IRAN GAS TO ARMENIA
St.Petersburg Times, Russia
Dec 19 2006
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) – Iran will start shipping gas through a pipeline
to Armenia in January, the Tehran Times reported Sunday, citing an
Iranian official.
About 1 million cubic meters of natural gas will be shipped daily
through the 160-kilometer pipeline, said Mohammad-Reza Akbari, the
managing director of Payandan, the company operating the pipeline.
That will increase to 3 million cubic meters per day "later on,"
he said.
WANTED: A NEW WORLD CHAMPION
Clive Stafford Smith
New Statesman
December 18, 2006
How can the US condemn torture in Argentina, political murders in
Russia and censorship in North Korea when it promotes "kangaroo courts"
at Guantanamo Bay?
Despite various bright moments in the past year, the cause of human
rights continued to be undercut by the very countries that should be
leading the way. It is difficult for a human-rights violator to be
an effective advocate for human rights and human decency.
Bringing the perpetrators of international crimes to justice is an
important step along the path towards civilisation. By resisting any
international trial of US personnel, no matter what the crime, and
by promoting what the British former law lord Lord Steyn described as
"kangaroo courts" in Guantanamo Bay, the Bush administration continues
to act as a dead weight in this area.
None the less, 2006 has brought some notable milestones. Charles Taylor
is the former Liberian president charged with ordering hundreds of
rapes that started on Valentine’s Day 1998, continuing until the end of
June. His trial was moved from Sierra Leone to The Hague, with Britain
promising a prison cell if he is convicted. In November, the case
began against Momcilo Mandic, justice minister in the Bosnian-Serb
government of Radovan Karadzic. Wire-tap evidence will be used to
prove his role in guards’ torture of inmates in three prisons.
The prosecution of war crimes has thoroughly infiltrated domestic
law as well. The French are seeking to prosecute President Paul
Kagame of Rwanda for the 1994 killing of the then Rwandan president,
Juvenal Habyarimana, when his plane was shot down. The murder sparked
violence that led to 800,000 deaths; the French claim jurisdiction
because the plane’s crew was from France. Prosecutors have authorised
arrest warrants for nine senior Rwandan officials. Similarly,
in November, Canada ordered the trial of Desire Munyaneza for his
alleged participation in the genocide.
Meanwhile, the pardons issued in favour of various Argentinian junta
leaders were ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in Buenos
Aires, leaving them open to prosecution for various crimes, including
kidnapping up to 30,000 people who "disappeared" during the late
1970s. And Spain ordered the arrest of the former Argentinian police
officer Ricardo Taddei for the torture and murder of 160 left-wing
"dissidents" at secret detention centres.
As prosecutions of officials become more frequent, there are signs that
the punishment of less exalted criminals is becoming more humane. In
April, the president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,
commuted the sentences of all 1,230 prisoners on death row to life
imprisonment. In Vietnam, a proposal would end executions for several
non-violent offences. That said, Le Manh Luong, a British national, was
sentenced to death in Vietnam just two weeks ago, on 25 November. In
the same month, another British citizen on death row, Mirza Tahir
Hussain, was freed by President Pervez Musharraf after 18 years in
prison, his liberation due largely to the personal intervention of
Prince Charles, then on a state visit to Pakistan.
The trend away from the death penalty has reached the US, where,
this past year, the number of such sentences imposed has been well
under half the figure ten years ago.
Free speech, however, is a human right that is all too often ignored.
The worldwide record has not been good in 2006. President George
Bush protested that his suggestion to Tony Blair that they should
bomb al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar was a "joke". Most people
failed to see the humour, including Sami al-Hajj, a journalist
for al-Jazeera, who on 15 December celebrated his fifth year in US
custody at Guantanamo Bay. In all that time, no charges have been
laid against him.
The Bush administration has been setting a bad example to some
unsavoury regimes. According to Reporters Without Borders, North
Korea, one of the members of the "axis of evil", is bottom of the
press freedom league table. Turkmenistan comes a close second: each
news bulletin there begins with a pledge that the broadcaster’s
tongue will shrivel if he slanders the country, the flag, or the
president. Such discord is unlikely, as President Saparmurat Niyazov
personally appoints journalists.
Various close allies of the west are not doing much better. The 59th
World Newspaper Congress was held in Moscow in June. Four months later,
the leading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a powerful critic
of President Vladimir Putin’s Chechen policy, was murdered.
Her killers have not yet been identified, despite video footage of them
entering her apartment building. The following month, there was much
less media coverage of a five-year sentence for Boris Stomakhin on a
charge of "inciting ethnic hatred" with his coverage of the Chechen
conflict. His crime was to describe the Russian presence in Chechnya
as an "occupation" and to compare Putin with Saddam Hussein.
