Clinic operator charged with health care fraud
BY TONY CASTRO, Staff Writer
LA Daily News Article Last Updated:11/10/2006 09:27:19 PM PST
A Russian immigrant living in Agoura Hills has been charged with bilking
Medicare out of more than $1.4 million in an elaborate scam in which he used
Mother Teresa’s personal physician to prey on homeless patients from Skid Row.
Rudik Avakyan, 55, in jail on $1.1 million bail, faces arraignment Monday on
charges that he recruited Medi-Cal and Medicare card holders at Los
Angeles’s Union Rescue Mission for fraudulent billing at a clinic he owned and
operated.
According to authorities, the clinic’s medical director – Dr. Prasantha
Nath, who once counted the late Mother Teresa among his patients – was an
unwitting participant in the scam that included the fraudulent reporting of medical
services that were never provided and billing for services provided to
patients who were dead.
Nath is not a defendant in the case, authorities said, and, in fact, was a
victim of identity theft in the scam.
Nath worked at Avakyan’s clinic two or three days a week – and only for a
few weeks before quitting – treating a handful of patients each day, a state
Attorney General’s investigation found.
But authorities say that Avakyan’s clinic fraudulently submitted claims for
hundreds of patients that Nath “could not possibly have treated, padded
Medicare bills with treatments that never occurred, submitted bills for services
rendered to 35 patients who were already deceased, and filled out medical
treatment charts for patients as much as six months prior to them actually being
seen by a doctor.”
Avakyan and two co-defendants also went so far as to bill Medicare for
treatments that Nath purportedly provided patients while he was out of the country
helping tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and the needy in India, according to
investigators.
Nath’s physician provider number was used for Medicare billings several
month past the time he had left the clinic, authorities said.
Avakyan was arrested last week at his home by agents from the Attorney
General’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse.
His co-defendants, Gayane Abramyan, 44, and Lusine Khatchatryan, were
described by authorities as “purported medical assistants at the Workplace
Industrial Management Clinic in Los Angeles.”
The three are charged with a felony complaint alleging 37 counts of grand
theft, attempted grand theft and filing of false claims.
Bail was set at $100,000 each for both Abramyan and Khatchatryan.
Prosecutors also succeeded in attaching a motion to Avakyan’s bail that
would require him to prove that the money he uses to post bail did not come from
the proceeds of the alleged crime.
Attorneys for the defendants could not be reached for comment.
According to authorities, the scam began unraveling in the summer of 2005
when officials from the Union Rescue Mission reported the suspicious
recruitment of the homeless by so-called “cappers” who would regularly round up Skid
Row residents into vans with promises of free meals and a $50 cash payment.
Avakyan and his defendants would then pay the cappers $350 for each patient
they brought to his clinic, authorities said.
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nu ez, D-Los Angeles, whose office received report
of the suspicious recruitment of the homeless in Skid Row, called for “the
harshest penalties allowed by law.”
“We cannot tolerate this kind of fraud,” Nu ez said in a statement, “I am
pleased by the hard work done by the Attorney General’s Office to unravel this
ring of rip-off artists.”
In announcing the arrests, Attorney General Bill Lockyer said “these
defendants must be held accountable for allowing their greed to turn to fraud.”
“Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud not only rips off taxpayers,” he said, “it also
puts public health at risk by limiting the amount of resources available to
help those truly in need.”
[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected])
(818) 713-3761

