Author: Yeghisabet Arthur

OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS SEND WRITTEN PROPOSALS ON SETTLEMENT OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT

Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
Nov 29 2007

Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend S.Agayeva / The Co-chairs of the OSCE
Minsk Group sent Azerbaijan written proposals regarding the settlement
of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry’s Press
Secretary, Khazar Ibrahim, reported Trend Special Correspondent on
29 November in Madrid.

Ibrahim said that the documents included 10 proposals, one of which
had not been co-ordinated due to its importance. He did not divulge
any further on the proposal.

The Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov, met with the
Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group on 29 November in Madrid.

The Minister’s meeting which was attended by the Foreign Minister
of Armenia, Vardan Oskanyan, US Co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group,
Matthew Bryza, Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, US Assistant
Secretary of State for International Affairs and Nicolas Berns,
took place within the 15th meeting of the OSCE Foreign Ministers,
which is being held in Madrid.

The conflict between the two countries of the South Caucasus began
in 1988 due to Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since
1992, Armenian Armed Forces have occupied 20% of Azerbaijan including
the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its seven surrounding districts. In
1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement at which
time the active hostilities ended. The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk
Group ( Russia, France, and the US) are currently holding peaceful
negotiations.

OSCE PA PRESIDENT CONFIDENT CONDITIONS FOR KARABAKH RESOLUTION CREATED

PanARMENIAN.Net
29.11.2007 18:23 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A ‘golden chance’ has emerged for resolution of
the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, OSCE PA President Goran Lennmarker
told the summit of the OSCE Foreign Ministers in Madrid.

He voiced assurance that all conditions essential for a peaceful
resolution of the Karabakh conflict were created and assessed highly
the activities of the OSCE MG as well as Armenian, Azerbaijani and
Russian Foreign Ministers.

ARMENIAN COMMUNIST PARTY WILL NOT SUPPORT ANYONE

A1+
[06:46 pm] 29 November, 2007

The Armenian Communist Party will not participate in the upcoming
presidential elections and will not support any candidate. Ruben
Tovmasyan, the first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party’s
Central Committee announced during the 37-th session of the party that
today was the establishment of Soviet system in Armenia. He explained
their decision by the fact that no free and fair elections had been
conducted in Armenia for 17 years. According to the amendments to the
RA Electoral Code, the security amount for the elections is defined
8 million drams which Ruben Tovmasyan attributed as a financial terror.

Comrade Tovmasyan announced that they had actively participated in
various activities organized by the opposition, but today they do not
find expedient to support neither the present actors, not the former
actors nor the supporters of wild liberalism.

GEGHAMYAN IS IDEOLOGICAL … WHAT? THE LEADER OF NOR JAMANAKNER ASKS

Largir, Armenia
Nov 29 2007

Now there is one idea in Armenia – to get rid of this government,
said the leader of the Nor Jamanakner Party Aram Karapetyan in a
news conference on November 29. "If they come together around it,
their cooperation will succeed. Later in normal conditions everyone
will present because there will be a new election, competition,"
Aram Karapetyan says with regard to the issue of unification of the
opposition, answering the question of joining Levon Ter-Petrosyan or
Vazgen Manukyan.

"Now you know there is something interest. I want to understand if
there is such a climate in this country where ideas do not interest
anyone, unfortunately, what ideological struggle means in this
atmosphere of apathy, fear and pressure? Around what ideas? For years
on the Armenian Revolutionary Federation says they are struggling
for ideas. But we cannot understand whether they are ideological
government or ideological opposition. For instance, I have decided
not to speak about opposition but on that day I did not understand
the speech… it is a little different, I don’t know. I don’t want
to insult because in future they may join the movement, but I don’t
want to remain silent," Aram Karapetyan says.

According to him, either there is real opposition which struggles
for a change of the situation, and won’t sell themselves out, is not
afraid, which is very important, in his opinion, and he is one of
these people if there are such. "They are pro-West or pro-Russian,
I don’t know, whether they are liberal, fundamentalist, it makes no
difference to me, we have been together so far. If there is no such
a group, it means we are alone with you, if you share this approach
that everything should change. In future we will start struggle, it
will become clear one is liberal, the other prefers planned economy,
when everything is normal. Now you say hello to them, the police
arrests, so what ideas are concerned?" Aram Karapetyan says.

