Author: Maghakian Mike

SOCIETY SHOULD ASSESS JUDICIAL SYSTEM
Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
19 Feb 05
On February 15 the meeting of the board of the NKR Office of Public
Prosecutor took place, which discussed the results of work done
in 2004 and the statements of the qualification committee. At the
meeting were present NKR President A. Ghukassian, Public Prosecutor
M. Ghukassian, other representatives of the judicial system. The
meeting discussed the work of the police in the previous year, the
necessity and means of improving the effectiveness of the work of the
police. It was mentioned that in the previous year the office of the
public prosecutor conducted checking 115 times and revealed 403 cases
of infractions. According to the statement, the recorded infractions
are typical of almost all the regions with slight differences. Although
numbers are for the good work of the police, there are still unsolved
problems. The public prosecutors of the regions said, they do not
have necessary conditions for better work. For example, the regions of
Shahumian and Kashatagh do not have means of communication, telephone
and transport. Another important question is the problem of training
and qualifying specialists. In 2004 96 suits for protection of state
interests were filed with total claims of 61 million 787 thousand
drams, which were mainly satisfied by the court. The analysis of the
juvenile delinquency rates for 2003 and 2004 showed that in 2004
the rate of juvenile crime grew considerably. To compare, in 2003
17 adolescents committed 13 crimes, whereas in 2004 48 adolescents
committed 34 crimes. On the whole, 518 crimes were committed in NKR
in 2004 (decreasing by 87 against 2003, of these 391 are defined by
criminal law). The majority of delinquencies are connected with rental
of land, government loans. According to the statement of the public
prosecutor of the region of Martuni, the growth of the crime rate
is also determined by the social conditions of people. The majority
of people who committed theft are married men under 40 (who have
to supply their families). Promising to settle the problems which
directly depend on the government, the president of NKR mentioned the
importance of cooperation between the police, courts and the office
of the public prosecutor.
SRBUHI VANIAN.
19-02-2005

DISCRIMINATIONS BY THE RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER
PanArmenian News Analysis
Feb 18 2005
Sergey Lavrov refused to honor the memory of soldiers who protected
the integrity of Georgia, but honored those who killed Baku Armenians
and Russian soldiers.
The official visit of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to
Armenia finished. As a foreign minister, this was his first visit to
his mother’s homeland. Lavrov never concealed his Armenian origin.
This is why certain points of his south-Caucasian tour look
particularly strange.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ From Yerevan the Russian minister left for Tbilisi,
but not on an official visit as planned, but just on a working one.
It should be reminded that Georgian authorities reviewed the status
of the visit in reply to Sergey Lavrov’s refusal to lay a wreath
on the memorial to soldiers fallen in battle for the territorial
integrity of Georgia. According to political analysts that diplomatic
demarche will not strengthen the atmosphere of trust between Moscow
and Tbilisi. By the way Russian officials never avoided laying a
wreath on the memorial since it is required by unwritten norms of the
protocol. It should be noted that virtually all foreign guests of high
rank visiting to Yerevan laid wreaths to the monument of the victims
of Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. This was done even by the
representatives of countries not accepting that the events taken place
in 1915 were genocide. Particularly the president of Kyrgyzstan Askar
Akayev did not doubt the necessity to visit Tsitsernakaberd although
he realized that he would have certain troubles with Azerbaijan and
Turkey – partner countries from “Islamic conference”. The president
was not mistaken. Ankara and Baku sent notes of protest to Bishkek,
but protocol is a protocol…
No one doubts that the actions of Sergey Lavrov were a demarche.
Noteworthy for us is the argumentation brought by the Russian
minister. Explaining the inadmissibility of his presence at the
memorial in Georgia, he said that it would be incorrect to lay a
wreath on the memorial of those who fought against Abkhazia and Osetia
since Russia is a mediator in the settlement of Abkhazian – Osetian
conflict. “As a country that supports the settlement of the conflict,
Russia has to take into account its status. An action like that can
hardly be conductive to creating a proper atmosphere for productive
negotiations between conflict parties”, Sergey Lavrov stated.
This argumentation looks very strange since only two weeks ago, on
February 2, Sergey Lavrov laid a wreath on the “alley of shehids”
in Baku. Here are the graves of those who died in the war forced on
Karabakh by Azerbaijan. If the memorial in Tbilisi is built in memory
of the victims of military actions then in the “alley of shehids”
besides soldiers lie those who slaughtered peaceful Armenians in
Baku yet long before the war. Moreover in the “alley of shehids”
there are also bandits who killed Russian soldiers who came to Baku
in 1990 for protecting Armenians and establishing order. Thus, laying
a wreath in the “alley of shehids”, Lavrov not only desecrated the
memory of hundreds of slaughtered Armenians, but also the memory of
Russian soldiers who fell doing their duty.
For some reason the minister forgets that Russia is a mediator in the
settlement of Karabakh conflict. The Russian diplomat with Armenian
roots did not think that “an action like that will not contribute
to creating a proper atmosphere for productive negotiations between
conflict parties”. Most unpleasant is that such a step is made by a
representative of the country that is considered to be the strategic
partner of Armenia.
Artyom Yerkanyan
–Boundary_(ID_tiNEOI5x5+OfmSNfx7vlzQ)–

SWITZERLAND-ARMENIA UNION CALLED PRESIDENT OF SWISS CONFEDERATION TO RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
PanArmenian News
Feb 18 2005
18.02.2005 17:26
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Switzerland-Armenia Union called President of
the Swiss Confederation Samuel Schmidt to acknowledge the Armenian
Genocide. In their statement the Union representatives reminded that
Geneva has recently recognized the Armenian Genocide while the Canton
leadership has not.

PRESS RELEASE
UN Department of Public Information, Yerevan Office
2 Petros Adamyan str., First Floor
Yerevan 375010, Armenia
Contact: Armine Halajyan, UN DPI Information Assistant
Tel.: (374 1) 560 212
Fax/Tel.: (374 1) 561 406
Millennium Development Goals-an Agenda for Human Development
Interview with Professor Jerzy Osiatynski, MDGs Advocate for
East and Central Europe and CIS Countries
UN DPI’s Information Assistant, Armine Halajyan, met Professor Osiatynski on
his second visit to Armenia, during which he was calling for a better
understanding of MDGs and how they mesh with the Poverty Reduction Strategy
Paper (PRSP) and other Government policies. An economist by profession and
a professor of economics at the Institute of Economics in the Polish Academy
of Sciences, he has also enjoyed something of a political career as Minister
of Finance (1991-1992) and a member of Polish Parliament (1989-2001).
* Could you define the MDGs? What are they? Are they merely theoretical
guidelines or can they be employed in everyday life?
When the Millennium Declaration was signed by 190 nations in 2000, it was
billed at first as a concept or framework to help create national strategies
to deal with the basic challenges facing humanity in the UN member
countries. The 8 goals address the most critical issues: poverty, education,
health, gender, environment. Goal 8 differs slightly in that it recommends
public and private partnership, and global partnership towards achieving
those goals. Partnership at the global level calls for the rich to assist
the poor to meet those MDGs, while at the national level it challenges the
corporate sector to find ways to feel and be responsible in guiding public
goals, private business, private sector partners, and local and central
government towards achieving the other MDGs.
This means that the MDGs had to be formulated in broad terms so that all 190
countries could sign the declaration. However, it was and still is believed
that the goals need to be localized or domesticated by every country in
order to address specific issues; there is an effort in the Regional Bureau
for European Countries to take the broad theory of MDGs and work it into
more specific targets for each local area, taking into account the most
pressing needs of each.
Moreover, MDGs touch everyday life since the various strategies of social
development that are driven by them require the participation of all kinds
of stakeholders.
* Since this is your second visit to Armenia, you have some idea of how the
MDGs are being approached here. Armenia committed itself to these Goals when
it signed the declaration but parallel to this there is the PRSP process and
the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) in which Armenia is included. How do
these various strategies and activities currently underway relate to each
other?
