Author: nina hovnanian

IRANIAN PRESIDENT TO VISIT ARMENIA SOON

Fars News Agency, Iran
Nov 2 2011

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is slated to pay
a visit to Armenia in the near future, sources revealed on Wednesday.

The Presidential Office’s Director-General for International Affairs
told FNA on Wednesday that President Ahmadinejad would pay a visit
to Armenia in the near future.

Mohammad Reza Forqani also mentioned that Ahmadinejad was due to
visit Armenia at the invitation of President Serzh Sargsian on June 4,
but the trip was called off.

The Iranian president was last in Armenia in October 2007. During
his two day visit to the Central Asian state, Ahmadinejad met with
university students and professors and Iranian expatriates in Armenia,
and signed four agreements and a joint statement.

Also during the same visit, the University of Yerevan granted an
honorary PhD degree to the Iranian president.

Sargsian was in Tehran in March to attend the Iranian New Year
festivities.

ARMENIAN VICE-SPEAKER DISMISSED FOLLOWING SPEAKER AND POLICE CHIEF

Vestnik Kavkaza
Nov 2 2011

Armen Gevorkyan, Armenian Vice-Speaker of Parliament and Minister
for Territorial Administration, has resigned, Interfax reports.

Vestnik Kavkaza reported earlier that Armenian Parliamentary Speaker
Ovik Abramyan had resigned on Tuesday. When asked about possible
resignation, Abramyan said he had not discussed the issue, Gazeta.ru
reports.

President Serzh Sargsyan offered him to head the electoral headquarters
of the ruling party during the coming parliamentary polls.

The Armenian police chief was dismissed earlier. There were other
major staff reshuffles. Yerevan’s mayor announced his resignation
last week to become deputy head of Gazprom.

DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT VISITS TSITSERNAKABERD

National Assembly of RA, Armenia

Nov 2 2011

On November 1 the members of the delegation of the European Parliament
led by Milan Cabrnoch, Head of the Delegation, Co-Chair of the RA-EU
Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, visited Tsitsernakaberd and
laid flowers at the 1915 Armenian Genocide Memorial and paid tribute
to memory of more than one and a half million victims, paid silence
tribute to memory of one and a half million innocent people.

The deputies of the European Parliament took a tour in the Genocide
Museum , got acquainted with the documents ensuring the Armenian
Genocide. Milan Cabrnoch, Co-Chair of the Committee, and the Bulgarian
deputy Evgeni Kirilov left note in the Commemoration Book. In his note
Evgeni Kirilov particularly has noted: “This is one of the tragic
exciting pages of the History of the Armenian People. We hope that
it will never be repeated in the history.”

Milan Cabrnoch, Co-Chair of the RA-EU Parliamentary Cooperation
Committee, in his talk with the journalists noted:

“I am in Armenia for the first time, being in the Genocide Museum
I am very impressed and I understand that the Armenian Genocide is
one of the important pages of the History of the Armenian People. I
am rather informed on the Armenian Genocide, as I was born in former
Czechoslovakia . The knowledge of the problem is very important for
us: the deputies of the European Parliament, in order we are able to
prevent such crimes.”

Slavi Binev, member of the RA-EU Parliamentary Cooperation Committee,
member of the European Parliament-Turkey Friendship Group, representing
Bulgaria , in his word mentioned: “In the European Parliament we have
adopted two declarations on the Armenian Genocide.

I believe that we have no right to forget our past, our history;
otherwise we won’t have future”.

I believe that in future not only new countries will join the
declarations on the Armenian Genocide, but also different NGOs,
which will give a big result.”

ARMENIAN AGRICULTURE MINISTRY URGING PROCESSING ENTERPRISES TO REPAY THEIR DEBTS TO FARMERS BEFORE JAN 1, 2012

ARKA
Nov 2, 2011

YEREVAN, November 2. /ARKA/. Armenian Agriculture Ministry has sent
letters to all the processing enterprises of Armenia urging them
to pay their debts to farmers before the end of this year, Deputy
Agriculture Minister Robert Makaryan said.

He said that contract-based procurement culture is being introduced
in the country. Some 40 companies buying grapes have already started
paying their debts to farmers. Of them, 20 companies have already
repaid their debts, and the other 20 companies have repaid them
partially.

