CUSTODY PROLONGED
A1+
07 July, 2008
The court of General Jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork Marash prolonged
Armenian MP Sasun Mikayelianâ~@~Ys custody for another two months on
July 7. The decision was made by Justice Ruben Afinian.
The court also cancelled the trial of Vardges Gaspar detained in
connection with the March 1 unrest. The latter is charged with Article
1 of the CC /violence against an official/
–Boundary_(ID_wZTjkkxr3mNw+jS7zY5IoQ)- –
Russian court refuses to hear Poland massacre case
Reuters
Mon Jul 7, 2008
A Russian court on Monday refused to consider a request for a criminal
investigation into the execution of thousands of Polish army officers
executed by the Soviet Union in a World War Two massacre.
After blaming Nazi Germany for the Katyn massacre for decades, the
Soviet Union admitted 18 years ago that its forces were responsible
but none of the culprits has ever been identified and investigations
have been shelved.
The families of some of the victims are trying to use the Russian
courts to force prosecutors to launch a new investigation into a
massacre seen in Poland as a symbol of the repression the country
suffered under Soviet domination.
In an earlier ruling, a court refused to hear the request. Lawyers
for the relatives appealed but a higher court on Monday upheld the
earlier ruling, said a lawyer for the relatives.
"The Moscow City Court left that decision unchanged," lawyer Anna
Stavitskaya told Reuters.
"We will apply now to the district military court … We think
there are all legal grounds to satisfy our request (for a new
investigation). But it is hard to say what the court will decide,"
she said.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski has described the 1940 massacre
at Katyn and two other sites — in which 15,000 Polish officers,
intellectuals and officials were shot and thrown into pits — as an
"act of genocide".
Russia’s reluctance to declassify all documents on the massacre has
angered Warsaw, clouding relations that have also been tense because
of disputes over trade, energy and the U.S. missile shield that may
be stationed on Polish soil.
The massacre victims were captured after the Soviet Union invaded
Poland in 1939 under a pact between Adolf Hitler and Soviet leader
Josef Stalin.
Their killing eliminated a swathe of potential opposition to Soviet
domination of Poland.
Advancing Nazi troops found the mass graves, in western Russia,
when Hitler later invaded the Soviet Union.
Only in 1990 did the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, reveal
that Stalin’s NKVD secret police had been responsible.
GOVERNMENT OF ARMENIA INTENDS TO ABOLISH ‘AIR TAX’
ArmInfo
2008-07-03 17:37:00
Till the end of the year the Government of Armenia plans to abolish
the 10,000 AMD ‘air tax’ passengers are charged at airport, Finance
Minister of Armenia Tigran Davtyan said at a briefing Thursday.
He said a principal agreement has already been achieved. The ticket
will include the tax, but it does not mean that air companies will
raise ticket price, the minister said. T. Davtyan said the budgetary
revenues from this tax made up 25-30 million drams annually. The budget
will lose tangible incomes with the abolition of the tax. However the
government goes no such step since the tax creates inconveniences to
citizens and hinders development of tourism. ‘In addition, we studies
the international experience and found out hat few countries charge
passengers this tax’, the minister said.
ARMENIAN AND TURKISH PRESIDENTS TO MEET IN ASTANA
Azeri Press Agency
03 Jul 2008
Azerbaijan
Baku. Turan Huseynova-APA. Turkish and Armenian presidents will meet
in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, APA reports.
Both presidents have been invited to event on 10th anniversary of
Astana. This is the first meeting of the presidents of the two
countries. Presidents of Georgia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and other
countries have been invited to the event.
HUMAN REMAINS DISCOVERED IN NORTH AZERBAIJAN ARE RESULTS OF TERRIBLE GENOCIDE: PACE PRESIDENT
Trend News Agency
03.07.08 13:48
Azerbaijan
Luis Maria de Puig, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe (PACE), considers that human remains, found at
the mass grave in the territory of the Azerbaijani Northern District
of Guba, are the results of terrible genocide. "I cannot say who
committed this genocide. However, it is a terrible genocide and I
saw how people had been killed savagely," the PACE President told
journalists after visiting mass graveyard in Guba, on 3 July.
PACE President Luis Maria de Puig arrived in Azerbaijan on 30
June with a 3-day visit. Puig met with Speaker of the Azerbaijani
Parliament Ogtay Asadov, members of Azerbaijani delegation to PACE,
members of political parties represented in the Parliament and human
rights activists, President Ilham Aliyev and the Prime Minister
Artur Rasizade.
Puig, the PACE President, visited the Northern region of Azerbaijan
together with Asadov, the speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament. Puig
familiarized with the state of national minorities residing in the
Northern region of Azerbaijan.
Mass graveyard was discovered during the construction of the stadium
in Guba in 2007. Researchers said that human remains, buried in
the grave, belonged to Azerbaijanis, who exposed to the genocide
committed by Armenians in 1918. So far, a total of 190 human remains
were discovered.
