Author: Kalashian Nyrie

THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED BY A PEACEFULMETHOD, SAID ARMENIAN PRIME MINISTER TIGRAN SARGSYAN IN STEPANAKERT ON TUESDAY

Interfax
Sept 2 2008
Russia

The recent events in South Caucasus have clearly demonstrated that
there is no military solution to regional conflicts, he said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh problem must be resolved solely through peace
talks, said Sargsyan, who chairs the Armenian governmental delegation,
which arrived in Stepanakert to attend the festivities on the occasion
of the 17th anniversary of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic (NKR).

For his part, Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan called
for further reinforcement of the NKR Defense Army because this is
required by the current geopolitical processes and the recent events
in the region.

As regards the military operations in Georgia, the minister said
that, unlike in other conflicts, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh
is different, because it has a capable army and a deep defense.

The NKR Defense Army has proved on many occasions that it is prepared
for any provocation from the enemy and is capable of providing security
for the republic, said the Armenian defense minister.

ARMENIAN AND RUSSIAN PRESIDENTS EXPLORE RAILWAY LINKS VIA IRAN
by Natalia Leshchenko

World Market Research Centre
Global Insight
September 3, 2008

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan is visiting his Russian counterpart
Dmitry Medvedev to discuss bilateral relations in the minds of the
Russia-Georgia crisis. The military hostilities gave a new lease of
life to the Iran-Armenia railway project. First introduced in 2006,
it was dismissed over the high estimated cost, $1US.5 billion, but
is back on the table now as diplomatic relations between Russia and
Georgia are cut off. The chance of bypassing Georgia for Russia’s gas
deliveries to Armenia is small at the moment, with the possibility
of building an Iran-Armenia gas pipeline branch only mentioned. The
price for gas deliveries over 2009-2011, was not discussed, according
to Medvedev’s aide.

Significance:Armenia has felt the effects of the military operation
in Georgia this August, particularly in the form of fuel shortages,
and its president, only elected this year and still facing street
opposition, is keen to assure economic stability and prosperity in the
country as a bedrock of his authority. Russian railway monopoly RZhD
already owns Armenia’s railway network as an affiliate company, and
is most likely to take charge of the Iran-Armenia railway, although a
source of funds would have to be found for such a costly project. One
may also wonder if the need to bypass Georgia for Russia-Armenia trade
may be pertinent and long-term enough to justify an expensive railway.

Review: Ararat: In Search of the Mythical Mountain

Sunday Telegraph/UK
by Frank Westerman
31/08/2008

Jeremy Seal follows one man and his Noah complex up Mount Ararat

A perilous ducking, though not quite of the biblical proportions his
title suggests, opens Frank Westerman’s memorably enquiring but wayward
memoir-cum-travelogue. Westerman recalls a July day in 1976 when melt
waters released from a dam in the Austrian Alps engulfed the ‘wadeable
stream’ where he was playing. That famously dry summer thus proved
torrential for the holidaying Dutch boy, if only temporarily. Washing
up unharmed in the back eddy of an inlet, he sensed Deliverance and so
thanked ‘God the Father for having heard my cry above the roaring
waters’. It is this Noah complex, as it might be called, and the
scientific values he comes to espouse in its place that Westerman’s
highly personal, occasionally brilliant narrative sets out to explore.

The adult Westerman sees science as ‘a vaccine against believing’. He
has given up prayer and resigned his membership of the Dutch Reformed
Church. He wonders at his own grandfather holding the creationist line
that the Earth is 6,000 years old – roughly a millionth, incidentally,
of current scientific estimates. Even so, he never forgets the story of
Noah and how the Ark was left on top of Mount Ararat when the flood
receded, nor that the tale transfixed him back in the days of Sunday
school. After a visit to Armenia in 1999, he decides ‘to climb biblical
Ararat and walk its highest ice fields’.

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The Armenian holy mountain just inside Eastern Turkey thus looms large
as Westerman’s spiritual and physical object, though it is less clear
what the author expects from the experience of climbing it. He talks of
putting ‘to the test my own resolve as a non-believer’, as if exposing
himself to holy places might still stir him to faith, but goes on to
dismiss the explanation as naive. While waiting for a clearer motive to
come along, Westerman focuses on a mountain richer in devotional,
scientific, geo-political and cultural significance than perhaps any
other.

