ARMENIAN SERVICEMAN DIES FROM AZERBAIJANI SNIPER’S SHOT IN IJEVAN MILITARY UNIT’S MARTIAL POSITIONS

Noyan Tapan
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. 39-year-old contract serviceman,
junior sergeant Ruben Tamrazian received fire-arms injury in the
tract of his heart from fire shot by Azerbaijani sniper and died on
the spot in martial positions of Ijevan military unit on December 18,
at about 18:00. Noyan Tapan was informed about it from RA Defence
Ministry Press Service.

AZERI FOREIGN MINISTER PRAISES PROGRESS IN KARABAKH TALKS IN 2006

Day.az, Azerbaijan
Dec 17 2006

Baku, 17 December: Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov
believes that the year 2006 was successful in the resolution of the
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

"On the whole, I can say that during two and a half years’ existence
of the Prague process, we have actually advanced greatly and agreed
many issues. On the whole, my assessment of 2006 is positive.

Actually, negotiations were productive, moreover, the OSCE Minsk
Group co-chairs also assess the process as productive," Mammadyarov
told journalists.

Commenting on the opinion that Azerbaijan and Armenia failed to use the
window of opportunities available in 2006 in the Karabakh settlement,
the Azerbaijani foreign minister said that it would be wrong to link
a solution to the conflict to a specific time frame.

The minister said that the negotiations would continue in 2007. At the
same time, Mammadyarov expressed his hope that Armenia was sincerely
disposed to resolve the conflict and that its request for a short break
to think of further steps in the Karabakh settlement was in no way
connected with the upcoming parliamentary election in Armenia in 2007.

"At present there remains only one serious issue and if we agree it,
it will actually mean a breakthrough. On the other hand, we would
like to believe that Armenia takes the talks seriously, that it is
actually disposed to accept the stage-by-stage settlement plan and
is not wasting its time from the political point of view. This is a
very important issue since elections are to take place in Armenia and
it appears there are other issues as well," the Azerbaijani foreign
minister said.

ZHIRAYR SEFILIAN’S MOTHER TAKEN TO HOSPITAL IN PREINFARCT CONDITION

Noyan Tapan
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. 70-year old Sima Taslakian, the
mother of Zhirayr Sefilian, former Commander of Shoushi special
battalion (Sefilian is being kept in the isolator of RA National
Security Service) was taken to the cardiological department of Yerevan
hospital N 1 in preinfarct condition in the evening of December 17. As
Noyan Tapan was informed by Armen Aghayan, Political Secretary of the
Defence of Liberated Territories public initiative, representative
of the Consolidation of Armenian Volunteers organization, currently
she is at the hospital’s reanimation department.

ARMENIA ONE OF FEW CIS COUNTRIES HAVING LARGE FOREIGN TRADE TURNOVER WITH EU

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, December 19. /ARKA/. Armenia is one of the few CIS countries
having large foreign trade turnover with EU, Tigran Jrbashyan,
Director of the Armenian office, Armenian-European Policy and Legal
Advice Center (AEPLAC), told reporters.

According to him, EU has been Armenia’s number one partner in trade and
economic relations over the last five years. After the oil exporter
countries, Armenia plays one of the leading roles in CIS in respect
of trade and economic relations with EU, Jrbashyan said.

He pointed out that Armenia imported mainly food and light industry
items from EU before, whereas now equipment and machinery prevails
in the country’s imports. It means that Armenian businessmen started
re-equipping their production facilities in line with the European
advanced technologies, Jrbashyan said.

Armenia’s foreign trade turnover with EU-member countries totaled
$877.3mln in Jan-Oct 2006 – a 34.6% increase compared with the same
period of 2005. A 58.1% increase was recorded in Armenia’s foreign
trade turnover with EU member countries in 2005 against the previous
year.

A NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES OF NKR NATIONAL SECURITY SERVICE AWARDED MARTIAL SERVICE MEDAL

Noyan Tapan
Dec 19 2006

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. In connection with the
professional holiday of the national security service employee,
on December 19, NKR President Arkady Ghoukassian signed a decree
on awarding Martial Service medal to a number of employees of the
sphere. As Noyan Tapan was informed from the Press Service under NKR
President, according to the agreements, for skilful, brave actions
contributing to fulfilment of martial tasks and for their courage
shown when defending NKR borders Martial Service medals were given
to Sanasar Baghdasarian, Samvel Grigorian, Vardges Grigorian, Hrant
Khosrovian, Komitas Karapetian, Arayik Hovsepian and Viktor Kocharian.

ARMENTEL TO BE STRIPPED OF ITS MONOPOLY IN 2007

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, December 18. /ARKA/. ArmenTel’s monopoly on Armenia’s
telecommunications is to be voided before November 14 2007.

Armenia’s state commission on public utilities decided at its Monday’s
session to strip ArmenTel of its sole right for providing International
Voice Gateway services. The decision is to take force in ten days
after the decision release.

The decision has been worked out by joint efforts of the commission,
ArmenTel’s experts, Russian VympelCom and representatives of Armenian
Transport and Communication Ministry.

Samvel Arabajan, a member of the commission, said the move marks
the completion of the first stage of telecommunication market
liberalization aimed at ridding it of monopolization.

He said that although deadline is November 14, 2007, it is planned
to complete all technical and legislative work by August 2007.

Oleg Bliznyuk, ArmenTel CJSC general executive director, in his turn,
expressed hope for market liberalization completion by the next year’s
September and voiced favor for civilized competition.

ArmenTel CJSC is one of Armenia’s two mobile communication operators
and the monopolist on stationary telephone communication. The company
has 400 000 mobile communication subscribers and 600 000 stationary
communication subscribers.

>>From November 2006, 90% of ArmenTel’s stakes belong to Russian
VympelCom (Bee Line brand). The remaining 10% belong to Armenian
government.

VympelCom authorities and Armenian government are now negotiating
over the sale of these 10 %.

ARMENIA’S STRATEGIC FACILITIES MUST BELONG TO NATIONAL PRIVATE CAPITAL

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, December 18. /ARKA/. Armenia’s strategic facilities must
belong to the national private capital, Edward Agajanov, economist
and former chief of the National Statistical Service stated at the
press conference on Friday.

He pointed out that oligarchs’ assets exceed the country’s budget
several times, and this capital could be used for the welfare of
Armenia.

In particular, Agajanov believes that one of Armenian oligarchs could
become the owner of ArmenTel Company.

The expert believes that foreign capital and technologies incoming
to the country is very encouraging.

At the same time, Agajanov pointed out that everything depends on
the importance of sectors and the size of the foreign capital’s share.

"It is necessary to take the country’s security into account, and
it is inadmissible to put all the strategic sectors in the basket of
one country," Agajanov said.

According to him, Russia is undoubtedly an important player in the
region. However, national interests should be observed in terms of
economic security.

In this relation, he also called unsuccessful the transaction "Property
Against Debt" with Russia.

RAO "UES of Russia" (Unified Energy System)owns the Sevan-Hrazdan power
unit of the HEPS, Hrazdan TEPS and manages the financial transfers
of the Armenian NPP.

Besides this, Russian VimpelCom Company bought 90% shares of the
national communication operator ArmenTel Company from OTE Greek
Company for EUR 341.9mln.

The agreement to transfer five Armenian enterprises to Russia’s
ownership against Armenia’s public debt for $93mln before Russia was
signed in 2002. However, the enterprises have not yet been put into
operation.

SHAMEFUL REWRITING OF HISTORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Robert Fisk Columnist

Belfast Telegraph
December 18, 2006 Monday
CTY Edition

OH how – when it comes to the realities of history – the Muslims
of the Middle East exhaust my patience. After years of explaining
to Arab friends that the Jewish Holocaust – the systematic, planned
murder of six million Jews by the Nazis, is an indisputable fact –
I am still met with a state of willing disbelief.

And now, last week, the preposterous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
of Iran opens up his own country to obloquy and shame by holding a
supposedly impartial "conference" on the Jewish Holocaust to repeat
the lies of the racists who, if they did not direct their hatred
towards Jews, would most assuredly turn venomously against those
other Semites, the Arabs of the Middle East.

How, I always ask, can you expect the West to understand and accept
the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 men, women and children from Palestine
in 1948 when you will not try to comprehend the enormity done the
Jews of Europe?

And, here, of course, is the wretched irony of the whole affair. For
what the Muslims of the Middle East should be doing is pointing out
to the world that they were not responsible for the Jewish Holocaust,
that, horrific and evil though it was, it is a shameful, outrageous
injustice that they, the Palestinians, should suffer for something
they had no part in and – even more disgusting – that they should be
treated as if they have. But, no, Ahmadinejad has neither the brains
nor the honesty to grasp this simple, vital equation.

True, the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem shook hands with
Hitler. I met his only surviving wartime Palestinian comrade before
he died and it is perfectly true that the intemperate, devious Had
al-Husseini made some vile anti-Jewish wartime speeches in German, in
one of which he advised the Nazis to close Jewish refugee exit routes
to Palestine and deport Jews eastwards (why east, I wonder?) and helped
to raise a Muslim SS unit in Bosnia. I have copies of his speeches and
his photograph hangs in the Yad Vashem Museum. But the downtrodden,
crushed, occupied, slaughtered Palestinians of our time – of Sabra and
Chatila, of Jenin and Beit Hanoun – were not even alive in the Second
World War. Yet it is to the eternal shame of Israel and its leaders
that they should pretend as if the Palestinians were participants in
the Second World War.

When the Israeli army was advancing on Beirut in 1982, the then Israeli
Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, wrote a crazed letter to US President
Ronald Reagan explaining that he felt he was marching on "Berlin"
to liquidate "Hitler" (ie Yasser Arafat, who was busy comparing his
own guerrillas to the defenders of Stalingrad).

That courageous Israeli writer Uri Avnery wrote an open letter to
Begin. "Mr Prime Minister," he began, "Hitler is dead." But this did
not stop Ariel Sharon from trying the same trick in 1989. He said
that, by talking to the US State Department, Arafat was "like Hitler,
who also wanted so much to negotiate with the Allies in the second
half of the Second World War", Sharon told the Wall Street Journal.

"… Arafat is the same kind of enemy".

Needless to say, any comparison between the behaviour of German
troops in the Second World War and Israeli soldiers today (with
their constantly betrayed claim to "purity of arms") is denounced as
anti-Semitic. Generally, I believe that is the correct reaction.

Israelis are not committing mass rape, murder or installing gas
chambers for the Palestinians.

But the acts of Israeli troops are not always so easy to divorce
from such insane parallels. During the Sabra and Chatila massacres –
when Israel sent its enraged Lebanese Christian Phalangist militias
into the camps after telling them that Palestinians had killed their
beloved leader – up to 1,700 Palestinians were slaughtered. Israeli
troops watched – and did nothing.

The Israeli novelist A B Yehoshua observed that, even if his country’s
soldiers had not known what was happening, "then this would be the
same lack of knowledge of the Germans who stood outside Buchenwald
and Treblinka and did not know what was happening".

After the killings of Jenin, an Israeli officer suggested to his men,
according to the Israeli Press, that, with close quarter fighting,
they might study the tactics of Nazi troops in Warsaw in 1944.

And I have to say – indeed, it needs to be said – that, after the
countless Lebanese civilian refugees ruthlessly cut down on the roads
of Lebanon by the Israeli air force in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and
again this summer, how can one avoid being reminded of the Luftwaffe
attacks on the equally helpless French refugees of 1940? Many thousands
of Lebanese have been killed in this way over the past 25 years.

And please spare me the nonsense about "human shields". What about
the marked ambulance of women and children rocketed by a low-flying
Israeli helicopter in 1996? Or the refugee convoy whose women and
children were torn to pieces by an equally low-flying Israeli air
force helicopter as they fled along the roads after being ordered to
leave their homes by the Israelis?

No, Israelis are not Nazis. But it’s time we talked of war crimes
unless they stop these attacks on refugees. The Arabs are entitled to
talk the same way. They should. But they must stop lying about Jewish
history – and take a lesson, perhaps, from the Israeli historians
who tell the truth about the savagery which attended Israel’s birth.

As for the West’s reaction to Ahmadinejad’s antics, Lord Blair of Kut
al-Amara was "shocked" into disbelief, while Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert responded with more eloquent contempt.

Strangely, no-one recalled that the Holocaust deniers of recent years –
deniers of the Turkish genocide of 1.5 million Armenian Christians in
1915, that is – include Lord Blair, who originally tried to prevent
Armenians from participating in Britain’s Holocaust Day and the then
Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who told Turks that their
massacre of the victims of the 20th century’s first Holocaust did
not constitute a genocide.

I’ve no doubt Ahmadinejad – equally conscious of Iran’s precious
relationship with Turkey – would gutlessly fail to honour the Armenian
Holocaust in Tehran. Who would have thought that the governments of
Britain, Israel and Iran had so much in common?

COURTS PRESSURE TRANSLATORS TOO

kurdishinfo.com, Germany
Dec 19 2006

Bianet-Publisher Zarakolu’s trial for "insulting the Republic" by
publishing books of two Armenian writers took a twist when the judge
postponed the case to include the translators. In two other incidents
translators were tried in freedom of expression cases.

Publisher Ragip Zarakolu’s case where he’s tried with 13.5 years
imprisonment for "insulting the republic, its institutions and Ataturk"
by publishing two books of Armenian writers, continued on December 14.

The judge postponed the case, ordering the translator of the books to
be brought to court. This is seen as another attempt to try translators
in freedom of expression cases.

Shafak and Tirman’s translators

Zarakolu stands trial because of publishing Prof. Dora Sakaryan’s
"The Memorials of an Armenian Doctor" and George Jerjian’s "Reality
Will Set Us Free".

Prosecution demands 7.5 years in prison for "insulting and ridiculing
the Republic and the State" of the first case and 6 years for
"insulting Turkishness and the armed forces" for the latter.

Translators Lutfi Taylan Tosun and Aysel Yildirim are being prosecuted
alongside Aram Publishing House owner Fatih Tas for the Turkish
language copy of John Tirman’s book "Spoils of War: The Human Cost
of America’s Arms Trade".

Writer Elif Shafak’s translator Asli Bicen was also tried when her
book "Father and Bastard" put onto court with the claim of "insulting
Turkishness".

Zarakolu’s cases will continue in March 15.

ews&file=article&sid=5219

CREATION OF FIRM LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL BASES IN NKR WILL CONTRIBUTE TO PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT, VARTAN OSKANIAN CONSIDERS

Noyan Tapan
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. "The referendum on NKR Constitution
will not have any impact on the negotiations process on settlement
of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict." Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian declared this at the December 19 press conference. At
the same time, in his words, the firmer the legal, economic and
institutional bases in Nagorno Karabakh are, the more confident the
NKR people and authorities will feel and the more real the possibility
of achieving compromise and peaceful settlement of the conflict will
be. "Presidential and parliamentary elections in NKR, creation of
firm institutional bases – all this will contribute to settlement of
the Nagorno Karabakh problem, as all this contributes to raising of
confidence to NKR. And some facts become irrevocable and Azerbaijan
irrespective of its willingness has to take this into account. Besides,
all these moments will be reflected in the document on the peaceful
settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and without fail will
have their positive influence," V.Oskanian declared. He expressed
bewilderment and disagreement with "exact and sharp" determinations
given in statements of a number of international organizations in
connection with the NKR referendum and in particular, their opinion
that the referendum will impede the negotiations. "We absolutely
disagree to this and consider that it is quite the contrary. Besides,
it has been repeatedly said that these organizations should avoid
such determinations," the Minister said.