The PACE President said that, he was horrified from what he
witnessed. Puig noted that he would inform the PACE special commission
about human remains discovered in Guba: "I will advise the commission
that they should visit this area."
The Azerbaijani speaker said that it was important for each Azerbaijani
to visit this graveyard.
ONLY 0.08% OF EUROPEAN TOURISTS VISIT ARMENIA
Panorama.am
12:57 03/07/2008
Recently governmental approve of the ‘conception on tourism promote’
will be realized in stages. The first stage is planned to realize in
2008-2011 and the rest stages will be planned after the monitoring
of realized projects, being held in that period. Mekhak Apresyan,
the head of tourism office of the ministry of Economy, informs it
to Panorama.am.
According to the head of the office the aim of the ‘conception on
tourism promote’ is to describe and evaluate the Armenian tourism
resources, trends and prospective of tourism development in Armenia,
as well as define the main aim of state policy in this sphere,
evaluate war-calls and obstacles decide problems, directions and
principles of state policy for the realization of the goal.
‘The main problem of the project is to develop eco-tourism, rural
and communal tourism, winter tourism as well as resort and healthcare
tourism’,-he added.
Apresyan notified that Armenia, being a stable country for business
and inculcation, safe and attractive for tourism, rich with natural and
historical resources has an opportunity to offer various, competitive
tourism results and high-quality service to international tourism
market and added that during the last 10 years an unprecedented
evolution has been registered, but comparing with international
scale, few people visited Armenia. Only 0.08% of European and 0.04 %
of would tourists visit Armenia. What concerns the income of inter
country tourism; in 2006 it used to be 299mln. US dollars.
He said that in order to realize the aim of state policy in the
sphere of tourism it is necessary to satisfy stable development of
tourism which demands the active and efficient cooperation of all
interested sides: members of state and local governments, private
sectors and inhabitants.
According to Apresyan the aim of state policy in tourism is to widen
the input of the sphere in national economy, create conditions for
the development territorial economy at the same time struggling
against poverty.
The head of the office said that it helps to realize the rise of
tourists` number at the same time increase the income and offered
more high-quality tourism results and new work places. For solution
of the problem of this sphere it is necessary for and foremost to
define and develop the sightseeing centers and tourism results,
create price system in Armenia, define the list of services, arouse
target markets, continually study the tends of development, develop
Armenia as an attractive country for tourism.
He assured that these projects will come true and some part of
it is in process of creation. Tourism develops mainly based on
tourism resources: natural, historical, human, and without them it
is impossible to secure its protection and reproduction. It means
none of us is privy.
PREVAILING PART OF ARMENIA’S POPULATION PREFERS TO LIVE IN HOMELAND
1
YEREVAN, JUNE 28, NOYAN TAPAN. Only 23% Armenia’s population see their
future beyond country’s boundaries. According to Radio Liberty, the
evidence of it is the results of the survey conducted by the Gallup
research center. Armenia is inferior to its South Caucasian neighbors
with that index. According to the data of the same survey, 28%
Azerbaijan’s population and 26% Georgia’s population don’t mind
emigrating.
Moldova is the leader with that index among CIS countries. 31% its
population wish to leave the country. That index is almost two-fold
lower in Russia, nearly 17%.
As a result of the surveys Gallup’s specialists revealed a number of
regularities connected with private transfers. They refute the
wide-spread opinion that funds sent by people to their relatives from
abroad reduce emigration. "Indeed private transfers have become a
unique stimulus for emigrating people. People receiving money from
their relatives living abroad gradually begin to think that the only
way of living a well-off life is emigrating," Gallup experts emphasize.
According to the latest data published by UN, more than 200 million
world’s population lives not in the country it was born. The annual
volume of money they transfer to their relatives is over 300bn USD.
Profile: Ara Darzi
The Sunday Times
June 29, 2008
Labour’s favourite doctor prescribes strong medicine, but patients and
his colleagues may not swallow it The surgeon Ara Darzi likes to
listen to Pink Floyd while he wields his scalpel. After a year-long
operation, the music stops tomorrow when he publishes a review of the
NHS that aims to revive the ailing patient on its 60th anniversary.
One of Gordon Brown’s first acts as prime minister was to call on Darzi
to undertake the task. He was duly ennobled as Lord Darzi of Denham and
made a health minister. Brown’s request `gobsmacked’ the 48-year-old
clinician, but stranger things had happened to Darzi.
Born in Iraq to Armenian parents and raised in the Russian Orthodox
faith, he went to a Jewish school before studying medicine in Ireland
and becoming an internationally renowned pioneer of keyhole surgery in
London. His robot-assisted techniques have earned him the nickname
`Robo Doc’.