Westerman takes in the Armenian church, a potted history of Ararat
mountaineering, and fundamentalist ‘Arkeologists’ (Ark searchers) such
as the former astronaut Jim Irwin. Sorties into the realms of
vulcanology and seismology (Ararat is highly earthquake-prone) entail
visits to, among others, a former geology professor, an exiled Armenian
academic and even the author’s atheist publisher. Westerman proves a
perceptive, passionate writer, with a line in memorable observations.
He describes the current rise of religion and the fear of modern-day
parents that they might lose children to it, ‘the way our parents 25
years ago could lose us to the squatters’ or punk scene’.

He also pens excellent discursive sections, notably on the 19th-century
discovery of Assyrian flood accounts which were inscribed on clay
tablets several centuries before the Old Testament was written, a fact
that causes him to dismiss the Bible as ‘one long act of plagiarism’.
There is a fine description of a low-tide walk on the Wadden shallows,
a kind of Dutch Morecambe Bay which Westerman presents as physical
preparation for the mountain climb.

It is characteristic of his narrative voice, candid to the point of
transparency, that he should allow his actual, symbolic intentions to
show through. ‘You want to defy the water. For your story,’ his wife
tells him.

Westerman clearly likes to range widely; the problem is his book’s
200-odd pages can feel uncomfortably crowded. Mount Ararat jostles for
space with the various memoir strands, including a whimsical one that
concerns Westerman’s young daughter. His journey to the base of the
mountain brings in the Armenian genocide, Ataturk, the Kurdish
insurgency and Orhan Pamuk (Westerman passes through the gloomy town of
Kars where the Turkish author’s Nobel-Prize winning novel Snow is set).
Less excusable are a number of dull inclusions, not least an ongoing
account of the bureaucracy entailed in securing a climbing visa, which
only add to the impression of a book so swollen with uneven content as
to burst its narrative banks.

The further surprise, given what gets in, is what stays out of Ararat.
Fans of mountaineering accounts should be advised that Westerman’s
actual climb occupies only the last 15 pages. Nor does Westerman do
more than touch upon resonant fears of the floods which rising sea
levels may cause. From a Dutchman, this feels like an omission.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Sept 1 2008

Turkish delegation to visit Armenia for Caucasus talks

A Turkish Foreign Ministry delegation will visit Yerevan this week to
discuss a proposed platform for the troubled Caucasus, Foreign
Minister Ali Babacan announced yesterday.

Babacan, speaking at a joint press conference with his Georgian
counterpart, Eka Tkeshelashvili in Ä°stanbul, said the
delegation will present Turkish ideas concerning the Caucasus
Stability and Cooperation Platform, proposed by Turkey as a mechanism
to develop conflict resolution methods among the Caucasus
countries. The proposed platform is planned to be made up of Turkey,
Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

"Next week, a delegation from the ministry will go to Yerevan. They
will discuss this issue ahead of a possible visit by our president to
Armenia," Babacan said, referring to a visit President Abdullah
Gül is expected to make to Yerevan at the invitation of his
Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarksyan, to watch a World Cup qualifying
game between the national teams of the two countries on Saturday.

"We will present our views concerning the Caucasus platform to our
counterparts in Yerevan." The visit of the Turkish diplomats to
Yerevan marks a turning point in Turkey-Armenia relations, frozen
since 1993 following Armenian occupation of a chunk of Azerbaijani
territory over a dispute in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Turkey was
one of the first countries to recognize Armenia as an independent
state following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they have no
formal ties. The Foreign Ministry recently confirmed that there have
been contacts between diplomats of the two countries in a third
country.

The question of how to establish contact between the estranged
neighbors Turkey and Armenia is just one of the obstacles that the
proposed Caucasus platform faces. Azerbaijan is unlikely to warm to
any sort of cooperation or contact with Armenia due to the continued
occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Georgia, for its part, refuses any
contact with Russia unless Russian forces withdraw from Georgia.

Tkeshelashvili reiterated in Ä°stanbul that what Russia must do
now is to withdraw from Georgian territory and fully implement a
cease-fire agreement. After that Georgia can begin assessing proposals
for contacts with Russia in a multilateral setting, she said. Russia,
she said, should see that it cannot act the way it used to in the
past.

She said Russia declared part of Georgian territory as independent
states, referring to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Russia
recognized last month, and called for joint effort to reverse Russia’s
"expansionist" policies.

