Author: Emil Lazarian

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 8 2007

In wake of Hrant Dink murder, print media pays heavy price for
coverage

The 18-year-old suspected murderer of Turkish Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, O.S. of Trabzon, has turned out to be a
bigger-than-expected headache for Turkish newspapers.

Many newspapers in Turkey are now facing stiff fines in the wake of
Dink’s mid-January murder for breaking the press rule of `not
disclosing the identities of those under 18 years of age.’
Prosecutors have demanded fines of up to YTL 100,000 from newspapers
that broke the `under 18′ rule, and reports are that if the money is
not paid within 10 days, the fines will increase. While the Turkish
Press Council complains that `the media is paying the price for the
Dink murder,’ the Journalists’ Association is pointing at what they
say is a double standard for newspapers compared to television
stations, noting that although Dink’s alleged murderer, O.S.,
received plenty of exposure on television, there have been no fines
meted out to television stations. A prosecutor working on the O.S.
case revealed recently in a press conference that the fines for the
Zaman newspaper in the Dink case would be more than YTL 100,000.

Journalist Oktay Ekþi, the chairman of the Turkish Press Council, has
asserted that it is the print media that is being saddled with the
bill following Dink’s murder, noting that he is against the tens of
thousands of fines dealt out to newspapers for each photograph and
article that broke the `under 18 criminal suspect’ rule. Eksi said
that prosecutors, instead of pursuing those responsible for the Dink
murder, have given orders for various newspapers to pay fines, and
that these fines have had a silencing effect on the 67 large and 900
local newspapers in Turkey, as well as on the nearly 20 news agencies
across in the country.

Ekþi also underlined that the printed press was not the first to
disclose Dink’s murderer’s identity to Turkey, recalling that on Jan.
21, 2007, the police had made O.S.’s name public, while a little
while later, the Ýstanbul governor, Ýstanbul police chief, the Samsun
governor and the Samsun police chief also revealed O.S.’s name and
identity once again. Ekþi also asserted that in the first days
following the murder, O.S.’s age had not yet been determined and that
most people in Turkey received their initial information about O.S.
and his actions from television.

Managing Editor of Hürriyet daily Tufan Türenç asserts that the
disclosure of Hrant Dink’s murderer’s identity should not have
brought up questions about press principles, saying: `There is no
reason for hiding names in this situation. Images of the killer were
openly broadcast to help bring about his capture. His name was
disclosed. Thanks to the broadcast images, he was caught. Would his
father have been able to identify him if something had prevented the
broadcast of these images? This is not a matter of principles. I
think the decision to reveal his name was the right one.’

The chairman of the Turkish Journalists’ Association, Orhan Erinç,
agrees that in principle, the names of criminal suspects under the
age of 18 should not be revealed in the printed press but notes that
since all of Turkey already knew O.S.’s identity, due to public
disclosures by high level government authorities, there was no logic
in this principle. Erinç also points to the contradictions inherent
in the fines which have been leveraged against the print media,
saying `When you make a disclosure on television it’s not a crime,
but when you write it in a newspaper, it’s a crime.’

Authorities at the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s bureau have agreed
that due to the massive outcry sparked by the Dink murder, as well as
to the fact that the identity of Dink’s murderer was known by `all of
Turkey,’ the rules of secrecy which would normally apply in a case
like this do not apply to the ongoing investigation into this case.
It was following the arrival of a state-appointed defense lawyer for
Dink murderer O.S. that the request was made to republic prosecutors
to bring about strictures on Turkish newspaper and television
coverage of the identity and images of the murderer.

08.03.2007

BÜÞRA ERDAL ÝSTANBUL

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

uefa.com, Switzerland
March 8 2007

Pyunik feel heat from chasing pack

Thursday, 8 March 2007
by Khachik Chakhoyan
from Yerevan

The new football season in Armenia is one of the most eagerly
anticipated in years, with FC Pyunik’s monopoly on the crown set to
be challenged.

