Author: Kalantarian Kevo

POLITICAL EXPERT: IN 2012 RUSSIA WILL MAKE USE OF ITS INFLUENCE ON ARMENIA TO PREVENT CASPIAN GAS DELIVERY TO EUROPE THROUGH SOUTH ENERGY CORRIDOR

arminfo
Wednesday, January 25, 15:06

This year Russia will try to make use of its strategic influence
on Armenia more actively, like a possible means for reaching its
goals regarding Azerbaijan and Turkey in the matter of Caspian gas
delivery to Europe through South Energy Corridor, which Moscow is
not interested in, political expert Marat Terterov (Brussels) told
Arminfo correspondent.

“I don’t think that Moscow will gain a full carte-blanche in the
process of Nagornyy Karabakh conflict peaceful settlement. However,
it is clear that Russia is a more active geo-political force in case
of any development of events in the South Caucasus, than other external
forces. But any role of Russia in the process of peaceful settlement of
the Karabakh conflict will be determined in the wider context of its
relations with the superpowers: the USA, France, etc, including the
problems of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Korea and Iran”, – he said.

Terterov thinks that the Caucasus still remains a rather complex
geo-political region from the point of view of the inter-state
relations, characterized with sharp distrust in each other, as well as
placement of the political forces in every country. Russia and Turkey,
especially Moscow still remain the most active players in the region.

It is no secret that the political strategy of Russia in the region
has a great effect on Armenia. Moscow has an opportunity to express
its viewpoint regarding the relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

He said that Turkey is less active but can affect development of
events especially using the lever of the energy policy in the region.

“For this reason, although the USA, some European countries, NATO
and OSCE show activeness in the Caucasus, they are less active than
Moscow and Ankara. Any action of Brussels should pass a long process
of internal revision and confirming. Incidentally, the Brussels
functionaries are very much careful not to say something that may
contradict foreign policy of the EU member-states. Although many
international experts call on Brussels to become more active in the
Karabakh conflict as well as in settlement of the crisis situation
in the Caucasus in a wider sense, I would not hope for that much”,
– Terterov said.

TURKISH ANALYST WARNS HIS COUNTRY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’S 100TH ANNIVERSARY

news.am
January 25, 2012 | 12:53

ISTANBUL. – In his new article in Turkey’s Posta daily, leading
Turkish journalist and analyst Mehmet Ali Birand reflected on the
French Senate’s passing of the bill that criminalizes the denial of
genocides, including the Armenian Genocide, and noted that whatever
happened has happened and that Turkey must now concentrate on 2015,
the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

“No matter how severely we react, it is all the same; Sarkozy attained
his goal. With this, Sarkozy killed several birds [with one stone].

Prior to the [French presidential] elections, he prevented the Armenian
votes from going to the socialists, and, as a president who comes
across against Turkey, he took the extreme right wing to his side,”
Birand noted, stressing that all Senate members, who took the floor,
accepted that Turkey was guilty, and that simply the criminalization
bill was discussed.

The Turkish journalist also wrote that both France and the entire world
accept that genocide was committed, and that they solely examine as
to how the deniers should be punished.

Mehmet Ali Birand also advised Turkey to beware 2015. “The Armenians
will launch a huge worldwide campaign in connection with the 100th
anniversary of the Genocide. Our current reactions must be calculated
in such way that we are able to give a correct answer in 2015. Our
present-day extreme measures will isolate us. [And] Let us not forget
that the US is next. [And] There could be Germany, or Spain, on the
next day. We must decide now as to what we need to do at that time,”
Birand noted, adding that Turkish PM Erdogan’s reaction was correct
this time.

To note, with a vote of 127 in favor and 86 against, France’s Senate
passed Monday the bill that criminalizes the denial of the genocides
which this country has formally recognized. And these are the Armenian
Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. This bill sets a one-year prison
sentence plus a 45-thousand-Euro fine for anyone who denies these
genocides. According to the regulations, the French President will
ratify it within fifteen days of the Senate’s decision. And Turkey
had announced earlier that if the bill were to pass, it will impose
a number of sanctions against France.

