Author: Hakobian Adrine

Turkish translation of `Blue Book’ presented in Ankara
28.06.2009 01:13 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Turkish and uncensored edition of the book "The
Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915 Ð 1916," which was
earlier criticized by the Turkish authorities for being a wartime
fabrication, has been released in Turkey.
The book, also known as the "Blue Book," was originally published in
1916 in English by the British parliament, and delves into the 1915
and 1916 incidents that resulted in the expulsion of many Armenians
from Anatolia. The central thesis of the book was the argument that
starting in 1915, Armenians were subject to a policy of mass
annihilation in the Ottoman Empire, Hurriyet DailyNews reports.
The inauguration of the Turkish version of the book was held Friday in
Ankara with the participation of Lord Avebury from the House of Lords
and Ara Sarafian, a British historian of Armenian origin.
"Years ago, the Turkish Parliament demanded from the British side to
withdraw the book but the British parliamentarians asked for dialogue
with the Turkish side on the issue. No response came from Turkish
Parliament. The publication of the Turkish edition of the book is a
milestone in a historical sense for Turkey and I believe a new era for
dialogue will be created after this book," said Avebury.
"The Armenian genocide is the only issue that couldn’t be acknowledged
and solved in the world history but I am sure the book will contribute
to the solution of the issue."
Sarafian said with the book the Turkish official thesis on the issue
had been opened for discussion.
"The Turkish edition of the book is such an exercise in an effort to
re-engage the Armenian issue within a more democratic and open
Turkey," he said. "I hope that at least some deputies of the
Parliament will reconsider their collective position on the Blue Book
and distance themselves from it."
The book was also sent to all deputies in Turkish Parliament and the
necessary permission was taken to distribute it to the bookstores in
Turkey.

CARRYING OUT TURKISH-ARMENIAN TALKS AND AZERBAIJANI-ARMENIAN TALKS IN PARALLEL WOULD ENSURE LASINT PEACE IN REGION: AHMED DAVUTOGHLU

ArmInfo
2009-06-27 11:48:00

ArmInfo. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday in
Trieste, Italy, G-8 foreign ministers issued a declaration in which
they also defined efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and
Armenia as positive, Turk.net reported.

Davutoglu also said that carrying out the two processes in parallel
with each other (Turkish-Armenian talks and Azerbaijani-Armenian talks)
would ensure lasting peace in the region.

Davutoglu mentioned that he would pay a formal visit to Moscow, Russia
in the following week and exchange views with his Russian counterpart
Sergey Lavrov about bilateral relations and regional issues.

ARMENIAN POLICE DISPERSE RALLY PROTESTING AGAINST SAAKASHVILI’S VISIT

Interfax
June 26 2009
Russia

Armenian police clashed with people protesting against the Armenian
visit of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili near the Armenia
Marriott Hotel in downtown Yerevan on Thursday.

Natives of the Georgian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, who currently
live in Armenia, held the protest. They demand that Saakashvili must
respect the rights of national minorities and give the official status
to the Armenian language in Samtskhe-Javakheti.

The police dispersed the unauthorized rally and had a brawl with head
of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun political
bureau Kiro Manoyan.

The latter has made no comments.

In all, the action involved about 50 people.

Saakashvili paid a two-day visit to Yerevan.

COMMISSION MEMBERS IN YSU SOCIOLOGY FACULTY EVALUATE TERM PAPERS WITHOUT READING THEM

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
27.06.2009 13:53 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Many students from Yerevan State University’s
Sociology Department have got satisfactory marks from term papers,
regardless the quality of their work. What’s more, they are not
entitled to appeal against the results.

Answering a PanARMENIAN.Net correspondent’s question whether any of
commission members read papers before evaluating them, commission’s
evaluation expert Aram Vartikyan said that papers were not read
by anyone. As to how in that case they were evaluated, he said,
"It’s none of your business."

Head of Chair Arthur Atanesyan also refrained from comments.

However, YSU PR Department Chair Karen Grigoryan characterized the
phenomenon as an obvious violation of rules, saying that commission
members are obliged to get familiarized with papers before defense. "No
on is entitled to evaluate term papers on his own, especially without
reading them," he noted.

ELECTION IN IRAN REVEALED THAT "VERY SERIOUS DOMESTIC CONTRADICTIONS

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
25.06.2009 21:24 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian Center for National and International
Studies (ACNIS) convened a roundtable discussion today, entitled
"Crisis in Iran: Lessons for Armenia," assessing the recent
post-election crisis in Iran and examining the lessons for Armenia,
the ACNIS press office reported.

ACNIS Director Richard Giragosian then presented an assessment of
recent developments in Armenia’s southern neighbor Iran, which has
been gripped by a powerful, and at times, even violent post-election
crisis that has seen the largest anti-government demonstrations since
the 1979 Iranian revolution, with hundreds of thousands of Iranian
citizens protesting a disputed presidential election. He argued
that the "post-election unrest poses the most serious challenge to
the Iranian authorities since they came to power in the wake of the
Iranian revolution twenty years ago." In addition, he noted that "the
current wave of unrest is largely directed against the ruling elite,
although it is not, at least yet, targeting the system itself."

After providing a focused analysis of the Iranian crisis, Giragosian
also presented several important lessons for Armenia, including the
fact that "Iran is now facing its own March 1st post-election crisis,
similar to the events in Armenia last year" and, in both cases,
"led to the tragic deaths of civilian demonstrators after the use,
and misuse, of force, with police and security forces applying an
excessive and repressive response to the demonstrations." He went on to
say that "in Armenia’s case, the March 2008 crisis remains unresolved,
as the authorities have been unable or unwilling to fully and fairly
investigate the events of March 2008" and warned that "Armenia, like
Iran, is plagued by a failure to adequately resolve the underlying
tension and demands emanating from that crisis."

Giragosian explained that another lesson for Armenia from the
current crisis in Iran was the fact that the election revealed that
"very serious domestic contradictions quickly developed into a highly
volatile and explosive internal situation that no ideology, no mater
how powerful, could contain." And, "for the Armenian authorities, this
lesson also includes a warning: that there can be no political panacea
or substitute for not addressing concrete socio-economic problems. And
with Iran, it is also clear that the recent crisis has shown that no
country in this modern world can remain truly isolated," he added.

He concluded by noting that the third lesson from Iran, the "economics
of change" as a driving force behind this tension that was even more
worrisome for Armenia. In both cases, he argued, "young Iranians and
Armenians share the same hopes, for a brighter future, for economic
opportunities, and for a voice in how their country is governed." He
then warned that "for both countries, there is no return to the
pre-crisis status quo, as the political and economic demands for
change remain unmet, and to continue to ignore these basic demands and
natural expectations, sparks a real risk of only prolonging the crisis,
and most dangerously, of merely fueling the fire of discontent."

In closing, Giragosian stated that "in terms of the outlook
for Armenian-Iranian relations, there are both inherent limits,
such as the Russian pressure on Armenia over the size of the gas
pipeline to prevent the re-export of gas beyond Armenia, and inherent
opportunities," arguing that "Armenia can play a role as a strategic
bridge to Iran, and as a platform for Russia, the EU and the US to
engage Iran."

RUSSIA’S IP-TELEPHONY OPERATOR SHOWS NAGORNO-KARABAKH AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE IN ITS RATE SCALE

APA
June 25 2009
Azerbaijan

Baku. Aynur Veliyeva – APA-ECONOMICS. Russian IP-telephony operator
has showed Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state in its table of
tariff packages.

Nagorno Karabakh is an internationally recognized and inalienable
part of Azerbaijan.

As APA-ECONOMICS find, Rinotel wrote the name of Nagorno-Karabakh in
the same line with the Armenian operators.

Besides, it allocated 374-47 as a country code to Nagorno Karabakh
and this code indicates the territory as Armenia’s.

Rinotel posts in its table that it has roaming services with all
mobile operators of Azerbaijan.

Rinotel’s channels are provided by Equant, Sovintel, TransTelekom
and RTCOMM.RU.

Mushfig Amirov, Press Secretary of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of
Communications and Information Technologies said that similar fact has
been found several times before and is corrected after the interference
of the ministry.

With regard to Rinotel’s tariff table, he said the Ministry has sent
a request to the GSM Association, the International Telecommunication
Union, Russia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies
and Rinotel for the correction.

MORTGAGE CREDITS EXTENDED BY ARMENIAN FINANCIAL SYSTEM – 92BLN DRAMS IN JAN-MAY

ARKA
June 23, 2009

YEREVAN, June 23. /ARKA/. Mortgage credits extended by Armenian
financial system was 92bln Drams or 13% of overall credit portfolio
at the end of May 2009, Vice-Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia
(CBA) Vache Gabrielyan said Monday at the annual meeting of the
country’s Union of mortgage market participants.

Mortgage market is a new and promising field of a great social
importance in the country, the Vice-Chairman said.

He also pointed out the necessity of clear procedures to meet the
growing market demand and the Union’s role in it.

Mortgage credits have kept growing on the Armenian market over the
last years, Gabrielyan said.

An average of 95% annual growth of mortgage credits extended by
Armenian banks was recorded over the last four years against 48%
increase in total portfolio of Armenian banks every year, he said.

Gabrielyan reported that total amount of mortgage credits allocated
by credit organizations of Armenia grew by an average of 190% every
year during the last four years.

The world financial and economic crisis has had impact on the country’s
financial market starting from the fourth quarter of 2008, he said.

Gabrielyan assured that the CBA, together with the government, takes
measures to smooth over the situation.

The share of mortgage credits in overall credit portfolio of Armenian20
banks was 13.03% in the first quarter of 2009. Mortgage credits
extended in the reporting period totaled 86.4bln Drams – an increase
of 3.3% or 2.7bln Drams as compared with the same period of last year.
($1=365.02Drams).

Ministers of Economy and Agriculture and Governor of Armavir Marz
visit ATG Operations

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian Technology Group, Inc., 1300 East Shaw Avenue, suite 131,
P.O. Box 5969, Fresno, CA 93755-5969
June 22, 2009
Contact: Peter Ara Guekguezian at 559-224-1000

The Armenian Minister of Economy. Nerces Yeritzyan, joined by the
newly appointed Minister of Agriculture, Gerasim Alaverdyan, made a
special working visit to the Armenian Technology Group Foundation
(ATG) operations headquarters in Armavir Region.

Governor of Armavir Marz, Ashot Ghahramanyan, and Ishkhan Karapetyan,
Executive Director for the Small and Medium Entrepreneurship
Development National Center (SME-DNC) of Armenia, also participated in
the field trip.

The purpose of their visit was to observe and familiarize themselves
with ATG’s latest development project — conservation agriculture —
and its long term benefits for the country.

The ministers, accompanied by their senior staff members, visited the
ATG warehouses to learn about the new no-till farming equipment and
methodology that ATG has introduced to Armenian farmers. The no-till
system is widely used in countries around the world at the forefront
of agriculture, including the USA, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil,
where more than 95 million hectares of land are being cultivated
annually with this conservation technology.

Conservation farming technology provides two major sustainable
benefits to the country: it allows farmers to save money and
resources; and, it enhances the quality of the farmland and increases
its productivity.

Agriculture is a challenging and difficult occupation, especially in
Armenia, where farmers use outdated farm equipment that is both
inefficient and expensive to operate.

Based on 20 years of working experience in the agricultural sector of
Armenia along with its vast network of farmer-cooperatives, ATG’s
focus for the immediate future is to transfer knowledge and technology
to farmers by conducting educational seminars and field
demonstrations, thus encouraging them to adopt conservation farming
technology and helping them lower their operating costs.

Gagik Mkrchyan, ATGF Country Director in Armenia, guided the visit. He
emphasized that the no-till system can reduce farm operating costs
between 30-50,000 AMD per hectare. This becomes more significant when
taking into account the dry land and semi-mountainous areas that
abound in Armenia, where profitable farming operation requires much
more effort and focus. No-till farming technology should reduce fuel
consumption by 37 percent, and farm labor and farm equipment operating
costs by 50 percent.

