Author: Varosian Antranik

ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR WILL BE BROKEN BY FEBRUARY 19 IN SOCIETY, ARARAT ZURABIAN CONSIDERS

Noyan Tapan
Jan 25, 2008

YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, NOYAN TAPAN. According to Ararat Zurabian, the
Chairman of Board of the Armenian National Movement (ANM), a member
of the central preelection headquarters of Levon Ter-Petrosian, great
changes happened in 2008 as compared with the preelection year of 2003.

Thus, in his words, still on the eve of the presidential race
18 parties declared their support to presidential candidate Levon
Ter-Petrosian, while in 2003 mobilization of opposition forces happened
only in the second tour, when opposition candidates consolidated
around Stepan Demirchian.

Besides, as A. Zurabian said in his interview to NT correspondent,
the presidential elections of 2003 were predetermined by the incident
of October 27, 1999 in the National Assembly, after which society was
intimidated. In his words, in 2003, during the huge opposition rallies,
people were detained in the streets and administrative arrest was
imposed upon them with the accusation of participation in the so-called
unsanctioned rallies. Nothing of the kind is observed today, as in
his words, such actions were precisely repulsed from the very first
move. "I mean release of the participants of the October 23 procession
detained by the Police, who took to the streets with a megaphone
to notify the people about the rally with Levon Ter-Petrosian’s
participation. Then the first President personally came to the police
station and stayed there until his supporters were released."

The ANM leader expressed an opinion that today the fear of 2003 has
been overcome to some extent. He expressed the hope that the atmosphere
of fear will be broken in society by February 19.

In Ararat Zurabian’s opinion, the fact that the President ran for
the second term then, while today the issue of change of President
is set without fail, is also positive compared with the previous
presidential elections. "In such authoritarian states as Armenia
it is very difficult to change the President running for the second
term. Certainly, now it is easier to do this than in 2003."

ARMENIAN CULTURE IN KAZAKHSTAN, UKRAINE AND GERMANY

Panorama.am
12:51 26/01/2008

This year several countries of the year will get introduced to the
Armenian culture. "Days of Armenian culture will be held in Kazakhstan,
Ukraine, Germany and the Scandinavian countries," Gaiane Durgaryan,
public relations department head at the ministry of culture, told
Panorama.am.

Durgaryan mentioned that we will also have a chance to get introduced
to the cultures of other countries.

"Culture Days of Iran, Germany and a Week of Scandinavian countries
will be held in Armenia," Durgaryan said.

Last year Armenian culture was presented in Byelorussia, Italy, and
China. Culture Days of Brazil, Italy, Germany, Egypt and Korea were
held in Armenia.

FIRST PRESIDENT CASTIGATED PRESENT ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES DURING HIS PRE-ELECTION VISIT TO KOTAYK REGION

arminfo
2008-01-24 23:11:00

ArmInfo. During his pre-election visit to Kotayk region the first
Armenian president, contender to the post of Armenian president Levon
Ter- Petrosyan castigated the present Armenian authorities and accused
them of gravest crimes.

Criticizing Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, the ex-president
stated: "Their power is based on the blood of national heroes
Karen Demirchyan and Vazgen Sargsyan". Another target of Levon
Ter-Petrosyan’s criticism is the entourage of Serzh Sargsyan, his
main opponent at the forthcoming presidential election. According to
Ter-Petrosyan, this entourage has nothing but criminal elements. He
said at a meeting with the voters of Arzakan that "Serzh Sargsyan’s
victory may only lead to a new war and death".

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONER VISITS ARMENIA

ARMENPRESS
Jan 23, 2008

YEREVAN, JANUARY 23, ARMENPRESS: The U.S. embassy in Yerevan said
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Doctor Peter B. Lyons visited
Armenia January 21-22 to familiarize himself with the status of the
nuclear power plant at Metsamor and Armenia’s plans for building a
new power plant to replace the Metsamor facility.

A press release by the embassy said Dr. Lyons also explored with
Armenian officials ways that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can
help Armenia to develop the regulatory infrastructure needed in order
to license a new nuclear power plant.