His years in Dublin have left him with an Irish lilt that marks his
affable manner. Courteous, brainy and driven, Darzi has done nothing to
embarrass his patron, unlike Brown’s other coopted `outsiders’ such as
Alan West, the security minister, Mark Malloch Brown, the foreign
minister, and Digby Jones, the trade minister.
He achieved heroic status last November by helping to save the life of
Lord Brennan, a Labour peer, who had a heart seizure after attacking
the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the Lords.
`I could see from the corner of my eye Lord Brennan was not very well,’
Darzi recalled on Desert Island Discs last week. `He collapsed. You
just forget where you are. So I started jumping on top of benches and
ended up doing a mouth-to-mouth and heart massage to see if I couldn’t
get him back.’ After several minutes of futile attempts, Darzi called
for an electric defibrillator (`I used the F-word’) and revived
Brennan. `As I was shocking him I saw the Archbishop of York doing his
prayers.’
Darzi continues to perform operations on Fridays and Saturday mornings
in London: he is honorary consultant surgeon at St Mary’s hospital,
professor of surgery at Imperial College and chair of surgery at the
Royal Marsden. The rest of the weekend is set aside for his wife Wendy
and children Freddie and Nina.
Having left political meetings abruptly when summoned for emergency
operations, he is clear where his priorities lie. He does a humorous
impression of aghast expressions in Downing Street when he raced off to
treat a colleague. `From day one I told them: if one of my patients
[needs attention], that comes first.’
Darzi seemed in need of pastoral intercession himself last October when
the interim report of his NHS review proposed 150 polyclinics or
`super-surgeries’, open all hours and partly run by private enterprise,
which would bring together family doctors and specialist consultants.
Amid talk of a mass walkout from the health service and calls for
Darzi’s resignation, fears were raised that the innovation could spell
the end of small practices run by family doctors, replacing them with a
wasteful, bureaucratic system.
The clamour has increased in recent weeks, with the British Medical
Association’s `save our surgeries’ campaign raising 1.2m signatures.
Scaremongering, protested Darzi, who accused doctors of `breaking their
professional vows’ by urging patients to oppose the plan. In last
week’s Sunday Times he singled out some doctors as `laggards’, so
intent on protecting their `professional boundaries’ that they
obstructed new treatments.
Since Darzi mooted the idea of polyclinics, all 31 London health trusts
have submitted plans for the super-surgeries.
Tomorrow’s review is expected to guarantee minimum standards of care,
setting out the rights and responsibilities of patients – although
plans to force people to lose weight or give up smoking in exchange for
healthcare have been rejected. Darzi also proposes to give a bigger
role to nurses.
Under his slogan `localise where possible, centralise where necessary’,
Darzi believes doctors and nurses must treat patients as customers,
inviting them to grade the quality of their care so others can shop
around: `When you go to a restaurant you look at a website and find out
exactly what people said about that restaurant.’
He visualises the NHS structured like a pyramid with, at the bottom,
patients receiving more care in the home – and being allowed to die
there, if they wish – while the top tier would consist of centres of
excellence along the lines of the Royal Marsden. Complex surgery and
critical care for serious illnesses would be provided by big hospitals
serving a million or more people.
Critics say aspects of the plan smack of John Major’s `patient’s
charter’, introduced to little effect in 1991. They also cast doubt on
Darzi’s avowed reluctance to take on a political role (`I had sleepless
nights thinking about this’), claiming he was used as a pawn by the
government in the 2004 Hartlepool by-election to reinforce its
reassurances that the town’s University hospital would not be closed.
His detractors point to a telling remark by Alan Johnson, the health
secretary, on Brown’s appointment of nonpoliticians to his `government
of all the talents’, known by the acronym `goats’. Johnson told The
Guardian in January: `We don’t have a goat problem in this department.
Our goat is tethered.’
Darzi was born on May 7, 1960, into a family that had fled to Iraq from
the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. His father’s work
as an engineer, developing power stations, often took the family
abroad, but Baghdad was then a stable cosmopolitan city in which Saddam
Hussein had yet to appear.
Darzi’s Jewish school was highly disciplined: `Very academic, not even
a playground. There was no such thing as sport, really.’ At home he
studied Armenian and served as an altar boy in church. He was expected
to emulate his father’s career, but while in hospital with a
life-threatening case of meningitis, his doctor planted the idea of
medicine.
His parents had friends in Ireland, which they considered safe for his
studies, so at 17 he was packed off to Dublin: `Rain, cold, miserable.’
Soon he began to fall in love with the place, visiting little towns in
a sailing boat and frequenting Durty Nelly’s bar in Limerick, which he
had been told had the most beautiful girls. Friends called him `Dara
Darcy, the dark Paddy’.
To his mind there was a curious parallel between the conflicts in
Ireland and Iraq: `Most of the troubles back in Iraq were between the
factions of the Shi’ites and the Sunnis. In Ireland, is was between two
factions of Christians. That had no logic to me. I found that quite
challenging.’
