Author: Jalatian Sonya

PanARMENIAN.Net

Senator Kennedy supports Armenian Genocide Resolution
27.03.2007 13:44 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian Assembly Board of Trustees
Member Annie Totah and Executive Director Bryan
Ardouny thanked Senator Edward Kennedy for his support
of Armenian issues including the Armenian Genocide
Resolution (S. Res. 106). AAA informed the
PanARMENIAN.Net journalist that Senator Kennedy has
cosponsored previous legislation to reaffirm the
Armenian Genocide. Resolution 106 calls upon the U.S.
President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and
sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights,
ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the
United States record relating to the Armenian
Genocide.

ARMENPRESS

INCUMBENT ARMAVIR MAYOR WINS ELECTION

ARMAVIR, MARCH 26, ARMENPRESS: The incumbent mayor
of Armavir, a town south-west of Yerevan and the
administrative center of the same name province,
defeated his rival in March 25 mayoral elections.
The mayor, Robert Khlghatian from the Republican
Party, according to preliminary count of votes, has
garnered 8,322 votes defeating his rival Araik
Aghababian from the Prosperous Armenia party of a
millionaire businessman Gagik Tsarukian.
Local election commission said the voter turnout
was high. Out of 25,884 eligible voters 15,791 went to
the polls on Sunday. Araik Aghababian received 6,844
votes. Election observers say they did not detect
major violations, except minor irregularities.
Many local experts argued that mayoral election in
this town will be indicative in terms of May 12
parliamentary polls, which are expected to see a tough
competition between these two parties.

Bank employee shot dead

ArmRadio.am
24.03.2007 11:59

The person on duty at Gyumri branch of `Ardshininvestbank’ Arkady
Muradyan died of wounds in his breast from Makarov gun. The accident
took place at about 3 at night. A criminal case was launched at the
Public Prosecutor’s Office of Gyumri

GABRIEL SARGSIAN DEFEATED BY RUSLAN PONOMARYOV IN 5th TOUR OF SAFRA INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT

Noyan Tapan
Mar 22 2007

SAFRA, MARCH 22, NOYAN TAPAN. Gabriel Sargsian was defeated by Ruslan
Ponomaryov (Ukraine) in the 5th tour of internatonal chess tournament
being held in the resort city of Safra, Spain. These two chess-players
have gained 3.5 out of 5 possible points each and share 1-2nd places.

OPPOSITION ACTIVIST FIRED BY UN
By Ruben Meloyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
March 20 2007

An Armenian employee of the United Nations office in Yerevan claimed
on Tuesday to have been fired for his active involvement in a recently
formed opposition movement that launched a campaign of anti-government
demonstrations last month.

Aramazd Ghalamkarian, an information officer at the UN office, was
among a group of young Armenians who set up Aylentrank (Alternative)
movement together with some close associates of former President
Levon Ter-Petrosian late last year. Its stated aim is to not only
campaign for regime change but also present a pro-Western ideological
alternative to Armenia’s current leadership which it considers corrupt
and undemocratic.

Aylentrank has also formed a bloc called Impeachment to contest the
May 12 parliamentary elections. Ghalamkarian’s name is 15th on the
list of its election candidates.

Ghalamkarian told RFE/RL that he effectively lost his job on May 7,
two weeks after the first Aylentrank rally in Yerevan. He said UN
officials informed him that he has been put on leave of absence until
April 30, the expiry date of his current employment contract.

"It was decided that I must go on leave and after that will not have
my contract renewed," he said. "As a justification, they cited my
activities in Aylentrank. They said I breached some UN rules which
I think are somewhat ambiguous and can be interpreted in a different
way."

According to those rules, posted on a special election monitoring
website of the Armenian branch of Transparency International, U.N.
employees "shall conduct themselves at all times in a manner befitting
their status as international civil servants and shall not engage in
any activity that is incompatible with the proper discharge of their
duties." They can join a political party only if "membership does not
entail action, or an obligation to take action, by the staff member
contrary to staff regulation."

Ghalamkarian insisted that his UN superiors had never warned him
of consequences of his involvement with Aylentrank beforehand. "I
asked them to show me the limits of what I am allowed to do so that
I either don’t overstep them and remain a UN employee or consciously
resign from the UN," he said. "But I was not given such a choice."

In Ghalamkarian’s words, such a choice was given to two other local
UN staffers who were initially included on the electoral list of a
newly formed party which, unlike Aylentrank, is not in opposition
to President Robert Kocharian. He said they kept their jobs after
dropping out of the race.

