Author: Jagharian Tania

SIX CITIZENS OF GEORGIA WERE ON BOARD OF AIRPLANE CRASHED IN YEREVAN

Prime News Agency
Feb 14 2008
Georgia

Tbilisi. February 14 (Prime-News) – Six citizens of Georgia were on
a board of the airplane crashed in Yerevan.

Agency "News Armenia" informed that Canadian-built CRJ-100, operated
by the Belarusian airline the Belavia, with 21 people on a board has
crashed in flames, shortly after taking off from Yerevan airport in
Armenia, and crashed at the airport.

As reported, "it had just left en route for Minsk when it caught fire".

According to the Georgian consul in Armenia Givi Sharangia, the
Georgians who were on the board, have not received any serious injures.

PRESIDENT OF WORLD ARMENIAN CONGRESS: "WE MUST USE ALL MECHANISMS TO PROVE THAT KARABAKH BELONGS TO US"

Today
43106.html
Feb 14 2008
Azerbaijan

A presentation of a collection of documents "Nagorno Karabakh in the
international law and world policy" was held in Armenia’s National
Academy of Science yesterday.

"Many books have been written on Karabakh, but this edition is special,
as it comprises a number of valuable documents", Ara Abramyan,
chairman of the Union of Armenians of Russia and President of the
World Armenian Congress, said during the ceremony. He considers that
the collection of documents may become one of the mechanisms of the
Karabakh conflict resolution.

"We must use all mechanisms and prove that Karabakh belongs to us. It
is impossible to imagine Armenia without Karabakh", he added. At the
same time, the chairman of the Union of Armenians of Russia, added
that the second edition of such documents is prepared for publication.

"We also intend to publish the second edition of the collection to
comprise comments of international specialists on the issue", Ara
Abramyan noted.

It should be noted that the collection of documents "Nagorno Karabakh
in the international law and world politics", has been issued by the
Armenian Institute of International Law and Politics under the Union
of Armenians of Russia and edited by Yuri Barsegov, professor and
doctor of law.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, Canada
Feb 15 2008

Sarkisian Could Become President in Armenia

February 15, 2008

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Serge Sarkisian heads to this month’s
presidential election in Armenia as the favourite, according to a
poll by Populus released by Armenia TV. 50.7 per cent of respondents
would vote for the current prime minister in the ballot.

National Assembly chairman Artur Baghdasaryan of the Rule of Law (OY)
party is second with 13.4 per cent, followed by former president
Levon Ter Petrossian with 12.6 per cent, Vahan Hovhannisyan of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation with 7.6 per cent, Artashes
Geghamyan of National Unity (AM) with 6.4 per cent, Tigran Karapetian
of the People’s Party (ZhK) with 4.5 per cent, and former prime
minister Vazgen Manukyan with 3.2 per cent.

Armenian president Robert Kocharyan was re-elected to a new four-year
term in March 2003 in an election marred by fraud allegations. The
next presidential election is scheduled for Feb. 19.

In April 2007, Sarkisian became Armenia’s new prime minister
following the death of Andranik Markarian. The Republican Party of
Armenia (HHK) was headed by Markarian until his death, and is now
primarily led by Sarkisian. In May, Armenian voters renewed the
131-member National Assembly. Final results gave the HHK 32.82 per
cent of the vote and 64 seats, making it the strongest party in the
legislature. On that same month, Sarkisian said he would seek the
presidency.

On Feb. 12, Heritage Party member Vardan Khachatrian announced the
endorsement of Ter Petrossian, saying, "We couldn’t simply hold a
passive stance at the election. Our decision is well-grounded. Levon
Ter Petrossian is the only candidate enjoying public feedback. The
recent large-scale rallies testify to this belief and had a direct
influence on our decision. We haven’t agreed on some major points,
for example the Karabakh conflict resolution. Besides, we have
ideological differences."

Polling Data

Which candidate would you vote for in the presidential election?

Serge Sarkisian
50.7%

Artur Baghdasaryan
13.4%

Levon Ter Petrosyan
12.6%

Vahan Hovhannisyan
7.6%

Artashes Geghamyan
6.4%

Tigran Karapetian
4.5%

Vazgen Manukyan
3.2%

Source: Populus / Armenia TV
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,500 Armenian adults,
conducted from Jan. 21 to Jan. 29, 2008. Margin of error is 2.2 per
cent.

sian_could_become_president_in_armenia

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Feb 15 2008

About 40 companies participating in third INTERPRINT EXPO 2008
exhibition

YEREVAN, February 15. /ARKA/. About 40 companies from Armenia, Iran,
Germany and other countries are participating in the third
international specialized exhibition INTERPRINT EXPO 2008 on
printing, advertisement, design and packing.

