Author: Nahapetian Samvel

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Feb 23 2007

POLAND’S FM TO VISIT ARMENIA ON FEBRUARY 25-27

YEREVAN, February 23. /ARKA/. Poland’s Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga
will visit Armenia on February 25-27, the press service of the RA
Foreign Ministry reported.
Within the visit Fotyga will meet with Armenia’s President Robert
Kocharyan, Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II, RA Prime Minister
Andranik Margaryan, Speaker of the RA National Assembly Tigran
Torosyan, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian.
Poland’s delegation headed by Fotyga will visit the depository of
ancient Armenian manuscript Matenadaran, and pay a flower tribute to
the Tsitsernakaberd memorial to victims of the Genocide in the
Ottoman Empire. L.M. -0–

Boxing on the up and up in Australia
Adrian Warren, AAP News – Australasia
Feb 25, 2007

SYDNEY, Feb 25 AAP – At a time when Australian boxing is going through
an up phase and has a bright future, it will finally pay homage to its
heroes of the past. In the space of a few weeks, Australia now looks
poised to have as many world champions as at any stage in its
chequered history. The peak period was back in early 2005, when Kostya
Tszyu, Vic Darchinyan and Robbie Peden each enjoyed world champion
status. Flyweight Darchinyan and junior welterweight Lovemore Ndou
presently hold IBF world title belts, with Anthony Mundine or Sam
Soliman to be crowned the WBA super middleweight champion next month
when they fight for the vacant title in Sydney. Just marginally behind
in status is Queensland excitement machine Michael Katsidis, who won
the WBO interim lightweight title with a thrilling stoppage win over
Britain’s Graham Earl last weekend. Throw WBF women’s featherweight
world champion Sharon Anyos into the mix and Australia is enjoying
unprecedented success on the international boxing scene. "It’s most
probably the richest we’ve been in boxing since the glory days of the
sport, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a healthier state," esteemed
trainer Johnny Lewis said. "I suppose we sort of started to go into a
backflip with the closure of the Sydney Stadium in 1970, I think it
almost sounded the death knell of boxing. "We certainly had good
fighters sparingly. In every decade (since) we’ve had a good fighter."
Those glory days, which Lewis felt were back in the 1950s and `60s,
are set to receive lasting recognition, along with the rest of
Australian pugilism’s colourful history, with a boxing section at
Melbourne’s National Sports Museum opening next year.

"We’ve had 11 world champions in this country, we’ve got a tremendous
history in boxing which surpasses any other sport in my prejudiced
view," Australian National Boxing Hall of Fame President Gus Mercurio
said. "It’s been said that you shake any family tree in Australia and
a boxer will fall out." The list of quality pugs in the present era
doesn’t end with the handful of current world champions. Recent world
title holders like Peden and Gairy St Clair and frequent world title
contenders Paul Briggs, Danny Green, Shannan Taylor, Nader Hamdan and
Hussein and Nedal Hussein flesh out a strong supporting cast, all of
whom still have aspirations of winning the ultimate prize. Katsidis
heads the younger brigade of emerging stars which also includes
featherweight Billy Dib, junior middleweights Rob Medley and Daniel
Geale, super middleweights Victor Oganov and Jamie Pittman and
lightweight Leonardo Zappavigna. While Lewis bemoaned the reduction in
the previously prolific production line of great Aboriginal fighters
bar Mundine and Peden, he noted other communities were stepping into
the breach. "You’ve got to have the hunger, that’s what makes the
fighters and at this point of time the hungriest kids in this country
are the Lebanese kids," Lewis said. "The Husseins and Nader Hamdan,
those guys have really done well for us over the last decade." Lewis
recently shifted his training base to the famous old City of Sydney
Police Citizens Youth club in Woolloomooloo, the club which spawned
former world bantamweight champion Jimmy Carruthers. Another gym fast
gaining recognition for its professionalism and depth is south-western
Sydney’s Grange Old School Boxing club where Ndou is
based. Ironically, the man in the vanguard of the current revival,
Darchinyan, remains one of Australian sport’s best kept secrets. An
exciting power puncher now earning acclaim in the US, Darchinyan has
an impressive 27-0 record (21 KOs), but the personable Armenian-born
boxer barely registers a blip on Australia’s overworked sporting
radar. Darchinyan, who defends his IBF and IBO titles against Mexican
Victor Burgos next month, hoped the expanding list of world champions
would help boost his unjustifiably low profile. "It’s great, it’s very
good," Darchinyan said of the recent rise in Australian boxing
fortunes. "When I was by myself and the only world champion, I
couldn’t see much support from Australia. "I think if we have more
champions Australia is going to support me.’ Triple world champion
Jeff Fenech, who formerly trained Darchinyan, said his old charge was
the leader of Australian boxing and called him for to be granted the
recognition his feats deserved. "He’s a proven commodity in the US,
it’s a pity that we don’t give him the credit he deserves in his own
country," Fenech said. AAP aw/jds