The head of the UN representation in Armenia, Consuelo Vidal, and other
senior officials there could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

ARMENIAN ECONOMY GROWS 9.4 PERCENT IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY

ARMENPRESS
Mar 21 2007

YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS: Armenia’s economic growth between
January and February 2007 stood at 9.4%, while the country’s GDP
totaled 186.8 billion drams ($519.1 million), the national statistics
service said.

For the period under review, consumer prices rose 5.1%,
year-on-year. Armenia’s industrial product prices were down 0.9%,
its volume of industrial output was 99%, while its trade totaled 199
billion drams ($552.6 million), up 51.5% compared to the same period
in 2006.

In line with Armenia’s 2007 budget, GDP growth is expected at 9%,
compared with 13.4% in 2006, and inflation at 4%.

CONGRESS DEBATES ARMENIA GENOCIDE
By Michael Scher

United Press International
March 21 2007

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) — In 1896 former U.S. Minister to
the Ottoman Empire Oscar Straus convinced President Grover Cleveland
to ignore a controversial resolution passed by both the Senate and
the House of Representatives that would have called for the Ottoman
Sultan to stop his killing of ethnic Armenians.

More than 100 years later the U.S. Congress is at a similar crossroads
on the very same issue. House and Senate Resolutions 106 call for
American foreign policy to recognize the killings of Armenians by
the former Ottoman Empire as ‘genocide.’ The Republic of Turkey is
the official successor state to the Ottoman Empire because of the
Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

Being the official successor state is part of the reason for the
Turkish government wanting to deny that the Armenian killings were
a genocide, said Brian Kabateck, a senior partner in Kabateck,
Brown & Keller, a law firm that has represented about a half-dozen
Armenian-Americans in cases against U.S. insurance companies and
banks that have denied claims and accounts to relatives of deceased
Armenians who took out insurance and had accounts before they died in
the Armenian Genocide. Kabateck said that the Ottoman state seized
property and businesses and that Turkey would be responsible for
reparations to Armenians and the nation of Armenia if they admitted
that what the Ottoman state did was genocide.

Kabateck`s suits throw into light the fact that there are 1 million
or so Armenians living in the United States. The main sponsor of
Resolution 106 in the House is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whose
constituency has a large population of Armenians.

Schiff is sponsoring this legislation because he believes that the
U.S. cannot have the moral authority it`s projecting in the current
Darfur crisis without recognizing a genocide that happened 90 years
ago. He said it is important for the United States to recognize the
killings as genocide despite the fact that Turkey is a friend and
an ally.

‘More often with friends than foes you have to speak candidly,’ Schiff
said. ‘I happen to believe … that the final act of genocide is the
denial of genocide.’

In 2004 a similar resolution, also sponsored by Schiff, was met with
resistance from the Bush administration because it feared it would
damage relations with Turkey, Schiff said. Schiff said that if the
current resolution passes it will affect U.S.-Turkey relations, but he
believes the Bush administration should spend less time appealing to
Congress not to pass the resolution and work on repairing the damage
it did to relations with Turkey because of the Iraq war.

‘They keep saying now is not the time,’ Schiff said. ‘It`s been 90
years. If this is not the time, when is?’

A central tenet of this bill is to recognize that what happened was
genocide, Schiff said. This is something the Bush administration is
protesting fearing a negative impact on relations with Turkey.

However, in every letter the administration sends to Congress it
recognizes what happened was genocide, Schiff said.

Tuluy Tanc, the minister counselor at Turkey`s Embassy in Washington,
said that while this resolution will most likely not result in
restrictions on the U.S. military or hurt cooperation between Turkey
and the United States over security in Iraq, it will hurt the Turkish
people.

‘There will be a reaction and Turkey will be deeply hurt,’ Tanc said.

‘How the government will react I cannot say, but there will be feelings
of unfairness towards a friend and an ally. … This will be like a
little slap in the face.’

Tanc said that the Armenian lobby`s presentation of facts to the
U.S. Congress was one-sided and that Congress was not taking into
account the Turkish side of the story.

For instance, Tanc provided Ottoman Empire census documents that showed
there were only 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey at the time
of the killings. Historians claim 1.5 million Armenians were killed,
which Tanc said was part of the inaccuracies in the current resolution.

Mehdi Noorbaksh, an associate professor of international affairs at
the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania,
said that if this resolution passes it will have a negative impact
on U.S.-Turkey relations.

‘It will be a disaster in a sense for Turkey,’ Noorbaksh said. ‘I
really do not think this administration is ready for a resolution
like this. … This will not help the United States.’

It will be necessary for the current Islamist government in power in
Turkey right now to react strongly to this in order to remain in power,
Noorbaksh said.

Some 20 other nations have passed resolutions similar to Resolution
106 and have gotten similar threats of dissatisfaction from Turkey,
said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National
Committee of America. When France passed a similar resolution in 2001
it was met with a stern reaction from the Turkish government, however,
the very next year trade rose by 22 percent between France and Turkey.

The United States has a long history of weaker resolutions of the
genocide dating back to the 1980s that have not hampered relations with
Turkey, Hamparian said. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan recognized the
Armenian Genocide in a speech about the Holocaust. In 1984 Congress
passed a resolution setting April 24 as a day of remembrance of
the Armenian Genocide. In 1996 and 2004 resolutions were passed
that limited the usage of U.S. aid to Turkey that was being used to
fund the Turkish lobby in the United States. Throughout all of these
resolutions, trade with Turkey has steadily increased Hamparian said.

‘U.S. relations with Turkey will certainly endure this (resolution
106),’ Hamparian said.

Eurasia Daily Monitor

March 21, 2007 — Volume 4, Issue 56

IRAN-ARMENIA PIPELINE: CLUES TO GAZPROM’S POLICIES IN EUROPE AND ASIA

by Vladimir Socor

On March 19 Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Robert
Kocharian of Armenia inaugurated the operations of the Iran-Armenia gas
pipeline (Armenpress, IRNA, March 19, 20). The project had received the
Kremlin’s green light. Although its scope is modest in terms of volume and
market potential, its commissioning reflects two incipient trends of
Eurasia-wide and potentially global impact, in some ways as their harbinger:
First, Gazprom’s looming deficit of gas; and, second, Russia-Iran relations
in the context of the much-discussed `cartel for gas.’

It is unprecedented for Russia to yield a part of the gas market in a
former Soviet country to a supplier from outside Gazprom’s sphere of
influence. This policy choice to de-monopolize is almost certainly not a
willing choice. It seems to reflect calculations that Gazprom may soon be
unable to meet all of its supply commitments to internal and external
markets from the almost-stagnant production in Russia.

Thus, it may make sense for Gazprom to plan a partial retrenchment
from some of its markets, if three prerequisites exist: non-lucrative supply
contracts (low-priced gas in a small market), strong Russian influence in
that country irrespective of gas dependency, and an alternative supplier
that cannot impinge on Russian interests in that country or farther afield.

All those prerequisites exist in Armenia. In such a situation, Russia
could share that country’s market with a third country, such as Iran, whose
gas export policies it hopes — with some justification — to be able to
control in the short and medium term.

In a generally little-noted though momentous event (see EDM, March 6),
Gazprom declined to present its overdue prognosis for gas output beyond 2010
during the Russian cabinet of ministers’ March 2 session. Prime Minister
Mikhail Fradkov had to urge in front of television cameras, `The situation
should not be over-dramatized.’ That same day, Russia’s Chamber of Accounts
criticized Gazprom for under-investing in exploration, field development,
and infrastructure maintenance in Russia while over-investing in
acquisitions unrelated to production. This public turn of events seems
indirectly to confirm the forecasts made last year by Vladimir Milov, Alan
Riley, and David Clark that Gazprom faces a gap between its production and
its supply commitments after 2010.

Iran’s entry in Armenia as a gas supplier courtesy of Russia seems
also to be a harbinger of that trend. It also sheds light on Moscow’s view
of possible coordination of gas export policies with those of Iran. The
government in Tehran has not abandoned its hopes to achieve a transit route
for its gas into the South Caucasus and farther into European Union
territory, with Armenia as the first way station on that possible route.
Moscow, however, strongly opposes such a prospect.

Thus, Gazprom took major precautionary measures against an expansion
of Iran’s role and indeed against any independent Iranian gas-export policy
in Armenia or beyond. It imposed from the outset on Yerevan — against
Tehran’s will — to reduce the Iran-Armenia pipeline’s diameter from the
originally designed 1,420 millimeters (the size of major gas export
pipelines) to 700 millimeters. This measure precludes any transit of Iranian
gas to third countries through this pipeline, confining Iran to the Armenian
market.

Moreover, Kocharian agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin last
year to hand the new pipeline’s section on Armenian territory over to
Gazprom via the ArmRosGaz company, in which Gazprom and its offshoot Itera
hold a combined 68% interest. In return for that and other property
handovers, Russia sells gas to Armenia at the deeply discounted price of
$110 per 1,000 cubic meters until 2009. Controlling the pipeline and
distribution network within the country, Moscow can exercise all but
discretionary control over the access of gas from a third-country
supplier — a situation that Moscow seeks to achieve in certain European
countries as well, albeit without price discounts.

By blocking the access of Iranian gas to Europe, the Kremlin
demonstrates its unwillingness to share European markets with Iran through a
`gas cartel’ or in any other form. However, Moscow is signaling almost as
clearly that it seeks joint-venture deals to develop Iran’s vast, untapped
gas fields and direct their output toward Asian markets, away from Europe,
where Gazprom wants to cement and expand its predominance. This strategy can
only succeed if Russia retains its present monopoly on the transit and
marketing of Central Asian gas, particularly from Turkmenistan.

Most likely, `Iranian’ gas to be supplied to Armenia will originate in
Turkmenistan for the time being. Iran imports small volumes of Turkmen gas
to supply the northern part of the country, which is distant from Iran’s
main fields. The Iran-Armenia pipeline runs for 101 kilometers in Iran from
Tabriz to the Armenian border and for another 40 kilometers in Armenia from
the border town of Meghri to Kajaran. The next planned section, to be built
by 2008-2009, should run for another 100 kilometers toward central Armenia,
there to link up with the existing distribution network, controlled by
Gazprom as well (Mediamax, Noyan Tapan, IRNA, March 19-20; see EDM, November
3, 7, 2006)

Armenia consumes approximately 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas
annually, due to increase through the country’s gasification and
electricity -generation programs. Iran is to supply some 400 million cubic
meters annually in the first stage of the project and up to 2.5 billion
cubic meters in the second stage, beyond 2010. By that time, Armenia’s
consumption will have increased significantly, even as Gazprom’s overall
capacity to meet supply commitments internally and externally is likely to
have declined.

–Vladimir Socor

TIGRAN KARAPETOVICH WILL LEAVE HOLDING

A1+
[08:25 pm] 20 March, 2007

Parties or unities taking part in the forthcoming elections have
equal rights to make use of TV or radio broadcast due to the 20th
article of RA Election Code.

To carry out any election campaign while in post or to abuse any
position during elections are prohibited in accordance with the 22nd
article of RA Election Code.

This comes to prove that Tigran Karapetyan will not be allowed to
have programs on ALM channel.

Mr. Karapetyan has informed that he would leave ALM, i.e. he is not
going to run ALM Holding. Artak Muradyan, his son-in-law is going to
take over him.

Tigran Karapetyan will keep on having programs on ALM channel after
elections, but this time as a deputy. Hå will talk on political issues
to make public the electors’ problems.

‘ I am having my last program on April 7,’ informed Naira Zohrabyan,
the author-reporter in Kentron channel. She is involved in the list
of’ Prosperous Armenia’ party. If elected, she will think over another
program. But in case the creative work is also prohibited due to the
law, she will prefer deputy work.

–Boundary_(ID_jvFWvnzVj8YVoha0nmlwIg)–

TURKS FAVOUR RELIGIOUS, ETHNIC PLURALISM: POLL

Agence France Presse — English
March 19, 2007 Monday 11:43 AM GMT

Most Turks believe the state should help preserve different religious
and ethnic groups in the face of rising nationalism, according to a
poll published Monday.

The poll by the Konda institution published in the Milliyet daily
showed that 66.4 percent believe the state should support efforts
to protect ethnic differences as opposed to 33.6 percent who say it
should not.

A total of 76.4 percent said the state should be involved in efforts
to preserve different religious groups while 23.6 percent said it
should not.

The poll, conducted among 48,000 people countrywide in October, comes
at a time of intense debate over surging nationalism following the
murder of an ethnic Armenian journalist by a suspected ultranationalist
grouping.

Turkey is home to tiny minorities of Jews, Armenians and Greeks,
as well as a sizeable Kurdish community in the southeast, where
separatist rebels have waged a bloody 22-year campaign for self-rule.

Improving the freedoms of its Kurdish and non-Muslim minorities is
one of the key elements in Turkey’s troubled accession talks with
the European Union.

Analysts say nationalist feelings are on the rise in Turkey, and
attribute this mainly to EU pressure for change.

Many Turks fear the government is making too many concessions to
Brussels and that Europeans do not really want a mainly Muslim,
relatively poor country of some 70 million people in their union.

Last year, the EU partly froze Turkey’s membership talks over its
failure to grant trade privileges to Cyprus, an EU member it does
not recognise.