After studying the new equipment that ATG had introduced, the Minister
of Economy stated "Farm equipment technologies have not been developed
in Armenia. This new no-till planter could provide a wonderful
opportunity to start cooperation between the government/public sector
and private sector. It is necessary to encourage farmers to adapt the
use of this system. We must persuade the private sector to be engaged
in small business development." Minister Yeritzyan further stated that
we should appreciate the possibilities and opportunities that this new
system can provide to the republic, adding that Armenia’s grain
production is not enough to satisfy its consumption.

The current economic situation in Armenia has created a very difficult
situation in the country: many farmers are no longer able to afford
cultivating their land. The inefficiency of the farm equipment
available to them, plus rising fuel and irrigation water costs, makes
it almost impossible for the small farmer to break even. As a result,
thousand of hectares of land have been left idle and are not being
cultivated. In the long term, this will have a devastating and
negative impact on local food supplies.

"In these challenging economic times, we believe it is essential to
assist the food producers in Armenia to reduce their operating cost as
much as possible." said Varoujan Der Simonian, Executive Director of
ATG. "It is not an accident that the Scientific American Magazine has
devoted one of its cover stories to no-till farming practices, which
it calls a ‘Quiet Revolution.’ We are pleased by the positive
evaluation of the Ministries of Economy and Agriculture, and will join
forces with them to find a solution in helping farmers reduce their
operating costs and increase their profit margins."

The ministers also observed the immediate impact that the new system
will have on the environment. It minimizes mechanical soil
disturbance, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, soil
compaction and the potential for soil erosion, and the disruption of
soil biological cycles. The system will also maintain moisture in the
soil, reducing the amount of irrigation needed and thus allowing
Armenia to conserve its scarce water resources.

ATG was established in 1989 in Fresno, California as a 501(c)3
non-profit public benefit corporation. For the past 20 years, ATG has
been focused on providing technical assistance to rural Armenia in
establishing long-term, sustainable economic development projects in
Armenia and Artsakh. You may contact ATG at P.O. Box 5969 — Fresno,
CA 93755, or

SCPEC permits merge of Cascade Bank and Cascade-credit
20.06.2009 14:29 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ State Commission for the Protection of Economic
Competition (SCPEC) permits merge of the Cascade Bank and the
Universal Credit Organization Cascade-credit, press office of the
SCPEC reports.
On May 11 the Cascade Bank applied to the Commission and informed
about bank’s decision of February 2009 to unite with
Cascade-credit. Same range of activities, effective usage of assets,
improved governance, raised competitiveness of services offered on the
financial market and further potential growth, grown revenues due to
expenditure cut were mentioned among the main reasons of the decision
on merge.
Besides, according to the data of RA Central Bank, after joining with
Cascade-Credit the bank will rank 16th in country’s banking system
(either by its assets, or by liabilities) instead of current 19th. (22
banks are currently operating in Armenia). In respect to other
showings, since merge of two companies cannot drive to dominating
position on any commodity market, the Commission permitted it.
The Cascade-Credit bank was established in May 1998 by the Emporiki
Bank of Greece with the capital of $3 million. In 2000, bank’s capital
grew to 4 million. In May 2005, Cascade Capital Holding purchased 100
per cent of bank’s shares and in June the bank was renamed into
Cascade Bank CJSC. Cascade Capital Holdings is 100 per cent owned by
the U.S.- based Cafesjian Family Foundation. The total capital of the
bank is 5 569 999 thousand AMD, with 14 153 474 thousand AMD of assets
and 8 583 475 thousand AMD of liabilities.
Cascade-Credit was established in 2004 by Cascade Capital
Holdings. Cascade-Credit provides renewable energy loans to build and
equip small hydro power plants and consumer, business and agricultural
loans and leasing.

ARMENIAN NATIONAL FENCING TEAM TO TAKE PART IN EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP IN BULGARIA

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
19.06.2009 18:02 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian fencers Mikael Ghazaryan and Arkady Muradyan
prepare for the European championship to be held from July 13 to 19
in Plovdiv (Bulgaria). As Artashes Madoyan, secretary general of the
Armenian Fencing Federation, told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter Mikael
Ghazaryan and Arkady Muradyan on the eve of the European championship
will participate in the 25th World Summer Universiade between June
1 and 12 in Belgrade (Serbia).

Rafael Hunanyan (sword) will also take part in the
Universiade. Armenian national team will leave for Belgrade on June 30,
2009