During the course of his visit, the Commissioner met with officials
from the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
Ministry of Nature Protection and the Armenian Nuclear Regulatory
Agency.

He also visited the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant.

Last November Joseph Pennington, the U.S. charge d’affaires in
Armenia and Armen Movsisian, Armenian energy minister, signed an
energy cooperation agreement, which includes joint development of
environmental safeguards for the country’s nuclear industry.

Armenia is planning to build a new 1,000-MWt power unit on the site of
an existing nuclear power plant, which has been operational since 1976.

The Armenia-U.S. agreement stipulates that the parties will join
efforts in preliminary assessment of environmental threats and the
development of seismic safeguards if the new reactor is built.

Specialists believe the existing Armenian NPP, located in the town
of Metsamor, near the Turkish border, will remain operational until
2016. It generates 40-50% of Armenia’s electricity.

In September 2003, the plant came under the five-year trust management
of INTER RAO UES, a subsidiary of Rosenergoatom and Russia’s RAO UES
electricity monopoly.

The European Union has insisted that Armenia shut down the nuclear
power plant, offering 100 million euros in aid. But Armenian experts
say construction of alternative power generating facilities would
cost the country about a billion euros.

In order to attract investment for construction of a new power unit,
the Armenian parliament abolished in 2006 the state monopoly on the
ownership of future NPP, allowing private investments.

According to Armenian minister, after the feasibility plan is prepared
the construction of a new power plant may take some 5-6 years.

HATRED AGAINST CHRISTIANS HAS ESCALATED IN TURKEY

Assyrian International News Agency
Jan 22 2008

On December 30, 2007, in the popular tourist resort of Antalya, Turkey,
the police revealed and stopped a secret murder plot. The aim was
to kill Ramazan Arkan, a priest working in The Church of Incil, in
Antalya. The case resembles other attacks targeted against Christians
in Turkey, where the hatred against Christians has escalated lately.

In a news feature, the Turkish TV channel HABERTURK reported that
Turkish police in Antalya has revealed and thus prevented the planned
assassination. A 22-year-old man was arrested for preparation of
murder of the Orthodox priest Ramazan Arkan.

According to several Turkish newspapers, the suspect has,
during interrogations, said that he has become inspired by the
TV-series "Valley of the Wolves", a popular TV-series among Turkish
ultranationalists. The series has also been released here in Sweden
in a movie version on DVD. The police neither confirms nor denies
these statements.

ESNA has earlier reported about an Italian, Catholic priest, who was
stabbed in his stomach by a younger male in the port city of Izmir,
in western Turkey. The priest, Adriano Franchini, survived the attack,
and shortly thereafter the perpetrator, who had been influenced by
different Internet sites which point out Christians as traitors,
was arrested.

In April 2007, five university students in Malatya, eastern Turkey cut
the throats off three Christians – a German citizen and two Turks –
at a Bible publishing company. Before the killings, the three victims
had been tortured for hours.

On February 5, 2006, the Catholic Italian priest Andrea Santoro was
shot to death in his church by a 16-year-old boy, in the Turkish
city of Trabzon at the Black Sea. The Agape church, which has
reopened for divine service since 2003, in Samsun at the Black Sea,
has been terrorized several times. The minister, Orhan Picaklar,
received several threats via e-mail and telephone. Despite several
reports to the police, the threats have continued. The police, who
on January 5th tapped the telephone conversation of a suspect, heard
the 17-year old adolescent brag about how he would kill the minister
of the Agape church, and become famous on TV. But the court handling
the case saw no need for detaining the young man; he was released,
but however prohibited to leave the country.

On hundreds of Internet sites, Christians are pointed out to be
missionaries, and thus threats against national security. On TV-series,
such as "Valley of the Wolves" (Kurtlar Vadisi), which is aired on
"Show TV" and "Black Snake" (Kara Yilan), which is aired on tv-channel
"A TV", ultranationalist emotions are incited. All these actions make
Christians feel unsafe in Turkey.

On January 19 2007, the Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was murdered
in broad daylight outside the premises of the newspaper Agos, in
Constantinople (Istanbul). A few days after the murder, the 17-year
old killer, Ogun Samast, was arrested.

