Author: Kanayan Tamar

The Wall Street Journal
Aug 3 2014

‘Freezing’ Lawless Regions Invites Hot Conflict

We need better strategies for dealing with Gaza and other black holes
in the international security system.

By Brenda Shaffer
Aug. 3, 2014 4:39 p.m. ET

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Value Your Change Short position Flight MH 17 over rebel-held
territory in eastern Ukraine on July 18 illustrates the dangers that
ungoverned territories present to international security. A
significant number of territories are currently without an accountable
authority and present dangers to their neighbors and others. We need
better strategies to get rid of these black holes in the international
security system, or prevent them forming.

Currently lawless or unaccountable territories arose in different ways
and for different reasons. Some territories, like the Gaza Strip, have
been transferred to governance under nonstate entities with limited
legal authority. Some ask to be recognized as states, such as the
Palestinian Authority, yet do not want all the responsibilities of
statehood, like limiting militia activity within their borders.

In other places, due to the activity of separatists, states are unable
to assert their legal sovereignty. Such areas include the
Armenian-supported region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, and the
Russian-engineered “breakaway” territories of Abkhazia in Georgia and
Transnistria in Moldova. All three are effectively ruled by a neighbor
who prefers to maintain the illusion of separation in order to derive
benefits without consequences.

In some instances, accepting territories without legal, liable
governments has become a preferred method in the international system
to avoid hard choices on conflict resolution. For over 20 years since
the Soviet breakup, four disputed regions–in Moldova, Azerbaijan and
two in Georgia, including South Ossetia–have been left in this limbo.
The U.S. and most other nations continue to formally recognize them as
the legal territory of recognized states from which they broke away.
But in many cases the international community simply ignores the
status quo because it provides an illusion of peace.

Enlarge Image Close

Associated Press

The convenience of “freezing” conflicts instead of resolving them
comes at a cost. These ungoverned territories are centers of illicit
activity, including money laundering, counterfeit goods, human
trafficking and the drug trade. They are often havens for terrorists
and criminals. Individuals inside and outside often derive financial
benefit from unregulated economies in these areas, where taxation is
nonexistent. Since banks in these regions may not be registered with
states, no one is technically running afoul of international treaties
and no one can be sued for illicit activity.

It is time to ensure that each such disputed territory has a return
address so that it is liable for its actions. There should be a
separation between legal sovereignty and security responsibility: If a
state supports a militia or force that operates in another area–like
Iran’s Hezbollah or Russia’s client militias in Ukraine and regions of
Georgia–then Tehran and Moscow are the return addresses.

This distinction is important for leverage. Most of the states that
support rebels in other territories are signatories to international
treaties and conventions related to prevention of terror-financing,
production of counterfeit goods, banking regulations, human
trafficking and more. If this activity takes place in the regions run
by their surrogates, the backing state is liable. Political
fabrications, such as so-called independent Abkhazia or
Nagorno-Karabakh or the People’s Republic of Donetsk, should not be
used by neighboring states to circumvent responsibility for their own
actions in creating these unstable regions out of another state’s
land.

But the rest of the international community has responsibilities too.
States whose sovereignty is threatened should be supported by the
international system to assert their authority throughout their
territories. The U.S. and Europe in particular should not encourage
states under siege to negotiate with rebels, but with their state
sponsors. More broadly, the international community should not
encourage the establishment of entities with limited authority in lieu
of the resolution of conflicts, as happened with the Palestinian
Authority.

To prevent the creation of other non-governed territories, the U.S.
should not contribute to state failure and then call that
democratization. In Libya the U.S. has undermined state authority or
weakened institutions. In Syria, U.S. and other support for rebels has
unintentionally turned some Syrian regions into ungoverned
territories, which has provided opportunities for the rise of the most
malevolent militias.