Curtain raiser
The campaign gets underway on 21 March with the first round of the
Armenian Cup, but it is the fight for the league title that is
causing real interest. Pyunik’s main rivals for the crown will be FC
Banants and FC Ararat Yerevan, as well as five-times Armenian Cup
winners FC MIKA. However, the surprise packages may well be FC
Gandzasar Kapan and FC Shirak, who have aspirations of making the
top-three after seeing six of their former players return to the
club. FC Kilikia and FC Ulis Yerevan have set their ambitions a bit
lower, while newcomers FC Lernayin Artsakh could represent the dark
horses.

New recruits
With Pyunik set to place an emphasis on youth this season, MIKA could
be the team who provide the greatest threat to their hopes of a
seventh successive title. They have bolstered their squad by signing
Brazilians Akleison and Tales, while goalkeeper Feliks Hakobyan gave
them a major boost by extended his contract by three more years.

Strength in depth
Ararat believe they need to strengthen their defence to mount a
challenge and they are scouring the market in Serbia and F.Y.R.
Macedonia to fortify their rearguard. Rivals Banants have largely
opted to sign local talent but they need to find a replacement for
Aram Hakobyan who left for Ukrainian side FC Illychivets Mariupil.
The arrival of Ugandan striker Eugene Sepuya and Egishe Melikyan
should help their chances, though.

Bright future
With all but three teams stating their intention of blooding their
youngsters this season and with all clubs reporting greater financial
stability, the future of football in Armenia looks to be unusually
bright.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish Daily News, Turkey
March 8 2007

Turkish press scanner
Thursday, March 8, 2007

Like a Middle Ages witch hunt – Bugün:

In an articled published in the daily Bugün yesterday, Turkish
Labor Party Leader Doðu Perinçek took the stand during his trial in
the Swiss city of Lausanne for saying so-called Armenian genocide was
an imperialist lie.

Perinçek said the case resembles a Middle Ages witch hunt and is an
indicator of the collapse of Western civilization. Famous U.S.
history professor Justin McCharty is attending the Perinçek trials as
a special witness.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Out-Law.com, UK
March 8 2007

Turkey blocks YouTube

OUT-LAW News, 08/03/2007

Turkey has taken steps to prevent access to YouTube after a video
insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, was
posted on the site.

By John Oates for The Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.

Turk Telecom took the action on orders from a court. The telco said
it would lift the ban, with the approval of the court, if the
offending video was removed. YouTube has seen a violent slanging
match between Greeks and Turks with dozens of response videos posted.

Paul Doany, head of Turk Telecom, said: "We are not in the position
of saying that what YouTube did was an insult, that it was right or
wrong. A court decision was proposed to us, and we are doing what
that court decision says."

The original video was posted by a user called Stavraetos. Greeks and
Turks, and the odd Armenian, used the video sharing site to chuck
insults at each other. The mainstream Turkish media took up the row.

Insulting Ataturk is a criminal offence in Turkey punishable by
prison.

In another blow for the brave new world of user-generated content,
France is banning anyone except reporters from videoing violent acts.
The legislation, proposed by Nicholas Sarkozy, aims to stop incidents
of happy slapping by imposing big fines on anyone filming such
attacks.

But the law is so widely drafted that several bloggers and Reporters
Sans Frontieres have pointed out it could be used to stop genuine
reporting.

Macworld noted that the law came exactly 16 years after an amateur
videographer filmed the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police
officers. Under the new law French police should be protected from
such an invasion of privacy.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Washington Post, DC
March 8 2007

Nobel prize winner Pamuk to tour Germany after all
Reuters
Thursday, March 8, 2007; 1:06 PM

BERLIN (Reuters) – Nobel-prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk
will embark on a book reading tour in Germany in May after he
canceled the visit at short notice five weeks ago amid concerns for
his safety.

Christina Knecht, a spokeswoman for Carl Hanser Verlag, Pamuk’s
German publisher, said the writer had always intended to meet his
commitments at some point.

"Nothing has really changed, he always said the tour was never
completely off. Now he’s suggested May, and we’re delighted that we
were able to find new dates with the organizers fairly quickly," she
said.

The safety of Pamuk, 54, became an issue after the murder in January
of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul.
A key suspect in that murder, escorted by police into a court house,
had warned Pamuk to be careful.

