Author: Jane Topchian

Photo: Getty Images

 

Italian police in the northern city of Trieste have seized nearly 800 shotguns en route from Turkey to Belgium, the BBC reports.

The firearms were found packed in individual boxes aboard a Dutch-registered truck that arrived on a ferry in the port city.

Although customs rules were not broken, the Turkish driver did not have licences for the weapons, police said.

Controls at Italian ports have been stepped up in the wake of the 13 November Paris terror attacks.

EU interior ministers meeting in Brussels last week agreed to tighten security and share more information about the gun trade to prevent trafficking of illegal weapons.

It came after attackers with semi-automatic rifles and suicide belts killed 130 people at a number of sites in Paris. Some of the attackers had lived in Belgium.

On November 26, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian participated in the Eastern Partnership Informal Ministerial Dialogue in Tbilisi, attended by Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, and Helga Schmid, Deputy Secretary General for the External Action Service.

Addressing the meeting, Minister Nalbandian said:

The European Neighborhood Policy has played a substantial role in promoting and deepening the cooperation between Armenia and the EU. We highly appreciate the EU’s continued support and assistance provided to our country over the years, which has been instrumental for the effective implementation and sustainability of the reform process and institutional capacity building in Armenia.

Armenia welcomed the European Neighborhood Policy review process. We highly appreciated the initiative of High Representative Mogherini and Commissioner Hahn to engage the partner countries in this process. We are pleased to note that the outcome of the EU Council deliberations of the last week duly reflected the principle of differentiation to be applied to the partners, taking into account the progress made in implementation of their commitments in the areas of democratic reforms.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank you, Johannes, and ask you to convey my gratitude also to Federica for your joint letter on the ENP review process that I have received a week ago and assure that we share the ideas contained therein.

Dear colleagues,

Since our last meeting in Minsk some important developments have taken place. I would like to note with satisfaction, the decision of the EU Council authorizing the European Commission and the High Representative to open negotiations on a new agreement with Armenia.

The negotiations will be launched in coming days and I am hopeful that through the active process of deliberations we will be able to reach an agreement on a new framework document that will reflect the essence and depth of our bilateral relations and set new guidelines for mutually beneficial cooperation.

Following the successful negotiations of last month, we look forward to signing in coming days the agreements on Armenia’s participation in a number of EU programs, such as “Horizon 2020”, and the Program for Competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises (COSME). In the area of transport, the Government of Armenia has expressed its readiness to conclude a common aviation agreement, following the liberalization of the aviation market through the Open Skies Policy.

We attach great importance to people to people contacts, and view enhanced mobility of our citizens as an important prerequisite for bringing our societies closer. It is almost two years now that the EU-Armenia Visa Facilitation and Readmission agreements are being implemented. We do believe that it is high time to move further and launch a dialogue on visa liberalization with an understanding that this is a reform oriented process.

Dear colleagues,

The Government of Armenia is committed to advancing the reforms aimed at development and consolidation of the democratic institutions and good governance, protection and promotion of human rights, strengthening the rule of law and the independence of judiciary. With this in mind, the President of Armenia has initiated the process of constitutional reform. If approved in referendum on December 6 it will transform Armenia’s semi-presidential model of governance into the parliamentary one.

According to the opinion of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe “the work carried out by the Constitutional Commission of Armenia is of extremely high quality and deserves to be supported and welcomed” . It also stated that the draft text of the Constitution is in line with international standards.

Dear colleagues,

Armenia well recognizes the importance of inclusive cooperation in different formats. We hold the view that it is possible to make best use of various integration frameworks employing more visionary approach. Since our joining the Eurasian Economic Union, and even before, we have been advocating for a rationale that builds on opportunities provided by different integration formats while avoiding undue creation of new dividing lines in the larger neighborhood. We want to make best use of our participation in the Eurasian Economic Union and at the same time develop mutually beneficial possible cooperation with the European Union.

Dear colleagues,

We look forward to advancing our efforts in the framework of both Eastern Partnership and European Neighborhood Policy and we are confident that we will continue to proceed in the right direction, based on shared values and respect of each other’s decisions and choices.

Thank you.

Fifa vice-president Michel Platini could be facing a life ban from football, according to his lawyer, the BBC reports.

The suspended Uefa chief is serving a 90-day suspension on corruption charges alongside outgoing Fifa president Sepp Blatter, while Fifa’s adjudicatory committee considers its verdict.

Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales said the ethics investigators’ “excessive” recommendations are a “scandal”.

The adjudicatory committee intends to announce its verdict next month.

The Frenchman is facing sanctions over a “disloyal payment” that saw Platini, 60, receive £1.35m from Blatter, 79, in 2011 for consultation work done nine years earlier.

The pair, who are serving 90-day provisional bans, have denied any wrongdoing, but admitted there was no written contract.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has said a political process to end the country’s bloody civil war cannot begin while it is occupied by “terrorists,” the BBC reports.

Mr Assad told Italian state television the timetable for elections “starts after starting to defeat terrorism”.

It is unclear whether he was referring only to Islamic State (IS) militants or also to Western-backed rebels.

Last week, 19 countries – including Mr Assad’s allies – set a deadline of 1 January for the start of peace talks.

They signed a UN statement that calls for a ceasefire to be agreed by 14 May 2016 and for free elections to be held a year later.

Neither the Syrian government nor opposition were invited to take part in the event in Vienna so that the countries could present a unified message.

In an interview with Rai TV broadcast on Wednesday night, the Syrian president stressed that no deadline for the start of a political transition could be set while parts of the country were not controlled by his government.

“This timetable starts after starting defeating terrorism. You cannot achieve anything politically while you have the terrorists taking over many areas in Syria,” he said.

“If we talk after that, one year and a half to two years is enough for any transition.”

The president also insisted in the interview that Syria was not an “incubator” for IS, which controls large parts of the country’s north and east.

The rise of the group, which “started in Iraq”, was the result of “the support of the Turks and the Saudis and Qataris, and of course the Western policy that supported the terrorists in different ways”, he said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs warns citizens of the Republic of Armenia against visiting Egypt.

“We advise the citizens of the Republic of Armenia to temporarily refrain from visiting Egypt without an urgent necessity,” the Ministry said in a Facebook post.

Photo by NASA/JPL-CALTECH/R.HURT

 

Astronomers have identified the most distant object yet in the Solar System, the BBC reports.

Observations with Japan’s Subaru telescope reveal the likely icy body to be some 15.5 billion km from the Sun – about three times further away than even far-flung Pluto.

Scientists say their initial studies suggest that the object – catalogued as V774104 – is some 500-1,000km across.

It will need to be tracked over time to learn the shape and extent of its orbit through the Solar System.

The discovery was announced at the 47th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences, taking place in National Harbor near Washington DC.

The team behind the find is led by Scott Sheppard, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Chad Trujillo, from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

President Serzh Sargsyan had a meeting today with Georgian Parliament Speaker David Usupashvili in Tbilisi.

The interlocutors warmly recalled the official visit of David Usupashvili’s delegation to Armenia this February and attached importance to the regular high-level meetings held during recent years, which, the RA president and the Georgian parliament speaker agreed, give a breath of fresh air to bilateral relations, thereby giving a chance to discuss the key items on the comprehensive Armenian-Georgian.

The Georgian parliament speaker welcomed and stressed the importance of the RA president’s visit, underscoring that Georgians hold Serzh Sargsyan in high regard and esteem not only as Armenia’s president, but also as a great apologist for the strengthening of friendship between Georgia and Armenia. David Usupashvili expressed the hope that Serzh Sargsyan’s visit will become another step forward aimed at reinforcing the friendship of the two countries.

President Serzh Sargsyan stressed the role of parliamentarians in developing brotherly and good-neighborly relations between Armenian and Georgia that are based on a strong historical foundation, noting that inter-parliamentary ties have long occupied their firm place in the agenda of inter-state relations which is testified by the presence of inter-parliamentary cooperation committees in the two countries’ parliaments.

The interlocutors agreed that the development of Armenia and Georgia, as well as the well-being of the two friendly peoples are greatly conditioned by the close cooperation between Armenia and Georgia and by the strengthening of relations. Serzh Sargsyan and David Usupashvili attached importance to the promotion of collaboration in all spheres, including political, economic, humanitarian etc..

Armenia’s president thanked for the participation of Georgia’s deputy parliament speaker in the events to commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide which took place on April 24 this year, on the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Centennial.

At the meeting, the parliament speaker noted that Georgia is carefully following the process of RA constitutional amendments and is aware that while developing the draft of amendments the specialized group also studied Georgia’s practice.

The interlocutors attached importance to taking a balanced, prudent and delicate stance on the sensitive issues and problems that are of crucial importance to each other and to showing respect for mutual interests.

The parties also reflected upon regional problems and challenges. President Serzh Sargsyan attached weight to Georgia’s role in the maintenance of security and stability in the region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 21 to discuss Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s surprise visit to Moscow, the latter’s first official international trip since the civil war broke out in Syria over four years ago, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Erdoğan reportedly expressed his concerns over the Syrian military’s recent strikes in Aleppo and its environs, which he said could trigger a new wave of refugees, according to sources.

Reuters reported that he also stressed the importance of “fighting all terrorist groups,” underlining the link between the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the military wing of the Kurdish PYD in northern Syria, and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said on Sunday talks with Armenian officials concluded in a decision to increase gas exports and electricity imports, Mehr News Agency reports.