Nevertheless, he does not specify whom he considers real opposition
whom he would support if not before at least after the presidential
election. Aram Karapetyan only repeats that after the presidential
election the real opposition will have to come together, and there
will be a change of government in Armenia.

Meanwhile, Aram Karapetyan thinks it is normal that the opposition
did not unite before the presidential election. "I can repeat the
same thing that in Armenia they do not come together around ideas,
they come together around actions," the leader of the Nor Jamanakner
Party says. He gives the example of unification of the Nor Jamanakner
Party, Impeachment and the Republic Party before the presidential
election and managed to give rise to a surge of popular movement for
the first time after April 2004. "I don’t think it is possible to erase
this. I think considerable work has been done during the parliamentary
election. It is another question that we did not go all the way. It
is a continuous process. My personal opinion is that its ending is the
presidential election," the leader of the Nor Jamanakner Party says.

AZERBAIJANI CIVILIAN REPATRIATED UNDER ICRC AUSPICES

A1+
[03:13 pm] 30 November, 2007

An Azerbaijani civilian previously detained in Yerevan has been
repatriated from Armenia to Azerbaijan under the auspices of the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The operation
took place on the road between the Armenian town of Ijevan and the
Azerbaijani town of Gazakh, at the international border.

Prior to his release and transfer, ICRC delegates had visited the
detained civilian on several occasions, in order to assess his
conditions of detention and treatment. The ICRC had also forwarded
family news between the detainee and his relatives.

Acting as a neutral intermediary and in accordance with its mandate,
the ICRC facilitated the transfer of the released civilian at the
request of both the Azerbaijani and Armenian authorities. ICRC
delegates had visited the civilian before the operation to ensure
that he was returning of his own free will.

TURKEY: SPURIOUS CASE AGAINST CONVERTS PROLONGED

Compass Direct News, CA
&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5134
No v 30 2007

Judge orders 12 more questionable witnesses to testify for prosecution.

SILIVRI, Turkey, November 30 (Compass Direct News) – Bowing to
demands of prosecution lawyers, yesterday the judge presiding over
a contrived case against two Turkish converts to Christianity for
"insulting Turkishness" ordered 12 more witnesses to testify.

During a 50-minute hearing yesterday in Silivri, 45 miles west of
Istanbul, Judge Metin Tamirci summoned two alleged eyewitnesses, five
gendarme soldiers, two policemen and three local residents to appear at
the next hearing before the Silivri Criminal Court, set for March 13.

Ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz claimed on behalf of his
three young plaintiffs that the potential witnesses on his September
4 petition to the court had "information and eyewitness details"
pertinent to the accusations against defendants Hakan Tastan and
Turan Topal.

The three Silivri residents summoned are listed on the defendants’
computers as people who had requested Christian literature and a
visit from a local Bible correspondence course with which Tastan and
Topal worked.

The prosecution had previously requested several of these individuals
as potential witnesses, but their admission into the case had been
denied by the previous judge. Judge Neset Eren withdrew from the
case in September after Kerincsiz accused him of improper bias in
his handling of the litigation.

"A year has passed, and the court has already heard all the testimonies
on both sides of this case," defense lawyer Haydar Polat told Compass
yesterday. "But it is clear from today’s hearing that the court plans
to continue this unfounded case for at least another year or more."

Stonewalled Judicial Process

In July, State Prosecutor Ahmet Demirhuyuk had called for the
Christians’ release, declaring that no credible evidence had been
produced against them.

Not only did the three plaintiffs give contradictory testimonies,
he said, but the prosecution failed to provide any concrete proof
that the two men had ever cursed Turkey or Islam.

Accordingly, Polat told Compass, his clients should have been acquitted
of all the charges at the next hearing on September 12.

Instead, the presiding judge’s resignation and replacement in effect
stonewalled the judicial process.

Without explanation, Demirhuyuk has been replaced by a succession of
other state prosecutors at subsequent hearings on the case.

The new presiding judge yesterday overrode objections by lawyers
Polat and Gursel Meric against calling new witnesses. The defense
team had argued specifically that those persons who prepared the
official statements for the case did not have the legal right to now
come up with any other information differing from what had already
been presented to the court.

The prosecution repeated its claims that the Christian defendants
were part of an organized, illegal group suspected of possessing
weapons and using immoral means to spread their influence.

Tastan and Topal are accused of insulting Turkishness, reviling Islam
and secretly compiling files on private citizens for a Bible course
by three young men, two of them minors.

The most prominent charge, denigrating Turkish identity, carries a
maximum three-year sentence under the Turkish Penal Code’s article 301,
which the European Union (EU) insists must be abolished or changed
to meet EU membership standards.

Several hundred intellectuals, including Turkish Armenian editor Hrant
Dink and Nobel Laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk, have been charged under
the controversial article curtailing freedom of speech.

Yesterday marked the first time that Tastan and Topal appeared before
Judge Tamirci, who will require them to be present at the March
hearing to face cross-examination after the new witnesses testify.

Arrested for two days in October 2006 and put on trial last November,
Tastan, 38, and Topal, 47, are both former Muslims who converted to
Christianity more than a decade ago.

Their active involvement in Protestant Christian ministries has
been labeled by Kerincsiz, nationalist elements and some government
officials as "missionary activity" that should be curtailed – if not
banned – in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.

Halting Hate Language

After the gruesome killing of three Christians who were tortured and
their throats slit in the southeastern city of Malatya last April,
the Turkish Interior Ministry admitted in June that there had been an
increase in individual crimes against non-Muslim citizens and their
places of worship.

The Interior Ministry’s official circular urged provincial governors
to take precautionary measures.

But to date, no open steps have been taken to halt trumped-up legal
pretexts against Christians or other non-Muslims, nor to prosecute
the use of hate language that could incite violence against them.

Last night, still another episode of Turkey’s highly popular "Valley
of the Wolves" weekly series on Show TV featured derogatory scenes
against Christianity. In one scene, a character voiced the threat,
"Just as we drove out the Christian crusaders, we will drive them
out. If you don’t have a gun, let me give you one."

In a thinly veiled variation of the Malatya murders, this fall the
TV series even portrayed a teenage boy commissioned by a nationalist
group to kill a Christian book publisher. Episodes on November 8 and
15 implied Christian missionaries were enemies of society, guilty of
links ranging from the sale of body parts to prostitution.

This month Turkish Christians started a protest campaign against the
overtly anti-Christian slant of the TV series, which has repeatedly
dramatized popular misconceptions of the Turkish populace against
missionaries, the Bible and so-called proselytizing of Muslims.

Russia & CIS Energy Newswire
November 30, 2007 Friday 2:39 PM MSK

World Bank expects gas prices in Armenia to grow in 2008

YEREVAN Nov 30

The cost of natural gas in Armenia could grow in 2008 and not in 2009
as previously expected, Aristomene Varoudakis, director of the World
Bank’s office in Yerevan, said at a press conference on Friday.

Natural gas prices are subsidized due to Gazprom’s (RTS: GAZP) sale
of the fifth power unit of the Razdansky Thermal Power Plant for
$248.8 million. Of this amount, $188 million was spent on subsidies
for domestic gas consumers until December 31, 2008.

With the steady growth in gas consumption rates in the country, funds
>From a special funds set up to subsidize domestic gas consumers could
run out before the scheduled period, he said. A rise in gas prices
will strengthen inflationary pressure, he said.

Inflation will also grow in Armenia in 2008 because of growth in
global food and oil prices, Varoudakis said. "Inflation will have the
biggest impact on the poorer parts of the population, and it needs to
be controlled based on these social factors," he said.

The government needs to continue institutional reforms to raise the
economy’s competitiveness, he said. "The government must take
measures to lower the cost of some goods and services in order to
compensate for the growth in food and energy prices," he said.

The number of natural gas consumers in Armenia has grown to 500,000
>From 100,000 over the last four years. Tariffs on natural gas for the
population total 84,000 dram per 1,000 cubic meters, or 59,000 dram
taking into account the government’s subsidies.

In accordance with Russian-Armenian agreements, Armenia will buy gas
>From Russia at a price of $100 per 1,000 cubic meters until the end
of 2008. Experts say gas prices will then double for Armenia.

