Author: Maghakian Mike

GEM AND JEWELRY MAKING DEVELOPMENT AGENCY TO BE CREATED IN FEBRUARY

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 1, NOYAN TAPAN. It is envisaged that in February the
Armenian government will make a decision on creation of the Gem and
Jewelry Making Development Agency adjunct to the RA Ministry of Trade
and Economic Development. Gagik Mrkrtchian, Head of the Gem and
Jewelry Department of the ministry, stated this.

According to him, the agency will implement the 2005-2007 program on
Armenia’s gem and jewelry sector, which will help overcome the
two-year-long crisis in the sector. G. Mkrtchian noted that the agency
will first of all deal with the problem of legislative reforms. In
his opinion, the experience of the the United Arab Emirates where
considerable progress in the gem sector has been registered in the
past 5 years can be used in Armenia. "The matter concerns developing
the gem and jewelry sector by sharply increasing investments through
certain tax and customs reforms," he said.

According to him, the sector’s development in the UAE was also
encouraged by creation of free trade zones, which, in the words of F.
Mkrtchian, "is used by all countries that have a developed wholesale
market of rough and cut diamnonds." The formation of such conditions
is first of all conducive to development of small and medium
enterprises of the sector.

"Under favorable conditions 200-300 enterprises will be set up against
the current 30 licensed diamond cutting enterprises," G. Mkrtchian
noted, adding that there are many jewelry enterprises in Armenia, most
of which are small and medium ones. According to him, the number of
gem and jewelry enterprises in the UAE reaches a thousand.

The ministry official said that in late 2005, Armenia’s gem and
jewelry sector employed 4,550 people. In 2006, this number declined by
600.

Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS General Newswire
February 1, 2007 Thursday 6:16 PM MSK

Baku hails Moscow’s position on Nagorno-Karabakh

The Azeri Foreign Ministry has welcomed Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s statement that Moscow had been trying to help Baku and
Yerevan find a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem

"Putin’s words are in unison with Azerbaijan’s approval of more
active efforts on the part the OSCE Minsk Group’s co-chairmen,
including the Russian side," the Azeri Foreign Ministry’s official
spokesman Tair Tagizade told Interfax on Thursday.

"The co-chairmen’s role is not to impose a solution on anyone – this
is out of the question, and here we agree with the Russian president
– but to promote the search for a solution, just what they have been
doing," the spokesman said.

Earlier on Thursday, Putin told reporters in the Kremlin that it was
up to Armenia and Azerbaijan to find a solution on the issue of
Nagorno-Karabakh.

"Don’t shift this problem onto our shoulders. You must find a
mutually acceptable way out yourselves," the Russian leader said.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 31 2007

The old Erdogan and the new Erdogan

by SELCUK GULTASLI

What Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has been saying for the last
several days about the deep state and the need to fight against it
struck me as an honest confession. The style he has recently been
using reminds me of the Erdogan of 2002-2004 when he was dubbed
the greatest Turkish reformer since President Turgut Özal, possibly
since Mustafa Kemal.
Now he argues that we have paid dearly as a nation for not doing
enough to destroy the basis of the deep state. By `we’ he, of course,
means politicians. On his way to Ethiopia, Erdogan admitted that
as the executive branch, they were only able to dig to a certain
depth, implying that the judiciary and the legislative were not
always helpful with the excavation.
What should also be noted carefully are his remarks dating the
creation of the deep state back to the Ottoman Empire. I assume he
means the last 10 years of the Ottoman Empire, when the Committee of
Union and Progress toppled the government of Kamil Paşa on
January 1913 by a bloody coup and then ruled the huge empire, not
with laws but with lawlessness. This is why most of the cabinet did
not even know the Ottomans had sided with the Germans and entered
World War I, which marked the end of the empire. That is why the
Armenian deportation led to a disaster. That is why Istanbul learned
about the 90,000 troops who froze to death in 1915 at
Sarıkamış only after the end of the war, three years
after the calamity.
Turkey has had four military coups in the last 47 years and there has
not been one single general who organized and carried out the coups
brought to justice. The only reason many people support the EU bid is
the assumption that the process will let Turkey be a more transparent
state in which the government decides everything, from Cyprus to the
promotion of its generals.
However, I admittedly have some doubts whether the prime minister
will follow up to what he said on the deep state. That is why I am
talking about the Erdogan of 2002-2004 when he was the leader of
a party, which dared to fight against all the remnants of the deep
state.
I miss the Erdogan who he said he would support the Annan Plan
for Cyprus reunification despite enormous opposition at home, not the
Erdogan who calls on NGOs to agree among themselves to get rid
of Article 301.
I miss the Erdogan who went to Diyarbakır and publicly
declared that Turkey had made mistakes in its policies vis-à-vis its
Kurdish people, not the Erdogan who acquiesced to the sacking
Van prosecutor Ferhat Sarıkaya, who prepared the Şemdinli
indictment.
I saw glimpses of that Erdogan when he invited members of the
Armenian diaspora to Hrant Dink’s funeral, not when he though
carrying placards that read `We are all Armenians’ was not
appropriate.
We miss this Erdogan as a statesman but not as a politician,
particularly when we are heading toward two elections!

