Category: News

The post-Soviet security organization, CSTO, will react to any actions causing escalation of tension at the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as in Nagorno-Karabakh, the organization's head Nikolai Borduzha said on Friday,  reports.

“The Organization has been reacting to any actions of the kind [use of military force] that affect security in the region,” he said.

At the same time, he continued, the organization is not involved in settlement of that conflict.

“We only monitor the situation, as it involves our ally – Armenia,” the official said. “CSTO’s position is quite strait – all participating countries want to have the conflict settled by only political means.”

“All countries are against escalation of the tension at the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, against use of heavy weapons,” he added.

Liverpool’s owners have scrapped their controversial £77 ticket and apologised for the “distress caused” by last week’s pricing announcement, the BBC reports.

Thousands of fans left 77 minutes into Saturday’s draw with Sunderland at Anfield in protest at the planned top-price £77 ticket in the new main stand.

In reversing their decision, club owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) told disgruntled fans “Message received.”

Liverpool’s dearest matchday ticket will now stay at £59.

The highest season-ticket price is also frozen.

Liverpool’s principal owner John W Henry, chairman Tom Werner and FSG president Mike Gordon issued an open letter detailing the changes, following what they described as a “tumultuous week”.

“The three of us have been particularly troubled by the perception that we don’t care about our supporters, that we are greedy, and that we are attempting to extract personal profits at the club’s expense,” it said.

“Quite the opposite is true.”

The club has also ended game categorisation – meaning fans will pay the same price for matchday tickets regardless of the opposition.

Photo: Sputnik/ Ilya Pitalev

 

The Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces have reportedly managed to liberate another strategic town in the western province of Latakia, Sputnik News reports.

Another key town has been taken back by the Syrian Army and the country’s National Defense Forces (NDF) after heavy fighting with militants in Latakia province in western Syria, media reports said.

Dozens of terrorists were killed and many more wounded after the Syrian troops finally took full control of the town of Bashoura, located in northern Latakia, sources said. Two days ago, it had been announced by Islamic Front-connected sources that Ahrar al-Sham, a coalition of multiple Islamist and Salafist units, had been targeting Syrian Army positions around the village.

The new offensive came after the Syrian Army and the NDF cleared the militants out of the strategic heights of Ziyaret al-Beidha, Zahra al-Beidar al-Mahrouq and Khandaq al-Shahour in Latakia.

Earlier this week, the Syrian forces managed to win back more villages and heights in northern Latakia near the border with Turkey, sources said, mentioning the villages of Dahret al-Baiday al-Mahrouq and Ard al-Kataf, as well as the hill of Ziyaret al-Beidha.

In another development, the Syrian Army continued their offensive in the northern province of Aleppo, regaining full control of the strategic town of Taana in the eastern part of the region.

The Syrian Air Force attacked terrorists’ positions in the towns of Hayan and Hraytan as the army continued to advance toward Tal Rafat in Aleppo.
Scores of terrorists were killed and injured in the army’s mop-up operations in the newly regained towns.

 

 

 

The Russian Foreign Ministry will study the inquiry of Russian parliamentarians on denouncing the Moscow Treaty of Friendship and Brotherhood with Turkey signed on March 16, 1921. Is this simple propaganda or an initiative that could lead to practical steps?

“Whatever the objective, the initiative should be welcomed,” head of the Modus Vivendi Center Ara Papyan says.  According to him, the treaty was an absurd from the very beginning.

If the treaty is annulled, Azerbaijan’s jurisdiction over Nakhijevan will come under question. According to Papyan, it will contribute to the development of Armenia’s relations with Iran. Armenia can raise the issue of Kars in the future, express a position on Woodrow Wilson’s Arbitral Award, under which the area to be returned to Armenia makes 100 sq. km.

According to Ruben Safrastyan, Director of the Oriental Studies Institute of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, even if Russia withdraws its signature from the treaty, it will in no way benefit Armenia. “The question is not about the Treaty of Kars, while it was under this treaty that Armenia was divided between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey.  It was simply a deal,” he said.

Ruben Safrastyan does not share the opinion that Armenia will only suffer as a result of aggravating relations between Russia and Turkey. “What’s important for Armenia is to be ready for the development of events in order to be able to present its interests if necessary,” he said.

“No one will tell us ‘come and take your lands’,” Safrastyan said.

According to preliminary information, there are Armenian nationals among the suspects captured over the murder of an Armenian  in Istanbul, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed.

“The opportunities of providing consular assistance are restricted because of the lack of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey,” the Ministry said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs follows the development of the situation and will provide additional information, if needed.

PHOTO: REUTERS/JANINE COSTA

 

Turkey’s patience may run out over the crisis in Syria and it could be forced to take action, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, calling on the United Nations to do more to prevent what he said was “ethnic cleansing” in the country, Reuters reports.

Erdogan accused the United Nations of insincerity in calling on Turkey to do more to help Syrian refugees instead of taking action to prevent the bloodshed in its southern neighbor.

“There is a chance the new wave of refugees will reach 600,000 if air strikes continue. We are making preparations for it,” Erdogan said in a speech to a business forum in Ankara.

“We will show patience up to a point and then we’ll do what’s necessary. Our buses and planes are not waiting there in vain,” he said, adding that Turkey had information that Iran-backed forces in Syria were carrying out “merciless massacres”.

Turkey, already home to more than 2.6 million Syrian refugees, has long pushed for the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria to protect displaced civilians without bringing them over the border into Turkey.

The proposal has so far gained little traction with Washington or NATO allies who fear it would require an internationally patrolled no-fly zone which could put them in direct confrontation with Assad and his allies.

Erdogan said the Syrian crisis could not be resolved without safe zones, and said that ways of keeping Syrians in their country needed to be sought.

He also said he had previously told the European Union’s two top officials, Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, that the time could come when Turkey would open the gates for migrants to travel to Europe.

“In the past we have stopped people at the gates to Europe, in Edirne we stopped their buses. This happens once or twice, and then we’ll open the gates and wish them a safe journey, that’s what I said,” he said on Thursday.

A Greek news website said on Monday that Erdogan, in a meeting in November with Juncker and Tusk, had threatened to flood Europe with migrants if EU leaders did not offer a better deal to help Turkey manage the refugee crisis.

On 11 February Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan partook at the reporting meeting of the NKR Public Prosecutor’s Office summarizing the results of the structure’s activities in 2015, NKR President’s Press Office reports.

Prosecutor General Arthur Mosiyan and responsible officials of the structure delivered corresponding reports.

The President rated the overall activity of Public Prosecutor’s Office as satisfactory.

According to the President, as a result of cooperation within the entire legal system great and diligent work has been carried out in fighting against crime, as a result of which a high level of public security was maintained in the republic.

At the same time President Sahakyan touched upon a range of issues the system faced noting the significance of their efficient solution.

“Over the past years we once again came to the conviction that we had achieved a stable development of our country and due to our traditions we have comparative advantages in terms of conscientiousness and respect for the law. This is the value, which should be maintained”, emphasized Bako Sahakyan in his speech.

Photo: PETER MCCABE/MONTREAL GAZETTE

 

Too many Quebec students finish high school with no knowledge of genocides, past or present, including the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, Rwandan genocide and the cultural genocide of First Nations, a Montreal-based foundation argued on Wednesday, reports.

The Foundation for the Compulsory Study of Genocide in Schools had Liberal MNA David Birnbaum table a petition in the National Assembly demanding that the topic be made mandatory in Quebec high schools. It is currently up to individual teachers to decide how much they want to teach about genocide, the foundation said.

“I’ve seen teachers who have done amazing jobs with their high school students; they put on exhibits, they take their students to the Holocaust museum, they learn about the Armenian genocide, and other schools that I’ve gone to where teachers have come up to me saying ‘We’re very, very worried, our children are graduating from Grade 11 not knowing even what the word genocide means,’ ” foundation chairperson Heidi Berger said.

The petition, which collected about 3,000 signatures, states that “racial and cultural intolerance and discrimination are the preconditions associated with the beginnings of genocide,” which is defined as “the systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic or cultural group.” Education, the petition continues, is the key to recognizing and preventing discrimination and acts of hate among youth, and knowledge of genocides is essential to preventing such acts in the future.

“Considering the times that we’re in, 25,000 Syrian refugees coming in, 16- and 17-year-olds with the radicalization and ISIS and so forth, with the cultural genocide and the Aboriginals, there’s no time like now to make sure that every student graduating from Grade 11 understands what genocide is and the stages that lead to genocide,” Berger added.

Catherine Poulin, press attaché for the education minister, said there is already a compulsory class that deals with genocide called “Contemporary World.”

“At this point, it is not our intention to change the curriculum,” Poulin said.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said there should be more compulsory content related to genocide in schools all across Canada.

“I spoke about this in the House of Commons last week and made a member’s statement calling upon all the different provinces to include this in the curriculum,” he said, adding Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia have made the most headway so far, along with some American states: New Jersey, New York, California, Florida and Illinois.

AFP Photo/Francisco Cobo

 

At least 30 people died in a pre-dawn prison riot in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on Thursday, as smoke billowed from the building, Agence France-Presse reports, quoting local media.

Riot police and ambulances were deployed at the Topo Chico prison as broadcaster Televisa reported that 30 died while Milenio television spoke of 50 victims, with inmates and prison guards among them.

The newspapers Milenio and Reforma reported that the riot broke out in an apparent escape attempt.

Families of the inmates flocked to the prison following reports of fatalities.

The incident erupted on the eve of Pope Francis’ trip to Mexico, during which he is due to visit another notorious prison in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.

“There can be no lasting military solution of Nagorno Karabakh,” U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills said in a Facebook chat with reporters on the first anniversary of his mission in Armenia.

“The escalation of tragic violence and rhetoric along the line of contact is a source of deep concern to the U.S. government. The possibility of that escalation triggering even through misjudgment or error along the line of conflict is real in my view. That is why the Minsk Group Co-Chairs have urged both sides to take steps to reduce the level of violence along the line of contact, and to implement mechanisms for monitoring the situation,” Amb. Mills said.

“This was a topic of discussion when the two Presidents met in Bern, Switzerland, in December. The U.S. Co-Chair, Ambassador Warlick, is engaged with the other Co-Chairs in continuing to move the dialogue forward,” he added.

“The Minsk Group co-chairs have raised with both sides the importance of investigative mechanisms along the line of contact and other steps to reduce the level of violence. This was discussed between the two Presidents during their meeting in Bern, in December. It is up to the two leaders to reach agreement on such steps. The Minsk Co-Chairs are facilitating discussions that I hope will lead to agreement,” Richard Mills said.

“Although there are some stark policy differences between the U.S. and Russia, we are still able to find common ground and cooperate on other issues of importance to the international community – most notably on the Iran nuclear issue and within the Minsk Group, where I have seen first-hand the Russian, French, and U.S. co-chairs engage effectively,” the Ambassador said.