Author: Kalantarian Kevo

WILL STEPAN DEMIRCHYAN BE NOMINATED FOR YEREVAN MAYOR?
Siranush Muradyan

"Radiolur"
02.03.2009 18:04

Will Stepan Demirchyan be the opposition candidate for the Mayor
of Yerevan?

"Discussons are still underway," the leader of the Peoples’ Party of
Armenia told "Radiolur."

What kind of relations will be established with the authorities, if
the opposition wins the elections? "Yesterday we held discussions
within the party. The party did not find it proper to run in the
elections alone. The Political Council was directed to discuss the
issue of participating in the elections with a common list. I mean
the common list of the opposition," Stepan Demirchyan clarified.

The coalition parties do not avoid specifying names. Leader of the
Orinats Yerkir faction Heghine Bisharyan said the party will make
the final decision by tomorrow evening. Heghine Bisharyan did not
exclude that she might head the list.

Discussions within the Prosperous Armenia Party still continue. Press
Secretary of the Party said compiling a list is not easy.

ARF Dashnaktsutyun has not been decided, either. "We are discussing
the issues of participation and the form of participation," head of
the ARF Dashnaktsutyun faction Artyusha Shahbazyan said.

A LAWSUIT IS FILED BY FOUNDATION IN HONOR OF HRANT DINK

PanARMENIAN.Net
03.03.2009 01:07 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A lawsuit has been filed by a foundation set up
in honor of the murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in
Turkey. The former editor of Agos was murdered in 2007 by a young
nationalist whose links to a group of ultra-nationalists, codenamed
Ergenekon, operating within the security forces and state bureaucracy
are now being investigated. "In the whole of the documentary the word
‘Armenian’ has been used thousands of times and only with negative
connotations," the Foundation said, The Times reports.

As it is mentioned in the article, Mr Dink had been one of several
high-profile intellectuals, also including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel
literature laureate, and Elif Shafak, the bestselling author, who had
been sued by nationalist lawyers over comments and writings alluding
Armenian Genocide. "You can see that all those cases were part of
a project of manipulation … There is a sick, abnormal tissue of
Turkish society that is poisoned by a nationalist, racist virus,"
said Ufuk Uras, an independent MP who backs Mr Kaya’s case.

NEXT SESSION OF CSTO TO BE HELD IN MOSCOW IN JULY

ArmInfo
2009-03-02 12:15:00

ArmInfo. The next session of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization [CSTO] will be held in Moscow in July, Secretary General
of CSTO, Nikolay Bordyuzha, said in Yerevan, Monday.

‘The main purpose of the session is to endorse the list of Collective
Rapid Deployment Force. I think these forces will be fully formed by
the CSTO July session’, – he said.

Bordyuzha also said that they have almost finished creation of
the normative and legal basis of the Collective Rapid Deployment
Force. ‘All these problems including the agenda of the forthcoming
CSTO July session will be coordinated with the leadership of Armenia’,
– he said.

To note, in 2008 Armenia became the chairman country in the CSTO.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN CENTRAL ASIA AND NEAR EAST

"Noravank" Foundation
26 February 2009

Sevak Sarukhanyan

The beginning of 2009 was marked by the developments of political,
military and economic character, which may cause some changes in the
situation in Central Asia and Near East. The activation of
implementation of `Nabucco’ project, the new quality of collaboration
between Turkey and Iran in the sphere of energetic, the decision of
authorities of Kirgizstan to withdraw American military base from the
country must be regarded as the most important ones.

`Nabucco’ and the accession of Turkey to the EU
Turkey was one of the countries which suffered from the
Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis most of all. Though the `Blue stream’ gas
pipeline directly connects Russian and Turkish gas systems and allows
supplying Russian gas by that pipeline laid on the Black Sea seafloor
directly to Turkey, but western Turkish provinces supply their gas
demand by Russian gas, delivered through the territory of Bulgaria. The
interruption of Russian gas supply through Ukraine caused the situation
when the western regions of Turkey were deprived of Russian blue-sky
fuel.