Makaryan said that the ministry is conducting an everyday monitoring,
which shows that AMD 15.2 billion of AMD 16.8 billion (90.5%) have
already been paid for the purchased grapes. The remaining amount will
be paid before the end of this year.

Some 33 of 39 processing enterprises have completely repaid their
debts, others partially.

Of AMD 2.8 billion, 2.5 billion has been paid.

Makaryan said that the ministry set this deadline to prevent repetition
of the previous year~Rs situation, when three companies had overdue
debts toward farmers as of May.

He said that the 2010 debts are already paid and expressed hope
that all the companies will pay the money they owe to farmers before
expiration of the deadline.

According to the National Statistical Service of Armenia, agricultural
output totaled AMD 169 billion in September 2011 ~V 18.6% year-on-year
growth.

Armenia has 30 canning factories, 20 wineries, more than 250 milk
purchasing and processing factories, 70 meat-processing factories
and four tobacco-processing factories.

Aggregate capacity of the Armenian enterprises is 285,000 tons, of
which 172,300 tons (60.4%) are tinned vegetables and 111,700 tons are
tinned fruits and juices. However, only 20% of this capacity is used
in practice.

SYRIAN-ARMENIANS PROFESSING ISLAM ARE TURKEY’S OUTPOST – HISTORIAN

Tert.am
21:48 02.11.11

Armenians in Syria who have adopted Islam are Turkey’s outpost there,
an Armenian historian has said.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Gevorg Yazichian said
that in Syria there are two communities of Syrian-Armenians who have
adopted Islam and who are never spoken about.

“They are Armenians by their origins whose ancestors were forced to
adopt Islam,” said he.

Those Armenians even do not know where Armenia is located and generally
do not accept their Armenian origin.

“These people are in fact Turkey’s outpost in Syria to incite unrest
in the future,” Yazichian added.

In his words, currently there are from 70,000 to 75,000 Armenians
in Syria among them Armenian-speaking Armenians and Arabic-speaking
Armenians who have a very low level of their national identity and
are on the brink of assimilation.

Further, he said that first time Armenians settled in Syria was during
King Tigran the Great before Christ, but Armenians immigrated to Syria
mostly after the Bagrationi Kingdom in the middle ages and after the
Armenian Genocide in 1915.

CIVILITAS POLLS

Wednesday, 02 November 2011 20:06

With the support of Norwegian and German governments, a few months
ago the Civilitas Foundation began to conduct polls throughout Armenia.

The results of the polls will be made available to the media and
will serve as the topic of public discussions. The aim of the project
is threefold:

The first and most important is to validate the value of an individual
citizen’s opinion. By creating a reliable and sustainable mechanism
for collecting the opinion of real people of all ages and in all
geographic areas, both participants in the polls as well as those who
read about them and see their opinion reflected there, will begin to
believe that individual opinion and public opinion have value.

The second aim is to offer reliable public opinion frequently and
consistently in order to validate the value of public opinion as a
tool for policy formation.

Finally, a third aim of the polling process is to broaden the scope
of public debate – by asking new questions, and by offering new and
different answers to old, standard questions. Both are crucial if
Armenian society is to continue to be engaged in public discourse,
without disdainfully casting aside old theories and conclusions.

Of course, good, reliable, objective polls also serve many other
purposes. There is no better way to gauge societal transformation,
changes in attitudes, hopes and expectations, the development of new
values and new customs and patterns of behavior, without gathering
responses to frequent, continuous sociological questions.

METHODOLOGY

Committed to making the polling process as accurate, transparent and
reliable as possible, Civilitas has collaborated with the Caucasus
Research and Resource Centers (CRRC). The CRRC experts of the central
office located in Tbilisi have offered expert guidance in staff
selection, training and question formation and poll processes.

The CRRC experts have also participated in the selection of respondents
in order to assure the formation of a demographically-representative
sample of respondents who trust the process and will offer honest
responses, without fears or suspicions about how their response will
be taken.

QUESTIONS

Questions are asked of 1000 households throughout Armenia within a
two-day period.

The first sets of questions have covered a variety of subjects. The
graphs below represent responses.

During the recent poll more than 1000 households were asked questions
about their readiness to temporarily or permanently leave the country.

The questions were asked in the second week of October, during a
month when public discourse and private chatter centered on this
topic. Both the National Statistical Service numbers about travel,
as well as individual anecdotal stories seemed to bear out the popular
conviction that emigration is no longer possible to rein in.

The responses were interesting. Nearly half have considered temporary
emigration, but almost one-fourth of the respondents would consider
permanent emigration. Interestingly, of those who have considered
permanently leaving the country, 23 percent have family members living
abroad. Of the NOs, 27 percent have family member living abroad.

‘Abroad’ often did not include Russia as far as some respondents
were concerned.

In mid-September, Civilitas asked about independence. A full 89
percent said they considered Independence Day a day of celebration.

And 86 percent said they were proud to be a citizen of Armenia. A
large number (68 percent) would vote again for independence, if the
referendum were held on the day of the survey.

Earlier in May, Civilitas asked questions about Internet use.

Forty-six percent of the respondents did not use the Internet, while
21 percent used it every day. As the main reason for not using the
Internet 38 percent of those who did not use Internet mentioned that
their financial means were not sufficient, 32 percent mentioned they
did not have a computer and 19 percent did not need it.

NEXT PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS TO BE HELD ON MAY 6

Tert.am
18:54 02.11.11

Chairman of Armenia’s National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan has mentioned
the date of 2012 parliamentary elections on Wednesday.

Speaking to RFE/RL Armenian service in response to a question about
his resignation, Abrahamyan said that the parliamentary elections
will take place on May 6.

“The process of my resignation will finish only in November. Let’s
assume that the month November is over and few months are left;
National Assembly elections are on May 6,” said he.

It comes after Hovik Abrahamyan declared about his intention to
resign so that to lead the electoral campaign headquarters of the
ruling Republican Party of Armenia to which he is a member.

US SELLING MILITARY HELICOPTERS TO TURKEY

Aysor.am
Wednesday,November 02

The United States is mulling over selling three Cobra helicopters and
several Predator surveillance aircraft to Turkey, to be delivered
by the end of the year to assist in the campaign against the PKK,
the Press TV reports.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) has formally notified
the US Congress of a possible sale of AH-1W Super Cobra Attack
helicopters to Turkey, CNN reported on Friday.

Ankara has been seeking the helicopters to replace those lost in its
long struggle against separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’
Party, which is also known by its Kurdish acronym, the PKK.

The deal, valued at up to $111 million, would “improve Turkey’s
capability for self defense, modernization, regional security and
inter-operability with US and other NATO members,” the DSCA said in
a statement, the Press TV reports.

ARMENIAN APRICOTS DEMANDED IN NETHERLANDS, GREENERY POPULAR IN UAE

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 2, 2011 – 15:50 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – As of November 2011, Armenia exported 12 858 tones
of fruit and vegetables against 10 570 tons for the same period in
2010, Armenia’s Deputy Agriculture Minister said.

Robert Makaryan told a November 2 press conference that apricot export
totaled 7 300 tons, sweet cherry export – 673 tons, plum and cherry
export -257 tons and 5.7 tons respectively.

According to the Deputy Minister, most Armenian products were exported
to Russian market – 9 890 tons, followed by Georgia- 2 858 tons,
Ukraine – 89 tons, Belarus – 15 tons, the Netherlands and the UAE –
1 ton for each.

Makaryan also noted that 94% of Armenian agricultural products are
exported by land, the rest of 6% are transported by air.

IRAN SAYS ISRAELI ATTACK WILL COME AT HEAVY PRICE

PanARMENIAN.Net
November 2, 2011 – 16:06 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Iran’s military chief warned Wednesday, November 2,
that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear development sites will come
at a heavy price, Haaretz reported citing the Iranian ISNA news agency.

Responding to reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been
trying to gain a majority in the cabinet for an attack on Iran, the
chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Hassan
Firouzabadi, warned both Israel and the U.S. against such a move.

“The U.S. officials know that the Zionist regime’s military attack
against Iran will inflict heavy damages to the U.S. seriously as well
as the Zionist regime,” ISNA quoted Firouzabadi as saying.

Haaretz reported Wednesday that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak have been trying to push for an Israeli attack on Iran in the
cabinet. They recently persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman,
who previously objected to attacking Iran, to support such a move.

Senior ministers and diplomats said the International Atomic Energy
Agency’s report, due to be released on November 8, will have a decisive
effect on the decisions Israel makes.