Author: Emil Lazarian

Turkish Press
May 11 2006
Press Review
HURRIYET
TUSIAD SENDS LETTER TO FRENCH DEPUTIES, SENATORS WARNING ABOUT
HARMFUL BILL
The Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD)
sent a letter this week to French parliamentarians rebuffing the
genocide allegations at the heart of a new bill criminalizing denial
of the `genocide’ and also warning of the damage bilateral relations
could suffer over the measure. The letter signed by TUSIAD Chairman
Omer Sabanci was sent to 577 deputies and 331 senators, and also said
that the proposed bill would have a chilling effect on freedom of
expression and historical research. /Hurriyet/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HRAYR KARAPETIAN: NO NEED TO DISSOLVE PARLIAMENT
Yerevan, May 12. ArmInfo. “I do not think that the resignation of
Artur Baghdasarian and withdrawal of “Orinats Yerkir” party from
coalition create the necessity to dissolve the parliament,” Hrayr
Karapetian, Secretary of ARFD faction, said this, commenting on the
recent events.
He added that RA National Assembly is able to normally function at
present and carry out constitutional reforms. He stated that a certain
vacuum has been shaped in the management of RA Parliament that is to
be overcome as soon as possible. Karapetian said that the new speaker
may be elected in the next parliamentary sitting after five days from
the decision on Baghdasarian’s resignation.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASK FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE TO PROTECT THEM
SOCHI, May 12. ArmInfo. The air traffic controllers who witnessed the
May 3 crash of A-320 airbus, turned to RF Federal Security Service
with the request to protect them and their families.
According to “Life” magazine, they stated they are not guilty in the
crash, b ut they are afraid that the relatives of 113 victims in the
crash will take revenge of them. According to the information from the
trustworthy sources, the air traffic controllers who turned for help
to RF Federal Security Service take special measures for safety. The
officials of relevant bodies met with them to discuss the situation
and evaluate the risk.
It’s worth mentioning that earlier the statement of the employees of
the Adler airport was published. According to them, nobody threatens
to the air traffic controllers who worked at the tragic night.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Levon Lazarian appointed RA Minister of Education and Science

ArmRadio.am
12.05.2006 17:57
`Radiolur’ learned from non-official sources that RA Minister of
Education and Science was dismissed, and he will be replaced by Head
of the ARF Parliamentary faction Levon Lazarian, who occupied the
position twice in the past.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESIDENT OF ACADEMY IS NOT AN EASY JOB
Lragir.am
12 May 06
Rumors circulate at the National Academy of Sciences that the possible
candidates of president of the Academy to be elected on May 17 are
Radik Martirosyan, Robert Atoyan, Yuri Shukyuryan, Lenser Aghalovyan,
and Edward Ghazaryan.
Edward Ghazaryan says the work of the president of the Academy is a
difficult and responsible job because the equipment is old, salaries
are low, the staff is aged, there are other big and small
problems. The scientific staff of the academy wants a president who
would solve these problems. And they demand a program from the
candidates. At this point the opinions of the staff and the
academicians clash. The latter are trying to avoid fair elections. 250
members of the scientific staff extended a proposal to the leadership,
which is an effort of holding transparent elections. Azat Sargsyan, a
leading scientific worker of the Institute of Mechanics, proposes to
hold an election in two rounds.
First, on May 17 the candidates will be nominated, then they will
extend a program on promoting science. `We think about the next
generation,’ says Azat Sargsyan. Second, the scientists demand that a
representative of the scientific organizations be chosen who would
vote to the election. The president is elected by 69 academicians and
17 associate members. The academicians discussed the proposals. It was
decided to nominate the candidates on May 17. On the same day the
nominees will present their program and the scientific staff will have
an opportunity to ask them questions. And the second proposal
naturally does not favor the possible nominees. Edward Ghazaryan says
withregard to the second question they applied to the government,
which will extend it to the National Assembly, where the question will
be raised.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeris rethink post-freedom tilt to West
-101811-2429r.htm
By Kathy Gannon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 13, 2006
ASTARA, Azerbaijan — After the Soviet Union collapsed and Azerbaijan
became free, the oil-rich country was caught in a tug of war for
influence between the secular, democratic West and Islamic Iran. Iran
sent in preachers, built mosques and gave scholarships to the
poor. But Azerbaijan turned to the West.
Nowadays, however, the early rumblings of political Islam are being
heard in the world’s biggest Shi’ite Muslim republic outside Iran,
aroused by frustration with rampant corruption, intractable poverty,
and a sense thatfor the sake of oil, the Western democracies have
chosen to ignore the taint of corruption in its elections.