It has also been a dangerous year to be a journalist in the
Philippines, where at least eight people working to expose corruption
have been killed. Although 60 journalists have been murdered there
in the past ten years, a trial of three men in October for the murder
of the journalist Marlene Esperat led to only the fourth conviction.
Meanwhile, Jose Miguel Arroyo, the husband of the president, has
brought 43 separate actions against journalists for libel; they have
now clubbed together in a class action to sue him for seeking to
"chill the freedom of the press".
But there have also been positive developments on free speech,
particularly where the European Union has brought pressure to bear
on new members, and countries aspiring to membership. The most famous
example came in October when the EU harshly condemned the prosecution
of the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, for "denigrating Turkishness"
by describing the genocide of Armenians during the Great War.
The prospect of entry into the EU also encouraged free speech in
Bulgaria, where Georgi Koritarov, a respected journalist, admitted to
acting as a spy during the country’s communist era and apologised for
his actions on television. His name had been officially released by
the interior minister as part of a Freedom of Information action. FOI
has become big news in Bulgaria, where the ministry of agriculture
and forestry was given a sardonic "Golden Padlock" award for refusing
to answer requests for information about corrupt sales of coastal
property to private individuals – including a growing number of UK
citizens. Romania faces similar challenges in joining the EU, and
has set up an "Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes".
Meanwhile, the struggle against discrimination on the basis of
gender and sexual orientation has oscillated this year. Much is
made in the western media of the alleged chauvinism of Islam; yet,
on the other side of that coin, the first 50 women were appointed as
state religious preachers in Morocco in May, in a government drive
to promote a more tolerant version of Islam. Four months earlier,
in Sudan, two female judges were elected to the new African Court on
Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Meanwhile, as the US Supreme Court debates whether to roll back the
constitutional right to abortion, the trend towards criminalising
all abortions in central America continues, with the Nicaraguan
government passing restrictive legislation in October. The new law
penalises abortion even when it is carried out to save the pregnant
woman’s life, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
Gay rights suffered a similar setback in Uganda, where a conviction
for sodomy carries the penalty of life imprisonment. In September,
a local tabloid began to publish the names of alleged homosexuals in
a development that could provoke the government to crack down.
Sadly, the focus of human rights to date has by necessity been on
the prevention of oppression. Yet we must not forget the words of
the US Declaration of Independence, which champions "the pursuit
of happiness". Although most people in Britain probably could not
find Bhutan on a map, the Himalayan country has made its priority
the "gross national happiness", rather than the conventional gross
national product.
In 2007, politicians, the media and advocates alike would do well to
remember that human happiness is the most significant right of all,
a view recognised in Bhutan, if not in Britain.
<em>Clive Stafford Smith is the legal director of Reprieve, a UK
charity fighting for the lives of people facing the death penalty and
other human-rights violations. He writes this column monthly. Contact
Reprieve at PO Box 52742, London EC4P 4WS. Tel: 020 7353 4640.
;/em>
PETER SEMNEBY: THE RIGHT FOR SELF-DETERMINATION SHOULD ONE OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES
ArmRadio.am
18.12.2006 11:46
The right for self-determination of peoples is one of the principles
that should be basic for the settlement of the Karabakh issue and
other conflicts, EU Special Envoy for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby
told the journalists after the meeting with the President of Nagorno
Karabakh in the NKR Permanent Representation in Yerevan.
At the same time he underlined that it is not the only principle,
referring to the Helsinki Final Act, which includes also
other principles, among which is the territorial integrity of
states. "However, the principle you mentioned should be one of the
basis ones," Peter Semneby added.
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Dec 16 2006
COMPOSITE INDEX OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY 86.7% IN ARMENIA IN 4TH QUARTER
2006
YEREVAN, December 15. /ARKA/. The composite index of economic
activity made 86.7% in Armenia in the 4th quarter of 2006 – a 13.3%
fall compared to the 3rd quarter.
The CBA press service reports that in the 4th quarter of 2006 the
economic activity index was 64.5 on a 100-mark scale, 74.5 in the 3rd
quarter, 65.9 in the 2nd and 70.5 in the 1st. According to the CBA,
the economic activity index was 72.2 in the 2nd quarter of 2005, 71
in the 3rd quarter and 53.6 I the 4th quarter.
>From early 2005, the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) started conducting
quarterly interviews of financial, nonfinancial organizations and
households. The goal of the interviews is to assess the changes in
and economic expectations of the organizations and households
involved, calculate and publish the composite economic indices.