Babacan admitted there were problems in implementing the Caucasus
platform, which calls for regional conflict resolution mechanisms and
broader economic cooperation among the five countries
involved. "People are wondering when we can officially start
this. This will happen when the conditions are ripe," he said. "Every
country has their stances and concerns. We will talk about
these. There will be intense diplomacy traffic. When the guns are
silenced, it’s time for diplomacy."

Analysts say with so many issues of dispute among the five countries,
the idea to bring them around the same table to discuss disputes could
be mere wishful thinking. But contacts have been intense since Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an announced the
proposal. ErdoÄ?an has visited Moscow, Tbilisi and Baku to
discuss the proposal. The Azerbaijani foreign minister had talks in
Ankara on Friday and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is
expected to arrive in Ä°stanbul today for talks on Tuesday.

"We need to shape the future of the Caucasus together," Babacan
said. "It is a time when we need to take brave steps to prevent the
regional tension from turning into global turmoil. Channels of
dialogue must be kept open," he added.

Azerbaijan worries

Analysts warn that contacts with Armenia could offend Azerbaijan,
Turkey’s regional ally which also shares close ethnic and linguistic
ties. Babacan assured his Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov,
on Friday that Turkey was a strategic partner of Azerbaijan in all
areas but signs of tension were visible during the one-day visit. The
two ministers gave a very brief press statement after their talks and
Mammadyarov said before meeting Babacan that his country would
consider "profitability" concerning a Russian proposal to buy
Azerbaijani oil, a move that would undermine a US-backed pipeline to
transfer Caspian oil to Europe via Turkey.

The government’s apparent plans to initiate dialogue with Armenia are
receiving criticism at home as well. Main opposition Republican
People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal told reporters yesterday that
the government was trying to reverse the official policy without
Armenia meeting any of the conditions requested by Turkey for
normalization of ties.

He warned against alienating Azerbaijan, saying this country is of
vital importance for Turkey in many respects. "I want the government
to refrain from taking any step that would harm Azerbaijan," he said
and added that he would rather go to Baku than to Yerevan to watch the
World Cup game.

RUSSIAN CARRIERS USING AZERI SPACE TO FLY TO ARMENIA DUE TO GEORGIAN CRISIS

Haykakan Zhamanak
Aug 28 2008

Armenia

"Over Azerbaijan"

It emerged yesterday [27 August] that over the past 20 days, Russian
air companies have been carrying out flights from Russian cities to
Armenia via the Azerbaijani air space and not via Georgia as usual.

The spokeswoman for the Armenian Civil Aviation Department, Gayane
Davtyan, confirmed to our correspondent the change of route from
Russian cities to Armenia. She said that air companies choose
their routes on their own and that it is not dangerous to fly over
Azerbaijan.

Russia’s Aerflot representative in Armenia, Tigran Nersisyants,
told our correspondent that back on 8 August, one day after the
Russian-Georgian confrontation began, the Russian agency for air
transportation sent a letter to their air companies recommending that
beginning 9 August they "should not carry out flights over Georgia
and temporarily use other routes, taking into account the current
limitations.

WILL CUSTODY BE PROLONGED?

A1+
[07:39 pm] 27 August, 2008

"The Court of General Jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork-Marash
districts will hear the case of Armenian MPs Miasnik Malkhassian
and Hakob Hakobian on August 27," Melanya Aroustamian, Advocate of
Myasnik Malkhassian and Hakob Hakobian, informed A1+.

Note, the special investigation body had petitioned the court to
prolong their custody for another two months.

Melanya Aroustamian also presents the interests of Melik Grigorian,
the family driver of Hakob Hakobian. She says Grigorian’s detention
has been disputed at the Appellate Court.

Melik Grigorian is charged with violence against a government
official. He was found guilty and sentenced to 6 months’ imprisonment.

It is still unknown when the Appellate Court will hear the
claim. Nevertheless, Melik Grigorian will be released on September 12.

The case of Mushegh Saghatelian arrested in the morning of March 1
was sent to the RoA Criminal Court.

Mushegh Saghatelian is charged under Article 316 of the RoA CC
(violence against a government representative and appliance of cold
weapon).