PELOSI’S PANDERING AGAINST TURKEY

Washington Times, DC
Feb 20 2007

Not content with undermining the war effort in Iraq, House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has apparently set her sights on Turkey, a NATO ally
and one of the few Muslim-majority nations in the world that is a
democracy. Mrs. Pelosi has scheduled a vote in April on a resolution
(H. Res. 106) that accuses Turkey’s Ottoman Empire of perpetrating
"genocide" resulting in the death or displacement of nearly 2 million
Armenians between 1915 and 1923. With the United States currently
fighting a war for its very survival against radical Islamists,
Congress should have much more important priorities than revisiting
events that occurred more than 80 years ago — particularly when
doing so has the potential to do serious damage to U.S. relations
with Turkey, whose cooperation will be critical to U.S. efforts to
stabilize Iraq.

But H. Res. 106 has far more to do with the power of ethnic lobbies
in Washington than with larger U.S. foreign policy interests.

The reality is that Armenian and Greek lobbying organizations hostile
to Turkey command far more power in Washington than do pro-Turkish
groups. And in their effort to settle old scores dating back to
World War I, they have the potential to damage our current ability
to maintain Turkey’s cooperation in stabilizing Iraq, where upwards
of 140,000 American troops are stationed, and to do grave damage to
our relationship with an ally of long standing, a country that has
long been a bulwark against regional rogue states like Syria. For
many years, Turkey was the only Muslim nation in the Middle East to
have trade and diplomatic relations with Israel.

But today Turkey has plenty of reasons to worry about current trends in
Iraq. Were the United States to "redeploy" its forces out of Iraq or
to dramatically scale back its military presence inside the country,
it would result in a power vacuum that would be filled by al Qaeda in
Iraq and like-minded Sunni jihadists on one side, and by the rogue
regime in Iran and its Shi’ite allies on the other. If U.S. forces
pull out or have their operational effectiveness crippled by harsh
restrictions that Rep. John Murtha is pushing for with Mrs. Pelosi’s
consent, the country would be plunged into all-out civil war. One
likely result would be the creation of millions of additional refugees;
it is not difficult to imagine that at a minimum hundreds of thousands
of these refugees would stream towards the Turkish border and that
Ankara would come under intense international pressure to admit them
as a sign of its goodwill.

One of the most underreported stories of the Iraq war has been
the extraordinary restraint shown by Turkey in dealing with a
volatile situation in northern Iraq — particularly the advent of a
quasi-independent Kurdish state there. Ankara’s relations with the
Kurds have been characterized by tension and violence. (Approximately
30,000 people have died in Turkey since the early 1980s as a result
of a terror campaign launched by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or
PKK). But even as it was coming under fire from Kurdish terrorists,
Turkey beginning in 1991 assisted the United States in providing
support for the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region in
northern Iraq which was protected from Saddam Hussein’s military by
the U.S.-instituted no-fly zone. Since the current Iraq war began
in 2003, the PKK has had a resurgence in southeastern Turkey. The
Ankara government complains that the dominant Iraqi Kurdish groups,
the PUK and the KDP, have done little to stop the PKK from using Iraq
as a base.

And in the coming months, the situation in northern Iraq is likely to
become much more threatening to Turkish interests. Sunni and Shi’ite
Arabs, Turkmen and Iraqi Christians are all upset about Kurdish plans
to incorporate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which officially lies
just outside the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, into
a de facto Kurdish state. They accuse the Kurds of seeking to drive
them out of Kirkuk in advance of a scheduled December referendum on
the city’s future to ensure that voters who will support the Kurdish
groups’ position. As Kurdish authorities come under fire for removing
non-Kurds from Kirkuk in advance of the referendum, Shi’ite expellees
are joining the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army militia, while Sunni Arabs
are joining al Qaeda affiliates, who are blamed for a rash of suicide
bombings in Kirkuk since last summer.

At such a dangerous time, the United States needs to be working
more closely with both our Kurdish friends in Iraq and our Turkish
allies. But Mrs. Pelosi seems more interested in playing ethnic
politics in order to score some cheap political points and win
additional votes.

GEN. BUYUKANIT HOLDS A NEWS CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON D.C.

Anatolian Times, Turkey
Feb 20 2007

WASHINGTON D.C. – "I got the impression (during his talks with
the U.S. authorities) that fight against terrorist organization
PKK was comprehended well and reached a serious dimension,"
Turkish General Staff Chief Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said in a news
conference in Washington D.C. Informing reporters on his talks with
the U.S. authorities, Gen. Buyukanit said that Iraq, PKK terror,
Kirkuk and resolution on so-called Armenian genocide were discussed
during his meetings.