There are many signs that neighboring Iran is capitalizing on the
discontent with a “we-told-you-so” message and winning some support in
its confrontation with the West over its nuclear program.
Ilham Aliyev, who took over as president from his dying father in 2003
in an election sullied by claims of widespread fraud, visited the
White House last month, underscoring his friendship with the Bush
administration. But many in Azerbaijan wonder how long his
overwhelmingly Muslim nation of 9 million people will stay in the
U.S. orbit.
“Azerbaijan will not become an Islamic country overnight, but the
beginnings are here,” said Arif Yunusov, author of “Islam in
Azerbaijan” and chairman of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, an
independent think tank in Baku, the capital.
“People today in Azerbaijan don’t believe America. People believe that
the West does not want democracy in our country, it just wants our
oil.”
Europe admired Whether an Islamic surge is coming is open to
question. Azerbaijan also has a strong Western-oriented camp, yearning
for Europe’s model of good governance and civil rights.
In the cosmopolitan capital, the overwhelming affinity is with Europe,
though attendance at mosque prayers is growing steadily, and human
rights workers say they were surprised at how many young Azeris joined
the demonstrations that swept the Muslim world over the publication of
Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad.
In the more conservative southern regions that border Iran, the return
to Islamic roots is more noticeable.
Azerbaijan is a “very complex country,” said Fariz Ismailzade, a
political science professor in Baku. “We have modern girls, but still
there is a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. It is slow but it is
happening.”
Azeris, says secular opposition politician Eldar Namazov, are “the
most European of people in the Islamic world — even more than
Turkey. Yet I think you can say today that we see some Islamic
renaissance, and the ground is ready for an Islamic revival here in
Azerbaijan. … Our society wants political change, but year after
year people are disappointed with democracy.”
More than a decade after signing a multibillion-dollar oil deal with a
U.S.- and British-dominated consortium, most of this country the size
of Maine is miserably underdeveloped. Nearly half the population
earns less than $1,000 a year. Unemployment hovers around 20 percent.
Oil revenues rising Azerbaijan anticipates oil revenues of $160
billion by 2025, and a $4 billion, 1,093-mile pipeline is pumping
Caspian Sea oil from Baku through Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan. Yet outside Baku, gas supplies are erratic and the
country runs on dilapidated Soviet-era infrastructure.
All this, say critics, adds up to a new opening for Iran, the Shi’ite
giant to the south.
“Iran has always been active in Azerbaijan, but before they weren’t
getting the results they wanted,” said Mr. Yunusov, the
researcher. That’s changing; “Now people think that Iran’s words make
sense, that the claims by Iran against the war in Iraq and against
America are not so bad, that the West just wants our resources.”
Iran is reported to be financing Azerbaijan’s opposition Islamic
Party.
Among Azeri refugees from the 1990s war with Armenia over the enclave
of Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran is the biggest provider of humanitarian aid,
and itgains points from a perception among the refugees that
Azerbaijan was betrayed from all sides during the war and that the
West has forgotten them.
Iranian television and radio, broadcasting in the Azeri language, are
the leading sources of information here in Astara and elsewhere on the
southern border. Azeri-language talk shows in the nearby Iranian city
of Tabriz are flooded with callers from Azerbaijan.
“Everything we want to find out, we find out from Iranian radio,” said
Mammadov Mazjtajab, a former reporter with Radio Liberty in
Astara. Broadcast propaganda has increased, much of it directed
against the United States, he said.
Increase in propaganda Mr. Mazjtajab said propaganda has increased
noticeably during the nuclear standoff.
Tehran has threatened to strike back at any country that cooperates
with an attack on its nuclear facilities. Azerbaijan’s government has
promised that its territory won’t be used for military action against
Iran, but people living nearby are nervous, pointing to a U.S.-built
radar facility just outside Astara and the upgrading of the airport at
Nakhichevan, also on the borderwith Iran, to accommodate NATO
jets. Both projects are U.S.-financed.
Iran’s perceived attractions are revealed in an encounter at the
border with Jamilya Shafyeov, an Azeri woman wearing three sweaters
against the cold and bemoaning her inability to find work. “I think
things are so much better over there,” she said, gesturing through a
small gray steel gate that opens into Iran. “What do we have here?
Nothing. No jobs. If I had a passport I would go there.”
Nail Farziyev, a retailer in Astara, drew cheers from fellow
shopkeepers when he said: “We can’t turn our back on Iran and we won’t
turn our back on them.
“Why is it that America thinks it can impose its will on everyone?” he
asked. “Why can’t Iran have peaceful nuclear energy? I want to know
why.”
In Baku, nearly 150 miles to the north, Mr. Yunusov’s think tank is
sampling opinion nationally and discovering similar sentiments.