Above all, states should be held responsible for what takes place in
their de jure territories. If Palestine wants a flag at the U.N., it
cannot relieve itself of responsibility for what happens in its
territory by claiming that nonstate militias out of their control are
perpetrating attacks. And if Russia wants the respect of the
international community, it must control the separatists in eastern
Ukraine that it is supporting and take responsibility for the downing
of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

The U.S. and Europe should stop trying to “freeze” conflicts as a
means for conflict resolution. This only delays the next round of
conflict and leaves huge territories that are springboards for further
danger.

Ms. Shaffer is a visiting researcher and professor at Georgetown
University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies.

Renew America
Aug 3 2014

A very sick world indeed!

By Victor Sharpe

You remember how back in 2011 all the talking heads on TV were
thrilled at the so-called Arab Spring, which they erroneously believed
was harboring a new golden age, one that was finally ushering in
democracy throughout the Arab states in the Middle East.

Well they now realize it has turned into a horrible frigid winter
blast as Islamism and jihadi violence are turning one Arab state after
another into Islamic tyrannies far worse than the regimes that existed
before. The tragedy is that the naiveté of the talking heads was, oh,
so predictable.

No democracies are rising in the Arab world, but that should be no
surprise. The Arab spring could never have resembled the brave Prague
Spring (which was a yearning by Eastern Europeans to be free from
Soviet domination) so long as Islam remains master of the Arab masses.

Instead, the shroud of sharia law stifles all expressions of free
thought in the Arab world and demolishes any hopes of a free and
unfettered press or anything resembling true democracy.

Matters are far worse now than since President Obama went to Cairo
shortly after his win in the 2008 presidential election and delivered
his speech to the Islamic world – a notorious speech which ushered in
the chaos, barbarism and horrific blood-letting we are witnessing in
Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and North Africa.

It all started in Tunisia as that country slid from a secular
dictatorship into an Islamic ruled and sharia compliant regime. An
Islamic fanatic, Rashid Ghannouchi, took power in that North African
country. He returned to Tunisia from years of exile as did the
Ayatollah Khomeini whose dire influence led to the “Mullahocracy” in
Iran with the spread of terror worldwide and the genocidal and
relentless threats towards Israel; nuclear or otherwise.

Predictably, Tunisia’s leader of the Islamist Ennahda party,
Ghannouchi, had already called for the destruction of Israel. This is
the typical anti-Israel requirement needed in order to boost one’s
pure Muslim credentials and bona fides in the Muslim and Arab world. A
very sick world indeed!

Ghannouchi compared himself to Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayip
Erdogan, who has practically turned Turkey into a de facto Islamic
republic and brought relations with Israel to the brink of war.

Turkey under Erdogan refuses still to acknowledge its genocide of
Christian Armenians, or its persecution of Assyrians, Greeks and
others, even as it lurches further and further into Islamization.

Its squalid and continuing record of depredations against the Kurds
and its continuing occupation of northern Cyprus, with the attendant
and brutal conversion of countless Greek churches into mosques, are
there for all to see.

Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, remains a divided city between Turks
and Greeks but that occupation elicits no mass protests in the capital
cities of Europe.

In 2007, Erdogan gave the lie to the nonsense that emanates from
western idealists and know nothings who still believe that there is a
moderate Islam and a radical Islam. As I have written in several of my
articles, there is only Islam: Period. Indeed Erdogan himself put it
starkly by saying:

“There is no moderate or radical Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

And speaking about the proliferation throughout the world of mosques,
Erdogan said:

“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our
bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” This is the same Erdogan who
recently and obscenely called Israel’s Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu,
a new Hitler and who plans to send another flotilla of “peaceniks” to
Gaza to break what it calls Israel’s blockade.

Erdogan knows full well that there would be no blockade, as he calls
it, as soon as the Hamas oppressors and occupiers of Gaza would stop
firing missiles at Israeli civilians.

He also knows full well, that even as the thousands of Palestinian
rockets slam into Israel’s villages, towns and cities, the Israel
Electric Company (IEC) continues to provide power to Gaza’s Arabs –
even though the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay and is in arrears
to the IEC to the tune of over half a billion U.S. Dollars.

