Author: Madatian Greg

ARMENIAN PM WELCOMES TURKISH DIALOGUE

Gaziantep Haber, Turkey
April 28 2008

Armenia is ready to start dialogue with Turkey on improving relations
if Ankara does not set preconditions to talks, Armenia’s new Prime
Minister Tigran Sarksyan said on Sunday.

The two neighbours have no diplomatic links after Ankara severed ties
in protest against Armenian control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region
over which Armenia fought Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan in a war in the
early 1990s.

"I confirm the readiness of the government of Armenia to engage in
constructive dialogue and establish relations without preconditions,"
the press office of the Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sarksyan said
he wrote in a letter to Turkey.

An Armenian backed administration controls the Nagorno-Karabakh
region. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still officially at war over the
mountainous area.

Last week Turkey’s foreign minister Ali Babacan said he had sent
Armenia a letter calling for dialogue.

Armenia is a mainly Christian state of around 3 million which lies
on the edge of the Caucasus which hosts a pipeline pumping oil to
Europe from Asia.

Armenia also accuses Turkey of genocide during at the end of World
War One.

Turkey denies the accusations and says that both Christian Armenians
and Muslim Turks died in fighting.

"I assure you that our efforts will be aimed at ensuring peace,
tolerance and stability in our region," Sarksyan told Turkey in
the letter.

Sarksyan took over as prime minister earlier this month. He had
previously been central bank chief.

Optimal gas prices to be assured for Armenia: RA PM

2008-04-26 13:19:00

ArmInfo. Optimal gas price s among those which may be offered by
"Gazprom" will be assured for Armenia, RA Prime Minister Tigran
Sarkisyan told journalists.

He recalled that visit of Chairman of the Board of "Gazprom" OJSC
leksey Miller to Armenia is expected in May, during which an agreement
will be reached on gas prices for the next three years according to the
average-term governmental programme. "We are sure that optimal gas
prices will be assured for Armenia among those which may be offered by
"Gazprom"", T. ‘Sarkisyan emphasized. He said that the average-term and
long-term governmental programmes should be developed based on the
world rise in gas prices. "As a result of it, we should take steps to
mitigate the negative price influences for the poor layers of the
population, as well as maintain the competitiveness of our economy", T.
Sarkisyan said. He also said that the competitiveness may be reached by
orientation at gas prices relative to the prices in the neighbouring
and competing countries, that will allow to slow down the price growth
rates.

To recall, according to the information, published last week by
"Kommersant", "Gazprom" intends to raise the price for gas supplied to
Armenia to US $165 per 1 cub m and maintain this price for the next
three years.

ARMENIANS REMEMBER MASS KILLINGS

Aljazeera.net, Qatar
AC2-42FA-B3FB-9DAC9D39407B.htm
April 24 2008

Thousands climbed to a hilltop memorial in Yerevan on Thursday [AFP]

Armenia’s new president has vowed to step up efforts to have mass
killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire recognised as genocide.

Addressing a commemorative gathering on Thursday, Serzh Sarkisian,
the president, said: "International condemnation of the Armenian
genocide is an inevitable part of Armenia’s foreign policy agenda."

Turkey rejects the genocide claim, which many countries recognise.

Armenians climbed to a hilltop memorial in Yerevan to mark the 93rd
anniversary of the start of the killings, which took place between
1915 and 1923 and led to a mass exodus of Armenians from what is now
eastern Turkey.

Tens of thousands take part in the procession every year, including
many from Armenia’s widespread diaspora who travel to Yerevan for
the event.

Unity call

"The republic of Armenia should double its efforts for the restoration
of historical justice.

"When it comes to condemning the genocide, denial has no future,
especially today when many countries around the world have added
their voices to the voice of truth," Sarkisian said.

Tigran Sarkisian, the prime minister, said that the massacres showed
the need for Armenian unity, a clear reference to post-election clashes
last month between opposition supporters and riot police that left
10 dead.

The opposition claims Serzh Sarkisian’s February win was rigged.

"We cannot be in safety and security if we are divided and
separated. We cannot prevent major disasters from recurring if we
fail to have a strong state," the prime minister said.

