Author: Kalantarian Kevo

FRENCH SPECIALISTS READY TO HELP

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 12:22:51 – 24/10/2012

Roland Asmar, founder of vascular health international association,
Francois Camus, scientific and medical program director at Servine
Company and Jerar Topujyan, medical expert attended today the
scientific conference dedicated to treatment and prevention of
vascular problems.

Francois Camus noted Servine Company is launching a new research
in oncology to find new medicaments and didn’t rule out further
cooperation with Armenia in this sphere.

DOES OSKANIAN EXPECT WAR?
Naira Hayrumyan

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 13:07:09 – 24/10/2012

It seems that new proposals are expected in the Karabakh issue
settlement. It is not clear yet where these proposals will come
from and whether they will become regular unrealized principles,
but Armenia is already getting ready for them.

The first was Vartan Oskanian’s statement who suddenly proposed to
sign an agreement with Karabakh on security guarantees. He noted that
much has changed in the region so, it is necessary to make it clear to
Azerbaijan that Armenia is ready to recognize Karabakh’s independence.

A similar statement was issued by the ARF Dashnaktsutyun, which
appealed to sign a military agreement between Armenia and NKR. True,
in case ARFD would not mind if Armenia recognized the NKR, Vartan
Oskanian still proposes not to do that step.

As we know, the meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
minister is close. What can the mediators propose?

The OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zaner said his organization has
achieved progress in the Transnistrian settlement, but said worried
with the Karabakh issue.

Strange events are happening in the Transnistrian issue settlement
process. The European Union is hinting to Moldova that it may open
membership prospects to the latter if it solves the Transnistrian
issue. Russia is actively pulling Transnistria to the Eurasian Union.

Apparently, Russia is ready to recognize Transnistria with this
precondition.

A similar precondition is not ruled out to be put forward to Karabakh:
if Armenia joins the Union, let Karabakh do it too.

Most likely, the U.S. and France will try to hold Armenia back
from this step. They will try to convince Armenia not to allow
Karabakh integrate into the Eurasian project, at least because the
NKR recognition by Russia even if Karabakh joins the Eurasian Union,
will means resumption of hostilities. Perhaps, this is the reason why
Vartan Oskanian appeals to sign a military agreement with Karabakh. At
the same time, neither Serzh Sargsyan nor Vartan Oskanian use the
best weapon against Russia, Azerbaijan and the others- recognition
of the NKR independence which would immediately solve all the issues.

RUSSIA WELCOMES MEETING OF ARMENIAN AND AZERBAIJANI FMS – AMBASSADOR

news.am
October 25, 2012 | 16:40

Russia welcomes upcoming meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministers, Russia’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan Vladimir Dorokhin told
1news.az.

He said there is no alternative to peace talks, while Russia, as one
of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing states, welcomes the upcoming
meeting in Paris. Dorokhin noted that the meeting is held not only
on the initiative of France but all OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

“The meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers is
coordinated with the MG Co-Chairs. Russia, as a co-chairing state,
has been active in organizing the meeting,” Dorokhin added.

POPOK INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING FESTIVAL OPENS IN ARMENIA

news.am
October 25, 2012 | 16:16

YEREVAN.- Popok international advertising festival opened in Armenia
on Thursday. The festival is organized by Armenian Advertising Council
with the support of Yerevan municipality.

During the festival, a new outdoor advertising and decoration concept
for Armenia’s capital will be discussed. Over 500 works from more
than 40 states will be represented.

President of the Armenian Advertising Council Armen Martirosyan
said the festival is strengthening its position in the international
market. For example, the Russian Association of Advertising Agencies
decided to include Popok in the rankings of advertising festivals.

MINISTER AVOIDED ANSWERING

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 15:20:20 – 25/10/2012

During today’s press conference at the prime minister’s office the
minister of economy Tigran Davtyan avoided answering the question
whether the reason of the lack of labor which the prime minister
mentioned is emigration.

According to Davtyan, every country has emigration and immigration
and the balance is counted at the end of the year. When journalists
said that the number of people who emigrated from Armenia in the
past five years is equal to the number of the population of Karabakh,
the minister said that it is necessary to improve the business climate.