Erdogan, while spewing his Islamo-Nazi rants, also knows that a never
ending flow of goods and food enters Gaza from Israel, even as the
Hamas thugs aim their rockets at the crossing between Israel and Gaza.
Egypt, no friend of Hamas or its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood,
blockades Gaza while Islamists kill Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai.

The blatant aggression against Israel in the current war has not only
revealed the enormous stockpiles of Iranian, Syrian and homemade
weapons and missiles that Hamas has accumulated but worse, it has
exposed the vast extent of a deep underground network of
interconnecting sophisticated tunnels.

These tunnels were created with cement Israel allowed into Gaza at the
behest of the morally corrupt United Nations. It was believed they
were for building homes, schools and hospitals.

Instead, tunnels were built designed to both store weapons and
facilitate terrorist attacks into Israeli villages and towns. Indeed,
many of the tunnels, now exposed by the IDF, were dug so that the
Palestinian gunmen would emerge in Israeli kindergartens and schools,
inflicting massacres on a horrific scale.

Not content with using their own Palestinian children as human
shields, the barbaric Hamas and Islamic Jihad thugs wanted to
slaughter as many Jewish children as they could. These are the same
monsters that so many duped Europeans take to the streets to support.
Yes, a very sick world!

Finally, perhaps the most chilling horror that Hamas has imposed upon
not only Israel but the West is the absolute desire of mostly young
Palestinian men – and some women – to kill Israelis or die in the
process as martyrs, which in their pathology guarantees entry to an
Islamic paradise as a Shahid.

As Prof. Louis René Beres, professor of Political Science and
International Law at Purdue University, has written:

“The Palestinian male who seeks the celebrated martyrdom of a Shahid
fighter is generally at a loss for identifying alternative ecstasies
of “maleness.” This means that his death as a martyr can be expected
to bring not only freedom from personal death, but also the only still
remaining opportunities for sexual satisfaction.

“For the Palestinian terrorist today, violence and the sacred remain
thoroughly intertwined, and mutually-reinforcing.”

The struggle against Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram, Al
Qaida and ISIS, ad nauseum, presents Israel, the United States and all
free nations with the vital necessity to overcome this frightening 7th
century Islamic religious war that is now raging here and now in the
21st Century.

The need is to convince Islamists that their ritual slaughter of Jews,
Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahai and all other non-Muslim faiths,
and those of no faith, will avail the Muslim terrorist naught and that
instead of receiving the pleasures of paradise and limitless
pleasures, it will lead, as Prof, Beres adds:

“to unbearable terrors of the grave.”

Armenian, Kurd Appointed to Endowment Council

July 15, 2014

The Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund was
established to support projects that commemorate and recognize the
experiences of all of the ethno-cultural communities affected by
Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914 to 1920.

The Endowment Council … is pleased to announce the appointment by
the Board of Directors of The Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras
Shevchenko of two new members to the Endowment Council effective July
1, 2014 – namely, Dr. Sima Aprahamian, to serve as the representative
of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, and Mr. Suleyman Güven,
as the representative of the Kurdish community.

Dr. Aprahamian, who holds a Ph.D. degree in anthropology (1989, McGill
University), is a Research Associate at the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute at Concordia University. Her current research is entitled
Narratives of Displacement. At the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, she
has taught many courses including Introduction to Women’s Studies,
Women’s Organizing & Resistance Across Cultures, Women, Science &
Technology. She has also developed and co-taught courses on
Anthropological Theory and Field Research. She has numerous
publications and has organized several academic events and conference
panels. She has presented many papers in peer reviewed international
conferences as well. She has conducted field research in Lebanon,
Armenia and Canada.

Mr. Güven, a Kurdish Alevi from the Dersim Province of Turkey, arrived
in Canada in April 1991 as a refugee. He is the editor of Yeni Hayat,
a Canadian-Turkish/ Kurdish newspaper; the Acting Vice President of
the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada for the past
three terms; and the founder of the Toronto Kurdish Community Centre.
Mr. Güven received awards from the Toronto Refugee Affairs Council
(TRAC) in April 2000 and the National Ethnic Press and Media Council
of Canada in 2008 and is the subject of a book Our Friendly Local
Terrorist (published in 2010), dealing with his story and his
struggle.

Trend, Azerbaijan
Aug 2 2014

Moscow concerned about sharp deterioration of situation in Nagorno-Karabakh

Moscow urges the sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to renounce
the use of force and to take measures to stabilize the situation in
the region, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department
under the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said on August 2,
ITAR-TASS reported.

“We express our concern over the sharp aggravation of the situation in
Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in huge casualties,” she added. “We
express deep condolences to the bereaved families.”

“We consider the recent events as a serious violation of the ceasefire
and voiced intentions to reach a settlement by political means,” she
added. “Further escalation is unacceptable.”

“The Russian Foreign Ministry urges all sides to renounce the use of
force and to take immediate measures to stabilize the situation,” she
said.

Armenian armed forces launched a diversion on the night of July
31-August 1, when reconnaissance and sabotage groups tried to cross
the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops through the
territories of Aghdam and Terter regions.

According to the Azerbaijani defense ministry, the effort was revealed
and prevented in time, by Azerbaijani armed forces.

Armenia’s reconnaissance and sabotage group attacked the positions of
Azerbaijani armed forces in the direction of Azerbaijan’s Aghdam and
Agdere regions on the night of August 1-2.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied
20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and
seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs
of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the U.S. are currently
holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four U.N. Security Council resolutions
on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

APA, Azerbaijan
Aug 2 2014

Armenian side also gave casualty

[ 02 August 2014 11:42 ]

Baku. Rashad Suleymanov – APA. Armenian side has also gave casualty in
the fights on frontline.

Though, enemy gave many casualties last night’s fights, for the
present, the “Defense Ministry” of the separatist regime in Karabakh
released information about killing of one serviceman.

APA reports that though the killed serviceman was not named, he was
born in 1989.

According to information in several Armenian social networks, the
killed Armenian serviceman served in the Armenian Army under the
contract.

Armenian press made public the name of killed serviceman. He is Zorik Gevorgyan.

Prague Post, Czech Rep
Aug 2 2014

Wineries in Armenia slowly modernizing

by John & Helena Baker

Oldest winery ever discovered sits in the footsteps of Noah

Mount Ararat — where according to the Bible, Noah’s Ark came ashore —
majestically overlooks Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. This peak is an
essential element in the nation’s sense of identity, especially since
a great majority of Armenians have long lived in a diaspora spread
across the globe.

Today, however, Mount Ararat is not even in Armenia. It stands a
little over 30 km across the border with Turkey, a country with which
Armenia has no diplomatic relations, in the main due to the genocide
of 1915.

Armenia is a small and ancient nation (population 3.2 million
inhabitants, with another 8 million living abroad), located at the
southern end of the Transcaucasian region that bridges Europe and
Asia, bordered by Russia, Georgia, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan and the
Caspian Sea. The region has for ever been a meeting point for a mix of
cultures, which is reflected in Armenia’s long and often troubled
history. Interestingly, it was the first country to adopt
Christianity as its official religion.

As is the case with Georgia (usually reckoned to be the seat of
viticulture), Armenia’s mountains and plains bear evidence of
mankind’s first winemaking endeavors. Vines are indigenous and
excavations have revealed that vines of the genus Vitis vinifera
silvestris (ancestor to the today’s wine grapes) have been growing
here for over a million years.

The 6,100-year-old winery that was discovered in 2007 in a cave in the
village of Areni in the southwestern Vayots Dzor province is the
world’s oldest, dated at least a thousand years before the one
unearthed in the Jordanian West Bank in 1963.

This winery has a press, fermentation vats, storage jars, while
pottery shards, grape seeds and pressed grape remains were also
present on the scene, and a leather shoe was found in the same cave
the following year.