About 800 organizations engaged in the industrial, construction and
service sectors and 2,621 households in Yerevan and in Armenia’s
regions were involved. The results serve as a basis for calculations
of the economic activity, business environment and consumer
confidence indices on a 100-mark scale. Over 50 marks mean high
activity, 50 unchanged situation and below 50 low activity. P.T. -0–
Lragir, Armenia
Dec 15 2006
GALUST SAHAKYAN HAD BETTER FORECAST HIS SON’S FUTURE
If Galust Sahakyan is so good at political forecasts, he should have
forecast that his son would not be allowed to become head of Ajapniak
Community, and his son would not resign from the post of deputy
mayor. Member of Parliament Manuk Gasparyan challenged the political
`fortune teller’ Galust Sahakyan on December 15. He means the recent
forecast of the leader of the Republican Faction on the parliamentary
election in 2007. Galust Sahakyan said at the Friday Club that in
2007 the Republican Party, Bargavach Hayastan, Ardarutiun, National
Solidarity and the ARF Dashnaktsutyun will enter the parliament.
Manuk Gasparyan stated at the Pastark Club that Galust Sahakyan must
have attended a backstage consultation on the future parliament, and
when he went to bed and woke up on the next day, he started thinking
that what he had heard on the previous day was his own forecast, and
he shared it with the public.
`I am stating that I will get 5 percent to foil Galust Sahakyan’s
forecast,’ says the leader of the Track for Democracy Party Manuk
Gasparyan.
`He enumerated those who can get about 3-4 percent, and he says they
will win the election,’ says Manuk Gasparyan and presents his own
list of parties which will be elected to the parliament. `These four
forces will be in the parliament – National Solidarity, Orinats
Yerkir, Bargavach Hayastan, Republican Party. All the others have
problems, all of them without exception,’ says the leader of the
Track for Democracy Party.
AZG Armenian Daily #241, 16/12/2006
Opinion
WASHINGTON-HATCHED POWER SHIFT IN ARMENIA?
Referring to political analyst Hayk Margarov, "Krasnaya Zvezda"
Russian newspaper wrote that Washington is preparing power shift in
Armenia next year. The American Heritage political foundation, which
has connection with the Republican Party, has already worked out a
plan to carry out power shift called "Anwar Sadat-2" in Armenia,
RFE/RL quoted Margarov as saying. The explanation of the heading
connected with Egypt former president Anwar Sadat who coming to power
immediately severed all relations with Russia.
According to "Krasnaya Zvezda" the changes in Armenia will be carried
out during the Parliament selection in 2007, their aim is to make
Robert Kocharian and his entourage leave the power and nominate for
this position a person who will be useful for the white House.
By the same schedule Russian troops will be withdrawn from Armenia and
Armenia- Azeri conflict will be solved not later than in
January-February of 2008.
According to the expert, this matter will be served in the USA during
the president selection performing the end of Russian troops presence
in Caucuses.
By Aghavni Harutyunian
A1+
OFFICE OF OPPOSITIONAL PARTY SET ON FIRE
[05:15 pm] 14 December, 2006
Yesterday evening unknown people tried to set fire to the office of
Armenian Liberal-Progressive Party (LPP), located on Abovyan 22.
At about 9 p.m. the residents of the building took notice of the fire
and rapidly extinguished it with joint measures. Shortly afterwards,
the members of the party and the police arrived at the site.
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, leader of the party, informed us that unknown
people poured petrol on the door of the office and burnt it.
But for the hasty reaction of the residents, the whole office and even
the building would have countered serious problems.
Mr. Hovhannisyan doesn’t want to give political estimation to the
event. He only notes that he hasn’t got enemies and the hooliganism is
likely connected with the political activity of their party.
`LPP is a political party; we are engaged in politics and have no
other business to do here. I have been in the political sphere over
the past eight years. I don’t want to give any political estimation as
I am not sure of anything», said Hovhannes Hovhannisyan.
A criminal action has been brought in this respect.
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH DECLARED AGAIN THAT THE USA SUPPORT TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF AZERBAIJAN
Democratic Azerbaijan
Dec 14 2006
President George Bush declared again that USA support territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan. December 8, Ambassador Plenipotentiary of
the Republic of Azerbaijan to the USA, Yashar Aliyev, granted his
credentials in White House.
At the event attended by President George Bush, officials of protocol
service of White House comprising the staff of diplomatic corps in
Washington, new Ambassadors of other 9 countries, Yashar Aliyev
declared that Azerbaijan highly values partnership with USA. He
said: "We always felt support of USA for our efforts on creation and
strengthening of our sovereign state. Being in White House in April
President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, stressed that our nations
adhere the common values".
Diplomat underlined: Azerbaijan as young independent country will
be faithful to the course of realization of political, economic
and social reforms, creation of free market economy. We realize all
difficulties of this course, understanding that it is the only right
way. Ambassador expressed his confidence that USA as a OSCE Minsk
Group co-chair and world super state will be striving for fair and
long term regulation of Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorni-Garabagh conflict.
US President George Bush welcomed new Ambassador of Azerbaijan.
Having highly valued friendship between USA and Azerbaijan, George
Bush, said: Azerbaijan, which created national oil fund for providing
transparent distribution of income from functioning Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipe-line, may serve as an example for other countries rich of
natural resources. US President expressed his confidence in increase
of role of our country as country-supplier and transit country within
European energetic corridor. He declared that he supports political
and economic reforms implemented in Azerbaijan.
At the same time he called on to continue democratic reforms for
ensuring supremacy of law, creation of civil society, independent
mass media, market economy and effective democratic institutions.
Underlining important role of Azerbaijan in fight against terrorism,
George Bush called our country "trustworthy partner of USA". He said:
"Future of Azerbaijan – with Euro Atlantic community; and USA will
support efforts of Azerbaijan on development of close contacts with
NATO and European Union".
Saying that conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia continues violating
stability on South Caucasus, head of American state urged both parties
to regulate the problem peacefully searching for ways which would
restore trust between Azerbaijani and Armenian nations.
George Bush declared that USA support territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan. He said: "We, as one of OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs,
jointly with Russia and France will continue cooperation with your
leaders in the field of soonest peaceful regulation of the conflict".
IT IS ENVISAGED TO RAISE SALARIES OF FIRST AID STATE-OWNED CJSC’S DOCTORS AND NURSES BY ABOUT 25% IN 2007
Noyan Tapan
Dec 13 2006
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 13, NOYAN TAPAN. In the 10 months of 2006, the First
Aid CJSC of Yerevan Mayor’s Office has registered 141.9 thousand calls,
which exceeds the index of the same period of previous year by 10
thousand. As company Director Artyom Petrosian said in his interview
to Noyan Tapan correspondent, the increase of the number of calls is
conditioned by not sickness rate, but mainly by growth of the number
of Yerevan’s population. In his words, 37 ambulance brigades provide
first aid to Yerevan residents every day, including professional
pediatrics, psychiatrical and other aid. In total, the company has 45
cars, 6 out of which have been purchased this year. The latters are new
Sobol cars, which, in A.Petrosian’s words, are intended for big cities.
Besides, the Furst Aid stopped exploitation of old Yeraz and
Raf cars in November this year. "As currently the company has no
problem of leading the doctor to patient’s house, so activities
aimed at raising the quality of rendered medical services will be
done soon," A.Petrosian said. In this respect in 2007 the company
plans to purchase two new cars with new medical equipments from Nizhni
Novgorod’s Lingas trade and industrial company. A.Petrosian said that
allocations given from state budget to the Armenian first aid system
grow year by year. Thus, in 2006 this sum amounted to 1 bln 132 mln
452 thousand drams (about 3 mln USD), while in 2007 it is envisaged
to allocate about 1 bln 277 mln 880 thousand drams. He said that
increase of allocations from the state budget will enable next year
to raise the salaries of doctors and nurses by about 25%. Currently
their average salary makes about 32000 and 26000 drams, respectively.
EUROPEAN UNION: NEW CONCESSIONS FOR TURKEY
ArmRadio.am
13.12.2006 11:27
Two days before the European summit in Brussels, diplomats representing
Member-States reached an agreement that represented a major retreat
from European values and the Union’s own standards.
The 25 Member-States have decided, consistent with the Commission’s
recommendations, to suspend negotiations on 8 out of the 35
chapters governing Turkey’s progress toward compliance with EU
standards. Undermining the impact of this half-step, they failed to
set any deadline for Turkey’s ratification of the Ankara Protocol –
a key document that would, at least implicitly, amount to Turkish
recognition of Cyprus. Questions also remain on the future status of
open track, as well as their connection to the timing of the Protocol’s
ratification. While not bringing any close to this complicated process,
the 25 Member States insisted that, up until 2009, the European
Commission will release annual reports on Turkey’s compliance with
its commitments.
"The Member States’ decision confuses – rather than clarifies –
the EU’s relations with Turkey,", declared Hilda Tchoboian, the
Chairperson of the European Armenian Federation. "The Council can
only restore Europe’s credibility in this area by fixing a reasonable
deadline for Turkey’s ratification of the Protocol."
The Federation regrets the silence of Member-States regarding
Turkey’s many other failings – such as its denial of the Armenian
Genocide and its criminalization of speech recognizing this crime,
as well as violations against the Kurds and other the cultural and
religious rights of minorities. These constitute a clear affront to
European values.
The Federation stresses that, along with Turkey’s refusal to ratify
the Ankara Protocol, it continues to violate its own agreements
regarding the European Neighborhood Policy by refusing to lift its
illegal blockade on Armenia.
"We regret that pro-Turkish governments within the Union have succeeded
in pressuring those within Europe who are working to ensure that Turkey
– in spirit and in practice – adopts European values and standards. It
is the right and responsibility of all European citizens to take
a stand against those who would grant Turkey undeserved access and
privileges at the expense of European values and to the detriment of
Europe’s future."