Author: Hakobian Adrine

PAN-ARMENIAN GAMES – IN THE RUN-UP TO QUARTER FINAL

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
13.08.2009 22:14 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Group soccer tournament organized within the frames
of pan-Armenian games has already finished. Selected quarter finalists
are teams representing Yerevan, Los Angeles, Gyumri, Beirut, Tehran,
Gogran, Isfahan and Buenos Aires.

Quarter final matches are due on August 14 in Artashat, Ashtarak
and Abovyan. Semi-final competitions are scheduled on August 15. The
final match and match for the 3rd prize will take place on August 16.

Pairs for quarter final: Artashat Yerevan – Los Angeles Gyumri –
Beirut Ashtarak Tehran – Gorgan Abovyan Isfahan – Buenos Aires
Results for group matches: August 10 Buenos Aires – Shahin-Shahr –
2-0 Beirut-Akhakalaki – 5-2 Los Angeles – Batumi – 1-0 Echmiadzin –
Tehran – 0-2 Stepanakert – Tbilisi – 1-2 Gorgan – Yerevan – 0-0 Gyumri
– Isfahan – 1-2 Istanbul – Almelo – 6-0 August 11 Buenos Aires –
Akhalkalaki – 0-1 Beirut – Shahin-Shahr – 0-0 Los Angeles – Tehran –
1-2 Echmiadzin – Batumi – 1-0 Stepanakert – Yerevan – 2-3 Gorgan –
Tbilisi – 1-0 Itanbul – Isfahan – 0-1 Gyumri – Amelo – 4-0 August
12 Akhallalaki – Shahin Shahr – 1-1 Buenos Aires – Beirut – 3-2 Los
Angeles – Echmiadzin – 1-1 Tehran – Batumi – 2-0 Stepanakert – Gorgan –
1-1 Yerevan – Tbilisi – 1-1 Istanbul – Gyumri – 0-0 Isfahan – Almelo –
5-1

ARMENIAN-TURKISH NORMALIZATION IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE OF APPARENT DISPROPORTION

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
13.08.2009 17:20 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Richard Giragosyan: "It’s hard to speak about
Armenian-Turkish ties normalization since there is apparent
disproportion of forces between two states," said Richard Giragosyan,
Head of Armenian Center for Strategic and National Research. The
expert first of all accounts for such disproportion by Armenia’s
unyielding policy.

"Armenia demonstrated diplomatic weakness on April 23, by signing a
road map with Turkey. That was a pressure upon Armenia which showed
our country’s attitude to its Diaspora," the expert said. Armenian
authorities, according to him, should not have publicized such
statement prior to April 24. Besides, Armenian side’s policy strongly
offended Diaspora, Giragosyan added.

GEORGIA: ONE YEAR LATER
Melik Kaylan

Forbes
08.11.09, 12:01 AM EDT

The consequences of Russia’s invasion, and bullying, remain just as
ominous today.

Some three or four days into Russia’s invasion of Georgia–exactly
a year ago–I made it to Tblisi, dumped my bags, and was soon in
a car heading toward the front with two Georgian friends. Russian
tanks had already burst out of South Ossetia into Georgian-held
territory and occupied Gori, Stalin’s birthplace, about an hour
north of Tbilisi. The Bush administration, bogged down in two wars
and strategically dependent on Vladimir Putin’s goodwill, choked and
froze. Russian tanks rolled on.

I had by this point advised Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to
prepare an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, an appeal to the world
at a pivotal moment when his country and the West’s credibility hung
in the balance. What happened next would arguably determine whether
Moscow would quickly succeed in taking back its empire in a swath
of the globe extending from Ukraine to the "Stans." I spent a good
many hours shouting into cellphones, drowned out by sounds of combat,
trying to set up the op-ed between New York and

In the days before we got to Gori, the Russians had bombed it
indiscriminately, causing a refugee outflow. They had swallowed the
territory between separatist South Ossetia and the town. From that area
and others, they were purging Georgian villages of their inhabitants
and settling checkpoints everywhere. Russian aerial bombs had hit and
killed members of a Dutch TV crew in Gori. On the road before us, a
Turkish TV crew had been shot up. They’d taken the left turn into the
hills toward the separatist South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali and
got hammered. Amazingly, they got footage of the bullets penetrating
their windshield and hitting their driver in the eye.