"CARD" FOUNDATION SUPPORTS PRESERVATION OF ARMENIAN NATIONAL TRADITIONS

Noyan Tapan

Au g 26, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 26, NOYAN TAPAN. "Traditional Delicacies" event was
organized at Yerevan’s Marriott Hotel on August 26 by the clubs of the
Youth Program of the Center for Agribusiness and Rural Development
(CARD) Foundation. The best youth clubs of ten Armenian marzes
(provinces) presented the traditional delicacies of their regions. The
event was accompanied by songs and dancing.

Anna Karapetian, an expert of the Foundation’s youth and gender
programs, said that the purpose of the event is to promote
the restoration and preservation of Armenian cuisine and
traditions. According to her, there are 110 youth clubs in our
country. Their membership numbers 2,000: children aged 11-16. The
Foundation implements many other programs for the youth: programs of
language teaching, agribusiness, professional orientation.

The U.S. Charge D’Affaires in Armenia Joseph Pennington said that
the members of youth clubs have made a great contribution to the
preservation of Armenian traditions and culture. In his words,
the program allows young people from rural settlements to mix and
establish links with each other.

The presentation of the book "Armenian National Cuisine" took place
during the event.

AMERICAN DIPLOMAT: USA TO CONTINUE WORK IN OSCE MINSK GROUP

ARKA
Aug 26, 2008

YEREVAN, August 26. /ARKA/. The USA will continue taking part in OSCE
Minsk Group on settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, U.S. Charge
d’Affaires in Armenia Joseph Pennington told journalists in Yerevan.

In commenting the opinion of the Head of Eurasian Policy Center of
Hudson University that participation of the USA and Russia in OSCE
Minsk Group is senseless bearing in mind the current relationship
between the USA and Russia after the events in South Ossetia,
American diplomat said that the one making this statement is not a
U.S. official. An American official could not make such a comment,
Pennington said.

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict started in 1988 when Nagorno-Karabakh
with prevailingly Armenian population declared its withdrawal from
Azerbaijan.

On December 10 1991, just a couple of days before the collapse of
the Soviet Union, a referendum was held in Nagorno-Karabakh in the
presence of international observers where 99.89% of the population
voted for full independence from Azerbaijan.

In response, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale war against
Nagorno-Karabakh.

The cease-fire agreement signed on May 12 1994 has been maintained
since then.

Since 1992 negotiations have been held on peaceful settlement of the
conflict under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by
the USA, Russia and France.

RECOGNITION OF INDEPENDENCE OF ABKHAZIA AND SOUTH OSSETIA BY RUSSIA HAS BECOME ONE MORE WARNING FOR THE UNITED STATES: ARMENIAN POLITICAL EXPERT

arminfo
2008-08-26 16:50:00

ArmInfo. The recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia by Russia has become one more warning for the United States,
says Armenian political expert Sergey Shakaryants.

It was the second step of Russia. The first step was Medvedev’s
statement that Russia was ready to halt its relations with NATO.

Russia has made it clear to the US that it would not admit any
encroachment on its interests in the South Caucasus and the whole
world.

"Presently, NATO sea forces are moving towards Russia’s best military
ships in the Black Sea and I hope that both sides will show enough
good sense to prevent new deplorable consequences of the unwise policy
of the Georgian authorities," says Shakaryants.

To note, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has signed decrees on
the recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

ARMENIAN POLITICAL EXPERT: IT IS VERY MUCH POSSIBLE THAT RUSSIAN PRESIDENT WILL KEEP THE PROBLEM OF RECOGNITION OF ABKHAZIA’S AND SOUTH OSSETIA’S INDEPENDENCE HOVER

arminfo
2008-08-25 16:21:00

ArmInfo. It is very much possible that Russian president will keep the
problem of recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence
hover, Armenian political expert, director of "Kavkaz" institute
Aleksandr Iskandaryan told ArmInfo correspondent when commenting
on today’s statement of Russian Federal Council. ‘The issue will
be taken by the president to observe but will be delayed because of
some reasons. Several factors are evidence of this, as recognition of
these two republics’ independence first of all depends on development
of relations between the USA and Russia’, – he said.

He also added that in case of worsening of the relations with the USA
Russia may immediately recognize independence of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia. In that case almost all the states, which are unfriendly to
the USA, will follow Russia’s example.

Today morning Federation Council of Russia applied to President
Dmitriy Medvedev with an application to recognize independence of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia.