Author: Kajoyan Gevork

Courrier International-
15 févr. 2013

HAUT-KARABAKH – La république autoproclamée fête ses 25 ans de lutte
pour l’indépendance

Le 13 février, les habitants du Haut-Karabakh, enclave séparatiste
arménienne en Azerbaïdjan, ont célébré le 25e anniversaire de la
`lutte pour la libération nationale’, rapporte le site russe consacré
au Caucase Kavkazski Ouzel. 7 000 personnes ont défilé à Stepanakert,
capitale karabakhie. Des festivités sont prévues durant toute l’année.

Pour Iouri Grigorian, militant indépendantiste et vétéran de la guerre
du Haut-Karabakh [1988-1994], le Karabakh `n’a pas encore réussi à se
réunifier avec l’Arménie, mais il est devenu indépendant et a préservé
son identité’. Pour l’un des initiateurs du mouvement indépendantiste,
Edouard Pogossian, `l’objectif à atteindre est la réunification d’une
Arménie libre et indépendante’.

Côté azerbaïdjanais, des man`uvres militaires d’envergure à proximité
des frontières du Karabakh se multiplient depuis février 2012. Celles
qui se déroulent en ce moment même près de la région de Terter
`constituent une démonstration de force’, estime le quotidien russe
Nezavissimaïa Gazeta. La position de la ville de Terter, que les
troupes d’autodéfense karabakhies n’ont pas réussi à prendre en 1994,
`revêt une importance stratégique. C’est depuis ce point que les
troupes azéries pourraient conduire la frappe principale [contre le
Karabakh]’. L’expert militaire russe Vladimir Popov n’en doute pas :
`L’Azerbaïdjan envisage la résolution du problème par la voie
militaire, et la participation de la Turquie n’est pas à exclure dans
un tel scénario.’

ARMENIE
Un groupe de travail se penche sur l’élargissement éventuel de l’accès
de l’industrie aux services financiers

Un groupe de travail mis en place par décret du premier ministre est
en train d’étudier la possibilité d’élargir l’accès aux services
financiers pour l’industrie a annoncé le Premier ministre Tigran
Sarkissian lors de sa rencontre avec les représentants de l’industrie.

Selon les entrepreneurs, les conditions de financement des banques
sont l’un des principaux problèmes.

Le groupe de travail comprend les représentants du ministère des
finances et de l’économie, ainsi que des experts de la Banque Centrale
d’Arménie. Le groupe devrait présenter un programme de mesures
complexes visant à élargir l’accès des entreprises aux services
financiers dans un mois a dit le Premier-ministre.

« Tout d’abord nous allons parler des taux d’intérêt » a déclaré
Tigran Sarkissian.

L’analyse de la Banque mondiale sur l’environnement économique de
l’Arménie a signalé trois obstacles critiques – la corruption, la
bureaucratie et les problèmes d’accessibilité au financement.

dimanche 17 février 2013,
Stéphane ©armenews.com

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 16 2013

Election fraud claims run high as Armenians prepare to vote

15 February 2013 /MUSTAFA EDÄ°B YILMAZ, YEREVAN

It’s a once-in-a-five-year choice the Armenians can make, yet few here
seem to be excited, with the presidential election ballot box
appearing in only two days’ time. The reason? Because it’s like
watching a movie after having been reminded too often about how it
ends.
So the news on President Serzh Sarksyan’s highly expected victory
following Monday’s polls will not be surprising at all. For Alexander
Iskandaryan, director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute, “the
race was over in December” when wealthy businessman Gagik Tsarukyan of
the Prosperous Armenia Party ` which captured nearly 30 percent of the
vote in the May 2012 parliamentary elections against Sarksyan’s
Republican Party of Armenia’s 53 percent — decided not to run in the
elections.

However, there are still candidates who would challenge the president
at the ballot box. Six candidates to be exact, yet in Iskandaryan’s
words “they could only be rivals to each other, not to Sarksyan.” In
an apparent indication of the kind of frustration people were feeling,
Andrias Ghukasyan — a political analyst who also happened to be one
of those candidates — has been on a hunger strike since Jan.21,
demanding “the fake elections be stopped.”

Another candidate, Raffi Hovannisian, who, according to almost all
opinion polls one might come across, stands the biggest chance of
replacing the current president for the next five years, explains that
Armenians have not experienced “free and fair” elections since their
country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Indeed, he said,
speaking to a group of Turkish journalists Thursday night, they have
not seen any since the first presidential elections that brought Ter
Petrosyan to power, under whom Hovannisian served as the first foreign
minister of the country.