INGO ARMENIA OPENS FIRST FAMILY MEDICINE CENTER FOR INSURED PEOPLE

Yerevan, January 31. ArmInfo. The first commercial Family Medicine
Center will be opened in Armenia in Jan 2007, says the director of the
leading medical insurer of Armenia, Ingo Armenia, Levon Altunyan.

The Center will have modern medical equipment, particularly,
40-parameter hematological analyzer, ultra sound fat tester, digital
electro-cardiographer and ultra-sonographer. This equipment will allow
to make right diagnosis and to prescribe complex treatment. Family
doctors will provide first aid in neurology, ophthalmology,
gynecology, cardiology. The patients will be able to consult the
leading specialists of the country. Altunyan notes that family doctors
will show individual approach to their patients: they will not only
treat them but will also prevent diseases and propagate healthy
lifestyle.

One more advantage of family medicine is that all family members may
get doctor’s advice. The key goal of the Center is to provide
highly-professional medical assistance, to reduce treatment due to
effective diagnostics in line with the standards of WHO and the Health
Care Ministry of Armenia.

The clients of Ingo Armenia will be treated free of charge. "We are
opening this Center first of all for our own clients," says Altunyan.

The future of chess belongs to Armenian and Azerbaijani Grand Masters

ArmRadio.am
31.01.2007 15:28

Ex-World Champion Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), who won the Corus
International Chess Tournament held in the Dutch city of Wijk aan Zee
together with Levon Aronyan and Teymur Rajabov, said that the future
of chess belongs to Armenian and Azerbaijani Grand Masters.

`Rajabov is one of the strongest Grand Masters in the world. His style
is a Southern one, like that of Kasparov. I can say almost the same
about Levon Aronyan. The future of chess belongs to them,’ Topalov
said in an interview with `Sport Express.’

PanARMENIAN.Net

Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway construction to begin in June
30.01.2007 18:01 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Tbilisi, Baku and Ankara ignored `Armenian’ warning
of the U.S.A., Russian `Izvestia’ writes. The construction works of
the strategic Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway will launch in June 2007,
stated the Turkish Ministry if Foreign Affairs today. The MFA
underlined that on February 7 a trilateral frame agreement will be
signed in Tbilisi between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Turkish
premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be present at the signing ceremony.

`This project, which has strategic importance, will give new impulse
to regional cooperation. The Turkish side will participate in the
construction works with readiness. The railroad will stretch along
Turkish territory, southern parts of the Caucasus, Central Asia and
China joining with Europe,’ says the statement of Turkish
MFA. Authorities underline that according to the plan, the
Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway will be given to exploitation within two
years.

It is worth of special notice that the U.S. Congress banned American
banks to finance the construction of the railroad if it bypasses
Armenia. Washington’s uncompromising stance on the issue was once more
confirmed by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza. Particularly he stated that if
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey want to build a railway bypassing
Armenia the U.S. cannot prevent them. But Washington will not assist
it either.

Monday Morning, Lebanon
Jan 29 2007

Turkey: Police probing ultra-nationalist leads in slaying of Hrant
Dink

Photo: A grave being prepared for Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish
journalist whose life was devoted to promoting freedom of speech and
the reconciliation of Armenians and Turks

Turkish police have been focusing their investigation into the murder
of the ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink on alleged links between
the prime suspect and an ultra-nationalist group.

`We’re looking into the political aspect of the murder and possible
links with illegal organizations’, Istanbul police chief Celalettin
Cerrah told the Anatolia news agency.
A prosecutor said that the suspect, 17-year-old Ogun Samast, had
confessed to the murder on January 19 and newspapers quoted the
teenager as telling police he shot Dink because the journalist
`insulted the Turkish nation’.
Dink, 52, was a taboo-breaking critic of the official line on the
1915-17 massacre by the Ottoman authorities of Armenians, which he
labeled as genocide, and was given a suspended six-month jail
sentence last year for `insulting Turkishness’.
Nationalists branded him a `traitor’ and Dink wrote in recent
articles in his weekly Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos that he had
received threats.
Quoting sources close to the investigation, newspapers said police
were probing links between Samast and a small, extremist group in his
home city, Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast.
Samast told police he was told to kill Dink by a friend, Yasin Hayal,
who spent 11 months in jail for a 2004 bomb attack against a
McDonald’s restaurant in Trabzon.
`Yasin told me to shoot Dink. He gave me the gun. So I did’, the
mass-circulation Hürriyet newspaper quoted the teenager as saying.
Turkish newspapers described Hayal, also in police custody, as an
`older brother’ figure who frequently met youngsters in the area and
influenced them with his ultra-nationalist views.
Hürriyet said Samast, an unemployed secondary school graduate, was
among 10 youths aged 15 to 17 whom Hayal had last year trained to
handle and shoot small arms in order to assassinate Dink.
Apart from Samast and Hayal, police were questioning six other
suspects in connection with the killing.
Police conducted a re-enactment under heavy security of the murder
with Samast, which saw passers-by booing the teenager and calling him
a `disgrace’.
Showing no remorse, Samast reportedly told police that he first tried
to meet Dink in his office but was not allowed in by suspicious
staff. He said he waited in the street until Dink returned from a
nearby bank.
`I approached him from behind and fired shot after shot’, Samast was
quoted by the Vatan newspaper as saying. Dink died instantly after
being shot three times in the head and neck.
Samast’s testimony turned the spotlight on Trabzon, a Black Sea port
of one million and a hot-bed of nationalism, which hit the headlines
in February 2006 with the murder of an Italian Catholic priest by a
16-year-old boy.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the police would
look into possible links between Dink’s killing and that of the
priest.
Hated by Turkish nationalists, at times misunderstood by his kinsmen,
Dink was also admired by many in Turkey and abroad for his commitment
to dialogue and reconciliation between the two communities.
`Because he sought reconciliation through truth, he was hated by
hard-liners on both sides. He was a target’, said an editorial in the
English-language daily Today’s Zaman.
Dink risked attack not only by his use of the word `genocide’ but
also by defending in court other people who faced prosecution for
expressing their opinions, notably Nobel Literature Prize laureate
Orhan Pamuk as well as novelist Perihan Magden, who hailed Dink as `a
true patriot’ and `a man with a great heart’.
Born into a modest family in Malatya, Eastern Turkey, Dink moved with
his parents to Istanbul at the age of seven.
He studied philosophy and zoology and took various jobs, including
with the Armenian Church, running a children’s holiday camp and a
bookshop, before founding Agos in 1996.
He was buried last week at an Armenian cemetery in Istanbul after a
ceremony in front of the Agos offices and a religious service at the
Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul. A Turkish diplomat said that
Ankara had invited prominent Armenian religious leaders from around
the world to attend the funeral.
The issue has further poisoned ties between neighbors Turkey and
Armenia; Ankara recognized Yerevan’s independence in 1991 but no
diplomatic relations were established and the border between the two
has been closed since 1993.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 30 2007

Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt: The unlikely agent of change

by LALE SARIIBRAHIMOGLU

Turkey’s outspoken and hawkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar
Büyükanıt has long been uneasy over what he sees as indifference
by foreign diplomats to Turkish military deaths from the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization. The
assassination of Turkey’s leading Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant
Dink, early this month in Istanbul has reportedly prompted
Büyükanıt to lodge similar complaints to a group of ambassadors
from several countries who visited him recently.
It has become a customary practice for Gen. Büyükanıt to invite
people who seek individual appointments from him all at the same time
when his schedule is busy. In one of those meetings full of
ambassadors, Büyükanıt was again critical of some foreign
diplomats’ decision to attend Dink’s funeral but not that of the
soldiers.
It is worth mentioning here that Gen. Büyükanıt strongly
condemned Dink’s slaying and one of his top generals in İstanbul
was at the funeral, while a wreath was sent on behalf of the Turkish
Armed Forces. I mention this to the readers to prevent a possible
misunderstanding that the Turkish military was indifferent to Dink’s
slaying.
But whether we agree or not, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) have long
been uneasy over the absence of foreign diplomats at soldiers’
funerals and apparently seek from diplomats the same sensitivity that
they show to the slaying of the country’s intellectuals and
journalists.
Büyükanıt is keen on meeting with foreign diplomats to express
the military’s views on various foreign policy issues, unlike some of
his predecessors such as retired Gen. Hüseyin
Kıvrıkoğlu , who imposed a ban during his tenure on
such meetings. But during his time no major military reforms were
attempted to reduce the still-existing political power of the
military.
Nevertheless, while meeting with the foreign diplomats, Gen.
Büyükanıt, outspoken by nature, used this opportunity to express
military views on several foreign policy issues.
Here are some excerpts from comments made by Büyükanıt during
his meeting with the diplomats:
`I want the TSK to become smaller in size, but for this to happen we
need modern equipment. Our size is big and people find it difficult
to understand’*
`We won’t send more soldiers to Afghanistan. Turkey has done its bit
in Afghanistan, such as assuming ISAF command twice.’
`NATO needs to do more in Pakistan to solve the situation in
Afghanistan.’
`The damage has already been done in Iraq’s oil-rich Kirkuk, when
records and deeds were destroyed [by the Kurds] soon after the US
invasion of Iraq.’ Büyükanıt implies, for example, that Turkmens
cannot prove that they are from Kirkuk since property records were
destroyed.
`If the US leaves Iraq, the country will disintegrate. As part of
the disintegration, Sunnis and Shiites may decide to attack the
Kurds, who may end up massing on the Turkish border as they did
following the 1991 invasion of Iraq. If the US and other coalition
troops withdraw from Iraq, it would cause instability in the entire
Middle East.’
`The US should increase focus on other parts of Iraq for the
possible stability of the country.’
`Iraqi Kurds [the Kurdish regional government under the Iraqi
Constitution] should be more cooperative with Turkey, and that will
make Ankara more cooperative with them.’
If we put aside the fact that Turkish generals’ keenness to speak
about internal and external politics causes discontent among
foreigners and Turks alike, we have to accept that, paradoxically, it
should be someone like Büyükanıt, supported by both junior and
senior officers, who can teach the powerful military that they must
accept that political authority is higher than military authority if
democracy is to mature in Turkey. But for this to happen, we need
strong a political leadership with the courage to further democratic
reforms.

*I, as a journalist, have heard this argument of the military for
many years, but the main reason behind the military’s difficulty in
downsizing personnel of around 700,000 — most of whom are conscripts
— is political. Through a big army the military maintains its
political power. We all know that ending conscription is the way to
reduce its size.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Armenia won’t enrich uranium
29.01.2007 15:05 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian and Russian Presidents
referred to the issue of the Armenian Nuclear Power
Plant during their meeting in Sochi, RA leader’s
Spokesman Victor Soghomonian told reporters in
Yerevan. Expedience of opening up uranium mines in
Armenia was also discussed, he said. `As you know,
Armenia possesses uranium resources and the expediency
of its extraction should be decided by specialists.
However, Armenia won’t enrich uranium,’ Soghomonian
underscored.

It’s worth mentioning that during the soviet period
uranium mines were run in Kapan but they were closed
over commercial impracticability and disutility.

Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
Jan 27 2007

Turkish Nationalist claims Turkish nation insulted in journalist’s
funeral

Tokat, 27 Jan (AA) – MHP [Nationalist Action Party] Deputy Chairman
Mehmet Sandir has claimed that the Turkish nation has been insulted
and the Turkish state has been challenged during the funeral of
journalist Hrant Dink that was held in Istanbul.

Participating in his party’s Province Council meeting in Tokat,
Sandir claimed that Turkey is undergoing a process of disintegration
due to the policies that have been pursued during the term of the AKP
[Justice and Development Party] government.

Asserting that the AKP government is a national security risk for
Turkey, Sandir said: "What has changed in our lives during the term
of the AKP government? Do we have more food on our table or do we
have more employment? Is our country at a more honourable place? We
believe that our country is being dragged to an environment of chaos
during the term of the AKP government."

Sandir continued as follows:

"On the one hand Kurdish conferences are being held, while on the
other, support is being extended to the Armenian genocide claims.
Furthermore in international politics support is being extended to
the pressure imposed by the EU on the one hand, and on the other,
maps that aim to establish a Kurdistan on our territory by destroying
our country are being published within the framework of the Greater
Middle East Project, of which the prime minister has proudly
announced that he is the co-chairman. In short, during the term of
the AKP government efforts are being made to rapidly disintegrate our
country with its society and its territory. The AKP government is a
national security risk for Turkey."

Hrant Dink’s Funeral Ceremony

Also referring to Agos editor Hrant Dink’s funeral ceremony in
Istanbul, Sandir said the following:

"From Tokat we strongly condemn the developments that occurred during
the funeral of one of our citizens of Armenian origin in Istanbul
this week. We condemn the slogans that were chanted during the
funeral ceremony. We condemn those who cried out slogans such as
‘Murderer state,’ ‘We are all Armenians,’ and ‘We are all Hrant
Dink.’ We are all Turkish and this is Turkey. I will lodge a
complaint with my nation against the prime minister primarily and
every person and every institution that caused this and supported
this. The Turkish nation has been insulted in Istanbul. The Turkish
state has been challenged."

Claiming that these insults are an expression of the determination
for dividing and destroying Turkey, Sandir said: "If you intend to
ensure that the masses adopt a new identity as the expression of the
emotional and humanistic reaction to the hateful murder, this is the
expression of the determination to destroy and divide Turkey."

In conclusion Sandir said the following:

"Why did these masses not carry even a single Turkish flag? Given
that you gathered in order to protest against a murder and given that
you wanted to express the fact that an ethnic identity has been
wronged, why did anyone not carry a Turkish flag as the symbol of
unity? Why did you obstruct those who wanted to carry a Turkish
flag?"