Author: Kajoyan Gevork

STATE REVENUE COMMITTEE DISCOVERED 71 CASES OF CUSTOMS VIOLATIONS IN ARMENIA

news.am
Nov 13 2011
Armenia

YEREVAN. – Armenia’s State Revenue Committee (SRC) has discovered
71 cases of customs violations from January 1 to October 21 of
2011. Most violations concern import attempts without customizing,
SRC’s information and public relations department informs.

Recently another attempt of smuggling has been prevented. In the
customs control area of “Apaven terminal” 23 tons of laminated
floors, 5500 cell phone chargers and 8000 cell phone batteries have
been discovered which were not declared. The goods were imported by
“Gevorg-Aram” company.

The officers of SRC’s operative investigative department of Nor Nork
region have discovered a small business in the capital’s Acharyan 5
building’s basement. Robert Zakaryan has been producing lavash without
state registration and without being included in the taxation system.

The business does not work anymore and the amount of damage caused
to the state is being cleared, the SRC reassures.

ARMENIAN PLAYWRIGHT CAN’T STAGE HIS PLAYS OVER ACTOR SHORTAGE

Tert.am
12.11.11

Armenian playwright Vahram Sahakyan says he has two plays written now
but cannot stage them because theatre actors are being filmed in soap
operas to make ends meet.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday Sahakyan said that the
rabbis art should be banned through Stalin-era methods.

“I have never complained of anybody and have always said that each
person will reach what s/he deserves,” said he.

“But today, I declare with all responsibility that things continue
this way, we will not have any culture in four years’ time at all –
neither theatre, nor cinema” said Sahakyan.

Vahram Sahakyan is the author of Khatabalada and Mea Culpa – plays
that were written several years ago but still attract full audiences
when staged.

“If we continue this way, this nation will disappear in several years.

It should be banned through methods of the Stalin-era dictatorship.

Whatever is rabbis must be simply banned,” explained he.

RUSSIA, IRAN SIGN AGREEMENT ON STRATEGIC COOPERATION

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 12, 2011 – 12:47 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Iran and Russia have signed a strategic cooperation
agreement in line with the policy of increasing bilateral cooperation,
a top Iranian security official announced on Friday, November 11.

According to Merh News Agency, Ali Baqeri, the deputy secretary of
the Supreme National Security Council, said that the agreement was
signed during his meeting with Yevgeny Lukyanov, the deputy secretary
of Russia’s Security Council, in Moscow on Friday.

“This is a document of cooperation between the two countries’
security councils, which had previously been put forward and was
finalized today,” Baqeri told reporters after the meeting with his
Russian counterpart.

“The document covers cooperation between Iranian and Russian security
councils in security, economic, political, and intelligence fields.

Through signing this agreement, the framework of cooperation between
the two neighboring countries’ security councils was established in
terms of form and content,” he explained.

During his meetings with Russian officials during his visit to Moscow,
he said that bilateral ties, the latest report of the International
Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear program, and Russia’s
step-by-step proposal were thoroughly discussed.

Meanwhile, Fars News Agency reported that Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister Mikhail Bogdanov arrived in Tehran on Friday night after
the two countries signed the agreement.

During the two-day visit, the senior Russian diplomat is due to
meet with high-ranking Iranian officials, including Deputy Foreign
Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, to discuss bilateral ties and
exchange views over regional issues.

Bogdanov is also due to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar
Salehi during his stay in Tehran.

IRAN’S INTERIOR MINISTER TO VISIT ARMENIA IN COMING WEEKS

armradio.am
12.11.2011 14:04

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar is to visit Armenia
in coming weeks, Iranian ISNA agency reports.

His trip to Armenia scheduled for late November or early December
falls in line with bilateral security, trade and economic cooperation.

RUSSIA SAYS READY TO HELP SYRIA START RECONCILIATION DIALOGUE

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 12, 2011 – 09:49 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Russia is willing to help the opposing sides in
the Syrian political crisis start a reconciliation dialogue, Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday, November 12.

