Author: nina hovnanian

LUXEMBOURG DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: AXE-MURDER IS NEVER HEROISM

ARMENPRESS
11 September, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS: As was announced by the Deputy
Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg Jean Asselborn at the press conference after the meeting
with the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Nalbandyan on
September 11, axe-murder can never be heroism. Asselborn noted that
the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary had already mentioned that
he did not mean to hurt Armenia in any way. “This is his message and I
would like to mention about it here. I think he expressed what he felt
at that time”, – said the Luxembourg Minister of Foreign Affairs. “In
the European Union we are quite concerned about the incident. And we
should not only inspire confidence to the presidents of the co-chair
countries, but also make steps to smooth the current situation”, –
added Asselborn.

On February 19 2004 in Budapest Azerbaijani assassin Ramil Safarov,
who axe-murdered Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan while sleeping,
when they were participating in NATO English Language Courses in the
capital of Hungary, was sentenced to life imprisonment without right
to be pardoned for 30 years. On August 31 2012 Safarov was extradited
from Hungary to Azerbaijan and was pardoned by the President Ilham
Aliyev. The murderer was advanced to mayor, provided with an apartment
and passport and given “national hero”. Different international
structures and countries came forward with announcements condemning the
Azerbaijan’s step. Armenia suspended diplomatic relations with Hungary.

LUXEMBOURG FM: SUFFERING OF GENOCIDE VICTIMS MUSTN’T BE FORGOTTEN

PanARMENIAN.Net
September 11, 2012 – 15:35 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn visited
Tsitsernakaberd memorial to Genocide victims. The official laid a
wreath to commemorate the victims of the tragedy.

Mr. Asselborn was further taken on a tour over Genocide Museum,
accompanied by museum director Hayak Demoyan.

The Foreign Minister left a note in a Book of Memory, which said,
“the massacre and suffering of Armenians cannot be forgotten. The
memorial is symbolic of the fact that the victims of the tragedy will
never be forgotten. I’m confident, the dishonor of the past can be
overcome by building a new future.”

BBC REPORT: “ARMENIA: THE CLEVEREST NATION ON EARTH”

BBC news agency wrote an article and made a report about the Armenian
victory at World Chess Olympiad.

“Armenia – a tiny, poor country of around three million people –
has won the chess Olympics twice in a row.

In so doing, it has triumphed over giants like Russia, China and
the US.

Chess is pursued fanatically in many parts of the world, but nowhere
more so than Armenia, where its over-the-board stars have become
national celebrities.

But how has little Armenia created a nation of chess geniuses –
is there something in the water? Assignment investigates”, BBC writes.

The report is available here.

‘WE WILL CONTINUE TO ISOLATE ARMENIA FROM INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL PROJECTS’

News.Az
Tue 11 September 2012 10:55 GMT | 11:55 Local Time

The cause of Armenia’s grave economic situation is Azerbaijan.

The statement came from President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev,
APA reports.

“The main problem for Azerbaijan is the occupation of our lands by
Armenia. Our lands are under occupation as a result of the aggression,
aggressive policy of Armenia against Azerbaijan.”

The president noted that this issue cannot find its solution because
of the support of patrons of Armenians in the world to them. “It’s
despite the fact that there are all opportunities and legal framework
for the solution of the issue. International organizations have adopted
decisions and resolutions. Leaders of the leading countries of the
world have made statements that this current situation is unacceptable
and the status quo must be changed. Unfortunately, Armenia remains
indifferent to these calls, and international community does not
exert the due pressure and effect on it. This is the cause for the
insolvability of the issue.We will continue to strengthen our country
and our international positions. Legal grounds for the solution are
sufficiently enough, and these grounds defend and support Azerbaijan’s
position. The UN, its Security Council, OSCE, the Council of Europe,
European Parliament and other international organizations have adopted
decisions which are the only path for the settlement of the conflict.”

The head of state stressed that the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan
is recognized by all countries, and this issue can find its solution
only within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

“There is no change in Azerbaijan’s position regarding this settlement
of this issue. We will not back off the path that we have taken.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an eternal and historical land of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan must restore its territorial integrity. Occupiers must be
and will be withdrawn from all the occupied lands. Azerbaijani citizens
must and will return to their homelands. Our compatriots will return
to the regions which are currently beyond administrative borders of
former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Province, and Nagorno-Karabakh,
Khankandi and Shusha. I am convinced and believe in this, and there
are enough factors to consolidate my conviction: International law,
economic power of Azerbaijan, our military potential and increasing
weigh of Azerbaijan in political arena. Only looking at the history
of the last one year, we can see the successes of Azerbaijan.

We are a member of the respected international organization – the UN
Security Council. We chaired this organization a couple of months ago.

We entered this organization with the support of 155 countries.

Recently, 120 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement supported
a resolution considering the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh
issue within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. 120 countries
is the majority of the world. We in many cases hear the notion of
international arena, and some organizations, some structures mean
themselves when they say international arena. International arena is
not an object that unites 20 or 30 countries. International arena
is the UN, and 155 countries in the UN supported us. International
arena is the Non-Aligned Movement.

There operate 120 countries. They too supported us. That is, the
international arena supports our position and of course, it gives
us additional opportunities and increases our confidence. But at the
same time, the Minsk Group has been created for 20 years to solve this
issue, but it cannot. It cannot exert the due pressure on Armenia. We
see that this issue can and must be solved at the expense of the power
of Azerbaijan. Therefore, we must be more powerful. We must further
strengthen our army and we do. At present the Azerbaijani Army is
among mighty armies not on a regional, but on a global scale. We are
advancing our country by strengthening our economic potential.

It enables us to conduct an independent policy on this issue. We make
decisions based on national interests in foreign and domestic policy.

Strong Azerbaijan is a strong regional factor, and a stabilizing
factor. At the same time, it’s already not possible not to account
with Azerbaijan in regional issues. Attempts not to account with
Azerbaijan brought no result and the recent history shows that.

Therefore, the stronger we are, the sooner Azerbaijan will restore
its territorial integrity.

We have an unambiguous position regarding the solution of the issue. I
have repeatedly stated my opinions on this. The aggressive forces
must be removed from all the occupied lands, and after that peace and
cooperation can emerge in the region and the source of danger can be
removed. So far, our lands are under occupation. Our number one target
is Armenia. We will continue to isolate Armenia from all international
and regional projects. This policy is bearing fruits and the cause
for Armenia’s difficult economic situation is Azerbaijan. This is
unambiguous. According to their own statistics, 80,000 people have
fled Armenia in the first half of the year. By the end of the year,
this figure will probably double. The Azerbaijan’s population is
increasing and after 5-10 years, in general, the correlation of
percents will be one to ten, maybe even less. These factors should
make them think. Their grave economic situation, demographic situation
and isolation from international issues must make them worry.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan is stepping forward. Despite the occupation of
our lands, we make great achievements and we increase them. A couple
of days ago, respected international economic structure – The Davos
Economic Forum placed Azerbaijan 42nd for economic competitiveness,
the first place in the CIS space. Our affair is the affair of justice.

We want the restoration of justice and we will achieve it. For us,
the number one issue in our foreign policy, on our agenda in general,
is liberation of the occupied lands. We are working day and night,
and we will continue this activity.”

COULD ARMENIAN MP NOT GIVE UP PARLIAMENTARY SEAT? – NEWSPAPER

news.am
September 11, 2012 | 06:50

YEREVAN. – “The topic of whether or not [Armenian National Assembly’s]
NA [ruling Republican Party] RPA-member MP Ruben Hayrapetyan will
renounce his [parliamentary] mandate was the order of the day again
yesterday [Monday],” Hraparak daily writes and continues:

Even though [his] petition to resign from the mandate was read at the
NA in the September 5 session, in line with NA regulation, Hayrapetyan
can withdraw it within fifteen days.

His well-known interview had left an impression that he regrets
[his aforesaid decision]. [And] In an interview with our reporter
yesterday, even some RPA members did not rule this out. ‘They say
so, they say so,’ specifically responded RPA Vice Chairman Galust
Sahakyan, and added: ‘There are all kinds of talks, but since there
is no accurate information, I have no comments.'”

As Armenian News-NEWS.am informed earlier, an incident had occurred at
capital city Yerevan’s Harsnaqar Restaurant on June 17, where several
military doctors including Edgar Mikoyan, Arkadi Aghajanyan, Garik
Soghomonyan, Artak Bayadyan and Vahe Avetyan were brutally beaten by
security personnel. And Vahe Avetyan died in hospital on June 29. A
criminal lawsuit was filed and the Police detained six people.

The Restaurant’s owner is ruling Republican Party MP, Football
Federation of Armenia President, and businessman Ruben Hayrapetyan,
who on July 4 formally submitted his resignation from his parliamentary
seat in connection with this incident.

OWEN, CEMAL AND 1915

Today’s Zaman
Sept 11 2012
Turkey

ORHAN KEMAL CENGÄ°Z

Last week I read two pieces one after another. The first was published
in the British newspaper The Independent. Owen Jones’s article bore
the headline “William Hague is wrong … we must own up to our brutal
colonial past.”