"He canceled the tour without giving any reason, but I think it was
really more about the situation in Turkey, and that he was being
pursued for weeks there," Knecht said, adding that as far as she
knew, Pamuk was probably in the United States now.

Dink and Pamuk were both prosecuted under laws restricting freedom of
expression in Turkey, which wants to join the EU.

Pamuk was tried for insulting "Turkishness" after telling a Swiss
paper in 2005 that 1 million Armenians had died in Turkey in World
War One and 30,000 Kurds had perished more recently.

Pamuk, whose best-known novels include "Snow," in which the main
character is shot in Frankfurt, has a big following in Germany, home
to about 2.5 million people of Turkish descent.

He is due to open the rescheduled tour in Hamburg on May 2, before
visiting Berlin, Stuttgart and Cologne. The trip will end on May 8 in
Munich. While in Berlin, Pamuk is due to receive an honorary
doctorate from the city’s Free University.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), UK
March 8 2007

Teen Gamblers Racking Up Debts

The lure of easy money is tempting Armenian youngsters into the
capital’s betting shops.

By Karine Asatrian in Yerevan (CRS N0. 382 08-Mar-07)

Two teenage boys walk into a betting shop on the central street in
Yerevan and begin studying forms on a table covered with information
about upcoming football matches.

After a half-hour discussion, they mark their bets, pay at the cash
desk and leave. They have bet 1,000 drams – about two US dollars – in
hope of winning five times that amount.

`We hope to win something,’ said Vahagn, a football fan and at
16-years-old already a regular gambler.

There are several hundred betting shops in Armenia. By law, they are
not supposed to accept bets from under-18s and will lose their
license or face a fine if they do. But a visit to several in the city
centre suggests under-age gambling is common in Yerevan and that
teens are wagering and often losing large amounts.

Yerevan’s bookies open around noon, and the schoolchildren start to
arrive after classes. Most of the teenagers IWPR spoke to said they
were doing badly at school.

Fifteen-year-old Artak began gambling two years ago and has since run
up debts of 500,000 drams, some 1,400 dollars.

Like many gamblers, Artak started off well, winning up to 10 times
his initial wager. Then he started to lose and became obsessed with
where he would find money.

First he pawned his mobile phone, and then staff in one betting shop
gave him credit. When his debts got too high, Artak turned to his
parents. They pawned their television, video camera and jewellery,
but it still wasn’t enough.

Artak eventually earned enough money to reclaim his parents’
possessions, but rather than do that he headed for the betting shop
instead.

Asked when he would stop gambling, Artak said, `When I win enough
money to cover my debts and buy myself a good phone and a gold
chain.’

Karen is now 16, but was 14 when he started gambling. A keen football
fan, he felt he could predict the outcome of games. `At first I
almost always won, but then I began to lose,’ he said.

He owes 50,000 drams and paid off an earlier debt by stealing money
from his parents. He was caught and punished by them but says it made
no difference.

`Punishment and advice from my parents don’t help me any more,’ said
Karen. `I don’t know whether I’ll ever rid myself of this obsession.’

Some start even younger than Karen.

Residents of a Yerevan apartment block were concerned to see an
ambulance arrive for their neighbour, Marietta, who had always been
in good health. She developed heart problems when she discovered that
her 13-year-old son Vardan was a compulsive gambler.

It was a classmate of Vardan’s who told her that her son was making
money by betting on the outcome of football matches. She went looking
for him after classes and discovered him in a betting shop.

`Every day I found that money was disappearing from the house,’
Marietta told IWPR. `It didn’t occur to me to suspect Vardan. I
suspected everyone but him.’

Marietta gave up her job to try to cure her son of his addiction. At
first it was slow going, but she bought him a computer and says she
has managed to divert his mania for gambling into one for computer
games.

But parents have other ways of fighting back. Armenian law says
transactions carried out by minors under 14 are not legal. `Parents
can go to court any time, have the transaction declared illegal and
get back the money their children staked,’ said lawyer Karen
Tumanian.

There are some who say the authorities should be intervening more
directly.

Child psychologist Ruben Poghosian accuses the government of doing
nothing to fight Armenia’s teenage gambling problem. He says betting
shops are too easily accessible and `the children see that anyone can
make money there’.

`It’s also the thrill of gambling,’ said Poghosian. `It’s a trap
which even adults find hard to resist.’

He says gambling is part of a wider social problem and believes
teenagers need to find other ways of earning money- no easy task in
present-day Armenia. `Find them a distraction which is thrilling and
will bring a child a great deal of pleasure,’ he advised, suggesting
that they take part in sport themselves rather than gambling on it.

But with pawnshops sustaining the young gamblers by readily accepting
their valuables including mobile phones, diverting teenagers’
attention from gambling could be difficult.

`We don’t give out money to children for pawned items,’ said a worker
at a pawnshop in the Shengavit district of Yerevan – even though
several teenagers said that they had pawned their telephones there.

Meanwhile, the betting shops themselves deny any responsibility for
the problem.

Gagik Boyajian, executive director of the Vivaro betting agency, told
IWPR that his staff had been told `not once, not twice but dozens of
times’ not to accept bets from underage punters and that therefore
their `conscience is clean’.

`How can we check whether they are 18 or not? Should we ask for their
passport every time?’ said Boyajian.

As for the finance ministry, it told IWPR that if betting shops are
found accepting bets from teenagers they could be fined up to 100,000
drams, around 280 dollars.

But this seems a small deterrent compared with the large amounts the
gambling shops are making from their hundreds of underage clients.

Karine Asatrian is a reporter with A1+ television in Yerevan.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WORLD IGNORING DIRE NEED TO ACT IN DARFUR, CHAD

The Star Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) Canada
March 6, 2007 Tuesday
Final Edition

Considering the scale of the crimes under consideration, the decisions
that emanated from the World Court and the International Criminal
Court last week seem wholly inadequate.

The World Court ruled on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia,
while the ICC filed information against two accused masterminds of
Darfur’s ongoing slaughter.

At least indirectly, both cases deal with events that led to the murder
of more than 200,000 people in each of the former Yugoslavia and Sudan,
as well as the rape, humiliation, mutilation and deportation of more
than a million more.

These crimes are almost impossible to comprehend. What is even harder
to fathom, however, is that the world seems unable to do anything to
stop them.

The World Court deemed as a crime of genocide what happened in
Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serbs sorted out thousands of Muslim men
and boys and systematically murdered them. And while it exculpated
Serbia from the more serious charge of being the first state to
be found guilty of genocide in the nearly 60 years since the world
community recognized it as a punishable offence, the court insists
Serbia must take responsibility for allowing the crime to take place.

Serbia "could and should" have prevented the genocide, the court ruled,
adding the country also should have punished those responsible for
the July 1995 murders rather than give them sanctuary. The country
is still suffering sanctions from European neighbours and NATO for
failing to hand over those responsible, although the Serbian government
claims it’s unable to catch them.

Almost simultaneous to that court’s ruling, the ICC called for the
arrest of Ahmad Harun, a former minister in charge of Darfur security,
and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a militia commander, on charges
that they participated in genocide in Darfur.

Although the UN doesn’t sanction the ICC, the court is backed by
104 nations and has a broad mandate to investigate war crimes and
crimes against humanity. According to the evidence presented in its
94-page report, the ICC can link the two men at last to 51 acts of
unspeakable brutality.

The world has watched in silent horror for years as the people of
Darfur and now Chad are subjected to some of the worst atrocities
imaginable, including the systematic rape of Muslim women to stigmatize
them and cause their families to reject them.

The methods used were "indiscriminate attacks against the civilian
population, murder, rape, inhumane acts, cruel treatment, unlawful
imprisonment, pillaging, forcible transfer and destruction of
property," the report says.

For example, witnesses describe how in December 2003, Abd-al-Rahman
"personally inspected a group of naked women (in the town of Arawala)
before they were raped by men under his command."

This is a similar to the tactic used in Bosnia by Serbs who
incorporated rape as an instrument of their ethnic cleansing policy.

While the world can, with some legitimacy, claim it was unaware at the
time of either the Holocaust or the Ottoman attack on the Armenians —
the two highest profile incidents of genocide that gave this gruesome
crime its name — there can be no such denial about what happened in
the former Yugoslavia or is happening in Darfur.

While the world community eventually took steps to end the genocide
in the Balkans, it has no will to act to save lives in Darfur.

Last-year’s signing of a peace agreement in Nigeria only served to
ramp up the horror, while ill-equipped, out-gunned and outnumbered
African Union troops stand by impotently.

Meanwhile the powerful Khartoum regime continues to get rich from the
sale of oil — most of which goes to China, which blocks sanctions
against Sudan.

It took a commitment from the United States to bring NATO to help
UN efforts to end the bloodshed in the Balkans. America no longer
has the capacity and NATO is too dysfunctional to act in Darfur,
and there is no other world power to fill the gap.

Although the world placed a lot of hope on the power of courts to end
such bloodletting, the two decisions last week demonstrate there can
be no justice without a willingness to back it with force. The ghosts
of victims in such places as Srebrenica and Arawala accuse us all of
failing to do what’s right.

If Serbia is complicit in the Bosnian genocide for doing nothing to
stop it and failing to pursue the perpetrators, what of the rest of
us when it comes to Darfur and Chad?

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKISH OFFICIAL PRAISES TIES WITH ISRAEL

Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
March 7 2007

JERUSALEM (A.A) -07.03.2007 -"We aim at contributing to efforts of
providing tranquillity in the Middle East," Turkish State Minister
Kursad Tuzmen said on Wednesday.

Tuzmen, who is currently paying an official visit to Israel to attend
Turkey-Israel Joint Economy Commission meetings and to hold a series
of talks with the aim of boosting commercial and economic relations
between the two countries, visited al-Haram al-Sharif, al-Aqsa Mosque
and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Replying to questions of journalists during the tour, Tuzmen said,
"people of Turkish descent in Israel serve as a bridge between our
two countries. They make valuable contributions to our bilateral
relations with Israel."

"There are many Jewish people among leading businessmen in Turkey.

Also, nearly 180 Israeli firms are operating in Turkey. We do not
have any discriminative approach against our businessmen of Jewish
descent. We are the heir of the Ottoman Empire from which 48 separate
states emerged. All those people of different faiths and ethnic root
had lived together in peace in Anatolia for centuries," he stressed.

Upon a question on the draft resolution on so-called Armenian genocide,
which was submitted to the US House of Representatives a while ago,
Tuzmen said, "the most influential lobby in the United States is the
Jewish lobby. They told us that they would do everything in their
power to prevent adoption of that bill."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HENRI TROYAT

The Times (London)
March 6, 2007, Tuesday

Henri Troyat, writer, was born on November 1, 1911. He died on March 4,
2007, aged 95

Vastly prolific writer whose interests ran from multivolume novels
to popular history and biography

A popular novelist and biographer of enormous fecundity, Henri Troyat
was the doyen, or oldest member, of the Academie francaise, and the
author of a bewildering number of books reflecting his chief passions:
France and Russia.

Despite the name he assumed as a young man in France, Troyat was a
Russian of Armenian extraction. He was born Lev Aslanovitch Tarasoff
in Moscow in 1911, the son of Lucien Tarasoff, an immensely rich cloth
merchant and railway baron, and his wife, nee Lydia Abessolomov. When
the Revolution broke out in 1917 Troyat, then 6, began a hair-raising
journey with his family. The first stage took them from Moscow to the
Caucasus. At one point they were stranded on the Volga while the Reds
closed in. The only way out was the river, but the one available boat
refused to take them -it was already too packed. Then it transpired
that the captain was a school friend of his father’s. He allowed them
to travel -in the bathroom. Troyat claimed that saved his life.

Troyat’s father possessed huge estates in the Crimea, but it was not
wise to stop.

They went to Constantinople and thence to Venice. The odyssey ended
in when they arrived in Paris in 1920. Troyat felt at home at once.

He had always spoken French, thanks to his Swiss governess, and he
adapted easily to life in his new country. He attended the Lycee
Pasteur in Neuilly where he was encouraged to keep a diary by a
schoolmaster who soon recognised his literary talents. He studied
in the law faculty of the university, taking a licence in law, but
instead of practising he passed the exam to become a functionary in
the prefecture that administers Paris.

He did his obligatory military service at Metz in Lorraine. He was
still in uniform when his first novel, Faux jour, was published in
1935. It snapped up the Prix du roman populiste, the first in an
impressive sequence of prizes he received in the years immediately
before the Second World War.

He returned to the prefecture, working in the budget department.

Neither he nor his employers seem to have had any problems with
him writing at the same time. In 1938 the corpus of his works were
"crowned" by the Academie francaise. That same year a colleague
dropped into his office and said: "Quick, go down to Plon (his
publishers). You’ve got the Goncourt." He had won it for his novel
L’Araigne (The Web).

Troyat served briefly as an officer in the war, but was demobilised in
1940, and from 1942 onwards he devoted himself entirely to literature.

His novels examined human failure and inadequacy. They disappointed
some people in that they were not novels of ideas, but derived much
more from the Russian classics he had known from his childhood. He
was capable of lashing out at his detractors and his novel La Tete
sur les epaules is an attack on Jean-Paul Sartre.

Between 1946 and 1948 he published Tant que la terre durera (As long as
the earth lasts), one of his most important works, a trilogy that told
the story of a Russian family from the outbreak of the First World War
to their arrival in exile in Paris. The product of a decade of work,
it was naturally based on the experience of himself and his family.

He liked the old-fashioned canvas of the multi-volume novel. Both
Les Semailles et les moissons (the sowing and the reaping) and La
Lumiere des justes (the light of the just), for example, came out in
five volumes.

His novels were often dominated by female characters, and when asked
about this Troyat said they were better "fuel for the novelists,
their lives being closer to those of animals".

He liked to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. His approach to
biography was very broad brush, bringing with it the accusation that
he was "l’historien des concierges" -a historian for char ladies. He
gave his public what they wanted, and they definitely wanted it:
his books were printed in runs of 600,000 copies.

His productivity was phenomenal. Over the decades he brought out lives
of the great Russians -Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Gogol,
Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Alexander I, Alexander II,
Alexander III, Nicholas I, Nicholas II, Ivan the Terrible, Chekov,
Turgenev, Gorky and Rasputin -as well as of such French greats as
Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Balzac and Dumas
pere.

Troyat was elected to the Academie francaise on May 21, 1959, taking
seat 28, which had previously been occupied by Claude Farrere.

He was appointed Grand-croix of the Legion d’honneur, Commandeur de
l’ordre nationale du Merite and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

At 65, in 1976 he published his memoirs, Un si long chemin. And the
road was to continue for another 30 years. In 2003 a court case
cast a shadow over his distinguished career when he was found to
have committed plagiarism in his 1997 biography of Juliette Drouet,
the mistress of Victor Hugo.

He lived in a detached house in the rue Bonaparte near the Metro
Pereire in the north of Paris, and then in a flat on the rue de
Rivoli. He impressed those journalists granted an interview by his
prodigious memory: he was able to recite some of the works of favourite
authors like Zola and Mauriac by heart, and read the dictionary every
day to expand his French vocabulary.

He was twice married, and had a son by his first marriage and daughters
by his second.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FOOTBALL: ARMENIA’S FOOTBALL CHIEFS SUPPORT CANCER-STRIKEN PORTERFIELD

Agence France Presse — English
March 7, 2007 Wednesday 9:26 AM GMT

Armenia’s football federation chiefs expressed their support to the
cancer-striken country’s national coach Ian Porterfield, adding they
had no plans to change the manager.

The 60-year-old Scot, who played with Sunderland and Sheffield
Wednesday during his career on the field, is set to undergo surgery
in near time after local medics found him to be suffering from
intestinal cancer.

"We are waiting for the results of his (Portierfield) medical analyses
to work out a plan for the national squad," Armenia’s football boss
Ruben Hayrapetyan said.

"However, I’d like to stress that we have no plans of changing the
national team manager."

Last August former Chelsea, Sheffield Wednesday and Aberdeen manager
signed a contract with the Armenian federation until the end of 2007.

Armenia are currently sharing the bottom spot of their Euro2008
qualifying Group A with Azerbaijan. Both teams have just one point
from four matches and are 10 points behind the group leaders Finland.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress