Author: Hambardsumian Paul

NUMBER OF COMMERCIAL LEGAL ENTITIES REGISTERED IN ARMENIA GROWS BY 3.11%, NUMBER OF PRIVATE BUSINESSMEN DECLINES BY 40.41% IN ONE YEAR

Noyan Tapan
Apr 16 2007

YEREVAN, APRIL 16, NOYAN TAPAN. According to the data of the RA Justice
Ministry’s State Register of Legal Entities and Private Businessmen,
in January-February 2007, 533 commercial legal entities and 1,086
private businessmen got registered, and their total number made
54,206 and 43,164 respectively as of March 1, 2007. According to the
RA National Statistical Service, as of March 1, 2006, the number of
legal entities registered made 52,572, that of private businessmen –
72,429: in one year, the number of legal entities increased by 3.11%,
whereas the number of private businessmen declined by 40.41%.

In January-February 2007, 173 legal entities and 211 private
businessmen were liquidated.

Investments of 712.65 mln drams (over 1 mln 980 USD) were made by 533
legal entities registered in the indicated period of 2007. Investments
of 504.6 mln drams were made in 32 enterprises founded only by foreign
legal entities and citizens, investments of 94.25 mln drams were made
in 9 joint ventures.

"SCREAMERS" TO BE SCREENED IN YEREVAN

ArmRadio.am
17.04.2007 17:15

The first screening of the "Screamers" documentary telling about
genocides and the Armenian Genocide, in particular, will take place
in Yerevan today.

During the week preceding April 24 it will be screened in "Moscow"
cinema.

Director Carla Garapedian has arrived in Yerevan to present the film
to Armenian viewers.

The "Screamers" is starred by Grammy-award winning band "System of
a Down."

The film tells about the trips of four members of the band, during
which they propagate the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and
call to recognize the genocide which is still being denied by Turkey
and the US.

The heroes of the film are trying to find out why genocides continue
nowadays. They participate in meetings held in different parts of
the country, organize rallies, including to the White House, share
information with their supporters and politicians. The film includes
episodes of their live concerts and stories about the private life
of the singers.

The "Screamers" are those who can never be silenced, who will continue
screaming against injustice.

During the stay in Yerevan the American Armenian director will have
meetings with different youth groups and NGOs. The evening of April 23
Carla Garapedian is expected to participate in a march to the memorial
to the Armenian Genocide victims: on that day she will lead all the
"screamers."

GINA OUT OF ARMENIA, AS QUESTIONS LOOM
David Vella

Malta Star, Malta
April 16 2007

Gina Khachatryan, the asylum seeker who was deported from England
to Armenia via Malta last week, has managed to once again leave her
homeland and is now "in a place of safety", according to her friends
in the UK.

But while human rights groups are relieved that she is not in danger
of persecution, journalists in Armenia are casting doubts on whether
or not Gina’s story of her hardships before leaving the country are
actually true.

Khachatryan made headlines in numerous British and Maltese newspapers,
including this e-newspaper, when she appealed for help to prevent her
deportation, since this would have put her, her husband, and their
five year old daughter at risk of political persecution.

The family had been living in the UK as asylum seekers since 2003.

But the British Home Office never granted them refugee status, and
last week the family was taken to a detention centre to be deported.

But human rights groups in the UK, along with a number of
journalists and journalist associations, started rallying against
the deportation. Gina had fled her country after exposing a case
of electoral fraud in 2003. She even spent 40 days in prison before
managing to escape Armenia, or so she claimed.

maltastar.com had talked to Gina herself, hours before she boarded an
Air Malta plane from London to Malta last Friday. She had explained
that she is afraid of going back to her country "because they will
arrest us immediately".

Unable to track down Gina’s story

But during the weekend, at least two journalists working in Armenia,
confirmed that they did not manage to find any details on Gina’s
experience back in 2003. On a blog hosted on the website of ‘The
Guardian’ newspaper, where Gina’s case was first mentioned, Roy
Greenslade wrote that a friend of his in Armenia "was unable to find
anyone at the Yerevan press club or the Investigative Journalists of
Armenia who knew of her or the incident she described. Furthermore,
[he] asked people in the newsroom of Armenia’s public TV company,
where Gina claims to have worked, and no-one there remembered her".

At the same time, in response to these doubts, the editor of
an Armenian newspaper wrote "we, too, have tried to validate Ms
Khachatryan’s claims, but so far found them unsubstantiated".

But, as Greenslade wrote in his blog, this does not necessarily mean
that her story was not true. "None of this is, of course, conclusive
proof that Gina has lied, but Armenian journalists – and journalists
everywhere – will be unhappy if she has pretended to be a journalist
in order to stay illegally in Britain… The truth is that there was
so little time to act after hearing about Gina’s detention that none
of us had time to check her story. On the other hand, we still don’t
know the truth. The whole thing remains a mystery".