Areni is also the name of the noble grape variety, whose wines
received their first written mention in the 5th century. The Areni is
perhaps the most interesting of all the myriad local grapes, giving at
best some fresh, delicate almost Burgundian reds in the Yeghegnadzor
region southeast of Yerevan.

Despite lying between the Black Sea (an inland sea) and the Caspian
Sea (variously classed as the world’s largest lake or also a sea), the
climate in most Armenian vineyard areas is very dry and decidedly
continental, with vast deserts to the south and extensive plains to
the north. Vines grow mostly between 500 meters and 1500 meters where
diurnal temperature swings can be extreme.

Winters are also harsh enough to warrant protection as the threat of
frosts both in spring and autumn is very real. Despite these and many
other difficulties the arrival of decent irrigation methods has made
viticulture a more practical undertaking in today’s Armenia, allowing
it to rise in commercial importance.

There are 13,000 hectares under vine though the majority of these
supply raw material for the far more illustrious Armenian brandy. Much
investment nowadays comes from Armenians abroad and wineries are
modernizing slowly from the old Soviet-style wine factories that
traditionally still supply the huge but largely unsophisticated
Russian market.

Winery of the month: Vinaøství ©abata

Vladimír ©abata, not long out of the Lednice wine school, set about
making his first wine in his back garden in Bøeclav. Later his family
moved to a property in Rakvice that had a minute 10 ares of vineyard
attached. Here he made wine with friends and in 1997 he went as far
as bottling his first solo batch. This only awakened the desire to go
professional. Subsequently he found and purchased a small property in
the not-too-distant hilltop village of Zajeèí where he based his small
production. In 2004 he was joined by his eldest son, Václav.

With boom times sweeping Moravia, ©abata decided on a new expanded
project, building a modern winery on a virgin site outside the
village. By 2009 this allowed for an annual production 30,000
bottles. With youngest son Jan now on board, ©abata and his old
colleague and investor Ivan Bene¹, founded the company Vinaøství
©abata s.r.o. in 2011.

Vinaøství ©abata has dedicated itself not just to making better wine
but to the growing trend of eno-tourism, running tastings for groups,
with lodging also available at the newly-completed 12-room Penzion and
Restaurant U vinaøství within the complex.

©abata has always stuck close to nature with all grapes sourced
locally, and the company speciality is the red and rosé made from
“samotok”, the free-run (unpressed) wine made fresh and ready for sale
every year on Nov. 11, as with traditional Saint Martin’s new wine.
Another house speciality is the Sur-Lie cuvée, a special blend which
spends a minimum of nine months on its lees.

Wines come from 15 grape varieties and cost between 105 to 155 Kè.
See also: Vinarstvisabata.cz

Wines of the Month:

White: Ryzlink vla¹ský 2013

Producer: Vinaøství Vladimír ©abata, Zajeèí, Moravia

This is a Welschriesling made from grapes that grew on the Pøítluky
slopes near Zajeèí. The wine has a pale straw appearance with
distinct goldeny tinges on the rim. The nose is elegant, floral, very
fresh with a good dab of butterscotch well to the fore. The bone-dry
palate is very pleasing, green apples delicately flushed out with a
predominant mineral character. Refreshing and light – just 11%
alcohol. (125 Kè)

Red: Areni Nairian 2008

Producer: Areni, Armenia

This wine has a beautiful deep red aspect, it is dry, made in the
famous Armenian wine village of Areni in the Vayots Dzor region. On
the nose one can sense tobacco, juniper and forest berries, mingled
with mountain herbs. The wine is well-knit in the mouth, with a full
texture and highlights of delicate raspberry accompanied by pleasing
vegetal and spicy tones. This is a modern-style Areni: clean,
transparent and smooth, with good acidity. Matured at least two years
in oak barrels from the Caucasus itself. (259 Kè)

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Aug 2 2014

4 Azerbaijani soldiers die as Armenian saboteurs try to enter
Azerbaijani positions

2 August 2014 – 11:59am

Four Azerbaijani servicemen died last night as a group of Armenian
saboteurs tried to enter Azerbaijani positions. The saboteurs suffered
considerable losses and had to retreat.