UN MEMBRE DU PARTI DASHNAK ECARTE L’OFFRE DE LEVON TER-PETROSIAN
Stephane

armenews.com
mercredi 25 janvier 2012

Un des leaders du parti de la Federation Revolutionnaire Armenienne
(Dashnaktsutyun) a qualifie de ” truc publicitaire ” l’appel du
Congrès National Armenien (HAK) d’un regroupement de l’ensemble des
forces de l’opposition lors des prochaines elections nationales.

Vahan Hovannisian a mis en doute la sincerite de la proposition du
HAK quant aux amendements radicaux necessaires dans le Code Electoral
de l’Armenie. Il a dit que le bloc mene par l’ancien President Levon
Ter-Petrosian ” a raille ” le parti Dashnaktsutyun et un autre parti
de l’opposition le parti Zharangutyun, quand ils ont essaye sans
succès d’obtenir des changements au sein du Parlement contrôle par
le gouvernement plus tôt cette annee.

” En ce temps-la il n’aurait ete heureux d’avoir l’appui de la rue,
pour ainsi dire ” a dit Vahan Hovannisian lors d’une conference de
presse. ” Le Code Electoral aurait subi une reforme positive si le
HAK au cours de ces rassemblements avait renforce notre lutte. Ils ne
l’ont pas fait et maintenant se rappellent soudainement [le code.] “.

” Pourquoi devons-nous devenir une partie de leur [ campagne ?]
Pourquoi ne nous rejoigne-t-il pas ? ” a-t-il ajoute en reference a
une campagne publique contre la fraude electorale qui a ete lancee
par son parti en fevrier.

Levon Zurabian du HAK a decrit les reactions du Dashnaktsutyun et
de Zharangutyun comme ” normales “. Il a aussi insiste pour que les
remarques d’Hovannisian ne se soient pas considerees comme un rejet
explicite de l’idee avancee par le bloc de Ter-Petrosian.

” À ce point cette reaction [du Dashnaktsutyun] ne cree pas d’obstacles
pour le lancement d’un tel processus ” a dit Levon Zurabian au service
armenien de RFE/RL (Azatutyun.am).

LA MONNAIE ARMENIENNE CONTINUE LENTEMENT DE CHUTER
Stephane

armenews.com
mercredi 25 janvier 2012

La monnaie nationale, le dram, s’est lentement, mais fermement deprecie
l’annee passee malgre l’augmentation des exportations et des remises
de fonds privees de l’etranger.

Un dollar valait 389 drams la semaine dernière soit une baisse de
6,2 pour cent sur un an. Le dram a perdu 3,7 pour cent de sa valeur
nominale au cours des trois derniers mois.

En decembre 2010 le Fonds Monetaire International avait averti que
le dram etait surevalue de 10 a 12 pour cent.

Le president Serge Sarkissian avait reconnu en mars 2011 que le
renforcement du dram en 2010 avait eu un impact negatif sur les
societes industrielles armeniennes. Il avait prevu sa ” très lentement
et stable depreciation ” au cours des mois a venir. Le dollar valait
368 drams a l’epoque.

GENOCIDE ARMENIEN : AVALANCHE DE REACTIONS EN FRANCE ET EN TURQUIE

France Soir

24 janvier 2012

Les reactions politiques se multiplient ce mardi en Turquie et
en France, après le vote lundi soir, par le Senat francais, d’une
proposition de loi penalisant la negation du genocide armenien sous
l’Empire ottoman.

Le vote de la proposition de loi penalisant le genocide armenien par
les senateurs francais lundi soir ne laisse personne indifferent en
France comme en Turquie, et chacun y va de sa petite phrase ce mardi.

