MINISTER NALBANDIAN TO VISIT GEORGIA
armradio.am
12.09.2008 09:59
September 12-13 the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of
Armenia Edward Nalvandian will visit Georgia, Press and Information
Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed.
In Tbilisi the Minister is scheduled to have meetings with the
Georgian authorities.
RUSSIAN EXPERT: IT IS HIGH TIME FOR TURKEY TO STOP BEING HOSTAGE OF AZERBAIJANI POLICY REGARDING ARMENIA
ArmInfo
2008-09-11 18:03:00
ArmInfo. It is high time for Turkey to stop being hostage of
Azerbaijani policy regarding Armenia, Russian political expert Sergey
Markedonov told ArmInfo correspondent.
‘Undoubtedly, we can say Turkey being quite a strong country
cannot take into consideration the view of its "younger brother"
Azerbaijan. The fact that Turkey’s foreign policy is conditioned by
the view of Baku causes irritation in the Turkish establishment’,
– he said. At the same time he said this is just one side of the
case as Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, which passed the Karabakh
war, is searching for additional security guarantees for Armenia and
cannot ignore the Turkish factor. ‘In this context Armenian president
will take all the efforts to take the republic out of isolation at
least from the Turkish side. Stemming from it, we should observe
the Armenian-Turkish relations only as unity of all these facts and
Abdullah Gul’s visit to Yerevan is just one of the links in the line
of the Armenian-Turkish relations’, – Markedonov concluded.
ALI BABACAN AGAINST GENOCIDE
AZG Armenian Daily
12/09/2008
Armenia-Turkey
According to "Associated Press", Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan
announced that in case of improvement of Armenian-Turkish relations
the process of recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the parliaments
of other countries will stop.
"In case of improvement of our relations and settlement of available
issues there will be no need for the third countries to discuss the
issue. We can announce – there is no need to be engaged in this,
Armenia and Turkey are now in close relations", he said.
TURKEY’S BABACAN: AZERI, ARMENIAN FMS TO MEET AT UN
Sept 10 2008
Turkey
Turkish FM Babacan said "there were quite a few problematic issues"
between Turkey and Armenia, such as the incidents of 1915, the Upper
Karabakh problem.
Turkey’s foreign minister expressed hope for more dialogue with Armenia
after Turkish and Armenian presidents watched a World Cup qualifying
soccer match in Yerevan last Saturday.
"In the new era for the Turkish-Armenian relations, there will be a
new momentum in dialogue and we are pretty hopeful for the new era
as we have seen a solution-oriented position on the part of Armenia,"
Ali Babacan told a televised interview on Wednesday.
Anatolian News Agency reported Babacan however said "there were
quite a few problematic issues" between Turkey and Armenia, such as
the incidents of 1915, the Upper Karabakh problem. The two countries
also have no diplomatic relations.
Babacan said he had been talking Turkish-Armenian relations with
his counterpart, Eduard Nalbandian, as well as relations between
Azerbaijan and Armenia.
"We have an ongoing process between the foreign ministers of the
two countries and we are in search of solutions to the problem,"
Babacan said.
Babacan said he might hold a joint meeting with Azeri and Armenian
foreign ministers on the sidelines of UN General Assembly meetings
in New York.
"Armenia seems to have passed a threshold now, and the diplomatic
traffic and our impression from the Armenian president and the foreign
minister reveals that there is a strong will for solution in Armenia,"
Babacan said.
"They do understand our sensitivities and we do understand theirs. We
have many reasons to be optimistic," he said.
President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia
on Saturday, a landmark encounter which officials said could help
restore strained ties between the two countries and boost security
in the Caucasus.
Turkey, a transit state for Caspian and Central Asian oil and gas
exports to Europe, was alarmed by the conflict and wants to play a
bigger role in Caucasus security.
Gul will hold talks with his Azeri counterpart in Baku on Wednesday
to discuss a Turkish proposal to establish a security and cooperation
platform for the Caucasus and to brief the president on his visit
to Armenia.
ARMENIANS IN THE UAE EXPRESS CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM
By Abbas Al Lawati, Staff Reporter
Gulf News
51.html
Sept 8 2008
United Arab Emirates
Dubai: As the relations between Turkey and Armenia are set to thaw with
the historic visit of Turkish President Abdullah Gul to the Armenia,
Armenian citizens in the UAE supported the move while members of the
diaspora expressed cautious optimism.
For Anahit G, an assistant manager from Armenia, the "open mindedness"
on both sides was a welcome move, but "pending issues" could not
be ignored.
"We can’t change our neighbours. They are a reality," she said,
noting that the closure of borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan and
instability in Georgia had put Armenia under a virtual "blockade".
"But for us to forgive them, the Turks need to admit to the genocide,"
she said, referring to the killing of some 1.5 million Armenians at
the hands of the Ottomans during World War One.
Diaspora
But citizens of the Republic of Armenia say that it is often difficult
to justify their pragmatic positions to the Armenian diaspora, which
has stronger anti-Turkish views.
Anna Kandaryan, an Armenian sales executive, said that while it was
necessary not to forget the killings, it was also important to think
about the future of Armenia.
"Diaspora Armenians have been personally affected by the genocide
and have been reminded about it continuously. They want nothing to
do with Turkey," she said.
"But the business potential between Armenia and Turkey is huge".
While diaspora Armenians too welcomed the move, they stressed the
need to keep the memory of the killings alive.
For Vartan Mardirossian, an Iraqi born Armenian business consultant,
Gul’s visit will open more windows and enable dialogue on the killings.
"I have Turkish friends here. I can tell a hundred of them about the
genocide and that would be an achievement. Imagine what a million
Armenians could do," he said.
For Hrach Kalsahakian, a Syrian Armenian in the tourism industry,
if the two sides wanted real normalisation, they needed to discuss
"all the issues, including the genocide".
"Personally, I think normalisation is very important for both
sides. But at what expense?" he said.
For Armenians, he said, the killings were not a matter of discussion,
but a fact. "We [the diaspora] are living proof of the genocide". His
grandfather, Kalsahakian explained, was the only member of his family
to survive the killings.
Kalsahakian however said he was not interested in "any kind of material
compensation" that Turkey fears will be demanded. "I just want moral
compensation. I want the memory of my people to be acknowledged and
respected. I am not vengeful," he said.
.html
Sep 9, 2008
Asia Times Online
Azerbaijan at crosswinds of a new cold war
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Azerbaijan’s presidential elections are a few weeks away and while
most experts agree it is a sure bet that the current president, Ilham
Aliyev, will easily win re-election, there is less certainty about the
future orientation of the country, increasingly caught in the
crosswind of a new US-Russia power struggle.
In his tour of the region last week, US Vice President Dick Cheney
shot many salvos against Russians, accusing them of posing a "threat
of tyranny, economic blackmail and military invasion" to its
neighbors. In his meeting with Aliyev, Cheney was comparatively more
reserved and put the emphasis instead on "energy security".
Coinciding with Cheney’s trip has been a new report by the European
Union’s energy commissioner, Andris Piebglas, calling on the EU to
redouble its efforts to build the US$12 billion Nabucco gas pipeline
[1] and reduce its dependence on imports from Russia in the wake of
the Georgian crisis that, per a report in the British newspaper The
Guardian, has led many experts to dismiss the planned 3,300 kilometer
Nabucco pipeline from Azerbaijan to Europe via Georgia and Turkey.
Not only that, both Russia and Iran have opposed the construction of a
trans-Caspian pipeline that would allow the shipment of gas from the
Caspian section of Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and then to Europe. Last
week, at a meeting of the Caspian littoral states on the legal status
of Caspian Sea, held in Baku, Iran’s point man on the Caspian Sea,
Mehdi Safari, stated, "We object to the trans-Caspian pipeline because
of the possible negative impact on sea ecology … there are Iranian
and Russian energy routes and it is unnecessary to jeopardize Caspian
ecology."
Although there is real concern about the Caspian ecology, both Tehran
and Moscow are equally if not more concerned about the geopolitical
ramifications of so-called "pipeline politics" in the Caspian basin
and the adjacent regions, particularly now that the US and Europe seem
determined to lessen the West’s energy dependency on both Iran and
Russia by cultivating alternative sources.
The crisis in Georgia is, however, a powerful wake-up call to Baku
concerning "roads not taken". On the one hand, Baku is interested in
cultivating closer military ties with the West, in light of the Azeri
parliament’s recent ratification of an action plan for greater
military cooperation with the US. A top US State Department official
has recently called for a strategic, trilateral cooperation between
US, Azerbaijan and Turkey. And yet, on the other hand, this is
precisely the kind of initiative that Baku would be wise to stay away
from, unless it is prepared to embrace serious backlashes from its
powerful neighbors, Iran and Russia.
One such backlash could conceivably come in the form of Russia’s
support for the independence of the Azeri breakaway region of
Gharabagh, given that the leaders of Upper Gharabagh have welcomed
Moscow’s decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia from Georgia. For now, Moscow is disinclined to back this
scenario and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated last
week that the situation in Gharabagh is "different". That may be small
music to Baku’s ears, yet few leaders or pundits in Azerbaijan can
afford to miss the sobering lesson from the crisis in Georgia, that
is, the exorbitant price paid for ignoring Russia’s national security
concerns.
This means that, contrary to some hasty conclusions about "Russia’s
colossal blunder", to paraphrase Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, Russia’s
military gambit in Georgia has not thrown Russia’s neighbors in the
bosom of the West, but rather, as in the case of Azerbaijan, prompted
them to adopt a more cautious foreign policy approach that is geared
to maintaining a balance in foreign relations, partly for the sake of
protecting fragile borders and territorial integrity. Instead of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, countries such as Georgia and
Azerbaijan have the theoretical option of cooperating and or even
joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is dominated by
Russia and China. At the moment, this may seem not to be in the cards,
yet it makes sense from the prism of regional stability.
In the Caspian Sea, Iran and Russia rely on the existing legal
convention for the Caspian that refers to it as a "common sea". That
is why both countries are opposed to the division of the Caspian’s
surface water. The various bilateral and trilateral agreements for the
division of the Caspian’s underwater resources do not trump the
"shared sea" condominium status of the sea that acts as a hinge
shutting the door to a foreign presence in the Caspian.
The above means that for the foreseeable future, despite marathon
meetings of the five Caspian littoral states, there will most likely
not be any new convention, thus guaranteeing the exclusion of NATO or
US forces from the important energy hub of the Caspian.
As for Baku’s geopolitical orientation, its cordial, business-like
relations with Tehran, as well as its pragmatic approach toward the
Russia-led geopolitical realities in the region, are prudent courses
of action that Baku would be ill-advised to forsake in favor of closer
ties with the West. After all, the West has been rather helpless in
terms of pulling Tbilisi out of the grave mess that its adventurist
leadership carved for itself.
Concerning the latter, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused
the US of providing military assistance to Georgia under the guise of
humanitarian assistance. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on
the other hand, has tried damage-control in US-Russia relations by not
putting the kiss of death on the US-Russia nuclear cooperation
agreement and, more importantly, not echoing Cheney’s blistering
verbal volleys.
While we await the results of elections in both the US and Azerbaijan,
the latter is likely to thread a cautious middle path that would steer
it clear of the headaches gripping the South Caucasus. Needless to
say, the pain of such headaches would be much alleviated if Democratic
Senator Barack Obama wins in November and somehow succeeds in
introducing real change in the hitherto hegemonic orientation of US
foreign policy. In that case, the first priority of a president Obama
should be to throw water on the new cold war logs fired up by Cheney.
Note
1. For more on the Nabucco pipeline, click here, and for more on
trans-Caspian pipeliness, click here.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran’s Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also
wrote "Keeping Iran’s nuclear potential latent", Harvard International
Review, and is author of Iran’s Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus
Fiction. For his Wikipedia entry, click here.
TVNZ, New Zealand
Sept 7 2008
Soccer diplomacy a Turkish goal
Sep 7, 2008 11:17 AM
President Abdullah Gul, making the first visit to Armenia by a Turkish
leader, joined Armenia’s president on Saturday at a soccer match which
both men said could help end almost a century of hostility.
The neighbours have no diplomatic ties but a relationship haunted by
whether ethnic Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks during World War One
were victims of systematic genocide.
Security for Gul’s trip was tight. Attack helicopters escorted his jet
on arrival and hundreds of demonstrators lined the streets of the
Armenian capital, Yerevan.
But the two presidents expressed hope their meeting at the World Cup
qualifier, the first match between the two national sides, would
herald a new beginning.
The initiative has gained new impetus since Russia’s war with Georgia
last month, which raised fears for the security of energy supplies
from the Caspian Sea to western Europe.
"We hope we will be able to demonstrate goodwill to solve the problems
between our countries and not transfer them to future generations,"
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan told a news conference after
receiving Gul.
Gul, alongside Sarksyan, said he was "leaving optimistic".
"If we create a good atmosphere and climate for this process, this
will be a great achievement, and will also benefit stability and
cooperation in the Caucasus," he told reporters after the game, which
Turkey won 2-0.
Sarksyan said he would attend the return match in October 2009, and
that the invitation to do so suggested Gul "also has some expectations
that there will be some movement between these two meetings".
Turkey has never opened an embassy in Armenia and in 1993 Ankara
closed its land border in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan, a
Turkic-speaking ally which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists
over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Alternative energy route
But even as the two presidents took their seats together behind
bullet-proof glass in a VIP box in the Hrazdan stadium, the challenges
were obvious.
Armenian fans booed the Turkish national anthem, and dozens of
demonstrators held torches and flowers in silent vigil at an imposing
monument to the World War One killings on a hillside behind the
stadium.
Protesters in the streets held banners that read: "1915 – Never
Again", and "We Demand Justice". But not all Armenians were hostile.
"It’s good Gul is here because we have to improve relations with
Turkey," said student Garik Tumanyan, 20. "It’s good for our country,
but Turkey must recognise that genocide happened."
Armenia says 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of Ottoman Turks,
and Yerevan insists Ankara should recognise the killings as genocide.
Turkey says Turks and Armenians alike were killed in partisan warfare.
But Russia’s decision last month to send its forces into Georgia, an
ex-Soviet state which borders both Armenia and Turkey, has convinced
many that it is time for Ankara and Yerevan to put their differences
aside.
Establishment of normal relations could have huge significance for
Turkey’s role as a regional power, for energy flows from the Caspian
Sea and for Western influence in the South Caucasus.
Landlocked Armenia, a Soviet republic until 1991, could also derive
enormous benefits from the opening of the frontier with its large
neighbour and the restoration of a key rail link.
Western-backed pipelines shipping oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to
Turkey’s Mediterranean coast bypass Armenia and bend north instead to
go through Georgia.
With that route looking vulnerable after the Russian intervention,
Armenia could be an attractive alternative.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan remained in Yerevan for further
talks with his Armenian counterpart, Gul said.
Turkey-Armenia relations boosted by president’s historic trip
President Abdullah Gul, the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia,
sounded upbeat that the two estranged neighbours could normalise
relations if they follow up on his historic trip, it was reported.
Sunday Telegraph/UK
Last Updated: 2:33PM BST 07 Sep 2008
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic ties and remain deeply divided
over the World War I deaths of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, the
predecessor of Turkey. Their border has also been closed for more than
a decade.
"I believe my visit has demolished a psychological barrier in the
Caucauses," Gul was quoted as telling reporters on his plane while
returning from his trip to Yerevan for a football match.
"If this climate continues, everything will move forward and
normalise," he said, without elaborating.
Turkish and Armenian ties have for years been poisoned by Yerevan’s
claims that up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed by
Ottoman Turks between 1915-1917 when their empire was falling apart.
Turkey rejects the allegation and says that 300,000-500,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up
arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading
Russian troops.
But Gul said neither the dispute nor the closed border between the two
neighbours figured in his meeting with Armenian President Serzh
Sarkisian.
"He did not mention… the so-called genocide claims," Gul said.
Tehran Times, Iran
Sept 8 2008
Iran to build dams, power plants in 10 countries
Tehran Times Economic Desk
TEHRAN – Iran’s Energy Ministry plans to construct dams and power
plants in 10 countries, the deputy energy minister for water and
wastewater affairs said here on Sunday.
`The Sangtudeh dam and its 220MW power plant in Tajikistan is one of
the projects,’ IRINN quoted Rasul Zargar as saying.
`Iran is also involved in a joint venture with Azerbaijan for building
a dam and hydropower plant,’ he said, adding that the project’s
feasibility studies have been finished.
`Preliminary studies for the construction of a dam and hydropower
plant on the Aras River in Armenia are being conducted,’ Zargar
stated.
The ground has been broken in a project to construct a power plant in
Sri Lanka at an estimated cost of ?¬520 million, he said.
The ministry also plans to build power stations in Syria and Iraq, he
noted. Iran has already built the Doosti Dam northeast of Mashhad near
the Turkmenistan-Iran border, the Anzab tunnel in Tajikistan, a wind
power plant in Armenia, and the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline,’ he stated.
Similar projects are underway in Pakistan and Mali, Zargar mentioned.
A letter of agreement has recently been inked with Turkey based on
which Turkish investors will participate in the construction of a
hydropower plant in Iran and will use the generated electricity in the
BOT (build, operate, transfer) method
Goal.com
6 Septembre
Mondial 2010 : La Turquie défait l’Arménie
Cette rencontre entre la Turquie et l’Arménie était particulière
tant le poids de l’histoire est important entre ces deux grandes
nations. Les Turcs ont pris les trois points de la victoire à Erevan
en s’imposant sur le score de deux buts à zéro.
La première rencontre du Groupe 5 de ces éliminatoires opposant
l’Arménie à la Turquie n’était pas une grande affiche de football
mais ce match, gagné deux buts à zéro par la sélection turque,
mérite une attention particulière car un antagonisme historique
sépare les deux populations en présence¦
Le football est un sport qui permet parfois de rapprocher des peuples,
en l’espace de 90 minutes, et ce soir à Erevan, l’Arménie a été
l’hôte de la Turquie. Les Turcs, emmenés par Erding et Tuncay, l’ont
logiquement emporté mais toutefois, la vaillante Arménie leur a
donné du fil à retordre. La bande à Emre a effectivement attendu la
seconde période pour inscrire les deux buts de la victoire. Tuncay a
ouvert la marque à l’heure de jeu puis Sentürk a enfoncé le clou 13
minutes plus tard.
Eliminatoires du Mondial 2010 ` Zone Europe
Groupe 5
Arménie ` Turquie : 0-2
Buts : Tuncay (60e), Sentürk (73e)