Author: Tadevosian Garnik

MONITORING ON NKR AND AZERI ARMED FORCES’ CONTACT LINE HELD WITHOUT INCIDENTS

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Feb 14 2007

February 14, according to an agreement achieved with the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic leadership, the OSCE mission held a planned
monitoring of the Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri Armed Forces’ contact
line to the south-east of the settlement of Kuropatkino of the NKR
Martuni region.

>From the positions of the NKR Defense Army the observation was held by
the OSCE office coordinator Imre Palatinus (Hungary) and the Field
Assistant of the OSCE Chair-in-Office’s Personal Representative
Zhaslan Nurtazin (Kazakhstan).

The monitoring passed according to the schedule. No cease-fire
violations were fixed.

>From the Karabakh party the observation mission was accompanied by
the NKR MFA and MOD officials, NKR MFA reports.

ARMENIAN DEFENSE ATTORNEYS TO ATTEND RAMIL SAFAROV’S COURT HEARING

Armenpress
Feb 14 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 14, ARMENPRESS: An Armenian defense attorney
Nazeli Vardanian and Hayk Demoyan, who is director of Genocide
Museum in Yerevan, will fly February 19 or 20 to Budapest, Hungary,
to attend a court of appeals hearing of an appeal filed by lawyers
of an Azerbaijani army officer Ramil Safarov.

Last year a Hungarian court sentenced Ramil Safarov to life
imprisonment without the right to apply for parole for the next 30
years for hacking to death on February 19, 2004 Armenian army officer
Gurgen Margarian, 26.

Both were participants of an English language training course within
the framework of the NATO-sponsored "Partnership for Peace" program
held in Budapest, Hungary.

Demoyan said chances that Safarov may be extradited to serve his
prison term in his native Azerbaijan, as his lawyers demand, are
very and very little. He said Hungary’s judiciary has no precedent
of extraditing a convict sentenced to life in prison.

648 LICENCES BY SIMPLE PROCEDURE GRANTED IN 2006

Noyan Tapan
Feb 12 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 12, NOYAN TAPAN. In 2006, the RA Ministry of Finance
and Economy granted 648 licences by simple procedure. According to
the ministry’s press service, 27 veterinary licences, 17 licences for
production of wine, apple wine and other wines from fruit and berries,
and 11 linences for medicine trade were granted. State duties of a
total of 744 million drams (about 2 mln 66 thousand USD) were collected
for licences granted in 2006. 486 licences were recognized as invalid,
one licence was suspended, as well as violations for suspension of
14 licences were registered in the same year. In 2001-2006, 5,095
licences were granted in Armenia.

TURKEY CAN CHANGE ITS POLITICAL COURSE TOWARDS RUSSIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
10.02.2007 13:56 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Ankara’s statement addressed to the United States
over the possible adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution by
U.S. Congress will hardly result in desired outcome for Turkey,"
stated to a press conference in Yerevan Adviser to the RA President
on National Security Garnik Isagulyan. In his words, Turkey’s
activation towards counteracting the adoption of the Armenian
Genocide resolution by the U.S. Congress can be useless. "I think
most probably the Armenian Genocide resolution will be adopted. In
this case Turkey can make efforts to establish closer cooperation
with Russia. We are watching the situation very carefully, but I don’t
think that such a turnover can create a serious threat to our national
security. Moreover, any movements in the region can tell upon Armenia,"
Isagulyan stressed.

Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on nuclear sites
are well advanced

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced
stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration,
according to informed sources in Washington.
The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount
an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an
attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves
office.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American
Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against
Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department
and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the
overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not
yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military
build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it
to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb
its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for
regional expansion.

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don’t
know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza]
Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking
Iran."
But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst,
shared the sources’ assessment that Pentagon planning was well under
way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by
Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against
nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this
out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Deployment

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security
Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft
carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS
Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10
days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well
as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered
oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian
officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of
hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out
war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning
for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for
war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for
an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with
what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to
throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up
in Iraq. It is an air operation."

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the
vice-president’s office, is the AEI, headquarters of the
neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of
evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its
influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid
endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But
in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state
department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more
troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike
on Iran?

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most
vocal supporters of such a strike.

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have
been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself."
But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a
nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but
as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will
be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive
Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009
and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran
has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to
acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if
diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment
then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush
administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear
weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we
will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike
but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian
armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though
the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes
former officials from the White House, state department and
intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the
MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I
believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and
Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear
tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to
Israel."

Opposition support

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for
Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting
Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of
the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US
policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was
not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is
not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various
notions of what the policy should be."

In spite of the president’s veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state
department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and
meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush
administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the
Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture,
the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal
thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation,
said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not
been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to
dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran
has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the
dance floor and the US is looking away."

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental
war".

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had
evidence – serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives – of
Iraqi militants’ weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of
the increased tension, Iran’s main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani,
cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal
meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but
that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said
had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock,"
he said.

War of words

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our
troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly" George
Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they
have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many
ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

"I think it’s been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled
waters" Dick Cheney

"It is absolutely parallel. They’re using the same dance steps –
demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of
negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux" Philip Giraldi, a former
CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the
run-up to the war in Iraq

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not
let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system
fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the
Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with
only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation" Iranian supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

STARTING 2008 GRANT ASSISTANCE TO BE PROVIDED TO WATER USER UNIONS OF ARMENIA

Noyan Tapan
Feb 08 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. According to the RA Law on 2007
State Budget of the RA, at the February 8 sitting the Armenian
government approved the 2007 program on the state budget-envisaged
maintenance of the state institution Vorotan-Arpa-Sevan Tunnels
Operation Department, and operation, technical state improvement and
repairs of the Vorotan-Arpa-Sevan water system. The government also
approved the directions of reforms on state financial assistance
to water user unions. The main purposes of these directions is to
strengthen support and participatory management of water user unions,
raise their efficiency and increase the effectiveness of predictability
and distribution of state expenditures. It was noted that reforms will
allow to shift from the currently used traditional spending method
of state financial assistance to water user unions to provision of
grant assistance in accordance with results. The assessed quotas
of state financial assistance to water user unions, as well as the
maximum levels of water loss for 2007-2011 were also approved. The
decision was made, taking into accout the proposals submitted by
the program of financial and structural reforms of the RA irrigation
system with the Japanese grant for preparation of the World Bank’s
Third Credit on Poverty Reduction Support. Chairman of the State
Water Industry Committee of the RA Ministry of Territorial Governance
Andranik Andreasian said after the siiting that the method of grant
assistance allows to assess results of water user unions’ activities,
based on which assistance will be provided. In all llikelihood the
new method will be used from 2008. This year the respective legal
documents related to its use will be prepared. A. Andreasian said
that the technical capacities of 51 water user unions of Armenia
enable to ensure sufficient water supply.

TURKEY MISSES ITS CHANCE WITH ARMENIA By FM Oskanian

Los Angeles Times
Feb 7 2007

Hrant Dink’s assassination provided a key opportunity for Turkey to
mend relations with its neighbor.

By Vartan Oskanian, VARTAN OSKANIAN is minister of foreign affairs
of the Republic of Armenia.

ANKARA HAS LET a rare moment pass. Three weeks after the assassination
of acclaimed Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, it appears the
Turkish authorities have grasped neither the message of Hrant’s life
nor the significance of his death.

In the days immediately following Dink’s shocking death, allegedly at
the hands of a fanatic Turkish nationalist, we in Armenia and others
around the world wanted to believe that the outpouring of public grief
would create a crack in the Turkish wall of denial and rejection,
and that efforts would be made to chip away at the conditions that
made the assassination possible. We all hoped that the gravity of
this slaying and the breadth of the reaction would have compelled
Turkey’s leaders to seize the moment and make a radical shift in the
policies that sustain today’s dead-end situation.

However, after those initial hints at conciliation, the message out
of Ankara has already changed. Last week, according to the Turkish
media, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there can
be no rapprochement with Armenians because Armenians still insist on
talking about the genocide.

The prime minister is right. Armenians do insist on talking about the
genocide. It’s a history-changing event that ought not, indeed cannot,
be forgotten. However, we also advocate a rapprochement. And one is
not a precondition for the other.

Dink was an advocate of many things. Chief among them, he believed
that individuals have the right to think, to talk, to explore, to
debate. Dink knew that if the authorities would just allow people to
reflect and reason aloud, share questions and search for answers,
everything would fall into place. Eventually, through public and
private discourse, Turks would arrive at genocide recognition
themselves.

Equally, he also believed that there must be dialogue between peoples,
between nations – especially between his two peoples, the Armenians
and the Turks. He himself was a one-man dialogue, carrying on both
sides of the conversation, trying to make one side’s needs and fears
audible to the other.

Unfortunately, Turkey’s policy of keeping the Armenian-Turkish border
closed has resulted in a reinforcement of animosities. Dink was one
of many Armenian and Turkish intellectuals who understood that there
needs to be free movement of people and ideas in order to achieve
reconciliation among neighbors. But Turkey insists on maintaining
the last closed border in Europe as a tool to exert pressure on
Armenia, to make its foreign policy more pliant, to punish Armenians
for defending their rights and not renouncing their past. Armenia,
on the other hand, has no preconditions to normalizing relations.

This hermetically closed border combined with a law that prevents
Turkey from exploring its own history and memory (by criminalizing
truth-seekers such as Dink) have created a world in which Turks can’t
know their past and can’t forge their future. They can neither explore
old memories nor replace them with new ones.

Three weeks ago, our grief was mixed with hope. Today, Turkish
authorities continue to defend Article 301, the notorious "insulting
Turkishness" statute used to prosecute even novelists who depict
characters questioning Ankara’s official line on the genocide. And
there is no mention at all of the continuing damage caused by a
closed border.

If Turkey can’t seize the moment, it should not be surprised when
others do. Last week, a resolution was introduced in the U.S.

Congress to affirm the U.S. record on the Armenian genocide.

The Turks will say such a resolution is not needed. They will say that
they’ve called for a joint Armenian-Turkish historical commission
to discuss the genocide, and they don’t need third parties. But
recognition of the Armenian genocide is no longer a historical issue in
Turkey, it’s a political one. Dink would wonder how "on the one hand,
they call for dialogue with Armenia and Armenians, on the other hand
they want to condemn or neutralize their own citizen who is working
for dialogue."

Dink was courageous but not naive. Still, he could not have predicted
this kind of "neutralization." The brutality of his killing serves
several political ends. First, it makes Turkey less interesting for
Europe, which is exactly what some in the Turkish establishment want.

Second, it may scare away Armenians and other minorities in Turkey
from pursuing their civil and human rights. Third, it can frighten
into silence those bold Turks who are beginning to explore these
complicated, sensitive subjects in earnest.

I prefer to think that more noble political ideals will be served.

Hrant Dink will remain an inspiration for Armenians who share his
vision of understanding and harmony among peoples and for Turks who
share his dream of living in peace with neighbors and with history.

BILL "ON FORMATION AND RESIGNATION OF GOVERNMENT" NOT PUT TO VOTING AT RA NA FEBRUARY 7 SITTING

Noyan Tapan
Feb 07 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 7, NOYAN TAPAN. On February 7, RA National Assembly
adopted all bills and legislative packages discussed in the previous
two days, with the exception of the bill "On Formation and Resignation
of Government." The latter was not put to voting. Legislative package
"On Making Amendment and Addition to RA Judicial Code and to Law "On
Compulsory Military Service" was adopted in second reading, the bill on
putting into force RA Judicial Code was adopted in first reading. Bills
"On Establishment of Tax Privileges to Construction of Meghri-Kajaran
Gas Pipeline," "On Making Amendments and Additions to RA Civil Code"
were also adopted in first reading. The latter specified relations
connected with responsibility of damage compensation. Legislative
package "On Aviation" was adopted in first reading. According to this,
the legislation regulating the sphere is brought in correspondence
with documents published by international aviation organizations. In
particular, in connection with transporter’s responsibility it was
stipulated that in case of flight’s being late the transporter has to
care for passengers’ needs: to provide them with food in two hours,
with communication means in four hours, with a dwelling in eight
hours. Legislative package "On Traffic Security" was also adopted in
first reading. It was submitted to the parliament by the government
for the second time. The package’s adoption had failed in 2006 December
due to lack of quorum at the voting.

NEWSPAPERS AND AUTHORITIES BICKER OVER DINK MURDER

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 6 2007

Truth may be the second casualty after the fatal shooting of editor
Hrant Dink outside the offices of his own newspaper on Jan. 19.

Newspapers competing to cover the story have come up with different
version of events.

In comments published in the press, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek
warned of a campaign of deliberate misinformation and of the dangers
that the police enquiry is now turning into "a war of retribution."

However, newspaper watchdogs blame the authorities themselves for
not providing a reliable stream information about a story vital to
the public interest. "It is apparent there is a power game within
the security apparatus and that reporters are having a hard time
uncovering the truth. Add to this a traditional governmental lack of
transparency, and you end up with information and allegations flying
about in the air," according to Yavuz Baydar, ombudsman for Sabah
newspaper. The Istanbul police have now urged caution in newspapers’
attempt to depict a second assailant at the scene of the crime.

Several papers have identified a man photographed at the time Dink’s
body was being placed in the ambulance as Yasin Hayal, a person
who confessed to having recruited 17-year-old Ogun Samast to commit
the crime.

Aykut Cengiz Engin, an Ýstanbul state prosecutor, said the man in the
picture taken by The Associated Press was in fact a police officer
from the homicide bureau.

Radikal newspaper, which has a record of pursuing stories to do
with state corruption, declared itself "happy to be corrected"
when its account of preferential treatment for Samast after he was
arrested proved to be untrue. The paper cited eyewitness accounts
in Ýstanbul’s Bayrampaþa Prison that he was given special bedding,
kebabs to eat and a room all of his own. Penal authorities in say
that Samast was being held in isolation in deference to his age. Far
from having silk embroidered quilt covers, he was denied any bedding
at all out of fear he might use it to do himself harm.

Vakit, a newspaper of the religious nationalist right, has accused a
cartel of media bosses of conspiring to muddy the waters around the
crime. Such an interpretation, however, is just not fair, according
to Radikal columnist Professor Haluk Þahin. Many of the leaks were
the work of institutions trying to outmaneuver their organizational
rivals. "The Turkish media is intensely competitive, and there is great
pressure to be first with the news even at the expense of confirming
that the story is a hundred percent accurate," Þahin said.

Ombudsman Baydar: "The main problem is that there is not a regular
flow of information from a central authority, say, a police
spokesperson. This leaves eager reporters and honest editors adrift.

They have no reference whatsoever to compare all other information
that comes to them.

He added that certain segments of press, due to the "sensitive"
character of the assassination, were willing to play along with certain
circles that put politics before the rule of law. "It is hard to tell
if the ‘honest’ segments of press will win in the end, but for sure
we will find out a lot about the crime itself," Baydar said.

Editorial writers have also come in for criticism. There is now a
petition circulating among academics in the United States accusing
among others Hurriyet Editor-in-Chief Ertuðrul Ozkok of intemperate
remarks about Zaman columnist Etyen Mahcupyan. Mahcupyan, like Dink,
is of Armenian origin.

The petition refers to press coverage as "irresponsible," "unethical"
and "dangerous." A proposed draft of the petition warns that Mahcupyan
has been quoted selectively in order to misrepresent his message.

Milliyet columnist Hasan Pulur likened Mahcupyan to an Armenian who
once struck a helpless Turkish officer as he was being led away by
a guard of allied soldiers when Istanbul was under foreign occupation.

The officer told the man to "hit him again" but that he would get
what was coming to him in the end. The fear is that by questioning
Mahcupyan’s patriotism, the press is setting him up as a potential
target as well.

–Boundary_(ID_wQ7RgP8JSz4aO4DS+0FYMA)–

ISTANBUL POLICE INTELLIGENCE CHIEF SUSPENDED IN PROBE INTO ARMENIAN JOURNALIST’S KILLING

International Herald Tribune, France
Feb 6 2007

ANKARA, Turkey: Authorities suspended the police intelligence chief
of Istanbul as part of an investigation into the killing of an ethnic
Armenian journalist in the city last month, police said Tuesday.

The Interior Ministry suspended intelligence chief Ahmet Ilhan Guler
on Monday evening following the Jan. 19 killing of Hrant Dink. The
daily Sabah newspaper reported he was removed from his post because
he had ignored a tip about a threat against Dink’s life a year ago.

The 52-year-old journalist had angered Turkish nationalists with
repeated assertions that the mass killings of Armenians around the
time of World War I was genocide.

Interior Ministry inspectors investigating the journalist’s death
reportedly discovered that Guler failed to report a tip – which
he received 11 months before the deadly attack – that some of the
suspects in Dink’s killing were planning to assassinate the journalist.

Dink’s death led to an outpouring of public sympathy for the journalist
and focused attention on a law in Turkey which makes it a crime to
insult the country or the Turkish national character.

Journalists and writers who spoke openly on controversial topics,
including Dink and Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, have been
prosecuted under the law, which critics say hampers free speech.

More than 100,000 people marched at Dink’s funeral, many of them
chanting for Turkey to abolish the law.

The government pledged to hold a speedy investigation into Dink’s
killing, and has already suspended the governor and police chief of
Trabzon, the city on the Black Sea coast where suspects in the killing
lived. Several other police officers were also suspended for posing
with the 17-year-old killer after his capture in the Black Sea port
city of Samsun.