CLASHES CONTINUE IN ARMENIAN-POPULATED DISTRICT OF ALEPPO

news.am
October 25, 2012 | 15:11

ALEPPO.- Armed groups of the Free Syrian Army entered the territory
of Al Zukhur district of Aleppo and its outskirts where Armenian
community representatives are residing, community representative in
Aleppo Zhirayr Reisian told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Clashes between the armed groups and Syrian government forces
continue. No reports on casualties among Armenian residents have been
received so far.

Meanwhile, Syrian state television reported fighting in several
other districts. A body of a Christian priest Fadi Haddad who was
earlier kidnapped by a group of armed terrorists was found in Damascus
province.

Thus, the Syrian opposition completely ignores the calls of the
international community, including UN special envoy to Syria, to
declare truce during the Islamic festival of sacrifice.

ARMENIA AWAITS TURKEY TO CHANGE ITS STANCE – PRESIDENT SARGSYAN

news.am
October 25, 2012 | 12:14

Silence about the Armenian Genocide has become a deafening silence,
Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan stated in his exclusive interview
given to the Quotidiano Nazionale magazine of Italy.

“The Armenian Genocide continues to be a forgotten calamity. In the
case when we know everything about the Jewish Holocaust, a thick
curtain has been pulled over the extermination of the Armenians. This
is what I call a double standard. One-and-a-half-million Armenians
were massacred almost a hundred years ago. [And] How many people in
the world truly recognize this reality?”, Armenia’s President asked.

As per Sargsyan, silence about the Armenian Genocide has become a
deafening silence for all humanity. “Especially since Europe has won
the Nobel Peace Prize, it will now make its voice be heard. And with
respect to Armenia, we found the courage to commence the process
of normalizing our relations with Turkey, but [official] Ankara
conditioned the process on unacceptable terms. Today, [and] together
with the EU, US, and Russia, we await Turkey to change its stance,”
Armenia’s President stated.

‘NIGHT OVER ERZINGA’: A PLAY ABOUT ACCEPTANCE AND HEALING
by Lilly Torosyan

October 23, 2012

“Night over Erzinga” tells the story of a family with a painful secret
that engulfs three generations. The production shifts between the past
and the present, with many of the actors taking on several roles, to
describe the impact that the Armenian Genocide has had on survivors
and their descendants. Playwright Adriana Sevahn Nichols describes
the play as “a story about how we heal and eventually surrender to
embrace the past, in order to live a more whole future.”

Playwright Adriana Sevahn Nichols Nichols says she was inspired
to write the play after learning about the gaps in her own family
history. “My mother is Armenian, but she was not raised by her
biological parents,” she tells the Weekly. After Nichols’ grandparents
moved to the United States, after narrowly surviving the Armenian
Genocide, her grandmother began to experience post-traumatic stress
disorder, eventually ending up in an institution where she was
given shock treatments. “From that point on, she never recognized
her children, so they were placed in foster care, as the state did
not believe my grandfather could take care of them on his own,”
Nichols says.

‘The memories that I have of my grandpa are very warm and wonderful.

He had an incredible heart-a petite man with big hands full of muscled
love-and he made the best dolma,” the playwright jokes. “I wanted to
understand how he could lose two families, in one lifetime, and not
lose his heart,” she adds. The play itself is partially set in Erzinga
(in present-day Turkey), where Nichols’ grandfather was from.

Three years ago, Nichols joined one of Armen Aroyan’s heritage tours to
historic Armenia to conduct research for the play. “When I put my hands
into the Euphrates River, there was something that reached back to
me…a sense of peace and a knowing that I’d come home. It was a kind
of baptism and I sensed that I now had the right to write this play.”

“I feel like when an elder dies, a library burns, so I had to get to
this story on the page before it was too late,” she says. “I returned
very different-I interviewed my remaining relatives. Sadly, my grandpa
didn’t talk much about the past, so very little was known. I thought,
how do I take these kernels of a story and grow them into something
meaningful?”

“At some point during the writing process, I felt like something else
was moving my pen, writing things I could not have known. The beauty
of it was when I went to fact check, and they would check out. It
was a sign that this story was being told from a much deeper place,”
reveals Nichols.

“This journey has brought me to a very profound relationship with
my ancestors, who I now know are my guardians and guides, and are no
longer just faces in a photos album, of a distant past.”