Though Russian Gazprom, Turkish national oil company and `Botas’ had
solved the problem of the increase in the amount of gas pumped through
the `Blue stream’ and managed to solve the problem of the gas supply to

the western regions of Turkey, Turkish authorities could use the
Russian-Ukrainian discrepancies in order to forward their political and
economic interests.

On January 19 Turkish prime-minister R.T. Erdogan, who was in Brussels
on the EU entry talks, cast a doubt on economic expediency of `Nabucco’
and stated that his country was going to reconsider its approach to
that project. He also mentioned that Turkey would not support the
`Nabucco’ project if Brussels did not reconsider its position on the
demands of the liberalization of the energy sphere, which was connected
with the issue of Turkey’s accession to the EU. `If we reach a
deadlock, then, naturally, we shall reconsider our position’, – said
Erdogan while speaking on the issues of `Nabucco’ and the accession of
Turkey to the EU.

It should be mentioned that it is the first time that Turkey has spoken
about the expediency of `Nabucco’. It is obvious that the position of
that country on `Nabucco’ project has not changed and it could not even
change as the construction of the pipeline will be of great political
and economic benefit for Turkey. The fact that Endogan put `Nabucco’ in
question can be regarded as the blackmail in order to boost the
accession of Turkey to the EU, which became possible at the moment when
Europe felt the unreliability of the gas pipeline going throu
gh the
territory of Ukraine on its own back.

After Erdogan’s critical statements in Brussels he entered into
negotiations with the president of European Commission Borroso. After
the high-level negotiations between Turkey and the EU Borroso said
that, anyway, Turkey and the EU had reached the agreement on the issue
of the construction of `Nabucco’ pipeline. However, in Barruso’s
opinion there is no necessity to tie `Nabucco’ with the accession of
Turkey to the EU. At the same time he said that if Turkey helped Europe
to diversify gas supply and to lessen their dependence on Russian fuel,
this would have positive influence on public opinion in Europe, which
have rather cautious relation to the prospect of big Muslim country’s
accession to the EU.

On January 20 Barroso came forward with the suggestion to promote the
work with Turkey in order it could join the EU as soon as possible. And
this will promote to the magnitude of the European Union and `will
enhance its energy security’.

The January ended providing two more evidences of the enhancement of
the positions of Ankara in the relation between Turkey and the EU.
Firstly, the summit on the issues of the `Nabucco’ pipeline
construction on January 27 in Budapest once more came to prove the
significance of Turkey for the energy and economic security of the EU
and underlined the importance of=2
0its membership to the EU. Secondly,
the growing significance of Turkey for the EU, probably, let its
prime-minister act aggressively (which is unacceptable for any European
leader) with the president of Israel Sh. Peres. At the same time the
behavior of the Turkish prime-minister was determined by another
important factor: the Islamic administration of Turkey tries to present
the interests of Muslim world. The latest developments, including the
steps made in the direction of the accession of Iran to `Nabucco’
project, show that the Turkish authorities also added some economic
constituent to their policy.

The stirring up of Iran in the regional energetic projects
Recently Turkey especially has been trying to emphasize the role of
Iran in the issue of Europe energy security. In his speech in the
Center of European policy in Brussels Erdogan said that one could
hardly supply the necessary amount of gas, i.e. 30 billion of cubic
meters, to provide the work of `Nabucco’ pipeline. According to Erdogan
`Nabucco’ can make sense in case if gas is pumped to Europe not only
from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan but also from Iran. The
talks on Turkish-Iranian energy collaboration began at the beginning of
the year and this was caused by the visit of Ali Larijani, the
spokesman of Iranian parliament, to Ankara. As a result the ministers
of energetic of Turkey and Iran were given a commission=2
0to stir up the
negotiations on the intensification of collaboration and implementation
of joint programmes in the sphere of gas. The pipeline Erzurum `
Tabriz, built as back as 2001, creates rather good background for the
accession of Iran to `Nabucco’. This pipeline supplied Turkey on
average with 8 billion cubic meters of gas annually; meanwhile, the
capability of that pipeline allows supplying three times as much gas.