The names of the soldiers killed are Corporal Parvin Aliyev,
Lance-Corporal Rakhil Guseynov, Lance-Corporal Elchin Akhmedov and
Private Sarkhan Guliyev.

Azerbaijani military forces now fully control the area.

KDWN
Aug 2 2014

Outbreak of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh kills 15

KDWN

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — A sharp escalation in fighting between
Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
has left 15 soldiers dead and prompted Russia to issue an urgent call
for calm.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that 12 of its troops have
been killed in the past four days, including four overnight.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s armed forces said one of its soldiers was killed
early Saturday, the third in recent days.

Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region and some adjacent territory have
been under the control of Armenian soldiers and ethnic Armenian local
troops since the end of a six-year separatist war in 1994.

Both sides report frequent shootings and attempted incursions along
the cease-fire line, but the latest outbreak of fighting is the worst
in many years. It was not immediately clear what set off the latest
violence between the former Soviet republics, with Azerbaijan and
Armenia each accusing the other of being the aggressor and claiming to
have repelled a series of attacks.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea, however, has contributed to the
tensions. Armenia, which depends on Russia for economic and military
support, has welcomed the takeover of Crimea and some Armenians have
suggested it could be a model for Nagorno-Karabakh. This has rattled
Azerbaijan, which like Ukraine has aligned itself with the West.

A spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed serious concern
Sunday about the fighting and the deaths it has caused. “Further
escalation is unacceptable,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a
statement. “We call on all participants in the conflict to show
restraint, refrain from the use of force and take immediate measures
aimed at stabilizing the situation.”

–

Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, and Lynn Berry in Moscow
contributed to this report.

Advertisement:Replay Ad

Aug
02

Outbreak of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh kills 15

KDWN

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — A sharp escalation in fighting between
Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
has left 15 soldiers dead and prompted Russia to issue an urgent call
for calm.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that 12 of its troops have
been killed in the past four days, including four overnight.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s armed forces said one of its soldiers was killed
early Saturday, the third in recent days.

Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region and some adjacent territory have
been under the control of Armenian soldiers and ethnic Armenian local
troops since the end of a six-year separatist war in 1994.

Both sides report frequent shootings and attempted incursions along
the cease-fire line, but the latest outbreak of fighting is the worst
in many years. It was not immediately clear what set off the latest
violence between the former Soviet republics, with Azerbaijan and
Armenia each accusing the other of being the aggressor and claiming to
have repelled a series of attacks.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea, however, has contributed to the
tensions. Armenia, which depends on Russia for economic and military
support, has welcomed the takeover of Crimea and some Armenians have
suggested it could be a model for Nagorno-Karabakh. This has rattled
Azerbaijan, which like Ukraine has aligned itself with the West.

A spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed serious concern
Sunday about the fighting and the deaths it has caused. “Further
escalation is unacceptable,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a
statement. “We call on all participants in the conflict to show
restraint, refrain from the use of force and take immediate measures
aimed at stabilizing the situation.”

–

Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, and Lynn Berry in Moscow
contributed to this report.

High time for the international community to sober the Azerbaijani
leadership: Armenian FM

23:10 02.08.2014

“We strongly condemn the provocative actions of recent days on the
Line of Contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan and on the
border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which resulted in the loss of
many lives and sharply raised the tension,” Armenian Foreign Minister
Edward Nalbandian said in comments to Armenpress.

“We express our deepest condolences to the families and relatives of
the victims of the Azerbaijani attacks,” he added.

“Baku continues to grossly violate the ceasefire agreements from May,
1994 and February, 1995, ignore the calls of the Heads of the OSCE
Minsk Group Co-Chair countries to refrain from provocative actions and
from the escalation of the situation, and the appeals of the
international community that through the use of force the conflict can
not be resolved , and that only through negotiations stability and
peace can be achieved. The recurrent adventurism of Baku pursues an
aim to undermine the negotiation process,” Minister Nalbandian said.