I think there has been great progress in Armenia towards developing a
poverty reduction strategy that goes far beyond a mere emphasis on economic
growth. Of course, it is true that as an economy grows, the average wage
increases and thus, as a rule, poverty is reduced. However, there is no
guarantee that this will occur-we have seen many cases in countries
transitioning from communism to democracy and market economy where national
economic growth has not led to a reduction in poverty. When the difference
between household incomes rapidly increases, you may have economic growth
but an increase in poverty. Moreover, we know that poverty is often a rural
phenomenon, especially where land is infertile and in mountainous regions;
economic growth is mainly concentrated in large urban areas. So, economic
growth alone cannot produce holistic development. That is why we have
recently seen a shift in thinking about development from emphasizing
economic growth towards stressing the need for human development and access
to education, health and other public services. Indeed, in many countries in
the region we see that respective poverty reduction strategies are
increasingly MDG-driven because the MDGs form an agenda for human
development-they include economic development but are not confined to it. So
in a sense you may say that there is huge overlap between the PRSP and MDGs
in Armenia. With time we will see more and more of this overlap.
* What is the current connection between these two? And what about the link
with the MCA, which is addressed to only 16 countries?
Estimates carried out under the Millennium project showed that poor
countries could only meet their respective localized Millennium Goals if
they received an annual transfer of around 50 billion dollars.
* Does that mean there are only 16 ‘poor’ countries?
No-there are many more. And, of course, there is poverty in rich states
too-in the US or EU countries, for example. Nevertheless, some months ago
the US Government decided to donate 2 billion dollars to help countries that
would otherwise struggle to meet the MDGs. We could say that we are now only
48 billion short! The US Government named 16 countries that would benefit
from this 2 billion. Quotas granted will not be uniform, but approximately
140-150 million dollars will be donated each year-a large sum, especially
for relatively small countries. The MCA exists to allocate the money to
projects that are mainly ensuring sustainable growth-you could say that
money will be given to eligible poor countries in order to promote economic
development. The money can be spent on projects proposed by Government,
local government or NGOs-the only condition is that the stakeholder must be
able to show that the money will be used to advance the MDGs. This is the
link. The MCA is not an alternative to the MDGs. In fact, those involved
need to show progress towards achieving MDGs if financial assistance is to
continue.
When the money was offered as a grant, all the governments of the 16
eligible countries immediately turned towards proposing projects that would
be oriented towards economic growth-not always MDG-oriented. This was a
mistake. And I suspect that this is one of the reasons why there are some
difficulties with grant allocations to Armenia. I believe that the projects
that will be accepted and approved will be those alleviating poverty in poor
localities and serving the wider achievement of all MDGs.
* Since you are the advocate for Eastern Europe and CIS countries, I wonder
what you can tell us about how our immediate neighbours, Georgia and
Azerbaijan, are doing in achieving the MDGs?
That is a difficult question to answer. I haven’t been to either of those
two countries and all I know about their progress is second-hand from
reading their documents. Obviously, I wouldn’t like to make any judgments
based on that sort of information. However, I would like to make a different
point in this context: the whole philosophy of the MDGs requires that the
political commitment of countries that signed the Millennium Declaration is
clearly visible. It is vital that there is evidence of progress in achieving
MDGs. In a sense, whether all targets and goals are reached is of secondary
importance. I am not saying reaching goals does not matter, but perhaps more
important is political commitment that brings progress significant enough to
be felt by the general public. We certainly do not want to put any emphasis
on cross-country comparisons. It is a national agenda for every country’s
government. It is an agenda for the whole nation or local government, or
NGOs. This is not a beauty contest! We want to see every country progressing
towards the goals according to their own specific needs with their own
specific agenda and their own policy instruments to address all these
issues. That is the essence of localizing the MDGs.
* How are MDGs prioritized? For Armenia, Goal 1 is the priority, as we had
mentioned earlier. But which goal comes next in your opinion?
Prioritization means that many countries have several strategies but there
are limited resources. All Government projects are subject to hard budget
constraints and thus they need to fit into the medium term budget
expenditure. In this context you need to decide how much you are willing to
spend on specific concerns. This is how I understand prioritization.
* Is there any advice you’d like to add-for the government or general
public?
