Author: Baghdasarian Karlen

ARMENIAN MP: “ARMENIA HAS NEITHER WILL NOR POWER TO GO TO WAR”

APA, Azerbaijan
June 18 2014

PHOTOSESSION

[ 18 Juny 2014 13:05 ]

Koryun Nagapetyan: “I humbly ask you. We have come here to avoid war”

Baku. Mubariz Aslanov – APA. Head of the Armenian delegation Koryun
Nagapetyan addressed the Azerbaijani side at the 86th NATO PA Rose-Roth
seminar titled “The South Caucasus: Challenges and Opportunities”
in Baku.

APA reports that Koryun Nagapetyan asked the Azerbaijani delegation
not to call Armenians aggressors in all cases. “I humbly ask you. We
have come here to avoid war. We don’t want war. Armenia has neither
will nor power to go to war”, he said.

The Armenian MP expressed desire to find a common language with
Azerbaijan in all cases. The moderator urged the Armenian MP to return
the topic. Stopping his speech, he held a short consultation with
members of the Armenian delegation. Then another Armenian MP Tevan
Pogosyan approached the moderator Ojars Eriks Kalnins and had a talk
with him. Kalnins conveyed the request of the Armenian delegation not
to call them occupiers or accept its position as accusation against
Azerbaijan. He explained that the Armenian delegation have no claims
against Azerbaijan. Kalnins said the members of the Armenian delegation
are ready to make a statement in this regard”.

From: Baghdasarian

ZIYAFAT ASGAROV: “THE ARMENIANS CAME TO BAKU FOR PROVOCATION”

APA, Azerbaijan
June 18 2014

[ 18 Juny 2014 19:14 ]

“They wanted to commit provocation against Azerbaijan during the
seminar acting in concert with Leyla Yunus”

Baku. Mubariz Aslanov – APA. First Vice-Speaker of the Azerbaijani
Parliament, Chairman of the Committee on Security and Defense issues,
Head of the Azerbaijani Delegation to the NATO PA Ziyafat Asgarov’s
interview to APA

– Mr. Ziyafat, the next NATO PA Rose Roth seminar ended. What were
the expectations and what is the final result?

– We had special expectations from this seminar. The program included
the topics reflecting those expectations. As we expected, the conflict
between Armenia and Azerbaijan was discussed at a special session and
the European parliamentarians were informed about the situation once
again. The issue was opened and discussed. Moreover, the importance of
Azerbaijan for Europe was the main focus of attention as we expected.

Because the issue on provision of Azerbaijan with hydrocarbon reserves
is very important for the Euro-Atlantic region. The other issue was
related to the situation in the region. I think we have achieved our
expectations. The seminar reached a conclusion and was successful. We
delivered our message.

– The Armenian delegation also attended the seminar. How did they
behave? And what can we expect from them after leaving here?

– You know, the Armenians came here on a provocative purpose. That’s
unequivocal. For this purpose, they even went against the program of
the seminar. They were frequently dropping a hint about Azerbaijan,
tyring to vilify it in subjects related or unrelated to Azerbaijan,
without even waiting for their turn. On the other hand, the Leyla
Yunus factor was part of their plans. They, together with Leyla Yunus,
tried to do something here by creating a show, but it was prevented.

– Are you suggesting they have planned it in advance together with
Leyla Yunus?

– Let there be no doubt about it! They have had a private talk
beforehand, there are lots of facts. They were conjointly trying
to commit a provocation against Azerbaijan, but it was prevented
successfully. Even the administration of the seminar politely explained
to Leyla Yunus that it isn’t a right place for a political meeting for
her. This is a NATO event. So she’s been invited to attend and make
her speech in a civilized way. She can freely convey her ideas about
the issues on the agenda. Let me tell you about another interesting
fact: Azerbaijan hosted this Rose-Roth seminar in 2004 and 2008,
but none of them was attended by the Armenians at those times.

So why did they come this time? They were able to come at that time,
too. At the same time, when we come together at same international
events in foreign countries, theese Armenians often don’t talk at all,
or make a very little speech. But they tried to be more active here.

This was part of a huge provocation. Leyla Yunus was waiting for
them in Baku for support. But they failed. They achived nothing. The
Seminar got through at a very high level. All top isues on the agenda
were successfully discussed.

From: Baghdasarian

ANOTHER PROVOCATION AGAINST AZERBAIJAN ON GOOGLE MAPS

Trend, Azerbaijan
June 19 2014

Baku, Azerbaijan, June 19
By Ilhame Isabalayeva – Trend:

Azerbaijan’s occupied lands have been shown on Google Maps (a service
from Google) in the Armenian language as territories of the so-called
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

Starting from June 18, the names of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s
other occupied lands have been shown on Google Maps in Armenian as the
territories of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the Seismic
Service Center at Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) said.

