Author: Vorskanian Yeghisabet

PREREQUISITES LEADING TO DINK’S MURDER TO BE CONDEMNED

Strasburg, January 25. ArmInfo. The prerequisites leading to
murder of Turkish journalist of Armenian origins Hrant Dink must
be condemned, Armen Rustamyan, Head of Foreign Affairs Committee
of Armenian Parliament, representative of Armenian delegation to
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said at the
report discussion of Andrew McIntosh, Member of the UK Parliament,
Member of the Sub-Committee on the Media of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe.

A. Rustamyan said that H. Dink’s murder was an attempt to slain the
freedom of action. "However, officials of the Council of Europe and
the document hold back the key motives of H. Dink’s murder. H. Dink
believed that acknowledgement of Armenian Genocide will lead Turkey
to the road of true democracy and integration into Europe. This is
what they didn’t forgive him," A. Rustamyan said.

Netherlands MP Tiny Kox said that after H. Dink’s murder, an article
was published in Turkey headed "They Killed Turkey," which – by Mr.

Kox’s opinion, shows that the murder had ethnical grounds. He said
that H. Dink was a super tolerant person but he was not tolerated. H.

Dink and his family lived under threats and H. Dink appealed to the
European Court and said he lived in hell. But he didn’t leave the
hell in order to turn it into haven.

Erol Aslan Cebeci, Turkish MP, said that he shares the worries about
threats, persecution and murders of journalists. "Death of H. Dink,
who was dedicated to promoting democracy, tolerance and mutual respect,
set pain in our hearts. We condemn this murder as well as murders in
other countries of the world," the Turkish MP pointed out.

Assassins are not punished these days. Nowadays, journalists have
more chances to die from a hired assassin rather than in a fight.

"Freedom of speech is not only an independent right of a state.

Countries should guarantee practice of the freedom. Freedom of speech
and Mass Media is the ground of civil society. This is the 4th power,"
he concluded.

French MP Jean-Francois Le Grand pointed out that the countries where
journalists are murdered demonstrate that the countries doubt in
themselves and their democracy. They don’t want to respond for their
actions and thus they condemn themselves. Attacks on journalists should
be reflected upon at once and not post factum. Council of Europe will
pass a powerful signal on non-admittance of non-tolerance and will
ratify the resolution.

Note: 610 journalists have been killed in the world since 1992.

Kocharian and Aliyev unlikely to meet before parliamentary election in Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net
24.01.2007 16:42 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov was positive, RA FM Vartan Oskanian told RFE/RL. "I can’t
say we achieved serious progress but it was useful experience and
the talks should be continued," he said adding that Robert Kocharian
and Ilham Aliyev will hardly meet before the parliamentary election
in Armenia.

RALLY DEDICATED TO HRANT DINK HELD IN ARGENTINA

BUENOS AIRES, JANUARY 24, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. On January
23, more than two hundred Argentine Armenians gathered in Buenos
Aires to mourn over the death of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink. According to Reuters, the crowd gathered in front of the Turkish
Embassy in Argentina. Some of them had such placards as "Turkey is
a Murderer-State," others were carrying candles and flowers. The
Armenian churchmen joined the crowd for saying the last farewell to
Hrant Dink with their songs ans prayers.

Reuters mentions that the Armenian community of Argentina is the tenth
largest Armenian community in the world, it has 130 thousand members.

1 BILLION 283 MILLION DRAMS RECEIVED FROM STATE PROPERTY ALIENATION IN
ARMENIA IN 2006

YEREVAN, JANUARY 24, NOYAN TAPAN. A single system of state property
registration was developed and introduced in 2006. The system is
constantly amended and updated, which ensures the reliability
of information and the continuity of data collection (and
provision). According to the State Property Management Department’s
annual report submitted to the RA prime minister on January 23,
the process of privatization and alienation of state property
was continued in 2006. The state budgetary revenues from property
privatization made 455 mln 420.4 thousand drams and 550 thousand USD,
with 42 mln 157.1 thousand drams of this sum being transferred to
community budgets. Resources from property alienation made 1 bln 283
mln 119.7 thousand drams, with 25 mln 133.6 thousand drams (about 68
thousand USD) of this sum being transferred to community budgets.

The Next Round of Talks on Karabakh Launched in Moscow

PanARMENIAN.Net
23.01.2007 13:55 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The next round of talks on the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict started in Moscow with the participation of Armenian and
Azeri Foreign Ministers Vartan Oskanian and Elmar Mamedyarov. Armenian
Ambassador to Moscow Armen Smbatyan told, "We expect positive steps
from this meeting, since today’s realities demand new approaches." In
its part the Azeri MFA has informed that "the sides will discuss basic
principles of peacekeeping process," stressing that this is the first
meeting between the two foreign ministers of both countries this year,
ITAR-TASS reports.

Today Azerbaijan
Jan 22 2007

PACE co-reporters: "Azerbaijani and Armenian societies not ready to
compromise"

22 January 2007 [14:22] – Today.Az

"Armenia should use all possible means for the peaceful settlement of
Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Yerevan should use its influence on Nagorno
Karabakh Armenians for the peaceful settlement of the conflict," the
report worked out by Mikko Elo and George Colombier, PACE Monitoring
Committee co-reporters to Armenia, reads.

The report, on Armenian implementation of commitments before the
Council of Europe, is going to be the main topic of the PACE winter
session meeting tomorrow. The report reads that Armenia doesn’t take
serious steps in the settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

"Nagorno Karabakh conflict is the biggest obstacle to the peace
and stability in the region. The presidents of the sides have met
three times- in Rambouillet (February), Budapest (June) and Minsk
(November). Nevertheless, no important steps have been taken for
the peaceful settlement. Robert Kocharyan showed no optimism to
the peaceful settlement of the conflict during the meeting with the
co-reporters. Besides, no work has been done to prepare both sides
for compromise. None of the societies is ready to compromise," the
report reads.

PACE Sub-Committee for Nagorno Karabakh conflict is going to organize
the meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations in Strasbourg
January 25, APA reports.

URL:

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Jan 22 2007

PREMIER OF AZERBAIJAN RECEIVES FIRST DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER OF
POLAND
[January 22, 2007, 20:09:09]

Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Artur Rasizade received the delegation
led by the first deputy foreign minister of Poland Pavel Koval, 22
January.

Noting presence of the historical relations between Azerbaijan and
Poland, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan said the mutual visits of
the heads of state and established appropriate legislative base have
given strong impulse to development of bilateral links between the
two countries. "The efficiency of economic relations should, however,
rise, as there is great potential for this", Mr. Rasizade emphasized.
"The inter-governmental commission could promote bilateral
cooperation in the global energy and transport projects being
implemented in region", he stressed.

Touching upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh conflict,
Artur Rasizade informed on the heavy sequences of aggressive
separatism and Armenian’s occupant policy.

The Polish diplomat updated the Premier on the meetings and talks he
held in Baku to strengthen cooperation between the two countries.
Azerbaijan has become a leading country in region, he stressed.
"Poland is going to cooperate with Azerbaijan not only in oil-gas
field, but also in economic, political, cultural spheres. We want to
activate our business links with Azerbaijan", he underlined.

Pavel Koval said his country stands ready to render any assistance in
Azerbaijan’s integration to Europe.

In meeting, the parties had comprehensive exchange of views on a
number of other questions.

HACKING OF INTERNET SITE OF AZERBAIJAN PUBLIC TV STUDIED

Yerevan, January 22. ArmInfo. "We are investigating who and where
the internet site of the public TV of Azerbaijan has been broken,
the technical employee of the site, Jahid Kazimov, informed TREND.

He stated that on January 22nd at 09:45, the server was hacked into
and the activity of the site was terminated. According to Kazimov,
direct hacking of Public TV had not taken place. It is considered
that the site has been purposefully broken because the emblem of
Armenia had been placed on the site of the Public TV.

Kazimov stressed that the security of the site had been ensured at a
high level because the TV channel co-operates with the world popular
internet portal YAHOO. "Only after inspecting the server, we will
discover the emptiness and clear up these problems. In my opinion,
it may have been hacked by Russian supporters of Armenia. We have
begun investigations and will determine which country the hackers
came from. All have been done to clear away because material against
the Armenian had been placed on the site. Activities of the site will
be restored at the end of the day." Kazimov said.

The Irish Times
January 20, 2007 Saturday

Fact and fiction in articles of warfare

by Davin O’Dwyer

Reportage: It is amazing how insulated we now are from the realities
of war. As Iraq and the Middle East rage, and conflict in Africa
remains a commonplace, war for us has assumed a fictional quality: we
consume coverage of the real thing in much the same way as we consume
Vietnam movies or second World War novels.

Watching Hitler’s end in Downfall or the execution of Saddam on Sky
News is not so very different, we find – the grand narratives of war
are familiar and easily digested.

Granta magazine’s editor Ian Jack will soon be departing after 12
years and, in Issue 96: War Zones, he addresses that most extreme and
troubling of subjects. Granta’s famous mix of reportage and fiction
offers an excellent juxtaposition of the fictional depictions of
conflict we so readily consume, and the factual accounts that we
approach in much the same way.

So we get Wendell Steavenson’s Victory in Lebanon, a factual account
of her experiences in Lebanon during the summer war. The brief,
savage conflict has already been reduced to end-of-year news summary
fodder in this part of the world, but, while Steavenson’s piece is no
better or worse than the best news reporting from the time, it
nevertheless gains power from its context. Removed from the daily
updates of casualties and political inertia, and sitting alongside
other reflections on war, Victory in Lebanon crystallises the
Israel-Lebanon war in all its grotesque futility, before it faded
away like any other headline.

Another factual essay is Operation Gomorrah, Marione Ingram’s
description of how she escaped the razing of Hamburg with her mother,
and became one of only 100 Jews in the city to survive the war. Her
piece brings searing, phosphorescent colour to a scenario so often
imagined in grainy black-and-white, as she and her mother pick their
way through burning streets and past bleeding victims. The final
line, however, is one of resignation: "Whatever sparks of penitence
smouldered beneath the ashes of the ruined city, the only expressions
of regret I saw or heard in the streets, shops and schools of Hamburg
were laments for the hardships of defeat."

THE FICTION, INCLUDING pieces by John Burnside and the Bangladeshi
writer Tahmima Anam, understandably offers more filtered reflections
on war. Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul, excerpted here, caused
an Orhan Pamuk-style controversy and court case in Turkey last year
for its story of the friendship between two girls, one Turkish, one
Armenian. Marc Slouka’s The Little Museum of History, the tale of a
dimly remembered Czech emigrant who turns out to have been a Gestapo
interpreter during the war, reveals the way in which wartime actions
hang over lives for ever more.

Simon Norfolk’s striking photographs from Scotland initially appear
out of place in a volume on war. Many could be picture postcards,
with glorious sunlight striking calm seas. But the blunt captions
("The ‘Z’ berth for nuclear submarines, off Rothesay, Isle of Bute"),
reveal that Scotland’s barren west coast is home to vast amounts of
British military technology – an RAF Tornado scrapes the clouds, or a
battleship rests on a serene lake. As Ian Jack writes in his
accompanying notes, "The loveliness of the changing light on sea and
mountain makes it hard to imagine the ominous technology buried
beneath." A photo of a heavily camouflaged soldier is the first human
evidence of military activity, his gun threatening a lakeshore.

Guy Tillim’s images from the Congo are far more conventional in their
portrayal of a country rent by long-term conflict.

AM Homes’s Like an Episode of LA Law ends the collection with a
clever illustration of a domestic conflict. It takes the form of a
list of deposition questions posed to the writer’s biological father,
who had deserted the author and her mother, and gradually illustrates
the scale of his duplicity. Its legal form encapsulates our
"civilised" conflict, but also demonstrates quite how far removed we
are from the realities of warfare. Compared to the brutality visited
on the Lebanese, the Armenians, the Jews of Hamburg, where the scale
of destruction is too huge to imagine and the fever pitch of
irrational hatred too alien to countenance, having a deceitful father
is an all-too-understandable sort of strife.

Davin O’Dwyer is a freelance journalist

Granta 96: War Zones Edited by Ian Jack Granta Publications, 256 pp. £9.99

RIA Novosti, Russia
January 19, 2007

Armenian president to arrive in Russia Jan. 24

MOSCOW, January 19 (RIA Novosti) – Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan will pay a routine visit to Moscow January 24 at the
Russian president’s invitation, the Kremlin press service said
Friday.

"The agenda of the visit includes talks between the heads of state to
discuss pressing bilateral issues," the service said.