Opinions are shifting In a survey he did three years ago, he said: “I
asked about Iraq and Afghanistan, and then everyone supported the
United States and everyone agreed that [Osama] bin Laden was behind
the September 11, 2001, attacks.”
But in a new survey he is conducting with the University of
Minnesota’s Department of Political Science, he said, “it is all
changed now. Some even say maybe the United States planned the
[September 11] attacks in order to go after Muslim countries to get
their oil.”
In Nadaran, 40 miles from the starting point of a pipeline regarded as
an engineering marvel, Hajji Vagif Gasimov hunkered down in a
municipal office with bitterly cold wind whistling through broken
windowpanes. “Our situation is getting worse from day to day,” he
said.
“My father was an oil worker, my grandfather was an oil worker. We are
surrounded by gas pipelines and we have no gas. We think that this is
America’s fault because they want all our resources.”
In the 1990s, he said, “my dream was to have a democracy like the
United States. Now we don’t say we are against democracy — we are
against America’s democracy now.”
No one thinks an Islamic takeover is imminent. The Turkish Foreign
Ministry says it welcomes good relations between Azerbaijan and
Iran. Azerbaijan is one-twentieth the size of Iran, but some Turkish
analysts think that giventhe large ethnic Azeri population in Iran,
Baku may have more influence over its neighbor than vice versa.
Confrontation feared “There are plenty of reports that Iran has helped
encourage greater religious devotion,” said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish
analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies. “The failure of the secular opposition to the
Aliev regime … has allowed the development of a religiously inclined
opposition. But I think for the moment it is manageable. The question
is, what will happen if there is a confrontation between Iran andthe
West? This will make life very difficult for Azerbaijan.”
Rafik Aliyev, a government official charged with managing religious
harmony in the country, said the corruption claims are exaggerated and
he sees no big protest vote for Islamic parties.
He sees Iran’s influence as both natural and worrying — an open
border, propaganda broadcasts, Azeri students being educated in
Iran. “Of course all these things can increase religious sentiment and
we have been thinking about these issues and taking some measures.”
The measures, he said, include a countrywide refurbishing of
infrastructure that has increased electrical supply to the south, and
establishment of Islamic teaching institutions to propagate a moderate
brand of Islam.
Mr. Namazov, the secular politician who was a powerful aide to
Azerbaijan’s late President Heydar Aliyev, said the Islamic Party made
gains in his Baku constituency in the disputed November parliamentary
election, while secular opposition parties won only a handful of
seats.
He said that when he met with European and American ambassadors
afterward, he told them: “It is true there is no danger today of there
being an Islamic government here, but in five years, if we still have
this system of total corruption, unemployment and severe human rights
violations, then Islamic representatives will be elected.”
© AP correspondent Louis Meixler in Ankara, Turkey, contributed tothis
report.
Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

President Robert Kocharyan received OSCE Secretary General

ArmRadio.am
13.05.2006 13:35
President Robert Kocharyan received today OSCE Secretary General Marc
Perrin de Brichambaut.
The President welcomed OSCE Secretary General’s visit to Armenia on
the occasion of starting the program of recycling of 872 tons of
mélange rocket fuel. Robert Kocharyan highly appreciated the
effectiveness of cooperation with the OSCE in regard to the volume,
level and prospects.
The collocutors thoroughly discussed the developments over the OSCE
territory and the process of reforming the OSCE as a structure.
At the request of the guest the President presented the current stage
of the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict. He laid emphasis
on the fact that the issue is being settled within the OSCE framework
and a rather effective format has been chosen. Reference was made to
Armenia-Turkey relations.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Panorama.am
16:09 12/05/06

POLITICAL DIVORCE IN ARMENIAN WAY
Arthur Baghdasaryan confirmed that Orinats Yerkir leaves the ruling
coalition in a press conference today. He said that an extraordinary
session of the party decided to `leave the coalition in a civilized
manner.’ Baghdasaryan also said that the coalition council decided
today that all Orinats Yerkir members should resign from their
posts. A. Baghdasaryan stated that the coalition has had many disputes
within itself in the course of the last three years, which have caused
scandals. Baghdasaryan grouped the reasons for the political divorce
into three groups. NA Chairman pointed out to disagreements on
interpolitical and social-economic issues (privatization programs,
annual reports of the Inspection Chamber.) The second group make up
issues on democratic reforms (disagreements concerned on fight against
corruption). And the third group of disagreements relates to foreign
policy issues, saying that Orinats Yerkir supports European
integration and that is a principle matter for them.’
A. Baghdasaryan said that he is going to submit his case for
resignation on May 22 session which will be confirmed within 5
days. After that the resignation will be approved. Baghdasaryan
refused to comment on the act of city construction minister who left
the party.
