
opposed to the bill, he said meaninglessly: ‘History isn’t the private
property of historians.’
Judging from the comments of French Armenians, this problem is
a political problem rather than a historical one. That’s why the
Armenians are against Turkey’ proposal for a commission of historians
which was also supported by Douste-Blazy. They try to base the problem
on demagogy. That’s why Turkey hast to stick to its proposal.
But Ankara isn’t doing much about this.
The fact that the Armenians didn’t reach their goals this time doesn’t
change the situation much, because there are third parties who want
to use this issue for their own interests.

ALGERIA SIDES WITH TURKEY ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ISSUE
PanARMENIAN.Net
25.05.2006 13:50 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Algeria sides with Turkey on many matters,
including the issue of the Armenian Genocide, Algerian President
Abdelaziz Bouteflika said yesterday at a meeting with Turkish PM
Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Bouteflika agrees with Turkey, which “proposes a joint study of
history by academics.”
The Prime Minister reportedly said a European Union decision to
reject Turkey’s possible membership would threaten global peace
and lead to a clash of civilizations, instead of an alliance of
civilizations. Erdogan said that the population living in Europe
is not only Christian, stressing that the EU cannot ignore Muslims
who constitute the second largest group in Europe. “If the EU is to
become a Christian club, it should announce this,” he said.
The Turkish PM noted that Turkey has always asked the EU a question:
What they expect from Turkey? “If the answer is integration we say
“yes” but if it is “assimilation” then our answer is “no.” We want an
understanding based on unity in numbers to come true,” Erdogan added,
reports Turkish Daily News.

STANCE OF UKRAINE CONCERNING TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF AZERBAIJAN STABLE
AzerTag, Azerbaijan
May 24 2006
President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko has declared, that his country
is ready to be one of participants of forming of plans of settlement of
“the frozen conflicts” in territory of the GUAM states. As informed,
Yushchenko has declared it on May 22 in Kiev after the meeting with
the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, answering the question of
the Azerbaijan journalists in connection with Nagorno Karabakh.
“We recognize that each such conflict demands personal plan. There
is no typical recommendation, there is no typical recipe – as,
shall admit, to resolve problem of Nagorno Karabakh, the problem
Pridnetsrovie, or the problem of Abkhazia. These are very personified
conflicts, and they should be considered exclusively proceeding
from the personal plan”, the head of Ukraine has declared. Having
reminded of the plan offered in due time by Ukraine on settlement
of the Pridnestrovie conflict, he has noted, that the given plan was
accepted both by the Moldavian Parliament and leaders of Pridnestrovie.
“Ukraine admits that each country, including the countries of GUAM,
require support concerning the declared sovereignty and the line of
borders which have been originally defined. We speak about firmness
of borders, about integrity of territories. It is a key component of
policy”, Yushchenko said. He added, that the given position concerns
not only to the GUAM countries, but also the world policy as a whole.
“Therefore, the stance of Ukraine concerning territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan is firm, and I can only confirm it”, Mr. Yushchenko stated.