As the Bush administration dithered, the op-ed was published and the
Journal’s editorial board had a meeting. Was there anything else
they could do? The Bushies, it seemed, had nothing more in their
arsenal than noises of disapproval. The Journal wrote an editorial
berating them for being supine and suggesting they send Condoleezza
Rice to Tbilisi. Washington complained loudly and publicly about the
editorial, claiming it was about to do just that. Russian warplanes
buzzed low over Georgia’s capital all day and night, but here, at last,
was the West’s firm red line that Moscow didn’t dare to cross. Once
Condi got there, the situation stabilized. If Moscow attacked, the
U.S. and Russia would be at war. Putin desisted, and Tbilisi was saved.

The Russians held to their line of control some miles outside
Gori. That was on their northern front near South Ossetia. They also
burst out of the other separatist zone of Abkhazia abutting the Black
Sea and overran various Georgian army bases and the Georgian port of
Poti. Meantime, my friends had located a little-known tractor track
that led into the back streets of Gori. We didn’t know if we might
hit a landmine or face a hail of ambush bullets. Russian military
officials were following a battle-plan they had successfully tested
during the 1990s in the Caucasus, in the Armenia-Azerbaijan war, in
Chechnya and around Georgia. They secured the perimeter of a town or
village with tanks and then allowed irregulars and militias to do the
dirty work. Against Azerbaijan they sided with Armenia. In Khojaly,
Azerbaijan, in 1992, for example, the Russian 366 Motorized Regiment
encircled the town while massacres of Azeri civilians ensued. In
later years, Moscow used contratniki, mercenaries working on contract,
many of them convicts released from prison, to pacify the towns and
villages of Chechnya. And now, they applied the tactic to the Georgian
region around South Ossetia.

We made it into Gori safely. Because we had entered illicitly, Russian
forces could not monitor our movements. So we stayed with locals and
watched the locked-down streets at night as South Ossetian irregulars
purged more areas, pillaged houses and abducted civilians. Equally,
the militias looted and wrecked Georgian cultural sites in the
hinterlands, which would have gone unnoticed, as reporters were not
allowed to see the sites. I was led to just such a location one day
at great risk to my guides as the sun went down, allowing me later
to report such incidents in the Journal.

Read All Comments As I said in that article, neither Georgians nor
the world was supposed to know about such things, because Moscow
annexed those parts into its expanded zone. As it turned out,
Moscow’s fully articulated plan of action included a highly effective
propaganda campaign. Tanks left Gori during the day while officially
accredited journalists came in to view the "peaceful" town. At night,
journalists left and the tanks returned, ushering in the militias. But
the propagandists’ main goal was to convince the world that President
Saakashvili had provoked the Russian action with a gratuitous Georgian
assault on Tskhinvali followed by a "genocide" against the locals
who the Russians were honor-bound to defend. Moscow cited bloody
statistics of massacred civilians in the four figures (later proved
to be manufactured).

The world’s media lapped it up, not least because a vast chunk of
European and American opinion did not wish to open a third front of
conflict, this time against the Russkies. Moscow well understood the
West’s perennial weakness from prewar Munich to postwar Berlin to
Prague and onward. Blame Saakashvili’s hotheadedness, and the West
would buy it with relief–as a forgotten British sage once observed,
"All men would be cowards had they but courage enough." In the
meantime, Moscow’s "near-abroad" would get the message to realign
with Russia or face the consequences unprotected. In vain did the
Georgian president protest that Russian tanks had already launched
their offensive through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia before
he ordered a response. How else would hundreds of Russian armored
vehicles surged into position all over Georgia within 48 hours?

The Russians deliberately humiliated Georgian pride in pointed ways
and took their time withdrawing to the limits of their newly expanded
zone. In everything they did, the aim was to destabilize Saakashvili’s
leadership–in short, to achieve a "regime change." Since then, Moscow
has unilaterally declared independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia,
a move endorsed by no one in the world except Nicaragua.

The dispute still endures as to who started the war. It heated up in
recent days ahead of the one-year anniversary, while a Swiss mission
completed its investigation on who did what first in those early
hours before the Russian invasion. The report is now postponed until
the anniversary is well behind us, because its findings will have
instant repercussions in the region. As a recent Journal report said,
"Georgian officials acknowledge they have the bigger hill to climb,
as only an unambiguous report blaming Moscow for the war could change
the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

Georgia’s position does not look healthy. The U.S. needs Russian help
in numerous crucial ways: to curb Iranian power and nukes, to set up
a supply route via Central Asia to Afghanistan because the Pakistan
route has grown too dangerous, to stay out of Syria and Venezuela,
and so forth. Vice President Biden has apparently already told
Tbilisi not to expect too much help against Moscow, which is a sure
way to encourage further Russian belligerence amounting, eventually,
to a problem across Europe and the world many times the size of Iran
or al-Qaida.

Nobody should be fooled by the seeming equivalency between Moscow’s
attempts at regime-change in Georgia and U.S. actions in Iraq. Georgia
is a full-fledged democracy with a flourishing economy. Iraq was a
bloody dictatorship until the U.S. intervened. The U.S. is trying to
keep Iraq together; Moscow is trying to fragment Georgia. The closer
analogy, in Russian minds, might be the break-up of Yugoslavia and
the West’s creation of entities such as Bosnia and Kosovo from the
pieces. But there again, the Serbians weren’t exactly models of
humanist tolerance. The first of the people-power color revolutions
occurred in Belgrade to unseat the bloody tyrant in place there, a
movement that washed hope across the post-Soviet sphere and carried
Saakashvili into office. Georgia has offered all manner of rights
to Abkhaz and South Ossetians, ranging from regional to linguistic
autonomy. Russia offers them the kind of polity to be found in any
regime upheld by Moscow, including its own. Which would you choose?

The West has furnished way too many levers and excuses to Moscow
propagandists in recent years, from the instability in Iraq to the
recent collapse in the global economy. Russia’s proffered alternative
grows closer and closer to the Soviet one daily: command economies,
Russian-backed political elites, subsidized industries, protected
jobs, state-owned media–the whole gamut. Plenty of folks, especially
those in power, in numerous countries from Venezuela to Uzbekistan
now consider this a viable alternative. If an iron curtain should
descend across the globe anew, we have to decide who to save and how
much to sacrifice. Solzhyenitsyn once said that the Russians were more
likely to triumph in the long run because they were more accustomed
to suffering and sacrifice. The Soviet collapse proved him wrong,
for a while. His words may yet come back to haunt us.

Melik Kaylan, a writer based in New York, writes a weekly column for
Forbes.com. His story "Georgia In The Time of Misha" is featured in
The Best American Travel Writing 2008.

SERGEY SHAKARYANTS: RA PRESIDENT MAY BE FORCED TO LEAVE FOR TURKEY

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
12.08.2009 15:47 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "Everybody says Armenia may find itself under
pressure in autumn. Many variants are considered. It’s hard to speak
about the kind of pressures, but they are sure to be exerted on
us," political scientist Sergey Shakaryants told a news conference
in Yerevan.

Even though Armenian President says he will not go to Turkey unless
Turkish side fulfills its promise, he may be forced to go there,
Shakaryants believes.

Besides, he said, pressures may result in Armenia’s refusal to involve
NKR in conflict settlement talks.

Armenian political scientist did not rule out the possibility of a
new war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Everything is possible, but
that will not happen till 2009. Azerbaijan will not dare to start a
new war. It will rather wait for a new commotion in the region before
thinking about a war," the expert stressed.

LEVON ARONYAN HELD HIS FIRST VICTORY IN GRAND-PRIX SERIES TOURNAMENT IN JERMUK

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
10.08.2009 21:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In the second round of 5th FIDE Grand Prix tournament
which started in Jermuk on August 9, Armenian grand master Levon
Aronyan held victory over Evgeni Alekseev (Russia). Russian chess
player gave in at the 72 move. In the second round game against
Bulgarian Ivan Vladimir Hakobyan, Vladimir Hakobyan again ended the
game in a draw.

