Author: Nanijanian Alex

EMBATTLED TYCOON GETS WESTERN LOANS
By Ruben Meloyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Dec 14 2007

A leading Armenian commercial bank secured on Friday $15 million in
mainly Western loans that will give a moral boost to its embattled
owner allied to former President Levon Ter-Petrosian.

David Sukiasian, the chief manager of Armeconombank, said it will
use the money to be provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (EBRD) and six European and Asian commercial banks
for extending credits to small and medium-sized businesses. He gave
few other details of the deal signed behind the closed doors, saying
only that the EBRD will contribute one third of the sum and naming
the other lenders. Those include Germany’s Commerzbank.

"It is the first time that those famous banks are providing such a
sum to an Armenian bank," Sukiasian told RFE/RL. "This deal reflects
their interest in Armenia’s banking system."

The signing of the loan agreement could hardly come at a better time
for Khachatur Sukiasian, a wealthy businessman and the principal owner
of Armeconombank and dozens of other, mainly small and medium-sized
companies. Sukiasian, who is also a parliament deputy, fell foul
of the Armenian government in September shortly after he publicly
reaffirmed his long-standing support for Ter-Petrosian and endorsed
the latter’s candidature in next February’s presidential election.

Armenian tax authorities launched a financial investigation into
companies making up the Sukiasian family’s SIL Group in October.

Three of those companies were promptly charged with evading millions of
dollars in taxes. Two of them, a pizza restaurant chain and a printing
house, saw their chief executives arrested on corresponding charges.

In an interview with RFE/RL last week, Sukiasian reiterated his claims
that the accusations were trumped up by the Armenian authorities in
retaliation for his strong support for Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian’s
main election challenger. The authorities, however, deny any political
motives behind the crackdown, saying that it is part of a broader
fight against widespread tax evasion in Armenia.

Signaling the government’s intention to widen the crackdown on SIL,
Armenian state television implicated Armeconombank on December 4 in
an alleged fraud scam involving tax and customs officials as well as
top executives of another Sukiasian-owned firm. It said the police
arrested four such officials and will likely make more arrests. The
tycoon denied any wrongdoing on the part of his bank.

David Sukiasian, who is Khachatur’s cousin, said Armeconombank has
not been inspected by tax officials or raided by the police. "It’s
business as usual at the bank," he said. "We continue to attract and
distribute funds. Some people are trying to politicize the bank. But
that won’t work."

The EBRD paid $1 million to buy 25 percent of Armeconombank in August
2004. EBRD officials said at the time that chose Armeconombank from
among the two dozen local banks because of its Western-style management
and financial transparency. An EBRD spokesman said last week that
the London-based lending institution continues to trust the bank.

RUSSIA GIVES COUNTERBLOW, ARMENIA’S ACTIONS DEPEND ON AZERBAIJAN

Lragir
Dec 13 2007
Armenia

Armenia can reconsider its participation in the Agreement on
Conventional Weapons in Europe in case Azerbaijan does, stated
the deputy speaker of the National Assembly Vahan Hovanisyan,
who is the ARF Dashnaktsutyun presidential candidate. "Otherwise,
I don’t think that the revision of the agreement will be useful for
Armenia, especially now," Vahan Hovanisyan stated December 13 at the
National Press Club, in answer to the question of reporters what the
consequences of Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement will be for
the region and Armenia in particular, and if Armenia may follow Russia.

Vahan Hovanisyan noticed, however, despite participating in the
agreement Azerbaijan does not limit its expenditures on weapons. "As
to Russia, I think though roughly Russia is correcting the mistakes of
the Russian government in the early 1990s," stated Vahan Hovanisyan,
noting that in those years Russia retreated from its strongholds in
Europe and could not prevent the enlargement of NATO.