Armenians believe up to 1.5m people died in orchestrated killings
during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey says 300,000 Armenians and at least an equal number of Turks
were killed in civil strife when the Christian Armenians, backed by
Russia, rose up against the Ottomans.

Closed border

The dispute has been a major obstacle in relations between Turkey and
Armenia, which have no diplomatic ties and whose border has remained
closed for more than a decade.

Ali Babacan, the Turkish foreign minister, said this week that Turkey
was "open to dialogue" with Armenia’s new government "with the aim
of normalising Turkish-Armenian ties."

The controversy has also complicated relations between EU-aspirant
Turkey and many Western countries, especially those with large
ethnic-Armenian communities such as the United States and France.

Many taking part in Thursday’s ceremony called on Western countries
to pressure Turkey into recognising the massacres as genocide.

"I lost my entire family at the hands of the Turks," Srbuhi Pirumian,
an 80-year-old Armenian said. "I will never tire of telling our
history to my children and to my grandsons….The Turks have no place
in Europe.

More than 20 countries, including Belgium, Canada, Poland and
Switzerland, have officially recognised the killings as genocide.

In 2006, French lawmakers voted to make it a criminal offence to deny
that Armenians were victims of genocide.

But many countries, including Britain and the United States, refuse to
use the term to describe the events, mindful of relations with Turkey.

———————- Armenian ‘genocide’

Armenians say they suffered discrimination, religious persecution,
heavy taxation and armed attacks under Ottoman Turks since 16th century

Thousands killed from 1894 to 1896 during a crackdown on Armenian
nationalists

Armenians claim 1.5m murdered or starved to death when Ottoman
Turks deported them to Syria and Mesopotamia deserts from 1915-1917
during WWI

Turkey says inflated toll due to ethnic clashes, disease and famine

All ties between Turkey and Armenia severed more than 90 years ago

SUCCESSFUL START OF EUROPE CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP

Panorama.am
21:26 22/04/2008

The first round of Europe Chess Championship finished and Armenian
GM-s Ashot Anastasyan, Artashes Minasyan and Tigran Kotanjyan fixed
successful results on their amounts. Anastasyan won Greek GM Antonios
Handzimanolis, Minasyan-Holland Alexander Van Biki and Kotandjyan
added a score on his amount as his competitor has missed the game.

Armenian GM-s Vladimir Hakobyan, Karen Asryan and 14-year-old Samvel
Ter-Sahakyan finished their games with successful results also. The
only lost was registered by Dmitri Haurtyunyan who met with German
Gerog Meyeri.

Armenian women chess players Elina Danielyan and Lilit Lazarian
finished with successful results the female round of Europe Chess.

The championship is taking place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

It started on 22 April and will last till 3 May.

HAYPOST AND INGO ARMENIA SIGN AN AGREEMENT

armradio.am
23.04.2008 10:37

April 23, 2008. HayPost and INGO Armenia have signed an agreement
today that will intend for HayPost to provide insurance products to
all customers in Armenia.

As of June 1st, HayPost offices will extensively begin selling
insurance packages to everyone, ensuring a high accessibility
of insurance to all customers, regardless of their location and
socio-economic status. HayPost staff is being trained and will obtain
the utmost professional qualifications to address and grant INGO
Insurance products.

"This is a highly important partnership for HayPost," states Hans Boon,
Director General of HayPost. "As part of our expansion plans in the
postal and financial services, and in combination with the Postbank,
HayPost will increasingly establish itself as a ‘one-stop’ service
center to make accessible all services to even the most disadvantaged
customer."

"All the required documentation is being sent to the Central Bank
of Armenia to provide HayPost with the insurance license," states
Levon Altunyan, Executive Director of INGO Armenia. "Our partnership
with HayPost is highly relevant for us and will be the basis of a
sustainable and increasingly substantial strategic collaboration."

The key result of this partnership will be that all underserved
customers – far and wide – will have direct and easy access to HayPost
and its postal, financial and now insurance services.

OPPOSITION RALLY HELD IN YEREVAN AGAIN

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.04.2008 15:31 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ After a long pause, the Armenian opposition held
a regular rally in Yerevan on April 19. The protest action started
at 3 p.m. at a monument to Alexander Myasnikyan, where the March 1
riots ended in bloody clashes with the police.