I think Armenia still has a fair way to go before genuine participation is
ensured-and the same could be said for government and financial
decentralization. Responsibilities for delivering some public goods should
not be delegated without first decentralizing finances. It is absolutely
vital to do that.
Also, we are in a process that clearly takes a long time to bear
fruit-change is required within a whole generation. It is crucial that the
corporate culture of governance is revised. Good governance and elimination
of corruption might become a separate and a rather important additional goal
in Armenia, just as Albania decided to make it. This agenda as a separate
goal has its own policy instruments, own targets and own indicators. I think
it could make sense if the Albanian experience is carefully studied here and
taken into consideration.
The interview is published in issue #22 of the UN Armenia Office Bulletin to
be posted soon at
* * *

Aristakes sings Armenian anthem during international match
Amersfoortse Courant (Dutch regional newspaper)
February 13, 2005
NIJKERK – Aristakes from Nijkerk will perform in front of at least thirty
thousand listeners. The singer was asked by the Royal Dutch Football
Association (KNVB) to sing the Armenian national anthem during the
international football match Netherlands-Armenia.
With this, the singer of Armenian heritage, will be the center of attention
on March 30 during the international match that will be played in Eindhoven
in the stadium of football club PSV.
An employee of the KNVB asked Aristakes whether he would like to sing the
Armenian national anthem at the start of the match.
“I immediately sat behind a piano and played the song. He was instantly
captivated,” says the Nijkerkian singer. Aristakes promptly suggested to
sing the Dutch national anthem as well.
“In the current discussions on integration, I think this is a chance to show
how you can adapt yourself in a foreign country”, says the Armenian.
Whether the Dutch anthem will indeed sound from his throat on March 30 is
still to be confirmed by the KNVB. The singer is not nervous for his
contribution to the international football match. “During the anthem usually
only the players are shown.”
Aristakes Yessayan has been living in the Netherlands since 1956. In the
1980s, the singer born in Greece scored two Top-40 hits with the songs
“Diamond Forever” and “Don’t Wanna Live Without You”.
This week the Foundation Square Promotion Nijkerk, organiser of events in
downtown Nijkerk, announced that Aristakes is the new chairman of the
organization.
He replaces Bert van ‘t Hazeveld who wants to have more free time for his
administrative function at football club NSC.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Oil-for-food was money for jam
New York correspondent David Nason
Australian, Australia
Feb 14 2005
IN an Armenian community newsletter circulated in New York in 2002,
Benon Sevan, the career diplomat accused of presiding over massive
corruption in the UN’s now defunct oil-for-food program in Iraq,
complained that he operated in the world’s toughest neighourhoods. “I
have no choice but to deal with the people involved,” he said at
the time.
In the end that may be the only defence left to the 68-year-old
Sevan who, on all the currently available evidence, stands guilty
of allowing the biggest aid program in UN history to descend into a
cesspit of patronage, bribes and kickbacks – a disaster that provided
Saddam Hussein with a secret, illegal income stream worth possibly
billions of dollars.
Exactly how much cash Saddam and his henchmen managed to rort from
dodgy UN-approved oil contracts between 1996 and 2003, and where
all that cash went, are key questions in the multitude of UN and US
congressional inquiries into oil-for-food now under way.
The biggest fear is that Saddam managed to channel large chunks
into the pockets of terrorist outfits such as Hamas, Hezbollah and
al-Qa’ida, a frightening concern given that some estimates say upwards
of $US5 billion ($6.5billion) was skimmed.
There are other compelling questions in the oil-for-food case too, like
why Kojo Annan, the son of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, continued
to be paid $US30,000 a year for five years by Cocetna Inspections,
a Swiss company holding a lucrative oil-for-food contract to monitor
the humanitarian aid arriving in Iraq, when he no longer worked for
it? And what role, if any, did the Secretary-General play in Cocetna
getting its contract in the first place?
For Australia also there are potential implications. Australian
wheat formed a significant part of food imports to Iraq under the
oil-for-food program and there have been allegations – all of them
denied by the Australian Wheat Board – of kickbacks worth $120 million
to keep US wheat out.
