Author: Babajanian Karo

ZAKIR HASANOV: WE ARE READY TO CRUSH THE ARMENIANS

Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijan
June 25, 2014 Wednesday

On the eve of the country’s Armed Forces Day, Defense Minister Zakir
Hasanov gave an interview to the state agency AzerTAG.

Referring to tensions on the front line, the minister said that
the reason for this is the continued occupation of the territory of
Azerbaijan by Armenia.

“Armenians fire on our positions, trying to carry out reconnaissance
and sabotage attacks, sniper fire at our civilians, damage farmland,”
he said.

Therefore, the enemy must be spoken in its own language, and we do it,
the enemy is losing and we take revenge for our martyrs. So it will
be after that,” said Hasanov.

The Minister further went on to open threats, noting that the Armed
Forces of Azerbaijan are ready to hit the territory of Armenia,

“We have every opportunity to hit any object and settlement on the
territory of Armenia. However, for the current situation the peaceful
Armenian population is not to blame and it constrains us,” said Hasanov

Speaking about the relationship of forces, the minister said that in
the last period of Azerbaijan’s military budget has increased by 20
times. “Military spending this year exceed the costs in 2013 by 7.1%.

At the same time, Armenia’s military expenditure in 2014 was 5.3
times smaller than our military budget. ”

The armaments acquired over the past 10 years created a serious
advantage at Azerbaijan. At the same time substantially developed
and strengthened the military-industrial complex of Azerbaijan.

Among modern armaments minister mentioned Smerch systems of various
modifications and variations, tactical missile complex Tochka-U,
artillery systems MSTA-S, TOS-1A, the newest T-90 tanks and others.

Serious work is being done in the direction of the training of
qualified military personnel and officers.

In conclusion, the Minister touched lighting military subjects in
the press, noting that in recent years in this direction have been
some changes. As an example, the minister called webpage Ministry of
Defense, which promptly publishes all materials.

He urged the media not to reveal military secrets, not to publish
rumors and unverified reports. -03D-

DISPUTE OVER GEORGIAN SECRETS

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
June 26 2014

26 June 2014 – 12:17pm

By Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for VK

The Georgian and Armenian foreign ministers have signed an agreement
on exchange and bilateral protection of secret information during the
recent visit of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to Tbilisi. The
agreement is confidential. In any case, any efforts by journalists
to find the document or learn what secrets the countries plan to
exchange have been fruitless.

Secrecy has only caused more curiosity. What makes the whole story
so unusual is the neglect of the opposition’s reaction. Georgian
ex-Minister for Defense Bachan Akhalaya, serving time in jail for
grave crimes, sent urgent letters to all the information agencies and
called the agreement treacherous. In his opinion, “NATO would close
its doors to Georgia” and the country would lose its chance to join
the Alliance or at least get a road map.

Nugzar Tsiklauri, an MP of the United National Movement (opposition),
noted: “NATO does not restrict Georgia in its right to have
confidential relations with neighbours. But when it is exchange of
secret information, natural questions arise. Armenia is considered
a strategic military and political ally of Russia in the Caucasus
Region. The CSTO is “an opponent” of NATO. I think that the overlap
of the topic of information exchange in the context of the renewal
of negotiations on reviving the railway through Abkhazia is not
a coincidence.

Thus, the foreign policy of Georgia under the current government
is becoming less predictable. On the one hand, the EU Association
Agreement is being signed, on the other, such agreements are signed,
and the true head of the government, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili,
says that he wants to take an example from the complementary policy
of Yerevan.

This is simply the infantilism of people who cannot understand what
is going on around. It is impossible to have good relations with
everyone. Eventually, you will ruin relations with everyone that way.”

Iosif Tsintsadze, the rector of the Diplomatic Academy, supposes:
“At first glance, it is a narrowly professional issue. There are
the first, second, third and fourth categories of secrecy. We are
unaware what exactly the foreign ministers of Georgia and Armenia
signed. But we need to bear in mind that secret information of any
category passed to Armenia will immediately be transmitted to its
allies. First of all, this is Russia. On the other hand, everything
Armenia passes to us will be spread around our allies. First of all,
the U.S. and other NATO countries.