Suren Surenyants, member of Republic party political council, Anna
Hakobyan, the wife of Nikol Pashinyan (currently wanted by the police)
and Melissa Brown, the wife of detained former foreign minister of
Armenia Alexander Arzumanyan, addressed the attendees.

Leader of People’s Party Stepan Demirchyan and head of Republic
party political council Aram Sargsyan were also present but could
not deliver speeches over lack of time.

Two hours later, the participants marched towards Liberty Square and
found it cordoned by the police.

After numerous calls to leave the site, the protesters broke up,
IA Regnum reports.

THE USA INDIRECTLY SUPPORTS THE ARMENIAN ISOLATION ALLOWING THE REALIZATION OF THE TRANS-REGIONAL PROJECTS PASSING OVER THE RA

PanARMENIAN.Net
19.04.2008 GMT+04:00

Being the assignee of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, which
stopped existing in 1920, the present Azerbaijan does not have any
rights on the Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan, since these regions
weren’t included in Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan.

After the explicit failures in NATO, in the Balkans and in the Middle
East, the US Secretary of States set to the Karabakh Conflict. In
any case, this is how the latest statement of the Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice can be interpreted. "The USA remains the active party
of the negotiations on the peaceful regulation of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Conflict. The USA doesn’t recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh as an
independent state, and its government body is not recognized in the
international level or in the USA.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The USA recognizes the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan and thinks that the future of the Nagorno-Karabakh is an
issue of negotiations between the countries, which aim at a long-term
and a comprehensive political resolution of the conflict.

The USA remains attached to the idea of finding a peaceful regulation
of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict within the frames of the OSCE Minsk
Group," says the statement. The given statement doesn’t make it quite
clear what Rice meant speaking about "the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan" and "the peaceful regulation of the problem". Again;
being the assignee of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, which
stopped existing in 1920, the present Azerbaijan does not have any
rights on the Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan, since these regions
weren’t included in Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. How is it
possible to speak about the peaceful regulation of the problem, when
on the one hand the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev once a week
says that the "patience of the nation is not unlimited and Azerbaijan
will return its territories", and on the other there is the nation of
Artsakh, which is ready to protect the hard-won independence. However,
maybe such "trifles" are not taken in account, as it may be seen in
the case with the Balkans and Palestine.

On the official website of the US State Department there is also
the American version of the conflict, where the USA is trying to be
objective: "the armed conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh lasted from 1990
to 1994.

>From the moment when the ceasefire came into force in 1994 the
computing system of Armenia has been controlling the most part of
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, as well as a large part of
the adjacent Azeri territories. The military operations, as well as
the displacement of the Armenian people from Azerbaijan and the Azeri
people from Armenia brought to the existence of millions of refugees
and displaced people. Over 100 thousand Azerbaijani today live in
the camps for the refugees, in terrible conveniences.

Turkey has closed its land frontier with Armenia as a sign of
solidarity towards Azerbaijan. The USA grants assistant to those who
have suffered from the conflict." Everything seems to be correct,
yet, for some reasons, there is nothing about the reasons underlying
history the conflict, nothing about the regime of strict isolation
of Armenia, which, by the way, the USA indirectly supports, allowing
the realization of the trans-regional projects passing over the RA.

However, let us turn back to the inquiry of the Department of
States. "Since 1999 the President Heydar Aliyev and Robert Kocharyan
have started a dialogue in a format of two-sided meetings. Aliyev and
Kocharyan had a meeting in Key West in April 2001. The parties have
achieved serious success, but could not come to a compromise over a
comprehensive regulation. Presidents Aliyev and Kocharyan met in the
frames of a multilateral meeting at the end of the year of 2001 and in
August in 2002, but could not overcome the disagreement. President
Aliyev died in 2003 and the process of the negotiations slowed
down, since presidential elections were held in both countries last
year. In 2004 the mediators initiated a series of meetings in Prague
between the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and the Minister
of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan. This meeting was to boost up the
dialogue between the countries. The negotiations on the suggested
principles continued from 2005 to 2006.

In the frames of the session of the chairs of the OCSE Minsk Group
in Madrid in November of 2007 the representatives of the three
mediator-parties; Nicolas Burns, Berner Kushner and Sergey Lavrov –
officially introduced the fundamental principles to the Minister
of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and the Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Azerbaijan and demanded that they accepted the suggestions and
continued the regulation process on their bases. The mediators
spoke of their intention to continue the negotiations on the basic
principles in 2008," states the document. The strange thing is that
there is nothing about "the basic principles", though one of those
principles, the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh, is one of the issues of
the negotiations. According to Azeri version, which is most probably
supported by the USA, the Nagorno-Karabakh is supposed to be granted
a status of "large autonomy". Quite naturally the Armenian party does
not agree with this. Because of this the negotiations are still in
process and will be in process for a long while. "It should be taken
into account that the process of regulation and the conflict itself
are two quite different things. The conflict itself depends on the
balance of power. Not only the army, but the economies, policies,
and levels of lobbying in different international bodies are also
involved. But the most important component of the balance of power
is the Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in the Armenian control," thinks
the Armenian expert Alexander Iskandaryan.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMEMBERED

Athens News Agency
April 21 2008
Greece

Events marking the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide were
held in the northern port city of Thessaloniki on Sunday, organised
by the Armenian National Committee and the Thessaloniki Prefecture.

The keynote speaker at the event, held at the Vellidis Conference
Centre, was former parliament president Apostolos Kaklamanis, while
greetings were also addressed by Macedonia-Thrace Minister Margaritis
Tzimas, representatives of the Armenian ambassador in Greece, of
Thessaloniki Prefect Panayiotis Psomiadis, by Thessaloniki Mayor
Vassilis Papageorgopoulos and representatives of the Armenian Youth
of Greece.

The speakers noted the efforts being made for recognition of the
Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government, and on ways of averting
other genocides from taking place in the future.

Caption: A scene from a wreath-laying ceremony in Thessaloniki on
Sunday, 20 April, 2008.

MEMBERS OF NEWLY CREATED ALLIANCE CALL ON NOT TO BUY TURKISH GOODS
By Marieta Makarian

AZG Armenian Daily
22/04/2008

Armenian Genocide

Yesterday, founder and co-chairman of "International alliance of martyr
nations" Avetis Kaladzian, chairman of Yerevan "Bonti" Greece NGO
Fruntik Nikoyait and chairman of Federation of Assyrian Organizations
Irina Kasparian met with the journalists in "Hayatsk" club.

Mr. Kaladzian informed that the Greeks, Ezidies, Assyrians united
the alliance to struggle for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
committed by Turkey not only against Armenians, but also Pontic Greeks,
Kurds, Ezidies and Assyrians.

The Alliance aims at gathering all the martyr nations of 19th-20th
centuries and continuing the struggle in order "the genocides of our
nations should be recognized, adopted and compensated by the Turkish
state", mentioned Mr. Kaladzian.

The start of the special program will be given on April 24 – a
wreath-laying at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex to commemorate
1,5 mln victims of the Armenian Genocide.

On May 19 and August 7 wreath-laying ceremonies will be held to
commemorate victims of Greece and Assyrian Genocides.

A book will be published that will involve brief information of
researches on 70 nations’ martyrdom by Turks.

Members of the alliance call on not to by goods of Turkish production
and boycott tourism in Turkey.

Several websites are being created that will inform the world about
the genocides committed by Turks against 70 nations.

WHY CHIEF OF POLICE OF MARTUNI WAS DISMISSED

KarabakhOpen
22-04-2008 11:42:13

"For the sake of the percentage of revealed crimes it is a Soviet
tradition in law enforcement agencies when officials of different
ranks do not register crimes which will hardly be revealed," said
the prosecutor general of NKR Arshavir Gharamyan in a recent news
conference.

The prosecutor general gave the example of the chief of the police
of Martuni who was dismissed. "After innumerable warnings to register
and to investigate crimes, we submitted a petition with the director
of the Police, and after a study the chief of the police of Martuni
was dismissed," said the prosecutor.