Author: Kanayan Tamar

ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES HAMPER DISCLOSURE OF MARCH 1 TRAGEDY – OPPOSITION

news.am
September 11, 2012 | 18:35

YEREVAN. – The murder of ten citizens shot to dead in Armenian capital
during demonstration on March 1, 2008 is still not revealed. It
is obvious that the current authorities are not only interested in
revealing the crime but try to hamper it anyway, opposition Armenian
National Congress (ANC) MP Nikol Pashinyan said in the Parliament.

According to him, the murder disclosure is not only the matter of
those ten families but belongs to the whole Armenian society.

“We will be consistent in disclosing the murder cases and all the
murderers, regardless of their office and social and public status,
will get the proper punishment,” he stated.

OF CHESS CHAMPIONS AND AXE MURDERERS
BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

Monday, September 10th, 2012 | Posted by Ara Khachatourian

Armenian chess champions greeted by President Sarkisian (left);
Azerbaijan’s hero axe-murderer Ramil Safarov

The streets of Yerevan thundered with cheers and jubilation Monday
night as throngs of residents flocked to the streets to welcome
Armenia’s National Chess team which had retuned from Istanbul where
it had beat the Hungarian team to win gold and clench the title of
world champion.

Fireworks lit up the Yerevan sky and social media was buzzing with
excitement and pride as our national heroes came home victorious.

Under normal circumstances, the chess victory would still have been
a source of pride and excitement, but would not have had historic
implications. However, under the dark cloud of the Ramil Safarov
incident, Armenia’s victory in Istanbul against Hungary and last
week’s absurd images from Baku, where Azeris celebrated the return
of an axe-murderer as hero turned irony into pathos.

It was indeed ironic that Armenia was left to battle Hungary in the
chess finals. Victory was even sweeter, since Armenia has suspended
all relations with Hungary over its decision to extradite the Azeri
soldier Ramil Safarov who brutally killed Armenian officer Gourgen
Margaryan in 2004. It was also poignant to hear the Armenian national
anthem in Istanbul

The recent developments have, once again, put into perspective the
crux of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and highlighted the gains and
losses that have played out during the course of the war and the
ensuing peace process.

What began as a democratic movement under Glasnost and Perestroika
for Armenians demanding their rights, turned violent when Azerbaijan
began a wave of brutal massacres and pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad,
Baku, Shahumian and Getashen. When Armenians were under relentless
Grad missile attacks they banded to fight a war imposed on them
and emerged victorious. Modern day heroes were born and hundreds
joined the pantheon that boasts selfless individuals who have put the
survival of the nation first. Azeris retreated without heroes and 20
years later live in squalor as a few in Azerbaijan reap the benefits
of its oil wealth. They were forced to create heroes, namely Haydar
Aliyev, who is the architect of the current regime that thrives on
and perpetuates hatred and brutality.

During the peace negotiations, Azerbaijan has continued to threaten
war, kill innocent civilians, and domestically stifle those who have
advocated change in favor of criminals and bandits. Official Baku,
through its president, has said that every Armenian is the state’s
enemy and must be dealt with accordingly.

While Armenia has not been without its own troubles in the continued
quest to protect human rights and justice, it has never officially
called for the destruction and murder of an entire race.

Decades ago as the world watched the brutal pogrom of Armenians with
the same tacit “concern” as expressed when Safarov was extradited and
then pardoned, the great human rights advocate and activist Andrei
Sakharov said that the Karabakh conflict is “matter of prestige”
for Azerbaijan, while for Armenians it is “a matter of life and death.”

So many deaths, including that of Gurgen Margaryan’s could have been
prevented had the international community, especially the US, Russia
and Europe, did not sit idly by and exert pressures in their absurd
efforts to advance so-called parity in the name of advancing peace.

The Karabakh conflict resolution process is at a crossroads now.

Azerbaijan’s blatant support and glorification of an Armenian killer
should not go unpunished by the stakeholders who claim to have
the region’s best interests at heart. Their “concerns” should have
turned to anger and condemnation when in the days following Safarov’s
extradition, Azerbaijan continued its sub-human policies and elevated
the axe-killer to a hero.

The US continues to say that it is looking for answers from Baku,
and the NATO secretary general last week guardedly asked for an
explanation and instead got the middle finger from Ilham Aliyev.

