Author: Maghakian Mike

CHIEF OF POLAND’S GENERAL STAFF: "NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT CAN BE SETTLED ONLY IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF AZERBAIJAN"

Today.Az
s/politics/50278.html
Jan 23 2009
Azerbaijan

On January 23 Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev received chief
of the General Staff of the armed forces of Poland, general Franchishek
Gagor, said the press service for the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan.

As is reported, the meeting was attended by Poland’s ambassador to
Azerbaijan Kshishtof Krayevski.

It was noted that the meeting participants discussed issues, resulting
from the contract of bilateral military cooperation and prospects of
deepening this cooperation.

Abiyev informed the visitor about the military and political situation
in the region.

In turn, general Gagor, speaking about the position of his country on
Nagorno Karabakh conflict, announced that the conflict can be settled
only in the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

ARMENIA NOT MATURE FOR EU YET

PanARMENIAN.Net
23.01.2009 17:51 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia can’t join the EU in the near future,
since it hasn’t matured for the Union yet, said France’s Ambassador
to the RA.

"Moreover, we have not adapted the new members yet and further
enlargement is unreal now," Serge Smessov said. "Nevertheless, the
countries engaged in the ENP can achieve great results."

Armenia has chosen the right path, according to him.

"The EU will facilitate implementation of programs in your republic
and in all countries which joined the European Neighborhood Policy,"
Amb. Smessov said.

EX-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PERNOD RICARD UKRAINE APPOINTED GENERAL DIRECTOR OF YEREVAN BRANDY FACTORY

ARKA
Jan 23, 2009

YEREVAN, January 23. /ARKA/. Ara Grigoryan, former Executive Director
of Pernod Ricard Ukraine is appointed General Director of Yerevan
Brandy Factory as of January 1 2009.

Inside the Pernod Ricard a system of 100% professionals is formed and
we have 100% confidence in them, Executive Director of Pernod Ricard
Eastern Europe Eric Lagord told journalists Thursday in introducing
the new general manager of Yerevan Brandy Factory.

Over the ten years when Grigoryan headed Pernod Ricard Ukraine he
created a good team and turned the Ukrainian company to one of the
most successful in Pernod Ricard system, he said.

Along with his high professional qualities he also has an Armenian
citizenship which will help him in his work, Lagord said.

Ex-general manager of Yerevan Brandy Factory Cedrik Retailleau is
appointed as Executive Director of Pernod Ricard Venezuela as of
January 1 2009. It is a progress for Retailleau as Venezuela is one
of the strategic markets on the American continent, he said.

Ara Grigoryan, in his turn, expressed gratitude for the confidence
and the opportunity to work in Armenia.

Pernod Ricard will be talking to you in Armenia now – it was worth
to return to Armenia even only for this, Grigoryan said.

Retailleau wished success to the new director of the factory and
expressed confidence that20it will continue recording achievements.

After having graduated from Yerevan Agricultural Institute Ara
Grigoryan started its professional activity in Yerevan Brandy Factory
in 1989 on various marketing and sales posts. In January 2001 he was
appointed as head of Pernod Ricard representative offices in Ukraine
and in Minsk. Grigoryan will carry out general director’s functions
in Yerevan Brandy Factory and Pernod Ricard Minsk simultaneously.

The Yerevan Brandy Factory was founded in 1887. The current factory
complex was put in operation in 1953. In June 1998 the factory joined
the Pernod Ricard group, an international corporation owning a number
of famous trademarks of alcoholic drinks and ranking the second in
the world in production and sales of alcoholic drinks. Pernod Ricard
purchased the Yerevan Brandy factory for $30mln at an international
tender.

Armenian National Committee Professional Network
104 N Belmont St. Suite 200
Glendale, CA 91206

ANC-PN Professionals Panel Series presents:
Mass Media in the Armenian Community

Join the ANC Professional Network and the Woodbury University Armenian
Student Association to meet with media professionals and discuss the
impact of the mass media in the Armenian American community.

For those interested in learning more about media and the community,
this is an excellent opportunity to network with media professionals in
the field. Featured panelists will discuss their career paths within
the fields of print, radio and television media.

