Author: Tavakalian Edgar

PRESS RELEASE
Date: July 22, 2008
Armenian National Committee of America
Eastern Region
122 W. 27th St., Floor 12, New York, NY
Contact: Karine Birazian
Tel: 917-428-1918

ANCA EASTERN REGION ANNOUNCES HONOREES FOR 2ND ANNUAL BANQUET
–Harvard Professor Samantha Power to receive ANCA Freedom Award
–Community Supporter Martha Aramian to receive ‘Vahan Cardashian’
Award

NEW YORK, NY- The Armenian National Committee of America, Eastern
Region (ANCA-ER), announced the honorees for its Second Annual
Banquet and Awards Program, to take place on Saturday, September
13, 2008 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

As announced previously, the ANCA-ER will present the ANCA Freedom
Award to Harvard University professor and human rights activist Dr.
Samantha Power. A leading voice on genocide awareness, Power won
the Pulitzer Prize for her book A Problem From Hell: America and
the Age of Genocide. She teaches at the Carr Center for Human
Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
and was a senior adviser to U.S. Democratic Party presidential
candidate Barack Obama.

The Vahan Cardashian Award will be presented to Martha Aramian of
Providence, Rhode Island, a long-standing active member of the
Armenian community. Aramian has been a strong activist in her
local Providence community and supporter of the ANCA’s efforts at a
national level. In 2006, on the occasion of the ANCA’s Capital
Campaign, she donated $200,000, greatly facilitating the purchase
of the ANCA’s new national headquarters in Washington DC. Aramian
has sponsored the establishment of a child care center, senior
center, and youth camp in Vanadzor, a city devastated by the 1988
earthquake.

"We are pleased to honor Samantha Power and Martha Aramian,"
commented Banquet Committee Chair Stephen Mesrobian. "These are two
individuals who have had a lasting impact and made a real
difference in the Armenian Cause through their dedication and
support."

The ANCA Freedom Award honors individuals who have succeeded in
bringing the history of the Armenian people and the truth about the
Armenian Genocide to the mainstream public consciousness. Recent
recipients have included U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans,
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez and musical band System of a Down.

The Vahan Cardashian Award is given annually to an ANC activist or
supporter who demonstrates longstanding accomplishments on behalf
of the Armenian Cause. The award is named for Yale-educated lawyer
Vahan Cardashian who set aside his successful New York practice to
dedicate himself to the establishment of the American Committee for
the Independence of Armenia (ACIA), predecessor organization to the
Armenian National Committee and advocate for the plight of the
Armenian nation. The 2007 Cardashian Award was presented to Vahe
Amirian of New Jersey.

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Photo Caption: Vahan Cardashian Award recipient Martha Aramian
a

BAKU NOT WORRIED OVER TURKEY-ARMENIA TALKS

Today’s Zaman
July 23 2008
Turkey

Azerbaijan is not concerned over secret talks between Armenia
and regional ally Turkey, a spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministry has said. Spokesman Khazar Ibrahim said on Monday that the
Azerbaijani government was interested in Turkey’s official position,
which Ankara said has not changed.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan confirmed last week that there
had been secret talks between Turkish Foreign Ministry diplomats and
Armenian officials earlier this month but underlined that such talks
were taking place from time to time to discuss ways to normalize
relations between the two estranged neighbors. The Foreign Ministry
also said no special meaning should be attributed to these talks.

"What is important for us is the official statements of the Turkish
officials. Mr. Babacan said Turkey’s policy has not changed, and we
hope that future steps Turkey will take will be in line with this
policy," Ibrahim, speaking at a press conference, was quoted by the
Anatolia news agency late on Monday as saying.

Turkey closed its border and severed its diplomatic ties with Armenia
in protest of Armenia’s occupation of the Azerbaijani territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. Ankara says normalization of
ties depends on Armenian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh, a change
of policy in Yerevan on claims of an Armenian genocide at the hands
of the Ottoman Empire and formal recognition of the Turkish-Armenian
border by Armenia.

The Turkish-Armenian talks, which reportedly took place on July 8 in
Switzerland, came amid calls for dialogue from Armenian President
Serzh Sarksyan. Sarksyan repeated his call for closer ties with
Turkey on Monday, telling a news conference that the improvement
of ties between Armenia and Turkey is mutually beneficial. Sarksyan
said earlier this month that he had invited his Turkish counterpart,
Abdullah Gul, to visit Yerevan and watch a football match in September.

