Author: Tambiyan Samvel

706 HOUSE CALLS IN TWO MONTHS

A1+
[01:24 pm] 27 February, 2009

Alavredi’s Ambulance Service has recently worked very efficiently. In
2008 all employees and drivers of the service underwent additional
training.

"We no longer encounter problems with medicine or fuel," says the
Service Director Stepan Mosinyan. "The only concern is that we do not
have doctors on call. House calls are answered by the ambulance man
and hospital attendant on duty." The director says they cannot form
a mobile medical team because of the lack of finances.

"Monthly general expenses on first aid mount to 900 000 drams,
including the salaries of the 18 employees, and the money spent on
medicines, fuel etc. If we keep a doctor on call we must give him a
monthly salary of 120-150 drams which we cannot afford at present. The
service also needs a special ambulance lorry," says Mr. Mosinyan. In
2008 the service received 2577 house calls. There were 706 calls at
the beginning of 2009.

MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS TO ARRIVE IN ARMENIA FRIDAY

armradio.am
26.02.2009 16:52

Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Bernard Fassier, Yuri Merzlyakov
and Matthew Bryza will arrive in Baku tonight. Eh mediators are
expected to have meetings with the President and the Foreign Minister
of Azerbaijan on February 27. Press Service of the French Embassy
in Armenia reported that the same day the Co-Chairs will arrive in
Yerevan. The mediators will visit Stepanakert over the weekend.

An agreement on the visit of the Co-Chairs was reached during the
meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents Serzh Sargsyan and
Ilham Aliyev in Zurich on January 28.

85 MILLION DOLLARS ALLOTTED TO ARMENIA

A1+
[03:38 pm] 25 February, 2009

The World Bank has approved a package of four operations, for a total
amount of $85 million, to help Armenia mitigate the impacts of the
global economic crisis.

The Bank’s ability to provide this support in a timely manner has
been made possible by Armenia’s strong foundation of implementation
capacity and policy reform momentum, Head of the World Bank Yerevan
Office Aristomene Varudakis told reporters today.

GEORGIAN PARLIAMENT SPEAKER VISITS THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEMORIAL

armradio.am
24.02.2009 16:09

Accompanied by the Head of Staff of the National Assembly of Armenia,
Gegham Gharibjanyan, he President of the Georgian Parliament, David
Bakradze, visited Tsitsernakaberd today, laid a wreath at the memorial
to the Armenian Genocide victims, watered the tree planted by the
President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili in the Memory Alley. The
Georgian Parliament Speaker also visited the Armenian Genocide
Museum-Institute where Director of the Museum Hayk Demoyan presented
the history of the genocide.

The Chairman of the Georgian Parliament left a note in the Memory
Book: "The right to live is the most sacred among all the rights. We
should remember the history and do everything to avoid reoccurrence
of genocides and ethnic cleansings nowadays."

David Bakradze told reporters that his country’s Parliament will not
discuss the Armenian Genocide issue in the near future. "I think that
from the moral viewpoint the visit of the Georgian delegation to the
Genocide Museum, the impressions we got here, clearly demonstrate our
attitude towards the issue. First of all, it is the responsibility of
politicians not to allow history repeat, to avoid ethnic cleansings and
genocides. It’s a sensitive topic for the Georgian people, as well,"
he said.

According to David Bakradze, in general, the bilateral parliamentary
ties reflect the partnership relations that exist between Armenia
and Georgia. "No doubt, there are still opportunities for further
improvement, and one of the purposes of my visit is to discuss in
which directions our parliaments could cooperate. We are ready to
develop the relations not only on the level of visits," the Georgian
Parliament Speaker noted.

Athens News Agency, Greece
Feb 22 2009

Τurkish MP, author presents novel in Thessaloniki

Turkish parliamentarian and author Kemal Anadol on Friday evening
presented his historical novel, "The Great Separation" (Büyük
Ayrili) to a Thessaloniki audience at the Macedonian Studies Society.

In the book, Anadol, a high-ranking CHP deputy in the neighbouring
country from the Izmir district, recounts the daily lives of ordinary
Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews in the 20 years before the Asia
Minor catastrophe in 1922 in the then Smyrna, Istanbul, Fokaia and
Aivali.

"History is not exclusively comprised of the sounds of canons and
swords, smoke, gunpowder and marches; history is also love stories,
love, hate, music, cuisine and trade between ordinary people," the
author and politician said.

WARMER U.S.-RUSSIA RELATIONS BETTER THAT WOULD BE FOR ARMENIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
20.02.2009 19:42 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The warmer U.S.-Russia relations are the better
that would be for Armenia, according to former Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Armenia.

"But at this time, such warming is still only a desire on everyone’s
part. There are still a series of very serious problems: NATO
expansion, the American missile defense shield, as well as contentions
over spheres of influence. It is especially the processes having to
do with defining spheres of influence and the possible arrangements
or understandings that they arrive at that will have serious impact
on Armenia," Vartan Oskanian, head of Civilitas Foundation told
PanARMENIAN.Net.

"Thus, we must do everything so that the perception of these two
countries about Armenia be based on Armenia’s compelementarity and not
on specific recent events. Specifically, closer financial cooperation
with Russia or the agreement signed about CSTO rapid deployment forces
can be seen as a deviation from the policy of complementarity, if
of course these steps are not followed by other steps which reaffirm
the balance in Armenia’s foreign policy," he said.

SENATOR BACKS DETENTE

Hurriyet
Feb 20 2009
Turkey

ANKARA – As concerns run high over possible support from U.S Jewish
groups for a resolution on the so-called Armenian genocide, an
American Jewish senator has deemed the government’s "courageous"
policy for normalizing ties with Armenia as praiseworthy.

Robert Wexler, Democratic member of the U.S. Congress and co-chairman
of the Turkey caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, said the
U.S. Congress should focus on the normalization of relations between
Turkey and Armenia. His remarks came late Wednesday after his meeting
with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Wexler said the courageous policy pursued by both Erdogan and President
Abdullah Gul toward relations with Yerevan was worth praising and
said informing the U.S. Congress of that was of due importance.

Wexler highlighted the new climate between Turkey and Armenia, which
began with the Turkish president’s landmark visit to Yerevan in
September, and said both countries took steps to start constructive
dialogue. "We should do our best to support the efforts of Turkey
and Armenia," he said.

WEBSITE CLOSED: AIF

ArmInfo
2009-02-20 10:32:00

ArmInfo. Web-site and its English version
stopped its activity. An explanation appeared on the latter: "The
project is temporarily closed", AIF Agency reports. Human rights
defenders qualified this as the next hit to the freedom of press
in Azerbaijan.

The site editor Elnur Baimov does not respond to the telephone calls
and e-mail requests. One of his employees said Baimov announced about
the site closure but did not explain the reasons.

Both own materials and information of the local news agencies were
placed on Day.az. It was among the most popular websites in the
republic.

Some experts connect the site closure with the upcoming March
referendum in Azerbaijan concerning possible lifting of restrictions
for the period of Ilham Aliyev’s presidency. This will allow the
Azerbaijani president to stay in his post also upon expiry of his
second presidential term.

TURKISH PM ERDOGAN: NO CHANGE IN KARABAKH POLICY

Journal of Turkish Weekly
Feb 19 2009
Turkey

ANKARA – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected
reports in Azerbaijani media that Turkey has revised its policy on
not normalizing relations with neighboring Armenia unless it ends
its occupation of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region.

"There is no difference between our position and Azerbaijan’s
position on Nagorno-Karabakh," Erdogan said in response to
a question. "Azerbaijan’s righteousness is established by UN
resolutions."

Erdogan also said he may meet US President Barack Obama in April, on
the occasion of a summit of G-20 countries. Obama phoned ErdoÃ~DŸan on
Monday and Erdogan said they discussed a number of issues, including
the Armenian diaspora’s efforts to win US recognition for Armenian
claims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in World War
I. Armenians rioted against Istanbul government during the First
World War and armed Armenian nationalists sided with the occupying
Russian forces. The Ottoman State decided to relocate many Armenians
to another provinces. The civil war and war curcumstances caused
great number of Armenian loses while more than 520.000 Turkish and
Kurdish civilians were massacred by the Armenian terrorists and gangs.

About 20 percent of Azerbaijan has been under Armenian
occupation. Apart from Karabagh many other Azeri towns were also
occupied by the Armenian forces with the Russian support and
encouragement.

Another problem between Turkey and Armenia is the border issue. Yerevan
does not recognise Turkey’s unity and calls the eastern provinces of
Turkey ‘Western Armenia’.

ARMENIA AMONG TOP TEN OF POPULAR DESTINATION POINTS OF PASSENGER TRAFFIC FROM RUSSIA

ArmInfo
2009-02-19 11:53:00

ArmInfo. Armenia has proved among top ten of popular destination points
of the passenger traffic from Russia by the Statistics of the Russian
Federal Agency for Air Transport. Russian media reported that Germany
is the most popular regular destination point for Russian and Turkey
is the most popular destination point of charter flights.

Russian air companies transported over 11.6 million passengers
to other states in 2008. Passenger flow of regular fights totaled
over 6.5 million people, which is by 12% more than in 2007. Over 5
million passengers preferred charter flights, which is by 10% more
than in 2007.

Last year over 735,000 passengers used the regular flights to Germany.

Egypt, Ukraine, China and Tajikistan are less popular among Russian
passengers. Top ten of the most popular regular flights include also
Turkey, Armenia, France, Uzbekistan and Spain.