Author: Nanijanian Alex

CIVIC SERVICE SYSTEM BECOMES MORE INDEPENDENT

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| 18:48:05 | 28-06-2005 | Politics |

“Today I will be sincere with you”, chairman of the council of civic
service Manvel Badalyan stated at today’s press conference. He informed
that this year the first stage of training and certification of all
the civic servants will be completed.

“The problem is that over 50 civic servants are avoiding the
examination trying to gain time for finding protectors. However it
will not happen”, M. Badalyan said. In his words, 3 absences from
the certification exam are equal to dismissal.

In his opinion the system of civic service is becoming more and
more independent year by year. Manvel Badalyan also informed that
the state budget provides for 5 billion 109 million AMD for the
salary to civic servants. “In 2006 the basic salary will be raised”,
M. Badalyan resumed.

IT SERVICES GRADUALLY EXPANDED IN ARMENIA: ROBERT KOCHARYAN

ARKA News Agency
June 27 2005

YEREVAN, June 27. /ARKA/. IT services are gradually expanded in Armenia
and serious business is being formed, RA President Robert Kocharyan
stated at his meeting with President of the Synopsys company Art de
Gias. The RA presidential press service reports that the RA President
welcomed the famed company’s activities in Armenia and wished it
to expand its activities in the country. “Armenia has selected high
technologies as a priority and attaches paramount importance to the
development of this field,” Kocharyan said. He reported that e-service
system is being introduced in various state government spheres,
which is an important step in ensuring transparency of government.

In his turn, the President of the Synopsys company presented the
main directions of the company’s activities and further programs. He
pointed out that the company will continue effective cooperation with
the country’s higher schools. P.T. -0–

Germany’s Turks lose their sense of belonging
By Bertrand Benoit

FT
June 25 2005 03:00

It is boiling hot in the Anadolu kebab shop on Wiener Strasse, but the
sweat lining Muzaffer Topal’s brow is not only induced by the grill
glowing behind his back.

“When the going got tough in the cold war, there was never any
question about what side Turkey was on,” he says, wiping his face with
a towel. “Some people seem to have a hard time remembering.”

As Germany prepares for a general election scheduled for September, a
mix of anxiety and resignation is spreading through Berlin’s
120,000-strong Turkish community.

While the campaign has yet to get going in earnest, immigration,
Turkey’s plan to join the European Union and the mass murder of
Armenians by Turks 90 years ago have been high on the political agenda
lately.

Politicians, social workers and analysts say the debates, coming amid
rising doubt about Germany’s ability to integrate its large foreign
population, could push the country’s otherwise placid and apolitical
1.9m Turks towards the edge of the political mainstream.

Chiefly responsible is the opposition Christian Democratic Union,
frontrunner to win the poll. Under Angela Merkel, its leader, it has
made opposition to Turkey’s EU membership a central plank of its
campaign.

In the Kreuzberg borough, which is 30 per cent Turkish, the position
is seen as a betrayal, especially among the few Turks who, like Mr
Topal, are members of the CDU, a party that once embraced Turkey as a
Nato ally. “If Turkey does not belong in Europe,” he says, “what do
you think it means for the Turks who live here? It means they do not
belong here.”

Partly because of its Christian label, the CDU has not traditionally
been a political home for Germany’s 600,000 voters of Turkish origin,
who have historically favoured the Social Democrats.

The CDU toned down the Turkish issue at an election last month in the
state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which boasts some of the largest
Turkish communities in the country. Yet it has no such qualms ahead of
the general election. This week, Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy
parliamentary leader, said immigration should become a focus of the
electoral campaign.

Turkish resentment, meanwhile, is also beginning to turn against the
SPD because of its insistence that Turkey should atone for the 1915
massacres of its Armenian citizens.

“Unemployment is driving the younger ones into the mosques,” says
Johannes Neuwirth, a teacher at Kreuzberg’s Eberhard-Klein high
school, where 80 percent of the 350 pupils are of Turkish origin – the
remaining 20 per cent have Arab backgrounds, mainly
Palestinian. “There is a risk that they will seek political haven in
Turkish nationalism or religious fundamentalism.”

While the foreign pop-ulation, after rising three-fold between 1970
and 1995, has since been falling, politicians have expressed alarm at
the development of “parallel societies” – self-made ghettos
linguistically, economically and culturally insulated from their
German environment.

As one CDU insider confides: “We have made huge mistakes in terms of
integration. We did not put enough pressure on immigrants to speak the
language and abide by the rules, and we failed to open education and
the labour market to them. Now we have a powder keg.”