“We feel the responsibility to make everything possible to initiate
an internal dialogue in Syria,” Lavrov said after a meeting of APEC
Foreign Ministers in Honolulu.

Lavrov expressed regret over the fact that certain representatives of
the Syrian opposition, especially those residing in the United States
and in Turkey, are boycotting any proposals aimed at the talks with
the Syrian authorities.

“We will attempt to convince [the opposition] to take a more
constructive approach and to care about their country,” the minister
said.

A delegation of the opposition Syrian National Council is expected
to visit Moscow next week to meet with Lavrov and Russian lawmakers,
RIA Novosti reported.

Opposition leaders maintain that Syrian authorities continue to use
force against “peaceful demonstrations” and many people were killed
or injured as a result.

Meanwhile, the authorities say that the troops and police are clashing
with militants, who are financed from abroad and attack administrative
bodies and ordinary citizens.

According to UN estimates, more than 3,500 people have been killed in
Syria since mid-March, when first protests against President Bashar
al-Assad’s regime began.

Russia and China vetoed in October a UN Security Council draft
resolution that urged the Syrian regime to immediately stop using
violence against protesters or face “targeted measures.”

However, Moscow and Beijing have called on the Syrian government to
quickly carry out its commitment of political reform and to resume
and promote an inclusive political process that involves the wide
participation of all parties in the country.

L’ARMENIE TERMINE A LA 4E PLACE EUROPEENNE
Krikor Amirzayan

armenews.com
samedi 12 novembre 2011

Echec pour l’Armenie aux championnats d’Europe messieurs par equipe
a Porti Carras (Grèce). Alors qu’elle etait en tete a l’issue du 8e
et avant dernier tour, l’Armenie a perdu 1,5-2,5 face a l’Allemagne
qui est devenue championne d’Europe. Mais la defaite de l’Armenie l’a
placee en 4e position au tableau final, la privant ainsi du podium
europeen. L’Armenie, championne du monde en titre echoue ainsi au
pied du podium europeen. L’Azerbaïdjan est vice-championne et la
Hongrie qui a cree la surprise en s’imposant 4-0 face a la Bulgarie
est troisième. Privant ainsi l’Armenie d’une medaille. L’Allemagne
qui etait classee au 10e rang des equipes participantes a ainsi
conquis le titre europeen, creant une grande surprise. Levon Aronian,
le numero trois mondial et le meilleur joueur armenien n’etait pas
dans une très grande forme lors de ces competitions. Il est en partie
responsable de la defaite de l’Armenie qui avait poudrant de reelles
capacites a s’emparer du titre europeen. L’Armenie, double championne
des Olympiades, championne du monde et qui avait en 1999 conquis le
titre europeen. Chez les dames, l’Armenie s’est classee 7e.

Classement final :

1. Allemagne 15 points

2. Azerbaïdjan 14 points

3. Hongrie 13 points

4. Armenie 13 points

5. Russie 13 points

6. Hollande 12 points

7. Bulgarie 12 points

8. Pologne 11 points

9. Roumanie 11 points

10. Espagne 11 points

STEVE WOZNIAK AWARDED AN HONORARY DOCTORATE OF STATE ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY OF ARMENIA

Mediamax
Nov 11 2011
Armenia

Yerevan/Mediamax/. Today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was awarded
an Honorary Doctorate title by State Engineering University of Armenia
(SEUA).

Steve Wozniak visited the SEUA today with his spouse Janette and met
with the faculty and students of the University, Mediamax reports.

Handing the Honorary Doctorate Diploma to Steve Wozniak for the
big contribution into the sphere of information and communication
technologies, SEUA Rector Ara Avetisyan expressed the hope that Apple
co-founder will often visit Armenia.

“This title is a big honor for me. Armenia has already become a
lifelong part of my soul and heart, and this University if very
important for me. This title means that I still can inspire young
people to create something new,” Steve Wozniak said during his first
lecture at SEUA.