Considering the well-known and “on-the-surface” circumstances,
I cannot understand the need for either Georgia or Armenia to sign
such an agreement.

We certainly need to support trade-economic and cultural ties with
Armenia, but why would our government suddenly decide to lift the
benchmark to a position as high as exchange of secret information? It
is like imagining a NATO member, Holland or Belgium, for example,
suddenly signing a similar agreement on exchange of information with,
let’s say the Czech Republic or Bulgaria, which were members of the
Warsaw Pact, in the 1970s. This is nonsense even in theory. We want
to join NATO, but Armenia is part of the Collective Security Treaty
led by Russia.

To be more realistic, Russia already knows all our secrets even without
any agreements, and NATO knows a lot about Russian secrets. So there is
nothing revolutionary here. Moreover, the fact that such an agreement
was signed by the foreign ministers seems all the more odd.

Only prime ministers and presidents are higher-ranking. It is peculiar,
to say the least, that an ally of our opponent becomes trusted.

Besides, the agreement may cause mayor annoyance in Azerbaijan. People
seem to ignore this and act as though the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh
and the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan does not exist.

At the least we may call this “diplomatic exoticism.” Have we already
resolved all disputes with Armenia about possession of churches and
so on and need to sign an agreement on exchange of secret information?”

According to Petre Mamradze, ex-head of the State Chancellery,
“Saakashvili, Akhalaya and others of that ilk are trying to blame
this for Georgia’s inability to join NATO. In reality, the doors to
the North-Atlantic Alliance were closed to Georgia forever after the
ex-president’s reckless military-political scheme in August 2008. U.S.

ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in her memoirs that
she had warned Saakashvili: if you start military actions, Georgia
will not see NATO for at least two generations. President Obama has
recently affirmed: Georgia does not stand on the path to NATO and we
will not be accepted regardless of the atmosphere.”

TURKISH FALSE FLAGS AND THE INVASION THAT ALMOST WAS

The People’s Voice
June 26 2014

June 26th, 2014
By David Boyajian

Turkey seems fond of so-called ‘false flag’ operations. In 1955,
for example, the Turkish government covertly bombed its own consulate
in Thessaloniki, Greece and blamed it on Greeks. The following day,
Turkey stage-managed massive anti-Greek riots in Istanbul that killed
over a dozen Christians and caused hundreds of millions in damage.

Fast forward to March 2014. A leaked audiotape caught Turkish officials
plotting to stage ‘false flag’ military attacks on their own territory
and blame them on Syrians. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu,
General YaÅ~_ar Gurel, and Intelligence chief Hakan Fidan planned
to use the attacks as an excuse to invade Syria. The title of this
article could easily apply to that plot.

To close observers of the Caucasus, however, it could also describe
a failed covert Turkish plan to attack Armenia two decades ago and
turn the geopolitics of the region upside down.

In October 1993, two years after the USSR had splintered, an ethnic
Chechen Muslim named Ruslan Khasbulatov – the Speaker, believe it
or not, of the Russian Parliament – led a coup against beleaguered
Russian President Boris Yeltsin. According to American, French, and
Greek officials, Khasbulatov and Muslim Turkey had a secret agreement.

If his coup succeeded, Khasbulatov would order Russian troops to
withdraw from Armenia, where they helped guard the latter’s border with
Turkey. That would pave the way for Turkey to invade the landlocked
Christian nation of just three million inhabitants.

History tells us that Turkey has always wanted to overrun Armenia.

Doing so would create a path to Turkic-speaking Muslim Azerbaijan, the
Caspian Sea, and, eventually, Central Asia. It’s called pan-Turkism.

In 1993, of course, Azerbaijan was losing its war with Armenians over
the ancient, majority-Armenian province of Karabagh. Azerbaijan was,
therefore, eager for Turkey to attack Armenia, and Turkey was ready
to help Azerbaijan turn the tide.

The Plot Fails

Harkening back to the Armenian genocide, Turkish President Turgut Ozal
had threatened to teach Armenia “the lessons of 1915.” Tansu Ciller,
Turkey’s prime minister, warned Armenia that she wouldn’t “sit back
and do nothing.” Turkey was massing forces on Armenia’s western
border and supplying Azerbaijan with weapons, military advisors,
and paramilitary forces. Chechen militants and Afghan Mujahideen were
already fighting alongside Azeris.

A successful Turkish attack on Armenia – Russia’s only military
partner in the Caucasus – would have all but destroyed Russian
influence in the region. That, in turn, would have increased the
likelihood that Chechnya, and much of the Muslim North Caucasus,
would eventually escape the Russian Bear’s grip. For a native-born
Chechen like Khasbulatov, it would all be a dream-come-true.

But bombarded by Russian tanks, Speaker Khasbulatov, V.P. Alexander
Rutskoi, and hundreds of rebel parliamentarians and supporters
surrendered the Parliament building on October 4, 1993. The coup and
the plot to invade Armenia had failed.

The Secret Pact

The Khasbulatov-Turkish pact was first revealed by Leonidas T.

Chrysanthopoulos in his book Caucasus Chronicles (London: Gomidas,
2002). He was Greece’s ambassador to Armenia from July 1993 to February
1994. Chrysanthopoulos, now 68, has served as ambassador to Canada
and Poland, and was recently Secretary General of the 12-country,
Istanbul-based Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization.

France’s ambassador to Armenia, Mme. France de Harthing, told him that
“French intelligence sources” confirmed that “the Turkish incursion
into Armenia would take place immediately after Khasbulatov would
have withdrawn the Russian troops from Armenia.” “This information,”
wrote Chrysanthopoulos, “was later confirmed to me by my United States
colleague,” Ambassador Harry J. Gilmore.

As a “pretext,” Turkey would claim to be targeting Kurdish PKK militant
bases, which in fact have never existed, in Armenia. Such a “pretext”
is similar, though not identical, to a ‘false flag.’

The Turkish strike would be “incursions of a limited nature,” though
it’s unclear what “limited” meant. More likely, as Turkey wouldn’t
find any PKK, the aim was to forge a permanent corridor across Armenia,
link up with Azeri forces, and cleanse Karabagh of Armenians.

The U.S. and France have never, as far as is known, publicly denied the
existence of the Khasbulatov-Turkish plot. Moreover, Chrysanthopoulos
gives no indication that any country tried to talk Turkey out of its
deal with Khasbulatov.

Is any of this relevant today?

NATO Ambitions

Yes, because current Turkish, American, and NATO policies in the
Caucasus strongly echo the 1993 Khasbulatov-Turkish plot. For two
decades, the West has been trying to penetrate and dominate the
Caucasus – Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia -and eventually cross
the Caspian Sea into energy-rich Central Asia.

One piece of the plan has already been partially implemented:
constructing oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan through Georgia
and Turkey.

NATO’s remaining goal: absorb the entire Caucasus. NATO would thereby
threaten Russia from the south, just as it now pressures Russia
from the west with its absorption of much of Eastern Europe (and,
NATO hopes, Ukraine).

Georgia and Azerbaijan are inclined to eventually join NATO. Armenia,
however, is not, though it has excellent relations with NATO and the
West. Armenia has little choice but to ally itself with Russia because
the former faces an ongoing existential threat from NATO member Turkey,
the 1993 plot being one example.

Armenia is the Caucasus’s linchpin. Had the Khasbulatov – Turkish
quasi-‘false flag’ operation against Armenia succeeded, Russia would
probably have lost, and NATO would have gained, the entire Caucasus.

New provocations, including ‘false flags,’ by Turkey and NATO cannot,
therefore, be ruled out.

Turkish, American, and NATO leaders must also be interrogated as to
whether their policies in the Caucasus are leading to peace or war.

-###-

The author is a freelance journalist. Many of his articles are archived
at Armeniapedia.org

ARMENIA’S CENTRAL BANK CUTS REFINANCING RATE TO SEVEN PERCENT

CISTran Finance
June 26 2014

June 26, 2014 7:30 AM
By Lisa Barron

The Central Bank of Armenia lowered its key refinancing rate to seven
percent, down 0.25 percentage points, on Tuesday.

The central bank reported deflation of 0.8 percent in May, bringing
the 12-month inflation rate at the end of the month to 3.6 percent. It
said the inflationary environment will continue to weaken in the next
months as the impact of higher energy tariffs that came into effect
last July is eliminated, ARKA reports.

The bank also said that growth in the first half of this year is
within its projected range, with higher-than expected expansion in
the agriculture and service sectors making up for weak performance
in the industrial and construction sectors.

“In this situation, the Central Bank considers it expedient to continue
easing of monetary conditions by lowering the refinancing rate,”
the central bank said, according to ARKA.

The bank last lowered its refinancing rate by 0.25 percentage points
on May 13.

POLICE ATTACK JOURNALISTS IN ARMENIA

Reporters Without Borders
June 26 2014

Published on Thursday 26 June 2014.

Reporters Without Borders is very concerned about the police violence
against journalists who were waiting with around 60 other people
outside a police station in the Yerevan district of Kentron on 23
June for the release of protesters arrested earlier in the day.

First, the police told the journalists to stand back on the grounds
that they were obstructing the work of the police. Then they formed a
line and kicked the feet of the journalists, who just wanted to cover
the imminent release of those arrested while protesting against an
increase in the price of natural gas.

Journalist Ani Gervorgyan was slapped by a policeman she recognized as
the one who had tried to confiscate her camera on 12 February. Another
journalist, Arpi Makhsudyan, was hit while filming with her mobile
phone and was forced to stop. Gala TV cameraman Paylak Fahradyan was
physically attacked and his laptop was smashed.

“We firmly condemn the police violence against journalists who were
just doing their job in a law-abiding manner,” said Johann Bihr,
the head of the Reporters Without Borders Eastern Europe and Central
Asia Desk. “The actions of the police must not be unpunished or else
their violent behaviour will recur and could become the norm. The
policemen who attacked the journalists must be brought to justice.”

A total of 27 people were arrested earlier in the day when police
used violence to disperse a demonstration outside the Public Services
Regulation Commission in protest against a proposed increase in
gas prices by the joint Russian and Armenian state-owned company
ArmRosGazprom.

Those arrested were accused under article 182 of the civil code of
“disobeying a legitimate order from the police.”

Armenia is ranked 78th out of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters
Without Borders press freedom index.

,46537.html

ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST ANCIENT CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IS ABOUT TO VANISH FOREVER

The Week
June 26 2014

Threatened by ISIS, Mosul’s Christians say goodbye

By Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy |

I’ve been reading the headlines from northern Iraq over the past two
weeks with an intensifying sense of dread. It’s a feeling very much
like the one I have whenever I read about the disappearance of some
huge ice sheet in the Antarctic or the extinction of yet another rare
species of animal. It’s the feeling that one more valuable ingredient
of life on Earth is about to vanish, in all likelihood, forever.

The takeover of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, by the jihadist
troops of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is a catastrophe
for the people of Iraq, who now face a revival of full-blown sectarian
warfare, and a strategic and psychological nightmare for the United
States, which sacrificed vast amounts of blood and treasure to topple
Saddam Hussein and build a viable government — the latter, it would
seem, in vain.

But over the past few days I’ve found myself mourning a more specific
disaster: the flight and dispersal of the last remnants of Iraq’s
once-proud community of Christians. Emil Shimoun Nona, the archbishop
of the Chaldean Catholics of Mosul, has told news agencies that the
few Christians remaining in the city prior to the ISIS invasion have
abandoned the city. Since the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, he
estimates, Mosul’s Christian population dwindled from 35,000 to some
3,000. “Now there is no one left,” he said. Most of them have joined
the estimated 500,000 refugees who have fled the ISIS advance; many of
the Christians, including the archbishop, have opted for the relative
security of Iraqi Kurdistan. (The photo above shows girls praying in
the Church of the Virgin Mary in Bartala, a town to the east of Mosul.)

(More from Foreign Policy: Why Hillary Clinton’s greatest foreign
policy “success” isn’t the win her new book claims)

The exodus has been triggered, above all, by the jihadists’ reputation
for bloodlust — a reputation that ISIS has consciously furthered
through its own propaganda. A few days ago, the jihadists used social
media to distribute photos supporting their claim that they had killed
1,700 Shiite prisoners taken during their rapid offensive. No sooner
had ISIS entered Mosul than some of their fighters set fire to an
Armenian church. This all seems consistent with the group’s grim
record during the civil war in Syria, where, among other things,
it has revived medieval Islamic restrictions on Christian populations.

(It’s their fear of Islamist rebels that has tended to align the
Syrian Christian community with the secular regime of Bashar al-Assad.)

In 2003, it was estimated that some 1.5 million Iraqis were Christians,
about 5 percent of the population. Since then, the overwhelming
majority has reacted to widening sectarian conflict and a series
of terrorist attacks by leaving the country. (Archbishop Nona’s
predecessor, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was kidnapped and killed outside his
Mosul church back in 2008.) Almost all of the various Iraqi Christian
communities — the Chaldeans (who are part of the Roman Catholic
Church), the Armenians, the Syriac Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox —
have benefited from large emigre contingents around the world who
have welcomed refugees from Iraq.

(More from Foreign Policy: Not so happy in Iran)

I’m glad that these believers have saved themselves and their faith,
but their emigration comes at a cost — as they themselves are only
too aware. For the past 2,000 years, Iraq has been home to a distinct
and vibrant culture of Eastern Christianity. Now that storied history
appears to be coming to an end. Even if the ISIS forces are ultimately
driven back, it’s hard to imagine that the Mosul Christians who
have fled will see a future for themselves in an Iraq dominated by
the current Shiite dictatorship of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
which enjoys strong support from Iran.

June 15, 2014: Iraqis attend mass in Alqosh, a small village 30 miles
from Mosul. Many Christian families have fled to the town. | (AP Photo)

It’s worth adding, perhaps, that Christians aren’t the only ones in
this predicament. Iraq is also home to a number of other religious
minorities endangered by the country’s polarization into two warring
camps of Islam. The Yazidis follow a belief system that has a lot in
common with the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism; about a
half a million of them live in northern Iraq. The Mandaeans, numbering
only 30,000 or so, are perhaps the world’s last remaining adherents of
Gnosticism, one of the offshoots of early Christianity. By tradition
many Mandaeans are goldsmiths — a trade that has made them prominent
targets for abduction in the post-invasion anarchy of Iraq. Losing
these unique cultures makes the world a poorer place.

(More from Foreign Policy: ‘Girls, stop what you’re doing or die’)

In the fall of 2003, when I was on assignment in Iraq, I had a
chance to travel to Mosul. It was a fateful moment for the U.S.-led
occupation, then just a few months old. I interviewed Gen. David
Petraeus, the commander of the American forces in the city and its
surrounding region. The insurgency that had already flared into life
in other parts of the country was only just reaching Mosul; while I
was there, several American soldiers were attacked by an angry mob
and killed — a harbinger of long years of violence to come.

But I soon discovered that there was a lot more to Mosul than the
headlines. The citizens of Mosul I met welcomed me with a spontaneous
hospitality that I hadn’t really experienced in the Iraqi capital.

This may have had something to do with the fact that Baghdad, the
heart of Saddam Hussein’s brutal Baathist state, retained little
palpable sense of its rich historical past. Baghdad had an almost
Soviet soullessness — the vast tracts of ugly prefab housing wouldn’t
have looked out of place in Warsaw or Beijing. Mosul, by contrast,
still retained its character as an Ottoman trade route city, a place
both scruffy and intimate. And it was enlivened by a proud sense of
its own diversity: You never knew whether the next person you were
going to meet was a Sunni or a Shiite, a Kurd or a Christian.

The Christians were especially fascinating — above all, because it
was hard to escape the sense that you were witnessing the practice of
traditions you weren’t going to find anywhere else. Some of Mosul’s
Christians answer to Rome; some follow various Orthodox patriarchs;
and some, like the members of the Ancient Church of the East, are
beholden to no authority but their own. There are Christians in and
around Mosul who still speak Aramaic, the language of Christ.

I found myself admiring the interior of the Syrian Orthodox Church of
Mar Toma (St. Thomas), brilliantly lit by long strings of light bulbs.

The parishioners were especially proud of their big display Bible
in the ancient tongue of Syriac, whose elaborate calligraphy adorned
surfaces in many parts of the building. (The church is also home to
a set of rare manuscripts in Syriac and Garshuni, a dialect of Arabic
used by medieval Christians.) No one actually knows how old the church
is, but it dates back at least to the eighth century. I also paid a
visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral, the seat of the Chaldean Christians’
archbishop, a stolid stone building that looked as though it could
withstand any attack. A year later it was bombed by jihadi insurgents,
badly damaging the structure.

For what it’s worth, the city’s long history of peaceful coexistence
doesn’t seem to be completely dead. Archbishop Nona has told of Muslims
in Mosul banding together to guard the city’s churches from looting,
and other reports from Mosul suggest that the Islamists are trying
to assuage the fears of religious minorities in the city.

But the Christians of northern Iraq can hardly be blamed if they’re
unwilling to bank on these faint glimmers of hope — the jihadists’
record speaks too eloquently against them. Back in 2003, there was
little inkling of the disaster that was about to befall Iraq’s
Christians. Today, there seems to be little that can be done to
reverse it.

ABKHAZIAN LINK: EXPERTS IN YEREVAN DISCUSS PROSPECTS OF STRATEGIC RAILWAY’S REOPERATION

ECONOMY | 26.06.14 | 11:14

Photo:

Gohar Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow reporter

The prospect of the reopening of the currently disused railway
connecting Armenia with the outside world seems realistic to some in
Yerevan, but others believe the re-operation of the Abkhazian section
of the Trans-Caucasus rail has no prospect for now.

The section of the railway was closed in 1993 as a result of the
Georgian-Abkhazian war and it became one of the factors that added to
Armenia’s economic blockade. Speculation about a possible reoperation
of the link became more active last week as Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan paid a visit to Georgia.

Before traveling to Tbilisi, Sargsyan also met with Russian Railways
Company head Vladimir Yakunin, who recommended that Armenia focus on
the Abkhazian railway. But little of the matter seems to have been
discussed during the Armenian leader’s visit to Georgia.

Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute Director Alexander Iskandaryan
thinks that there are so many unresolved problems connected with the
reopening of this railway section that at least in the near future
it will be impossible to solve the matter.

“Technically, it is almost impossible. There are thousands of problems
involved. Cargo security is one of them. Suppose your cargo gets lost
in Armenia, Georgia or Russia. In that case you know whom to contact.

And what would you do if your cargo were lost in Abkhazia, in the
territory of an unrecognized state? What would the reaction of Georgia
be in such situations? Where will the Georgian-Abkhazian customs
checkpoint be situated? One can talk about such issues for hours.

There are enormous difficulties involved – a lack of true desire
from the Georgian and Abkhazian sides,” Iskandaryan said at a press
conference on Wednesday, adding that the Abkhazian railway is a
necessity only for Armenia.

Meanwhile, expert on Georgia Johnny Melikyan considers the reopening
of the railway realistic and thinks that it is beneficial not only
to Armenia, but to Georgia and Abkhazia as well.

Mass protests demanding the resignation of President Alexander Ankvab
began in Abkhazia in late May. Eventually, the Ankvab government
fell and forces advocating closer ties with Russia came to power
in Abkhazia. According to Melikyan, the new authorities in Sukhumi
acknowledge Russian assistance, but they also think that Abkhazia
should develop its own economy.

“There was speculation also connected with the Abkhazian railway,
which would also provide them with money for transit. And we can say
today that the Abkhazian side is more constructive in this matter,
the Georgian side is already discussing it, the main issue is Russia’s
readiness, and at the moment there are conditions when due to serious
lobbying activities one can get the discussions started in some new
format,” Melikyan told ArmeniaNow.

He added that if all parties are constructive, the likelihood of the
re-opening of the Abkhazian railway will be higher. “I think that
the Armenian side is using these opportunities and during his most
recent visit to Georgia this matter perhaps was discussed, but they
did not speak loudly about it because neighboring Azerbaijan is not
interested in Armenia’s overrunning the blockade,” the expert said.

EL MUSEO SOBRE EL GENOCIDIO ARMENIO ABRIRA EN 2015

Clarin, Argentina
16 junio 2014

El Gobierno porteño cedio el terreno Estara en Palermo, un barrio con
fuerte presencia de la comunidad, para conmemorar la matanza entre
1915 y 1923.

El primer Museo porteño sobre el genocidio armenio sera construido
en Gurruchaga y Jufre y se estima que se inaugurara el proximo año,
al conmemorarse el centenario de la matanza de un millon y medio de
personas. Ayer, en un acto que se realizo en el Centro Armenio, el
jefe de Gobierno porteño, Mauricio Macri, entrego la llave simbolica
de un predio que cedio la Ciudad y en el que se hara la obra.

La cesion había sido anunciada en mayo por el Ejecutivo y recibida
con satisfaccion por las distintas agrupaciones. Carlos Manoukian,
responsable de Asuntos Culturales y prensa del Centro Armenio en
Argentina, resalto que “se empezara a trabajar para desarrollar un
lugar muy importante para la difusion y el conocimiento masivo de
los tragicos hechos”, y adelanto que “sera un lugar abierto para todo
público en donde se exhibiran objetos historicos y otros elementos que
se traeran directamente desde el museo de Armenia, ubicado en Erevan”.

El predio había sido pedido años atras y ademas de objetos valiosos
tambien tendra documentacion original de la epoca y hasta una
biblioteca. Para eso, ya se puso en marcha un concurso de ideas y se
abrio una convocatoria para que todos los miembros de la comunidad
que tengan elementos que crean que pueden ser expuestos (imagenes,
documentacion, libros) puedan colaborar.

Tambien llamado holocausto armenio, el genocidio comenzo el 24 de
abril de 1915, cuando el Imperio Otomano detuvo a 235 armenios en
Estambul. Se estima que hasta 1923 hubo entre 1,5 y 2 millones de
personas asesinadas.

ESTEGHLAL COMPLETES SIGNING OF MEHRDAD KARIMIAN

Tasnim News Agency, Iran
June 25 2014

June 25, 2014 – 16:12

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Esteghlal football club announced the signing
of Tractor Sazi midfielder Mehdi Karimian.

Karimian joined Esteghlal on a one-year contract for an undisclosed
fee.

Esteghlal is going to strengthen its team for the 14th edition of
the Iranian Professional League which will kick off from August 1.

Esteghlal has already signed Armenian defender Hrayr Mkoyan, Sepahan
midfielder Omid Ebrahimi, Tractor Sazi winger Milad Fakhreddini and
Sajjad Shahbazzadeh from Saipa.

FEDERATION COUNCIL RATIFIES TREATY ON MILITARY-TECHNICAL COOPERATION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND ARMENIA

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
June 25 2014

25 June 2014 – 4:17pm

The Federation Council ratified today a treaty between Russia and
Armenia on the development of military-technical cooperation.

According to the treaty, the delivery of military products will be
carried out under contracts concluded between authorized organizations
of the parties, without the issuance of import or exort licenses,
ITAR-TASS reports.