The answers to such questions will have a big bearing on how radical
the US push to reform or even abandon the UN becomes, but for Sevan,
who climbed from humble beginnings in Cyprus to become a trusted senior
official in charge of both the oil-for-food program and security at
all UN offices around the world post September 11, the catastrophe is
personalised by the expectation he soon will face corruption charges
of his own.
While he denies any criminal wrongdoing, this month’s interim report
of the UN’s independent inquiry headed by former US Federal Reserve
chairman Paul Volcker confirmed allegations first raised in 2004
that Sevan repeatedly lobbied Saddam officials in the late 1990s
to provide contracts to a Swiss-based company run by small-time oil
trader Fahkry Abdelnour.
Sevan did himself no favours when he told Volcker’s investigators
he and Abdelnour hardly knew each other and had spoken just once –
a fabrication quickly exposed by a check of his UN phone records and
electronic diaries. It got worse when Abdelnour confessed to paying an
illegal $US160,000 surchage into an Iraqi-controlled Jordanian bank
account once the 11-million-barrel oil concession Sevan had secured
on his behalf was sold.
Not surprisingly, there is now intense interest in the financing of
properties Sevan owns in Manhattan, New Jersey, the expensive upstate
New York district of Rye and in the elite Hamptons precinct of Long
Island Sound.
Also troubling investigators is a mysterious $US160,000 deposit in
one of Sevan’s US bank accounts.
Sevan claims the cash came from the Cypriot aunt who raised him as a
child, but in a twist worthy of a John Le Carre thriller, the aunt fell
down an elevator shaft in Nicosia last June – police say accidently –
and died before she could be questioned.
In his report, Volcker expressed doubts that the aunt had the means
to provide Sevan with funds of such magnitude, a view supported in
Cyprus last week by editor, publisher and fellow Armenian Matthew
der Parthogh, whose father Georges is one of Sevan’s oldest friends.
“She (the aunt) had just a small flat and she lived on a pension, so
I doubt very much the money came from her,” der Parthogh said. “She
was a public servant who never married and was quite frugal, but I
still don’t think it is possible.”
More revealing is der Parthogh’s view that Sevan may have fallen
victim to his own deceptions.
“Many times Benon was in Cyprus and told us he did things for the UN in
Iraq and other places that in the West would be considered unethical,”
de Parthogh explained.
“He made no apologies for it. He said you had to know how to manoeuvre
your way through bureaucracy and know when to turn a blind eye to
make sure things got done.
“In Iraq he always said his job was to get humanitarian aid to the
suffering people, so he did what had to done. I don’t think Benon is
crooked but maybe he was not so bright sometimes.”
Curiously it was to Australia, not Cyprus, that Sevan fled when the
first whiff of scandal about his oil lobbying for Abdelnour emerged
in 2004, ironically in the newly free Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada which
named 270 individuals who had received vouchers to buy Iraqi oil at
cut-rate prices.
Among those named on official documents Al-Mada obtained were then
Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri, British Labor MP George
Galloway, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and a small army
of Russian politicians.
When this extraordinary tale was picked up by the international media,
Sevan took off, holing up at a luxury resort at Noosa in Queensland. A
month later he returned to New York and announced his retirement.
Australian ambassador to the UN John Dauth said last week he understood
Sevan had visited a close friend in Queensland. But he said he had
not had any requests from investigators for information about Sevan’s
movements in Australia.
Despite his retirement Sevan remains a UN staffer with full diplomatic
immunity, courtesy of a token annual $US1 salary agreement that
ensures his continued co-operation with the Volcker inquiry.
However, Annan has vowed that if a prosecutor establishes a criminal
case against Sevan, he will remove the diplomatic immunity in order
for justice to take its course.
What would happen to Annan’s immunity should Volcker nail him in
regard to Cocetna is unclear, but the most likely scenario for
Sevan is charges laid by the Manhattan district attorney who has
been given copies of all relevant files and is conducting a criminal
investigation.

US Company to Tackle Development of Gold Deposits
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Feb 12 2005
AssA-Irada 12/02/2005 17:50
A special program on tapping Azerbaijan’s gold deposits has been
developed and submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers, Minister of
Ecology and Natural Resources Huseyn Baghirov told journalists
on Friday.
After the document is passed, US RV Investment Group will tackle
large-scale activity on developing the country’s gold fields, he said.
The US company plans to invest some $500 million in the project,
of which $30-40 million will be spent on exploration work.
The Minister did not elaborate on the gist of the program, but said
RV Investment has already started work on these fields.
Baghirov earlier said that the government had given RV Investment
Group the last opportunity to resume work on the relevant agreement,
saying that if the contract terms are not met, it will start talks
with other companies.
The 25-year agreement, signed earlier by Azergyzyl state company,
abolished in 1997, and RV Investment Group (with Azerbaijan holding
51% stake and the US company 49%), envisions developing 9 fields
containing 400 tons of gold, 2,500 tons of silver and 1.5 million tons
of copper. These fields are mainly located in the Kalbajar, Zangilan,
Dashkasan and Ordubad regions. Three of the deposits are located in
Azerbaijani territories currently occupied by Armenian armed forces.

VANDALS REPLACE ARMENIAN GRAVESTONES WITH GEORGIAN ONES OUTSIDE ARMENIAN
CHURCH IN TBILISI
AKHALKALAKI, FEBRUARY 9. ARMINFO. Unknown vandals attacked one of
the Armenian cultural monuments in Tbilisi.
According to A-INFO, last night, Armenian gravestones were stolen
from the courtyard of the Armenian St.Virgin Church and replaced with
Georgian ones. Leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church Georgian
Diocese, bishop Vazgen Mirzakhanyan is concerned that the next
victim will be the church itself and all the Armenian churches
in Georgia. Bishop Mirzakhanyan intends to apply to the Georgian
President Mihkeil Sahakashvili for help.

PanArmenian News
Feb 8 2005
BUSH ADMINISTRATION PROPOSED $55 MILLION AID TO ARMENIA IN FY 2006
08.02.2005 14:40
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian Assembly of America has welcomed the
positive components of the Bush Administration’s Armenia-related
foreign aid allocations of the just-released FY 2006 budget, and
especially the parity it established in security aid to Armenia and
Azerbaijan and the reference to humanitarian assistance to Nagorno
Karabakh. The draft bill provides for $5 million each to Armenia and
Azerbaijan in Foreign Military Financing and $750,000 each for
International Military Education and Training. At the same time the
Bush Administration asked for $55 million in economic assistance to
Armenia in FY 2006 – down from last fiscal year’s request of $62
million. Later the US Senate had approved “not less than” $75 million
in economic aid to Armenia. In the words of Assembly Board of
Directors Chairman Anthony Barsamian, the organization is determined
to advocate to Congress for increased funding. Details of the Bush
Administration’s FY 2006 Budget described Armenia as “one of the
leading performers in Eurasia in economic and political reform,” and
said it was for this reason that “Armenia was one of the two
countries in the region deemed eligible to receive grants from the
Millennium Challenge Account.”

Anadolu Agency
Feb 8 2005
Azerbaijani Parliament Speaker: Turkish Parliament Should Recognize
Massacre Of Azeris In Khojaly In 1992 As A Genocide
Anadolu Agency: 2/7/2005
BAKU – Azerbaijani Parliament Speaker Murtuz Alasgarov has stated
that the Turkish parliament should recognize the massacre of Azeris
by Armenians in Khojaly in 1992 as a genocide.
During meetings between the two countries` delegations headed by
Alasgarov and Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc, Alasgarov made
a request from the Turkish parliament to recognize the massacre of
Azeris by Armenians in 1992 as a “genocide“.
Arinc assured Alasgarov that he would bring this matter to the
attention of the Turkish parliament on February 26th, the day that
marks the 13th anniversary of the Armenian massacre of Azeris in
Khojaly.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijani parliamentarians proposed that Turkey and
Azerbaijan establish a museum of “martyrs“.
Arinc told the Azerbaijani deputies that Turkey would cooperate with
Azerbaijan in opening of such a museum.