He told the audience why and how he decided to become an engineer.

“I fell in love with the computer because it allows the man to
program what he wants to do. Still from early childhood I dreamed
of a personal computer, and my good friend Steve Jobs, who always
valued the perfection in life, understood me and we began doing it,”
said the inventor of the first personal computer in the world.

Steve Wozniak also told about his contribution into the provision of
communication between the USA and USSR during the Cold War. He also
said that besides information technologies he was also attracted by
Christian missionary work at college.

Today, Steve Wozniak was also awarded the Armenian President’s Global
IT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Humanity through IT. The
award was instituted by Synopsis Armenia with the sponsorship of
VivaCell-MTS.

OSCE MINSK GROUP REJECTS USE OF FORCE IN KARABAKH SETTLEMENT – LUKASHEVICH

Interfax
Nov 10 2011
Russia

The co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe’s Minsk Group have again rejected the use of force in settling
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Alexander Lukashevich has said.

“The Minsk Group’s report to the OSCE Permanent Council says that
the conflict has no military solution and that the parties’ political
will alone can forge a positive result,” Lukashevich said at a press
briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

The co-chairs of the Minsk Group also reported “what steps they have
been making to improve the atmosphere of the talks, to build trust
and to consolidate the ceasefire regime,” he said.

Lukashevich announced that at the end of November the Minsk Group
co-chairs plan to visit the region for talks with the Azeri and
Armenian presidents.

The reports says that more than 14 bilateral meetings have been
held this year with the Azeri and Armenian presidents, according
to Lukashevich.

“The talks with the Azeri and Armenian leaderships addressed progress
in the peace process, and the work to draft the basic principles of
the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement that was being done with the Russian
president’s personal participation and in strong cooperation with
his counterparts in the United States and France,” he said.

ARMENIA: CONDI IN THE CROSSHAIRS
Giorgi Lomsadze

EurasiaNet.org

Nov 11 2011
NY

Many ethnic Armenians who read ex-US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice’s recently published memoirs (“No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My
Years in Washington”) are spitting fire over her descriptions of her
battles with the US-based Diaspora Armenian lobby.

Both in 1991 as a presidential aide (to then US President George Bush)
and in 2007 as secretary of state (under then President George W.

Bush), Rice worked to defeat the congressional push for recognizing
the World-War I-era slaughter of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks
as genocide.

While acknowledging the brutality and the scale of the bloodshed,
Rice writes that US recognition of the act as genocide would have
antagonized Turkey, a key strategic ally for the US. She argues
that she was guided by the raison d’etat that labels are best left
to historians.

Not in the view of American-Armenian Diaspora groups or many
Armenian-language news services, who have republished a letter from
Harut Sassounian, the publisher of Los Angeles’ The California Courier,
a weekly catering to the city’s sizable Diaspora Armenian community,
that advises Stanford University (where Rice now works as a political
science professor, a political economy professor at Stanford’s business
school and, lastly, a public policy fellow) to inform the 57-year-old
foreign policy veteran that “genocide deniers are not welcome at one
of America’s most distinguished institutions of higher learning.”

Warming to his task, Sassounian charged that Rice had behaved as
“a spineless official of a banana republic” by allegedly caving in
to Turkish interests.

And Rice? Ever the diplomat, she’s keeping quiet.

ARMENIA TO IMPROVE ITS ECONOMY

The Messenger
Nov 11 2011
Georgia

Armenia’s Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian stated on November 8 that
in 2012 his country plans to increase economic development up to the
level of the pre-crisis period. During the first five months of this
year Armenia’s economy increased by 5 %. Sarkisian also said that
diversification of the Armenian economy is underway to reach a level
that can create more jobs and eliminate poverty. Some local analysts,
however, express concerns that Armenia could face a second wave of
the economic crisis coming from the direction of the Russian economy,
to which is closely connected.