Despite the “sorrowful yet beautiful” nature of the story, as one
critic put it, Nichols assures that there is a lot of humor in
the play. “When we laugh, we are able to celebrate the triumph of
the human spirit and the power of love, to overcome everything we
Armenians have had to endure, and continue to thrive.”

Ultimately, the play was commissioned by the Middle East America:
A National New Plays Initiative, which was designed to encourage the
development of Middle Eastern-American playwrights and plays through
the partnership of tri-coastal theatres: San Francisco’s Golden Thread
Productions, where the play premiered last year for a successful run;
New York’s Lark Play Development Center; and Chicago’s Silk Road
Rising, where it is highlighting now.

“Night over Erzinga” has premiered in two major cities thus
far, and Nichols hopes for more presentations throughout the
country. In particular, she has her heart set on bringing the play
to Massachusetts, where her grandparents lived, and which is home to
the oldest Armenian-American diaspora community; and to Los Angeles,
home of a sizable Armenian community that embraced and pushed Nichols
to go forth with the play, and without which “none of this would’ve
happened.”

“Night over Erzinga” will be playing in Pierce Hall at the Historic
Chicago Temple Building through Nov. 11.

For play times and ticket information, visit

RUBEN SAFRASTYAN: THE WEST FAILS TO OVERTHROW ASSAD’S REGIME
Anna Nazaryan

“Radiolur”
18:31 23.10.2012

“Attempts are being made to move the Syria events to Lebanon,”
Director of the Oriental Studies Institute of the National academy
of Sciences Ruben Safrastyan told a press conference today. However,
the terrorist acts committed in Lebanon a few days ago did not expand
thanks to the Lebanese army.

According to Ruben Safrastyan, one should not forget, however, that
some zones in the north of Lebanon are outside the control of the
Lebanese authorities and the camps of Syrian rebels are deployed there.

The West fails to succeed in Syria and overthrow Assad’s regime, the
calculations of the West and Turkey turned out wrong. Syrians do not
divide, while the opposition mostly consists of foreign militants,
who aim to commit jihad in Syria.

The West also aims to cause disruption among the elite in Iran, and
the accusations of possessing nuclear weapons are just a good reason,
according to Safrastyan. The research centers in the West have found
out that Iran is still enriching uranium and the process will come
to an end in May-June, 2013.

DRONE VIOLENCE ALONG ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI BORDER COULD LEAD TO WAR

Global Post
Oct 23 2012

Armenia and Azerbaijan could soon be at war if drone proliferation
on both sides of the border continues.

Nicholas ClaytonOctober 23, 2012 06:15

YEREVAN, Armenia – In a region where a fragile peace holds over three
frozen conflicts, the nations of the South Caucasus are buzzing with
drones they use to probe one another’s defenses and spy on disputed
territories.

The region is also host to strategic oil and gas pipelines and a
tangled web of alliances and precious resources that observers say
threaten to quickly escalate the border skirmishes and airspace
violations to a wider regional conflict triggered by Armenia and
Azerbaijan that could potentially pull in Israel, Russia and Iran.

To some extent, these countries are already being pulled towards
conflict. Last September, Armenia shot down an Israeli-made Azerbaijani
drone over Nagorno-Karabakh and the government claims that drones
have been spotted ahead of recent incursions by Azerbaijani troops
into Armenian-held territory.

Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan,
said in a briefing that attacks this summer showed that Azerbaijan is
eager to “play with its new toys” and its forces showed “impressive
tactical and operational improvement.”

The International Crisis Group warned that as the tit-for-tat incidents
become more deadly, “there is a growing risk that the increasing
frontline tensions could lead to an accidental war.”

With this in mind, the UN and the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have long imposed a non-binding arms
embargo on both countries, and both are under a de facto arms ban
from the United States. But, according to the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), this has not stopped Israel and
Russia from selling to them.

After fighting a bloody war in the early 1990s over the disputed
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked
in a stalemate with an oft-violated ceasefire holding a tenuous peace
between them.

And drones are the latest addition to the battlefield. In March,
Azerbaijan signed a $1.6 billion arms deal with Israel, which consisted
largely of advanced drones and an air defense system.

Through this and other deals, Azerbaijan is currently amassing a
squadron of over 100 drones from all three of Israel’s top defense
manufacturers.

