Author: nina hovnanian

Armenia’s former prime minister: The indicator of the economic growth
in Armenia is extremely low for the first half of 2014

by Alexandr Avanesov
Friday, July 25, 15:23

The indicator of the economic growth in Armenia is extremely low for
the first half of 2014 versus the same period of 2013, the former
prime minister of Armenia, a member of the parliament from the
opposition Armenian National Congress, Hrant Bagratyan, wrote at his
“Facebook” page.

He also added that in the first half of 2014 the GDP index was 3,4%
versus the same period of 2013. The GDP index was 3,1% for the 1Q
2014. “So, we have just 0,3% “progress” and no economic growth. But
how one can compare himself with the former government and say that
the situation has improved a little?

The former government was simply a mistake and was drawing the wool
over our eyes for 6 years, especially that there was almost no growth
in the key branches of economy (industry, agriculture and
construction). Export grew by 0.8%, and import – by 1.1%…The highest
positive progress is noticed only in the sphere of services”, –
Bagratyan said.

He said that one can strictly assess the activity of the new
government at the end of October of the current year, after six month
of activity. “However, today I can say that we were waiting for more
but for the three month of activity the government made just a couple
of reforming steps. For instance, it has started returning VAT to
tourists…But is it hard to develop the economy of the country? We
just need equal tax field for everybody. When we say that small and
big business are equally taxated, we should understand that a big
business has an effect of volume that should be neutralized. Only
after that, the field will become equal. The tax system should be
changed fully and immediately. When giving tax privileges to micro
business, we do not resolve the problem but worsen it. If there is no
business, privileges are senseless. Actually, there is no business, as
the tax field has not been equally distributed.

Let’s touch on investments and state assistance. Stop relaying only on
big plants (external and local) and on philanthropists! The country
should be built by people and investments should be decetralized. We
have to attract the funds of millions of Armenians for development of
the country through the investment funds and investment banks. The
state should help to form clusters and guarantee minimal
profitability of certain strategic investments. Moreover, all the
dominating and monopolist companies, banks, telephone operators,
“Gasprom-Armenia”, Kajaran, Tekhut, Agarak, Kapan. “City”, “SAS”, etc.
should have a status of a OJSC and should be taken to auction at the
stock market. Then, financial system should be separated from the
state, and Central Bank should stop saving this or that bank and
ensuring revenues for the budget. And finally, local government
bodies should have enough funds and should not beg Yerevan for money.
I can continue the list. What hinders you to implement all this?
Thanks to the reforms made at the beginning of the 90s, we had a
double-digit growth for several years. But reserves ended in 2007. Now
we need another approach. the previous government did not understand
it. But what about the new one?”, – Armenia’s former prime minister
asked.

Church and intellectuals have to create pan-Armenian resistance
platform – opinion

12:49 * 25.07.14

An Armenian theologist affiliated with the opposition Heritage party
says he doesn’t see a bright vision for Armenia in the current state
of affairs.

Vardan Khachatryan proposes consolidating the efforts of the church
and the intelligentsia to mobilize the nation’s potentials.

“We have never experienced a period of such rapid changes; never
before have we seen such an upsurge of hazards and threats. The speed
of such tectonic changes demonstrates that we are close to the rupture
point that lowers the likelihood of a bloodless outcome, with the
bordering regions where we have neighbors (Turks, Persians,
Azerbaijanis and even Georgians) being flooded with blood. An
overtension dominates the world in all possible ways, with solutions
being hinted by the international media. But that’s not the right way;
it isn’t clear yet what the outcome of all this will be,” he told
Tert.am.

Khachatryan said he sees only one way out in the country. “We must,
conventionally speaking, re-establish Hayk [historical Armenia] and
recall that the country’s defense has noting to do with either troop
size or the quantity of weapons, nor even with the defense
borderlines,” he explained.

Khachatryan said he finds love for the country the only best
protection at moments of ordeal. He also stressed the role of
consolidating the diaspora efforts for creating a pan-national
platform of resistance.

Asked whether the society has to rely on the opposition or the ruling
authorities in organizing the mobilization, the theologist-politician
said he thinks that the church and intellectuals have a more important
role to play.

“The church is a more acceptable option, as the degree of its static
character is, to my mind, considerably higher in the society. The
opposition and the authorities are the bearers of in-depth interests,
with one wishing to seize power and the other not willing to cede it,”
he replied.

The theologist called for launching a forum debate to address more
practical steps.

“Otherwise, I do not see a vision of a bright future. From this point
of view, we have to invited representatives of both the authorities
and the opposition to propose plans and a big forum which needs to be
fairly organized to influence the society’s conscience,” he added.

Idea of arming Armenian border villagers gains support (updated)

July 25, 2014 – 14:37 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met Thursday, July
24, with the members of the Public Council to discuss the immigration
problem, its causes and ways of prevention. The meeting also focused
on Armenia’s joining the Eurasian Economic Union, border security,
environment, electricity price hike, funded pensions as well as
constitutional reforms.

The border security got special attention, causing hot debate
regarding a possibility of arming the residents of border villages.
President Sargsyan, however, spoke against any initiative of the kind.

Earlier, Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan said that all the
possible routes from Azerbaijan to Karvachar area of Nagorno Karabakh
will be mined.

“The Nagorno Karabakh defense army is taking appropriate measures to
discover possible routes of penetration from Azerbaijan into
Karvachar, including work on mining of those paths,” Ohanyan said.
“The alert level on the frontline has been raised. Commanders of the
NKR defense army are taking all necessary measures. Population is
warned accordingly.”

Meanwhile, former commander of Arabo detachment Manvel Yeghiazaryan
said he supports the idea of arming the residents of Armenia’s border
villages.

“It’s erroneous to think that weapons can results in increase of the
crime rate in the area,” he believes.

Yeghiazaryan also supported Tavush province governor’s offer to invite
diplomats and representatives of international organizations to visit
the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, where “they can see everything with
their own eyes.”

ARMENIE
L’opposition condamne les décisions politiques de la justice

Le parti Héritage voit un > derrière le verdict
controversé et la peine de prison prononcée contre un ancien officier
de l’armée qui selon lui a été persécuté pour dissidence.

La semaine dernière, un tribunal d’Erevan a condamné le colonel à la
retraite Volodia Avetisian pour fraude et prise de pot de vin et l’a
condamné à six ans de prison.

Plusieurs mois avant son arrestation controversée en Septembre
Avetisian avait commencé une protestation solitaire sur une place
centrale de la capitale arménienne, exigeant de meilleures conditions
sociales pour des milliers d’anciens combattants.

De nombreux anciens combattants qui vivent de pensions maigres de
l’Etat ont soutenu la protestation qui a connu une expansion dans les
mois suivants.

Les partisans d’Avetisian ont décrit le procès comme un exemple de
persécution politique visant à faire dérailler leur mouvement
anti-gouvernement.

Dans un communiqué publié mercredi le parti Héritage a décrit la
décision du tribunal comme un >. Le parti a déclaré que la
décision était une violation du principe de la liberté d’expression.

La députée du parti Héritage Zaruhi Postanjian estime que par cet acte
judiciaire les autorités arméniennes ont signifié >.

Comment: Christian flight will haunt the Arab world: In a Middle East
rebuilt along less tolerant lines, it’s not just minorities that face
exile, but virtually a century of secular thought

BY William Dalrymple

GUARDIAN LEADER
PAGES; Pg. 30

The past decade has been catastrophic for the Arab world’s 12 million
Christians. In Egypt revolution and counter-revolution have been
accompanied by a series of anti-Copt riots, killings and church
burnings. In Gaza and the West Bank Palestinian Christians are
emigrating as they find themselves caught between Israel’s pro-settler
government and their increasingly radicalised Sunni neighbours.

In Syria most of the violence is along the Sunni-Alawite fault line,
but stories of rape and murder directed at the Christian minority, who
used to make up 10% of the population, have emerged. Many have already
fled to camps in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan; the ancient Armenian
community of Aleppo is reported to be moving en masse to Yerevan.