The panel will feature Paul Chaderjian from the Armenian Reporter,
Maria Armoudian, formerly of KPFK, Ara Khachatourian of Asbarez Daily
Newspaper, and Harry Vorperian from Horizon TV.

The program will feature a short introduction by the panelists about
what they do and how media impacts the Armenian American community,
followed by questions from the moderator and then an open question and
answer session with the panelists.

Hors’ dourves and light refreshments will be served.

Date: Saturday, January 31, 2009
Time: 1:30pm – 3:30pm
Location: Hensel Hall Conference Room, Woodbury University
7500 Glenoaks Boulevard
Burbank, CA

Please direct all questions to:
Phone: 818-500-1918
Email: [email protected]

We look forward to having you join the PN and Woodbury U ASA for this
educational workshop.

PRESIDENTS OF ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN TO MEET IN THE NEAR FUTURE

armradio.am
20.01.2009 18:10

President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, received the
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, Yuri Merzlyakov (Russia), Matthew Bryza
(USA) and Bernard Fassier (France), and the Personal Representative
of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk. The Foreign Minister
of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, was present at the meeting.

The interlocutors discussed issues related to the current stage
of negotiations on the Karabakh conflict settlement. The co-Chairs
informed the President about the results of their earlier meetings
in Baku. An agreement was reached on the organization of the meeting
of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the near future.

ARMENIA PM VISITS NAGORNO KARABAKH

armradio.am
19.01.2009 16:06

On January 17 and 18 the Prime Minister of Armenia, Tigran
Sargsyan, visited the Nagorno Karabakh Republic. The Prime
Minister was accompanied by the Ministers of Defense, Transport and
Communication. The visit was aimed at discussing the coordination
and implementation of the cooperation programs agreed upon during
the sitting of the Governments of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.

The Armenian Prime Minister visited capital Stepanakert and Shahumyan
region, including regional center Karvachar, talked to the population
and familiarized with the problems they face. Accompanied by NKR
President Bako Sahakyan and Prime Minister Ara Harutyunyan, PM Tigran
Sargsyan visited "Base Metals" Company of Drmbon.

In Stepanakert the Head of Armenian Government visited military
units of the Defense Army, familiarized with the everyday life of
the servicemen and had meetings with the Officer staff. The Defense
Minister of Nagorno Karabakh presented the issues of army-building
and the development programs.

RA Premier said during the meeting with reporters that problems could
be solved easier with joint effort.

ARMENPRESS

CO-RAPPORTEURS OF PACE MONITORING COMMISSION TO PRESENT REPORT ON
THEIR MEETINGS IN ARMENIA JANUARY 26

YEREVAN, JANUARY 16, ARMENPRESS: Co-rapporteurs of the Council of
Europe Parliamentary Assembly Monitoring Commission Jorge Columbien
and John Prescott will present report over their January 15 meetings
in Armenia and implementation of PACE 1609 and 1620 resolutions to the
commission January 26. Secretary of the Commission Bas Klein who
arrived with the co-rapporteurs told Armenpress that Jorge Columbien
and John Prescott refuse to make comments over their impressions from
the visit noting that they will present their assessments in the
report.
B. Klein also said that the co-rapporteurs did not see a necessity
of meeting with the representatives of the opposition as the main
addressees of the implementation of the resolutions are the
authorities and it was necessary to learn from them about the progress
in implementation of the resolutions.
The co-rapporteurs on January 15 met with the National Assembly
speaker Hovik Abrahamyan, head of the Armenian delegation to PACE
David Harutyunyan, head of the commission set up for the inquiry into
March 1-2, 2008 events and their causes Samvel Nikoyan, members of the
fact-finding commission, prosecutor general Aghvan Hovsepyan, human
rights defender Armen Harutyunian.
John Prescott and Jorge Columbien also met with President of
Armenia Serzh Sargsyan.

Robert Fisk’s World: When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War
out of it

How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being called Nazis?

Saturday, 17 January 2009
Independent.co.uk Web

Exaggeration always gets my goat. I started to hate it back in the
1970s when the Provisional IRA claimed that Long Kesh internment camp
was "worse than Belsen". It wasn’t as if there was anything nice about
Long Kesh ` or the Maze prison as it was later politely dubbed ` but it
simply wasn’t as bad as Belsen. And now we’re off again. Passing
through Paris this week, I found pro-Palestinian demonstrators carrying
signs which read "Gaza, it’s Guernica" and "Gaza-sur-Glane".