`We are going to be an opposition,’ Arthur Baghdasaryan said also
saying that neither the ruling power warmly welcomed them nor will the
opposition do so. However, we will find our place in the field,
Orinats Yerkir leader says. /Panorama.am/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Panorama.am
14:51 13/05/06

HOW MUCH DOES WEDDING COST?
3rd exhibition-sale of wedding gowns and accessories took place in
Armenia Mariot hotel today. According to Naira Ohanesyan, assistant to
commercial director of the hotel, the number of participants is
growing. She says beauty saloons, 3 wedding saloons and tourist
agencies take part in the exhibition-sale. The young couples are
interested in prices first of all. For example candles offered by
Aelita will cost from AMD 15 thousand up to $150. A wedding gown may
cost from $100-1200. Rent price of a gown depends on how many times a
gown is put on.
Singer Sirusho rented a wedding gown in which she performed for one of
her ad videos. Shushan Petrossian also took a gown for her
relative. Also, Kristina Pepelyan rented a gown from saloon `Paris’
costing $50-100 for rent and $500-1500 for purchase.
Tour agency `Five stars travel’ offers special trips to Egypt, Vienna,
Prague and St. Petersburg. A 7 day trip to Egypt, ticket excluded,
costs $400. /Panorama.am/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS RELEASE
Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) – Yerevan Office
53-55 Pavstos Byuzand Street, 375010
Yerevan, Republic of Armenia
Contact: Inessa Grigoryan
Tel: (+374 10) 522076; 562068
Fax: (+374 10) 522076
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
Children of Armenia Fund – New York Office
630 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2100,
New York, NY 10111, USA
Contact: Mariam Dilakian
Tel: 212 – 994 – 8201
Fax: 212 – 994 – 8299
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
PRESS RELEASE
COAF Establishes Two Adolescent Clubs to Promote Livestock Farming
In the Villages of Lernagog and Argina
Lernagog, Armenia, May 12, 2006 ¾ Today, the Children of Armenia Fund
(COAF), in partnership with the Center for Agribusiness and Rural
Development (CARD), formed adolescent clubs in the villages of Lernagog
and Argina of the Armavir District of the Republic of Armenia. The
selected twenty 12-13 year-old adolescents gathered in their respective
school yards and cheered the sponsors as they arrived with the sheep.
After congratulatory remarks by the Lernagog Mayor, Mr. Sargis
Margaryan, and COAF and CARD project managers, the participating ten
adolescent residents of Lernagog received two sheep each, together with
a care package. The Argina distribution immediately followed
Lernagog’s.
The project aims at teaching youngsters how to take responsibility for
taking care of the sheep ¾ caring, feeding, and controlling diseases.
The broader objective is to develop livestock farming in the region.
Adolescents from disadvantaged, needy, or single parent families are
selected to join the club provided they satisfy a set of pre-established
criteria, including their personal level of interest in livestock
farming and the existence of a suitable sheep shed adjacent to the
family home. Under the close watch and direction of an expert
veterinarian, the youngsters will gain knowledge of animal science and
take daily notes on their sheep. CARD will be responsible for
organizing trainings, providing educational materials and hygienic
supplies. COAF has purchased the livestock and will provide animal
feed, if necessary. Monitoring and supervision of the project will be
done in a partnered way by both COAF and CARD project staff.
This project is expected to contribute to the economic development of
the Model Cluster villages. Particularly in animal husbandry, COAF
plans several other initiatives that will increase the supply chain in
agricultural products and ultimately lead to milk and wool processing
businesses or cooperatives.
Children of Armenia Fund was founded in 2000 with the aim to reduce
poverty through the revitalization of rural Armenia and the realization
of projects that are instrumental for the revival of communities. With
the introduction of its novel approach to clustering in February 2006,
COAF is currently implementing the Model Cluster working in six villages
in the Baghramyan region of the Armavir District. The key components of
COAF’s Model Cluster project comprise Infrastructure and Economic
Development Programs, and Community Development including Health, Social
and Educational Programs. In 2006, besides its Model Village Karakert,
COAF is also working in Myasnikyan, Shenik, Dalarik, Lernagog and
Argina.
The Armenian Rural Youth Development Program, initiated by the Center
for Agribusiness and Rural Development, is a voluntary non formal
educational program that supplements formal school education. It is
modeled after the US 4-H Program. The program is helping young people
gain skills needed to become responsible, self-directing, productive and
contributing members of society. The Extension Youth Development Program
provides real experiences and an opportunity for youth to gain life
skills, project development and implementation skills, basic
agricultural knowledge in order to be engaged in community development
activities.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress