Category: 2017

Sports: Armenia’s football team is quite dangerous at home: PZPN chief

Karagyozian Lena
Pan Armenian, Armenia
Oct 3 2017
Armenia’s football team is quite dangerous at home: PZPN chief

The national team of Poland has not yet won any games in Armenia, head of the Polish Football Association (PZPN) Zbigniew Boniek said, adding that the Armenian team are quite dangerous when playing at home.

“Let’s remember, at least, our first match with the Armenians. We were able to snatch a last-minute victory despite the fact that they had lost to Romania with a score of 0: 5 in an earlier match,”Boniek said.

The former football player noted that the match with Armenia is more important than the one with Montenegro.

2018 World Cup qualifying between Armenia and Poland will be held on Thursday, October 5 at the Republican stadium in Yerevan.

Canadian ICT Business Mission to Yerevan in the Republic of Armenia

Torgomian Varazdat 
Canadian Government News
October 2, 2017 Monday
Canadian ICT Business Mission to Yerevan in the Republic of Armenia
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador: Newfoundland and Labrador
Association of Technology Industries has issued the following events:
Canadian ICT Business Mission to Yerevan in the Republic of Armenia 2
Oct
The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service invites you to participate in
its Canadian ICT Business Mission to Yerevan in the Republic of
Armenia.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is one of the fastest
growing sectors in Armenia, and Armenia already has a Canadian ICT
business presence. The Armenian government strongly supports the
business community by welcoming international companies, developing
special economic zones and creating a strong investment climate with
customs and tax privileges. As a member of the Eurasian Economic Union
(EEU), Armenia can be an entry point to a market of 180 million people
with an annual GDP of USD 4 trillion. The mission is an excellent
chance to learn more about these opportunities, and to forge linkages
with local and global companies active in Armenia.

Armenian Assembly Internship Program in Armenia Concludes Another Successful Summer

Khoyetsian Rose

ARMENIAN
ASSEMBLY OF AMERICA
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: October 3, 2017

Contact: Danielle
Saroyan

Telephone:
(202) 393-3434

Web: www.aaainc.org

 

ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
IN ARMENIA CONCLUDES ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL SUMMER

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Armenian Assembly of America’s
(Assembly) Summer Internship Program in Armenia concluded in August with
another successful summer. The program featured lectures and discussions with a
wide range of officials and tours around the homeland. The eight-week
internship program in Yerevan was packed with interesting activities including
meetings with prominent individuals from civil society and political leaders,
aimed at helping the participants better understand the socio-political situation
in Armenia and Artsakh.

 

This year’s
summer class included Kyra Chamberlain interning at the International Center
for Human Development, where she researched the status of Syrian refugees in
Armenia; Rachael Minassian interning at the Regional Studies Center, where she
examined gender studies in Armenia under the supervision of its Founding
Director, Richard Giragosian; and Satenik Beglaryan interning at ArmComedy, the
first satiric political news show in Armenia that just completed a tour in the
United States.

 

“It is
my pleasure every year to meet our summer interns and get to know them,
especially their passions and ambitions, and watch them grow while
participating in the Armenian Assembly’s internship program in Armenia. These
dedicated students will be leaving their marks on the Armenian community, both
in Armenia and in their hometowns,” Assembly Regional Director Arpi
Vartanian said.

 

Since its
inception in 1999, the summer program in Armenia has introduced college-aged
students to life in their ancestral homeland, provided valuable international
work experience, and helped participants foster the skills needed to become the
next generation of community leaders.

 

The Assembly
interns met with U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills, Jr., Founder and
Director of the Yerevan-based Regional Studies Center Richard Giragosian,
Assembly Turkish Regional Analyst Alin Ozinian, and former Assembly intern
Sarkis Balkhian. Balkhian is now the Advocacy Director of the Aleppo
Compatriotic Charitable Organization, which supports Syrian refugees in
Armenia, and a Middle East and North Africa consultant at Human Rights Watch.
Balkhian spoke about his experience participating in the Terjenian-Thomas
Assembly Internship Program in Washington, D.C. in 2007 with the Armenian
National Institute (ANI) and in Armenia in 2008, where he interned at the
Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute and the Middle East Division of the Republic
of Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

The interns
participated in local events around the capital, including “The Local
Roots of Global Peace Conference” at Eurasia International University,
where they heard presentations from speakers including USAID-Armenia Mission
Director Deborah Grieser and Giragosian. They also toured the Armenia Tree
Project’s Karin Nursery, helped build a home with Fuller Center for Housing in
Geghard Village, participated in a local folk dance lesson, and visited
historical, religious, and cultural sites throughout Armenia and Artsakh. These
sites include Garni Temple, Geghard Monastery, Zvartnots, Khor Virap Monastery,
Areni Cave, Noravank, Karahunj archaeological site, Parz Lake, Dilijan, petroglyphs
at Sev Sar, and more.

 

“A
large part of discovering my heritage in Armenia has been about this ethereal
experience that comes with soaking up the atmosphere at each cultural site, not
simply visiting the sites or memorizing facts about the history. It may not
happen at first, but it gradually sinks in after a while, and you put together
the puzzle pieces of your own identity,” Kyra said after visiting
Vagharshapat, also known as Holy Etchmiadzin, the spiritual capital of Armenia.
She is a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

 

The
participants travelled to Artsakh, where they sat down with President Bako
Sahakyan and Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan. Reflecting on her meetings with
Artsakh President Sahakyan and Foreign Minister Mirzoyan, Rachael said:
“For a political science major, this was a thrilling experience. We were
able to ask [President Sahakyan and Foreign Minister Mirzoyan] questions and
hear from them firsthand about their positions on different issues pertaining
to Artsakh and Armenia. This was probably my favorite part of the trip, and
it’s something I’ll never forget.” Rachael is a student at Providence
College in Rhode Island.

 

While in
Artsakh, the interns visited the ancient cities of Shushi and Tigranakert,
toured Gandzasar Monastery, and met with The HALO Trust staff. HALO clears
landmines in the area and makes Nagorno Karabakh safe. On their way back to
Yerevan, they rode on the 3.6-mile (5,752 meters) Wings of Tatev Aerial
Tramway, recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2010 as the world’s
longest non-stop double track cable car, and explored the magnificent Tatev
Monastery.

 

To find out
more about the 2017 summer interns’ experience in Armenia, visit the Assembly’s
Intern Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages.

 

Established
in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based
nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of
Armenian issues. The Assembly is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt
membership organization.

 

###

 

NR#: 2017-068

 

Photo
Caption 1: Armenian Assembly Intern Coordinator Mariam Karapetyan, Satenik
Beglaryan, Kyra Chamberlain, Rachael Minassian, and Regional Director Arpi
Vartanian with Mount Ararat in the background

 

Photo
Caption 2: Armenian Assembly Regional Director Arpi Vartanian, Kyra
Chamberlain, Ambassador Richard Mills, Jr., Rachael Minassian, Satenik
Beglaryan, and Intern Coordinator Mariam Karapetyan

 

Photo
Caption 3: Armenian Assembly 2017 summer intern class at Ayrivank

 

Caption 4: Armenian
Assembly Intern Coordinator Mariam Karapetyan, Regional Director Arpi
Vartanian, Artsakh President Sako Bahakyan, Kyra Chamberlain, Satenik
Beglaryan, and Rachael Minassian


Available online at: 


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Azerbaijani press: Ukrainian FM: Karabakh conflict is an aggression

Baghdasarian Karlen
3 October 2017 14:29 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 3

By Elchin Mehdiyev – Trend:

Ukraine understands its Azerbaijani friends well because the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an aggression, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.

Klimkin made the remarks at a joint briefing with his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov in Baku Oct. 3.

Klimkin stressed that Ukraine will continue to support Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Azerbaijani press: Azerbaijani MP criticizes Turkish citizens’ illegal visit to occupied lands

Adrine Hakobian

By Azernews


By Rashid Shirinov

The illegal visit of a group of Turkish citizens to the occupied Azerbaijani lands does not meet the strategic cooperation, friendly and brotherly relations existing between Azerbaijan and Turkey, said Elman Nasirov.

 The Azerbaijani MP told Trend that this casts a shadow on the Azerbaijani-Turkish relations.

“This also causes confusion in the Azerbaijani society. Today the relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey are an example for all countries of the world,” Nasirov said. “However, such actions of a group of individuals, calling themselves “the Turkish intellectuals,” caused fair discontent in the Azerbaijani society.”

The MP added that Turkey always supports Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan supports Turkey, noting that the main reason for the closure of Turkey’s border with Armenia was the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

“In this case, the illegal visit of Turkish citizens to Nagorno-Karabakh is unclear and it is a crime. The Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan has rightly opened a criminal case on this fact, these individuals should be prosecuted,” said Nasirov.

Without documents and consent from relevant executive authorities, four Turks Ufuk Uras, Ali Bayramoglu, Said Cekinoglu and Erol Katircioglu crossed the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan avoiding checkpoints on September 22. The Grave Crimes Investigation Department of Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office filed a criminal case under Criminal Code’s Article 318.2 (illegally crossing Azerbaijan’s state borders) against them.

That is, they deliberately traveled from territory of Armenia and illegally arrived in occupied Khankendi and other settlements of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. They have been declared in the international wanted list. Azerbaijan also sent an appeal to the Turkish law enforcement agencies in order to detain the four citizens.

Unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia are considered illegal, and any individuals paying such visits are included in the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s list of undesirable persons. Baku continues the work to prevent such illegal actions, and the foreign citizens should keep their eyes peeled in order not to be deceived by Armenian occupiers.

URL: 

Azerbaijani press: Entrepreneur reveals truth about Armenian economy

Emil Lazarian

By Azernews


By Rashid Shirinov

The Armenian economy has long been heading towards the default and the process intensified recently, but the government lacks a tool to fix the issue. 

Couple of weeks ago, the country’s government organized Armenia-Diaspora Forum in Yerevan, where officials and representatives of the ruling party talked a lot about the “great” business environment in Armenia and conditions allegedly created for entrepreneurs from the Diaspora.

However, the businessmen have a different opinion.

“Unfortunately, the rules do not change,” Armenian businesswoman Silva Hambartsumyan has told Lragir news agency, answering the question whether she agrees that Armenia has no attractive investment conditions.

Hambartsumyan added that she does not believe in economic growth in Armenia: “Is it possible to talk about growth while selling fruits and vegetables?”

Many members of the Diaspora, who began to invest in this country when it gained independence, very soon realized that they were wrong in trusting their money to the criminals in the Armenian government. In this regard, the aid of the Diaspora dropped dramatically in the 2000s, and has almost completely disappeared in recent years.

“They should deal not with show, but with economy. There are a lot of investors, but many are afraid to invest in Armenia. Also, there are many of those who invested and lost money,” Hambartsumyan noted.                                                          The entrepreneur added that favorable investment conditions in Armenia are created for individual people, for example, brother of Armenian Premier Minister Samvel Karapetyan.

Today, many entrepreneurs of Armenia emphasize that it is impossible to build a developed economy and foreign trade based on fruits and vegetables. But a worse problem is that even the agricultural opportunities get limited in Armenia day by day. Rates in this sphere drop uncontrollably, and given this and the agricultural monopoly existing in Armenia, one can expect further decline in this sphere, as well as in the whole economy of the country.

URL: 

Azerbaijani press: Germany supports Karabakh conflict’s solution via talks: ambassador

Arsine Chaltikian
3 October 2017 19:31 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 3

By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:

Germany supports the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through negotiations, Michael Kindsgrab, ambassador of Germany to Azerbaijan, said at a press conference in Baku Oct. 3.

“Germany supports Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and would like the negotiations on the conflict settlement to continue,” the diplomat said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Azerbaijani press: Dual standards of European democracy with regard to Catalonia and Karabakh

Hunanian Jack
3 October 2017 16:18 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 3

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva – Trend:

European separatism, a terrible phenomenon corroding Europe, has received a new momentum, after the so-called referendum on independence of the Spanish region of Catalonia. The measures that were taken by the central government to prevent this referendum were unprecedented.

In the week preceding the voting, the central government sent two huge ferries to Catalonia, on board of which there were about 10,000 employees of the Civil Guard. Their main duty was to suppress riots and fight extremism.

A few weeks before this event, arrests all those who, in the central government’s opinion, had contributed to the development of separatism ideas in general and the referendum in particular began in Catalonia.

A few days before the event, the Spanish guardsmen eliminated more than half of 2,315 polling stations, withdrawing urns and ballots from there. Polling stations access to the electronic vote counting system was denied, after which this “referendum” was named by the media as the first Internet war. The Catalonia province itself was flooded with several thousand employees of the Spanish Civil Guard.

However, the Catalans were adamant in wanting to hold a “referendum”, which resulted in mass clashes with the guardsmen. Meanwhile, it is an important fact that the Spanish Civil Guard used rubber bullets and tear gas, batons against the protesters, as well as arrested hundreds of protesters. Doctors said that only in Barcelona about 1,000 people, suffered from the guardsmen’s actions, were treated on October 1.

Now, none of the European leaders even thought to condemn rather harsh actions of the authorities against the Catalans, who are promoting separatism right in the center of Europe.

If authorities of any non-European state acted as decisively as the government of Spain in a similar case, global media outlets would have started showing indignation over what was happening, hysterically accusing the state’s leader of dictatorship and all the mortal sins. However, in this case even the ardent activists from the Human Rights Watch were very sluggish, and quite late to condemn the actions of the Spanish Civil Guard.

The reason why European leaders preferred to silently support Madrid’s actions is quite obvious: next time, similar situation may happen in Germany, Italy, the UK and several other European countries, each of which has a source of separatism, constrained by the most severe methods.

Here we again witness ugly show of double standards of European democracies and biased European media outlets, which hypocritically call, for example, Nagorno-Karabakh, as “unrecognized disputed region of the South Caucasus” or portray Baku’s inclemency in absolutely legitimate actions in the territories occupied by Armenia.

May one say now that Baku was too soft to separatists in Azerbaijan and should have urged all the forces of the region to suppress this hotbed of separatism, which today is precedent for many small European nations?

May one hope that the EU, if faced with the threat of civil war in its territory, will react more strictly to Armenia’s aggression against Azerbaijan?

Unfortunately, no one knows this, since the double standards of the West have perfectly been working for several decades, allowing Western countries to maneuver among their own conscience, toughness toward their own separatists and friends from the Armenian lobby.

—

Elmira Tariverdiyeva is the head of Trend Agency’s Russian news service



Azerbaijani press: OSCE MG co-chairmen due in Baku Oct. 7, says Azerbaijani FM

Greg Madatian
3 October 2017 13:48 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 3

Trend:

Co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group will arrive in Azerbaijan on Oct. 7, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said Oct. 3.

Mammadyarov said that before their visit to Azerbaijan, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen will arrive in Yerevan, Armenia.

“The co-chairmen will arrive to discuss the agenda of an upcoming meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents,” Mammadyarov said. “Following the presidents’ meeting, the mediators want to achieve logical results and break the stalemate in the conflict settlement.”

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Azerbaijani oress: Azerbaijani MP accuses Yerevan of manipulating fate of Syrian Armenians

Emil Lazarian
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The autumn session of the OSCEParliamentary Assembly under the theme “Security in the OSCE Area: New Challenges, New Tasks” kicked off in Andorra on Oct. 3,APA reported.

 

The OSCE PA autumn session began with the Mediterranean Forum where issues of support for cooperation and security in the sea basin were discussed.

 

Addressing the forum, the head of Armenia’s delegation to the OSCE PA stated that over 100,000 become refugees in the wake of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

 

The delegation head emphasized that Armenia accepted more than 20,000 Armenian refugees from Syria, asking the OSCE PA for support to his country.

 

The deputy head of the Azerbaijani delegation to the OSCE PA, Tahir Mirkishili, said that said that while the most serious problems in the OSCEregion are refugees and conflicts, the countries should be responsive and sincere in addressing these problems.

 

“If the Armenian government had been responsible 30 years ago and not invaded Azerbaijani territory, we would not be talking about the more than a million refugees in Azerbaijan and 100,000 refugees in Armenia,” Mirkishili said.

 

He also accused Yerevan of manipulating the fate of Syrian Armenians. “The manipulation of the fate of Syrian Armenians is inadmissible,” Mirkishili stressed.

 

“The head of Armenia’s delegation talked about 20,000 refugees transferred to Armenia from Syria. But he did not specify why those refugees coming from Syria have been placed in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories by the Armenian leadership. It wrong of you to manipulate their fate,” he added.

 

Mirkishili noted that it is important to eliminate the consequences of a problem before making an effort to resolve it.

 

“If we want problems resolved, countries must stop occupying each other’s territory and respect each other’s territorial integrity,” he said.