Guernica, as we all know, was the Basque city razed by the Luftwaffe in
1937 and Oradour-sur-Glane the French village whose occupants were
murdered by the SS in 1944. Israel’s savagery in Gaza has also been
compared to a "genocide" and ` of course ` a "holocaust". The French
Union of Islamic Organisations called it "a genocide without precedent"
` which does take the biscuit when even the Pope’s "minister for peace
and justice" has compared Gaza to "a big concentration camp".

Before I state the obvious, I only wish the French Union of Islamic
Organisations would call the Armenian genocide a genocide ` it doesn’t
have the courage to do so, does it, because that would be offensive to
the Turks and, well, the million and a half Armenians massacred in 1915
happened to be, er, Christians.

Mind you, that didn’t stop George Bush from dropping the word from his
vocabulary lest he, too, should offend the Turkish generals whose
airbases America needs for its continuing campaign in Iraq. And even
Israel doesn’t use the word "genocide" about the Armenians lest it
loses its only Muslim ally in the Middle East. Strange, isn’t it? When
there’s a real genocide ` of Armenians ` we don’t like to use the word.
But when there is no genocide, everyone wants to get in on the act.

Yes, I know what all these people are trying to do: make a direct
connection between Israel and Hitler’s Germany. And in several radio
interviews this past week, I’ve heard a good deal of condemnation about
such comparisons. How do Holocaust survivors in Israel feel about being
called Nazis? How can anyone compare the Israeli army to the Wehrmacht?
Merely to make such a parallel is an act of anti-Semitism.

Having come under fire from the Israeli army on many occasions, I’m not
sure that’s necessarily true. I’ve never understood why strafing the
roads of northern France in 1940 was a war crime while strafing the
roads of southern Lebanon is not a war crime. The massacre of up to
1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps ` perpetrated by
Israel’s Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli soldiers watched and
did nothing ` falls pretty much into the Second World War bracket.
Israel’s own estimate of the dead ` a paltry 460 ` was only nine fewer
than the Nazi massacre at the Czech village of Lidice in 1942 when
almost 300 women and children were also sent to Ravensbrück (a real
concentration camp). Lidice was destroyed in revenge for the murder by
Allied agents of Reinhard Heydrich. The Palestinians were slaughtered
after Ariel Sharon told the world ` untruthfully ` that a Palestinian
had murdered the Lebanese Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel.

Indeed, it was the courageous Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz of the
Hebrew University (and editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica) who wrote
that the Sabra and Chatila massacre "was done by us. The Phalangists
are our mercenaries, exactly as the Ukrainians and the Croatians and
the Slovakians were the mercenaries of Hitler, who organised them as
soldiers to do the work for him. Even so have we organised the
assassins of Lebanon in order to murder the Palestinians". Remarks like
these were greeted by Israel’s then minister of interior and religious
affairs, Yosef Burg, with the imperishable words: "Christians killed
Muslims ` how are the Jews guilty?"

I have long raged against any comparisons with the Second World War `
whether of the Arafat-is-Hitler variety once deployed by Menachem Begin
or of the anti-war-demonstrators-are-1930s-appeasers,
most recently
used by George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. And pro-Palestinian
marchers should think twice before they start waffling about genocide
when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem once shook Hitler’s hand and said `
in Berlin on 2 November 1943, to be precise ` "The Germans know how to
get rid of the Jews… They have definitely solved the Jewish problem."
The Grand Mufti, it need hardly be added, was a Palestinian. He lies
today in a shabby grave about two miles from my Beirut home.

No, the real reason why "Gaza-Genocide" is a dangerous parallel is
because it is not true. Gaza’s one and a half million refugees are
treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas
chambers or forced on death marches. That the Israeli army is a rabble
is not in question ` though I was amused to read one of Newsweek’s
regular correspondents calling it "splendid" last week ` but that does
not mean they are all war criminals. The issue, surely, is that war
crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools
is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol.
There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children.

I should add that I had a sneaking sympathy for the Syrian foreign
minister who this week asked why a whole international tribunal has
been set up in the Hague to investigate the murder of one man `=2
0
Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri ` while no such tribunal is set
up to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 Palestinians.

I should add, however, that the Hague tribunal may well be pointing the
finger at Syria and I would still like to see a tribunal set up into
the Syrian massacre at Hama in 1982 when thousands of civilians were
shot at the hands of Rifaat al-Assad’s special forces. The aforesaid
Rifaat, I should add, today lives safely within the European Union. And
how about a trial for the Israeli artillerymen who massacred 106
civilians ` more than half of them children ` at the UN base at Qana in
1996?

What this is really about is international law. It’s about
accountability. It’s about justice ` something the Palestinians have
never received ` and it’s about bringing criminals to trial. Arab war
criminals, Israeli war criminals ` the whole lot. And don’t say it
cannot be done. Wasn’t that the message behind the Yugoslav tribunal?
Didn’t some of the murderers get their just deserts? Just leave the
Second World War out of it.

ESTONIAN PRESIDENT VISITS OIL TERMINAL, HISTORICAL PARK IN AZERBAIJAN

Baltic News Service
January 15, 2009 Thursday 3:07 PM EET

Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, now on an official visit to
Azerbaijan, Wednesday visited the Sangachal oil refinery and the Gala
historical and ethnographic reserve and discussed with the minister
for industry and energy alternative energy supply opportunities to
countries of the European Union.

Ilves and members of the Estonian business delegation were given an
overview of production and technology at a terminal of the Azerbaijani
state oil company that went into operation in 2001, the Azertac news
agency reported. Through that terminal oil arrives at end users
via the Baku-Novorossiisk, Baku-Supsa and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
pipelines and gas via the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline.

On Wednesday the Estonian president also visited the Gala historical
and ethnographic reserve in the vicinbity of the Azerbaijani capital
of Baku. The park has unique historical and cultural monuments starting
from the 3rd century BC.

During Ilves’s meeting with Natig Aliyev, the industry and energy
minister of Azerbaijan, the energy capacity of the country in the
future and the Nabucco pipeline project for the supply of gas to
Europe was discussed.

Commenting on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, President Toomas Hendrik
Ilves Wednesday one more time underlined Estonia’s respect of the
principle of countries’ territorial integrity. Ilves gave an interview
to Azerbaijan’s state television, answering to questions pertaining
to cooperation between the two countries, neighbourhood policy of
the European Union, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, energy security,
the situation of the Azeri community in Estonia and other aspects of
relations between the two countries.

Speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ilves said that Estonia
had always respected the principle of territorial integrity, pointing
out that war had never solved any problems. Ilves added that the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue was not a problem for Azerbaijan alone but to
many countries.

Azerbaijan and Armenia waged a war over Nagorno-Karabakh from February
1988 until May 1994. Because of the war Azerbaijan lost 9 percent of
its territory and more than 800,000 fugitives were forced to return
to Azerbaijan.

After the war a mainly Armenian-populated Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh
with its capital in Stepanakert was established and only the Republic
of Armenia has recognized its independence.

ONE IN BED, THE OTHER IN ISOLATION CELL

A1+
[04:57 pm] 14 January, 2009

"Vardan Jhangiryan’s state is still most concerning. He is still in
bed and needs rest cure. Jhangiryan suffers from a few diseases which
cannot be cured in Armenia," says Lusine Sahakyan, Advocate of ex
Deputy Prosecutor Gagik Jhangiryan and his brother Vardan Jhangiryan.

Remind that Vardan Jhangiryan, charged with violence against a
government representative, suffers from vertebral tuberculosis. His
health further aggravated after receiving a missile wound during the
detention on February 23, 2008. Today he has serious health problems.

The next court sitting is due at 10.00, January 20. The previous
sittings were adjourned because of the defendant’s poor health. Judge
Martirosyan has confirmed the standing judgment on Jhangiryan’s
compulsory attendance.

Note that the advocates have submitted numerous medical certificates
about the defendant’s state. They are going to send new documents
certifying Jhangiryan’s ill health and file a petition for the case
dismissal.

The court ruling on the case of Gagik Jhangiryan will continue on
January 15. The court will hear the policemen invited by Jhangiryan’s
advocates.