"The continuous enlargement of NATO, creation of strongholds of NATO in
the post-Soviet space, and the urge of some post-Soviet states for NATO
membership should worry Russia, and it is ready for a counterblow,"
Vahan Hovanisyan says. He does not think that it will foster mutual
understanding between Russia and its Western partners, but on the other
hand, there is no major threat, because Vahan Hovanisyan thinks judging
by the military doctrine of Russia, it does not have aggressive plans.

TURKEY ATTACHES GREAT ATTENTION TO NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT – AMBASSADOR

Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
Dec 10 2007

Azerbaijan, Baku / Òrend corr K. Ramazanova / The Armenian-Azerbaijani
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a very important problem for Turkey,
the Turkish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Huseyn Avni Karslioglu said at
the winter session of the International School Azerbaijan-NATO on
10 December.

"The Nagorno-Karabakh problem is very close to us and we would like
to discuss it at the winter session," he said.

According to the Ambassador, Azerbaijan has a great future and there
are opportunities for new projects.

–Boundary_(ID_URxPW2rVQ3jYMfh40883yw)- –

THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY
Ian Buruma

Guardian/UK
9 Dec 07

The new Spanish law against rallies and memorials celebrating the late
dictator Francisco Franco will not foster free thinking, but impede it

In October, the Spanish parliament passed a law on historical memory,
which bans rallies and memorials celebrating the late dictator
Francisco Franco.

His Falangist regime will be officially denounced and its victims
honoured.

There are plausible reasons for enacting such a law. Many people
killed by the fascists during the Spanish civil war lie unremembered
in mass graves.

There is still a certain degree of nostalgia on the far right for
Franco’s dictatorship. People gathered at his tomb earlier this
year chanted "We won the civil war!", while denouncing socialists
and foreigners, especially Muslims. Reason enough, one might think,
for the Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero,
to use the law to exorcise the demons of dictatorship for the sake
of democracy’s good health.

But legislation is a blunt instrument for dealing with history. While
historical discussion won’t be out of bounds in Spain, even banning
ceremonies celebrating bygone days may go a step too far. The desire
to control both past and present is, of course, a common feature of
dictatorships. This can be done through false propaganda, distorting
the truth, or suppressing the facts. Anyone in China who mentions
what happened on Tiananmen Square (and many other places) in June
1989 will soon find him or herself in the less-than-tender embrace
of the state security police.

Indeed, much of what happened under Chairman Mao remains taboo.

Spain, however, is a democracy. Sometimes the wounds of the past are
so fresh that even democratic governments deliberately impose silence
in order to foster unity. When Charles de Gaulle revived the French
republic after the second world war, he ignored the history of Vichy
France and Nazi collaboration by pretending that all French citizens
had been good republican patriots.

More truthful accounts, such as Marcel Ophuls’s magisterial
documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1968) were, to say the least,
unwelcome. Ophuls’s film was not shown on French state television
until 1981. After Franco’s death in 1975, Spain, too, treated its
recent history with remarkable discretion.

But memory won’t be denied. A new generation in France, born after
the war, broke the public silence with a torrent of books and films on
French collaboration in the Holocaust, as well as the collaborationist
Vichy regime, sometimes in an almost inquisitorial spirit. The French
historian Henri Russo dubbed this new attitude "the Vichy Syndrome."

Spain seems to be going through a similar process. Children of
Franco’s victims are making up for their parents’ silence. Suddenly,
the civil war is everywhere, in books, television shows, movies,
academic seminars, and now in the legislature, too.

This is not only a European phenomenon. Nor is it a sign of
creeping authoritarianism. On the contrary, it often comes with
more democracy. When South Korea was ruled by military strongmen,
Korean collaboration with Japanese colonial rule in the first half
of the 20th century was not discussed – partly because some of those
strongmen, notably the late Park Chung Hee, had been collaborators
themselves. Now, under President Roh Moo-hyun, a new truth and
reconciliation law has not only stimulated a thorough airing
of historical grievances, but has also led to a hunt for past
collaborators.

Lists have been drawn up of people who played a significant role in
the Japanese colonial regime, ranging from university professors to
police chiefs – and extending even to their children, reflecting the
Confucian belief that families are responsible for the behaviour
of their individual members. The fact that many family members,
including Park Chung Hee’s daughter, Geon-hye, support the conservative
opposition party is surely no coincidence.

Opening up the past to public scrutiny is part of maintaining an
open society. But when governments do so, history can easily become a
weapon to be used against political opponents – and thus be as damaging
as banning historical inquiries. This is a good reason for leaving
historical debates to writers, journalists, filmmakers, and historians.

Government intervention is justified only in a very limited sense. Many
countries enact legislation to stop people from inciting others to
commit violent acts, though some go further. For example, Nazi ideology
and symbols are banned in Germany and Austria, and Holocaust denial is
a crime in 13 countries, including France, Poland, and Belgium. Last
year, the French parliament introduced a bill to proscribe denial of
the Armenian genocide, too.

But even if extreme caution is sometimes understandable, it may
not be wise, as a matter of general principle, to ban abhorrent
or simply cranky views of the past. Banning certain opinions, no
matter how perverse, has the effect of elevating their proponents
into dissidents. Last month, the British writer David Irving, who was
jailed in Austria for Holocaust denial, had the bizarre distinction
of defending free speech in a debate at the Oxford Union.

While the Spanish civil war was not on a par with the Holocaust, even
bitter history leaves room for interpretation. Truth can be found
only if people are free to pursue it. Many brave people have risked
– or lost – their lives in defence of this freedom. It is right for
a democracy to repudiate a dictatorship, and the new Spanish law is
cautiously drafted, but it is better to leave people free to express
even unsavoury political sympathies, for legal bans don’t foster free
thinking, they impede them.

In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2007.

–Boundary_(ID_nyPQL7apJU3IZjTI1cLeRQ)–

Hayots Ashkharh , Armenia
Dec 8 2007

KARABAKH ISSUE

Tendencies And Speculations

As we know in the framework of the 15th session of OSCE Foreign
Ministers’ Council, which took place recently in Madrid, Minsk group
co-Chairs introduced to Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers
the written version of the basic principles of the regulation of
Karabakh conflict discussed in Prague process. The co-Chairs
anticipate getting the answers of the two Presidents in the nearest
future.
In general, during the recent years the formulations and the
announcements given by different international organizations
regarding the regulation of Karabakh issue give ground to
contradicting evaluations and opinions in our reality. If we sum up
these evaluations it is not difficult to distinguish two evident and
mutually contradicting tendencies.
First: The interested concern of our political circles and society
towards the prospects of the regulation of Karabakh issue, which is
based on the consciousness of the decisive significance of this issue
for the destiny of all Armenians.
Second: In the situation created in the whole world, including our
region, the keen intentions of certain political powers to use
Karabakh issue as a means to solve their political problems.
When they notice any foreign pressures on the swift regulation of
Karabakh issue, two contradicting tendencies are manifested inside
the country:
a) Those considered about the destiny of the state and the nation
make efforts to formulate a general response to the foreign
challenges.
b) Those who speculate the destiny of the state and the nation for
narrow party and personal purposes prepare themselves for internal
political struggle and try to get rid of Karabakh as soon as
possible.
During the recent years the only idea circulated in the
pro-opposition camp is the proposal to bring NKR back to the
negotiation table, something that has never been removed from our
agenda. All the other proposals were simple speculations upon a very
complicated and multi-layer issue.
In our opinion the existing speculations can be divided into those
of Armenian Pan National Movement, radicals and simple populists.
First: Ter-Petrosyan’s strategic clause is: ` Karabakh is the
reason of all our hardships and the main hindrance to our bright
future.’ Thus the ex-President doesn’t give any formula for the
solution of this complicated issue.
Instead he continuously states that it is not Azerbaijan that
hinders the process of peaceful regulation of Karabakh issue by its
bellicose announcements, but Armenia.
The second conception, to be more precise the absence of the
latter, is hidden in the policy of silence adopted by the radical
powers regarding Karabakh issue. And though similar attitude is
sometimes followed by a strict criticism of the `wrong policy pursued
by the authorities’, it is not difficult to notice that the radical
leaders have adopted the policy `one nail drives out another’. That
is to say `let R. Kocharyan fail, and we will silently wait, until
the arena is open for us.’
The third conception is the extreme populism, which in its
culmination point even comes to the marasmus idea of punishing
Armenian authorities by The Hague Court.
In reality our approach should be like this: in terms of Karabakh
we belong neither to Armenian Pan National Movement, nor to the
radical powers, we are neither pro-governmental and nor
pro-opposition, we are not Armenians or Karabakh inhabitants, or
Diaspora. In terms of Karabakh issue our national interest is common,
all the methods are moral in case the employment of these methods
brings to good results.

KAREN NAHAPETYAN

MICROSOFT RA COOPERATES WITH ARMENIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Noyan Tapan
Dec 7, 2007

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, NOYAN TAPAN. Five Armenian higher education
institutions have concluded contracts with the Microsoft RA company,
a branch of the Microsoft Company in Armenia, concerning the creation
of Academies of Information Technologies." According to the information
provided to a Noyan Tapan correspondent by Grigor Barseghian, the Head
of the Microsoft RA company, courses of system administrators and
engineers of the Microsoft technologies are already being conducted
in the Academies of Information Technologies and the graduates of
these courses will receive respective diplomas with the Microsoft
Certified Systems Administrator and Microsoft Certified Systems
Engineer specializations. It was mentioned that the universities, which
have founded Academies of Information Technologies, have received
licences for using the software packages and multimedia resources
of the Microsoft. According to Grigor Barseghian, the lecturers,
who give lessons by the curricula of the Microsoft and the teachers
of the subject Informatics at schools will receive requalification
in those academies.

It was mentioned that three Armenian universities have subscribed
to the Software developer Network Academic Alliance program of the
Microsoft, which allows to make use of the licences of all the software
packages of the Microsoft. The latter allows to install those software
packages in the innumerable computers of the university in order to use
them for educational purposes. Lecturers also enjoy that right. In
addition to this, a limitless possibility for renovating those
packages through the websites of the Microsoft is also given. "Thus,
the university is given a possibility to automatize the educational
process in line with the international level," Grigor Barseghian
stressed.

ARMENPRESS

HERITAGE DECIDES AGAINST CONTESTING PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 6, ARMENPRESS: The opposition
Heritage party, lead by the U.S.-born Raffi
Hovhanesian, who was Armenia’s first post-Soviet
foreign minister, decided today against fielding its
candidate for the February 19 presidential election.
The decision was approved by the party’s governing
board.
Raffi Hovhanesian, expected to be nominated as a
candidate, was barred from contesting the February 19
election because he does not have a ten year-long
Armenian citizenship, a constitutional requirement for
all contenders.
He was given Armenian citizenship in 2001 only, but
he says his citizenship should be backdated to the
first year of Armenia’s independence, because his
citizenship applications had for years been illegally
ignored by president Robert Kocharian and his
predecessor Levon Ter-Petrosian.
The press office of the party said to Armenpress
today that the governing board will make a final
decision on who to support in the election only after
the Central Election Commission finishes the official
registration of all candidates.
The governing board will also scrutinize the
election programs of all candidates to back up its
choice.

TEHRAN DEMANDS COMPENSATION FOR ACCUSATIONS REGARDING TEHRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

PanARMENIAN.Net
04.12.2007 16:51 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Iran’s government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham on
Tuesday demanded compensation from the United States for accusations
made in recent years by Washington regarding Tehran’s nuclear program.

"The Americans have put a lot of pressure on us and manipulated world
public opinion against Iran with their baseless accusations and should
therefore pay the price for it," Gholam-Hossein Elham said.