Arka News Agency, Armenia
April 14 2006

"LAW-GOVERNED COUNTRY" PARTY INFORMS CEC OF INACCURACIES IN VPOTERS’
LISTS

YEREVAN, April 13. /ARKA/. The "Law-Governed Country" party has
informed the RA Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of inaccuracies in
voter’s lists, Chairman of the party Arttur Baghdasaryan told
reporters.
"The matter is that in monitoring the lists we discovered a number of
inaccuracies – deceased people, people outside Armenia and so on," he
said. Baghdasaryan said that the party addressed two letters to the
CEC, which are currently under consideration. We will be consistent
in monitoring voters’ lists and informing the CEC and the relevant
police departments of the inaccuracies," Baghdasaryan said.
The "Law-Governed Country" party was founded in 1997 and has about
100,000 members. The party has chapters in all Armenian regions. The
party’s slate includes 120 names.
The parliamentary elections are to be held in Armenia on May 12,
2007. P.T. -0–

IN 2006 ARTSAKH GOT HUMANITARIAN AID OF 66 MILLION DRAMS

KarabakhOpen
13-04-2007 17:21:14

The head of the department of humanitarian aid of the NKR Ministry
of Social Security M. Dadayan told the Azat Artsakh that in 2006
NKR received humanitarian aid of about 66 million 151 thousand
drams. Organizations and individuals from the United States, France,
Germany, Russia and Armenia provided second hand medical equipment
and medicine of 13 million 810 thousand drams, food of 46 million
900 thousand drams, secondhand clothes of 83 060 drams, different
appliances of 55 million 355 thousand drams. Humanitarian aid comes
through the programs of the Stepanakert office of the Red Cross, The
HALO Trust (U.K.), Shen (France) the Armenian Evangelical Association
and Agape (U.S.).

According to M. Dadayan, in 2006 humanitarian aid to Karabakh went
down by 10 million 727 thousand.

DAVOUDI FELICITATES NEW ARMENIAN PREMIER

Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran
April 12 2007

Iran-Armenia-Felicitations

First Vice-President Parviz Davoudi on Thursday felicitated new
Armenian Premier Serzh Sarkissian on taking the office.

He also extended felicitations to the Armenian government and Armenian
nation on the new appointment.

Davoudi said that it is expected that through collective cooperation
of Iran and Armenia, the current level of cooperation would further
broaden in all grounds.

Former Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margarian, leader of the
ruling Republican party died of a heart attack last month.

INDIAN COMPANY ILLEGALLY TAPPING GOLD IN OCCUPIED AZERI LANDS TO BE PUNISHED, RAMESH VOWS

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 11 2007

India will probe the issue with its company that is engaged in illegal
exploitation of gold in Azeri territories occupied by Armenia, said
Indian Minister of State for Commerce Shri Jairam Ramesh in Baku.

"In Baku I heard about the illegal involvement of an Indian company
in Azerbaijan’s territory. We will investigate this issue and will
take effective action," he added.

He said India supports the fact that Indian companies have to
operate in accordance with the intergovernmental agreements and local
legislation.

UN RWANDA GENOCIDE EXHIBIT DELAYED

Al-Arab online, UK
April 10 2007

A U.N. exhibit on the 13th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide has
been delayed after Turkish objections to a mention of the killing of
Armenians in Turkey during World War One, organizers said on Monday.

James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust which
works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition,
said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents
and it was put up on Thursday.

The photo and text exhibit, organized in part by the
British-based Aegis Trust, was scheduled to be opened on Monday by
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But Turkey objected to a sentence in the text, which showed how the
Armenian killings contributed to the creation of the term genocide,
according to James Smith, chief executive of Aegis, whose mission is
to prevent genocide.

It said: "Following World War One, during which 1 million Armenians
were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League
of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes,"
Smith said.

Organizers said they were informed of the delay by the U.N. Department
of Public Information, which had initially approved the exhibit in
the visitors’ lobby.

The secretary-general’s office then consented to the postponement.

U.N. officials confirmed that objections by Turkey and others, which
they did not mention, were responsible for the delay.

One staff member said an official in the Department of Public
Information had not sent the text to other divisions for fact-checking.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said.

David Browan, communications director for Aegis, told Reuters that
Armenian diplomats had agreed to the removal of the words "in Turkey,"
which was acceptable to his group. But he said, "We understand that
was not acceptable to the U.N."

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Turkey says large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks died in a partisan conflict raging at that time.

Aegis, however, is resisting removing references to the Armenian
killings in connection with the exhibit on Rwanda, where at least
800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutus.

The murders began on April 6, 1994.

The exhibit also mentions the Nazi extermination of Jews in World
War Two and has passing references to Cambodia’s killing fields and
crimes in Bosnia, East Timor and Sudan.

But a U.N. official insisted the exhibit would take place.

"We are committed to it. It is a very important issue," said Manoel de
Almeida e Silva, an official in the strategic communications division.

Rwanda’s genocide began hours after a plane carrying President
Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it approached the capital,
Kigali, on April 6, 1994.

The 100-day slaughter, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis
were killed by Hutus, ended after rebels ousted the extremist Hutu
government that orchestrated the killings.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done
without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a
matter of principle you can’t just go around striking things out. It
is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide
issues, we couldn’t do that on any genocide, and we can’t do this,"
he said.

"If we can’t get this right, it undermines all the values of the U.N.

It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms of
preventing (genocide)," Smith said.

"You can’t learn the lessons from history if you’re going to sweep
all of that history under the carpet. And what about accountability?

What about ending impunity if you’re going to hide part of the truth?

It makes a mockery of all of this."

TURKISH OBJECTION POSTPONES RWANDA GENOCIDE SHOW

Pravda, Russia
April 10 2007

An exhibition on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, scheduled for Monday
was to be opened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But it has been
postponed because of Turkish objections to a reference to the murder
of a million Armenians in Turkey during World War I.

James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust, which
works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition,
said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents
and it was put up on Thursday.

A Turkish diplomat complained about the reference to the Armenian
murders, he said, and Armenia’s U.N. Ambassador Armen Martirosyan
went to see the new Undersecretary for Public Information Kiyotaka
Akasaka and they agreed to remove the words "in Turkey."

Martirosyan said Akasaka invited him to the exhibition’s opening,
but late Sunday "I was informed that the opening would be postponed,
or delayed, or even canceled." He blamed Turkish "censorship" and
the country’s refusal "to come to terms with their own history."

On Monday, the exhibition in the visitor’s lobby had been turned around
so it could not be seen by the public. Smith said he was still hoping
for a diplomatic solution to the dispute.

"We are very disappointed about it because for us, this was meant to be
about the Rwandan genocide, and the lessons from the Rwandan genocide,"
and to engage the secretary-general on the pledge by world leaders to
protect civilians from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which
Smith said was not happening in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region.

U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed Turkey complained about
the exhibition, but he said "the basic concern" was that the review
process for U.N. exhibitions, which takes into account "all positions,"
was not followed. He said there were other concerns which he refused
to disclose.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," Haq said.

Smith told The Associated Press the exhibition refers to the Armenian
murders to help explain the word "genocide," which was coined
by Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. Lemkin was
inspired by what happened to the Armenians and other mass killings,
and campaigned in the League of Nations – the precursor of the United
Nations – against what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism."

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Smith said a small panel on Lemkin in the exhibit "says that during
World War I a million Armenians were murdered in Turkey." It goes on
to explain that Lemkin first used the word genocide in 1943, and then
focuses on the Rwanda genocide, lessons from it, and the responsibility
of the international community to prevent future genocides, he said.

Haq said "the U.N. hasn’t expressed any position on incidents that
took place long before the United Nations was established" after
World War II.

"In any case, the focus during the anniversary of the Rwanda genocide
should remain on Rwanda itself," he said.

Rwanda’s genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal
Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital,
Kigali, on April 6, 1994. The 100-day slaughter, in which more than
500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists, ended after
rebels ousted the extremist Hutu government that orchestrated the
killings.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done
without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a
matter of principle you can’t just go around striking things out. It
is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide
issues, we couldn’t do that on any genocide, and we can’t do this,"
he said.

"If we can’t get this right, it undermines all the values of the U.N.

It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms
of preventing (genocide)," Smith said. "You can’t learn the lessons
from history if you’re going to sweep all of that history under the
carpet. And what about accountability? What about ending impunity
if you’re going to hide part of the truth? It makes a mockery of all
of this."

Haq said Ban planned to meet with Rwanda’s U.N. ambassador late Monday,
and he read a message from the secretary-general who recalled the
"personal impact" of his visit to Rwanda last year to pay his respects
to victims and survivors of the genocide.

"On this 13th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, two messages
should be paramount," Ban said. "First, never forget. Second never
stop working to prevent another genocide."

ld/10-04-2007/89376-genocide_show-0

12 % OF TURKEY’S POPULATION SAYS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS HISTORICALLY PROVED FACT

PanARMENIAN.Net
09.04.2007 14:29 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ An overwhelming majority of Turks oppose the Armenian
Genocide Resolution currently pending in the U.S. Senate and House
of Representatives, as well as another resolution, which demands
from Turkey to normalize its relations with neighboring Armenia,
Zaman reports. The poll, recently conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow,
revealed, that if the U.S. Congress approves the Genocide Resolution,
83 percent of respondents would oppose or strongly oppose Turkey
assisting the United States in Iraq. Almost four-fifths of Turks favor
strong action by the Turkish government if the Genocide Resolution
is passed, including suspension of diplomatic relations.

Asked why the U.S. Congress would approve the Resolution on the
Genocide, 42 percent of the respondents cited anti-Muslim feelings
in the U.S. and some 31 percent said it was due to domestic politics
in the United States. Another 12 percent said the "Armenian Genocide"
was a proven historical fact.

If the U.S. Congress approves the Armenian Genocide Resolution, 78
percent said they would boycott American products, vote for candidates
that oppose the United States or demonstrate. Only 11 percent said
they would take no action. On relations with Armenia, 73 percent said
they think the passage of the resolution would worsen relations between
Turkey and Armenia. 84 percent of those who now have a very favorable
opinion of the U.S. would change their opinion for the worse. The
poll was conducted among 1200 people in 15 provinces of Turkey.