After the developments which took place in South Caucasus in August,
when it became clear that Georgia was not reliable as a transit
country, the possibility that Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan will join the
South Caucasian pipeline has sharply lowered. Today Azerbaijan, in
fact, is the only Caspian country ready to take part in `Nabucco’
project not only on paper but also practically. Neither Turkmenistan,
nor Kazakhstan has made any practical step to become a part of that
project and they would hardly do. Under such conditions Ankara realizes
that in order to implement the `Nabucco’ project and to get necessary
financial and political dividends they need to include Iran, which has
rather vast gas resources, in that project. There is such an approach
in Europe too, on the level of political and economic actors. On the
summit in Budapest the necessity of developing of cooperation with Iran
was also stated by the executives of the companies, which are involved
in the
implementation of `Nabucco’ pipeline, including the author of
the project and one of the main lobbyists the vice-president of
Austrian `OMV Gas & Power GmbH’ company G. Bogart.

The main difficulties, which may emerge owing to the accession of Iran
to the `Nabucco’, are conditioned by the position of Washington as the
new administration of the US, in spite of the different analysis, has
not elaborated and presented its own `Iranian policy’ yet. However,
today there are rather good grounds for the improvement of the
relations between Iran and America, especially, if we take into
consideration those difficulties, which will arise after the withdrawal
of their military base from `Manas’ in Kirgizstan. This will bring to
the shift of the power and will directly influence the relations
between Iran and the US.

Developments in Central Asia
The decision of the authorities of Kirgizstan to remove troops from the
territory of their country brings the situation in the region back to
2001 when the US had no military presence in Central Asia. When in 2001
Washington after the agreement with Moscow opened military bases in
Uzbekistan and Kirgizstan, the main aim of the US was to implement
military actions in Afghanistan. After the fall of Taliban regime the
military bases were not withdrawn from the region, though there was an
impression that the Afghani problem was solved and20there was no
necessity to keep those bases. The Russian-American discrepancies
concerning those military bases, (those discrepancies were called by
Russian analyst F. Lukyanov `war of nerves’) disappeared in February
2009 when Kirgiz authorities under the obvious pressure of Russia and
on the assumption of compensation made a decision to close `Manas’ Air
Force base. This is a very important decision of strategic character,
which is the evidence of the consolidation of Russian positions in the
region. Unlike 2003 when the Pentagon produced different fabricated
reasons in order to preserve its military presence in Uzbekistan and
Kirgizstan, the situation is quite different today; the military
presence in Central Asia is of vital importance for Washington as the
situation in Afghanistan recently has really become tense and
dangerous. And under such circumstances Kirgizstan, and in fact Russia,
make the US withdraw from the region.

How is the US going to solve the problem of reinforcement, supply and
support of their troops when they have lost their bases in Central Asia
and when Pakistan becomes even more dangerous transition area for the
Americans? The news that Washington tries to offer Tajikistan to open
air force base on its territory comes to prove the slackening of the US
positions and the entanglement of the situation. Tajikistan is not only
the ally of Russia, it is also a country, which has close t
ights and
broad cooperation with Iran, and there are many Islamists and radicals
fraught with hatred towards the US. It is obvious that if Washington
cannot make terms with Russia concerning the military base in
Tajikistan, then it needs at least to carry out the consent of Tehran.
Iran until recent times has great resources to escalate the situation
in Tajikistan, which is at civil war now, and it is out of question
that there cannot be any American military presence without the consent
of Iran.

This is really a very important factor that can boost the dialogue
between the US and Iran. It can start not now but in several months
when Iran embarks on a new stage of presidential relations.

However, the beginning of 2009 initiates serious changes in regional
military and political developments, which may also cause the change of
general situation and the shift of powers.

