Author: Tamamian Anna

PEOPLE SUSPECTED OF KILLING CITIZEN OF RUSSIAN FEDERATION DETAINED

Noyan Tapan
Aug 08 2007

YEREVAN, AUGUST 8, NOYAN TAPAN. The preliminary investigation of
the criminal case filed with regard to the assasination of Dmitri
Genadi Yermolov, a citizen of the Russian Federation, is being
implemented by the Investigation Department of the RA Prosecutor
General’s Office. According to Sona Truzian, the Spokeswoman of
the RA Prosecutor General’s Office, the identities of those, who
committed the assasination, have been found out as a result of the
operative measures taken by the preliminary investigation, they have
been detained and the fire-arms, which served as tools for committing
the crime, have been confiscated.

It should be mentioned that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Russian Federation has applied to the Armenian authorities, asking to
immediately find out the circimstances of the death of the Russian
serviceman. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Armenia in its turn
expressed readiness with regard to providing the presence of the
authorized representative of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian
Federation during the examination of the above-mentioned case.

According to the proclaimings appeared in press, two unknown people
stopped the "VAZ-2102" car in the territory of the Arinj village of the
Kotayk region at about 00:35 on August 6, took the five passengers out
of the car, beat them, after which allowed them to leave. However,
the passengers had hardly passed a few meters, when the two men
started to shoot in the direction of the car, as a result of which
one of the passengers: D.

Yermolov, received a fire-arm injury and died on the way to
hospital. No more than a few hours later as a result of the taken
measures it was found out that it were A. Andreasian and G. Balian,
who beat the passengers and the driver of the above-mentioned car
during an ungrounded argument and then shot in their direction. These
two people have been put under arrest. Two "Sayga" shot-guns with a
rifling muzzle of 7.62 mm calibre have been confiscated.

According to the sources of panorama.am., "the bodyguards of one of
the greatest oligarches of Armenia stand behind this murder." And
according to "Aravot", the Russian "Regnum" news agency reported that
the above-mentioned two people, who are suspected of committing the
murder, are working in the security service of the "Multi Group"
concern, which belongs to Gagik Tsarukian. At the same time, the
newpaper mentions that the "Bargavatch Hayastan" ("Prosperous Armenia")
party categorically refuses this information.

KARABAKH CONFIRMS DEFECTION OF PRIVATE TO AZERI SIDE

Mediamax news agency
6 Aug 07

Yerevan, 6 August: The defence ministry of the Nagornyy Karabakh
republic (NKR) today confirmed that a serviceman of Nagornyy Karabakh’s
defence army, Hambartsum Asaturyan, went over to the Azerbaijani side
on 4 August.

In an interview with Mediamax today, the head of the ministry’s press
service, Col Senor Hasratyan, said that 23-year old Asaturyan "left
his military unit on his own in unclear circumstances, crossed NKR’s
state border and went over to the opposite side".

[Passage omitted: Asaturyan has been serving in Nagornyy Karabakh’s
armed forces since May]

[In a report at 1616 gmt on 4 Aug 07, Azerbaijan’s Day.az website
identified Asaturyan as an Armenian serviceman]

TURKEY MANAGED TO THRUST HIS VIEWPOINT CONCERNING EVENTS OF 1915 ON WORLD COMMUNITY

PanARMENIAN.Net
03.08.2007 14:19 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Western journalists are not ready to tell the truth
about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire,
The Independent’s journalist Robert Fisk stated in his lecture at
the American University in Yerevan. He said Turkey managed to thrust
his viewpoint on the world community saying that during Ward War I
Armenians were deported, since they could launch a civil war in the
Ottoman Empire.

"After the assassination of Hrant Dink I was reading world
press. Reuters had prepared a material from Trabzon, which included
everything besides the true motivations of that murder. It read about
social causes, that the youth has guns at hand and so forth.

Moreover, The New York Times constantly tells about "good relations
between Armenian and Turks in the Ottoman Empire". Everybody is well
aware that this is not the truth. But nevertheless, what is written
it becomes a viewpoint," Fisk said.

Robert Fisk, a world-famous journalist and writer, author of a book
on the Middle East and correspondent at The Independent, has written a
book entitled "The Great War of Civilizations", where he has devoted a
separate chapter to the Armenian Genocide under "The First Holocaust"
title. In his book Fisk brings historical documents, interviews with
those who have survived massacres of Armenians and settled in Lebanon
and Syria. The book has been already translated into Turkish but has
not come into the market yet.