Armenia, meanwhile, employs only a small number of domestically
produced models.

Intelligence gathering is just one use for drones, which are also
used to spot targets for artillery, and, if armed, strike targets
themselves.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces routinely snipe and engage one another
along the front, each typically blaming the other for violating the
ceasefire. At least 60 people have been killed in ceasefire violations
in the last two years, and the Brussels-based International Crisis
Group claimed in a report published in February 2011 that the sporadic
violence has claimed hundreds of lives.

“Each (Armenia and Azerbaijan) is apparently using the clashes and the
threat of a new war to pressure its opponent at the negotiations table,
while also preparing for the possibility of a full-scale conflict in
the event of a complete breakdown in the peace talks,” the report said.

Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in the
Armenian capital, Yerevan, said that the arms buildup on both sides
makes the situation more dangerous but also said that the clashes are
calculated actions, with higher death tolls becoming a negotiating
tactic.

“This isn’t Somalia or Afghanistan. These aren’t independent units.

The Armenian, Azerbaijani and Karabakh armed forces have a rigid chain
of command so it’s not a question of a sergeant or a lieutenant
randomly giving the order to open fire. These are absolutely
synchronized political attacks,” Iskandaryan said.

More from GlobalPost: Israel grapples with blowback from booming
drone industry

The deadliest recent uptick in violence along the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border and the line of contact around Karabakh came in early June as
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on a visit to the region.

While death tolls varied, at least two dozen soldiers were killed or
wounded in a series of shootouts along the front.

The year before, at least four Armenian soldiers were killed in an
alleged border incursion by Azerbaijani troops one day after a peace
summit between the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian presidents in St.

Petersburg, Russia.

“No one slept for two or three days [during the June skirmishes],”
said Grush Agbaryan, the mayor of the border village of Voskepar for
a total of 7 years off and on over the past three decades. “Everyone
is now saying that the war is coming. We know that it could start at
any moment.”

Azerbaijan refused to issue accreditation to GlobalPost’s correspondent
to enter the country to report on the shootings and Azerbaijan’s
military modernization.

Flush with cash from energy exports, Azerbaijan has increased its
annual defense budget from an estimated $160 million in 2003 to $3.6
billion in 2012. SIPRI said in a report that largely as a result of
its blockbuster drone deal with Israel, Azerbaijan’s defense budget
jumped 88 percent this year – the biggest military spending increase
in the world.

Israel has long used arms deals to gain strategic leverage over its
rivals in the region. Although difficult to confirm, many security
analysts believe Israel’s deals with Russia have played heavily into
Moscow’s suspension of a series of contracts with Iran and Syria that
would have provided them with more advanced air defense systems and
fighter jets.

Stephen Blank, a research professor at the United States Army War
College, said that preventing arms supplies to Syria and Iran –
particularly Russian S-300 air defense systems – has been among
Israel’s top goals with the deals.

“There’s always a quid pro quo,” Blank said. “Nobody sells arms just
for cash.”

In Azerbaijan in particular, Israel has traded its highly demanded
drone technology for intelligence arrangements and covert footholds
against Iran. In a January 2009 US diplomatic cable released by
WikiLeaks, a US diplomat reported that in a closed-door conversation,
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev compared his country’s relationship
with Israel to an iceberg – nine-tenths of it is below the surface.

More from GlobalPost: Are Iran’s drones coordinating attacks in Syria?

Although the Jewish state and Azerbaijan, a conservative Muslim
country, may seem like an odd couple, the cable asserts, “Each country
finds it easy to identify with the other’s geopolitical difficulties,
and both rank Iran as an existential security threat.” Quarrels
between Azerbaijan and Iran run the gamut of territorial, religious
and geo-political disputes and Tehran has repeatedly threatened to
“destroy” the country over its support for secular governance and
NATO integration.

In the end, “Israel’s main goal is to preserve Azerbaijan as an ally
against Iran, a platform for reconnaissance of that country and as
a market for military hardware,” the diplomatic cable reads.

But, while these ties had indeed remained below the surface for most
of the past decade, a series of leaks this year exposed the extent
of their cooperation as Israel ramped up its covert war with the
Islamic Republic.