Replying to a question on a dialogue with Kurds in the north of
Iraq, Buyukanit noted, "I`m a soldier. My task is to fight against
terrorism. It is impossible for me to have a talk with those who
consider PKK a political entity. Two (Kurdish) groups in the north
of Iraq extend full support to PKK currently. Some say that we should
talk to them. What will I tell them who support PKK? We know that it
(PKK) obtains C-4 explosives from them."

"Another issue concerning the military is to secure our border. I
also had talks on this matter. It is very difficult to protect the
Iraqi-Turkey border. It is high and steep. We placed high number of
(security) forces there. The other side of the border is empty. No
security force in Iraq was designated to protect the other side. The
border`s other side in Iraq was delivered to PKK. There are several
armed terrorists on the other side. I told the U.S. authorities this
issue," he stressed.

Stating that the region was under the control of two groups in the
north of Iraq, Buyukanit indicated, "these groups made statements
against Turkey. As you know the Turkish parliament held a closed-door
session earlier to discuss Iraqi issue. After that the administration
in the north (of Iraq) held a similar session and then they made a
statement. This statement disturbed us which said that PKK was not
a matter of terror, but a political one."

He underlined that several countries including the USA considered
PKK a terrorist organization.

Replying to a question, Buyukanit said, "if a terrorist organization
is not supported by other countries, it cannot survive. PKK has existed
for long years, because it was supported financially and politically."

"Not only military but also all organizations, institutions fight
against PKK terror. On the other hand, there are several parameters
supplying terror. We explained those issues to the U.S. authorities,"
he stressed.

Stating that several countries and organization including USA, EU
and NATO accepted that PKK was a terrorist organization, he said,
"however several conferences have been held recently. The question is:
Is it possible to turn PKK into another identity? Some circles think
that it is possible to turn it into an issue of human rights and
minorities. It is the most important matter regarding fight against
PKK. Turkish nation should be on alert on this matter."

Answering a question on a possible limited operation to the north of
Iraq, Gen. Buyukanit noted, "a symbolic operation is not conducted.

Operation must have a target and a limited operation is not staged."

-KIRKUK-

In regard to Kirkuk, Buyukanit said, "we have historical ties with
Kirkuk. The city is a miniature of Iraq. Problems of Iraq also exist
in Kirkuk."

Gen. Buyukanit said, "a referendum is being planned to be held in
Kirkuk at the end of 2007. Demographic structure has been changed
there. At the end of referendum there will be an ethnical and sectarian
clash there. This situation will destroy unitary structure of Iraq. A
divided Iraq does not comply with interests of Turkey.

That`s why we are interested in Kirkuk."

Stating that he informed the U.S. authorities on those matters, he
said that all state institutions considered that unitary structure
of Iraq must be protected.

-IRAN-

"Turkey does not approve several countries` possession of nuclear
weapons in our region. We told U.S. authorities that it is a threat
for whole region. Turkey earlier said that this matter should be
solved through peaceful means," he noted.

-RESOLUTION ON SO-CALLED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE-

Buyukanit said that the U.S. administration was ill at ease over the
resolution on so-called Armenian genocide, stating that all U.S.

officials that he met were against this resolution.

In regard to military relations, Buyukanit said that military relations
between Turkey and the USA were moving on the right track.

PREMIERE OF OPERA "ARSHAK II" TO TAKE PLACE ON FEBRUARY 25

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 16, NOYAN TAPAN. The premiere of the opera "Arshak
II" will take place at the Alexander Spendiarian National Academic
Theatre of Opera and Ballet on February 25, with famous singers Hasmik
Hatsagortian and Anahit Mkhitarian performing the major parts. The
artistic director of the theatre Gegham Grigorian stated this at the
February 15 press conference. According to him, they now are working on
the last episodes of the performance. The premiere of another opera –
"Davit Bek" will take place on May 8 on the occasion of Shushi
liberation. The artistic director said that funds have been allocated
from the state budget for staging three operas for the first time in
the last seven years. Besides, new wind instruments will be purchased
with state budgetary allocations for the orchestra (the old wind
instruments were purchased as long ago as the 1960s). In April the
theatre will go on tour to the Egiptian cities of Alexandria and Cairo
to show the ballet "Gayane". G. Grigorian noted that with the aim of
arousing interest in opera performances among children and young
people, the theatre requested young composers to write operas for
children.

