Author: Tvankchian Parkev

U.S. SUPPORTS OSCE MINSK GROUP ACTIVITY IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH SETTLEMENT

Interfax News Agency
March 31 2008
Russia

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be resolved peacefully and the
activity of the OSCE Minsk Group will contribute to it, temporary
U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Armenia Joseph Pennington said.

"The U.S. has remained a supporter of a peaceful solution to the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and I am sure that the activity of the
OSCE Minsk Group will lead to this solution," Pennington told a press
conference in Yerevan.

He also said that the U.S. co-chairman of the Minsk Group and Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew
J. Bryza will soon arrive in the region.

FOURTEEN ARMENIANS WIN QUALIFICATIONS FOR OLYMPIC GAMES

ARMENPRESS
March 31, 2008

YEREVAN, MARCH 31, ARMENPRESS; Fourteen Armenian athletes have
already qualified for the Olympic Games in Beijing, China. The first
qualification was won by shooter Norayr Bakhtamian. Five qualifications
were won then by Armenian weightlifters in an international tournament
in Thailand. Boxers won their qualifications in tournaments in Chicago,
USA and Italy.

Two qualifications were won in Azerbaijan by wrestlers Arman Adikian
and Yuri Patrikeev.

Two more qualifications were won in Brazil by judoist Armen Nazarian
and lance thrower Melik Janoyan. A qualification was won also by
another judoist Hovhanes Davtian, but it yet has to be confirmed
officially.

Armenian athletes expect to win more qualifications at Europe’s
wrestling championship in Tampere, Finland. Experts say a total
of 20-25 Armenian athletes may win the right to fight at the Games
in China.

EDGAR MANOUCHARIAN GAINS SELF-CONFIDENCE

A1+
31 March, 2008

For a long time Edgar Manoucharian, a rising Armenian football star
playing for Ajax of Amsterdam, couldn’t score for the Armenian national
team. Moreover, he has rarely been recruited to the national team due
to constant injuries. Manoucharian kicked his only goal three years
ago in an informal game with Macedonia.

At last, he brought victory to his team last week in a friendly
meeting with Kazakhstan scoring the only goal of the game. He told A1+
in an interview that this goal will boost his self -confidence and
let him score more goals. He also thanked his teammates for their
tremendous support.

Presently Manoucharian plays for the youth team of Ajax, and this is
likely to last until the end of the playing season. However, Edgar
hopes to be promoted back to the main team.

Statesman Journal, OR
March 30 2008

Dan Butler will headline Salem Film Fest

He appeared on ‘Frasier,’ directed film ‘Karl Rove’

RON COWAN
Statesman Journal

March 30, 2008

Actor/director Dan Butler, best known as the "Bulldog" character in
the popular "Frasier" TV series, will headline this year’s third
annual Salem Film Festival April 18-20.

Butler is the producer, co-director and co-writer of the opening
night film "Karl Rove, I Love You," which stars Butler as himself.

He will be joined at the 6 p.m. April 18 showing at the Historic
Elsinore Theatre by Phil Lierness, his co-director, director of
photography and cast member.

They will do a question-and-answer session after the film. All of the
visiting filmmakers and actors will be introduced prior to the
showing of the film.

Butler’s film is a mix of documentary and mockumentary. He plays
himself as a character actor who hopes to change the course of the
2004 presidential election by doing a one-man show exposing what he
considers the evil political influence of Rove, the presidential
adviser and Republican political guru.

Instead, Butler becomes all too close to his subject.

"We’re taking a lot from real life," he said. "Most everything is
real, except the premise."

The festival, which includes more than 50 features and short films,
will have other guests, although the details of their appearances are
still being finalized.

They include:

Mardik Martin, an Armenian immigrant who co-wrote "Raging Bull" and
"Mean Streets" with director Martin Scorsese and is the subject of
the documentary "Mardik: Baghdad to Hollywood."

He will appear the evening of April 19 to do a question-and-answer
session after the documentary and receive a special tribute award
from the film festival.

He will introduce a special showing of "Raging Bull" and will preside
earlier in the day at an afternoon panel discussion at the Hallie
Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.

Pearl Fryar, the Bishopville, S.C., man who made himself and his
hometown famous with his unusual and artistic topiary creations and
is profiled in "A Man Named Pearl." Fryar will appear the morning of
April 20 with his film.

Voice artist Enn Reitel, who plays a film buff who becomes a
television personality in "Trust Me," a comedy about a con man in
Hollywood. The film will show April 20 and Reitel will do a question
and answer session afterward with Peter Morris, the film’s producer

Other directors, producers and writers are expected at the festival,
which takes place at the Elsinore, the Grand Theatre and Salem
Cinema.

Panel discussions with filmmakers will take place at Willamette
University’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art and a separate youth and
amateur competition will be held at the IKE Box.

Among the other films in the festival will be Helen Hunt’s
directorial debut, "Then She Found Me," a comedy/drama about a
teacher who deals with divorce, pregnancy and the discovery of her
birth mother (Bette Midler); "Driving to Zigzigland," the story of a
Palestinian cab driver/actor trying to stay in the U.S.; and
"Audience of One," the odd but true story of a San Francisco
evangelical minister who attempts to film a biblical epic and enter
the film and television industry.

The festival focuses on independent films, both American and
international, including features and documentaries.

The program will include a special children’s program, short films
paired with feature-length movies; Academy Award-nominated shorts and
foreign films, including the English "London to Brighton" and the
Italian "My Brother is an Only Child."

Salem Cinema, the Historic Elsinore Theatre and Allied Video
Productions are the main organizers of the festival, which is
coordinated by Loretta Miles and Jeff Hart.

Festival passes are currently on sale at the Elsinore box office.

A special festival section will appear in the Statesman Journal on
April 10.

TURKEY CALM OVER ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ MOVE AT KNESSET

Today’s Zaman
March 28 2008
Turkey

The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, decided on Wednesday that a
parliamentary committee will hold an unprecedented hearing on whether
to recognize the World War I era killings of Anatolian Armenians as
genocide, the Israeli media reported.

The decision to hold the hearing was proposed by left-wing Meretz
Chairman Haim Oron and the government did not oppose the motion,
the Israeli daily Haaretz said. The Knesset House Committee will
decide whether the issue will be handed over to the Knesset Education
Committee or to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The Israeli
government has full support for Ankara’s stance on the controversial
1915 incidents, Turkish diplomatic sources, speaking on customary
condition of anonymity, told Today’s Zaman on Thursday, expressing
confidence that the Armenian allegations would not be officially
recognized by Israel. Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their
kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings during the last years
of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey categorically rejects the claims,
saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks
died in civil strife that emerged when the Armenians took up arms
for independence in eastern Anatolia. "One should not ignore the
fact that a small number of members of the Knesset, only 11 members,
were present when on Wednesday, they agreed to take the issue to a
committee. There is no change in the Israeli government’s stance on
this issue," the same sources said.

UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL ADOPTS ARMENIAN RESOLUTION PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE

PanARMENIAN.Net
28.03.2008 18:19 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On March 28, the UN Human Rights Council adopted
a resolution On Prevention of Genocide introduced by Armenia, the RA
MFA press office reported.

The document is the continuation of Armenia-initiated proposals on
genocide early prevention and early warning signs.

Armenia states that crime committed through ethnic, racial and national
hatred are crime against humanity.

Mechanisms for prevention and punishment of genocide perpetrators
should be worked out on the basis of UN Convention.

Armenia proposed discussions of the resolution in UN structures,
countries, non-governmental organizations.

According to RA permanent representative to the UN Zohrab Mnatsakanyan,
prevention of genocides and adoption of the resolution points out to
the international community’s moral responsibility before the memory
of genocide victims.

The resolution was approved by 58 states, including all EU member
countries, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Norway and others.

A. ASHOTYAN: "IT IS POSSIBLE TO ADJUST MISTAKES"

Panorama.am
15:27 27/03/2008

The four-sided political coalition will give an opportunity to
establish political dialogue and civil cooperation, said member of
the Republican Party Armen Ashotyan in a meeting with the journalists
doing their master’s at Yerevan State University.

He said that it is obvious mistakes were done by "different sides"
of politics and now the "fair image" of some politicians surprises
the Republican representative. "I hope that the four-sided political
coalition will give an opportunity to adjust the mistakes," he said.

According to Ashotyan everybody should make its conclusion after the
March 1 events. The officials should think seriously over the item
why so many people have ignored them and started activities against
them and the society should understand that fighting is not a way
to solution.

Thus the officials and the four-sided political coalition have to work
seriously on the amendments and regain the trust of people towards
the country and state officials.

ATTEMPTS OF "DRIVING ARMENIA INTO A CORNER" TURN OUT A FAILURE
Armen Tsatouryan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
March 25, 2008

The presidential elections and the subsequent events of March 1-2
were a serious test to Armenia’s international rating and reputation
earned in the course of many years.

The difficulties that fell to our country’s lot recently became the
subject of the biased attention of the superpowers having serious
interests in the region. The struggle between the authorities and
the opposition was some way or another linked to the convergence and
conflict of some of those key interests.

We began tasting the first bitter fruits of this phenomenon in
the post-election period when no single day passed without the
visit of delegates representing some European or international
structure. Offering their help to the forces that were leading a
sharp struggle against one another, the organizations which were
simultaneously acting as mediators were actually imposing their
conditions not only on the direct parties to the conflict but also –
on Armenia.

During the whole post-election period the great number of delegates
representing Western countries never tried to answer the question
whether the protest actions organized by the opposition leader might
be considered a normal phenomenon in their countries in view of the
fact that the pro-Government candidate received 2.5 times more votes.

They were not interested in such "details"; the important thing was
that there was "distrust of the election results". As to whether
such distrust was real or artificial, dramatized and envisaged for
a foreign spectator, our guests were no longer interested in that.

Even after L. Ter-Petrosyan chose the territory nearby the French,
Italian and Russian Embassies as the site of the ‘decisive battle’,
aiming to arouse an international interest in the dramatization of the
protest actions, nobody asked these people why they were endangering
the uninterrupted work of the foreign country representatives.

Instead, the films shot from the windows of those embassies were
spread all over the world, and there started the raffling of a
well-staged scenario.

The first part of the presentation of such scenario was Ter-Petrosyan’s
March 11 press-conference.

However, Ter-Petrosyan’s chances began diminishing slowly, along with
lifting the state of emergency in the town of Yerevan, forming a broad
political coalition and publishing the reform program declared by the
latter. The demand previously imposed on the opposition by the PACE
Monitoring Committee to respect and recognize the decision of the
Constitutional Court the final clarification of Russia’s attitude
towards the authorities in Armenia also greatly contributed to it
as well.

Unlike some Western guests, Deputy Foreign Minister and State Secretary
G. Karasi n publicly refused to meet with L. Ter-Petrosyan. In this
way, the senior Russian official showed his country’s clear-cut
negative attitude towards the scenario of making Armenia a target of
international pressures.

It became obvious that the scenario of giving the opposition freedom
of hands and suppressing the authorities to maximum possible extent
will not work in Armenia even if it becomes necessary to threaten the
country with the prospect of terminating the "Millennium Challenges"
program. In such conditions, the sketches of the second part of the
"soap opera" concerning the Armenian elections and post-electoral
developments became visible.

This time, after rendering such "great services" to the international
community, the opposition leader has to moderate his ambitions for
power and simply become an ordinary lever for imposing certain foreign
policy issues on Armenia.

The "Moor" has done his job: he has harmed our country’s international
rating and reputation, questioned the outcome of the elections and
provoked an international intervention. Now he can go away for ever
if the Armenian authorities demonstrate a clear-cut attitude towards
the forces which funded the skillfully dramatized performance.

In their recent statements, the international structures emphasize
all the time that the OSCE Observation Mission considered the
Armenian elections mostly in line with the international standards,
i.e. legitimate. However, their final report is still to be
published. Before that, NATO is to hold its summit in Bucharest. Within
the frameworks of the summit, Armenia and Azerbaijan may resume the
interrupted talks as well.

However, on the eve of staging the second part of the international
political "soap-opera" concerning the Armenian elections and
post-electoral developments, President-elect Serge Sargsyan paid a
working visit to Moscow.

The unconditional support of the Russian leadership creates the strong
basis that may make Armenia feel more confident in confronting the
possible international coercions.

The scenario of staging a "colored revolution" in Armenia or, in case
of its failure, driving our authorities into a corner and imposing
serious concessions with regard to different international issues is
reaching a deadlock in a slow though consistent manner.

ARMENIAN COOPERATION WITH RUSSIA

Russia-InfoCenter
March 26 2008
Russia

Russian- Armenian integration will be growing. The fact that the
newly elected Armenian president Serge Sarkisyan has made its first
official visit to our country has emphasized the importance of the
bilateral relations.

Serge Sarkisyan came to Moscow on Sunday with the official visit
(March 23-24) at the invitation of the Russian president.

The visit has become the continuation of Russian- Armenian highly
topical, trust-based political dialogue. This weekend the wide range
of issues of bilateral interest has been discussed.

Traditionally Russia has been keeping good economic relations with
Armenia. Though a bit deteriorated after the Soviet collapse, the
relations were renewed on the market base only in the last five years,
when the economy of the two countries firmed up.

In 2007 the turnover between our countries has increased in 65%
and made up about $ 700 million. If to recall the index of 2005,
the turnover was about $ 300 million. Last year the Russian share in
the Armenian external turnover was 16,1%, what is the highest rate
in comparison with other countries.

Nowadays Russia and Armenia are realizing a series of co-projects in
different spheres of economy.

Energy co-projects.

In 2008 the second part of building works of the gas pipeline
Iran-Armenia, which is an investment project of the company
ArmRosgazprom, a joint venture of Russian ‘Gazprom’, the Armenian
Ministry of Energy and a company ‘Itera’.

The company is holding modernization of the Sevano-Razdanskaya
hydro-electric power station and has started building a gas pipe-line
Kadzharan-Ararat. According to the investment program ArmRosgazprom
is to invest $30 million into Armenian power economy.

At the present Armenia is buying the Russian gas at the reduced price,
that is $110 for a thousand cubic meters.

Nuclear cooperation.

Russian State Corporation Rosatom and Armenian Ministry of Ecology has
signed a protocol on joint geologic exploration, uranium ore mining
and processing. The Russian-Armenian company is going to invest in
the project about some hundred million dollars. February this year
Armenia joined the International Uranium Enrichment Center, established
by Russia and Kazakhstan in May 2007. Russian company Rosatom is to
take part in the tender for building nuclear power plant, which will
be held by the Armenian authorities this year.

Banks and industry.

Russian business is present in the Armenian bank sector. In 2007
the Russian Gazprombank purchased 80,09 % in the registered capital
Armenian-Russian Export-import bank. Russian large companies and banks,
such as Troyka-Dialog, Unibank, Gazprombank and VTB have come to the
Armenian market.

Russian companies control the major part of telecommunication and
industry brunches in Armenia. MTS owns 80% of share of the mobile
operator K-Telekom (the trade-mark Vivacell). The mobile net operator
Armentel is now a Vympelcom subsidiary.

Russian Aluminy (Rusal) owns Yerevan rolling mill plant. The Russian
state corporation Rostechnologies is planning to invest in Armenian
engineering and machine tool technology. The volume of the military
goods supplies has made up $25 million since 2002.

NEW FORMAT ARMENIA

Panorama.am
18:25 26/03/2008

"To calm down the created strained situation in Armenia is possible
only by carrying out some serious amendments in the country," said
Galust Sahakyan the deputy of the NA and the Republican Party. He
said that those amendments and reforms were clarified in their party’s
projects and in their president candidate’s project also.

"Those projects are quite real. The strained situation in the country
will be calmed down in the nearest months," he said and added that
not the public is strained but those who wish to gain force, those
who once have had that force and they missed it so much.

The politician said that the people are nervous because of waiting
and looking forward to those changes. He said that Armenia opposition
is against creating relationship.