The ANAS Seismic Service Center, as the seismological centers in other
countries, uses Google Maps in its work, and such provocations against
Azerbaijan by Google cause great concern and are strongly condemned,
according to a message posted on the seismic service center’s website.

It was also noted that this is not the first provocation on the part
of Google.

Such things happened before, and after persistent requests from the
Seismic Service Center the names of Azerbaijani territories in the
Armenian language were taken out from the Google Maps.

“With regret, we would like to say that such provocative acts are
periodically taking place on the part of Google,” according to the
message.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied
20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and
seven surrounding districts.

The two countries 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: Baghdasarian

TWO ANGLICAN CHURCH CELEBRATIONS IN TURKEY

Anglican Communion News Service
June 18 2014

>From the Diocese in Europe website

Canon John Higgins reports on two stories reflecting life in the
church in Ankara in recent weeks.

“Recently we experienced a demonstration of a historic moment in
the strengthening of links between our own Church of England and the
Armenian Apostolic Church. To my absolute surprise and delight, I was
invited by Bishop Hovakim, Director for Inter Church Relations of the
Armenian Apostolic Church, to preside at an ecumenical celebration of
the Eucharist for the Feast of the Ascension. The service was held in
Bishop Hovakim’s home diocese in the north of Armenia, in a monastery
church in Harichavank.

“Present at the service were representatives of the Armenian Apostolic
Church, including seminarians who are studying at Harichavank,
plus members of the Anglican Congregation in Armenia bolstered by
a visiting tourist group from the UK that was led by Canon William
Taylor from the Diocese of London.

“This is a possible first in the history of inter church fellowship
in Armenia, and provided a powerful symbol of unity as we celebrated
together the Ascension of our Lord.”

Canon Higgins also tells us; “Having kept the Feast of the Ascension
on Ascension Day we transferred the Feast of the Visitation to the
Sunday following to allow a ‘women and girls’ centred liturgy to
complement our December patronal Boy-Bishop liturgy.

“With a script based on the Visitation Gospel by Kate Redden,
translation by Fr Ebrahim into Farsi, and costumes by Whitney Wiggs,
with Olivia Bishop playing Elizabeth and acting as narrator, Sadef
Abdolvand playing Mary, and Rosalynn Ay playing Gabriel. Also,
with neither Olivia speaking Farsi nor Sadef English, the drama,
which replaced the Gospel and sermon, wove seamlessly between Farsi
and English, though the congregation of well over 60 had the text in
both languages.”

From: Baghdasarian

LADIES SOCIETY SUPPORTS ARMENIAN CHURCH

Thousand Oaks Acorn
June 18 2014

The Armenian Apostolic Church of Ventura County invites all interested
women of the community to join the newly formed Ladies’ Society.

Established on June 8, the Ladies’ Society supports the mission of
the Armenian church in Thousand Oaks, which meets at St. Patrick’s
Episcopal Church.

The organization promotes the history, culture and traditions of the
church and its people; cultivates Christian virtues; and practices
the teachings, doctrines and rites of the Armenian church.

The group’s activities include fundraising to support the church.

The next society meeting will be at 2:30 p.m. Sun., June 22 at St.

Patrick’s Episcopal Church, One Church Road, Thousand Oaks.

In addition, the Divine Liturgy is held at 12:15 p.m. every second and
fourth Sunday of the month. Archpriest Father Arshag Khatchadourian
is the presiding visiting priest.

For more information, call Trisha Adrian at (805) 551-5780 or Nora
Sahagian at (805) 379-5928.

From: Baghdasarian

ASSYRIANS AND CHRISTIANS UNDER ATTACK IN IRAQ AND SYRIA

Assyrian International News Agency, AINA
June 19 2014

By Stephen Starr

Posted 2014-06-19 06:28 GMT

With extremists battling for control of Iraq’s largest oilfield on
Tuesday, upping the stakes in a burgeoning war against the central
government in Baghdad, Iraq’s Christians once again find themselves
at risk.

Over the past 10 days, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), also
known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a fundamentalism
jihadist group, has streamed across the Nineveh plains of northern
Iraq from its bases in eastern Syria, capturing a line of towns and
cities, including several with large Assyrian and Chaldean Christian
populations.

Some 160 Christian families have fled Mosul, Iraq’s second largest
city, for Christian-inhabited towns and villages in northern Iraq
over the past week, according to Associated Press.

Hundreds more have left seeking safety in the autonomous Kurdish region
to the east. Mosul was home to about 130,000 Christians before the
US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq and following last week’s Isis takeover,
is reported to be almost empty of Christian families.

Assyrians are one of the oldest indigenous communities in the region.

Their roots in what is today northern Iraq and eastern Syria go back
over 2,000 years, with the latter stages of that history increasingly
marred by bloodshed.

During the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as the first World War
unfolded, about 750,000 Assyrians were killed as part of the broader
slaughter of Christian Armenians and Greeks in modern-day Syria,
Iraq and Turkey.

Then in 1933, about 3,000 Assyrian Christians were killed by Iraqi
soldiers and Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Sumel, leading to
mass migration across the border to Syria.

Hellish time

More recently, Christians in Iraq have experienced a hellish time. On
Christmas Day last year, 37 people were killed in a series of car
bomb attacks close to churches in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The wave of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations following the
2003 invasion saw many of the city’s Christians flee to northern Iraq
where they have lived in relative safety, until now. As a result,
Iraq’s Christian community is today thought to number just 40 per cent
of its pre-2003 figure, and today, in the face of the Isis assault,
is on the move again.

“Each day we went to bed in fear . . . In our own houses we knew no
rest,” a Christian woman from Alqosh in northern Iraq told reporters,
speaking of the threat from jihadists.

The danger to Christians in northern Iraq appears not only in the
form of jihadists. With Isis viewed as likely to encounter difficulty
in holding on to territory in the face of an impending fight-back
from better-equipped government forces, a long-standing threat to
the slivers of territory in northern Iraq inhabited by Christians
has appeared.

Kurdish militias

According to the Assyrian International News Agency, a total of 14
Assyrian towns and villages in the north have in the past week fallen
under the control of Kurdish militias.

Iraq’s Kurds have their own designs of expanding territorial control
across the north, including to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk which
Kurdish peshmerga control since late last week.

The peace and stability enjoyed in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous
region in the north of the country and home to the country’s five
million Kurds, has proved a rare bright spot in Iraq’s recent history.

“The Kurds control now most of the disputed territories,” said Wladimir
Van Wilgenburg, a columnist with Al Monitor and an expert on Kurdish
affairs. “They now almost have their national desired borders, only
in Diyala [province] there is still a border with the Iraqi army,
the rest of the 1,000km is with the Isis.”

Syrian threat In Isis-controlled eastern Syria, Christians have fared
little better. Last March, the jihadist group announced Christians
there must convert to Islam, pay a tax or face death. Churches have
been damaged and crosses, paintings and statues burned in Raqqa,
a city in Syria’s east. Several Syrian and foreign priests have been
kidnapped and killed by jihadists in Syria over the past three years.

But Christians are preparing to fight back. Their militias today
form an important cog in the Syrian regime’s fighting force in the
shape of National Defence Forces — groups of civilians armed by the
Syrian regime.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has called on civilians to take
up arms and fight against Isis; reports say about 600 Christians in
the town of Bartella, 20km from Isis-controlled Mosul, are defending
their homes with machine guns and other light weapons.

With the US and other Western governments slow to become involved in
another Iraq quagmire, the threat to Christians and other minorities
is set to mount.

From: Baghdasarian

HOLLANDE’S PROPOSAL OF NEW ALIYEV-SARGSIAN MEETING NEEDS TO BE MORE SPECIFIC – AZERI FOREIGN MINISTER

Interfax, Russia
June 18 2014

Baku is expecting Paris to be more specific about French President
Francois Hollande’s initiative to organize a new meeting between the
presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsian,
respectively.

“Such a proposal from the French, from President Hollande, has already
arrived, and we are now waiting for more details from the French
regarding the organizing of this meeting,” Azeri Foreign Minister
Elmar Mammadyaros said at a briefing held jointly with his Russian
counterpart Sergei Lavrov after bilateral talks in Baku on Wednesday.

The minister said he had nothing more to say on the subject as Baku
was now expecting steps from the French.

With regard to the Wednesday talks with Russian Foreign Minister
Lavrov, Mammadyarov said that the Karabakh conflict was among the
subjects of discussion. “We discussed what to do to move the talks over
Nagorno Karabakh from the deadlock, as a status quo is unacceptable,”
he said.

From: Baghdasarian

GOOGLE MAP PRESENTS NKR ‘ARTSAKH REPUBLIC’: AZERBAIJAN UNHAPPY

13:01 19.06.2014

Azerbaijan is unhappy with the fact that Google maps present Artsakh
as the Nagorno Karabakh Artsakh Republic from June 18 and indicates
the names of all settlements in the Armenian alphabet.

The Republic Seismological Service Center under Azerbaijan National
Academy of Sciences (ANAS) has told APA about the fact.

The Republic Seismological Service Center, which uses its Google
maps on its official website like other countries’ seismological
organizations, assesses the fact as “provocation.”