Other issues of author

DEVELOPMENTS IN DOMESTIC POLICY OF IRAN [29.01.2009]
ON IRAN-US PERSPECTIVE OF RELATIONS [24.11.2008]
NEW IRAN-WEST DEVELOPMENTS [30.10.2008]
ENERGY FACTOR IN SOUTH CAUCASUS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE LATEST
DEVELOPMENTS [25.09.2008]
IRAN: POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS [03.07.2008]
ENTRANCE OF THE IRANIAN GAS INTO EUROPE [17.04.2008]
NEW DEVELOPMENTS OVER THE IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM [31.03.2008]

THE ARMENIAN PRESIDENT BRIEFED ON THE STATE OF GOLD AND MOLYBDENUM MINING INDUSTRIES

PanARMENIAN.Net
27.02.2009 20:34 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On Feb 27, the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan
met Geopromining Company management, the Armenian presidential
press service reported. During the meeting, Chairman of the Board of
Directors of Geopromining Siman Povarenkin briefed the President on
the activities of the company in Armenia, the situation in gold and
molybdenum mining industries and development prospects.

Serzh Sargsyan emphasized the importance of retaining job positions in
the sphere of mining under the global financial crisis and expressed
hope that Agarak copper-molybdenum complex will avoid staff reductions
and increase of job positions in the gold mining. The parties touched
upon Geopromining’s investment plans in Armenia.

RUSSIA WILL ISSUE ARMENIA WITH A $500 MILLION LOAN – PUTIN

Itar-Tass
Feb 27 2009
Russia

NOVO-OGARYOVO, February 27 (Itar-Tass) — Russia will issue Armenia
with a $500 million loan, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told his
Armenian counterpart Tigran Sargsyan on Friday.

"We have almost finished consideration of the $500 million loan,"
he noted.

"Thereby we will implement our agreement; we just need the Russian
budget to be approved by the State Duma," Putin said. "I hope that
will happen in the near future, the budget will be amended and we
will give support to the Armenian economy."

Sargsyan thanked Putin for the financial aid. "That is a very
substantial sum for us. Thanks to this financial assistance we will
clean up the negative consequences of the world crisis," he said.

"The money will assist thousands of Armenian plants, in which Russia
has a stake. We can create a favorable macroeconomic environment for
them," Sargsyan said.

SPONSOR’S UPDATE FROM KOTAYK, ARMENIA

SOS Children
arity-news/kotayk-2008-update.htm
Feb 25 2009
UK

Child sponsorship update from the SOS Children’s Village Kotayk,
Armenia from Summer 2008.

The bright sun outside urges us to finish all our main jobs before
the summer holidays and keeping our promise to you we are writing
about your sponsored SOS Children’s Village Kotayk in Armenia, as
it has become a kind tradition to be in contact with you this period
of the year. And every time when we sit down to share with you about
the recent events and developments in our Village, we know how much
you have been looking forward to getting this news. With pleasure we
send you information on recent events and developments in the village
Kotayk as well as our warmest greetings and great feelings for your
help during this time.

You may already know that SOS Children’s Village Kotayk is 18 years old
since its inception and it enjoys great popularity in our country. It
is our continuous endeavour here to create an atmosphere very near to a
normal family for the lonely child who has been a victim of severe and
unfortunate circumstances. One very detailed article was published in
National newspapers about the SOS. The article covered one full page
and 1/3 of another page. Another popular TV channel twice highlighted
the work of SOS, first inviting the National Director for a detailed
Questions & Answers about the activities of the SOS Children’s Village,
and for the second time inviting for a podium.

The year was full of events, celebrations, visits and many other
entertainments organised in the village, as it mostly coincided with
New Year, Christmas, Day of Army, Women’s Day, the Day of Maternity
and Beauty, the Victory together with many birthdays which were
all celebrated in very joyful atmosphere giving a lot of energy and
enthusiasm for children. And correspondingly many excursions have been
organized connected with the above mentioned events. As you may know
Armenian Christmas is on 06 January and this is one of the beloved
events for the children of our Village. It is the day when many,
many people visit the Village, perform concerts for the children and
together with the Santa give presents to all the children.