In February, the Times of London quoted a source the publication said
was an active Mossad agent in Azerbaijan as saying the country was
“ground zero for intelligence work.” This came amid accusations from
Tehran that Azerbaijan had aided Israeli agents in assassinating an
Iranian nuclear scientist in January. Then, just as Baku had begun
to cool tensions with the Islamic Republic, Foreign Policy magazine
published an article citing Washington intelligence officials who
claimed that Israel had signed agreements to use Azerbaijani airfields
as a part of a potential bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear sites.

Baku strongly denied the claims, but in September, Azerbaijani
officials and military sources told Reuters that the country would
figure in Israel’s contingencies for a potential attack against Iran.

“Israel has a problem in that if it is going to bomb Iran, its
nuclear sites, it lacks refueling,” Rasim Musabayov, a member of the
Azerbiajani parliamentary foreign relations committee told Reuters. “I
think their plan includes some use of Azerbaijan access. We have
(bases) fully equipped with modern navigation, anti-aircraft defenses
and personnel trained by Americans and if necessary they can be used
without any preparations.”

He went on to say that the drones Israel sold to Azerbaijan allow it to
“indirectly watch what’s happening in Iran.”

More from GlobalPost: Despite modern facade, Azerbaijan guilty of
rights abuses

According to SIPRI, Azerbaijan had acquired about 30 drones from
Israeli firms Aeronautics Ltd. and Elbit Systems by the end of 2011,
including at least 25 medium-sized Hermes-450 and Aerostar drones.

In October 2011, Azerbaijan signed a deal to license and domestically
produce an additional 60 Aerostar and Orbiter 2M drones. Its most
recent purchase from Israel Aeronautics Industries (IAI) in March
reportedly included 10 high altitude Heron-TP drones – the most
advanced Israeli drone in service – according to Oxford Analytica.

Collectively, these purchases have netted Azerbaijan 50 or more drones
that are similar in class, size and capabilities to American Predator
and Reaper-type drones, which are the workhorses of the United States’
campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.

Although Israel may have sold the drones to Azerbaijan with Iran in
mind, Baku has said publicly that it intends to use its new hardware
to retake territory it lost to Armenia. So far, Azerbaijan’s drone
fleet is not armed, but industry experts say the models it employs
could carry munitions and be programmed to strike targets.

Drones are a tempting tool to use in frozen conflicts, because, while
their presence raises tensions, international law remains vague at
best on the legality of using them. In 2008, several Georgian drones
were shot down over its rebel region of Abkhazia. A UN investigation
found that at least one of the drones was downed by a fighter jet
from Russia, which maintained a peacekeeping presence in the territory.

While it was ruled that Russia violated the terms of the ceasefire
by entering aircraft into the conflict zone, Georgia also violated
the ceasefire for sending the drone on a “military operation” into
the conflict zone.

The incident spiked tensions between Russia and Georgia, both of which
saw it as evidence the other was preparing to attack. Three months
later, they fought a brief, but destructive war that killed hundreds.

The legality of drones in Nagorno-Karabakh is even less clear because
the conflict was stopped in 1994 by a simple ceasefire that halted
hostilities but did not stipulate a withdrawal of military forces
from the area. Furthermore, analysts believe that all-out war between
Armenia and Azerbaijan would be longer and more difficult to contain
than the five-day Russian-Georgian conflict.

While Russia was able to quickly rout the Georgian army with a much
superior force, analysts say that Armenia and Azerbaijan are much
more evenly matched and therefore the conflict would be prolonged
and costly in lives and resources.

Blank said that renewed war would be “a very catastrophic event” with
“a recipe for a very quick escalation to the international level.”

Armenia is militarily allied with Russia and hosts a base of 5,000
Russian troops on its territory. After the summer’s border clashes,
Russia announced it was stepping up its patrols of Armenian airspace
by 20 percent.

Iran also supports Armenia and has important business ties in the
country, which analysts say Tehran uses as a “proxy” to circumvent
international sanctions.

Blank said Israel has made a risky move by supplying Azerbaijan with
drones and other high tech equipment, given the tenuous balance of
power between the heavily fortified Armenian positions and the more
numerous and technologically superior Azerbaijani forces. If ignited,
he said, “[an Armenian-Azerbaijani war] will not be small. That’s
the one thing I’m sure of.”

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