According to Hovannisian, hundreds of public buildings — among them
schools and hospitals — were used for Sarksyan’s propaganda, one
piece of information he said his campaign has documented to relevant
election observers. He went on to claim that civil servants and
military conscripts were too often pressured to vote in a particular
way by the government in the landlocked Caucasian country, adding that
Sarksyan, however, on a number of occasions made clear that he would
do everything to ensure elections are properly held. “We applaud the
president for those remarks and will hold him to his promises,” he
said. When asked what his reaction will be if he finds out that
Monday’s election is no exception to the Armenians’ bitter experience
for years now, he said, “I will tell you that on Tuesday.”

Sarksyan won the previous presidential elections in 2008 in the first
round with nearly 53 percent of the vote against Petrosyan’s 21.5
percent, a result the latter strongly disputed with allegations of
fraud. The 2012 general elections were marred by similar accusations
towards the government, whose results were recognized by none of the
four opposition parties represented in Parliament.

Xinhua General News Service, China
February 14, 2013 Thursday 1:16 AM EST

Armenian president promises “secure Armenia”

YEREVAN Armenia, Feb. 14

President Serzh Sargsyan has promised voters to keep Armenia secure,
the Armenpress News Agency reported Thursday.

The 59-year-old incumbent, who is seeking reelection in the
presidential elections scheduled for Feb. 18, said during a campaign
speech that Armenia is located in such a volatile region that
unjustified risks aren’t warranted.

“We have a clear objective – to build a secure Armenia. We live and
develop in a region where we must not take unjustified risks,” he
said.

Addressing the young in particular, the president said their votes
would decide the future course of the country.

Sargsyan promised to take every measure to ensure good education and
well-paid jobs for the young and urged them to join him in “writing
the book of secure Armenia.”

Global Times, China
Feb 16 2013

OSCE observers deployed in Armenia for presidential vote

Xinhua | 2013-2-16 23:48:18
By Agencies

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on
Saturday started deploying its short-term and long-term observers
across Armenia to monitor next Monday’s presidential election of the
country.

The OSCE has some 270 observers led by OSCE ambassador to Yerevan
Heidi Tagliavini and they come from a dozen of OSCE member states.

The OSCE observation mission is scheduled to give a press briefing on
Tuesday next week on preliminary findings of this year’s election. A
final report on the observation of the entire electoral process will
be issued some eight weeks after the election day.

Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, who is of no relations to the
country’s incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan, has invited the OSCE to
send its observers for the presidential vote.

The OSCE has observed eight elections in Armenia since 1996, including
the 2008 presidential and 2012 parliamentary elections.

Armenian parliament leader and US ambassador did not hold secret
meeting – spokesperson

February 16, 2013 | 13:36

YEREVAN. – Armenian National Assembly (NA) Speaker Hovik Abrahamyan on
Thursday met with US Ambassador John Heffern not as the NA leader, but
rather as chief of the election campaign headquarters of the ruling
Republican Party (RPA) leader and presidential candidate, incumbent
President Serzh Sargsyan, the NA speaker’s spokeswoman Gohar Poghosyan
told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

She noted that the said meeting with the US ambassador was not secret,
and deputy headquarters chiefs – Deputy PM and Territorial
Administration Minister – Armen Gevorgyan and – RPA MP – Davit Harutyunyan
likewise attended the talk, during which they discussed the electoral
processes, activities of the campaign headquarters, etc.

As Armenian News-NEWS.am informed earlier, John Heffern on Thursday
met with Hovik Abrahamyan, Zhamanak daily reported.

`In all likelihood, the US ambassador discussed with Abrahamyan
matters linked to the presidential election [to be held in Armenia on
February 18], since he [that is, Abrahamyan] heads Serzh Sargsyan’s
[campaign] headquarters.

But this meeting is noteworthy in the sense that the US embassy – or,
similarly, America – does not accept Abrahamyan all that much as the NA
speaker, and considers him a part of Armenia’s criminal-oligarchic
system.

[But] it is noteworthy that neither the NA nor the US embassy released
an official statement with respect to the meeting of Abrahamyan and
Heffern; and this could be their first meeting,’ Zhamanak wrote.

The IOC is Giving Up Wrestling for Lent

Patheos
February 14, 2013

By Kyle Roberts

Cutting the oldest Olympic sport

from the Olympics is a bad idea. But that’s exactly what the IOC is
proposing for 2020. Once it is out of the olympics (to make room for
modern pentathalon, wakeboarding, wushu and a few others). I’ve got
nothing against those sports (I don’t know what some of them are), but
I do know that wrestling is one of the oldest sports, dating back to
when Greeks and the Romans started this whole deal. As Rulon Gardner
said recently, when you think of the Olympics, you think marathon and
wrestling. To be fair, you also think of swimming, and gymnastics,
and…well, you get the point.

Wrestling is primal; it’s one person’s strength, cunning, training,
stamina and will against another’s-right there in real time. As Mike
Downey notes, it’s `hand-to-hand combat in its essence. A fight with
civility.’

To wrestle is to enter a different sort of time and space. Time
expands and the outside world fades into a blur. I used to hear it
said that for wrestlers, the only thing that exists in for that
six-minute match is you, your opponent, and God.

I know that feeling, having wrestled in high school, and dabbled a bit
in college. I was never even close to having olympic aspirations, but
I can feel for those who do. The olympics are the pinnacle of amateur
sport. The very best high school and college wrestlers have the
olympics as their ideal-their greatest level of achievement. It’s also
the only familiarity most people have with the real sport of
wrestling. Take it out of the Olympics, and `wrestling’ may become
synonymous in the public mind with the WWE, Vince McMahan’s
counterfeit version.

Not surprisingly, lots of people agree that it’s a bad idea. A White
House petition has generated nearly 24,000 signatures, at last check,
and the big names of wrestling are mounting a campaign to save their
sport. Armenia’s wrestling head, Levon Julfalakyan, called the
proposal a `betrayal’ of the sport. Hopefully this swift, widespread
reaction will prompt a change of heart.

Armenian presidential candidate already refuses to recognize future
protocol on election results

NEWS.AM
February 16, 2013 | 20:08

YEREVAN. – Armenian presidential candidate Vardan Sedrakiyn does not
accept the campaign, as such, and will not recognize the final
protocol of the election results, the candidate told Armenian
News-NEWS.am.

According to him, right in the middle of the campaign his name was
connected with the assassination attempt on another presidential
candidate Paruyr Hayrikyan, which influenced the course of the
campaign.

`I was busy with the explanatory statements in connection with the
charges in my address, resulting in all the pre-arranged interviews
with regional television companies to fail, and so on. And some of the
media did not even invite me,’ the presidential candidate said and
wished everybody free and fair elections.

In response to the comment, whether he will still not acknowledge the
elections results if he gets 81% of the votes, Sedrakyan refused to
answer.

`What does this irony have to do with all of this? Do you not live in
this country? Do you not see what is happening?’ he replied.

Serzh Sargsyan: “Raffi Hovannisian has run a beautiful campaign”

18:09, February 16, 2013

During his final campaign speech before Monday’s election, President
Sargsyan confessed that Raffi Hovannian’s open style of campaigning of
shaking hands and kissing babies had ushered in a new political
tradition in Armenia.

Sargsyan made the remark during a speech in downtown Yerevan just two
days before the February 18 presidential election.

`Yes, today in Armenia a revolution is taking place. It is a
constitutional revolution that we all are engaged in. And in the first
place, with our active participation,’ Sargsyan told the seated crowd.

`Raffi Hovannisian is proving that to be in the opposition doesn’t
mean to foment hatred everywhere,’ Sargsyan said.

Sargsyan labelled Hovannisian’s campaign `beautiful’ and full of tens
of thousands of handshakes. The president said that those who mocked
it were mistaken.

In contrast, Raffi Hovannisian’s final appearance at the Marriot Hotel
was standing room only and emotionally charged with occasional
outbursts from the crowd, as well as impromptu singing and dancing.

Hovannisian called on Serzh Sargsyan to do the right thing and
instruct all government officials, from regional governors to village
heads, from the police to the security services, to stop their tactics
of intimidation and to allow voters to cast a ballot according to
their conscience.

Armenian FM meets Turkish journalists

18:25 16.02.2013

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian received journalists
representing the leading Turkish mass media, who have arrived in
Armenia within the framework of a program implemented by the Hrant
Dink Foundation.

Responding to the journalists’ questions, Minister Nalbandain
presented Armenia’s foreign policy priorities, its position on urgent
regional and international issues.