The Guardian, UK
Nov 11 2006
Problem with your country’s image? Mr Anholt can help
Got a problem with your national image?
Oliver Burkeman at the nation branding masterclass in London
Saturday November 11, 2006
The Guardian
Nobody from the government of Kazakhstan was present at the Langham
hotel in London yesterday for the world’s first masterclass in nation
branding. This wasn’t for want of trying: the Kazakhs had appealed
for help in combating the Borat Problem, but Simon Anholt, the expert
in the field of image makeovers for nation-states, had refused on
ethical grounds. Still, representatives from 65 countries did attend
– including a man from the Saudi tourist board, full of ambitious
plans for oil-refinery tours, and an Armenian woman named Armine
Yeghiazaryan.
“We recently completed a survey to find out what people think about
Armenia,” Ms Yeghiazaryan explained.
And what do people think about Armenia? “Lots of people don’t really
think anything about Armenia,” she conceded. Then she brightened.
“But quite a few of them had heard of it.”
Mr Anholt, who works as a consultant to numerous governments,
including Britain’s, frequently gets hostile responses to the term
“nation branding”.
“At first there was outrage,” he recalled. “People said: ‘You’re
treating nations like nothing more than products in the global
supermarket!’ Which I actually thought was a great metaphor.”
In fact, most big countries already have brands, Mr Anholt points out
– gut associations that people make when they hear a country’s name.
“Nigeria? It’s those scam emails. Japan? Technology, expensive …
Britain? Posh, boring, old fashioned. Switzerland? Clean and
hygienic. Sweden? Switzerland with sex appeal.” His job is making
sure those associations are a help, not a hindrance.
“This is fundamentally not a marketing trick,” he insisted. “It’s
national identity in the service of enhanced competitiveness.”
Carol Hunter, from the Isle of Man government, listened intently. If
your gut reaction to hearing Isle of Man is “birching”, she’d like
you to abandon it; if it’s “TT races”, she’d like you to broaden it.
If it’s “tax haven”, you may not be too far off, but these days the
preferred slogan for the Man brand is “freedom to flourish”.
Striding the stage beneath the chandeliers in the Langham’s ballroom,
Mr Anholt told delegates that the image being promoted to sell a
country to tourists is usually exactly the wrong one to sell it to
investors.
“For years, the Scottish tourist board marketed Scotland as a country
stuck about 100 years in the past, a place of emptiness, wildness and
no buildings,” he said. “Actually, there was one building: a thatched
pub and some yokels inside drinking whisky.” That might be appealing
to holidaymakers. “But it’s no good if you’re trying to persuade
Samsung to build their next factory there.”
It was a tension acutely felt by the man from Madrid, who glumly
noted that a reputation for siestas and all-night parties was not
exactly helping promote the Spanish technology sector.
And what of Jamaica? “You think sun, sea and sand, don’t you?” asked
Nicole Maraj-Pandohie, from Invest Jamaica. “You don’t think strong
business infrastructure.” You also think violent crime. “Yes. I deal
with this every day. Every day,” she said, with great forbearance.
Not that nation branding can’t go embarrassingly wrong. “The trouble
with Cool Britannia,” Mr Anholt sighed, “was not the basic idea. The
problem was that the government forgot it was trying to promote
Britain, and started promoting the campaign to promote Britain.”
(These days, the representative from Visit Britain explained, the
UK’s brand values are depth, heart, and vitality.)
Mr Anholt makes moral judgments on who to work with. The Kazakhs did
not make the cut, but if they had, he would have advised them to play
along with Borat, the fictional Kazakh reporter. “At least they have
a reputation now. It may be a bad one, but it’s much easier to turn a
negative into a positive than nothing into something.” Which was not
what the Armenians wanted to hear.
,,1945380,00.html
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Nov 11 2006
Putin vows to double trade with Azerbaijan
AssA-Irada 11/11/2006 02:51
Russia and Azerbaijan plan to double bilateral trade in the near
future, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
In a meeting at the Kremlin on Thursday with his Azerbaijani
counterpart Ilham Aliyev, in Russia on a three-day visit, Putin said
the strengthening trade ties between the two countries will serve the
purpose. He noted that the bilateral trade turnover has already
exceeded a billion dollars.
`I believe we will double it in the next two or three years. In any
case, the growth rate of the turnover suggests this,’ the Russian
leader said. `We have established very high-level cooperation in the
political field, international affairs and the economy.’
Putin said the two countries have already increased their trade by
50% this year compared the first ten months of 2005.
President Aliyev praised bilateral ties as well. `The relations
between Russia and Azerbaijan have reached their highest level –
probably a peak since gaining independence [in 1991]. We aspire to
further expand potential for cooperation. We are successfully
collaborating in the political, economic and humanitarian areas. A
positive solution of outstanding issues will facilitate strengthening
our ties and stabilizing the situation in the region as a whole.’
The two leaders also discussed the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over
Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh, regional security and other international
issues.
350 Russian companies are operating in Azerbaijan. Most of the
Russian investments have been directed to the production and
transportation of oil. Azerbaijan mainly imports wheat, sugar,
beetroots, electricity, natural gas, and timber from its northern
neighbor, while exports include fruit and vegetables, petrochemicals,
tea and cotton.

Daily Star – Lebanon
Nov 11 2006
Beirut’s real-life version of ‘The Yacoubian Building’
By John Ehab
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, November 11, 2006

BEIRUT: Longtime residents of Beirut could be forgiven for reacting
to the popularity of “The Yacoubian Building” – the bestselling novel
written by Alaa al-Aswany and the blockbuster film adaptation
directed by Marwan Hamed – with some confusion. Aswany’s book and
Hamed’s movie concern the iconic status of a 70-year-old neoclassical
building on Talaat Harb Street in Downtown Cairo. Erected by
Armenian-Egyptian businessman Nichan Yacoubian in the 1930s, the
once-grand building fell on harder and harder times in the 1960s,
when it was left in the charge of numerous superintendends after a
wave of nationalizations under then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In
“The Yacoubian Building,” the structure is the setting for an
unfolding drama narrating Egypt’s modern sociopolitical history.
There is, however, another Yacoubian Building, equally storied and
symbolic, spread across two blocs and located in the Caracas
neighborhood of Ras Beirut. Like it’s namesake in Cairo, Beirut’s
Yacoubian has been witness to turbulent times.
At the time Cairo’s Yacoubian was being built, a vacant plot of land
populated primarily by some fruits, cacti and vegetable bushes was
sold to an Armenian-Lebanese man named Yacoub Yacoubian. A fruit
seller named Umm Mahmoud once lived on those lands and remembers the
place before the huge buildings went up.
“We used to live on this land, tending the garden for the Mezhers,”
recalls Mahmoud. “After the Mezhers sold the land … we moved.”
Not long after, Mahmoud adds, foundations were laid for an enormous
10-story, double-bloc building with 140 flats. Unlike the colonial
style of Cairo’s Yacoubian, Beirut’s counterpart came shaped like a
U-turn, copping the style of Le Corbusier.
Samia al-Assi moved into the Yacoubian in 1974 and never left. In the
days before Lebanon’s 1975-1990 Civil War, Assi recalls, the building
was famous for the artists who lived there. Singer Faiza Ahmad and
comedian Abdel-Salam al-Nabulsi were among the celebrity residents.
Back in the day, recalls Elie Qartabawi, who resides in the Yacoubian
still and has lived there longer than anyone else, “it was the
biggest, most famous, most expensive building in Lebanon.”
The Yacoubian used to boast a famous nightclub – the Venus – situated
one floor below ground. A legend in its time, the Venus welcomed
Cabinet ministers, MPs and army commanders alike. It was also a
favored destination for wealthy tourists from the Gulf. Shortly after
the Civil War broke out, the Venus closed its doors.

In the years that followed, the internally displaced sought shelter
in the building. Among them was Mohammad Sweidan, otherwise known as
Abu Ali. During the war he became the Yacoubian’s natour, or
concierge.
“I [saw] terrifying days during that war, and often received death
threats,” sighs Abu Ali.
All the local militias passed through the Yacoubian, and therefore
past his post.
Abu Ali says he was twice kidnapped by militiamen who were inquiring
after arms. With the Israeli invasion in 1982, he adds, an officer
pulled up to the building and called on all inside to surrender their
weapons.
Around 60 pistols came tumbling down into the courtyard, says Abu
Ali, who was ordered to collect them for the officer. The next day he
found one pistol left behind. He sold it to a banker for LL500.
“Like anything else in Lebanon,” says Qartabawi, “the Yacoubian
declined during the war. One day a lady asked me: ‘Where is the
Yacoubian refugee camp?'”
These days, the Yacoubian is known as the home of Abu Elie, the bar
that occupies the lower back corner of the building.
“The people who come here are mostly intellectuals, mostly leftist
and always progressive,” says Nina Jamal, a customer.
Posters of Che Guevara dominate the walls, along with pictures of
Marx, Lenin, Nasser, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Samir Kassir and George
Hawi.
Abu Elie himself once lived in the Yacoubian and ran a sandwich shop
in the neighborhood. In the early 1990s, he moved back to Bourj
Hammoud and opened the bar.
Still, confusion abounds. Since the “The Yacoubian Building” has been
screening in Beirut’s movie theaters, Assi says, “many people ask me
if they shot the film here.”
sp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=7682 3

Daily Star – Lebanon
Nov 11 2006
Landmark’s battle scars take on new meaning
Multimedia artist Marwan Rechmaoui’s captures history of a former
icon
By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Daily Star staff
Saturday, November 11, 2006

Interview
BEIRUT: Marwan Rechmaoui’s most recent work, entitled “Spectre,” is
an exact, sculptural replica of a building that spreads across two
blocs in the neighborhood of Ras Beirut.
As an artist, Rechmaoui has nurtured an enduring interest in acts of
mapping and deconstructing city life. “A Monument for the Living,”
from 2002, dealt with the history of Bourj al-Murr, the concrete
tower in Kantari that continues to define the Beirut skyline despite
its uselessness (never finished, can’t be used, can’t be knocked
down, can’t be imploded, can’t shake a reputation as Civil War-era
sniper nest and torture center). “Beirut Caoutchouc,” from 2003,
re-created a map of the capital in tough, interlocking black rubber.
For “Spectre,” he tells The Daily Star, “I wanted to take a
cross-section of Lebanese society,” but only by dealing with the
traces that society leaves behind, the marks that are imprinted on
Beirut’s urban fabric.”
Plus, Rechmaoui used to live in this particular building, so whether
he’d be keen to acknowledge it or not, it must mean something to him.
The building, known as the Yacoubian, is named for the man who had it
built, says Rechmaoui, an Armenian originally from the Syrian city of
Aleppo who, according to rumor, once worked as a cake vendor but came
into great wealth when he moved to Beirut.
As Rechmaoui tells it, the Yacoubian was erected in the Nasserite
era, in the aftermath of Syria’s brief unification with Egypt, when
members of the Damascene elite were nervous about the potential
nationalization of their assets and shifted large amounts of capital
into banks in Beirut.
At the time, he continues, a group of five architects living in
Beirut pushed for new legislation to be passed in Lebanon, which
would allow the units of a particular building to be separated and
sold. Previously, such legislation had applied only to undeveloped
land.
As a result, he says,”people took advantage.”
Huge structures went up in Beirut’s residential and commercial
quarters. The typical four- to six-floor apartment building gave way
to towering blocs like the Yacoubian’s.
A Lebanese architect named Rafik al-Muhib drafted the plans for the
building. Yacoubian had commissioned him to design a deluxe housing
complex for wealthy residents who would be living in close proximity
to the sea and Beirut’s upscale, cosmopolitan nightlife district.
Indeed, in the initial years of its existence, the building was used
for that very purpose. The legendary Venus nightclub was located
beneath the parking lot, and every night that parking lot was filled
with Rolls Royces and Ferraris.
But with the outbreak of the 1975-1990 Civil War in Lebanon, the
building’s original residents, whether they were from Lebanon or
elsewhere, began to leave in large numbers. They were rich, says
Rechmaoui, which meant they could afford to escape the fighting, and
they had other places to live anyway.
As the violence in Lebanon continued, new residents began to move in
– refugees from other parts of Beirut and from South Lebanon, seeking
to escape the first Israeli invasion of March 1978.
Some of the older residents stayed on throughout the 15-year war.
Some refugees from the South who decided to settle down in Beirut
after the war eventually bought their apartments and stayed as well.
Some refugees who had been squatting in their units moved out and
made way for another wave of new residents in the postwar period.
In the process, the Yacoubian Building lost its original luster. It
is no longer viewed by anyone as a glamorous address.

But for Rechmaoui, it is a telling piece of history.
For a few years, he says, he lived in there in a first-floor
apartment with a studio next door, his two windows located right
above the entrance. For Rechmaoui, what is interesting about this
sprawling, two-bloc concrete structure is the challenge it presents
to the central tenets of modernity.
It was designed to be clean, rational, sleek, and sophisticated, he
says, and for a time it was all these things. It resembled an
architect’s maquette.
But then everything broke down. Residents wrecked the unity of the
facade by enclosing their balconies or throwing up tough and colorful
curtains. Businesses moved in hung exterior placards advertising
their offices. The boy scouts established a base in the complex, as
did an Eritrean social club and a dive bar much loved for its Che
Guevara memorabilia.
The new inhabitants of the Yacoubian established their own ad hoc
barriers and gerrymandered boundaries between units. The spaces
imagined by planners gave way to realities of how those spaces were
used. New rules took hold. The rhythms of urban life were disrupted
by the conventions of rural residents who lived in the Yacoubian
Building as they had in their villages.
“Spectre” is a recreation of this building in miniature. Rechmaoui
was commissioned to create it by the Sao Paulo Biennale, which opened
last month. He planned to cast it in concrete and have it shipped by
boat from Lebanon to Brazil this past summer. With the outbreak of
another war with Israel, things didn’t pan out. Instead, Rechmaoui
traveled to Sao Paulo in late September and built the work there
ahead of the opening in early October. He had only two weeks time to
complete it, which meant he had to make sacrifices.
As it stands now, “Spectre” is constructed of wood and painted a pale
shade of beige.
Originally, Rechmaoui wanted each unit to be not only rendered in
concrete but also exploded out for emphasis, “a gentle rather than
violent explosion,” he explains.
Pulling out each unit would call attention to the demarcation lines
between the apartments and highlight how they function, how they
allow a heterogeneous group of people to live together.
“Spectre” was meant to be a recreation of every detail along these
borderlines, examining the traces people leave behind and exploring
how urban life is impressed upon a city’s surface. At the same, the
artist wanted to make manifest his refusal to divulge what goes on in
those people’s lives inside.
“I don’t like to deal with people,” Rechmaoui says. “It’s a hassle
for me. I work how I work. Plus I didn’t want the work to be
gimmicky. You can never know what’s inside [a building like the
Yacoubian.] You can only see what people allow you to see, even if
you’re a voyeur.
“For me, it’s important to work on the city,” he continues.
“According to modernists, a place like this does not exist, because
to exist it has to follow a certain order. This place is chaos, but
it works and it works well. I don’t look at it as a case study on how
people are living and how they function,” he adds. It’s more a
mediation on urban life, “throwing away traditions to live now in
this life.”
Rechmaoui traveled to Sao Paulo with a suitcase packed full of
individually marked and ordered envelopes – the accessories
representing each of those borderlines.
The work currently on view in Sao Paulo is an approximation of the
work Rechmaoui originally wanted to do. Within a year’s time, he
intends to redo the work as planned.
The one lesson he learned in Brazil is this, he says: “I realize it
has to be bigger.”

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Nov 11 2006
SPEAKER OF AZERBAIJAN PARLIAMENT MEETS ITALIAN DELEGATION
[November 10, 2006, 22:22:51]
Speaker of Milli Majlis of the Azerbaijan Republic Ogtay Asadov
November 10 met with the delegation led by President of the
Constitutional Court of Italy Franco Bile visiting the country to
take part at the international conference held at Constitutional
Court of Azerbaijan in Baku.
The friendly ties between Azerbaijan and Italy successfully develop,
Mr. Asadov noted. The negotiations President of Azerbaijan carried
out in Italy in February 2005 and the signed documents have opened a
new phase in development of relations. As stated, today the goods
turnover between two countries has reached $1,5 billion. All the
large-scale economic projects in region have been initiated by
Azerbaijan and now the country plays importunate role in Europe’s
energy safety, the Speaker of Azerbaijan stressed.
Ogtay Asadov spoke of the inter-parliamentary links between the Milli
Majlis of Azerbaijan and Italian Parliament. He also updated the
guest on ensuring human rights and freedoms in the Republic, the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh conflict and the UN Security
Council’s resolutions to solve the problem.
President of the Constitutional Court of Italy Franco Bile expressed
gratitude for hospitality they were shown during the event in Baku.
`Azerbaijan develops intensively and ensures human rights at high
level. We are convinced that reciprocal visits will have positive
influence on development of our relations’, he underlined.
The sides also had exchange of views on a number of other questions
representing mutual interest.

Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE)
Nov 10 2006

OSCE Office helps promote environmental awareness in Armenia’s
regions

YEREVAN, 10 November 2006 – As part of its environmental activities
in Armenia, the OSCE Office in Yerevan will co-host an
awareness-raising event in the province of Aragatsotn tomorrow.
The event, which has as its goal the eventual clean-up of the area
surrounding the village of Artashavan, will be attended by 15
non-governmental organizations’ representatives and 25 volunteers. It
is organized by the OSCE Office, the Public Environmental Information
(Aarhus) Centre in Lori, and the NGO Compatriot Unity.
The participants will be briefed on the Aarhus Convention and its
principles, problems related to environmental security and the OSCE’s
engagement in this field. They will also learn more about regional
history, which is tightly connected with the development of the
Armenian alphabet.
In addition, they will pay a visit to Saghmosavank, where the
so-called Monastery of Psalms of the 12th century is located.
The OSCE Office in Yerevan supports the establishment of a network of
Aarhus centres in the regions of Armenia to promote the Aarhus
principles. Currently, there are five centres in three provinces of
Armenia and one in the capital, Yerevan.

Fistful of Euros, Sweden
Nov 10 2006
323 Years of Caffeine
by Alex Harrowell
One of Thomas Barnett’s commenters complained about Europe being a
cafe society, so why not some café-blogging? After all, the collectif
antilibérale over at European Tribune had a whole thread on
brasseries not so long ago. Der Standard has a long article on the
history of Viennese kaffeehäuser, going back to 1683 and the second
siege of Vienna.
First of all, a classic trope of European history-the fact everyone
knows, but that turns out to be rubbish. Like King Canute telling the
tide to back off (a little like keeping spam out of our comments
threads, but I digress) – everyone remembers that, but hardly anyone
realises that Canute did it to humble his courtiers with the limits
of power, rather than in a gesture of deluded arrogance. Every
schoolboy knows that one Georg Franz Kolschitzky was rewarded for
sneaking through the Turkish lines with a message by being given a
stash of coffee beans from captured stocks. Another version is that,
after the relief of Vienna, he looted the beans from the Turks’
abandoned baggage train, or bought them for a song from a soldier who
didn’t know their value.
The only problem is that it’s not true.
In fact, the first café in Vienna was opened by an Armenian who was a
former servant at the Imperial Court, and who may also have been a
spy. (What else? Cafés are for conspiring.) There are obvious
parallels between the two stories, and it’s hard not to imagine that
Kolschitzky was a more patriotic and Catholic figure for little
Austro-Hungarian boys’ consumption. Brief consideration also debunks
the story that no-one knew what the brown beans were – Venice had
opened the first European café in 1647, and this key strategic
technology spread rapidly along the sea trade routes, so that cafés
were opening in numbers in London in the 1650s.
Gambling and billiards were common from the word go. 40 years on,
newspapers began to appear, and another 20 years saw the first café
with music. Booze and hot food had to wait until 1808, when Austria
joined Napoleon’s trade embargo on the UK and immediately lost access
to coffee. But it was 1856 before women were admitted. From then on,
the sky was the limit-or rather, it was until the eruption of the
short twentieth century.
Vienna’s Ringstrasse is today surprisingly short on cafés; there are
essentially three worth speaking of, the Schottenring at the top end,
the Schwarzenberg at the Schwarzenbergplatz halfway down, and the
Prückel at the Stubentor near the bottom. The reason is grim. Most of
the luxury car showrooms and airline offices are former Jewish cafés,
expropriated before the extermination of their clientele, and
converted to their new use postwar because of their fine locations
and ample clear space on the ground floor. A curious architectural
echo of this exists in London, where a recently opened restaurant
that claims to be an attempt at a classic café-restaurant occupies,
yes, a former car showroom.
My favourites were the Stadlmann, next to the Institute of Political
Science on the Währingerstrasse, and the Alt Wien in the city centre
on Bäckerstrasse. And the Hawelka, but everyone loves the Hawelka.
Any favourites?
2748.php
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Nov 10 2006
NATO PA TO DISCUSS NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT
[November 10, 2006, 19:24:13]
Since November 11, the first vice-speaker of Azerbaijan Parliament,
the head of delegation of Azerbaijan in Parliamentary Assembly of
NATO (NATO PA) Ziyafet Askarov and MP Siyavush Novruzov will be on a
visit in the Canadian city of Quebec to participate in 52nd annual
session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
In the frame of session, will be conducted meetings of political
committee, committees on defense and safety, on economy and safety,
on science and technology, and also political groups and Standing
Committees, press service of Milli Majlis told.
In meeting of subcommittee `Further opportunities of safety and
defense’ of the Committee on Defense and Safety, will be heard the
report on the topic `The Role of NATO in region of Southern
Caucasus’. Also will be conducted exchange of views on situation in
the countries of region, development of relations with NATO, the work
done in the field of individual cooperation, and on other questions.
On action, also will take place discussions on the
Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The session is to consider acceptance of the declaration of the Riga
Summit of NATO. The document will reflect importance of rendering
assistance to the countries of Southern Caucasus and the Balkans,
observance of democratic standards in the member states of the
Organization.
The visit will end 19 November.

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Nov 10 2006
Coming elections affect internal political situation in Armenia:
deputy

Source: Trend
Author: Trend

10.11.2006

(ArmInfo) -. The coming elections affect the internal political
situation in Armenia, RA Parliament deputy, Viktor Dallakyan, said
during today’s press-conference in “Pastark” discussion club.
According to him, RA authorities are nor ready to give the power in
case of defeat in elections. “There is no understanding in the
country that the power may be left for the reason that you have been
given less votes, therefore, the authorities will do and do their
best to achieve their reelection”, the deputy said. In his opinion,
imitation of amendments to the Electoral Code is going on in the
Parliament at present. It is unclear, Dallakyan said, if the
international supervisory missions will be invited to the elections,
since this issue also is not discussed by pro-power forces.
“Everything is being done to falsify the elections again”, the deputy
confirmed, reports Trend.
As for the question who will take the place of judges in Election
Committees in the light of the RA Constitutional Court’s decision on
unconstitutionality of the presence of judges in Electoral
Committees, V. Dallakyan said that it would be true to give the
liberated places to opposition.