However late in the game, it is time for the international community to
recalibrate its position and begin to not ignore bellicose statements
and acts by Azerbaijan and view them as a threat to not only to
Armenia and Armenians, but their own efforts at establishing peace
in the region.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov on Monday pledged to work to diffuse tensions between Armenia
and Azerbaijan on the sidelines of the upcoming United National General
Assembly. One way to ensure that their efforts hold any credence is
to use the pulpit of the General Assembly to loudly condemn Azerbaijan
and any other nation that promotes hatred, murder and glorifies those
who commit them as a state policy.

Two neighboring countries welcomed national heroes to their
midst. As the world watched, a definitive picture has emerged that
magnifies-in no uncertain terms-the contrast between civilized
people and barbarians: A nation proudly welcoming a group that for
several weeks has been representing his country in an international
competition and is returning a hero having leveraged sportsmanship,
acumen and conviction and another nation proudly welcoming a person who
wielded an axe, viciously and brutally murdering another human being.

A POSTER WITH PICTURES OF GENERAL ANDRANIK AND GURGEN MARGARYAN IN “NATIONAL” STADIUM OF SOFIA

2012-09-11 22:35:30

Armenian fans have brought with them an enormous poster with pictures
of General Andranik and Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan, who was
brutally murdered in Budapest, to the “National” stadium of Sofia,
where the Bulgaria-Armenia match of the qualifying round of World
Football Cup 2014 has launched, reports ArmSport. Com.

The poster reads the following writing in English: ” Andranik’s
children are also heroes”

HUNGARY HANDED OVER AZERI KILLER AWARE OF BACKLASH RISKS -PM

Chicago Tribune
Sept 11 2012
IL

BUDAPEST, Sept 11 (Reuters) – Hungary knew its decision to hand
convicted killer Ramil Safarov over to his native Azerbaijan would
spark a diplomatic backlash from Armenia, Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban said on Tuesday.

Budapest released Safarov, a soldier, to Azerbaijan last month where
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev pardoned him on arrival. Safarov had
served eight years of a life sentence for killing an Armenian officer
during a NATO-sponsored training session in Hungary in 2004.

Armenia immediately broke diplomatic ties with Hungary and said that
releasing Safarov, who was given a hero’s welcome on his return,
was a “grave mistake”.

Orban was asked at a news conference about a report by news portal
origo.hu, which said the prime minister had taken the decision despite
being warned about the risks of such a move.

“There was coordination within the entire government about this,”
Orban said. “Each ministry presented its opinion, the justice ministry
about the legal side and the foreign ministry about the diplomatic
consequences.”

Orban said he had then announced the decision personally in line with
general procedure.

“The foreign ministry had forecast precisely what types of consequences
this or the other decision may have. Nothing happened after our
decision that we would not have reckoned with in advance,” he added.

Hungary has said its actions were consistent with international law
and that Azerbaijan had promised to uphold Safarov’s sentence.

While the two countries were in talks about developing closer economic
ties, these were in no way linked to the release of the soldier,
the Hungarian government has said.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since a war between ethnic
Azeris and Armenians that erupted in 1991 over the mainly Armenian
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. A ceasefire was signed in 1994 but new
cross-border clashes this year have raised fears of a resumption
of fighting.

(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

,0,3824180,full.story

AZERBAIJAN-ARMENIA WAR COULD TRIGGER REGIONAL CONFLICT
By Timothy Heritage and Francesco Guarascio

21:23, September 11, 2012

LINE OF CONTACT, Azerbaijan, Sept 11 (Reuters) – A dusty trench,
interrupted every few metres by lookout posts and gun positions,
winds its way as far as the eye can see.

“Put your head above the trench and they’ll shoot you,” says a young
ethnic Armenian soldier, peering through a narrow slit in a concrete
watchtower at Azeri lines 400 metres away where he says snipers lie
in wait.

The bullets fly both ways. On the other side of the minefields, Khosrov
Shukurov’s daughter was recently shot in the arm. The 70-year-old
Azeri farmer keeps his cows on leashes to stop them straying beyond
the wall built to protect his village.

Sporadic firefights have intensified along the front line around
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan in the
South Caucasus controlled by ethnic Armenians since a war in the
early 1990s that killed about 30,000 people.

Azerbaijan has stepped up threats to take the region back and its
decision to give a hero’s welcome to a soldier convicted of hacking
an Armenian to death on a NATO course has highlighted the risk of a
war that could draw in Turkey, Russia and Iran.

When the ethnic Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh declared
independence as the Soviet Union collapsed, and took over more Azeri
territory outside the region than within it, Christian Armenia avoided
direct war with Muslim Azerbaijan.

It now says it would not stand aside if the enclave it helped establish
was attacked.

Both it and Azerbaijan have more powerful weapons than two decades
ago and if pipelines taking Azeri oil and gas to Europe via Turkey
or Armenia’s nuclear power station were threatened, war could spread.

Armenia has a collective security agreement with its regional ally
Russia, while Azerbaijan has one with Turkey, itself a member of NATO
for which an attack on one member state is an attack on all 28.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of a “much broader
conflict” when she visited Armenia in June and NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Friday he was “deeply concerned” by
the Azeri soldier’s pardon last month.

UPHILL BATTLE

Political and military analysts say war is not inevitable, and that
the potential for destruction and a regional war serve as a deterrent.

But they are increasingly discussing how a conflict between Armenia
and Azerbaijan might play out.

The most likely trigger is seen as a particularly deadly skirmish on
the line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh-held territory and the
rest of Azerbaijan or on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border. Nine people
died in clashes in June.

“At some moment the crossfire will not be limited to the use of
small weapons. One side will hit the other with heavy weapons,” said
Rasim Musabayov, an independent member of parliament in Azerbaijan’s
capital, Baku.

“Then you can see a scenario in which the other side responds with
air power and then it all goes from there.”

Less likely would be a political decision to go to war – despite
Azerbaijan’s threats to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh – or a
pre-emptive strike by Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh if an attack by
Azerbaijan seemed imminent.

If a conflict did break out, Azerbaijan would likely try to besiege
Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of about 160,000 people linked to Armenia
by a narrow land corridor, since the enclave’s troops dominate the
high ground and have mined elsewhere.

“A key factor is the topography, the extent to which Nagorno-Karabakh
has created defences in depth. This could make the lower land killing
fields. Progress would come at a high cost,” said Wayne Merry,
a former U.S diplomat and an expert on the region at the American
Foreign Policy Council in Washington.

The Azeris could also attack the towns of Jebrail and Fuzuli to the
south and southeast, outside the enclave before the 1991-94 war but
part of the 20 percent of Azerbiajan under ethnic Armenian control
since.

“SPASMS OF MUTUAL DESTRUCTION”

Azerbaijan’s annual defence spending is more than Armenia’s entire
budget, but Armenia has warned of an “asymmetrical” response to any
attack, threatening what Merry called a “spasm of mutual destruction”
fuelled by bitterness from the last war.

Abbas Aliyev, 66, was forced out of Fuzuli as it was seized by ethnic
Armenian troops and settled with his wife and four children in the
cramped basement of an apartment bloc in Baku where one toilet is
shared by 16 families.

He is one of hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of them Azeris,
who cannot return home until the conflict is resolved. “I want to
breathe the fresh air of my region again,” he said.

Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh use similar words to explain
why they would not give the region up.

“I got all the paperwork I needed to go to the United States but
decided not to go. It’s marvellous here. Look around you, breathe the
air,” said Samvel Gabrielyan, an artist in Stepanakert, a quiet city
of nearly 57,000 in the mountains.

Smart new apartment blocs stand on the rubble of buildings destroyed
there during the war. A few still have bullet marks.

“We’d be ready to fight again if we had to. Otherwise what did all
those deaths in the last war mean?” Gabrielyan said.

Such passions, and a belief on both sides that they can win a war,
risk encouraging the politicians and military.

Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, said a war now would be much more
destructive than the low-tech conflict of the 1990s.

“It would be much more bloody and become a full state-state conflict
with unpredictable consequences.”

Obvious targets in Azerbaijan would be the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE)
natural gas pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil
pipeline. Both are in northwest Azerbaijan, within range of Armenian
forces, and have a role in Europe’s attempts to reduce its reliance
on Russia for energy supplies.

A consortium of Western oil companies operates the Azeri, Chirag and
Guneshli oilfields in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea, as well
as Azerbaijan’s large Shah Deniz gas field.

Led by British Petroleum and including Norway’s Statoil and two U.S.

companies, Chevron and ExxonMobil, it has plenty to lose if war
breaks out.

Each side can hit the other’s capital, and Armenia’s, Yerevan, is
only 30 km (19 km) from its Metsamor nuclear power plant. Northwest
Azerbaijan contains a water reservoir and power station as well as
an international highway and railway.

REGIONAL ALLIANCES

“We think that if hostilities resume, they could not be limited
to a local or regional framework. I think they would have a wider
geographical spread,” Bako Sahakyan, the self-styled president of
Nagorno-Karabakh, said in an interview.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in a gesture of solidarity with
ethnic kin in Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
rejects Armenia’s insistence it recognise the killing of Armenians
in Ottoman Turkey during World War One as genocide.

Russia has a military base at Gyumri in northwest Armenia.

Neither, however, would want to rush into a war that would damage
their own, fragile relationship and Russia would not want to upset
its efforts to deepen ties with Baku.

Iran, another regional force, was neutral during the 1991-94 war and
would be likely to remain so. But its relationship with Azerbaijan
has soured, especially since Baku started buying arms from Israel,
and it might be sucked into a conflict if it allowed goods to keep
flowing through its border with Armenia.

Efforts to find a political solution led by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have had little success,
and political concessions are hard for leaders who would risk losing
power if they looked weak.

“Nagorno-Karabakh is an integral part of Armenia. This is how ordinary
people see it,” said Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, the Armenian
Apostolic Church’s senior official in the enclave, which is still
part of Azerbaijan under international law.

“We will do everything to save our land.”

On the other side of the line of conflict, farmer Shukurov will not
move from the village of Ciragli, despite his daughter’s injury and
the bullet holes riddling his house. “That is what the Armenians want,
but I will not give up,” he said.

Diplomats and analysts say that if another war breaks out, it is
likely to end in stalemate. “The Azeris can’t retake Karabakh now.

They are militarily incapable of doing it,” said Matthew Bryza,
a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan.

“I don’t think they could dislodge the Armenian forces from the high
ground. I think that’s extremely difficult.”

Yusif Agayev, an Azeri military expert and veteran of the war, said
there was no mood for a protracted fight.

“I think it would be a month or two, that is the amount of time our
armed forces could fight for. If it drags on longer then it will become
a war that society will have to participate in, not just the army,”
he said. “I don’t think the society of my country is ready for war.”

HUNGARIAN PM ADMITS HE KNEW AZERI KILLER WOULD BE RELEASED

PanARMENIAN.Net
September 11, 2012 – 18:30 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban admitted in
a closed party meeting last week that he had ordered Ramil Safarov to
be transferred back to Azerbaijan despite the fact that he was aware
that Safarov would be released sooner or later, Politics.hu reported
citing Origo.hu.

The Hungarian-language website, which for its part cited two separate
unnamed sources close to the government and Fidesz, said Orban had
been repeatedly warned by his fellow party members and advisors of
the risks such a move involved but the Prime Minister was looking to
make a gesture toward the Azeris in an effort to secure new creditors
to buoy up Hungary’s ailing budget.

During the meeting, which turned into a heated debate, Orban
acknowledged that he knew “there would be trouble” but expected
Safarov to be pardoned only months later for “health reasons.”

Despite protests by Tibor Navracsics, the Minister of Public
Administration and Justice, and repeated warnings by justice ministry
experts, Orban in August went ahead and ordered the transfer agreement
to be signed.

Origo said the government politicians it asked for comment agreed that
the incident was “awkward” but shared the Prime Minister’s opinion
that the best way to handle the situation was to practically ignore
the whole case.

ARMENIA’S LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS CAN HARDLY BE CALLED ELECTIONS – ARFD

news.am
September 11, 2012 | 18:05

YEREVAN.- The local self-government elections in Armenia will
follow the lead of “vicious parliamentary elections”, MP from ARF
Dashnaktsutyun said.

Armen Rustamyan said democracy is abused in Armenia. The citizens are
deprived of the right to vote due to use of administrative resources
by officials. Elections in Talin, Akhtala, Sisian, Kapan and Gyumri
are the evidence thereof, he added. The MP stressed in many cases
election bribes were distributed.

“In other states local self-government elections are the basis of
democracy, but not in Armenia. Such voting can hardly be called
elections,” he emphasized.

As to low voter turnout, Rustamyan said it proved people are
disappointed in the government.

ALIYEV RELEASES AZERI MURDERER BUT SUSPICIONS ABOUT BREVIK’S SENTENCE

news.am
September 11, 2012 | 18:43

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev is offended by international
community on the whole and the European agencies in particular.

President said pressure and accusations started against Azerbaijan
after the extradition of Ramil Safarov and his pardoning.

“Armenians and Armenian lobbies raised a clamor. I said some months
ago that our main enemy is Armenian lobby. At present, they are
conducting many dirty campaigns against Azerbaijan. Under the care of
the Armenian lobby, corrupt, hypocritical senators, heads of several
international organizations, some politicians put forward groundless
accusations against Azerbaijan. These accusations are baseless,” APA
agency quotes Aliyev. He seems to be especially offended by Council
of Europe Secretary General.

“Everything was settled within the law and conventions adopted by
Europe. And now look, what did the Secretary General of the Council of
Europe do? His duty is to embody humanism and defend human rights. The
Council of Europe has repeatedly put forward groundless accusations
against Azerbaijan.

His compatriot Breivik killed about 80 people and he was sentenced to
21 year imprisonment. And it means that he got 3 month of imprisonment
for each people.Is that possible? Why does he keep silence about this?”

HAYK DEMOYAN: AZERBAIJAN FAILED IN ITS ATTEMPTS TO CREATE AN IMAGE OF HERO
Alisa Gevorgyan

“Radiolur”
11.09.2012 17:23

“Azerbaijan is trying to create an image of an Azerbaijani Soghomon
Tehleryan out of Ramil Safarov. The Azerbaijani and Turkish diplomacies
have been working hard in that direction ever since 2004,” Director
of the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute Hayk Demoyan told reporters
today. He considers, however, that the attempts of creating an image
of a hero have failed. In 2004-2006 Demoyan represented the Armenian
Defense Ministry in the judicial process on Safarov case in Budapest.

Who was Ramil Safarov after the verdict of 2006? According to Demoyan,
he was a used material, which had defamed his own country, people
and the army he represented.

Thus, Ramil Safarov helped discover a shameful fact about his country.

The authorities and people of that country are constantly crying
about 20% of their land being occupied by the Armenian side, while
at the same time they train their soldiers on an illegally occupied
territory – Northern Cyprus.

Safarov uncovers also a dangerous military secret of Turkey. It turns
out that Turkey trains Azerbaijani killers on the territory of the
European Union it has occupied, who will later commit crimes on the
territory of that same European Union.

Safarov is now in Azerbaijan. Who needs him there? Only Aliyev and
his clan, Demoyan is confident. According to him, Aliyev now pursues
the aim of raising his standing inside the country, and in this regard
the raise of a patriotic wave was simply necessary at this point. “In
reality Ilham Aliyev is a ‘double criminal.’ By deciding to pardon
Safarov he not only violated the Azerbaijani law, but also released
a military criminal, who had defamed the Azerbaijani army and people,
Demoyan said.

AGMI Director says Armenia’s decision to suspend ties with Hungary
following the shameful deal with Azerbaijan was quite adequate. As
for the next steps of Armenia, Demoyan says we’ll make a gross mistake
if we fail to avail ourselves of this situation.

According to Hayk Demoyan, the transfer and release of Safarov have
already affected the negotiation process on the settlement of the
Karabakh conflict. The recent developments also mean the end of
discussions on mutual concessions, he concluded.

GENERAL MANVEL’S CLOSE FRIEND HAS BEATEN UP A MAN FOR OUTDRIVING

September 10, 2012 11:18

At around 10:30 p.m., Saturday, Norik Mirzakhanyan, the head of the
communal department of the town of Ejmiatsin, and his friends beat
up a citizen in the very center of the town, next to the square. The
eyewitnesses told that the driver of an Opel Vectra with
01 084 license plate outdrove Norik Mirzakhanyan, aka Kartol Noro,
rushing on the central street of Ejmiatsin. The latter couldn’t stand
that impudent deed – he stopped the car that had outdriven him, pulled
the driver out of the car and bombarded him with curses and blows.

Since the incident took place near the cafe belonging to General
Manvel and the general’s bodyguards were probably in the cafe, they
appeared at the scene very quickly and helped Kartol Noro “to defend
his honor.” Anyway, our interlocutor said that cars “with 045” had
come to the scene very quickly and had beaten that youth for about
10 minutes. The latter defended himself as much as he could. No one
of the eyewitnesses dared to interfere realizing quite well that he
would suffer the same fate. hasn’t managed to find out
about the youth’s fate and other details of the incident yet.

Let us mention that Norik Mirzakhanyan is one of Manvel Grigoryan’s
close friends. They say the general does everything to protect Norik.

By the way, Norik Mirzakhanyan has been involved in another scandal
recently. Law-enforcers found drugs in his car. They say General
Manvel interfered to get him off the hook at that time.

Nelly GRIGORYAN