As a student at the Royal College of Surgeons, Darzi took to hanging
around hospitals to see if he could make himself useful and experience
the reality of being a doctor. After conducting his first appendix
operation, a year before qualifying, he said: `It was the most exciting
day of my life.’
He met Wendy, the Protestant daughter of a dentist, at a college
function. Their subsequent marriage in 1991 posed interdenominational
problems: `We had to find a church in Ireland to get married, and also
to have an Armenian patriarch to come and give us a blessing.’
Darzi first encountered keyhole surgery in Dublin. `Surgery in those
days was a big cut – the bigger the cut, the more macho the surgeon
was.’ Enthused by accounts of less invasive techniques, he did his
first keyhole operation and was struck by the patient’s quick recovery
time. `The same day we had done an open operation on the patient next
door. It was like chalk and cheese.’
Moving to England to gain experience, he encountered resistance to
keyhole surgery from his superior, who pronounced the procedure
dangerous, until Darzi won him round by conducting an operation with
him. `Very quickly we realised this was the tip of the iceberg.’ The
medical director of St Mary’s hospital was so thrilled by the publicity
that he offered Darzi a consultancy at the youthful age of 31. The
student decided to wait until he had qualified a year later.
Showered with awards, in 2002 he was knighted for services to medicine
and surgery; in 2003 he became a British citizen.
Darzi says his review of England’s healthcare is like no other,
incorporating the views of 2,000 medical experts. His watchwords are
courage, innovation and best practice. `I am a great believer in
bottom-up. When I want to change something in a ward environment, I go
and talk to the student nurses on the ward, because they know exactly
what is happening on the ward.’
It sounds invigorating, but whether doctors can surmount their `change
fatigue’ and give Darzi a sympathetic hearing seems open to doubt.
INFORMATION ABOUT 750,000 BORROWERS COLLECTED ARMENIAN ACRA CREDIT REPORTING
ARKA
June 27
Armenian credit bureau ACRA Credit Reporting has collected information
about 750,000 borrowers and loans totaling AMD 1.8 billion.
Arthur Javadyan, the chairman of the bureau and the head Armenian
Central Bank, said Friday at the annual meeting of ACRA shareholders.
All the commercial banks of the country and ten credit organizations
cooperate with the bureau.
Javadyan said that financial organizations, with necessary records of
ACRA at their disposal, will be able to make their decisions quicker
and services more available.
"According to the World Bank’s study ACRA is topping the CIS
ranking. This brings its indicators closer to those of European
countries such as Finland, Greece and Switzerland as well as
Singapore", he said.
Artak Arzoyan, the director of the credit bureau, speaking about the
organization’s activity for the previous year, said that 24% of the
country’s adult population is aware of the matter and this year the
awareness reached 33%, just up to international standards.
"Information requests made 14% of total number of provided credits
in late 2007. This shows effectiveness of credit information. Despite
ACRA lags behind some countries on this indicator, the result of 2008
is expected to reach 30%, up to global tendencies", he said.
Azroyan also said that ACRA provided credits on 80% requests, while
the remaining 20% were denied because of unfavorable credit record
of the requesters.
"An agreement on cooperation with USAID program on supporting financial
sector was signed in the passed year. Technical support for legal
control and practical management as well as description of business
processes", the director said.
ACRA Credit Reporting was established in January 2004 and started
operating in April 2007.
The bureau shareholders are 17 Armenian commercial banks, one credit
organization and Dun&Bradstreet prestigious international organization
as well as 14 other organizations.
In 2007, the credit bureau’s assets totaled AMD 54.9 million against
49.7 million in 2006 and equity capital 38.3 million against 25.4
million a year earlier.
The bureau’s main aim is to collect, process and update the information
received from banks and credit organizations and provide it to
empowered agencies, not revealing the information to not empowered
entities.
RECURRENT WARLIKE ANNOUNCEMENT OF ALIEV
AZG Armenian Daily
28/06/2008
Karabakh conflict
"Azerbaijani people are tired of negotiations; we should be ready to
liberate our territories in a military way. Our lands are occupied
more than ten years that causes the Azerbaijani people and state
many sufferings", Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev announced on the
occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Azerbaijani armed forces.
For all that, according to him, "Azerbaijan prefers holding of peaceful
negotiations on settlement of Karabakh conflict".
"Though the negotiation process has its positive sides, we are
not going to tolerate forever the occupation of our territories by
Armenia", mentioned Aliev.
He underlined that "there are not and there couldn’t be any mechanisms
for separation of Nagorno Karabakh from Azerbaijan on the negotiation
table".
"The war isn’t finished. Only the first stage of it has ended. And
part of Azerbaijani territories’ loss is temporary", added Aliev.