In Yakovenko-Kamski game, Russian chess player came out on top,
defeating his rival at the 29th move.

After 2 rounds, grand masters Levon Aronyan, Peter Leko and Ivan
Chaparinov topped the tournament list, with 1.5 points.

In the 3rd round, Aronyan played against Ivan Chaparinov, and Hakobyan
competed against Gata Kamsky. Both Armenian representatives played
with black figures.

2nd round games:

Leko Peter – Eljanov Pavel 1/2

Kariakin Sergey – Gelfand Boris 1/2

Bacrot Etienne – Kasimdzhanov Rustam 1/2

Jakovenko Dmitry – Kamsky Gata 1-0

Akopian Vladimir – Cheparinov Ivan 1/2

Aronian Levon – Alekseev Evgeny 1-0

Inarkiev Ernesto – Ivanchuk Vassily 1/2

Tournament position after 2 rounds: Aronyan, Leko, Chaparinov – 1/2;
Hakobyan, Yakovlenko, Bacrot, Gelfand, Elianov, Kasymzhanov, Ivanchuk –
1; Alekseev, Inarkiev, Kamsky – 1/2.

ARAM TIGRAN: FAMOUS ARMENIAN-KURDISH SINGER TO BE BURIED IN DIYARBEKIR

2009 /08/11 | 12:14

Diaspora

Aram Tigran, an Armenian born in Syria and considered among the
best of contemporary Kurdish singers, passed away in Athens, Greece,
on August 6.

Born in 1934 in Al-Qamishli to Genocide survivors, by the age of
20 Aram was playing the oud and singing in Armenian, Kurdish and
Arabic. In 1966 he moved to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, and worked
for Yerivan Radio for 18 years. In 1996 he moved to Athens.

His death has affected many, and not least those recognizing the
important contribution he made as a cultural bridge between Armenians
and Kurds. Aram Tigran was unknown to most Armenians but loved by
many Kurds for his songs sung in the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish.

According to bianet news, Fýrat Anlý, Diyarbakýr province chair of the
Democratic Society Party (DTP) and member of the funeral organisation
committee, the funeral mass would take place eitherAugust 10 or 11
in the Armenian church in Diyarbakýr.

Tigran will then be buried in the Armenian graveyard.

Anlý said that Tigran had previously expressed a wish to be buried
in his place of birth, in Al-Qamishli, Syria.

However, after participating in a culture and arts festival in
Diyarbakýr last year and spending around two months in the city on
this visit, he told his family and people in the city that he wanted
to be buried there.

This year, he took part in Diyarbakýr’s 9th Culture and Arts Festival,
but because of ill health he only performed three Kurdish songs.

During Newroz celebrations in Batman last year, Tigran sang songs in
Kurdish, Turkish, Armenian and Arabic. He also sang the "Sarý Gelin"
song in memory of assassinated journalist and human rights activist
Hrant Dink.

FACING RESISTANCE, GUL URGES COMMON SENSE ON KURDISH ISSUE

Today’s Zaman
11 August 2009, Tuesday

President Abdullah Gul visited an ancient Seljuk burial site in Bitlis
province on Saturday.

President Abdullah Gul has emphasized the importance of finding
a solution to the country’s long-standing Kurdish question with
the participation of opposition leaders, who have been adopting a
hard-line policy on the issue.

"Opposition is very important. Opposition is part of politics," said
Gul, as quoted by Sabah daily columnist Yavuz Donat, who spoke with
Gul aboard his airplane on Sunday afternoon while returning from a
trip to the provinces of Muþ, Bitlis, Tatvan and Ahlat. Donat wrote
yesterday that the president had not mentioned any party names or
leaders, talking instead about the "opposition" in general terms. On
the other hand, Milliyet daily’s Taha Akyol, who was the second of
two journalists talking with Gul during the flight, wrote that Gul
said he was willing to meet with main opposition leaders Deniz Baykal
and Devlet Bahceli.