“Being the initiator and instigator of the provocations, Azerbaijan is
trying to put their responsibility on the other sides. However, it is
obvious that by rejecting the proposals of the international community
on the establishment of a mechanism of investigation of incidents,
Azerbaijan is assuming the whole responsibility for the ceasefire
violations,” he added.

Accoridng to the Foreign Minister, “It is high time for the
international community to sober the Azerbaijani leadership, which has
lost the sense of reality and is going against the value-system of the
international community.”

“Together with the Co-Chair countries Armenia will take the necessary
steps for halting the provocative acts, for the stabilization of the
situation, for continuation of the negotiation process aimed at the
settlement of the conflict exclusively through peaceful means,”

You do not deserve Sevan

August 2 2014

The world’s hottest, the quietest, the safest, the most fertile, the
most patient, the most misunderstood, the most wonderful water. The
most cursed water, whose shores are visited by almost half of the
people left in the country every weekend during this season. They step
on the ground getting out of the car and begin cursing the wind, cold
water, fantastic sun, the stones on the shore, and with curses in the
mouth, they start preparing to eat. Later, when eating a piece of
bread they curse again concluding that this is not a place to come,
and then, after the piece of bread and destroyed they get into the
water and right in the water they begin cursing the water. Well, do
you know Sevan that you curse? You would not even find this miracle on
the map if it were not painted in blue. Sevan is not a peninsula,
which you call an island, nor the “Flamingo”.

Sevan is not a Tsovagyugh villager standing at the roadside blue
“domik” and showing a grampus size fish with his hands and with wild
persistence argued that his criminal fish poaching is “health to the
sea.” Sevan is not the five thousand drams and dystrophic build-up
viewer of toiletless shore that the community sewage is dumped into
the lake without being filtered, and he is genuinely surprised that,
“Hey guys, how these stupid Yerevan people get into this dirty water.”
The Sevan you know has two directions: one from “Gavar side” and the
other from “highway side.” You were not even told that the beach
recreation in your known main part is just prohibited, that it is not
only unpleasant, but also very often deadly dangerous. Yes, Sevan has
also a fantastic beach protected by the mountain chains of Areguni and
Sevan, no wind, hot water and white sand, with Divine peace, but it is
just far away from the highway. But, you call Shorzha the entire
territory from Motel to Shorzha. You are even lazy to reach Shorzha,
not to speak about knowing that beyond it there is Artanish, Gil,
Tsapatagh, Pambak, Daranik, Areguni … You look like a non-existing
family whose members prefer eating the liver and intestines of Fugue
fish. You do not know that you cannot undress your body that has not
seen the sun throughout the year and wonder for hours under the thin
rays of mountainous sun and argue that it is the best way to avoid
getting ill in winter season. You do not know that you cannot get on
the Soviet Union worn out hydrocycle loaded with ten more people and
make wild howls, not to speak about knowing what a divine pleasure it
is to listening to matchless silence of the Sevan Lake.

You do not know that littering the water with plastic bottles and bags
looks like forcing you to drink gasoline. Sevan is not a place for us
to “cheat on” with a libertine. It is not a place for you to eat
one-week food ration violently in a few hours, it is not a place to
drive your car crazily and turn on the silliest available music disc
to the maximum. It is not a place to enter the peninsula church with a
wet bathing suit, proudly waving the pithecanthropus curls and
controverting Rev. Minas with a hiccup who rebukes you. Well, what are
you doing in Sevan? You do not know so much about Sevan that the rest
of your days will not be enough to know and learn. At least learn not
to blaspheme Sevan being in Sevan. One day, its patience will be run
out, and will swallow all you cursing it and your wives swimming in
robes, bra and rags, will appropriately explain everything to you and
in response to your curse, it will spit you out to the shore.

AGHASY HUNANYAN
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