`We start 2008 with this exhibition, because the publishing was
vigorously developed in Armenia throughout the previous year’, Ara
Stepanyan, executive director of LOGOS EXPO exhibition company, said
Friday in Yerevan at the exhibition opening ceremony.

He said this is one of those areas whose development is very
important to Armenia.

`This area is necessary to us. Everybody wants to know how to start
his business and how to boost it, which printing mechanisms to choose
and how to present own business’, Stepanyan said and wished the
exhibition participants effective work.

Levon Ananyan, chairman of the Union of Armenian Writers, said that
Armenian companies’ latest achievements are displayed at the
exhibition.

`I’m proud of the fact that our country has managed to reach such a
level in developing printing, advertisement and publishing areas’, he
said.

At the same time, Ananyan pointed out some underdeveloped aspects and
singled out marketing and management in book market as examples of
these aspects.

The exhibition will wrap up on February 17.
The purpose of the expo is to develop this business in Armenia,
according to the source. The expo also aims at attracting top
specialists in the field, putting fresh idea into practice and using
information technologies for printing art, advertisement and design.
The initiators of the expo believe this will help improve design
quality and will allow establish business ties between manufacturers
and design studios.

The sponsors of the event are the RA Ministry of Trade and Economic
Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Union of Manufacturers and
Employers (Businessmen), the National Union of Book Publishers and
the Writers’ Union of Armenia.

LOGOS EXPO Center is the first private exposition company in Armenia
and is a leader in organizing branch-wise, industrial, national and
international expositions and congresses both in Armenia and abroad.
The company has organized about 80 expos for the past 7 years.

LOGOS EXPO Center has been operating since 1999. Over 1,000 local and
foreign organizations have participated in its expositions, the
number of customers making 60,000. M.V.-0—

BIRD FLUE: FRONTIER SOLDIERS HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY TO FIRE ON BIRDS

Panorama.am
19:30 12/02/2008

"No one has the right to assign the frontier soldiers on the Turkish
border to shoot on birds crossing the border," National Security
Service told Panorama.am.

Panorama.am again talked to Grisha Baghyan, food safety and veterinary
state inspection head at the ministry of agriculture. The latter
further explained that an arrangement is made with Andranik Asatryan,
veterinary service head of the frontier forces, to "make control
stricter by the veterinary service."

"By saying stricter control we mean that the veterinary service of the
frontier forces will help us, in particular, by providing information
on dead birds or sending them to laboratory for studies," Baghyan said.

Speaking about shootings on the birds, the inspection head said that
they will shoot not to kill birds but to frighten them. Moreover,
during bird migration a monitoring will be conducted, bird blood will
be tested to identify those that carry infection.

TOM LANTOS, KEY CONGRESS VOICE ON US FOREIGN AFFAIRS DIES

Agence France Presse
Feb 11 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Tom Lantos, a Hungarian born-Holocaust survivor,
outspoken global human rights advocate and veteran Democratic foreign
affairs expert, died Monday, a month after announcing he had cancer.

California representative Lantos, who had just turned 80, was
surrounded by his family when he died Monday morning in Bethesda
naval hospital north of Washington, his spokeswoman Lynne Weil said.

He died from complications of cancer of the esophagus, which
he said last month would force his retirement from the House of
Representatives, where he had served since being elected in 1980 and
latterly chaired the chamber’s Foreign Affairs committee.

When he announced his diagnosis, Lantos, expressed his "profoundly
felt gratitude to this great country."

"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the
Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have
received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of
serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress,"
he said.

Tributes quickly poured in for Lantos, from across the political aisle.

President George W. Bush hailed him as a "champion" of human rights.

"As the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, Tom was a living
reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the
innocent at the hands of evil men," Bush said in a statement issued
from the White House, where flags were lowered to half-staff.

Hillary and Bill Clinton remembered the "courageous and improbable
journey" of Lantos’s life.

"Tom bore witness to the worst of human cruelty and devoted his life
to stopping it," the Clintons said in a statement.

Clinton’s Democratic White House rival Barack Obama honored Lantos’s
"truly extraordinary life" in which he "never wavered in his defense
of freedom and opposition to tyranny."

House speaker Nancy Pelosi said the veteran congressman’s passing was
a "terrible loss" while the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs
committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen described Lantos as an "unfailingly
gracious and courageous man."

Born in Budapest to a Jewish family in February 1928, Lantos was 16
when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. As a teenager, he was a member
of the anti-Nazi resistance, and later of the anti-Communist student
movement.

After the Soviets invaded Hungary, he discovered that most of his
family had died in the Holocaust. By 1947, he was in the United
States on an academic scholarship and became an economics professor
in San Francisco.

Since the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006 elections,
Lantos has used his committee to launch strident appeals for greater
US action on human rights in China, Darfur, Myanmar and Russia.

Under his stewardship, the committee voted in October to describe the
mass slaughter of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as "genocide"
— plunging US relations with Turkey into crisis.

Lantos had also emerged as a fierce critic of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, and warned last June "Russia’s tactics under the KGB
colonel now in charge of the Kremlin threaten to send the country
back to its authoritarian past."

PanARMENIAN.Net

Mikael Harutyunyan: Armenia ready to develop
cooperation with NATO
08.02.2008 17:18 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ February 7, Armenian Defense
Minister Mikael Harutyunyan met with NATO delegation
led by Jaroslaw Skonieczka, NATO’s Director for
Euro-Atlantic Integration and Partnership, and Frank
Boland, Director of Force Planning. The delegation is
in Armenia to assess the IPAP implementation, RA
Defense Minister’s Spokesman, Colonel Seyran
Shahsuvaryan told PanARMENIAN.Net.

Welcoming the guests, Minister Harutyunyan noted that
the regular visits of NATO officials to South Caucasus
prove the Alliance’s interest in the region.

`NATO plays a significant role in ensuring
international security and stability. This fact is
proved by presence of peacekeeping missions in Kosovo
an Afghanistan. Cooperation with the Alliance is a
priority for Armenia,’ he said.

`The IPAP initial 2-year stage is completed. The
outcomes will be discussed at 26+1 NATO session in
April. Strategic reconsideration of the security
system will start this year,’ he added.

The Minister assured that Armenia intends to develop
cooperation with NATO and voiced hope that during the
coming years this cooperation will expand and cover
new fields.

The officials also exchanged views on regional
security and marked out plans of future activities.

RELIABLE PEOPLE SHOULD BE APPOINTED TO STRATEGIC POSTS – AZERI EXPERT

Day.az, azerbaijan
Feb 4 2008

"Vafa Quluzada: `Reliable people should work at strategic facilities
of Azerbaijan, otherwise, spy scandals will occur constantly’"

4 February: A Day.az interview with political expert and former state
adviser on foreign policy issues, Vafa Quluzada.

[Correspondent] How would you comment on accusations, both official
and unofficial, of former Azerbaijani officials of collaboration with
the Russian special service?

[Quluzada] The presence of special service agents of foreign states,
moreover, in such an important country like Azerbaijan is natural.

And there is nothing surprising that the Russian intelligence service
works on the territory of our republic.

The surprising is other thing. The Azerbaijani authorities have not to
appoint pro-Russian people, who have studied in the Russian Federation
or those connected with Russia this or that way, to key posts. Similar
problems will emerge permanently if such people are staked on.

Airports, stations, post-offices, medical institutions these are
facilities of heightened interest of foreign special services, and
therefore, issues of selecting personnel for those facilities have
to be paid extraordinarily much attention.

[Correspondent] Nevertheless, information accusing officers of the
security service of the Baku airport and the Azerbaijani National
Security Ministry appeared practically straight away after it was made
public that the former head of the Azerbaijani permanent mission at the
UN, Eldar Quliyev, collaborated with the Russian special service. Do
you think these are mere fortuity?

[Quluzada] However that may be, Azerbaijan is becoming more independent
and is obliged to protect own interests. In addition to this, the USA
is a partner of Azerbaijan and they are interested that the Russian
special service not act wilfully in our republic.

Therefore, we can expect support in this sphere from the United States
and Israel, that is to say, their special services can cooperate with
Azerbaijan in order to protect not only our but also their secrets
connected with ours.

[Correspondent] What would the Russian intelligence service be
interested in Azerbaijan first of all?

[Quluzada] As I already said, Azerbaijan is of great interest for the
Russian special service. Even after the demise of the Soviet Union and
the departure of Azerbaijan from the direct sphere of influence of the
Kremlin, the Russian intelligence has not suspended its activities
here. In particular, Moscow is interested in the development of our
relations with the USA and NATO, the prospects of joining Azerbaijan
to the North Atlantic alliance, the possibility of deployment of
NATO military bases in the republic. I think that the Azerbaijani
special service should also strive for bugging conversations of the
Russian leadership. It would be interesting to find out what Vladimir
Putin is going to do with the Azerbaijani occupied lands. After all,
we all know that not in the least Armenia has occupied Karabakh but
the Russian army. It would also be better what instructions Vladimir
Putin gives to [Armenian Prime Minister] Serzh Sargsyan regarding
Nagornyy Karabakh. One way or another, without deviating from our
main subject, I would recommend the Azerbaijani authorities to check
all strategic facilities, their personnel, who might be of interest
for the Russian special service.

The war of special services continues and we have to learn a lesson
from the latest incident.

[Correspondent] Is any reciprocal demarche possible by Russia?

[Quluzada] What would a demarche give? The matter is that we have
to try to appoint to key posts people who will protect secrets and
interests of the state, nationalists, and people devoted to their
national ideals, and not those who serve national ideals of foreign
states.

[Correspondent] In any case, very recently, after a spy scandal,
Latvia and Russia declared some diplomats persona non grata.

[Quluzada] Right, but in this case, those arrested are not the
Russian diplomats but the Azerbaijani officers spying for the Russian
intelligence.

[Correspondent] I mean, is it possible to "suddenly" appear people
exposed on charges of spying for Azerbaijan after the success of the
Azerbaijani special service?

[Quluzada] No, one should not expect this to happen. Anyway, it would
be another case, if a Russian diplomat were, who recruited the people
arrested in Azerbaijan or received and gave information, expelled.

What would do Russia in response is only known to the Russian
leadership.

ARMENIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS ON THE RISE — KOCHARYAN

ITAR-TASS, Russia
Feb 7 2008

YEREVAN, February 6 (Itar-Tass) — Russian-Armenian relations are
on the rise and have a brilliant future, Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan said in a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov
on Wednesday.

In his words, economic ties have become the locomotive of bilateral
cooperation, and Russian capital comes to different sectors of the
Armenian economy.

"Effective programmes are underway. We expect this integration to
expend further," he added.

The president stressed the dynamic development of cooperation in the
field of infrastructure, the presidential press service told Itar-Tass.

Kocharyan and Zubkov said trade turnover between Russia and Armenia
was coming close to one billion U.S. dollars and existing results
cerate good prerequisites for more ambitious and promising programmes.

In their view, the effective work of the bilateral inter-governmental
commission on economic cooperation also contributes to this success.

Kocharyan and Zubkov also noted the importance of intensified
cooperation in the humanitarian sphere, in the field of culture and
education. The president of Armenia and the prime minister of Russia
agreed that interaction in these fields should be coordinated better.

SORRY UNDER PRESSURE ISN’T SORRY AT ALL
Caitlin Wall

Foreign Policy Passport
Feb 6 2008

Last week, Australia’s government announced that it will formally
apologize for its decades-long practice of stealing Aboriginal children
and giving them to white families to raise. The practice, intented to
destroy "Aboriginality" and force racial assimilation, was official
government policy from 1915 to 1969. During these years, many children
were raised in poor conditions in institutions, received little to no
education, and suffered abuse at the hands of caretakers. Apologizing
for it is an admirable step by the new Australian administration to
move forward from a dark past. Australia aside, though, there has been
a real lack of sincerity on the international apology front lately.

Over the past year, some in the U.S. Congress have attempted to force
apologies from other nations on two occasions. First, the House of
Representatives passed a resolution urging Japan to apologize for
forcing thousands of women into sex-slavery during WWII. More recently,
the House attempted a vote condemning Turkey for its treatment of
Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century. And while I by no
means wish to diminish these atrocities, I wonder: Would an apology
elicited under pressure really contribute to the healing process?

Consider the case of Iraq. This past Sunday, controversial legislation
to reintegrate former Baathists back into Iraqi government became
law. It was one of the key "benchmarks" the U.S. Congress has been
using to judge the Iraqis’ progress. As Feisel al-Istrabadi, Iraq’s
former deputy ambassador to the U.N., pointed out in a recent Seven
Questions interview, de-Baathification had gone horribly awry. The
question, though, is not whether reconciliation is warranted,
but whether it is real and sustainable given how the bill came
about-under U.S. pressure. Can reconciliation be treated like just
another benchmark? Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a top Sunni
leader and influential member of the Presidential Council, certainly
doesn’t think so.