When Akyol asked the president whether he would talk to Republican
People’s Party (CHP) leader Baykal and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)
leader Bahceli about the government’s latest "Kurdish initiative,"
Gul said: "I will do whatever is necessary and have done so. Nations
sometimes face difficult problems. In those times, their institutions
and parties produce collective common sense ideas. You know I
called the leaders and spoke with them. I see everyone engaging
with goodwill."

The phrase "Kurdish initiative" refers to a recently announced but
vaguely described plan to address the country’s Kurdish problem,
which has claimed about 40,000 lives since the 1980s as the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and government forces have engaged in
a war, and the problems of the country’s Kurdish citizens, which have
not been adequately addressed.

Following a few other initiatives that have lacked continuity, Interior
Minister Beþir Atalay announced two weeks ago that the government was
working on a new package to solve the Kurdish question by working
on further democratization and the expansion of human rights and
freedoms. This time the society seems to be engaged in a more vigorous
debate on the issue as many commentators are even discussing the
possibility of a federal structure even though government sources
say ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials would
not accept any suggestions that include a change to Turkey’s unitary
form of government.

"The ruling party is not closed to dialogue. In their provincial
and district organizations — where there is public discussion —
they have already engaged in a debate about the government’s Kurdish
initiative. This has not been happening for the last 25 years. I wish
the CHP and the MHP could do the same thing," said Orhan Miroðlu,
a former politician and a Kurdish intellectual who survived an
assassination attempt at the infamous Diyarbakýr Prison.

President Abdullah Gul visited an ancient Seljuk burial site in Bitlis
province on Saturday.

However, addressing the public in Antalya on Sunday, Bahceli continued
to stick to his hard-line stance and called the government’s Kurdish
initiative a "fallacy."

"Under the name of democratization, the democratic regime of Turkey has
been taken in a different direction. Under the name of democratization,
division and clashes have been encouraged, and at the end, scenarios
of separation have been tried to be implemented," he said in reference
to the Treaty of Sèvres, which was imposed on the Ottoman government
by the victorious Western powers at the end of World War I. Signed
in 1920, the treaty provided for the establishment of Armenian and
Kurdish states in Anatolia but was in fact never put into effect,
being rejected by the national liberation movement, whose success
led to its replacement by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

"We know the scenarios that Western imperialism played out to divide
and eliminate Turkey. They haven’t given up on that," Bahceli said. "As
we evaluate the impositions of the United States and the European
Union and the demands of the PKK, we see that they overlap. They are
the same."

Bahceli also referred to the plans of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan,
who is currently serving life in prison on Ýmralý Island in the Sea
of Marmara off the coast of Ýstanbul.

"He talks about a three-step plan: Both sides should call a
cease-fire. … Consensus should be formed to have a democratic and
civil constitution, and a commission should be formed to reveal truth,
as if this nation has not seen the truth regarding the results of
separatist terrorism," Bahceli said. "Such demands as general amnesty,
ceasing [military] operations, using Kurdish as a language of education
[alongside Turkish] and accepting the PKK as a party in talks are
going to be accepted by the Turkish Republic, and you call this a
‘solution’?"

In addition, Bahceli harshly criticized President Gul for referring
to a town in the province of Bitlis by its former Kurdish name,
"Norþin." The town is officially known as "Guroymak."

"As he sees the crowd, he steps out and greets them, calling Guroymak
by its former name, Norþin. He responds to the PKK’s demands in
Guroymak," Bahceli said, questioning Gul’s intentions. "Is he going
to change Ýstanbul to Constantinople next?"

Mehmet Metiner, a columnist at the Star daily and a former advisor
to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, said Bahceli has been missing
the big picture by delving into party politics.

"Bahceli closed the doors to dialogue," Metiner said despite hailing
Bahceli’s "respectable" approach in calming down nationalists who
would have otherwise demonstrated violently in the process of Ocalan’s
capture and return to Turkey in 1999.

"I still believe in his common sense approach," Metiner added.

Kurdish intellectual Miroðlu also praised Bahceli’s attempt to not
encourage its extreme wing to take to the streets, but said the MHP
should see the Kurdish issue as a national problem.