MLive.com, MI
Nov 29 2007

Kevorkian discusses assisted suicide, prison reform in Detroit

11/29/2007, 4:46 p.m. EST
By COREY WILLIAMS
The Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) – Nearly six months after his release from a Michigan
prison, Jack Kevorkian still maintains he was right to help suffering
people end their lives.

The assisted suicide advocate also urged Wayne State University
students to be vigilant of government and a courts system he accuses
of being "dishonest and corrupt."

Wearing his trademark blue cardigan, Kevorkian was the featured
speaker during an often humorous, hour-long lecture Thursday
afternoon before more than 300 people on the school’s Detroit campus.
The topic of the program was billed as prison reform, but he didn’t
address that subject until 45 minutes into the lecture.

Instead, he talked about the U.S. Constitution’s 9th Amendment and
the importance of fighting for the rights it guarantees. Kevorkian
used the 9th Amendment to justify his right to help someone commit
suicide.

"I did my duty as a physician," Kevorkian said. "The person wanted to
die. He said: ‘Please help.’ I was a doctor. What was I supposed to
do, let them suffer?"

The 79-year-old retired pathologist claims to have helped at least
130 people die from 1990 to 1998. He completed eight years in prison
following his second-degree murder conviction in the death of a
52-year-old man with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Kevorkian is on parole for two years, and has promised not to help in
any other assisted suicides.

But his criticisms of the government apparently weren’t softened by
his prison stay.

"Right now, what I’m saying is dangerous for me because the tyrant
doesn’t like it when you infringe on his power," Kevorkian said. "Law
never creates rights. All the law can do is stop you from exercising
it."

He pointed to the law that prohibited the drinking of alcohol between
1920 and 1933, and included a thinly veiled stab at assisted suicide
opponents.

"You have the right to drink anything you want, cyanide even,"
Kevorkian said.

He also stressed the need for prison reform, where some type of
mediation is allowed between victims and those accused of crimes.

"Punishment doesn’t work," he said. "The system we have now is very
cruel and punitive."

Psychology student Charles Bell of Detroit said he agreed with many
of Kevorkian’s ideas, but he can see why others don’t.

"He goes against the norm," said Bell, 21.

The largely student audience gave Kevorkian a loud ovation at the end
of the lecture, with a dozen or more lining up afterward to meet him.

Kevorkian also is expected to speak Jan. 15 at the University of
Florida in Gainesville.

"My mission is simply to teach," he said.

ARMENIA TO DOUBLE PEACEKEEPING CONTINGENT IN KOSOVO

PanARMENIAN.Net
03.12.2007 18:15 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ From 2008 Armenia will double the peacekeeping
contingent in Kosovo, RA Defense Minister Mikael Harutyunyan said. "It
will be a company with two platoons (over 70 servicemen)," the Minister
said adding that an agreement was already signed with the Greek side,
Novosti Armenia reports

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY KITTING ASSURES THAT HE WILL SPARE NO EFFORT TO STRENGTHEN ARMENIAN-IRISH RELATIONS FOR EVEN MORE

Noyan Tapan
Dec 3, 2007

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 3, NOYAN TAPAN. Jeffrey Kitting, the newly appointed
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ireland to RA,
(residence Sofia) on December 3, handed the copy of his credentials to
RA Deputy Foreign Minister Armen Baibourdian. Noyan Tapan was informed
about iy by the RA Foreign Ministry Press and Information Department.

During the conversation that followed the ceremony, A. Baibourdian,
highly evaluating the current level of Armenian-Irish relations, said
that Armenia is interested in strengthening and developing political
and economic dialogue between the two countries for even more. The
newly appointed Ambassador of Ireland also expressed satsifaction
with active cooperation between Armenia and Ireland and assured that
he will spare no effort to strengthen bilteral relations for even more.

The interlocutors also touched upon cooperation within the framework
of the European Neighborhood Policy and at the bilateral level,
improval of legal-contractual field, as well as great potential of
development of bilateral economic relations, discussed possibilities
of implementation of joint programs.

Jeffrey Kitting was born in 1957 in New York. He graduated from
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). In 1981 he was employed by the
Foreign Ministry system of Ireland. In 2000-2004 he was the Consul
General of Ireland to Shanghai (People’s Republic of China) and in
2005 was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of
Ireland to Bulgaria.