The Turkish police, who treated the murderer like a national hero,
proudly posed with a Turkish flag in their hands, in front of the
cameras, and boasted about taking pictures with the killer.

On Ocotber 12, 2007, Arat Dink, son of the murdered Hrant Dink, and
the responsible for the publication of the newspaper Agos, Serkis
Seropyan, were sentenced to one year of conditional jail sentence for
"desecrating Turkishness". The sentence is based on the very same
paragraph that Hrant Dink was judged for, paragraph 301 in the Turkish
penal code. Arat dink, who received several threats after the sentence,
was forced to flee Turkey on the 6th of November 2007.

The European Union has for a long time protested against the fact
that Turkey, a country applying for membership in the European Union,
has failed protect the human rights and the religious freedom of the
very small Christian minority. On the contrary – the development has
been towards the opposite direction.

However, Turkey sees herself as a secular state with religious
freedom. In the beginning of the 20th century, one third of the
population in Turkey was Christian. As a consequence of Seyfo –
the genocide against the Assyrians, Armenians and Pontic Greeks
during World War I – with subsequent pogroms, barely 100,000 of the
Christians remain out of a 75 million large population in Turkey.

PRESS RELEASE
January 22, 2008
Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance
20 Concord Lane, Cambridge, MA 02138
Contact: Zoe Kevork
(818) 761-4204

"2ND BIENNIAL ARMENIAN DRAMATIC ARTS ALLIANCE / PAUL SCREENWRITING
COMPETITION NOW ACCEPTING SCRIPTS"

The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance (ADAA) announces the 2nd Frances Paul
Lyons/ Almas Paul Screenwriting Competition. The deadline for submissions
for the Paul Screenwriting Competition is February 15, 2009, and the winning
writer will be honored with a $10,000 award in August 2009.

The contest will be administered by the Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance
(ADAA), which will establish a panel of noted film professionals to select
the winning script. Scripts must have an Armenian theme, but writers are not
required to be of Armenian descent. The contest guidelines are posted online
at

In its inaugural year the Paul Screenwriting Competition included both
screenplays and theatrical plays. Beginning with the 2009 competition, the
award will be limited only to screenplays, with stage plays featured through
ADAA’s Saroyan Prize for Playwrighting in the alternating year.

The Paul Family generously established The Frances Paul Lyons/Almas Paul
Annual Screenwriting Competition via their fund at the Western Diocese of
the Armenian Apostolic Church of North America, under the auspices of
Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, ensuring the continuance of this award for
years to come. Actress and ADAA Board Member Karen Kondazian, a member of
the Paul Family, was honored to facilitate the creation of this award,
particularly to recognize her dear father and mother, Varnum and Lillian
Paul.

The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance’s mission is to make the Armenian voice
heard on the world stage through the dramatic arts of theatre and film. The
organization accomplishes this mission by supporting playwrights and
screenwriters and providing production opportunities, commissions,
scholarships, research tools, networking resources and writing awards.

ADAA’s headquarters are in Cambridge, MA with worldwide affiliates in Paris,
Yerevan, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and other major cities. For more
information about Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance and how to contribute to
its important mission, please visit our website at or
call us at 617-871-6764.

"ARMENIAN BILL" REJECTED IN BULGARIA AGAIN

Azeri Press Agency
Jan 21 2008
Azerbaijan

The bill prepared by extreme-right Bulgarian Ataka Party on official
recognition of the happenings in Ottoman Empire in 1915 has been put
to the vote again, APA’s Eastern Europe bureau reports.

The bill, which has been put to vote for the third time in the
parliament, was discussed with participation of 173 parliamentarians.

50 of the parliamentarians voted for the bill, 63 voted against and
60 abstained.

MP from Movement for Rights and Freedoms Remzi Osman regarded
discussing such a proposal in the parliament as disrespect to the
history and legislative body. Remzi Osman mentioned that such events
happened in most countries and Armenians attacked Turkish army
and people. The MP regarded judgment of the history by parliaments
as wrong.

Parliamentarian from Bulgarian Socialist Party Alexander Radoslavov
stated that the arguments of the initiators of the bill are based
on hatred.

"Hatred can not be used as political argument in the parliament. It
will contribute neither to mankind, nor to peace," he said.

Turkish Daily News, Turkey
Jan 19 2008

Pro-Armenian scholar blames ‘deep state’ for Dink’s murder
Saturday, January 19, 2008

ÜMÝT ENGÝNSOY
WASHINGTON – Turkish Daily News

Turkey’s atmosphere of intolerance is to blame for the murder of
Hrant Dink a Turkish academic in the United States, who also spoke in
Washington about Turkish-Armenian relations, said Thursday.

Turkey’s `deep state’ is guilty of masterminding last year’s
killing of Dink, a prominent Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, said
Taner Akçam, a Turkish academic backing Armenian `genocide’ claims.

This `deep state’ is an underground coalition of part of the
security forces and unelected bureaucrats determined to impede
Turkey’s democratization, Akçam, who is a former left-wing militant
and now a visiting associate professor of history at the University
of Minnesota, said at a news conference here.

Dink, editor of the Armenian-Turkish Agos newspaper, was shot to
death in front of his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007. A nationalist
youth was apprehended for the murder and has confessed to the crime.
His trial is ongoing.

Dink’s murder was much more complicated than an isolated crime and
was a result of a `dangerous mindset’ in Turkey, Akçam said.

"A climate has been created such that to attack and persecute an
intellectual is considered a patriotic act,’ he said, adding, `the
media targets and attacks intellectuals and turns them into prey…
the justice system punishes the intellectuals, and thugs are used as
pawns to attack and kill the targeted intellectuals.’

What he called the atmosphere of intolerance in Turkey has
worsened, rather than improved, in the year following Dink’s murder,
Akçam said.

‘Repeal Article 301′

Akçam called on Turkey to abolish Article 301 of the Turkish Penal
Code, which criminalizes `insulting Turkishness,’ under which Dink
had been prosecuted.

Turkey does not have to formally label World War I-era killings of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as `genocide’ to resolve the dispute
with Armenians, Akçam said, speaking at the Southeast Europe Project
at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington-based research center. A
Turkish move to accept "the crimes committed against Armenians" and
apologize or make a related gesture would solve the problem, he said.

The Ottomans had decided to remove the Armenians from their homes
as early as 1913, shortly after their defeat in the Balkan War, Akçam
said, disputing the Turkish argument that an Armenian rebellion in
cooperation with invading Russian forces in eastern Anatolia had
prompted the Ottoman government to forcibly relocate Armenians. He
gave no evidence, however, only saying he had proved it in his new
book.

Some Armenians in Istanbul and western Anatolia had also been
deported, Akçam added, but again he gave no evidence, only referring
to his book.He supported Ankara’s proposal for the creation of a
joint Turkish-Armenian commission of historians to probe the genocide
claim, adding that such a project would not work if Turkey did not
set up diplomatic and other relations with Armenia.

RUSSIA WILL NEVER ALLOW KOSOVO IN UN

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.01.2008 14:16 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Russia warned Kosovo’s leaders that if they declare
independence the territory will never become a member of the United
Nations or other international political institutions, the AP reports.

On January 17, Russia vetoed discussion of Kosovo’s status in the UN
Security Council.

Meanwhile, Kosovo is expected to proclaim independence in late February
or early March.

OSCE MG CO-CHAIRS RETURN FROM YEREVAN TO BAKU

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.01.2008 19:32 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ January 18, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs Matthew
Bryza, Bernard Fassier and Yuri Merzlyakov returned from Yerevan to
Baku to meet with President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov.

At Baku airport Amb. Bryza told reporters that the Yerevan talks were
constructive but there will hardly be any considerable progress before
the presidential election in Armenia.

For his part, Russian Co-chair Yuri Merzlyakov said that the positions
of Azerbaijan and Armenia do not coincide on some chapters. "That is
why we did not offer the Foreign Ministers to meet," he noted.

When touching upon participation of the Azeri community of Nagorno
Karabakh in the talks, Merzlyakov said, "It’s Azerbaijan’s internal
affair and if official Baku expresses such an intention, the Azeri
community can join the talks," IA Regnum reports.