The worst affected areas of Syria are controlled by Isis. Last weekend
it issued a decree offering the dwindling Christian population of
eastern Syria and northern Iraq a choice: convert to Islam or pay a
religious levy – the jizya. If they did not comply, “there is nothing
to give them but the sword”. The passing of the deadline led to
possibly the largest exodus of Middle Eastern Christians since the
Armenian massacres of the first world war, with Mosul’s entire
Christian community heading for the relative tolerance of the Kurdish
zone.

Even before this latest exodus, at least two-thirds of Iraqi
Christians had fled since the fall of Saddam. Christians were
concentrated in Mosul, Basra and, especially, Baghdad – which before
the US invasion had the largest Christian population in the Middle
East. Although Iraq’s 750,000 Christians made up only 7% of the
pre-war population, they were a prosperous minority, as symbolised by
Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister – who used to disarm foreign
dignitaries by breaking into Onward, Christian Soldiers in Aramaic,
the language of Jesus.

According to tradition St Thomas and his cousin Addai brought
Christianity to Iraq in the first century. At the Council of Nicea,
where the Christian creed was thrashed out in AD325, there were more
bishops from Mesopotamia than western Europe. The region became a
refuge for those persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantines, such as the
Mandeans – the last Gnostics, who follow what they believe to be the
teachings of John the Baptist. Then there was the Church of the East,
which brought the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, as well as Greek
science and medicine, to the Islamic world – and hence, via Cordoba,
to the new universities of medieval Europe.

Now almost everywhere Arab Christians are leaving. In the past decade
maybe a quarter have made new lives in Europe, Australia and America.
According to Professor Kamal Salibi, they are simply exhausted: “There
is a feeling of fin de race among Christians all over the Middle East.
Now they just want to go somewhere else, make some money and relax.
Each time a Christian goes, no other Christian comes to fill his place
and that is a very bad thing for the Arab world. It is Christian Arabs
who keep the Arab world ‘Arab’ rather than ‘Muslim’.”

Certainly since the 19th century Christian Arabs have played a vital
role in defining a secular Arab cultural identity. It is no
coincidence that most of the founders of secular Arab nationalism were
men such as Michel Aflaq – the Greek Orthodox Christian from Damascus
who, with other Syrian students returned from the Sorbonne, founded
the Ba’ath party in the 1940s – or Faris al-Khoury, Syria’s only
Christian prime minister. Then there were intellectuals like the
Palestinian George Antonius, who in 1938 wrote in The Arab Awakening
of the crucial role Christians played in reviving Arab literature and
the arts after their long slumber under Ottoman rule.

If the Islamic state proclaimed by Isis turns into a permanent,
Christian-free zone, it could signal the demise not just of an
important part of the Arab Christian realm but also of the secular
Arab nationalism Christians helped create. The 20th century after
1918, which saw the creation of the different Arab states, may well
prove to be a blip in Middle Eastern history, as the old primary
identifiers of Arab identity, religion and qabila – tribe – resurface.

It is as if, after a century of flirting with imported ideas of the
secular nation state, the region is reverting to the Ottoman Millet
system (from the Arabic millah, literally “nation”), a view of the
world that made religion the ultimate marker of identity.

Despite sizeable Christian populations holding on in Lebanon, Jordan
and Egypt, there is likely to be little place for Christian Arabs in a
Middle East rebuilt on intolerant ideologies such as that of Isis.
Their future is more likely to resemble that of the most influential
Christian Arab intellectual of our day, Edward Said. Born in Jerusalem
at the height of Arab nationalism in 1935, Said died far from the
turmoil of the Middle East in New York in 2003. His last collection of
essays was appropriately entitled Reflections on Exile.

William Dalrymple is author of From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among
the Christians of the Middle East

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
July 24 2014

Shining crescent

by Yusuf Kanli

Turkey is a country in the first league of international diplomacy.
Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu was exuberantly boasting in comments
to the media that `Turkey had become such an important and big player
that even a fly could not fly in its region without Turkey being
informed in the first place.’