Additionally the period was a good start for the second part of
the academic year. In this aspect a lot of our children were very
progressive and showed significant results in their studies. Various
hobby groups of the village remain active and go on functioning
productively with the attendance of most of the village children;
almost all of them express their interests and abilities in the above
mentioned groups and various exhibition-competition activities take
place in the Village regularly. The comparatively newly opened Young
Journalists’ hobby group was surprisingly well admitted, and in the
result in April an orientation visit had been organised to the printing
house where they witnessed interesting processes of printing. It was
really exciting! Children of this group with the help of their hobby
group leader have established and regularly publish newspaper called
"Hrashamanuk" which means "wonder kid". Children publish their poems,
fairy-tales, and stories about village activities in it as well as
interviews with SOS staff. In March there was a regular exhibition of
needlework hobby group and some of the village children had really
nice works and got memorable presents from the jury. By the way,
it has been a long time since SOS children painted batic pictures,
which are, surely, the visiting-card of our Village. Unlike paintings
of the first generation, which used to hang on SOS nursery school
walls, the new ones are decorating their home walls.

Children’s out of school activities One of our girls named Ani
has been attending dancing school for already a few years where
she has been learning both Armenian and Latino dances. She has
quite serious achievements in it and most probably will get soon
a qualification verified by the certificate. Her dancing group has
even got an invitation to visit Bulgaria with concerts which is not
decided finally. Besides, she shows good progress at school and,
in general, she is very much interested in studying and is actively
involved in activities both at school and SOS-Village. Moreover, she
attends almost all the hobby groups in the Village and is very good at
painting, embroidery, sewing as well as role playing. One of her batik
paintings the SOS village have recently presented to the best friend
of the SOS children famous Armenian singer Christine Pepelian who
visited to the SOS-Children’s Village on the occasion of her birthday.

We have told you many times about sport activities in the Village,
and we are proud to inform you that our SOS football team is a
serious one and is known as one of the best junior football teams in
Armenia. There are 10-11 boys in this team. They are trained 5-6 days
weekly for 2-3 hours by their coach. The SOS-team has had many matches
within last years and it mainly ended up the winner. Recently there
has taken place a competition in the capital city of Yerevan between
the junior football teams representing all the orphanages of Armenia,
which was initiated by the joint cooperation of the Brazilian and
Argentinean Embassies in Armenia. Unfortunately our team didn’t take
the first prize; instead it played a very good game full of nice
goals. All the participants got presents form the above-mentioned
embassies. It is worth mentioning that some of the boys have a good
potential for becoming professional football players by the words of
experts, however, they have to make it their big wish and dream to
reach this goal.

The health issue of the SOS children has been under the constant
control of the organisation. Some of the children needed psychological
assistance and the association has provided that, and thanks to them
many children who had psychological problems now are fully relaxed from
the emotional instability. So the year was smooth and quiet without
any significant events and occasions, and to our great happiness only
joyful facts were by the SOS Children Armenia. It is worth mentioning
that we make every effort to create conditions for psychological
rehabilitation and social integration of the children into the village
life at present and into the society in the future. Whenever facing
difficulties, SOS-mothers ask for additional support by professional
psychologists. It is a matter of common understanding that children
get their positive energy in the families as family is the heart of
society, and in this sense, the role of the SOS mothers is of high
importance. The implementation of case discussions that started in
the beginning of January has become a very welcoming support towards
the work of the SOS mothers. All this becomes possible because of the
sincere and affectionate care given by the mother and surely your
valuable sponsorship. Your support is not only financial but helps
the child in a unique way too.

Developing young lives and the community Here we must tell you some
details about the Youth Facilities as a substructure of SOS Children
and in general life in Youth Facilities has been very active during
these months, and their Individual Development Plans are mostly vividly
coming into life. The bright examples are stated below which made
the of our youth very hopeful and our youngsters smoothly build up
their internal culture and a such they demonstrate excellent example
of a well organised community as a whole. Andrey and Paylak from the
Youth Facility I have graduated their High Schools recently, Andrey-the
State Academy of Arts and Paylak-the State Teaching Institute and are
getting ready to take their mandatory military service. Some of our
youngsters study at secondary or vocational schools, while the others
are at higher educational institutions. Luckily, our youngsters having
acquired enough life and professional skills can make achievements
in real life. As we have stated in our previous reports, a young
lady named Nelly is enjoying great successes in the Circus art. She
is already receiving serious roles in the circus performances, and
thus sees her future in that filed.

The year was very fruitful for the implementation of other SOS
projects aiming to strengthen families and prevent the abandonment
of children. The forthcoming of the Family Strengthening Programme in
Yerevan, the programme of Support to the Quality Development of Public
Schools in Kotayk and Nor Gyugh villages, greatly increased the public
awareness on the organisation. The start of the Family Strengthening
Programme in Yerevan became a kick-off for the process of awareness
building in Yerevan as well. The SOS Armenia was thrilled to cooperate
with the City Hall, which was really a great pride for SOS Armenia. In
the result after a year of its operation the Family Strengthening
programme was awarded by a letter of commendation by the beneficiaries
themselves and an official one by the City Hall. Another fact that
surely must be highlighted in our report the establishment of the
second Children’s Village in Idjevan, one of the wonderful and green
places in Armenia. We greatly hope that soon it will become a safe
shelter for a lot of children in need of normal family atmosphere. Thus
the year was very important and significant in this aspect too.

The period for the initiative of SOS Armenia to support the development
of public schools of the adjacent to Children’s Village Kotayk
villages of Nor Gyugh and Kotayk was marked by the opening ceremony
of a training and resource centre in Kotayk school where mostly our
SOS children study. New child centered methodologies have been well
practiced by the trained teachers. It can be proudly stated that
the school has so far managed to be awarded grants from the Catholic
Church, as they have written projects proposal together with children
for music centre and theatrical curtains for the hall. Another donation
by an Armenian from Iran was conducted; desks for 11 classrooms have
been presented to the school. Toilets outside the school have been
reconstructed by the godfather of a SOS child another Armenian from
Italy. They called it just a miracle.

June 01 is the International Day of Protection of Children and we
are very much pleased to see the number of people and organisations
offering special programmes to our children.

An education and a future The work of the SOS Nursery School as an
inseparable part of the Children’s Village, was fully integrated into
the village life. Moreover, almost all the events of the village were
organised in the premises of the Nursery School. Needless to speak
about the close cooperation of the kindergarten staff and those SOS
mothers whose children attend the nursery school. It remained to be
the only pre-school age child care service provider in the vicinity
of the four neighbouring communities in the result of the close
cooperation. The "Ararat Climbing Hold" German company has built and
set up a child-friendly "climbing wall" in the Nursery School, which
the children enjoyed very much and it was the first one in Armenia.

Here also a very notable event related to the physical capacity of
the village; after 14 years, the village was fully gazified which
promotes to obvious savings for the CV. Another important and long
pending event was the set-up of Internet connection in the CV. It
was of great help for the village as today it is difficult to imagine
life without this kind of connection.

So this year the SOS Children’s Village Kotayk has been a safe and
comfortable home for 79 children in need who found warm families
and loving mothers here with the help and thanks to your precious
support. Since the beginning of the year only one child has been
admitted in the village, and thus the total number of children
is 252 children in SOS-Armenia together with Youth Facilities and
Semi-Independent Living.

Last but not least, as usual for this period organisation of summer
holidays for our dear children and youngsters is under way about
which you will be reported on their holiday experience in detail in
our-end-of-year report. Finally, we want to express our gratefulness
personally to you and to all our sponsors, friends and donors who
provide us with continuous support and devotional care. We highly
appreciate your charity and wish to help our SOS children to have
a better future tomorrow. In our days such kind of support is most
noble and praiseworthy.

On behalf of our SOS children, SOS mothers and the staff, I want to
express my gratefulness to your sincere support and devotion to our
children. It’s true that without your generosity and thoughtfulness
it would be impossible to make these events come true and to make our
children’s life happier and brighter. We keep praying for all of you
and may you be happy and healthy throughout your life. We feel happy
to be friends with you and also feel proud that the long distance is
not an obstacle for our friendship, and we sincerely look forward
to enlarging the circle of friends. We do hope that our feelings
are mutual.