A POPULARITY CONTEST IN LEBANON

Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
Aug 2 2007

A by-election in a Christian heartland this weekend will take the
pulse of Lebanon’s sparring factions. Lucy Fielder reports from Beirut

Sunday’s by-elections in Mount Lebanon and Beirut threaten to be
heated and messy, judging by this week’s cacophony of mud-slinging
and rhetoric from leaders and media representing Lebanon’s opposing
camps. At stake are two seats vacated by the assassination of MPs
Pierre Gemayel and Walid Eido, both from the ruling "14th March"
movement.

Most Lebanese see the vote in Metn, a predominantly Christian mountain
region north of Beirut, as a referendum on the relative popularity
of opposition Christian leader Michel Aoun and the "14th March"
ruling movement.

Former president Amin Gemayel is contesting the seat left empty when
his son Pierre was gunned down last November. Metn has been a safe seat
for the Gemayel clan for decades and the Phalange Party it founded in
the 1930s has its headquarters in the lofty village of Bikfaya. Pierre
Gemayel’s assassination is likely to rally "14th March" supporters
behind his father. Large billboards of Pierre have flanked Gemayel in
his rally speeches and Bikfaya held a mass commemorating its dead son
this weekend. Nonetheless, the polls’ favourite is Camille Khoury,
candidate for Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement.

Two factions have played tug-of-war with Lebanon since the
assassination of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri in February 2005
forced Syrian troops to withdraw. Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora’s
government and its supporters pull Lebanon towards an ever more
involved United States and accuse Syria of the string of assassinations
that have shaken Lebanon. At the other end of the rope, Hizbullah tries
to keep Lebanon in an eastern orbit with its allies Iran and Syria.

Polls predict the Beirut seat will stay with the Sunni Future Movement
of Hariri’s son Saad, who heads the "14th March" parliamentary
majority. A car bomb killed Hariri ally Walid Eido in June on
the seafront in Beirut and the favourite to replace him is Mohamed
Amine Itani. Of Lebanon’s major sects, the Sunnis are overwhelmingly
behind Hariri, the Shia behind Hizbullah, and the numerically small
but politically significant Druze minority follows "14th March’s"
Walid Jumblatt. Only the Christians are significantly divided.

Aoun’s alliance with Hizbullah endured Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon
and the ensuing internal blame- game — with a significant proportion
of Lebanese blaming Hizbullah for drawing Israel’s fire by kidnapping
two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack last July.

Most observers believe the axis has cost Aoun Maronite support but he
remains the single most popular Christian leader, ahead of far-right
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, a "14th March" leader.

Abdo Saad, head of the Beirut Centre for Research and Information,
said a poll he conducted on Friday forecast a clear win for Aoun’s
Free Patriotic Movement. "But it’s not easy to predict in a volatile
area such as Metn, it could all change," he said. Twenty per cent of
Metn voters have no political affiliation and could go either way,
he said. And in shock-prone Lebanon, major upheaval before then is
always possible.

Saad said he was unable to release the results of the privately
commissioned poll, but the margin was clear. For Gemayel to change the
result, Aoun’s allies, MP Michel Murr and the Armenian party Tashnaq,
would need to renege on their promised support and the former president
would need to attract 70 per cent of independents.

"I would be surprised if the tayyar [Aoun’s FPM] didn’t win," he said.

Aoun and Gemayel traded insults this week and rival supporters kicked,
punched and beat each other with sticks on the streets northeast of
Beirut. Gemayel described Aoun as pro-Syrian and his alliance with
Hizbullah as an "alliance against nature", depicting the by- election
as a "struggle for Lebanon’s survival". Aoun responded by slamming
the former president as a "failure" as a politician. "Not you, nor
anything you boast of reaches to below my waist level," he said.

Aoun has contested the constitutionality of the election because Prime
Minister Siniora signed off on it after pro-Syrian President Emile
Lahoud refused. After a Free Patriotic Movement legal appeal against
the election failed, Aoun decided against a threatened boycott and
put Khoury’s name forward. However, he still portrays the contest as a
battle against the violation of the constitution. The constitutional
council was re-considering the validity of the election at the time
of writing.