"The whole world is aware that Iran has not even taken one single step
contrary to international regulations and that all nuclear centers in
Iran are supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
– the U.S. should therefore start revising its stance," the spokesman
added, RIA Novosti reports.

A U.S. intelligence report released Monday said that Iran halted its
atomic weapons program in 2003 and seemed less determined to develop
nuclear arms than the Bush administration previously believed.

As of mid-2003, Iran had not resumed its nuclear weapons program
even as it was continuing uranium enrichment in defiance of the UN
Security Council, the National Intelligence Estimate report added.

Russia & CIS Military Newswire
December 3, 2007 Monday 1:00 PM MSK

Armenia sends 8th peacekeepers’ unit to Kosovo

YEREVAN Dec 3

A farewell ceremony for the eighth peacekeepers’ unit sent to Kosovo
took place at the Yerevan regiment last Saturday.

The eighth unit consisting of 34 peacekeepers will replace the
seventh peacekeepers unit in Kosovo.

"Our peacekeepers are fulfilling with dignity their duty to provide
security for civilians both in Kosovo and Iraq," Armenian General
Chief of Staff, Col. Gen. Seiran Oganian said at the ceremony.

The experience gained by these peacekeepers serves as a good basis
for forming Armenia’s peacekeeping forces, he said. At the same time,
their commitment improves the image of the Armenian army in the eyes
of the international community.

The two years of Armenia’s participation in peacekeeping missions in
Kosovo and Iraq brought its military many awards, including from the
government.

Armenia joined the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo in 2004, when the
first platoon of 34 Armenian peacekeepers flew there on February 12.

Armenian ‘blue helmets’ participate in the peacekeeping operation in
Kosovo as part of a Greek battalion. A memorandum on participation of
the Armenian Armed Forces infantry platoon in the peacekeeping
operation in Kosovo as part of the Greek battalion was signed in
September 2003 and was ratified by the Armenian National Assembly on
December 13, 2003.

kk sm

LEADER OF NSDU ADVISES TO DRAW THE FIRST PERSON WHO WILL CONGRATULATE THE WINNER

Lragir, Armenia
Nov 27 2007

After Paruir Hairikyan had failed to bring together the opposition
and to create a democratic front, he stated November 27 at the Hayeli
Club the forces which hindered the consolidation and are trying to
appear as common candidates can decide by a draw who will be the
first to congratulate the common candidate of the Republican Party
or the Bargavach Hayastan Party.

Hairikyan believes that after the failure of the democratic front
the victory of the government’s candidate is inevitable, considering
that the victory of the same force in the parliamentary election was
highly appreciated by the international organizations. According to
Paruir Hairikyan, it means that a similar election will be evaluated
positively. "In the parliamentary election the Bargavach Hayastan
Party and the Republicans got 70 percent of votes, now they only need
50 percent," Paruir Hairikyan says.

According to him, the absence of Levon Ter-Petrosyan in the
parliamentary election is not a change of the situation either.

"Levon Ter-Petrosyan is one of the candidates, a dead candidate
for healthy people. A dead politician cannot be a candidate. Levon
Ter-Petrosyan, a dead politician for ten years, now suddenly wants
to be a candidate. Levon Ter-Petrosyan is now one of the candidates
and at best he will take the third place, at best for him. Now he is
the fifth, and there is no doubt about it. Some people come together
around him but those are people who give one point but take away two,"
Paruir Hairikyan says who mentions that he is caring about the society,
and states "by electing a dead man we become a dead society."

As to whom of the "alive" the National Self-Determination Union is
likely to support, it depends on the programs the "alive" will propose
which should match those of the NSDU. And the idea of making Armenia
the most democratic society in the world underlies the program of the
NSDU. Paruir Hairikyan says on December 1 the board of the party will
hold a meeting and make a decision on the stance of the party on the
presidential election.