While economic integration matters, it is not sufficient, says Bülent
Arslan, head of the DTF, a German-Turkish group within the CDU:
“Political participation is hugely important. Right now there are too
many Turks who do not feel attracted to any political party.”

As Mr Topal warns, while Germany has yet to experience any racial
unrest, it is in a fragile state of equilibrium. “We Turks have
adopted western values. But we can do without them if we have to.”

Pan Armenian News

CE WILL FOCUS ON ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN WITHIN NEXT MONTHS

23.06.2005 04:23

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia and Azerbaijan will be in focus of the Council of
Europe (CE) within the next months, stated Chairman of the CE Committee of
Ministers, Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral. When
addressing the PACE meeting the Portuguese FM reminded that in the course of
the CE Warsaw Summit in spring a number of documents were adopted, by means
of which CE further tasks should be implemented. «First of all we have to be
sure that the Council of Europe member states meet the organization
standards of promotion of democracy, protection of human rights and
supremacy of law,» he said. `Thereupon within the next months the South
Caucasus will be in focus of our attention taking into account the important
developments referring to the constitutional amendments in Armenia and
parliamentary election in Azerbaijan,’ the Chairman of the CE Committee of
Ministers stated.

ARFD CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR NKR PARLIAMENT BEATEN UP

YEREVAN, JUNE 21. ARMINFO. A member of ARFD Vazgen Manukyan, who was
the 12th in the pre-election list of ARFD-Movement-88, running for the
NKR parliament, was taken to military hospital of Stepanakert
approximately at 14:00 today with concussion of the brain and face
injury.

Chief physician of the hospital Gevorgyan says that health state of
Manukyan is stable, and there is not necessity of surgical
operation. His life is no longer in danger. The physician refused from
specifying the reason of Manukyan’s injuries. Manukyan’s wife is sure
that her husband was subjected to bodily injuries. She says at 13:00
on June 21 Manukyan was called somewhere on phone and the information
on his hospitalization was received in an hour.

Representative of the opposition bloc of Gegham Baghdasaryan thinks it
was the work of the authorities. Radio Freedom reports.

Agence France Presse — English
June 20, 2005 Monday 4:22 PM GMT

Ruling party headed for win in controversial Nagorno-Karabakh polls

STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan June 20

Early results Monday from parliamentary polls in the self-proclaimed
republic of Nagorno Karabakh showed the ruling party on course for
victory in a vote Azerbaijan has slammed as illegitimate.

Election officials in the tiny unrecognized enclave said the ruling
party and its presumed ally had garnered 22 seats in the 33-seat
parliament, according to preliminary results.

An opposition bloc led by the national-socialist Dashnaktsutyun party
took only three places and immediately contested Sunday’s vote.

The eight other seats were won by independent candidates, the early
results showed.

“We don’t consider that the elections were fair, free and
transparent,” said Gegam Bagdasaryan, a representative of the
opposition bloc.

It accused regional authorities of abusing their “administrative
resources” in the run-up to and during the poll in this mostly ethnic
Armenian enclave, which has been bitterly contested since it broke
from Baku upon the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

But when asked if it would stage street protests to contest the
outcome, Armen Sarkisyan, another member of the opposition coalition,
said only the bloc’s primary goal was to “ensure stability in the
country.”

Pending final results, election officials said the rulling Artsakh
Democratic Party had taken 12 seats while the recently formed Free
Fatherland party, seen as loyal to Nagorno Karabakh’s leader Arkady
Gukasyan, won 10.

No foreign governments have sent observer missions, reflecting the
territory’s unresolved status.

But the enclave’s authorities have hoped the election would shore up
demands for independence. On the eve of the poll, Gukasyan said a
fair vote would help secure international recognition of the
republic.

Officials on Monday refused to comment before a final vote count,
expected in a few days time.

Azerbaijan has made it clear it considers any vote in the region
illegal until hundreds of thousands of Azeris banished from Karabakh
and seven surrounding regions were allowed to return.

The enclave is widely seen as propped up by Armenia, which fought
Baku in a war for control over Nagorno Karabakh between 1993 and 1994
that claimed some 25,000 lives and forced another million residents
— mostly Azeris — from their homes.

“Armenia is eager to legalize the occupation,” Azerbaijan’s election
commission charged in a written statement on Saturday.

“Elections and referendums on the occupied territories must be
conducted only after the territory’s restoration to Azerbaijan,” it
said.

Despite the tensions, Azerbaijan signalled its willingness to carry
on negotiating on Monday.

Azeri Foreign Minister Araz Azimov announced that the next in a
series of talks between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian
counterpart Robert Kacharian would take place on August 26 in Russia.

“The discussion is fairly deep and the time has come to document some
of the agreements achieved,” Azimov was quoted by Interfax as saying.

Monitors from non-governmental organizations meanwhile reported no
major violations in Sunday’s voting, and the US-based Public
International Law and Policy Group lauded the poll.

“This was a transparent election,” said Paul Williams, an observer
for the group, which admitted it supported Karabakh’s aspirations to
self-determination.

Some 78 percent of the 90,000 eligible voters turned out for Sunday’s
poll in the enclave, where a tense ceasefire has held more than a
decade after the bloody conflict.

Nagorno Karabakh Republic has a population of 145,000 and comprises
14 percent of Azerbaijan’s overall territory.

The parliament is elected for a five-year term.

HARVEST STARTED IN HADRUT

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
17 June 05

Harvest of arable crops has started in the region of Hadrut. In the
region, 8394 ha of arable crops were planted, of which 773 ha is
barley. Of the 52 combines 45 are ready for harvesting, and the
majority of combines is working in barley fields. The department for
agriculture, amelioration and use of land of the administration of
Hadrut told us that so far over 300 ha of barley was harvested, the
crop yield is about 600 tonnes, and the average crop yield per hectare
is 1.8 ` 2.1 tonnes. According to the head of the department
L. Abrahamian, the gross yield of arable crops this year is estimated
to exceed the previous year. The average crop yield per hectare will
reach 1.8 ` 2 tonnes, and 150 thousand tonnes of grain is expected.
`In fact, we had expected even a higher yield but the rains in May had
a negative impact on the crops,’ mentioned L. Abrahamian. Harvesting
is controlled to solve the problems that occur in time. Measures are
taken to organize 24 hour watch to prevent fires.

E. DAVTIAN.
17-06-2005

Parliamentary polls in Nagorno Karabakh enclave

The News International, Pakistan
June 20 2005

STEPANAKERT: Voters went to parliamentary polls on Sunday in the
self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno Karabakh, a mostly ethnic
Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, amid strong opposition from
Azeri authorities. Seven parties and 185 candidates were vying for
places in Nagorno Karabakh’s fourth parliament, with two thirds
of the parliament’s 33 seats to be elected directly and one third
under a proportional system. Nagorno Karabakh’s authorities have
said the vote is a chance to prove to the world the territory’s
independence. “I voted for stability, independence and prosperity,”
Nagorno Karabakh’s leader, Arkady Gukasyan, said after casting his
ballot. It was essential, Gukasyan said earlier, that the vote come
up to European standards in order to avoid harming Nagorno Karabakh’s
image and “the process of peaceful settlement with Azerbaijan”.

APPEAL COURT APPROVES CHALLENGE AGAINST JUDGE CHAIRING COMPLAINT CASE
STARTED IN CONNENTION WITH DECISION TO DECLARE ELECTIONS OF CHAIRMAN
OF RA LAWYERS CHAMBER INVALID

YEREVAN, JUNE 17, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA Appeal Court on Civil Cases
approved on June 17 the challenge against Judge Tigran Sahakian
who chaired the case on the complaint filed against the decision
to declare the results of the elections of Chairman of the RA
Lawyers Chamber invalid. In addition to the challenge, the lawyer
Cromwell Grigorian, the representative of the third person in the
case, submitted an application received from the lawyer Hamlet
Stepanian. According to this application, the above mentioned judge
was conducting propaganda in favor of one of the candidates for the
post of the Chamber Chairman – Ruben Sahakian which provided the
ground for challenge. To recap, Enok Azarian was elected Chairman of
the RA Chamber of Lawyers. However, the court of Yerevan’s Kentron and
Nork-Marash communities examined the case as aresult of the complaints
filed by Ruben Sahakian and several other lawyers and made a decision
to declare the elections invalid.

JICA JAPANESE COMPANY TO ORGANIZE TRAINING COURSES FOR ARMENIAN SMEs

YEREVAN, JUNE 17, NOYAN TAPAN. Training and consultation courses
on marketing, management, accountancy, financial management and
bank resources will be organized in Armenia by an agreement signed
lately between the “National Center for Armenian SMB Development”
fund and JICA Japanese company. Noyan Tapan was informed about this
by Rshtun Martirosian, Head of the “National Center for Armenian SMB
Development” fund. According to him, not only Japanese specialists, but
also specialists from Cambridge and Oxford will visit Armenia within
the framework of the 3-year program. It was mentioned that Armenian
specialists that participated in retraining courses in their turn
will organize courses for SMEs working in the sphere of production,
rendering of services, trade and other spheres.