Opposition deputies since then have been ridiculing that statement as
the shortest surviving joke of all ages. Can anyone imagine what great
successes the Turkish foreign policy team has achieved over the past
few years? The Armenia rapprochement was imposed by a hilarious lady
who must have been aware in the first place that it would not work.
However, protocols were signed. It could have been a great achievement
but the Turkish team, like the Armenians, had accepted it under
duress. Not only did neither of the two countries endorse it through
their parliaments, they did whatever was possible to kill it. Thus,
the Armenia front is heading to 2015 with prospects gloomier than
ever.

There were red lines in the Iraq policies. No, Turkey would never,
ever accept the Kurds carving out an independent state from Iraq. Now,
Iraqi Kurds are inching towards transforming their de facto state into
de jure, about to go to referendum for independence. Surprisingly, the
principled and foresighted Turkish foreign policy team apparently
still believes they are faced with a bluff in northern Iraq. In the
meantime, a deputy chairman of the ruling party, also a Kurd, was
rather happy, saying Turkey might be enhanced by embracing an
independent Kurdistan.

The Arab Spring was to bring democracy to the entire region. Through
zigzagging yet apparently unforeseen policy undertakings, the region’s
`great country’ became, in less than two years, a country advising its
nationals to move out of two neighboring countries because being a
Turk has become an added security risk in both Syria and Libya¦ Are
things better in Iraq? No, the foreign minister aspiring to become the
successor of Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an as premier and ruling Justice and
Development Party’s (AKP) leader could not prevent the Islamic State
of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from taking the Turkish consul, its
entire staff and security, as well as some of their family members
hostage¦

The prime minister is crying that he was no longer a telephone pal of
American President Barrack Obama. They last talked in February. Still,
if you believe it, Turkey is a shining star ` if not a crescent `
thanks to its successful handling of foreign policy.

A bad joke, is it not!?

July/25/2014

The Messenger, Georgia
July 24 2014

What happened at the Armenian Church in Tbilisi?

By Messenger Staff
Thursday, July 24

There was a clash at the Armenian Church in Tbilisi on July19. It
could be taken as an ordinary clash or hooliganism. However, Armenian
Church representatives in Georgia state that it was a deliberate
attack on the Armenian Church, which according to them was based on
religious and ethnic grounds.

Georgian analysts believe that there are other forces at work aiming
to aggravate Georgian-Armenian relations. Therefore, analysts demand
an overwhelming investigation in order to reveal the individuals who
wish to create an ethnic-religious confrontation in Georgia.

There are two main versions of this story. According to the first
version, a driver was trying to turn her car around and got upset
because of another car blocking the street. An argument then ensued
resulting in a clash. Some supporters of the woman appeared.
Spirituals tried to calm the situation, but unfortunately, one of them
was assaulted during the skirmish.

However, Armenian Church representatives said it was a deliberate
attack by Orthodox Christian Georgians on Armenians motivated by
ethnic and religious reasons.

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Chairman of the Human Rights’ Protection Union,
claims that it was deliberate propaganda coming from a certain group
in the country, who wants to strain situation between the two
neighboring countries.

Representatives of various NGOs made a statement on July 22 and
concluded that the incident included verbally abusive language in
terms of ethnicity. They claim that the incident transformed into
wider aggression that was mainly targeted towards some representatives
of the Armenian Church rather than the church itself or an ethnic
group. It was also stated that there was a certain number of ethnic
Armenians in both groups.

NGOs ask the government to conduct an urgent investigation of the case
and take adequate measures to avoid the risk of a similar
confrontation.

“The government should pay the utmost attention to anti-Armenian
attitudes in the country to prevent future conflict,” NGOs state.

The Georgian Patriarchate immediately responded to the incident,
stating that the incident had no ethnic or religious overtones to it,
at the same time condemning the behavior of those involved in the
incident.

According to some analysts, such an incident might serve Russian
interests in Georgia. Such developments would create unrest in Georgia
and damage Georgia’s path to NATO and the EU. As such, analysts appeal
to the Georgian government to pay more attention to this sensitive
issue to avoid any future confrontations.

Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA, Iran
July 24 2014

Armenian leader calls for massive turnout in IntË?l Qods Day rallies

Tabriz, East Azarbaijan prov, July 24, IRNA ` Archbishop of Armenians
of East Azarbaijan province in western Iran, in a message on Thursday,
urged all Iranians, the Armenian community in particular, to
participate in the International Qods Day rallies to be held on
Friday, July 25.

Archbishop Grigor Chiftchian invited Armenians of Azarbaijan to take
to the streets on Friday along with other compatriots to mark the
International Qods Day.

He said that people should massively turnout in the rallies to show
their outrage at the Israeli atrocities against the civilians in Gaza
and express support for the Palestinian nation in their resistance to
the Zionist occupation.

Around 2800 inhabitants of Gegharkunik region benefit from orange
foundation and Armenian eye care project joint project

YEREVAN, July 24. /ARKA/. . Around 2800 inhabitants of Gegharkunik
region have benefited from Orange Foundation and Armenian Eye Care
Project (AECP) joint project, which aimed on conducting free eye
screenings for inhabitants of the region and provide medical treatment
to socially vulnerable people, Orange Armenia telecom said in a press
release today.

It said eye screenings have been conducted by AECP ophthalmologic
groups. 470 from 2800 screened inhabitants have been sent to Mobile
eye care hospital (MEH) for in-depth medical examinations. Surgeries
or laser treatments have already been provided to 195 people in Mobile
eye care hospitals stationed in Martuni and Vardenis. At the moment
the surgeries are being conducted in Chambarak as well. At the end of
the project the number of such surgeries will reach 50.

“It is already the fourth year we are cooperating with Armenian Eye
Care Project. We have visited to all regions of Armenia and some
regions were visited even twice. Orange Foundation proudly supports
implementation of this large-scale project, which brings concrete and
tangible changes in inhabitants of the regions of Armenia and their
families’ lives. With excitement and great relish we see the people,
who regained their eye sight and return to their normal life.” said
Lilit Martirosyan, General Secretary of Orange Foundation.

“It is the second time we are working in Gegharkunik region, despite
the fact that starting from 2003 we make our sixth tour in Armenia. We
are glad that this time the inhabitants of the most vulnerable areas
of Gegharkunik region have benefited from our services and that
medical services suggested by us to inhabitants of all the rest
regions of the RA were available for them as well. According to our
surgeon Asatur Hovsepyan, who works in mobile hospital, the flow of
patients exceeded all forecasts and the eye diseases severity level
was high enough,” said AECP Armenian office director Nune
Yeghiazaryan.

The project in Gegharkunik region has been arranged considering the
special request of the Ministry of Health of the RA by including the
most indigent settlements of Gegharkunik region. It is the part of a
2014 large-scale joint project between Armenian Eye Care project and
Orange Foundation.

Within the frames of this project overall in 5 regions of Armenia
medical examinations of 11 300 adults and 4 600 children and provision
of around 2000 eye glasses are foreseen. Mobile hospital is ready to
perform more than 1000 surgeries and laser treatments. At the same
time the comprehensive special classes on eye care will be organized
in regions’ schools. -0-

– See more at:

Armenian president against plan to arm border regions

20:49 * 24.07.14

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has opposed to a poposal for
supplying arms to the population in border villages.

The issue was actively debated at a meeting with members of the Public
Council earlier today. The Council members proposed the initiative as
a measure to strengthen security in the border regions. Dwelling on
the capacities in the military, the president said that the national
armed forces are efficient enough today to ensure the defense of the
sensitive regions.

The meeting also addressed other issues of concern, including
migration, its causes and consequences, Armenia’s Eurasian integration
and its possible impacts, mining development etc. The Council also
discussed its future plan of actions with the president.

Armenian News – Tert.am