The article was quite interesting for a number of reasons. The first
was obvious: A country known as a bastion of democracy is being
invited to face its past. And from this article we understood that
“facing history is still a hot debate,” even in a place like the UK.

Owen started his article with a few quotes from British Foreign
Secretary William Hague: “We have to get out of this post-colonial
guilt. … Be confident in ourselves.”

Jones’s article is a challenge to the “lets forget everything and
reach eternal peace” mentality. Hague’s way of relating to the past
is quite popular in Turkey, as you probably know. Interestingly, Owen
was criticizing Hague’s approach to history by making a comparison
with British expectations of Turkey. Owen said, “A foreign country
such as Turkey can rightly be berated for failing to come to terms
with an atrocity like the Armenian Genocide, but the darkest moments
of our own history are intentionally forgotten.”

After reading Owen’s piece in The Independent, I came across a few
interviews with Hasan Cemal in different newspapers, all of which were
about his new book titled “1915: Armenian Genocide.” The book has not
yet been published, but it is already quite famous in Turkey. Some
criticize Cemal while some praise him for his soon-to-be-published
book.

Cemal is quite a well-known figure in Turkey. He is a journalist
and writer, writing a regular column for the Milliyet daily. He is
the grandson of Cemal PaÅ~_a, one of the three leaders of Ä°ttihat
ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress [CUP]), which
organized the massacres of the Armenians in 1915.

I think his book is quite timely and meaningful. So far I have only
seen the cover of the book and read a few sentences from its preface.

On the cover, Cemal’s photo appears; in it, he lays flowers at the
site of the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. Obviously, the
book will spark quite an intense debate in the coming days, and the
discussion has already begun.

Like Owen, Cemal emphasized the importance of facing the past in
the interviews he gave. He said: “We cannot move forward without
confronting and taking into consideration the events of the past. We
cannot keep an eye on the anguish of the past. Moreover, the pain of
1915 is not a story, it is a current day issue.”

I want to conclude this piece with some words I underlined in the
preface to Cemal’s new book:

“I cannot forget that Yerevan morning in September 2008. In the
first sunlight of the morning, the peak of Mount Agrı [Ararat]
would emerge and then vanish in the fog. ‘The hand of history,’ I
had written that morning, ‘will show the way for those who wish to
see.’ In 1919, the colonial army of England had opened fire on people
in India, committing a crime against humanity by bloodying its hands
with the Amritsar Massacre. In 1997, Queen of England Elizabeth II,
while apologizing to the people of India, had said that what happened
in Amritsar was a tragedy, but ‘history cannot be rewritten, however
much we might sometimes wish otherwise.’ Surely we cannot change
history; however, facing history is in our hands. Without facing the
grim realities of the past, how can we ever move forward? We cannot
remain silent in the face of pain! We cannot allow yesterday to take
today hostage. … Real peace and democracy can unfortunately only
be arrived at by passing through intolerable pain, as in the case
of Hrant Dink, through paying a big price. It is evident that some
stones in the lives of certain societies don’t happen without the
paying of a price, or they don’t sit where they are supposed to.”

FOOTBALL: BULGARIA TAKES ON ARMENIA IN WORLD CUP QUALIFIER

Focus News
Sept 11 2012
Bulgaria

Sofia. Bulgaria national football team is to take on Armenia on
Tuesday in a Group B match of the 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign.

At the Vasil Levski National Stadium the Bulgarians will go out for
their first historic victory over Armenia. Coach Lyuboslav Penev will
stake on the same team, which scored an even vs Italy last week.

Armenia tops the temporary standing in the group with 3 points ahead,
followed by Bulgaria, Italy, Denmark and the Czech Republic.

Around 15,000 people are expected to watch the game live at the
stadium. The match will kick off at 9 p.m. /local Bulgarian time/.

INSIGHT: IF CAUCASUS ERUPTS, WAR COULD SPREAD

Chicago Tribune
Sept 11 2012
IL

Timothy Heritage and Francesco Guarascio

Reuters

5:05 a.m. CDT, September 11, 2012

LINE OF CONTACT, Azerbaijan (Reuters) – A dusty trench, interrupted
every few meters by lookout posts and gun positions, winds its way
as far as the eye can see.

“Put your head above the trench and they’ll shoot you,” says a young
ethnic Armenian soldier, peering through a narrow slit in a concrete
watchtower at Azeri lines 400 meters away where he says snipers lie
in wait.