Aoun would consider the cancelling of the election a victory as much
as winning the seat said Charles Harb, an American University of
Beirut psychology professor and political analyst. "But if Aoun wins
he’ll be able to say the candidates that Hariri is putting forward
lack credibility. It would put a serious dent in the ’14th March’
if Gemayel does not get re-elected in his own constituency."

A fierce battle for Lebanon’s presidency looms in September. Former
general Aoun has long had his eye on the post, traditionally reserved
for a Maronite Christian under Lebanon’s sectarian system. Gemayel,
who was president with US backing from 1982-88 at the height of the
war, may be planning to stand again. "This by- election will strengthen
the hand of the winner for the presidential elections," Harb said.

He described the relationship between Aoun and Gemayel as a "tumultuous
history" of "marriage ending in divorce". The two were allies during
Gemayel’s presidency, and in 1988 it was he who appointed Aoun, then
commander of the army, as prime minister, despite the Sunni claim
to that position. Parallel governments and Aoun’s doomed military
campaign against the Syrians were to ensue.

But the two have squared off in the political dispute of the past
two years.

Maronite divisions have rattled Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir,
who sees them as diminishing the clout of the traditionally powerful
sect. He urged his followers to unite this week and appeared to hint
that Aoun should bow out by pointing out the seats in question belonged
to assassinated MPs. He called for the by-election to be postponed or a
"consensus" MP found.

Khaled Saghieh wrote in the independent, pro- opposition Al-Akhbar
newspaper last week that the patriarchate usually pleaded for
"unity of the ranks" at times of electoral battle. It appeared that
the patriarch was "jealous" of the other major sects, which have
overwhelmingly adopted one opinion and one leader, he said.

"Thus, the Maronite patriarch came up with a special recipe that
includes democracy but without threatening the unity of the ranks.

What does this mean? It means simply that the Christian political
leaders have no role to play and the differences and disagreements
between them are secondary to the higher interests of the sect,
determined by the church and its master, the patriarch from Bkirki,"
Saghieh wrote.

TEHRAN, BAKU SEEKING CLOSER TIES

PRESS TV, Iran
July 31 2007

Iran’s Ambassador to Baku Nasser Hamidi-Zare’ has said that Iran and
Azerbaijan currently enjoy high-level bilateral relations.

In an interview with the Azeri TV channel ANS on Monday, the envoy
highlighted the firm resolve of the Iranian and Azeri officials to
further cement ties.

Commenting on Iran’s stance toward the territorial conflict between
Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Karabakh region, the ambassador
stressed Iran’s readiness to render support for settling the dispute.

The diplomat stressed that Iran’s relations with other countries
including Armenia are by no means to the disadvantage of Azerbaijan,
insisting that Tehran respects and recognizes the sovereignty of the
Republic of Azerbaijan.

Hamidi-Zare’ said Iran believes the Karabakh conflict should
be resolved peacefully through negotiations between Armenia and
Azerbaijan.

The envoy elaborated that Iran’s government supports restoration of
Azerbaijan’s occupied territories and repatriation of all refugees
displaced by the conflict to their home, and expressed the country’s
outright rejection of any illegal move which deteriorates the dispute.

The territorial conflict between the two South Caucasus countries
emerged in 1988.

Referring to Iran’s nuclear program, the ambassador said that thanks
to its young scientists, Iran is already on the right track toward
developing its nuclear technology for civilian purposes.

"Once the US made every endeavor to force us to relinquish our resolve
to access nuclear energy. Today, however, the Americans have been made
to enter into negotiations with Iran over Iraq, seeking Iran’s aid
and recommendations to settle problems in the war-ravaged country,"
he added.

Highlighting the close viewpoints of Iran and Azerbaijan on the Caspian
Sea legal regime, Hamidi-Zare’ recalled the positive outcomes of the
June confab held in Tehran.

During the Tehran meeting, the foreign ministers of five Caspian
littoral states managed for the first time to issue a joint communique
and also agreed on the agenda of the next summit slated for August,
he said.

The Caspian Sea legal regime is based on two agreements signed between
Iran and the former USSR in 1921 and 1940. The three new littoral
states established after the collapse of the Soviet Union do not
recognize those treaties, triggering a debate on the future status
of the world’s largest lake.

In response to question about the likelihood of a US-Russia agreement
on the common use of Gabala radar base in Azerbaijan, the ambassador
said that the decision would undermine independence and sovereignty
of the Azerbaijan Republic.

He said the US has concerns over the legitimacy of its operations and
hence seeks to secure bases for itself in different parts of the world.

In the past, global powers used their force to exert pressure on
other nations, he said, noting that policy has expired today. "Had
the Gabala radar station been of any use, it would have prevented
the collapse of the former Soviet Union," the envoy commented.

Hamidi-Zare’ stated that the Islamic Republic attaches significance
only to the statements and actions of Azeri officials, reiterating
the Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s remarks that Azerbaijan will never
allow third countries to use its territory against Iran.

BOOK REVIEW: THE BIRTH OF MIDDLE EAST STRIFE VIEWED THROUGH THE CONFLICT OF TWO MEN
By Michael Kenney

Boston Globe, MA
July 31 2007

Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T.E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds
of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, By Ronald Florence, Viking, 512 pp.,
illustrated,, $27.95

T.E. Lawrence, the fabled Lawrence of Arabia, and Aaron Aaronsohn,
a Palestinian Jewish agronomist, met only a few times, meetings
that were invariably brief and hostile — "devoid of amenity," wrote
Aaronsohn in his diary after one of those meetings.

But out of those encounters during the final years of World War I,
Ronald Florence, an independent historian who lives in Providence,
has created a revealing narrative about the territorial conflicts in
the Middle East.

Of the first meeting, in February 1917 in a hallway of the Savoy
Hotel in Cairo that was serving as the British Army’s Middle East
headquarters, Florence writes "[that] by then their separate plans to
reshape the Middle East were already in motion. And the two ambitious
and strong-willed men would discover that the fortunes they had
planned for Palestine were on a collision course."

With those few meetings to go on, Florence’s narrative in "Lawrence
and Aaronsohn" becomes one of alternating accounts. And with Lawrence
such familiar territory — if only from the Peter O’Toole portrayal —
the reader will be tempted to skim through those chapters. But with
Aaronsohn there is the freshness of discovery.

In 1917, Aaronsohn was 41 — two years older than Lawrence — and
already a person of some international distinction. Growing up in
Palestine, he had become an expert on the region’s ecology, with his
discovery of a potentially valuable strain of wheat bringing him to
the attention of American Jewish leaders.

And from years spent exploring the region, usually on horseback, he
had information of great value to British intelligence services —
the likely sources of underground water, deduced from the ruins of
ancient cities, and the disposition of Turkish forces.

While frequently rebuffed by the British, Aaronsohn, with knowledge
of the treatment of Armenians by the Turks, believed that a British
victory was vital for the future of Jews in Palestine.

As a spy, Aaronsohn had an equal in his younger sister, Sarah. She
was, writes Florence, "a beautiful and sensuous woman" who was also
"a fearless and adventurous horsewoman." Forced into a joyless
and loveless marriage with a Constantinople merchant, at the first
opportunity she returned to Palestine.

With her brother on military missions in Cairo and London, she soon
took over the espionage operations of NILI — the Hebrew initials for
"The glory of Israel does not deceive" — an underground group made
up of recruits from her brother’s agricultural research station.

Later, when Turkish forces threatened the espionage operation, she
was in Palestine, and refused to join her brother in Cairo. "I want
to be with the others in the place of danger at the time of danger."

Within weeks, she and other NILI agents had been arrested. Sarah
was beaten, then brutally tortured. Eluding her guards with a ruse,
she killed herself with a gun that she had hidden.

"Nili," writes Florence, became a popular name for girls in Israel.

Her brother also died tragically. Like Lawrence, he was in Paris
during the Peace Conference in 1919. Seeking material to buttress
his proposals for a Jewish Palestine, he went briefly to London.

Returning to Paris on a foggy morning in May 1919, he died when the
mail plane in which he was the sole passenger crashed in the English
Channel.

Both he and Lawrence had prepared maps outlining their rival
territorial proposals for Palestine (both are printed in this book).

Lawrence’s proposed borders created a narrow coastal Palestine, wedged
in front of expansive Arab desert kingdoms. But, writes Florence,
its straight-line borders, "[ignored the] terrain, resources,
cultivation patterns, economic development issues, and history,"
which defined Aaronsohn’s Palestine.

As it turned out, neither Lawrence’s "righteous passion" nor
Aaronsohn’s "precise science" prevailed, and the region was carved up
between the British and the French. Their legacies, Florence suggests,
are more political than territorial. For Lawrence it was "legitimation
of Arab nationalism"; and for Aaronsohn, a demonstration that "the land
. . . could support the increased population" of modern-day Israel.

SEVERAL FOREIGN LEADING INSURANCE COMPANIES TO ENTER ARMENIAN INSURANCE MARKET IN 2008

Noyan Tapan
Jul 30, 2007

YEREVAN, JULY 30, NOYAN TAPAN. It is expected that leading foreign
insurance companies will function from 2008 on the Armenian insurance
market. The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has reached preliminary
agreements about that.

Tigran Sargsian, the Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia, reported
this on July 27.

In his words, in all probability, a British insurance company
will be the first to work on the Armenian insurance market. "It is
desirable that the first company be from Great Britain, as CBA’s
risks are insured at that country’s insurance company. In addition,
that country is a world financial center, and Armenia has ambitions
to become a regional financial center," the CBA Chairman said.

According to him, by the adoption of the new law "On Insurance," the
limitations of foreign companies’ participation in Armenian insurance
companies’ capital were liquidated. In T. Sargsian’s opinion, the
interest of foreign insurance companies in the Armenian insurance
market will increase abruptly, when only insurance companies meeting
the requirements of the above mentioned law function in Armenia.

ARG TOPS LIST OF BIGGEST TAX PAYERS

ARMENPRESS
Jul 27, 2007

YEREVAN, JULY 27, ARMENPRESS: The joint Russian-Armenian Armrosgazporm
(ARG) natural gas operator has moved to top the list of 300 biggest
Armenian taxpayers.

According to the list, unveiled by the state taxation service, ARG
has nearly doubled the amount of taxes it paid in the first six months
of this year, to 12 billion Armenian Drams. Nearly half of the money
were direct-income and profit taxes.

The second line is occupied by ArmenTel telephone company, which paid
10.2 billion Drams, of which 4.5 billion Drams were direct taxes.

The third biggest company was Zangezour copper and molybdenum plant
which paid 9.7 billion Drams, including 4. 3 billion of direct taxes.

Armenia’s second mobile phone operator K-Telecom was the forth with
7.4 billion Drams of paid taxes.

Flash petrol importing company came next with 4.4 billion Drams of
paid taxes.

DERRY OUT OF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE AFTER DEFEAT IN ARMENIA

Evening Echo, Ireland
July 26 2007

Derry City are out of this year’s Champions League after losing the
second leg of their qualifier against FC Pyunik yesterday evening.

The Armenian champions won 2-0 in Yerevan following the scoreless
draw in last week’s first leg.

Elsewhere, Belfast side Linfield are also out after losing 1-0 in
the second leg of their first round qualifier against Swedish side
Elfsborg.

"THE CHALLENGES OF 21ST CENTURY AND THE ARMENIAN YOUTH" CONFERENCE’S DECLARATION AS A BASIS OF FURTHER ACTIVITIES

AZG Armenian Daily #140
By Aghavni Haroutiunian
26/07/2007

Social

Members of the Armenian Catholic Primacy’s Armenian Catholic Union in
Damascus Shant Keshisian and Perch Ter-Sargisian’s letter is one of the
echoes that the World Armenian Congress received from the participants
of the Pan-Armenian International Youth Conference "The Challenges of
the 21st Century" held in July 9-11, in Yerevan. They express their
unreserved valuation on the reports, the serious attitude of the
working groups and the declaration of the "The Challenges of the 21st
Century" conference, which is really a distinct guide for the youth.

Many people mention that the gathering of the Armenian youth from
various countries was really a different and very efficient event in
the series of similar measures.

The valuation of the representatives of the Stavropol branch of the
Union of the Armenians in Russia, first, refers to high organizational
level of the conference and the youth’s serious approach to the
discussed issues.

"The cooperation in the working groups was dynamic and very
efficient. The positive inclination and the desire to unite really
gave their results", mention the Armenian youth of Stavropol.

The participants affirmed that the discussions of the practical
issues and the presentation of the proposals in the working groups
of the conference were more preferable for the youth, which became
the sources of the declaration.

The issues of Artsakh, recognition of the Armenian Genocide,
development of the Armenian State system and the Armenian
provinces, preservation of national originality and development of
Armenia-Diaspora and Diaspora-Armenia relations are the main points
of the declaration issued at the end of the conference.

The chief aim of the World Armenian Congress and the above-mentioned
conference is to gather the efforts of all Armenians round our
national interests, as it was written in the slogan of the conference:
"We are strong, when we are together".