Wishing you good luck, all the best and memorable summer vacations,

Yours sincerely, Hovhannes Kostanyan, Village director

TBILISI FEAR-MONGERING IN JAVAKHK, SAYS MANOYAN

ARF Press Service
Tuesday February 24, 2009

YEREVAN (ARF Press Service)–Georgia’s central authorities are
actively fear mongering in Akhaltskha and Akhalkalak regions of
Javakhk, announced ARF Political Director Giro Manoyan during a press
briefing Tuesday.

"Nevertheless, Armenia has no right to interfere in Georgia’s domestic
affairs, as it will be a violation of the republic’s commitments to
the Council of Europe," Manoyan told the news conference.

"On the other hand, Georgia spares no effort to evict the Armenian
population whose only wish is to live peacefully in its native land,"
he added, reminding reporters that late Prime Minister Andranik
Margaryan had called for the establishment of an Armenian consulate
in Javakhk, but that proposal was rejected by Georgian authorities.

On another front, Manoyan said that ongoing negotiations between
Armenia and Turkey is not reducing the likelihood of official
U.S. recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

"Opening the border and establishing diplomatic relations alone
would not prevent the genocide’s recognition because Armenia is not
committing itself to renouncing the process of genocide recognition,"
said Manoyan.

"Turkey should assume responsibility for the crime against humanity
committed by the Ottoman Empire," Manoyan said.

"It is necessary to press on and keep the Armenian Genocide question
on the agenda. Turkish high ranking officials are distorting the
facts in an effort to create the image that Armenia does not have a
%u218Genocide Problem,’" added Manoyan

He said the recognition of the Genocide has strategic and national
security implications and is a stated Armenian foreign policy priority.

Manoyan added that the prospects for the resumption of diplomatic
relations between Turkey and Armenia have begun to worry Azerbaijan,
which, in turn has initiated its own diplomatic campaign against
Armenia.

LEGISLATION FORBIDDING "PROSELYTISM" PRESENTED TO VENICE COMMITTEE

Panorama.am
15:27 23/02/2009

Armen Ashotyan, the co-author of the legislation to make changes
in the law on "Freedom of conscience and religious organizations",
recommended today during the National Assembly session to postpone
the voting of the legislation up to the next session.

It is remarkable that the law defines the term "proselytism" (soul
hunting) and stresses that it is forbidden in the territory of Armenia.

Armen Ashotyan told to Panorama.am that they have received
recommendations from the deputies, ordinary people and the religious
organizations, and made a decision to ask the Chairman of the NA to
present the legislation to the Venice Committee for making expertise
before putting it on vote.

ARMENIANS USE TURKEY-SUDAN TIE FOR RECOGNITION

Hurriyet
Feb 23 2009
Turkey

WASHINGTON – The largest U.S. Armenian group has launched a campaign
to urge the administration in Washington and Congress to formally
recognize Armenians’ claims of "genocide", by using Ankara’s developing
ties with Sudan.

Washington views the killings of people in the Darfur region of Sudan
by militias backed by the Khartoum government as genocide.

The Armenian National Committee of America, or ANCA, in a weekend
statement, accused Turkey and Sudan of establishing an "axis of
genocide."

The ANCA said it had alerted members of Congress to "the human costs
of the emerging axis of genocide" between the Ankara and Khartoum
governments.

ANCA said Turkey had been directly selling weapons to Sudan, that
Ankara diplomatically supported the Sudanese government’s genocide
denials and that Turkey was using its U.N. Security Council seat to
block anti-genocide efforts. "The genocidal Ankara and Khartoum regimes
have grown markedly closer over the past two years, driven by Turkey’s
increasingly brazen efforts to undermine the international community’s
efforts to isolate Sudan’s genocidal regime," the ANCA said.

Sudanese visit "In recent weeks, Turkey came under considerable
international scrutiny for hosting Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman
Mohammed Taha who during a meeting with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
asked Turkey to use its position in the U.N. Security Council to block
any possible attempts to arrest Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir
on charges of genocide," it said. The ANCA also posted on its Web
site a photograph in which President Abdullah Gul was shaking hands
with al-Bashir.

The U.S. Armenians’ top objective this year is to win U.S. recognition
of the 1915 incidents as "genocide".