Après le ministre turc de la Justice, Sadullah Ergin, qui avait denonce
” un manque total de respect pour la Turquie “, le ministère des
Affaires etrangères a ” condamne fermement ” un ” acte irresponsable
” de la part de la France. Leur homologue au Travail, Faruk Celik,
a pour sa part designe le president francais Nicolas Sarkozy, qui
soutenait le texte, comme un assassin de l’Histoire.

“Honte a toi, France”, titre un journal turc La presse turque etait
elle aussi unanime ce mardi pour denoncer un coup porte par la France
a la liberte d’opinion. ” Honte a toi, France “, titrait en une le
quotidien populaire Vatan. ” La France où est ne l’ideal de liberte
a porte le coup le plus dur a la liberte d’expression. En votant la
loi sur la negation du genocide, elle a renie son propre passe “. ”
Le president francais Sarkozy a tourne le dos a la liberte et a la
Turquie pour quelques votes “, clamait le journal populaire Posta.

Face a ces reactions, le chef de la diplomatie francaise, Alain
Juppe, a declare sur Canal + : ” Je voudrais appeler nos amis turcs
au sang-froid ” et tendre ” la main ” a ce ” grand pays, cette grande
puissance economique, politique “. Le ministre de l’Interieur, Claude
Gueant, a tenu a preciser que la Turquie ” n’est pas visee ” par le
vote de cette loi. ” La loi ne stigmatise absolument pas la Turquie,
simplement, elle sanctionne les attitudes negationnistes a l’egard
des crimes genocidaires, c’est tout”, a-t-il declare sur i-Tele.

“Attitude très agressive”, selon Delanoë Du côte de l’opposition,
le maire socialiste de Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, a pointe sur France
Info l’instrumentalisation de ce vote. ” Ce qui est choquant “, c’est
que ce vote ait ete ” instrumentalise a des fins electoralistes,
en meme temps que depuis cinq ans, monsieur Sarkozy a adopte une
attitude très agressive vis-a-vis de la Turquie “. Au micro de RTL,
le candidat Modem a l’election presidentielle, Francois Bayrou,
a pour sa part evoque une faute : ” C’est une faute contre ce que
doit etre la loi dans la Republique Francaise. Ce n’est pas a la loi
d’ecrire l’histoire, encore moins l’histoire d’autres pays, d’autant
plus que nous avons deja reconnu le genocide armenien.

Que Nicolas Sarkozy et Francois Hollande aient tous deux soutenu par
leurs elus cette loi me paraît etre une faute et une erreur contre
la loi et contre la France “.

Le Senat francais a ratifie lundi soir une proposition de loi deja
adoptee par l’Assemblee nationale le 22 decembre, qui sanctionne d’un
an de prison et 45.000 euros d’amende la negation de tous les genocides
reconnus par la France, dont celui des Armeniens en 1915. La Turquie
refute le terme de genocide, meme si elle reconnaît que des massacres
ont ete commis et que quelque 500.000 Armeniens ont peri en Anatolie
entre 1915 et 1917. Les Armeniens, eux, evoquent 1,5 million de morts.

PRESS RELEASE
Hayastan All-Armenian Fund
Governmental Buiding 3, Yerevan, RA
Contact: Hasmik Grigoryan
Tel: +(3741) 56 01 06 ext. 105
Fax: +(3741) 52 15 05
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:

26 January, 2012

Hayastan All-Armenian Fund launches construction of kindergarten in Martuni
Region’s Sos Village

Project is yet another education-sector initiative made possible by
French-Armenian community

Yerevan, January 26, 2012 – The Hayastan All-Armenian Fund has begun
construction of a kindergarten in Sos, a village in Artsakh’s Martuni
Region. The project is co-sponsored by the fund’s French affiliate and the
government of Artsakh.

The future kindergarten will be a two-story structure designed to
accommodate up to 50 children. The first floor will comprise a locker room,
naprooms, restrooms, a kitchen, a laundry, and storage rooms; the second
floor will consist of playrooms, an events hall, and a gym. The facility
will also feature a sizeable playground. Currently crews are laying the
foundations of the kindergarten, which is slated to open in Fall 2012.

In the meantime preschoolers in Sos will continue to attend the community’s
existing kindergarten, which was built in the 1970s. The campus is in a
state of serious disrepair and lacks some of the core amenities required of
a modern educational institution, among them central heating and even a
sewage-disposal system.

Due to the dilapidated condition of the old campus, some families have opted
altogether not to send their children to the kindergarten, according to Sos
mayor Igor Ghahramanyan.

Commenting on the construction of the future kindergarten, the mayor
reiterated his community’s great joy and anticipation, given the imminent
availability of a spacious and comfortable kindergarten featuring
state-of-the-art amenities.

Sos is the site of another major development project, the construction of a
critically needed potable-water network, which the Hayastan All-Armenian
Fund implemented in 2010 with the co-sponsorship of the French-Armenian
community and the government of Artsakh. Thanks to the initiative, the
residents of Sos have since enjoyed around-the-clock access to water.

“Our hope is that such projects will vastly improve prospects of economic
and social development in the village of Sos, which flanks the main road to
the Amaras Monastery complex,” said Ara Vardanyan, executive director of the
Hayastan All-Armenian Fund. “In this respect, our high praise goes to our
French affiliate, for its consistent support of preschool-building
initiatives in Artsakh. One of these is the soon-to-be-completed
construction of a kindergarten in Drakhtik, a village in the Hadrut Region.”

Sos, which traces its history to the 1700s, is home to 1,040 residents. The
community’s main occupations are cattlebreeding and winemaking. The local
agricultural-machinery park, established in recent years in Sos village, has
gone a long way to improve farming productivity, Ghahramanyan said.

ARMENIA’S LEVON ARONIAN TOPS TATA STEEL TOURNAMENT

ARMENPRESS
JANUARY 25, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS: Armenia’s grand master Levon Aronian
beat Italian Francesco Karuana at the ninth round of the Tata Steel
international tournament in Dutch town of Wijk aan Zee and tops the
list of the “A” group of the tournament, Armenpress Armenian news
agency reports citing the official website of the tournament.

Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk and Azerbaijani
Teymur Rajabov share 2-4 places.

FIRST LADY OF TURKEY TAKES REVENGE ON FRANCE

ARMENPRESS
JANUARY 25, 2012
YEREVAN

ANKARA, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS: Turkey has decided to turn to the
First Lady in its fighting.

Hayrunnisa Gul, the spouse of Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul, will
tomorrow give a dinner for women ambassadors accredited in Turkey,
wives of ambassadors and women representatives of international
organizations, Armenpress reports citing Anadolu agency.

It is noteworthy that the spouse of the French Ambassador to Turkey
has not been invited.

It is a tradition to organize suchlike banquets in Chankaya
presidential palace from time to time, but tomorrow’s event will be
more large-scale. Nearly 90 guests will be invited. The banquet will
be held behind closed doors. The First Lady of Turkey is intended to
deliver a speech before the dinner.

ERDOGAN SLAMS “RACIST” FRENCH GENOCIDE BILL

Monsters and Critics

Jan 24 2012

Paris/Istanbul – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday
denounced as ‘discriminatory and racist’ a bill adopted by the French
parliament that makes it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide
at the hands of Ottoman Turks a century ago.

Turkey would take ‘step by step’ measures against fellow NATO member
France over the bill, he said, calling it an attack on freedom of
expression.

After seven hours of intense debate Monday the French Senate adopted
the bill, which had already been approved by the lower house of
parliament in December.

Armenia welcomed the move as ‘historic.’

‘The day the law was accepted will be entered with golden letters
not only in the history books of Armenian-French friendship but also
in the chronicles of global human rights protection,’ said Armenian
Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has 15 days to sign the text into law.

A spokesman for the Turkish embassy in Paris, Engin Solakoglu, warned
Sarkozy of repercussions ‘in all areas’ – diplomatic, political,
economic, military and cultural – if he enacted the law.

‘France will have to do without Turkey in these domains,’ he told
France Info radio.

In December Turkey already suspended military and diplomatic
cooperation with France, a NATO ally. Turkey has warned this time it
could downgrade ties, among other measures.

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Tuesday repeated his appeals for
Turkey to show ‘sangfroid’.

Juppe also admitted in an interview with Canal + television that the
bill, which punishes genocide denial by a year in prison and 45,000
euros (57,000 dollars) in fines, was ‘badly timed.’

France officially recognizes two genocides: the Nazi Holocaust of
Jews during World War II and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians in eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1917.

The country already has a law criminalising Holocaust denial. The
current bill extends that punishment to people who deny Armenians
also suffered genocide.

Armenians say around 1.5 million people were either killed or died
during forced deportations in eastern Turkey in 1915, at the height
of World War I.

A dozen countries have declared there was a genocide.

Turkey estimates between 300,000 and 500,000 people died but rejects
the genocide tag, saying that there was no systematic policy to
destroy the Christian Armenian community.

Ankara has accused Sarkozy of fishing for votes among France’s small
but influential Armenian community in the run-up to this year’s
presidential elections.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION LAW: IS FRANCE CRIMINALIZING FREE SPEECH?

International Business Times

Jan 24 2012

By Amrutha Gayathri: Subscribe to Amrutha’s RSS feed

Taking the international rhetoric on the Armenian genocide to the next
level, the French government has approved a bill making it illegal
to deny that the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in the first
quarter of the last century was genocide.

As expected, the approval of the bill, on Monday, sparked an angry
retaliation from Turkey, including a threat of “total rupture” of
diplomatic ties with France.

However, the international debate currently involving France, Armenia
and Turkey seems to conveniently overlook a key controversial element
in the new law – it criminalizes free speech.

The adoption of the new law seems to erroneously suggest that France
has only recently joined the global crusade to recognize the Armenian
genocide. The fact is France passed a bill, in 2001, officially
accepting the Armenian massacre between 1915 and 1923 was genocide.

The new genocide law – which penalizes anyone who chooses to have a
different opinion about the Armenian mass killing from that which
the constitution mandates – is clearly in conflict with France’s
obligation as a democracy to respect free speech.

The new law should, perhaps, have been named Anti-Genocide Denial
law, rather than the widely used but more general term, Genocide
Recognition law.

An overwhelming majority of historians and academic institutions
across the world have already recognized the Armenian mass killing
was genocide. However, this is not enough for legislators to “lock”
history up or constitutionally “protect” history, effectively
criminalizing dissent.

“Officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide is one thing, and I have
no problem with it. Criminalizing free speech is quite another. The
fact that there is a consensus on a particular view doesn’t justify
declaring dissenting views illegal; there is value in periodically
reevaluating our conclusions in cases like this. France should
be ashamed of this attack on freedom,” a commentator wrote on an
Internet forum.

The law which mandates a maximum 45,000 Euro ($58,000) fine and a
year in jail for offenders has met with criticism for being grossly
anti-democratic. The suggestion that the State is better equipped
than the people in determining truth is high-handed, to say the least.

“As repugnant as the atrocities against ethnic Armenians were, it
is undesirable for States to interfere with the right to know and
the search for historical truth, especially when those events took
place in another country,” Article19.org, an organization “defending
freedom of expression and information” wrote in a post, published
while the law was still a draft.

“The notion of forbidding words, even ugly words, is repulsive
in the extreme. It is very sad to see one of the cornerstones of
European democracy taking that path. France has lost all moral right
to condemn anyone else for repressing the right to speak freely,”
wrote another commentator.

When there is no social necessity in France to limit political views,
as is the case during a State-imposed emergency, the new law should
be deemed undemocratic and orchestrated merely to restructure its ties
with Armenia and to appease 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France, in the
wake of a two-round presidential vote scheduled for April 22 and May 6.