PanARMENIAN.Net

RA MFA supports OSCE MG latest statement
16.02.2007 15:52 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian Foreign Ministry
supports the latest statement by the OSCE Minsk Group
to avoid initiatives including those within the UN
General Assembly, RA MFA Acting Spokesman Vladimir
Karapetian told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter. `We do
think that the transfer of the Karabakh problem to the
UN general Assembly can damage the development of the
negotiation process,’ said he.

The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict settlement, Ambassadors Yuri
Merzlyakov (Russia), Bernard Fassier (France) and
Matthew Bryza (U.S.) met in Paris on February 14th and
15th, in the presence of the Personal Representative
of the OSCE Chairman in Office, Ambassador Andrzej
Kasprzyk and RA Fm Vartan Oskanian.

OSCE CIO GOING TO VISIT YEREVAN AND BAKU TILL SUMMER

PanARMENIAN.Net
15.02.2007 15:19 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Spanish Foreign Minister
Miguel Angel Moratinos is going to pay a visit to Armenia and
Azerbaijan till summer. "As I already mentioned, my wish is to work
as a facilitator and I have the intention of meeting this year with
the government and authorities of the sides involved in the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict, on the one hand, and the mediators, on other, so
as to get to know their concerns and to help implement the suggestions
that will allow them to bridge the existing differences," he said.

"2006 has been a positive year thanks, in the first place, to the
Group Minsk mediators, but also to several constructive meetings in
the framework of the Prague Process of bilateral encounters between
Heads of State and Ministers of Foreign Affairs of both countries. The
OSCE welcomed this initiative last December, and congratulated the
rapprochement between the sides regarding principles in order to
solve the conflict. I believe that this effort should be increased
and sustained in the future," added he, reports the APA.

CITIZENS ARE DISCONTENT WITH THE NA ACTIVITY

A1+
[05:48 pm] 13 February, 2007

The RA citizens are of bad opinion of the acting parliament’s
activity. A1+ suggested its readers estimating the work of the acting
parliament by a 5-degree scale. We have come to the above-mentioned
conclusion after summing up the results of the Internet polling.

Over 69 % of the polling participants marked the work of the parliament
"1". 19% put a "bad" mark to the RA activity, 8% – "satisfactory"
and only 4% assume that the RA Parliament has displayed excellent
work in 2003 – 2007.

Over 400 citizens participated in our polling.

Thus, 88% deem the work of the parliament negative whereas 4%
– positive.

This week we suggest our readers answering the following question,
"Why do the RA TV Stations charge such high prices /80 -130 thousand
AMD per a minute/ for political advertisements? "

Reminder: the oppositional forces refuse to use the chance of
advertising. Their refusal is determined by various factors; some of
them see it a matter of principle, others don’t seize the opportunity
because of the scarcity of money.

We expect your active participation.

CAUCASIAN MEDIA INSTITUTE TO PRESENT REVIEW OF MONITORING METHODOLOGY FOR COVERING PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

Yerevan, February 13. ArmInfo. Caucasian Media Institute (SMI)
under support of the Council of Europe will maintain an independent
monitoring project on covering electoral campaigns in Armenia and the
review of project realization methodology, Boyana Urumova, Special
Representative of Secretary General of the Council of Europe, told
ArmInfo correspondent.

Ms. Urumova said that different activities will be held within frames
of the project. An action plan consisting of two key elements has
been worked out.

The one focuses on press related issues and abilities of Media to
accomplish its obligations – guaranteeing objective covering of
electoral campaign. The other focuses on consolidation of potential
abilities of the electoral committee to conduct the elections on
appropriate level.

She said that some activities scheduled for the pre-election campaign
have already commenced. COE supports CMI in independent monitoring of
Armenian Mass Media. The project will be re-started two weeks prior
to the elections and will last the whole period of the electoral
campaign. On the whole, the monitoring will take 2 months. Ms. Urumova
said that CMI will be partially presenting conclusions and results
on particular monitoring aspects.

PARTIES VOICE DISCONTENT OVER HIGH ADVERTISING CHARGES

Armenpress
Feb 09 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 9, ARMENPRESS: Armenian parliament members voiced
today their discontent at local television companies for setting
excessively high price for one minute of political advertising ahead
of May 12 parliamentary elections.

Thus Public TV which has the largest auditorium in the country said
it will ask 80,000 drams (more than $200) per one minute of political
advertising, while private companies indicated they would charge even a
higher price. Opposition leaders said it was a government-engineered
plan to scare opposition parties away from TV screens. Artashes
Geghamian, head of one of the biggest opposition National Unity party
said his party will ignore utterly the paid advertisement.

But Mher Shahgeldian of ex-parliament chairman Arthur Baghdasarian’s
Orinats Yerkir praised the Public TV for charging less than private
television channels. Galust Sahakian, head of the Republican Party’s
parliament faction, said apart form paid time parties are entitled
also to free advertising time.