SHEIKH-UL-ISLAM HAJI ALLAHSHUKUR PASHAZADEH MEETS WITH THE HEAD OF THE LOS ANGELES TOLERANCE CENTER

Azeri Press Agency
July 22 2008
Azerbaijan

Baku. Elbrus Seyfullayev -APA. Chairman of the Caucasian Muslims
Office Sheikh-ul-Islam Haji Allahshukur Pashazadeh has welcomed the
head of the Los-Angeles Tolerance Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper at his
residence in Baku, APA reports.

Chairman of the Caucasian Muslims Office said tolerance in Azerbaijan
was at the highest level. "Religious tolerance is at the highest level
in Azerbaijan, representatives of different religious confessions are
free to live together and to pray. All religious meeting-houses have
an opportunity for free functioning, synagogues, churches and temples
are constructed in the country and representatives of various faiths
are praying there. Azerbaijan can be a real example of tolerance
in the world". Sheikh-ul-Islam Haji Allahshukur Pashazadeh said new
synagogue would be constructed for the highland Jewish community and
promised his support for its construction. Haji Allahshukur Pashazadeh
said large Armenian community lived in Los Angeles, which actively
worked against Azerbaijan. "Armenians living in Los Angeles may have
misleading information about Azerbaijan. It needs to explain them
truth. Therefore I am ready to meet with Armenian religious figures.

I can meet them even at church to explain them realities". Heads of
various religious confessions gave examples of high-level religious
tolerance in Azerbaijan. Rabbi Abraham Cooper thanked for sincere
welcoming and said he was pleased to see free coexistence of different
religious communities in the country. Then the sides presented gifts
to each other.

TURKISH OFFICER DENIES ANY INFORMATION ON JOURNALIST MURDER

Hurriyet
July 21 2008
Turkey

An officer of the Turkish army rejected Monday the claims of being
informed prior to the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink.

"I don’t remember any document regarding the assassination of Hrant
Dink," Colonel Ali Oz, the gendarmerie field officer of Trabzon at
the time of incident said in his interrogation in the northwestern
province of Bursa.

Oz and Captain Metin Yildiz claimed for failing to act on information
received prior to the assassination. Turkey’s northeastern province
Trabzon governor’s office gave the permission for the investigation
after assessing a report of the inspectors from the Turkish Interior
Ministry on Sunday.

Dink, editor in chief of Agos newspaper, was shot dead outside the
offices of the paper in Istanbul in January, 2007. Police arrested
the gunman and a suspected associate who was identified as Yasin Hayal.

The trial began in July 2007. Prosecutors have asked for a prison term
of 18 to 24 years for Dink’s assassin Ogun Samast and life sentences
for two key suspects, Erhan Tuncel and Hayal for inciting to murder.

SERZH SARGSYAN: KARABAKH SETTLEMENT POSSIBLE THROUGH PEACE TALKS

armradio.am
21.07.2008 16:55

"Abdullah Gul’s visit to Yerevan will allow consolidating the positive
trends in the normalization of relations apparent in the public moods
of the two countries," Armenian Presidnet Serzh Sargsyan told a press
conference dedicated to the 100th day of his presidency.

"I’m confident that Presidnet Gul’s visit to Yerevan will allow
turning the existing trends into a stable movement targeted at the
normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations," the President stressed.

RA President disagreed with the opinion of some Turkish political
circles that the normalization of relations will benefit only
Armenia. "The normalization of relations will be mutually beneficial,
and I hope that when taking a decision on visiting Yerevan Abdullah Gul
will be guided by reason." Presidnet Sargsyan noted that normalization
of relations with Turkey will be a "great success" for Armenia.

Commenting on the statements that some political forces in Armenia
may organize acts of protest in case Turkey’s Presidnet arrives in
Yerevan, Serzh Sargsyan said such forces exist in both countries. "Does
it mean that we must not undertake anything for solving the existing
problems? I think both sides should make efforts to solve the issue,"
the Presidnet stated, expressing hope that the number of supporters
of normalization of relations prevails in both countries.

The Armenian President declared that Armenian and Turkish diplomats
held a meeting in Geneva earlier in July and said he does not see
anything "sensational" in it. Serzh Sargsyan noted that diplomats of
the two countries had had meetings in the past.

Serzh Sargsyan declared about his willingness to continue the
negotiations on the Karabakh conflict settlement on the basis of
Madrid Principles.

"I’m confident that we can reach the solution of the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict through peace talks. Having met with Azerbaijan’s
President Ilham Aliyev once, I got an impression that the means
for peaceful settlement of the issue have not been exhausted yet. I
have the impression that President Aliyev is ready to continue the
negotiations," RA President Serzh Sargsyan said.

Commenting on the periodic criticism of the Minsk Group activity by
the Azerbaijani side, Serzh Sargsyan called those actions a "minor
guile." In his words, the format of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs
is able to register progress sin the process.

RUSSIA AND ARMENIA ENJOY EXEMPLARY RELATIONS

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.07.2008 18:35 GMT+04:00

The Armenian-Russian relations are on a high level, according to
RA President.

The forthcoming visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will promote
development of Armenian-Russian cooperation. We enjoy relations that
can be exemplary for all. Unanimous position on plenty of issues makes
our cooperation within international organizations more efficient,"
Serzh Sargsyan said

The Moscow Times, Russia
July 21 2008

Gulags of the World United
21 July 2008
By Mark H. Teeter

The recent publication of Jane Mayer’s "The Dark Side," like previous
accounts of America’s ill-conceived "war on terror," has generated
considerable op-ed ink and high-decibel dismay in the United
States. Yet some Russian observers likely noted the book’s reception
less for the hue and cry, which they’ve heard before, than for a
particular lexical instance. "The Dark Side" rigorously documents such
horrendous wrongdoing — including the illegal imprisonment, torture,
ritualized abuse and humiliation of "enemy combatants," real and
imagined — that for some Americans only a Russian term could describe
it. The Washington Post, for example, summarized Mayer’s message as,
"The United States has succeeded in creating an American gulag."

Foreigners have long used this word for their own purposes, of
course. References to an "African gulag" or "British gulag" are easily
adduced, while "American Gulag" has been used to title studies of the
U.S. prison system, immigration internment and even teenagers’ civil
rights. How should a Russian feel about such hyperbolae? If you
survived the "original" gulag or lost a loved one to it, would you not
wince at hearing the term describe the detention of U.S. juvenile
delinquents?

Or how should anyone react when the closed system of company farms
that supplies McDonald’s restaurants in Russia is called the
"McGulag"? Is this amusing or profane? Did you just laugh?

The primal gulag was neither generic nor funny, of course. It
represented a specific place, time and people, as we are reminded
regularly by the testimonials that have continued to emerge ever since
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s "The Gulag Archipelago" introduced the
acronym to the world in the mid-1970s. The unjust imprisonment and
inhuman abuse of the gulag system were not merely specific; they were
definitive. Using Dostoevsky’s maxim that a society’s degree of
civilization may be judged by its prisons, the gulag proved the
civilization of Soviet society a spectacular failure.

If certain Russians question whether a "real" gulag can exist
elsewhere, many non-Russians question the atavism in evidence where
the first one thrived. While no one here advocates illegal arrests,
torture and mass murder, great swaths of Russians remain ambivalent or
even positive toward the police-state system built precisely on those
pillars. As a Moscow radio commentator succinctly put it, "We are a
unique country," in which "the Stalin regime literally raped the
nation and destroyed millions of human lives, yet to this day we can’t
decide whether this was good or bad."

In the end, questioning who might own the gulag "brand" is both
pointless and abhorrent. To dwell on numerical comparisons — this
gulag destroyed X people, that one Y — settles nothing and indirectly
abets Stalin’s infamous dictum that "One death is a tragedy; a million
is a statistic." All of the past century’s epic-scale, premeditated
exterminations — of Armenians, Soviets, Jews, Chinese, Cambodians and
Tutsis — were clearly tragedies at once individual and collective,
with collective meaning "of the whole world." When such slaughters
occur, all mankind pays a price. The proportions and malevolence
combine to recalibrate what it means to be human, redefining the race
downward through our shared failure either to perceive or prevent
them.

But if we "own" these disasters together, if anyone’s gulag is
everyone’s gulag, should we not study them together as well, the
better to honor their victims and discourage their repetition?
Shouldn’t Russians and Americans, say, jointly study their own gulags
and one another’s, each bringing unique resources and perspectives to
bear?

Yes, and here’s one example: Last week, the Center for History and New
Media at Virginia’s George Mason University initiated "Gulag: Many
Days, Many Lives," a web site offering an "in-depth look at life in
the Gulag through … original documentaries and prisoner voices, an
archive [of] documents and images and teaching and bibliographic
resources." While key support for the project comes from U.S. sources,
like the Kennan Institute, State Department, National Endowment for
the Humanities and Harvard’s Davis Center, the project couldn’t have
been conceived or realized, quite obviously, without Russian
cooperation, specifically from Moscow’s International Memorial Society
and Gulag Museum at Perm-36.

We are all slightly better off for this. That Russians and Americans
created this site together is a small but heartening reminder that our
species is sometimes capable of rising above certain inessential
distinctions — of nationality, ethnicity, ideology and faith — that
we have too often and disastrously indulged.

Mark H. Teeter teaches English and Russian-American relations in Moscow.

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
July 19 2008

A group of Armenian intelligencers try to pass to Azerbaijani territory

[ 19 Jul 2008 15:42 ]

Baku. Mahbuba Gasimbayli-APA. A group of Armenian intelligencers tried
to pass to Azerbaijani territory in the direction of Aghdam village of
Tovuz region at 00.30 on July 19, Eldar Sabiroglu, Spokesman for
Azerbaijani Defense Ministry told APA

He noted that Azerbaijani servicemen prevented them to pass to the
territory. One Armenian intelligencer was killed and the rest of them
escaped. Killed Gor Mikhailovich Manasian’s body and arm remained in
Azerbaijani side.

WB YEREVAN OFFICE PRESENTS REPORT ‘ARMENIA: ECONOMIC MONITORING NOTE’

ArmInfo
2008-07-16 15:09:00

Wednesday on July 16 WB Yerevan Office presented a report ‘Armenia:
Economic Monitoring Note for the first half of 2008’. The report
outlined marcoeconomic risks in the country.

Mr. Aristomene Varudakis, World Bank Armenia Country Manager said
such reports will be published once in 6 months to provide timely
and brief data on the economic situation for the last 6 months. He
said the report is quite urgent given the new government plans for
economic reforms. The report covers economic policy of Armenia, as
well as the economic structure including the spheres of health care,
education, agriculture, and transport.

Moreover, the report presents the monetary and fiscal policies,
the latest development in the financial sector, as well as
telecommunications, energy, drinking and irrigation water. Structural
problems are often presented not orderly, he said, but they are
important to meet the challenges the country has faced. A. Varudakis
added that the report is useful to the citizens of Armenia including
specialized organizations, students, officials, public organizations
as well as to international structures interested. The report is
published in English and translated into Armenian.

For his part Aghasi Lazarian, WB Yerevan Offuce economist, said that
over the last not full 6 months, GDO kept rapidly growing mostly at
the expense of construction sphere (14.9% growth for 5 months of 2005)
and services (10.6% growth) not subjected to export. Simultaneously,
intensive growth of risks has been observed including rapid growth
of inflation (Jan-Jun – 9.6%) and worsening of unfavorable balance of
trade of Armenia, reduction of export due to the tense situation in the
international market and rise of prices for imported goods. ‘Despite
the 9.8% GDP growth for the 5 months, it is early to make forecasts
for the end of 2008′, he said. He outlined 0.4% decline in industrial
sectors and 1.9% slackening growth in agriculture.

At the same time he added that inflation in Armenia had been chiefly
conditioned by oil and food products’ prices raising in the world
market as well as raising of prices in the sphere of services, which
is conditioned by the high demand because of the transfers coming
to the country (40-50% growth over the first quarter of the current
year). He also said that though influence of the money and credit
policy is reducing because of interventions at the monetary market,
currency demand was big over the five months of the current year and
Central Bank sold $100 mln, which also was a restraining factor. At
the same time he added that over the first 6 months the volume of
the tax revenues has grown by 35,5%, which is higher of the predicted
level. This is conditioned by improvement of the tax administration.

Indicators of the Armenian budget will be better in the current year
because of such rates, he emphasized.

For his part, Artavazd Hakopyan, WB Yerevan Office Executive
Agricultural and Ecological Programs marked the backgrounds of the
sphere growth. In particular, gradual growth in plant cultivation
has been stipulated by planting of gardens 5-6 years ago, as well as
enhancement of efficiency in irrigated zones. Alongside with that, the
risks are aggravated in non-irrigated zones and in cattle breeding
in view of climate changes and animals diseases, in particular,
avian influenza and swine fever in 2007 and 2006. He said that the
government development program increased agricultural subsidies. ‘We
think that other mechanisms of market relations exist, including
implementation of new technologies’, he emphasized.

RA OMBUDSMAN CONSIDERS EXPEDIENT ARMAN BABAJANIAN’S SUSPENDED PRE-TERM
RELEASE

NOYAN TAPAN

JU LY 15

One of these days the independent commission on suspended pre-term
release of convicts from serving their punishment or on replacing the
non-served part of punishment by a milder one is going to discuss the
mediation of the Convicts’ Hospital penitentiary institution of the
RA Justice Ministry on suspended pre-term release of editor-in-chief
of the Haykakan Zhamanak daily Arman Babajanian from serving the
punishment.

The Information and Public Relations Department of the RA Ombudsman’s
Administration mentions that the independent commission had turned down
the respective mediations of the Nubarashen penitentiary institution
in July 2007 and of the Convicts’ Hospital penitentiary institution
in December 2007.