The bullets fly both ways. On the other side of the minefields, Khosrov
Shukurov’s daughter was recently shot in the arm. The 70-year-old
Azeri farmer keeps his cows on leashes to stop them straying beyond
the wall built to protect his village.

Sporadic firefights have intensified along the front line around
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan in the
South Caucasus controlled by ethnic Armenians since a war in the
early 1990s that killed about 30,000 people.

Azerbaijan has stepped up threats to take the region back and its
decision to give a hero’s welcome to a soldier convicted of hacking
an Armenian to death on a NATO course has highlighted the risk of a
war that could draw in Turkey, Russia and Iran.

When the ethnic Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh declared
independence as the Soviet Union collapsed, and took over more Azeri
territory outside the region than within it, Christian Armenia avoided
direct war with Muslim Azerbaijan.

It now says it would not stand aside if the enclave it helped establish
was attacked.

Both it and Azerbaijan have more powerful weapons than two decades
ago and if pipelines taking Azeri oil and gas to Europe via Turkey
or Armenia’s nuclear power station were threatened, war could spread.

Armenia has a collective security agreement with its regional ally
Russia, while Azerbaijan has one with Turkey, itself a member of NATO
for which an attack on one member state is an attack on all 28.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of a “much broader
conflict” when she visited Armenia in June and NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Friday he was “deeply concerned” by
the Azeri soldier’s pardon last month.

UPHILL BATTLE

Political and military analysts say war is not inevitable, and that
the potential for destruction and a regional war serve as a deterrent.

But they are increasingly discussing how a conflict between Armenia
and Azerbaijan might play out.

The most likely trigger is seen as a particularly deadly skirmish on
the line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh-held territory and the
rest of Azerbaijan or on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border. Nine people
died in clashes in June.

“At some moment the crossfire will not be limited to the use of
small weapons. One side will hit the other with heavy weapons,” said
Rasim Musabayov, an independent member of parliament in Azerbaijan’s
capital, Baku.

“Then you can see a scenario in which the other side responds with
air power and then it all goes from there.”

Less likely would be a political decision to go to war – despite
Azerbaijan’s threats to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh – or a
pre-emptive strike by Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh if an attack by
Azerbaijan seemed imminent.

If a conflict did break out, Azerbaijan would likely try to besiege
Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of about 160,000 people linked to Armenia
by a narrow land corridor, since the enclave’s troops dominate the
high ground and have mined elsewhere.

“A key factor is the topography, the extent to which Nagorno-Karabakh
has created defenses in depth. This could make the lower land killing
fields. Progress would come at a high cost,” said Wayne Merry,
a former U.S. diplomat and an expert on the region at the American
Foreign Policy Council in Washington.

The Azeris could also attack the towns of Jebrail and Fuzuli to the
south and southeast, outside the enclave before the 1991-94 war but
part of the 20 percent of Azerbaijan under ethnic Armenian control
since.

“SPASMS OF MUTUAL DESTRUCTION”

Azerbaijan’s annual defense spending is more than Armenia’s entire
budget, but Armenia has warned of an “asymmetrical” response to any
attack, threatening what Merry called a “spasm of mutual destruction”
fuelled by bitterness from the last war.

Abbas Aliyev, 66, was forced out of Fuzuli as it was seized by ethnic
Armenian troops and settled with his wife and four children in the
cramped basement of an apartment bloc in Baku where one toilet is
shared by 16 families.

He is one of hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of them Azeris,
who cannot return home until the conflict is resolved. “I want to
breathe the fresh air of my region again,” he said.

Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh use similar words to explain
why they would not give the region up.

“I got all the paperwork I needed to go to the United States but
decided not to go. It’s marvelous here. Look around you, breathe the
air,” said Samvel Gabrielyan, an artist in Stepanakert, a quiet city
of nearly 57,000 in the mountains.

Smart new apartment blocs stand on the rubble of buildings destroyed
there during the war. A few still have bullet marks.

“We’d be ready to fight again if we had to. Otherwise what did all
those deaths in the last war mean?” Gabrielyan said.

Such passions, and a belief on both sides that they can win a war,
risk encouraging the politicians and military.

Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, said a war now would be much more
destructive than the low-tech conflict of the 1990s.

“It would be much more bloody and become a full state-state conflict
with unpredictable consequences.”

Obvious targets in Azerbaijan would be the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE)
natural gas pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil
pipeline. Both are in northwest Azerbaijan, within range of Armenian
forces, and have a role in Europe’s attempts to reduce its reliance
on Russia for energy supplies.

A consortium of Western oil companies operates the Azeri, Chirag and
Guneshli oilfields in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea, as well
as Azerbaijan’s large Shah Deniz gas field.

Led by British Petroleum and including Norway’s Statoil and two U.S.

companies, Chevron and ExxonMobil, it has plenty to lose if war
breaks out.

Each side can hit the other’s capital, and Armenia’s, Yerevan,
is only 30 km from its Metsamor nuclear power plant. Northwest
Azerbaijan contains a water reservoir and power station as well as
an international highway and railway.

REGIONAL ALLIANCES

“We think that if hostilities resume, they could not be limited
to a local or regional framework. I think they would have a wider
geographical spread,” Bako Sahakyan, the self-styled president of
Nagorno-Karabakh, said in an interview.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in a gesture of solidarity with
ethnic kin in Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
rejects Armenia’s insistence it recognize the killing of Armenians
in Ottoman Turkey during World War One as genocide.

Russia has a military base at Gyumri in northwest Armenia.

Neither, however, would want to rush into a war that would damage
their own, fragile relationship and Russia would not want to upset
its efforts to deepen ties with Baku.

Iran, another regional force, was neutral during the 1991-94 war and
would be likely to remain so. But its relationship with Azerbaijan
has soured, especially since Baku started buying arms from Israel,
and it might be sucked into a conflict if it allowed goods to keep
flowing through its border with Armenia.

Efforts to find a political solution led by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have had little success,
and political concessions are hard for leaders who would risk losing
power if they looked weak.

“Nagorno-Karabakh is an integral part of Armenia. This is how ordinary
people see it,” said Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, the Armenian
Apostolic Church’s senior official in the enclave, which is still
part of Azerbaijan under international law.

“We will do everything to save our land.”

On the other side of the line of conflict, farmer Shukurov will not
move from the village of Ciragli, despite his daughter’s injury and
the bullet holes riddling his house. “That is what the Armenians want,
but I will not give up,” he said.

Diplomats and analysts say that if another war breaks out, it is
likely to end in stalemate. “The Azeris can’t retake Karabakh now.

They are militarily incapable of doing it,” said Matthew Bryza,
a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan.

“I don’t think they could dislodge the Armenian forces from the high
ground. I think that’s extremely difficult.”

Yusif Agayev, an Azeri military expert and veteran of the war, said
there was no mood for a protracted fight.

“I think it would be a month or two, that is the amount of time our
armed forces could fight for. If it drags on longer then it will become
a war that society will have to participate in, not just the army,”
he said. “I don’t think the society of my country is ready for war.”

(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove in Azerbaijan, Hasmik Lazarian
in Yerevan, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels;
editing by Philippa Fletcher)

,0,7941289,full.story

ARMENIAN TEAM WON THREE OLYMPIADS THANKS TO THE TEAM SPIRIT, RUSSIAN SPECIALIST SAYS

Mediamax
Sept 11 2012
Armenia

The Chairman of the Board of the Russian Chess Federation (RCF),
Ilya Levitov

Yerevan/Mediamax/. The Chairman of the Board of the Russian Chess
Federation (RCF), Ilya Levitov, thinks that the Armenian team won
three of four last Chess Olympiads thanks to the team spirit.

The most important thing in team tournaments is the psychological
training and the team spirit, said Ilya Levitov in an interview to
“Kommersant”.

“We met the Armenians in the sixth round and Vladimir Kramnik
defeated the leader of the Armenian team Levon Aronyan. The rest
Armenian chess players are rated much lower than ours but they came
together and snatched a draw in the end. This is the team spirit,
when every grandmaster plays for himself and for his friend, thanks
to which the Armenian team won three of four last Olympiads,” the
Russian specialist said.

OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS MEET WITH THE FOREIGN MINISTERS OF ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe OSCE
Sept 10 2012

The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Ambassadors Robert Bradtke of
the United States of America, Igor Popov of the Russian Federation,
and Jacques Faure of France) and the Personal Representative of
the OSCE Chairperson-in-office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, met on
September 2 with the Foreign Minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian,
and on September 3 with the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar
Mammadyarov, to address recent events in the region and efforts to
peacefully resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Co-Chairs discussed with the two Ministers the August 31 decision
of the Government of Azerbaijan to pardon Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani
army officer who had been serving a life sentence in Hungary for the
brutal 2004 murder of an Armenian officer in Budapest.

They expressed their deep concern and regret for the damage the pardon
and any attempts to glorify the crime have done to the peace process
and trust between the sides.

The Co-Chairs reiterated to both Ministers that, as their Presidents
stated in Los Cabos on June 19, there is no alternative to a peaceful
settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They will continue to
maintain contacts with the sides to reduce tensions and advance the
peace process.