"Both the MHP and the CHP should not see the Kurdish issue as part
of everyday politics," Miroðlu said, adding that CHP leader Baykal
announced last week two red lines the CHP is not willing to cross:
language rights and democratic autonomy.

Baykal had said that allowing the use of the Kurdish language in
public education in addition to Turkish would be wrong and that an
autonomous province would hurt the unitary structure of the country.

Participating in celebrations of an ethnic and cultural minority called
the "Avþar" in Kayseri on Sunday, Baykal said everyone should be proud
of his or her own ethnic identity but at the same time remember that
he or she is part of the Turkish nation.

Columnist Metiner recalled the former stance of the CHP on the
Kurdish issue.

"In the past, CHP officials have said that they would be willing to
talk about any type of solution once the guns are put down. Now,
they are even against talking with the Democratic Society Party
[DTP]. This is not the line a social democratic party should adopt. And
if Ocalan has the ability to have the PKK lay down its arms, then
he is valuable. It is not important who says what but what is said,"
Metiner added, criticizing Baykal.

Despite opposition from the MHP and the CHP, Prime Minister Erdoðan met
with representatives of the DTP on Aug. 5 to discuss the government’s
Kurdish initiative. The meeting was the first of its kind, as the prime
minister had previously declined to meet with DTP officials as long as
the party refused to describe the PKK as a terrorist organization. The
leaders hesitated to give details of the meeting, but sources say
DTP representatives were pleased with the government’s initiative.

Metiner said the prime minister should also talk with Baykal and
Bahceli.

"As waters calm down, there will be meetings. The effects of harsh
statements have not passed yet," he added.

President Gul, on the hand, said both the CHP and the MHP leader have
goodwill and are "working for Turkey."

"Is it possible for them to not be able to see this important Kurdish
problem?" he said in response to Milliyet’s Akyol.

Gul also said Turkey will solve its long-standing Kurdish problem as a
modern state and as a "country that desires to be a member of the EU."

Voronezh inhabitant received 4.9 years’ prison sentence for attacking
an Armenian
08.08.2009 12:00 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The railroad district court of Voronezh found 22
year-old Alexander Chalenko guilty of causing grave health damage to
an Armenian, Voronezh Investigative Committee Department’s press
service reports. On the night of September 2, 2008, a 25 year-old
Armenian, citizen of RF, was attacked and beaten by teenagers aged
16-20 while accompanying his relative home. According to the
conclusions of the court and prosecutor’s office, Chalenko took out a
knife and beat the victim on the back several times. `Then attackers
hid away, and the aggrieved was moved to hospital. Court found
Alexander Chalenko guilty and sentenced him to 4 years and 10 months
in prison. The convict will serve his sentence in a correctional
colony of general regime,’ Kommersant periodical reports.

Edward Nalbandyan met with Matthew Bryza
08.08.2009 14:57 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On August 8, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward
Nalbandyan met with OSCE MG American Co-Chair Matthew Bryza.
During the meeting, parties touched upon recent developments in
Karabakh peace process and issues concerning Armenian-American ties,
RA MFA press service reports.

Trend, Azerbaijan
Aug 7 2009

Azerbaijani Court keeps in force a sentence on Azerbaijani soldier
charged with high treason

Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 7 / Trend News H.Bagirov /

The Court did not grant an appeal of former soldier of the Azerbaijani
National Army convicted of high treason.

The Shirvan Court of Appeal considered an appeal of soldier, Vusal
Heybatov, who returned from captivity in Armenia on Aug.7. The court
kept in force the verdict of the Court of Serious Crimes, who
sentenced Haybatov to 11 years imprisonment.

Soldier of the Azerbaijani Army, a resident of the Khilmilli village
of the Gobustan region, Vusal Haybatov, 20, was captivated in Agdam
region on Apr. 11, 2008 and returned to Azerbaijan on May 3.

Haybatov revealed the state secrets to Armenian Special Services.

Haybatov was accused of Article 274 (high treason) of the Azerbaijani
Criminal code and the Court of Serious Crimes sentenced him to 11
years in imprisonment.