From: Baghdasarian

HOW IS ARMENIA GOING TO STRIKE PIPELINES?

Hakob Badalyan, Political Commentator
Comments – Thursday, 19 June 2014, 12:11

NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Rose-Roth seminar discussed security
of energy projects. The issue was brought up by Azerbaijan which
inquired whether NATO will defend energy projects, pipelines if
Armenia strikes them. Novruzov of the Azerbaijani delegation asked
NATO officials whether NATO will protect the pipelines if Russia
threatens them through its partner Armenia.

Baku is actually playing a double game. On the one hand, it is
discussing the division of Artsakh with Russia through a prospective
war. On the other hand, it is trying to get guarantees of security
of pipelines from NATO. No doubt Moscow has passed the issue of these
guarantees to Azerbaijan. For the Kremlin, the security of pipelines
is a chance of legitimization of the Caucasian war.

During the seminar, deputy representative of NATO PA Mediterranean
and Middle East Special Group Paolo Alli called Armenians to be
careful with their statements, Radio Liberty informed, referring to
the Azerbaijani press.

Earlier, the head of the Armenian delegation, Republican Koryun
Nahapetyan had stated in response to Azerbaijan’s motions that the
energy projects will be threatened if Armenia is left out of them.

It is hard to tell how weighted the opinion of the deputy
representative of NATO PA GSM Paolo Alli is and whether it is an
official position, but he has stated that as long as Azerbaijan is
not a NATO member, it cannot have a direct participation in provision
of the security of pipelines. Although, Alli said, transportation
of carbohydrates is important to them, and they will focus on their
security.

In fact, Azerbaijan has not been refused provision of security of
pipelines, which may indicate directly some probability of military
actions. Interestingly, Serzh Sargsyan gave an interview to the Public
Television and announced that Armenia is getting armed but does not
say it out loud. Why has Serzh Sargsyan announced about it now during
the visit of the Russian foreign minister Lavrov to Baku before his
visit to Georgia along with the NATO seminar.

The response of the NATO functionary indicates that the issue of
activation of military actions is at least possible to discuss.

Armenia’s threats to hit the pipelines are at least losing their
urgency. Yerevan mistakenly believes that Russia will be its ally
in this.

In reality, Russia is not interested in allowing a strike to
pipelines. Russia is not resolving any issue. Moreover, it is
complicating relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, they
are the key regional partners of Moscow in the discussion of division
of the Caucasus.

NATO could be Armenia’s ally if the pipelines are targeted which
would thus contain the enthusiasm of Turkey and Azerbaijan to agree
on dividing the Caucasian pie with Armenian stuffing. Nevertheless,
statements made during the seminar in Baku hint that NATO is not
encouraged by the prospect of cooperation with Armenia on this matter.

At the same time, this is not something unexpected, considering that
one of the chief guarantees of maintaining peace – the sovereignty of
Armenia – has been destroyed by Armenia itself under Russian guidance,
disturbing the balance in the region.

– See more at:

From: Baghdasarian

AGREEMENT WITH KFW ON CONSTRUCTION OF KAPS RESERVOIR IN ARMENIA MAY BE SIGNED IN SEPTEMBER

YEREVAN, June 19. /ARKA/. The loan agreement with German KfW on
construction of Kaps water reservoir in Armenia may be signed in
September, the press office of the Armenian government reported
referring to the premier Hovik Abrahamyan’s meeting with the German
side

The meeting was attended by the German ambassador to Armenia Reiner
Morell, general director of Europe and Asia affairs at KfW Roland
Ziller and the head of German Society of International Cooperation
(GIZ) Dagmar Bot. The sides discussed cooperation programs between
Armenia and KfW.

In general, construction of reservoirs is one of the government
priorities, and the respective works on four new reservoirs are
expected to start in the near years.

The head of the government and Ziller stressed the importance of the
construction of Armenia-Georgia electric main supported by KfW.

The premier expressed hopes that the Central Bank of Armenia and KfW
will develop their cooperation into programs on apartment repairs
and on small and medium-sized enterprises.

Issues on energy savings in schools, agriculture and community
infrastructures have been also discussed, according to the report.

Implementation of these programs is expected to start after the
sitting of Armenian-German intergovernmental commission this autumn,
says the report.

Armenia’s premier Hovik Abrahamyan expressed the importance of further
development of Armenian-German relations and said this cooperation
is given special attention on Armenia’s foreign policy agenda.

The government will do its best for expansion of economic and political
ties between the country, the premier said.

German KfW bank has been supporting implementation of programs in
Armenia since 1995. The main fields of cooperation are energy, water
supply, development of finance and banking and the private sector.

Funding from KfW exceeded 0.5 billion euros as of October 2013. -0–

– See more at:

From: Baghdasarian